Archive of Our Own

9:52 pm

Galadriel hesitated in front of the door to apartment 301, giving the post-it note in her hand a final readthrough.

Dear neighbor,

As a fellow musician, I understand the need to practice, but could you please turn down the volume on your amplifier after 8 pm? I would highly appreciate it.

Sincerely,
G. Noldor, apartment 302

The message was polite, and her request was reasonable. In her first drafts of the note, she’d mentioned headphones, but she’d decided to at least try to meet her neighbor halfway.

Before her nerves could talk her out of it, she took the little square of paper and pressed it up on the door, running her hand over it to make sure it would stay put. Using post-it notes was probably not the most mature way to communicate with a neighbor, but it was the least confrontational option she could think of.

The distorted noise of H. Maia’s electric bass followed her into her own apartment, the thin walls offering her no shelter from the prog metal songs that were either originals or simply too obscure for her to recognize them. According to their landlord, her neighbor had every right to play their barely comprehensible music every night until 10 pm if they felt like it, just like she had every right to start her practice sessions on the piano every morning at 7 am. She just really, really wished they wouldn’t.

She’d tried ear plugs. She’d tried noise cancelling headphones. She’d tried pretty much everything she could think of, but she simply couldn’t escape the vibrations of the rumbling notes that had to come from a fifth string.

She looked at her wristwatch, counting down the seconds until the clock struck ten. She’d been living in her new apartment for two weeks now, and her neighbor had yet to break the time limit a single time. A part of her always hoped they would, giving her an excuse to complain to the landlord, but H. Maia was just as punctual as they were loud. At 9:59 pm, silence finally fell over the apartment complex, giving her about half an hour of peace and quiet before going to bed.

If her note didn’t work, she might have to go to war.

6:55 am

Galadriel turned off her alarm with a groan. For someone who didn’t officially start her workday until after lunch, it was an ungodly hour to wake up at, but the internal echo of her mother’s stern voice prevented her from pressing the snooze button.

Four hours a day.

To get anywhere in the cut-throat world of classical music as a pianist, you had to practice four hours a day. For a high school student, the mantra meant skipping lunch. For a college student, it meant skipping sleep. For a pianist with a master’s degree, desperately trying to make a living on music alone, it meant skipping any semblance of a social life.

As always, she started her day with putting on a pot of coffee before getting dressed. At 6:58, she downed her first cup as she brushed the tangles out of her hair, pulling the waist-long locks up in a lazy bun. At 7 am sharp, she headed over to the baby grand that was taking up a solid quarter of the apartment. If she’d still been with her ex, he would probably have tried to convince her to turn the space into a seating area with an oversized TV, possibly squeezing in a bookshelf to separate it from the kitchenette. Her decision to prioritize the piano over buying a couch would have driven him up the walls.

That, among many other things, was why she now referred to Celeborn as her ex.

Galadriel sighed as she opened up her threadbare copy of The Well-Tempered Clavier. She knew the opening prelude by heart, but she still fixed her gaze on the sheet music as she stretched her fingers. The simple piece was perfect for warmup, and it had been a part of her daily routine for almost a decade.

Music was more than just a calling. It was a commitment.

Because of her decision to turn what most people would consider a hobby into a career, her schedule was always packed. Mornings were for practice, days were for high school music teaching, and afternoons were for private lessons for kids who hated her almost as much as they hated the instrument that their parents had chosen for them. She would have liked to say that her evenings and weekends were for performances, but she wasn’t sure if accompanying amateur piano trios, going through the same handful of songs over and over again at weddings, and occasionally playing a piece or two with an orchestra that really shouldn’t be calling itself philharmonic truly counted as performing. In theory, the small number of hours she had left each day before going to bed were for silence.

Because of H. Maia, apartment 301, that part of her schedule remained theoretical.

The day Galadriel moved into her new apartment, she’d still been under the impression that she’d somehow found herself the perfect home. It was small, but the rent was low, and the landlord was of the opinion that a bit of noise was to be expected during acceptable hours. It wasn’t until later that evening that she’d realized her landlord’s laidback attitude was a double-edged sword. You didn’t just get away with playing the piano for four hours in the morning—you also got away with spending just as many hours on whatever it was that her neighbor was doing to their obnoxiously loud bass every night.

For two weeks, she’d tried to convince herself that it could have been worse. Her neighbor had an awful taste in music, but they clearly knew what they were doing. Their sense of rhythm was impeccable, pulling off seemingly random intervals of 5/4 and 7/8 time signatures with ease.

She just wished they didn’t have to be so damn loud about it.

Her baby grand made quite a bit of noise too, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. It was an acoustic instrument, and unlike an amplifier, its volume couldn’t be turned down with a simple button.  

As she broke the silence of the apartment building with the prelude’s first arpeggio, she hoped that H. Maia understood the difference.

9:05 am

Galadriel’s thoughts strayed to her little note as she poured herself a second cup of coffee from the pot, taking a brief break in her practice session. Living in an apartment was uncharted territory for her, and she wasn’t sure how neighborly interactions were supposed to work. She’d grown up in an old, isolated house on top of a large hill that had been in the family for ages, and she’d skipped her dorm room phase by moving into Celeborn’s house. At the time, it had felt like the perfect solution, despite the two hour commute back and forth to campus. Celeborn came from old money, and he’d had more than enough bedrooms to spare for a soundproof practice room.

In hindsight, it was obvious that a man who hadn’t worked a nine-to-five day in his entire life would never have understood the unglamorous life of a classical musician. He’d apparently thought that after her student years, she’d be willing to settle down, dropping her dream of going solo one day. Their relationship had quickly started to dwindle once he’d realized that she had no intention of letting it go. After one hint too many about how she would be happier as a stay-at-home wife, giving expensive private lessons to privileged kids instead of trying to achieve something impossible, she’d packed her belongings and left.

She put the cup of coffee into the microwave to warm it up. Celeborn with his fancy coffee pod machine would have found it barbaric, which made the bitter taste slightly more bearable. He’d called her dream juvenile and naïve, but she knew what she wanted, and she was going to get there.

After finishing her drink, she sat back down at the piano. She still had two more hours to go.

11:45 am

When Galadriel left the apartment to go to work, the note on H. Maia’s door was gone. Her heart skipped a beat as she quickly turned around, checking her own door.

Her neighbor had left a response—a single word, taking up almost the entire post-it note.

No.

She snatched the note from the door, checking the backside for some kind of elaboration. There wasn’t any. She’d spent over an hour on her message, choosing every word with care to avoid unnecessary conflict. Her neighbor was clearly not on the same page. She clenched her fists, crumpling the piece of paper in her hand.

H. Maia, apartment 301, clearly didn’t care all that much about peace.  

8:23 pm

When Galadriel stepped out of the elevator later that night, her neighbor was already at it again, the bass pounding against her sore eardrums. She cursed under her breath as she stomped into her apartment, more annoyed than ever by the erratic polyrhythms and the unpredictable key changes. She’d just spent an entire evening listening to a heated discussion between a violinist and a cellist regarding whose part deserved the most attention in the Mozart piece they were currently playing, both completely missing the point about the piece in question being a trio. The obvious answer was either both or neither, but Galadriel had quickly decided that she wasn’t going to go anywhere near that hornet’s nest. After suffering through their bickering, she would have killed for some peace and quiet—and was genuinely tempted to do so—but eventually settled on pulling out her block of post-its from her desk drawer again.

