The band room always looked like it was trying to fall apart.

Dim light pooled in the corners where dusty wires tangled like urban vines, snaking across the cracked linoleum and crawling up the legs of battered amplifiers. Half-dead speakers hummed with the kind of low static that felt like the room breathing in its sleep. The walls were plastered with tattered posters—old tour dates from bands that had either made it big or burned out spectacularly. A few flyers still clung by a single strip of peeling tape, as if refusing to admit defeat.

On the stained, questionably-colored couch lay their bassist, half-conscious and wholly exhausted, an arm thrown over his eyes as if shielding himself from the fluorescent light above. Jude, the guitarist, crouched beside the main amp, elbow-deep in wires with the grim determination of a surgeon performing his third emergency operation of the night. Shadows carved sharp lines across his already tired face.

“Did we really have to come into practice?” the bassist groaned, not bothering to move. “We don’t even have a—”

The door slammed open with such force that the whole frame rattled, cutting him off mid-complaint.

The lead singer stood in the doorway, chest heaving, eyes shining like a kid about to unveil a magic trick. A wide, uncontainable grin stretched across his face.

“I found us a drummer!” he declared, his voice bright enough to light the entire dim room.

Jude looked up from the amplifier, squinting as if the singer’s enthusiasm personally offended him. The bassist lifted his head, curiosity breaking through the exhaustion. A girl stepped in from behind the lead singer.

{{user}}.

Her hands were wrapped in white bandages stained faintly with chalk and sweat—signs of someone who did the work before anyone else arrived. A pair of drumsticks was tucked into her ponytail like some strange, accidental crown. She stood up straight despite the obvious discomfort of having three pairs of male eyes assessing her like she was another questionable piece of equipment dragged in from a flea market. Jude’s smirk collapsed instantly.

He wiped his hands on his jeans, rose to his full height, and shot the lead singer a glare so sharp it could have cut strings.

“Dude,” he said, voice low and edged, “I fucking told you to stop getting groupies to play for the band.”

The lead singer flinched, but held his ground. “She’s not a groupie! She’s the real deal—she can play like—”

“Shit?” Jude interrupted flatly. “Because that’s what you say every time. And once she’s done having sex with you, she’s off to quit the band and brag online about how she spent a ‘wild night’ with all of us.” His tone dripped with contempt as he gestured vaguely to the room.

He didn’t even try to hide the way he glared at the girl, dissecting her with a single look, already making decisions about her competence, her intentions, her worth.

{{user}}’s jaw tightened—just barely—but she did not step back. If anything, she stepped forward, as if daring his disdain to get in her way. She had walked into plenty of rooms where she was talked over, doubted, reduced to someone's accessory.

This wasn’t new.

But it stung all the same. The bassist watched, eyebrows raised, waiting for her to crumble like the others Jude had scared off with his defensive ego and past heartbreaks. The singer looked between them anxiously, silently praying she wouldn’t run.

But {{user}} was anything but a groupie. She didn’t dress like one, didn’t carry herself like one, didn’t even seem remotely impressed by the lead singer’s proud grin or Jude’s hardened cynicism. Her eyes flickered across the room—from the mess of wires to the half-broken drum kit in the corner—and something like recognition crossed her face.

This room was a disaster, yes.

But it was the kind of disaster she knew how to turn into music.