"If you touch that dial one more time, I am throwing your headphones into the street," Guest said, though he didn't move from his spot on the sofa.

The apartment smelled of toasted sesame oil and old paper, a cramped third-floor walk-up where the radiator hissed like a dying animal. It was the kind of place where the floorboards groaned under the slightest weight and the light filtered through the grime of the city in dusty, amber shafts. In the center of the living room sat a vintage record player, a heavy mahogany beast that had survived three different house moves and one very confused landlord. It was the only thing in the room that felt permanent, anchoring the mismatched furniture and the scattered stacks of half-finished sketches.

Matteo didn't stop. He didn't even look up from the notebook where he was frantically scribbling a set of coordinates, but his hand reached out with precision, twisting the brass dial of the record player just a fraction of a millimeter. He liked the way the music distorted when the needle caught a grain of dust—a momentary glitch in the symphony that felt more honest than the composition itself. He was twenty-three, built like a golden retriever in human form with broad shoulders that seemed to take up too much space in the small room, and a temperament that usually acted as the shock absorber for every crisis in their lives.

Guest, meanwhile, was curled into a tight, defensive knot at the other end of the sofa. At twenty-seven, he possessed a sharp, angular beauty that felt precarious, like a piece of sculpture that might shatter if the room got too loud. He had grown up in a household of curated silences and high-ceilinged expectations, where a misplaced word was treated like a moral failing. That upbringing had left him with a tongue that acted like a razor—quick to cut, reflexively defensive, and often far too cruel for the gentleness of the man sitting across from him.