I would highly appreciate it.

This time, she didn’t bother signing her note. There were only three apartments on the third floor, one of them vacant. If anyone else was currently having a post-it note conversation with H. Maia, she would have seen it by now. She marched back into the corridor, slapped the note on the door, and then returned to her apartment, waiting for the clock to strike ten.

11:52 am

Whenever Galadriel had a keyboard in front of her, time seemed to lose all meaning. Some days, the four hours of practice every morning felt like an eternity. Other days, the hours flew by, reminding her of just how much she loved her instrument and her music. Unfortunately, those were the practice sessions that tended to completely mess up her schedule, forcing her to skip lunch to get to work in time.

When she rushed out of her apartment, she couldn’t help but notice that the note she’d left for H. Maia was gone. She spun around mid-step, finding a new piece of paper attached to her door.

Waking someone up at 7 am with the same fucking arpeggio every morning should be considered a violation of the geneva conventions .

No.

Galadriel raised her eyebrows, anger brewing in her chest as she stared at the post-it note. Her piano was loud, but it didn’t make the walls vibrate like the amplifier of her neighbor’s bass. They could easily turn the volume down. She couldn’t. Their level of noise was an active choice. Hers wasn’t. She’d thought that as a fellow musician, her neighbor would have at least a sliver of sympathy for her situation, but no. H. Maia, apartment 301, had denied her polite request, and they were clearly willing to die on their prog metal hill.   

Galadriel barely knew anything at all about her neighbor, but the two of them were definitely at war.

6:17 pm

Most of the time, Galadriel didn’t mind rainy days. As long as she got to spend them somewhere warm and dry, preferably in front of a piano, she even enjoyed them. Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude was one of the easiest pieces in her repertoire, but there was something almost magical about using the soft taps against the window to help the steady repetition of A flats carry the melody forward. She was still filled with childish joy every time she managed to synchronize the prelude’s crescendo with flashes of lightning and rumbling thunder.

The Raindrop Prelude had definitely contributed to her losing track of time earlier that day, stressing her out to the point that she’d accidentally left her sheet music for the pseudo-philharmonic orchestra at home.

She glanced at the clock on her car’s dashboard as she parked outside the apartment building. The orchestra was expecting her at 6:30. As long as the old elevator wasn’t having another one of its uncooperative days, she could make it. She grabbed her briefcase and jumped out of the car, sprinting through the downpour. It only took a few seconds for the rain to soak through her jeans and her long-sleeved shirt. Her hand was already deep inside one of the pockets in her briefcase, searching for the right set of keys, when she noticed that someone was holding the door for her. The man was tall enough that she could easily dash into the building under his arm.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly as she slammed her hand against the elevator button.

“No worries.” He gave her a grin that made the corners of his hazel eyes wrinkle. He was a couple of years older than her, probably in his late twenties or early thirties, and he practically radiated charisma. He wasn’t conventionally attractive, but with the sharp angles of his face and the short stubble on his chin, he definitely fell into the category of unconventionally hot. His leather jacket had saved him from some of the rain, but his disheveled brown hair was plastered against his forehead and neck.

“Halbrand,” he said, reaching out his hand. When she grabbed it, she couldn’t help but notice the hard calluses on his fingertips as they briefly touched her skin.  

Musician.

“Galadriel.” Her mouth went dry when she noticed the gig bag strapped to his back. It could belong to an electric guitar, but she strongly suspected that if she were to open it, she would find a five-string bass.

The H in the H. Maia stood for Halbrand.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” he said as they waited for the absurdly slow elevator to reach the ground floor, clearly unaware that he was standing next to the woman who kept waking him up every morning with the same C major arpeggio. “New here?”

“I moved in two weeks ago.” She glanced up at him, waiting for a reaction. He raised an eyebrow, but since there was still a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, she figured that he hadn’t made the connection yet.

Yet being the key word.     

The elevator finally arrived. For a moment, she considered taking the stairs, but she didn’t have a single minute to spare. She reluctantly stepped into the little cage, embracing her fate.

According to the sign above the push button, the elevator was supposed to fit four grown adults, but whoever designed the building had not taken instrument cases into consideration. Galadriel’s heart pounded in her chest as she pressed her back against the wall, putting as much distance between her and H. Maia as possible. He was a full head taller than her, and his shoulders were broad enough to completely block her sole escape route.  

“What’s our heading?” he said, nodding at the push button panel.

She took a deep breath. “Third floor.”

The elevator grew even more cramped as understanding dawned in his eyes. He pushed the button, the doors slowly closing behind him. His laidback grin turned into a scowl.

“Galadriel, as in G. Noldor,” he said, narrowing his eyes.   

“Halbrand, as in H. Maia.” She raised her chin as she glared back up at him. He had her cornered, but she was not going to let herself be intimidated by a damn prog metal bassist.

“So this is what the bane of my fucking existence looks like,” he said, eyeing her from head to toe. His lips curved into a smirk as his gaze lingered on certain areas of her upper body where her soaking wet shirt clung to her skin. “If you’d knocked instead of leaving that note, we might have been able to reach an agreement.”

Galadriel’s mouth fell open, heat rushing to her cheeks. Her neighbor wasn’t just an asshole—he was a chauvinistic asshole.

“Just turn down the damn amplifier,” she said, fighting the urge to drop her briefcase and cross her arms. “I can’t help that my piano is loud. Your instrument,” she wrinkled her nose as she nodded at his gig bag, “can be played with headphones. Do you see the difference here? I’m loud because I have to be. You’re loud because you’re an—”

“For fuck’s sake.” Halbrand grabbed her chin between his thumb and his index finger, leaning forward as he tilted her head back. “Stop talking.”

His voice was low and even, but the unyielding tone in his command made her instinctively swallow the final word. He let out a chuckle that sent a shiver down her spine.

“G. Noldor, finally being quiet. That was easier than I thought it would be.” His smirk widened. “Maybe I should have knocked on your door instead.”

Galadriel finally snapped out of the spell his voice had ensnared her in, grabbing his wrist to break free from his grip. Her hands and arms were strong for a woman her size, trained to pull off smooth octave runs and quick jumps on the heavy keys of a grand piano, but the fingers cradling her chin didn’t budge when she tried to pry them away. He held her in place for a few more moments before releasing her, clearly pleased with the opportunity she’d given him to show off. The heat in her cheeks returned with a vengeance, because unfortunately, his little flex had hit home. Her neighbor was a chauvinistic asshole, but he had the hands of a musician—a skilled musician.

She hated the man, but her treacherous body was definitely intrigued by those fingers.

