Your sheet music fluttered slightly under the soft breeze of the open window, pages carefully marked with pencil: ritardando, con anima, dolce.

Kevin leaned over your shoulder and squinted. Then snorted.

“Why does your sheet music have instructions?” he asked, tone caught between disbelief and amusement.

You didn’t look up from the grand staff. “So I don’t forget how to feel things while I’m playing.”

“Right,” he said, pulling up a folding chair and dramatically dropping into it. “Because nothing screams raw emotion like someone telling you to ‘play with moderate tenderness.’”

You rolled your eyes. “And what, exactly, do your charts say? ‘Slam until your wrists break’?”

Kevin grinned. “More like ‘blast beat until your ancestors hear you.’”

You finally turned to face him, brow raised. “I’m sorry we’re not all trying to summon demons every time we perform.”

“Demons appreciate tempo,” he replied, tapping out a rhythm on his knee. “Yours would fall asleep halfway through a Chopin nocturne.”

“And yours would cry from sheer lack of nuance,” you shot back, but your smile betrayed the fondness beneath the sarcasm.

He held your gaze for a beat longer than necessary. “Maybe. But they’d still say you’ve got the prettiest hands they’ve ever seen.”

You blinked. “That’s—”

“An observation,” he interrupted, now very focused on his drumsticks. “Just an observation.”