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What kind of music do you like?

They hadn’t listened to any at all since Walt had arrived.

Yacht rock is my favorite. The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, the Eagles, Hall and Oates. Walt licked his finger and turned a page of the book he was reading. Why?

No reason, I’m just surprised it’s not like... swing... jazz—

Walt snorted.

There was more than just swing and jazz around. Besides, yacht rock is a combination of a lot of things. It reminds me of jazz, but it has stories like country, a sarcasm to it like big band; it’s got folk guitar. It’s not chintzy or overproduced like stuff from the nineties. Smoother on the ears than things from now.

Like all the genres between then and now, just... averaged out.

Walt shrugged. You could put it that way.

He said he liked “playing music” that night in the bath. Maybe this would stop him from filling their head with wool and rain.

Can you play some? Like, make a playlist?

Walt sent Hollis a spark of annoyance but closed his book and pulled out Hollis’s phone. He spent about twenty minutes arranging something to his liking, then put Hollis’s phone in a mug by the side of their bed and pressed play.

It was... not exactly Hollis’s cup of tea, but it was certainly something.

It took about a half hour for Walt to begin tapping his fingers against the sides of the book. An hour for him to start singing along quietly, like he’d forgotten Hollis was even there.

Hollis didn’t sing. Hearing his own voice wielded with skill was...

There wasn’t a name for this emotion. He didn’t have words for the way the notes buzzed in his throat, slipped like honey through his teeth. The way his ears rang with it, pleasure unformed and indistinct.

Sitting in the dark of himself, both a witness and a hostage, violently aware that his heart picking up speed had nothing to do with how Walt was feeling.

And Walt himself wasn’t sad anymore, he was comfortable. The way they’d felt in that warm hollow, without that layer of despair over it.

Warm and pleased, and Hollis shook with it.

He watched and listened and shook.