“And no, I can’t use headphones, because I need to feel the music to know if it’s good or not,” he said. “Unlike some people, I write my own shit. I can’t just rely on sheet music and a metronome to get it right.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You think that’s all there is to classical music? Reading sheet music and following a metronome?”

“You’re the only classical musician I know, and I have to listen to you every fucking morning at 7 fucking am.” His voice sharpened as he reached the end of the sentence. “If there had been a single shred of originality in you, I think I would have heard it by now.”

Before Galadriel could say something about where he could shove his damn originality, the elevator doors finally opened. She pushed past him, heading straight for her apartment without looking back. The clock was ticking, and she had to find her sheet music before someone summoned the elevator down to the ground floor again.

Hopefully, the rain would wash away her anger and the lingering heat in her body on her way back to the car.

8:27 pm

Galadriel wasn’t sure if knowing the face of her neighbor made the unsolicited onslaught of prog metal better or worse. She still despised the music, but she could now picture his calloused fingers as they danced over the neck of his bass, hitting every hammer-on with perfect precision. Though the distortion of his amplifier made it difficult to hear the difference, she was pretty certain that he mostly played without a pick.

Her perception of her neighbor wasn’t the only thing that had changed after their real-life confrontation in the elevator—his perception of her seemed to have changed too. The amplifier was louder than ever, and now, she knew it was personal. He was making her pay for her practice sessions on purpose.

The war was still on.

7:01 am

Galadriel pursed her lips as she looked at the sheet music to the C major prelude. She usually played it in pianissimo, but when her fingertips touched the keys, she somehow ended up with a mezzo-forte.

If Halbrand insisted on filling her apartment with prog metal, she might as well fill his with Bach.

11:45 am

When Galadriel left the apartment, there was a new note on her door.

You really know how to ruin a morning.

For the first time since she moved into her new home, she left for work with a smile on her face.

9:40 pm

After about a week of open warfare, Galadriel pulled out her block of post-its again. There was something about the chord progression of Halbrand’s latest bassline that made her skin crawl, and even after several attempts to count the beats per bar, she still had no idea what time signature he was playing in.

Maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe he was just playing random notes in a random rhythm just to mess with her.

She clenched her jaw and wrote a quick note.

Would it kill you to stick to one time signature for longer than a few bars?

11:43

Galadriel left the apartment slightly early to give herself time to read Halbrand’s response.

Sorry princess, I don’t do vanilla.

She flushed, quickly pulling the post-it down from her door. Even though she and Halbrand were the only ones who set foot on the third floor of the building, she still cringed internally at the possibility of someone stumbling upon her neighbor’s highly suggestive note.

To her surprise, she found that Halbrand had actually left an addition to his message on the back of the post-it this time.

[4/4 x3 + 3/4 x1] x3, [4/4 x3 + 5/4 x1] x1. Not that fucking difficult.

Galadriel furrowed her brow. The transcription looked more like a math equation than actual music, but when she matched it up with the confusing bassline that she’d been forced to listen to the night before, it made sense. It was absolutely insane, but it made sense.

She shook her head, folding the note and putting it in her pocket. Her neighbor was an asshole and a musical lunatic, but no one could blame him for being boring.

8:59 pm

There was nothing perfect about having perfect pitch. It did have its perks, but most of the time, it just made Galadriel’s life even noisier than it already was. For some inexplicable reason, her brain was programmed to memorize frequencies instead of intervals, and her classical education had taught her how to sort those frequencies into an arbitrary system of letters.

Being able to instantly find the right key when she had to play something by ear was undeniably convenient, but there was nothing useful whatsoever about getting annoyed at bus bells and car alarms for being out of tune.  

Most people probably wouldn’t notice if the extra B-string on a five-string bass was a little flat. The sound was low enough to be more of a rumble than an actual note, and she knew that some tuners didn’t even pick up the low vibrations. Her ears did, though. They always did.  

When she first got home, she’d still had hope that Halbrand would hear the little pitch issue himself. She’d told herself that sooner or later, he had to hear the dissonance that the string was causing.

He hadn’t.

Eventually, her patience ran out. Before her common sense could convince her to think about the consequences of what she was about to do, she’d already left her apartment and started slamming her fist against Halbrand’s door. The noise came to a stop, leaving her with a slight ringing in her ears that only spurred on her anger. She’d been a musician for longer than she could remember, but she’d somehow managed to avoid getting tinnitus. If the ringing turned out to be permanent, she might kill the man.

She was pretty sure that the noise in her ears was an E.

“What?” Halbrand said as he opened the door, narrowing his eyes as he peered down at her. “I thought I made it clear that I’m not—”

“It’s flat.”

“What?”

“Your B-string is flat.” Galadriel pushed past him and entered his apartment without invitation. Unlike her, he’d managed to squeeze in a couch in the small studio apartment, but he’d placed his amplifier where most people would have set up a TV. There was a massive instrument case standing in the corner where she’d chosen to park her baby grand. It was dusty, but it did prove her suspicion about his musical background. At some point, he’d played the countrabass. He did know what he was doing.  

He’d left his electric bass on a stand right next to the amplifier, still plugged into the cursed box of noise. She headed straight toward it, her gaze fixed on the untuned string.

Halbrand hurried after her, but his moment of surprise had given her a head start. “Don’t you dare—"

She picked up the bass and sat down on the floor. The instrument itself was nice to look at, mahogany brown with black pickups, but it was definitely not suitable for someone her size. The body dug into her chest as she positioned it over her thigh, and she doubted that she would be able to close her fingers around its neck even if she tried. It didn’t matter, though. She wasn’t going to play the damn thing. She was going to tune it.

“Don’t,” Halbrand said, his voice low.

Galadriel ignored him. His bass was in her arms, which meant that she basically had a hostage. If he wanted to throw her out of the apartment, it was going to have to wait. 

She placed her thumb on the B-string and gave it a strum. A noise that fell somewhere between a B and an A sharp boomed from the amplifier. She scowled, turning down the volume before grabbing the lowest tuning peg. She’d never been much for stringed instruments, but she knew the basics. Clockwise meant lower, counterclockwise meant higher.

“Seriously, if you damage it—”

“Just shut up and let me get this over with.” She closed her eyes, searching her mental archive for a proper B. Once she’d found it, she hummed the note out loud, making sure that she’d caught the right pitch. She started strumming the string again, slowly turning the peg until the distorted sound from the amplifier resonated with her voice.

“There,” she said with a smug smile. “B.”

When she looked up at Halbrand, she found him standing a few feet away, his gaze flickering between her and his bass.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. His body was tensed up, ready to rescue his beloved instrument if needed, but his eyes were glazed over with heat. Her common sense finally caught up with her when she realized why. She’d entered a man’s apartment wearing nothing but slippers and a thin night robe. The way she was holding the bass had hitched up the hem of the garment, leaving very little to imagination. From his point of view, he’d probably gotten a pretty good look at her upper body too.

She shuddered as she met his gaze, cradling the bass against her chest. She wasn’t sure if anyone had ever looked at her with that level of barely restrained hunger before. Celeborn certainly hadn’t. Even in the bedroom, he’d always been calm and collected. Just by looking into Halbrand’s eyes, she could tell that there would be nothing calm and collected about him if he let that hunger loose.

