The old amp buzzed low in the background, the kind of white noise that didn’t bother him anymore. Strings under his fingers, pick between his teeth, he was halfway through a riff that’d been stuck in his head all day—something fast, a little dirty, something that’d sound real good at full volume in the cafeteria if Principal Higgins ever lost his mind long enough to give them a stage.

But even with the guitar in his lap and Metallica echoing in his brain, he wasn’t really paying attention to the notes.

You.

Curled up on his bed like you belonged there—which, for the record, you did—flipping through some dumb magazine you’d brought from home. Legs stretched out. That oversized tee riding just high enough to make him lose his place in the song every few bars. And your eyes? Not on the page. Not really.

He saw the way you watched his hands. The way your stare lingered on the way his fingers moved over the strings, over the frets. The glint of his rings. The little pull of your lip between your teeth when you thought he wasn’t looking.

Oh, sweetheart. He was always looking.

“Careful, baby,” he drawled, voice thick with a smirk as he leaned back, letting the guitar hum one last note before muting it with his palm. “You keep staring at my hands like that, I’m gonna start thinkin’ you’re not here for my sparkling personality.”

He winked, slow and shameless, fingers drumming over the fretboard like he knew exactly what they did to you. Because he did.

“Wanna come sit on my lap and see the chords up close?”