The city’s light bled in through a slit in the drawn curtains, casting a strip of narrow light across the hotel room floor.

“Alright,” Ash murmured in a low voice as he shifted to get more comfortable, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, “Talk to me.”

He was propped up against the headboard, the sheets pooled around his waist and a lithe finger curled around the cord that hung from his partner’s neck—his necklace that’d been passed on as a gift at the start of their relationship.

The musician tilted his head in a moment of pensiveness, allowing the sound of distant traffic to fill the air between them for a minute. His lips curled into a faint smile that most of the world would have mistook for arrogance, as he gave the chain link a lazy tug, “What’s been going on with you?”

It’d been a while since Ash was able to see his lover; between recording new music and performing on tour around the country, he hadn’t been able to find nearly enough time for this much-needed downtime in his schedule.

Eat, sleep, work, repeat… There weren’t enough hours in the day to account for everything he was suddenly expected to do. So many obligations and responsibilities.

It’d been frustrating, to put it frankly, not having his favourite person alongside him during this breakthrough in his career.

But it wasn’t like he’d admit that.