Heat pooled in the pit of her stomach when she recalled the note where he’d described the time signatures of his work in progress.

Sorry princess, I don’t do vanilla.

“I should probably leave,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

He cleared his throat. “You probably should.”

She stood up, carefully handing him the bass. He snatched in from her hands, throwing the strap over his shoulder before trying out the freshly tuned string.

“Perfect pitch?” he asked as he played a quick scale, his fingers sliding over the frets with ease. She wouldn’t have been able to close her hand around the instrument’s neck, but he certainly could.

She swallowed hard. “Perfect pitch.”

“Must be nice.”

“Overrated.” She tried to tear her eyes away from his hands, but the smoothness of his movements held her gaze captive. She’d heard the fast hammer-ons and pull-offs in his works more times than she could count, but she’d never seen them in action before.

There was some serious strength in those fingers.

“If you keep looking at me like that, you’re staying the night.” His low voice rippled through her body, awakening something raw and primal deep inside her. She wasn’t sure whether his statement was a threat or a promise, but she could tell by the look in his eyes that he meant it. If she didn’t leave, he would devour her.

She fled.

10:17 pm

Once the B-string had been dealt with, Halbrand went back to practicing, turning the amplifier back up. Galadriel still hated his music, but seeing him play it had done something to her perception of it. She didn’t just hear noise anymore. She saw long, slender fingers, moving impossibly fast across a bass neck that was almost as wide as her palm.

The heat that he’d ignited within her refused to cool down. When she crawled into bed, pulling the curtains of the sleeping nook shut behind her, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep unless she did something about that need. She slid her fingers under the waistband of her panties, letting out a soft gasp as she grazed her clit. The man hadn’t even touched her, but she was still soaking wet for him. She closed her eyes as she slipped a finger between her folds, wondering how deep a man with hands like his could reach.

The thought of having his fingers curled up inside her made her moan out loud. She bit down on her lip to muffle the sound, taken aback by her own reaction. She’d never been particularly vocal in bed, but seeing Halbrand play had set something inside her on fire. When she gathered her wetness and let her fingers slide over her clit, she thought about the heat in his eyes and the hoarseness of his voice. He’d been just as turned on by watching her tune his bass as she’d been by watching him play it.

She swallowed another moan, imagining his fingers treating her with the same strength and precision as he’d been treating those strings.

Her orgasm hit her hard and fast, pulling a loud gasp from her lips. Once the waves of pleasure died down, she stared up at the ceiling, already embarrassed by what she’d done.

Her neighbor’s influence over her life was no longer limited to a timeframe.

11:44 am

When Galadriel left the apartment, Halbrand had, of course, left a note. It wasn’t the snarky remark about how she’d practically broken into his home to mess with his bass without his consent that she’d expected, though. It was something far worse.

I could have helped you with that.

Galadriel ripped the post-it off the door and quickly scrunched it in her hand, sincerely hoping that she was never going to have to look Halbrand in the eye again.

10:37 pm

For a week and a half, Galadriel tried her best to purge the image of Halbrand with his bass from her mind. For a week and a half, she focused on the music rather than the musician, working on building up that hatred again. For a week and a half, she managed to go to sleep without touching herself.

When she finally gave in, she made sure that her face was pressed against her pillow when she came.

8:31 am

Galadriel hated jazz. She’d tried to understand the supposed beauty in the unpredictability, to find enjoyment in its experimental nature and the way it challenged the traditions of Western classical and popular music, but the dissonant chords still made her brain hurt.

When one of the percussionists in the orchestra had approached her after a practice session, asking her if she would be willing to accompany his wife at a jazz concert, her instinctive response had been hell no. He’d then revealed that his wife was none other than Disa and that the stage she’d be performing at was Lindon, which had changed the hell no into a god yes. Disa’s ordinary pianist had apparently broken her arm in a car accident, which meant that the local celebrity was in desperate need of an accompanist that could jump in with only three days’ notice. Her husband had suggested Galadriel.

The pay was mediocre, but for a nobody like Galadriel, exposure was an even more powerful motivator than money. The Lindon Theater usually brought in hundreds of concertgoers per gig. People rarely remembered the name of an accompanist, but performing at Lindon would still bring her one step closer to her dream of having a stage for herself one day. Despite her inexperience with the genre, she’d gladly accepted the offer, knowing that it would be worth it in the long run.

At the time, Galadriel had been confident that she would be able to pull it off. The timeframe was tight, but she’d always been good at playing prima vista. Three days should be enough. She’d spoken with Disa, who’d given her a quick walkthrough of the songs they’d be playing and a stack of paper that Galadriel had assumed would be sheet music.

It wasn’t.

An experienced jazz musician would probably have found the chords that Disa had scribbled down on top of her lyrics perfectly reasonable, filling the gaps with improv. Galadriel was not an experienced jazz musician. To her, the chord charts looked like a hellish version of algebra.

After spending about an hour on trying to turn the combinations of letters, numbers, and geometric symbols into something that resembled music, Galadriel knew for sure that she’d underestimated the difficulties of transitioning from classical music to jazz. As she made her way through the first draft of her arrangement, she wasn’t even sure if she was playing the right chords.

She sighed as she wrote down her chord transitions, painstakingly transcribing the algebra into classical sheet music. The only good thing about jazz was that even if she made a mistake somewhere, it would probably just add another number to the chord. If there was one thing that jazz musicians excelled at, it was playing the wrong notes on purpose.

 9:33 am

Galadriel nearly fell off the piano bench when someone knocked on her door. During her first month and a half in her new apartment, she’d never had a visitor. She crossed her fingers as she made her way to the little hallway, hoping that she hadn’t somehow summoned the landlord to her doorstep with her lousy jazz.

When she opened the door, she realized that she’d summoned someone way worse.

“If you show that shit to anyone, you’re going to make a fool of yourself,” Halbrand said as a greeting. “The second-hand embarrassment is fucking killing me. You can’t half-ass jazz.”

The unsolicited critique hit hard, catching her off guard. When she was practicing, it was easy to forget that there was actually someone listening to her play. Her neighbor had suffered through hours upon hours of classical music, but this was apparently where he drew the line.

If he mentioned the little incident that had caused him to write his last note, she would probably combust and die on the spot.  

“It’s just one gig, okay?” she snapped. “I’ll figure it out.”

“You’re going to play that shit in front of an audience?” He raised his eyebrows, staring down at her in disbelief. “Big?”

“Lindon.”

He cursed under his breath. “Give me the music. Right now.”

Before she could stop herself, she was already following his command, fetching Disa’s pages and her own sheets from the music desk. She hesitated before handing over her apparently disastrous arrangement.

“What are you going to do with it?” she asked.

He snatched the sheets of paper out of her hand. “Prevent you from destroying your fucking career. I need to get to work, but I’ll write down a bassline for you when I get home. You’ll probably butcher it, but I doubt it can get any worse than this.”

