Unplugged

Chapter 5: Unplugged

By the second evening in the safehouse, cabin fever had set in hard.

Julian’s whole life ran on notifications, cameras, and people telling him yes. Cut off from all of it felt like torture. He paced the living room half the morning. He tried an old spy novel from the shelf, gave up after three pages, and spent exactly three minutes trying to talk Kael into letting him check his phone.

Kael handed him a deck of cards instead and went back to cleaning his rifle.

Now it was 2 AM. The rain had softened to a steady drizzle against the windows.

In the bedroom, Kael slept in his usual spot — arms crossed, chair facing the door, breathing slow and even. He slept the way soldiers do: light, ready to move, but still. The soft rise and fall of his chest under the black t-shirt drew Julian’s eyes more than once.

Julian wasn’t sleeping at all. He stared at the ceiling, still buzzing from the last two days — the canceled shows, the red ink on that letter. The quiet of the forest was too loud. It left too much room to think, and his thoughts weren’t good company right now.

He threw back the covers and swung his feet onto the cold floor. He glanced at Kael, half expecting his eyes to snap open. They didn’t.

Julian slipped into the dark living room, guided by a thin line of moonlight through the shades. He wasn’t sure what he wanted — water, a distraction, anything.

He opened a storage closet, hoping for another book. Instead his hand found something smooth and curved, tucked behind a stack of wool blankets.

A guitar. Old, scratched, missing a tuning peg. Left behind by some operative killing time between jobs, probably. To Julian it looked like a rope thrown into water.

He carried it to the couch and sat down cross-legged in the dark. The strings were stiff and badly out of tune. He worked the pegs by ear, tightening them one at a time until the chords rang out warm and full.

Then he closed his eyes and started to play.

Not the pop songs. Not the tracks that filled stadiums. His fingers moved through something slower, finger-picked, sad. After a long intro, he started to sing.

His stadium voice was loud and sharp. This voice was different — soft, clear, shaking a little. He sang about feeling empty in a crowded room. About being looked at constantly and never actually seen.

In the hallway, unnoticed, Kael listened.

He’d woken the second Julian’s feet hit the floor. He’d followed to send him back to bed. But when Julian pulled the guitar out of the closet, Kael stopped and stayed where he was.

Watching him now — hair falling in his eyes, coaxing something beautiful out of a five-stringed piece of junk — Kael felt something in his chest settle differently than it had all week. The soft, unguarded sound of that voice pulled at him in a way he hadn’t expected.

This wasn’t the man who screamed about oat milk. This was someone scared and alone, working through it the only way he knew how.

Julian hit a high note and his voice cracked. He stopped playing, let the last chord fade, and rested his forehead against the neck of the guitar with a shaky breath.

“You’re out of tune on the G string.”

Julian’s head snapped up. Kael stepped out of the shadows, barefoot, in sweatpants and a black t-shirt that clung to the solid lines of his chest and shoulders.

“Jesus, Kael.” Julian pressed a hand to his chest. “Wear a bell or something. You move like a ghost.”

“Occupational hazard.” Kael crossed the room and sat down on the far end of the couch, leaving space between them. He didn’t tell Julian to go back to bed. The quiet between them felt heavier now, more charged.

Julian pulled the guitar closer, suddenly feeling exposed. “How long were you standing there?”

“Long enough.” Kael leaned forward, elbows on his knees, watching him — no mockery in it, just attention. The weight of that gaze made Julian’s skin warm. “You didn’t write that one with a team of producers.”

Julian looked down at the guitar’s scratched wood. Heat crept up his neck. “No. I wrote it at sixteen. Before the label. Before Marcus. They said it was too sad for radio, so it never went anywhere.”

“They’re idiots.”

Julian looked up, surprised. Coming from a man who’d already said he didn’t care about music, it landed harder than any compliment he’d gotten in years. A small, real smile pulled at his mouth.

“It’s different like this,” Julian said, running his thumb along the edge of the soundhole. “Just me and the guitar. No expectations. I don’t have to be Julian Vance the rock star. I can just breathe.”

“You wear the arrogance like armor.” Kael’s voice stayed low, matter-of-fact. Not a question. “You make yourself impossible so people keep their distance. If they hate the diva, they can’t hurt the kid underneath.”

Julian went still. Nobody looked past the leather pants and the platinum records. Nobody had ever seen him — and this man had known him three days and already taken him apart.

“And if I do?” His voice was quieter now, the bite gone. “In my world, if you don’t have armor, people chew you up. You have to be untouchable.”

Kael reached over and pushed the neck of the guitar down gently, until Julian had no choice but to look at him. The brief brush of his fingers against Julian’s was warm and steady.

“You don’t need armor in this house.” His voice dropped lower. The words settled between them like a promise. “I’m your shield now. You can drop it.”

Julian’s breath caught. For once, he didn’t want to fight back or push away. The quiet intensity in Kael’s eyes made it hard to look anywhere else.

“Okay,” he whispered, barely louder than the rain.

Kael held his gaze a moment longer. Something unspoken passed between them — solid, heavy, and new. Then he pulled his hand back and settled into the corner of the couch.

“Play it again,” he said. “And fix that G string.”

Julian let out a small, watery laugh. He turned the peg, found his place, and started to play — and for the first time in a long while, he felt safe.