The pulse of the warehouse had shifted.
Gone was the heat of confrontation, replaced now by the hum of potential. Lights blinked in test patterns. Steel scaffolding stretched into the air like skeletons of dreams still being built.
Ryan's hand slid from Luna's waist, only to lace their fingers together instead—gentle now, not claiming. Just leading.
"Wanna see the rest?" he asked, voice low and a little teasing.
Luna nodded, still a bit pink in the cheeks, unsure if it was from earlier or from Ryan's touch now—light and grounding like a promise of things to come.
They wandered through the half-lit maze of halls and platforms, dodging coiled wires and ducking under beams. Ryan pointed things out with casual flair—the bar setup, the secret chill-out rooms, the elevated stage where the DJ booth was slowly being pieced together like a crown on a dark throne.
"It's like a monster still waking up," Luna murmured, staring at the skeletal rigging.
Ryan grinned, eyes crinkling. "Exactly. She's not much now, but give it two days and she'll be purring like a beast on molly and magic."
Luna laughed softly. "Did you always want to be a DJ?"
Ryan's expression softened. "Yeah. Pretty much."
They kept walking, Luna letting their hands swing between them. "How'd it start?"
Ryan tilted his head, thinking. "Secondary school. GarageBand on the school Mac. It was trash. Like, garbage loops and fake strings and nothing made sense. But it was mine, y'know? I could build something. Made this horrible trance remix of the school anthem once and got detention for a week."
Luna snorted.
"Then I joined the audio club. Thought it'd be boring, just setting up mics for assemblies or whatever. But they had this dusty little storage room with an old Numark mixer and a bunch of LCD decks no one touched. That was it. I was gone."
Luna looked at him, wide-eyed. "That's… actually really cool."
Ryan shrugged, but there was pride there, curling in his smirk returning to his chiseled features. "It was a lot of skipping class and begging my teachers not to fail me. But I knew what I wanted."
Luna's voice dipped, soft with admiration. "And you chased it."
Ryan turned to him, and for a second he looked poised and radiant, lit by the flickering of an unfinished light rig above.
"I still am," he said. "This is just the start."
And then, with a sudden mischievous glint in his eye, he bumped Luna's hip with his own.
"When it's done… you're coming up to the booth with me."
Luna blinked. "Me?"
"Yeah, you." Ryan stepped a little closer, voice dropping to that velvety register that always made Luna's stomach flutter. "I want you there. Beside me. So you can see what it's like when a thousand people fall in love with the sound."
Luna's throat went dry.
"And maybe," Ryan added, "so they can see who I'm making it for." Ryan said, his free hand reaching out to tuck a few strands of hair behind Luna's ear, his touch lingering as his eyes held Luna's, gentle but firm, as if the music wasn't the only one he was chasing anymore.
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