It wasn’t until then that Galadriel noticed that the t-shirt under his leather jacket had the logo of the local music store printed across his chest. Their mismatched schedule immediately made more sense. The store opened at ten and closed at four. Considering his skill and dedication, he probably spent some time with a band every evening.

When she moved into the apartment, she’d taken their only hours of silence away from them both.

She furrowed her brow. “Why?”  

“Why, what?”

“Why would you help me?”

He fell silent, making her wonder if he even knew the answer himself. His offer to correct an arrangement written by a neighbor he was supposed to hate made no sense whatsoever, and somehow, it seemed like the absurdity of it hadn’t struck him until now.

“You’d owe me one,” he finally said. “One piano-free morning.”

She pursed her lips. “When?”

“Whenever I want it.”

The mere thought of being forced to skip practice the day before a performance made her wince. “No deal.”

When she reached for her sheet music, Halbrand took a step back, dodging her hands. “Next Saturday, then. No piano next Saturday.”

Galadriel considered it. She didn’t have anything important planned that weekend, and she could probably use some rest. She hadn’t had a cheat day in ages, and if her arrangement truly was as bad as Halbrand claimed it was, it was a good deal. After a month of forced exposure to prog metal, she’d learned that there was a significant amount of jazz in it.

Halbrand was excellent at playing the wrong notes on purpose too.

“Fine. No piano next Saturday.” She tilted her head to the side. “What’s the occasion?”

“My band has a gig that Friday,” he said, confirming her suspicion about his after-work activities. “My ears are going to be pretty sore.”

“Fair enough.” Galadriel didn’t even like prog metal, but she still found herself intrigued. “Where?”

“A place where someone like you would probably be stopped at the door,” he said with a snort. “That holier-than-thou attitude of yours would make you look like a narc.”   

“Barad-dur?” she guessed. The club was notorious for its very specific target audience, and she definitely didn’t belong to that crowd. People rarely entered the club sober, and from what she’d heard, they often left it with substances in their blood that she wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.  

Judging by Halbrand’s smirk, her face must have revealed her discomfort. “Not a place for a good little girl like you.”

“It’s not just your ears that are going to be sore, then,” she said, trying her best to ignore her body’s odd reaction to being called a good little girl. At the age of twenty-five, being called a girl should be insulting, but there was something about the tone in his voice that made his comment bypass that logic. “You’ll be hungover.”

“That too.” He shrugged. “Do we have a deal?”

She sighed. “Yes, we have a deal.”

“I’ll have a bassline ready for you when you get home,” he said. “Go back to your usual repertoire for now. This,” he nodded at the sheet music, “is not worth practicing.”

He turned around, skimming through Disa’s notes as he made his way toward the elevator. Her reaction to being called a good little girl had been unexpected, but her feelings about someone knowing her schedule was even stranger. She never noticed when he left for work, her mind too focused on her practice, but he’d clearly kept track of when she got home from her daily activities.

Galadriel’s days were full of social interactions, but the life of a struggling classical pianist was ultimately a lonely one. She hadn’t heard anyone say the words welcome home since she broke up with Celeborn, and the knowledge that there was at least one person in her life that noticed when she returned to the apartment every night meant something. She wasn’t sure what that something was, but it still filled her chest with warmth.  

7:53 pm

When Galadriel stepped out of the elevator after another tedious practice session with the trio, there was a stack of paper waiting for her right outside her apartment. Halbrand had done his homework, and he’d left her another post-it note while he was at it.

Remember the 11s and the 13s. It’s jazz. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty, princess.

She huffed as she removed the note from the door. He was right—in her first draft, she’d occasionally cleaned up some of the extended chords because of the dissonance. She’d half-assed it.

Halbrand’s sheet music was messy, but he’d taken the time to write the bassline down on lined paper with classical-style notation, adding recommendations on how to deal with the chords. She could already hear the dissonance in his arrangement, but she trusted his skill and experience.

When it came to music, she trusted him.

9:31 pm

After reading through Halbrand’s sheet music a couple of times, her fingers were itching to try it out. Her neighbor was working on a new project, playing the same bars over and over again with minor adjustments, but the noise didn’t bother her as much as it usually did. She glanced at her baby grand, wondering if she would even be able to hear her own music if she tried to practice during Halbrand’s hours. Somehow, the thought of sitting down at the piano while he was playing felt like a violation of some unspoken rule. The mornings were hers, but the nights were his.

In the end, she couldn’t resist the temptation of giving the sheet music a go. She was crossing some kind of boundary, but hopefully, he wouldn’t even hear it over the sound of his amplifier. She placed his arrangement next to Disa’s on the music desk, giving them both a final readthrough before tentatively playing the first chord. With the help of his bassline and his advice regarding the 11s and 13s, she slowly created a new version of her accompaniment—one that actually sounded like jazz.

It didn’t take long before the noise from the apartment next door came to a sudden stop. She immediately raised her fingers from the keys and dropped the pedal, her heart hammering against her ribcage. He’d heard her. She’d intruded on his practice hours, and he’d heard her.

She was just about to close the lid on the piano when Halbrand started playing again. The amplifier was just as loud as before, but he’d turned down the distortion. She raised her eyebrows, looking at the sheet music he’d given her as she listened to him play his own arrangement, adding improv here and there in ways that she would never have thought of.

Galadriel lowered her hands back down on the keys and started playing along. The vibrations of the bass overpowered anything she tried to play with her left hand, but her right hand was working in a different spectrum. The dynamics between their instruments were far from balanced, but she once again had to admit that Halbrand was right—the bassline did sound better when she could physically feel it.

Her lips formed a small smile as she allowed herself to get lost in the music. She’d always been terrible at jamming, but her usual fear of making mistakes was less overwhelming when she didn’t have to deal with the disappointed looks that she usually received whenever she tried to improvise.

For the first time in her life, she understood why other musicians found jamming fun.

When the bass fell silent, she realized that she’d lost track of time again. It was 10 pm, and the music hours were over. Thirty minutes had passed since she sat down at the piano, and she hadn’t even noticed it.

Her fingers were still itching when she grabbed a pencil and her sheet music notebook, writing down her new arrangement.

11:45 am

Better.

Galadriel folded the note and put it in her pocket. When she left the building, she was still smiling.

8:47 pm

The concert was a success.

Galadriel was well aware that it was Disa who had brought the magic to the stage, but she was still filled with pride when she read the positive reviews. A reporter from the local newspaper had written a full article about the event, and in one of the paragraphs, he’d actually mentioned the pianist that had showed up out of nowhere with only three days’ notice.

She carefully cut the article out of her second copy of the newspaper with a pair of scissors. In the reporter’s brief review of Galadriel Noldor’s accompaniment, he’d complimented her technical skills, but he’d mostly focused on the creativity of her arrangement—the air of originality that she’d apparently accomplished with her unique combination of classical precision and prog-like boldness.

She highlighted the sentence and wrote a quick note before heading out into the corridor, taping the article on Halbrand’s door.

Thank you.

11:45 am

You did good.

