He still had the leather jacket.
It hung at the back of the wardrobe like a fossil from a louder era, the sleeves creased into permanent rebellion. Sometimes he’d catch sight of it while reaching for a neatly ironed shirt and feel a faint, embarrassing tug in his chest, like hearing a song you once loved playing faintly in a supermarket.
Dave had been seventeen when the jacket first mattered. Spiked hair, safety pins, opinions sharp enough to cut glass. He’d shouted about the system in cramped venues that smelled of beer and sweat. He’d sworn he’d never sell out, never settle down, never become one of them. The future was a thing to fight, not plan for.
Back then, the world felt simple: there were the powerful, and there were the rest of us, and he knew exactly which side he was on.
He raved through the 90s with the stamina of someone who believed sleep was a conspiracy. He drifted through bad jobs with heroic indifference, treating employment as a temporary inconvenience rather than a necessity. Weekends blurred into weekdays, hangovers into late alarms. Responsibility hovered nearby, politely waiting to be acknowledged.
He ignored it with admirable dedication.
The bedsit in Rhyl had peeling wallpaper and a mattress that remembered every poor decision ever made on it. There had been a girl whose surname he never learned, a pregnancy scare, a string of unpaid bills that arrived like threatening postcards from the future. Life didn’t implode dramatically; it just sagged in the middle.
One morning he woke up and realised rebellion had stopped being fun and started being exhausting.
The change wasn’t dramatic. No lightning bolt, no epiphany. Just a slow drip of practical thoughts. Rent. Stability. Pensions. Words he once treated like punchlines began to sound suspiciously like solutions.
He cut his hair first. A small thing. Sensible, even. Interviews went better when people could see your eyebrows.
The job arrived soon after. Then a better one. Then a promotion. Each step felt temporary, a strategic compromise. He told himself he was infiltrating the system, learning its weaknesses from the inside.
The system, meanwhile, quietly handed him a company lanyard and a dental plan.
Years passed in tidy increments. He bought shirts that needed ironing and shoes that required polish. He stopped going to gigs because they were too loud and started complaining when restaurants played music too loudly. Somewhere along the way he discovered he liked coffee that tasted of adjectives.
He told himself this was maturity.
The leather jacket stayed in the wardrobe, watching.
The biggest change wasn’t the job or the mortgage or the reliable sleep schedule. It was the music. One afternoon he realised the records he once worshipped had been replaced by something softer, safer. Stadium anthems. Polished choruses. Songs that didn’t demand anything from him except passive approval.
He told himself it was just taste evolving.
One weekend, while clearing space in the spare room, he found the old vinyl stacked in a dusty crate. Angry album covers. Bands with names that sounded like threats. He picked one up, smiled nostalgically, then opened his laptop and searched for its resale value.
The listing went live within minutes.
It felt efficient. Sensible. Adult.
Election day arrived on a rainy Thursday. He stood in the polling booth holding the stubby pencil, staring at the ballot paper like it was a mirror. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then made a neat, decisive cross beside the candidate who promised stability, lower taxes, and strong markets.
The pencil didn’t tremble.
Walking home, he passed a group of teenagers outside a takeaway. Leather jackets. Loud laughter. One of them shouted something about the government and the end of the world. They sounded furious and certain and invincible.
He felt an unexpected flicker of irritation. Kids, he thought. They’ll understand when they’re older.
That evening he hung his suit jacket beside the old leather one. The two garments touched at the shoulders, strangers sharing a hanger. He stood there for a moment, staring at them, unsure why the sight made him uneasy.
Then his phone buzzed with a work email, and the feeling passed.
The leather jacket stayed where it was, waiting patiently for Rebellion festival in August where he could play pretend.
