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Harrison smiled into his hair and pressed a lingering kiss there. “Absolutely.”

“Kinky.” Jake peered up. “Should’ve warned me.”

“Think I sort of did.”

Jake lifted his head fully then, slipping one hand flat on Harrison’s chest and propping his chin onto it as he looked up at him. And Christ. That gaze did something unbearable to Harrison. Soft. Open. Still wrecked from sex, yet somehow looking at him as though this meant far more than either of them had intended it to.

Then Jake grinned. “You’re a sexy fuck, Detective Black.”

Harrison bunched Jake’s hair into a fist and pulled him up to kiss him. “Back at you, Jake Whitton.”

Jake breathed a laugh, then rolled onto his side and dragged up a corner of the sheet, making a thoroughly inadequate attempt to clean them both and Harrison revelled in those rough hands moving gently over him. Somehow, the tenderness of it affected him almost as much as the sex had. Then when Jake finished, Harrison caught him around the waist and pulled him close beneath the tangled sheet, facing him in the dim light.

Jake stroked his thumb across Harrison’s side. “Thanks for telling me.”

Harrison worried at his bottom lip before nodding. “Probably should’ve done a while ago.”

“I get it.” He held his gaze without judgement or pity. “Stuff like that… it’s hard to say out loud when you’ve spent years keeping it boxed in. You hold it all so tight trying not to let any of it leak through the cracks, then one day summat shifts and the whole bloody roof caves at once.”

“That’s an incredibly roofer way of putting it.”

“S’what I know.” Jake shrugged one shoulder. “But I can hold some of it for you now.”

Harrison narrowed his eyes. “I find it deeply suspicious that you can apparently be this perfect.”

“Trust me, I’m very much held together with cheap screws and bad decisions. You already know that.”

“I think you underestimate how well put together you are.”

“You say that, but I once tried fixing a leak with expanding foam and optimism.”

Harrison chuckled. Fondly.

Then Jake’s expression softened again. “But I mean…Maybe I know a bit about what happens when you spend too long carrying everything alone. Grief. Anger. Trying to hold the whole structure upright even when half of it’s already rotted through underneath.”

“True.”

“And, well, maybe I’ve been looking for someone to hold mine, too.”

Harrison pushed Jake’s hair back from his face. “Maybe we can hold each other’s then.”

Jake considered that for a moment, eyes heavy with exhaustion. “We’re each other’s wall plates.”

Harrison grimaced. “Absolutely not.”

Jake laughed softly into the pillow. “Thought you liked the roofing metaphors.”

“Until you made me sound like a condemned building.”

Jake snorted. “You’re not condemned, Harry.”

“No?”

“Nah.” Jake gripped Harrison’s hip beneath the sheets. “You’ve just been carrying too much weight for too long. That’s different.”

Harrison looked away for a second, suddenly unable to hold the tenderness of it directly. And Jake yawned, nudging closer, dragging them back from the edge of sincerity before it swallowed them whole.

“Alright then.” He rubbed his nose down Harrison’s, then kissed him. “Let’s be each other’s rhythm instead.”