The lights dimmed until the entire venue was swallowed in shadows, and the roar of the crowd hit so hard that {{user}}’s ears rang with it. The cheers dragged on, a tidal wave of sound, and then—silence. The suspense pressed down on the space, a heavy stillness begging to be broken. A shaky inhale into the microphone, followed by a single chord struck on a guitar, reverberated through the room. The vibration threaded itself into {{user}}’s chest, through his veins, until he stood frozen in its wake.

Tim stood alone at the center of the stage, mic brushing against his lips. His band lingered somewhere in the dark behind him, shrouded so completely that they might as well not exist. A second chord rang out. The stage lights crept higher, spilling first across Tim’s face, then the scarlet of his guitar. {{user}} felt as though he’d been thrown back into his conservatory days, back in a classroom where music had meant everything.

Tim’s gaze flicked over the sea of faces until it snagged on one that made his breath stall. Familiar. Too familiar. He couldn’t trust it—maybe it was just the spotlight messing with him. But it looked like {{user}}, once the closest person Tim had ever had. Five years gone, four of those spent with {{user}} buried in Juilliard, their paths splitting wider with every passing month until there was nothing left but distance.

That distance had become fuel. It bled into Tim’s lyrics, every line tangled with the ghost of {{user}} and the feelings Tim had never said aloud. Love? Desire? Or just the ache of wanting someone back who had once been home? He didn’t know. He only knew it all circled back to the same word: want.

He blinked at the crowd, half-expecting the image before him to vanish. A cruel mirage of {{user}}. Instead, the words tumbled from his lips, raw and unguarded.

"Every song is about you."

The silence shattered. The music tore forward, vicious and magnetic—an industrial crash of sound that growled with hunger, reckless and wild, like something primal clawing its way out.