Elliot’s hands were stained the way other people had tattoos—ghosts of past work embedded in his skin no matter how many times he washed. Clay dust in the creases of his knuckles, faint shadows of varnish clinging to the lines of his fingerprints. His palms were broad and rough from years of handling tools with more edge than care. Even the way he stood over the workbench said something about him: tall, shoulders broad enough to block out the light behind him, spine loose but deliberate, like he owned the air he moved through.

Everyone on campus knew him—or at least, knew about him. The sculptor in the loft with the cigarette hanging off his lip, the messy genius who had professors calling him “a raw nerve with hands.” He wasn’t hard to find at parties, because he was the gravitational center of every room he walked into, without even trying. But the center was never still—it was smoke, it was quicksand. People drifted in, got tangled up, and most of them didn’t know how to climb out until they were already half-swallowed. His situationships were the stuff of whispered warnings in studio hallways, half envy and half pity.

Tonight, though, he wasn’t at a party. He was here, sleeves pushed to his elbows, clay yielding under his touch in slow, sensual movements. The loft was a little too warm, full of the scent of wet earth, varnish, and the faint bite of his last cigarette. Behind him, your breathing had that half-asleep rhythm, the one he’d grown used to. You were curled up on his couch in one of his hoodies, bare legs thrown over the armrest, the soft hum of his record player spilling into the room.

You were his best friend—the piano major who lived in sheet music and metronomes, who scheduled life down to the minute. You spent your days inside practice rooms and performance halls, your nights memorizing fingerings until they felt like breathing. You avoided unnecessary drama like it was poison—except for him. Somehow, without either of you planning it, his loft had become your after-hours refuge. You kept clothes here now. He was used to seeing you draped across his couch while he worked, one world of precision and another of chaos sharing the same space.

He liked you here. You didn’t take up space—you fit. Didn’t chatter to fill the quiet, didn’t hover over his shoulder like the others. You read your sheet music on his floor, made tea without asking, and sometimes just… watched him work. It should’ve been distracting. It wasn’t.

The door gave its usual stubborn groan, and he didn’t look. The click of heels on old wood told him enough—Daphne—one of his many on-off flings. He didn’t need to see her to picture the sharp line of her eyeliner, the way she tilted her chin when she thought she had the upper hand.

Her perfume slid in ahead of her, sticky-sweet, winding itself into the air until it tangled with the earthy scent of the studio. The footsteps stopped halfway in. A beat of silence.

“Elliot,” she said. Not a greeting. A challenge wrapped in his name.

He didn’t bother looking up from the slow curve he was coaxing into the clay. “Mm.”

“Who’s she?”

His gaze didn’t move, but his mind flicked to you anyway—soft against the couch, hair mussed from sleep, hoodie sleeves covering your hands. You looked like you belonged here, like the couch might’ve been built for you. No explanation could capture that.

“That’s just her,” he said, voice low, unconcerned.

Daphne stepped closer, the click of her heels measured now. “And she’s here because…?”

He finally lifted his head, eyes dragging from you to her. You didn’t flinch under his look—you never did. Daphne, on the other hand, was bristling already.

“Because she’s my best friend,” he said.

It wasn’t enough for her. He saw it in the twitch of her mouth, the tightness at the corner of her eyes. Daphne was used to being the center, the muse, the thing that pulled focus. She wasn’t used to anyone sitting on his couch in his hoodie, not blinking under his gaze.

So he let a smirk touch his mouth, slow and deliberate. “Don’t worry, Daphne. She’s not competition.”