Galadriel blushed as she put the note in her pocket—another keeper. She hadn’t thought that he would actually show up at the concert, but she’d secretly hoped he would.

If their war was still ongoing, she was losing.

9:37 pm

After having been forced to listen to about a dozen repetitions of the same bassline over and over, almost identical except for minor alterations of the last bar, Galadriel slammed her fist against the wall between her and Halbrand’s apartment before sitting down at the piano. He was clearly writing something original again, and he was overthinking it.

When the bass fell silent, she played her own version of the melody, ending it with a simple shift into the major dominant chord of the parallel minor key. It was a textbook classical move, possibly too vanilla for his taste, but it was an easy solution to his problem.

He mimicked her version of his bassline, repeating it a couple of times before finally moving on with his work. She closed the lid of her baby grand, wondering how on earth she’d ended up in a situation where she was helping a neighbor write prog metal.

Whatever they had going on between them was definitely spiralling, but she would be lying if she said that she didn’t enjoy it.

8:15 pm

When Galadriel got home from a late private lesson with a young high school kid who would probably outmatch her own piano skills one day, there was a flier, a concert ticket, and a note taped to her door.

You should hear it live.  

10 :31 pm

On the day of Halbrand’s concert, Galadriel could have spent her night in blissful silence. She could have rested her ears, enjoying some peace and quiet for once, taking a well-deserved break from all the music in her life. She could have stayed home, but instead, she found herself at Barad-dur, watching a live performance by a prog metal band called Utumno.  

The doorman had given her a strange look when she entered the club, but once she’d shown him the ticket that Halbrand had given her, he’d reluctantly let her in. Her black crop top and her one pair of skinny jeans was a conservative outfit compared to what most of the women in the audience were wearing, but it was the only combination of clothing she owned that was even remotely suitable for a place like Barad-dur. Right before leaving the apartment, she’d decided to add a deep red lipstick to the ensemble.

If her mother had seen her, she would have tried to ground her.

Utumno was a band of five, with a drummer, a synth player, two guitarists and a bassist. One of the guitarists also happened to be the lead singer, which meant that the spotlights were mostly fixed on him. He wasn’t the true star of the show, though. Without the support of Halbrand’s bass, the riffs on his guitar would have sounded empty, and his low-pitched vocals would have fallen flat without the backup of a steady baritone.

Galadriel would never have guessed that Halbrand could sing.

When she’d first noticed the second microphone stand on the stage, she’d assumed that someone backstage must have made a mistake. She’d listened to Halbrand’s music every night for a month and a half, but she’d never heard anything except his bass. It was possible that the amplifier had simply drowned out the sound of his voice, but he could also be a natural. After three finished songs, she had yet to hear a single false note come out of his mouth. The lead singer, a man named Melkor who for some reason liked to call himself Morgoth, brought a raw, rugged sound to their music. Halbrand brought stability.

Galadriel nearly choked on her beer when Utumno played the intro of their fourth song. So far, she’d vaguely recognized all of them because of Halbrand’s practice sessions, but this was the one that she’d altered the bassline of. She held her breath as they approached the end of the first verse, waiting for the shift that would ease them into the chorus, and was completely blown away when she heard the finished result of her little contribution. Her eyes widened when she realized that it wasn’t just Halbrand that had taken a brief detour into the major dominant chord—the entire band had followed suit.

Her head spun as she tried to process the enormity of what she’d done. Utumno, a band that was clearly popular within its genre, was playing a song that she had helped create.

During the second repetition, Halbrand’s gaze swept over the audience until it somehow found hers. He gave her a grin that hit her harder than the glasses of wine she’d downed to gather enough courage to enter Barad-dur, igniting a fire within her that had nothing to do with the alcohol. Though the spotlights rarely stayed on him for long, he clearly thrived on stage. His natural charisma was at an all-time high, making him shine like a sun.

Galadriel’s opinion about prog metal being a noisy, pretentious, and generally overcomplicated genre remained unchanged, but she still enjoyed every moment of hearing the context of Halbrand’s basslines.

Once Utumno finished their final song, the speakers at Barad-dur switched from prog metal to fast-paced EDM. Galadriel quickly realized that this was the point where the club turned into a place for people with a slightly more liberal view on narcotics than her. She was just about to head for the exit when someone grabbed her arm, spinning her around and pulling her against a firm chest.

Halbrand.

“You came.” Even though he was practically yelling straight into her ear, she could barely hear him over the music. He took a small step back and gave her outfit a closer look. Judging by his smirk, he clearly liked what he saw. His gaze was still burning with adrenaline, and it kept returning to her crimson lips. He placed his hand on the small of her back, pulling her close. The fire within her flared up as she felt his hardness press against her stomach.

He leaned down, his lips grazing the shell of her ear. “Backstage. Now.”

Before she could give him a response, her wrist was already stuck in his hand. He zigzagged through the crowd with ease, dragging her along with him. The doorman guarding the backstage entrance gave him a nod and let him pass without giving Galadriel a single glance. She knew it shouldn’t have annoyed her that band members bringing women into the backstage area was considered a normal thing, but it still did.

She refused to acknowledge her surge of jealousy.

Halbrand pulled her through a narrow corridor before throwing a door open, yelling, “Out.”

The band members of Utumno looked at him, and then at Galadriel. With a collective chuckle, they all left the couches they’d been sitting on, some of them patting Halbrand on the back on the way out.

“Have fun,” Morgoth said before Halbrand closed the door behind him, locking it with a soft click.

The backstage lounge was about as glamorous as she’d expected, with worn-out couches, a minifridge, and a coffee table covered with empty cans of beer. Compared to the club, the room was silent, but she could still hear the pounding bass of the EDM.

Halbrand released her wrist, leaning back against the door. His gaze wandered down her body, lingering on her cleavage and her bare midriff.

“Look at you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Did you dress up like this for me?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

He closed the distance between them, grabbing her chin. She blushed as he tilted her head back, examining her face. “Did you paint those pretty little lips for me too?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“If that’s the case, I should be allowed to taste them, shouldn’t I?”

His heated eyes met hers, sending a surge of pure need through her body. All she could do was nod.

Her back slammed into the wall, and then his lips claimed hers. He kept his firm grip on her chin, holding her in place as his tongue delved deep into her mouth. His kiss was ruthless, showing no mercy as she gasped for breath. He nudged his leg between her thighs, forcing her up on her toes as he pressed his cock against her stomach. She wrapped her arms around his neck, anchoring herself to him to keep her balance. His free hand slipped under the hem of her crop top and the underwire of her bra.

“You’ve got no shame at all, do you?” he murmured before pinching her nipple, drawing a sharp gasp from her lips. “Showing up half-naked at a man’s apartment because of a flat fucking string, and now this. Did you think of me when you came that night? Was that moan for me too?”

She nodded again, too ashamed to admit it out loud.

“Good, because I sure as hell was thinking about you.” He slipped his thumb into her mouth, smearing her lipstick with her saliva. “You, tuning my bass with your tits half out in the open, humming like a little siren. I wanted to take you right there on the fucking floor.”

His words ignited that primal need within her again, filling her bloodstream with heat. She closed her mouth around his thumb and sucked, glancing up at him as she swirled her tongue against the pad of his digit. His eyes fluttered shut as he let out a low groan, his cock hardening.

If she didn’t hit the breaks right now, she was going to fuck her neighbor. There was no question about it. She was tipsy, and he was still high from the endorphins of a successful performance. Neither of them was at their full mental capacity. They should stop.

She didn’t want to stop.

He pulled his thumb out of her mouth, burying his hand in her hair. When he looked down at her, his eyes were hard and unyielding.

“On your knees,” he said. “Show me what that pretty little mouth can do.”

Galadriel was an independent woman—too independent, according to Celeborn at the final stages of their relationship—but when Halbrand used that voice, she obeyed. She allowed him to use his grip on her hair to lower her down on her knees, her fingers already working on his jeans. His cock sprang free, just as large as the rest of him, but she didn’t hesitate. She wrapped her hand around him, keeping eye contact as she slowly pumped it.

“You can go harder than that,” he said, and then winced when she briefly tightened her grip. She raised an eyebrow, a small smirk playing on her lips.

“Pianist,” she said. “I can go a lot harder than that, but I don’t think you’d like—”

Her scalp stung as he dragged her face to his groin, pushing his cock between her lips. She nearly choked as he pushed himself deep into her mouth, her eyes tearing up.

“You can take it,” he said. “Breathe.”

She breathed. Once she got used to his size, she ran her tongue over the soft skin and began to suck. He used the hand entangled in her hair to set the pace, fucking her mouth without mercy.

“That’s it,” he said, brushing away a tear from the corner of her eye. “G. Noldor, being quiet. I should have known that this,” he pressed himself even further into her mouth, coating the base of his cock with lipstick, “was the solution all along.”

Galadriel moaned, feeling her wetness seep into the fabric of her jeans. The way he treated her should feel degrading—humiliating, even—but her body’s response to it was undeniably positive.

“My needy, annoying little neighbor,” he murmured, gently caressing her cheek. “I’ll take care of you.”

She gasped for breath as he pulled himself out of her mouth with a soft pop. Her face was covered in saliva, precum, and probably a bit of lipstick, but Halbrand still looked like he wanted to devour her. He grabbed her by the waist and threw her over his shoulder, unceremoniously dropping her on one of the couches. He freed himself from his clothes and then pulled off her jeans and panties in one go, nearly ripping the tight fabric apart.

“Off,” he said, nodding at her upper body. “I want a full view this time.”

Galadriel pulled off her crop top and unclasped her bra, tossing the garments on the floor. Her common sense almost managed to catch up with her when she realized that she was lying fully naked on a filthy backstage couch at Barad-dur, but before the train of thought could move any further, Halbrand’s mouth was once again conquering hers. If he was bothered by the taste of his own precum, he didn’t show it. He ran his fingers through her hair, giving it a light tug to give him access to her neck. His lips traced her racing pulse as his hand found its way between her legs. He let out a soft chuckle when his fingers dipped into her cunt.

“So fucking wet for me.” He slipped a finger into her with ease, quickly followed by a second. When he curved them upwards, she knew that her imagination hadn’t done them justice. An embarrassingly loud moan left her lips, her hips bucking to bring him even deeper inside her.

“Is this what you thought about that night?” he murmured. “My fingers, playing your cunt?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “God, yes.”

When he pressed his thumb against her clit, her mind went blank. She stopped caring about the noises she was making, letting it all out as his fingers treated her with even more strength and precision than she’d expected, and she’d expected a lot.

She should have let him help her out that night.

Galadriel dug her fingertips into his back as he coaxed her closer to her climax. Her nails were always cut as short as possible, but her hands were strong enough that she would probably leave crescent-shaped marks on his skin anyway. That was the danger of having the strength of a pianist. Things often broke in her hands, but Halbrand didn’t seem to mind her rough touch.

Maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d been fantasizing about the hands of a musician.

“Look at me, princess.” He gave her hair another tug. “Look at me when you come.”

One glance at his hungry eyes was all it took to push her over the edge. She cried out as the strongest orgasm she’d experienced in years washed over her, the waves of pleasure rippling through her body. He continued to pump his fingers into her, drawing out her climax for longer than she’d thought was possible. When her muscles finally stopped spasming, there was not a single coherent thought left in her mind.

He pulled his fingers out of her and pressed them against her lips. She opened her mouth without questioning, licking the digits clean. The heat in Halbrand’s eyes turned into a wildfire. He grabbed her hips and flipped her onto her stomach, maneuvering her body as if she weighed nothing at all. She yelped in surprise, but when she tried to move, he cupped the nape of her neck in his hand and pushed her face down on the couch.

“You had your fun,” he said, propping her hips up in an angle that pushed the flexibility of her back to its limits. “Now it’s my turn.”

Nothing could have prepared her for the feeling of Halbrand’s cock slamming into her, forcing her body to accommodate to his girth. Before she could get used to the fullness, he was already pounding into her, using the hand on her neck as leverage. She wasn’t sure how it was even anatomically possible, but her cunt somehow accepted every inch of him.

“Perfect,” he groaned. “So fucking perfect.”

It didn’t take long before her pleasure started building up again, growing stronger with every thrust. She reached the brink of her climax, but to pass the threshold, she knew that she would literally need a hand. In her position, she couldn’t even move her arms, so that hand was going to have to be his.

“Please,” she mumbled, her voice muffled by the couch.

“Not yet.” His voice was firm, but his rhythm was getting erratic. He continued to use her body in the most primal way possible as he chased his own release. Her entire being yearned for that damn hand, but he held her captive on the edge in some twisted kind of torture.

“Please,” she repeated, the word sounding more like a whine than a request.

Halbrand’s hand finally left her hip, moving down her stomach toward the apex of her thighs. It stopped right before reaching its destination, making her groan in frustration.

“Pill?” he asked, his voice strained.

“What?”

“Are you on the pill?”

“Implant.”

“Thank god.” He finally swirled his fingertips around her clit with perfect precision, causing her to erupt again. Her inner walls clenched around his cock, bringing him over the edge along with her. He slammed into her one last time, his hips jerking as he spent himself inside of her.

She’d barely regained the ability to think when he moved her again, making room for himself on the couch before draping her on top of him. He was covered in sweat, and his seed was leaking out of her, but neither of them seemed to be capable of moving.

“Should’ve taken you on the floor that night,” Halbrand mumbled, pulling her close.

“Definitely.” She placed her head in the crook of his neck and let her body relax. He’d told her that he would take care of her, and he’d stayed true to his word. Fucking him had been everything she’d imagined and more.

Galadriel wasn’t sure for how long they simply lay like that, silently cooling down from the explosion that had just taken place between them.

“Does this place have a shower?” she eventually asked.

“I think so,” he said, and then added, “I hope so.”

They both glanced at the bathroom door. She hoped he was right too, because otherwise, the bus ride home was going to be really uncomfortable.

“I should clean myself up,” she said, feeling a little awkward. She had no idea how someone was supposed to act after getting fucked in a backstage lounge. It wasn’t exactly the kind of knowledge she’d ever expected that someone like her would need.

“You probably should. I have some things I need to take care of before I get out of here.” He reluctantly removed the arm that kept her trapped against his chest. “I’ll… see you at home?”

“Yeah.” She stood up and gave him a tentative smile, warmth blooming in her chest. “See you at home.”

8:37 am

For the first time in ages, Galadriel slept in. Waking up without her alarm was strange, but the feeling of slowly opening her eyes in a silent apartment was heavenly.

A morning without piano. Her fingers itched when she passed her baby grand on the way to the coffee machine, but she managed to stay away from it. She’d made Halbrand a promise, and she was going to keep it.

Every step she took reminded her of what she’d done—what they’d done. There wasn’t a single joint in her body that didn’t protest when she moved. The way Halbrand had bent her body to his will had done a serious number on her hips and legs.

She waited for the shame and regret to kick in, but the feelings never arrived. The only thing she felt guilty for was an issue of consent. Halbrand had probably had a beer or two before he went up on stage, but it was the post-performance endorphins that had been the main cause of his obvious inebriation. She’d never done drugs, but that was a high that she was actually familiar with.

The next time she heard his bass, she was going to leave a note. It was a cowardly way of apologizing, but she wasn’t sure if she had it in her to look him in the eye.

She grabbed her phone after pouring herself a cup of coffee, spending her practice-free morning on scrolling through numerous reviews of Utumno’s show. Nearly all of them were positive, and so were the comments about the fourth song’s classical touch. Her name was obviously never mentioned, but she still felt a spike of pride every time someone complimented her chord progression.

Focusing on her private lessons and her practice session with the orchestra was not going to be easy.

8:43 pm

After making sure that Halbrand was right in the middle of a playthrough of one of Utumno’s songs, Galadriel carefully left her apartment.

Sorry about yesterday.

It was a lousy apology, but she didn’t know what else to write. She was sorry about the circumstances that had led to them ending up in the backstage lounge, but her regret was half-hearted at best. Inebriated or not, he’d still given her the best sex of her life. An extended apology would just have been a bunch of lies.

She left the note on his door and fled.

10:07 pm

A hard knock on her door nearly gave her a heart attack. She quickly slipped out of her night robe, putting on a t-shirt and a pair of sweats.

Her neighbor had decided to respond to her note in person.

“What the fuck is this?” he said as she opened the door, holding up the note as he entered her apartment without invitation.

“An apology…?” She took a step back as he closed the door behind him. He was pissed at her, but not for the reason she’d thought he’d be.

“For what?” he asked. “If you’re having regrets about last night, just say so. Don’t hide behind a fucking post-it note.”

“No, I…” She hesitated. This was exactly why she’d chosen to leave a note instead of confronting him in person. Her feelings were complicated, and she had no idea how to express them. “You were still high from the show. I… I shouldn’t have let it go that far. It was shitty of me, and I’m sorry.”

“Are you for real?” He stared at her in disbelief. “I’ve been going back and forth between hating you and wanting to fuck you for weeks. The show had nothing to do with it.”

She blushed. “Oh.”

“Why do you think I left the apartment in the first place?” he asked. “I was planning on coming over anyway. Was yesterday just a one night stand to you?”

“I… I don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “It doesn’t have to be.”

The anger in his eyes shifted into heat as her words hung between them. Her blush deepened. She’d been flirted with before, but she wasn’t sure if she’d ever flirted with someone herself. She’d definitely never given someone a suggestion like the one she’d just given Halbrand. Everything about him and their strange relationship was uncharted territory.

The only thing she knew for sure was that she wanted him.

“Would you leave me another apology note if I kissed you again?” he asked, a smirk tugging at his lips.

She raised an eyebrow. “Depends.”

He slowly approached her, cornering her against the wall. “Depends on what?”

“On what you do afterwards.”

He let out a short laugh before pressing his lips against hers, exploring her mouth with far more patience than he’d ever shown her before. She stood up on her tiptoes, running her fingers through his messy hair as she pressed her body against his. His hands caught the back of her thighs, hoisting her up with ease before carrying her across her small apartment. When he dropped her on the bed, she spread her legs in an obvious invitation.

“No more notes, then,” he said with a grin, fire dancing in his eyes.

She grabbed his t-shirt, pulling him into the sleeping nook. “No more notes.”

7:53 am

Having another person in the room during a practice session was strange, but there wasn’t much Galadriel could do about it. She and Halbrand had stayed up way too late, and when her morning alarm rang at 6:55, she hadn’t had the heart to throw him out. Even if he went back to his apartment, he was going to have to listen to her practice anyway.

“Can you play the shitty weather song?” he asked once she’d finished one of Czerny’s etudes.

She sent him a quick glance over her shoulder. He’d propped himself up into a sitting position, using all of her pillows to turn the bed into a couch. His full attention was fixed on her.

“There’s this piece you play every time it rains,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s called, so I just refer to it as the shitty weather song.”

“The Raindrop Prelude.” She smiled, his words filling her with an unfamiliar sense of intimacy. Her neighbor barely knew anything about her backstory, but he knew her music better than anyone. On a fundamental level, he knew her.

“It’s a good one,” he said. “Way better than the one you just played.”

Galadriel wholeheartedly agreed. She dug through her sheet music, pulling out her collection of Chopin’s preludes before granting his request.  

They spent the entire morning together, trying to decode the names that he’d given the pieces in her repertoire. Some of them were easy, like that fast Beethoven song and the one with the crazy right hand jumps. Others were trickier, like the long one with the octave thing. She eventually figured out that he was referring to Chopin’s Ballade in G minor—one of her own favorites, even if some parts made her forearms cramp. Halbrand had a soft spot for the romantics, which was unexpectedly endearing for a prog metal bassist.

She’d been convinced that the life of a struggling classical pianist was ultimately a lonely one, but in a single morning, Halbrand managed to prove her wrong.

Their hours of music were slowly blending together. The mornings were supposed to be hers and the nights were supposed to be his, but she couldn’t help but feel like they were both turning into theirs.

Months passed. Utumno gained more notoriety with their unexpected classical elements, and Galadriel Noldor became known for the touch of prog that she brought to her accompaniments.

Eventually, the solo opportunity arrived. Backed up by a pseudo-philharmonic orchestra and a supportive prog metal bassist sitting on the first row, Galadriel performed Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 in C minor at the Lindon Theater. The massive chords nearly gave her a knuckle inflammation, but she pulled it off.

That night, Galadriel officially became a concert pianist—a small and struggling one, but a concert pianist nonetheless. The dream that Celeborn had called juvenile and naïve finally came true.  

Her mornings were for practice, her days were for teaching, and her evenings and weekends were for performances. She still had to listen to prog metal every night, but she’d accepted that part of her daily schedule. Her and Halbrand’s music had become just as intertwined as their lives.

The hours between 10 pm and 7 am belonged solely to them.