Liverpool Rhythm | NEON LIT

The Cavern Quarter at two AM was where Liverpool's heartbeat lived. Not the tourist Beatles stuff—the real city, the one that danced until dawn and didn't care who was watching. I'd been doing sound for clubs here for three years, but The Basement was my favorite. Sticky floors, low ceilings, and a crowd that came to lose themselves.

Tonight, they were losing themselves to DJ Mariah.

I watched her from the booth, ostensibly checking levels but really just... watching. She was a vision behind the decks—natural hair haloed by laser lights, body moving to beats she controlled like a conductor. She was thick in all the directions that mattered, curves that bounced with the bass, and her face when she dropped a particularly nasty transition was pure ecstasy.

Then the left channel died.

"Marcus!" Her voice cut through my headphones, thick Scouse accent sharp with panic. "I've lost half the system!"

I was at her side in seconds, diving under the decks while she kept the right channel going through pure DJ sorcery. Loose connection. Amateur mistake from whoever set up before me. I had it fixed in two minutes, but I took three—proximity to her was intoxicating.

"You're a lifesaver." She grabbed my face and kissed my cheek when I emerged. "Drinks on me after. Don't you dare leave."

I didn't dare.

The club cleared at four. Mariah found me breaking down cables, two bottles of beer in hand.

"For my knight in shining... whatever that is." She nodded at my band t-shirt.

"Massive Attack."

"Good taste." She leaned against the wall, watching me work. "You're different from the other sound lads. You actually listen to the music."

"Hard not to when it's that good." I coiled the last cable. "You've got proper skills. Not just pressing play on a laptop like half the DJs out there."

"Trained on vinyl. My dad's collection." She sipped her beer. "He was a club DJ in the eighties. Back when this city invented half the sounds that matter."

"The Haçienda generation."

"That was Manchester, but yeah. Liverpool had its own thing." She pushed off the wall, moved closer. "You want to see my setup? Got a studio in the flat. Nothing special, but it's mine."

It was very special. Her flat overlooked the docks, the studio a converted bedroom packed with equipment that must have cost years of gig money. Turntables, a mixing board, speakers that probably violated noise ordinances.

"Impressive," I said.

"I know." She wasn't being arrogant—just honest. "Sit down. I want to play you something."

The track she queued was different from her club stuff. Slower, deeper, built on a sample I couldn't quite place. Her body swayed as she mixed, adding layers, building something that felt like a conversation.

"What do you think?" she asked when it faded.

"I think you should release that."

"I will. When it's finished." She turned to face me, backlit by LED strips that painted her in purple and blue. "It needs something, though. I haven't figured out what."

"A vocal, maybe?"

"Maybe." She stepped closer. "Or maybe it needs to be finished the way it was started. In a particular... mood."

"What mood was that?"

"Hungry." She reached out, touched my chest. "Restless. Wanting something I couldn't name." Her hand slid up to my shoulder. "You know the feeling?"

"I'm starting to."

She kissed me with the same precision she brought to her mixes—deliberate, controlled, building toward something inevitable. Her mouth was sweet with beer, her body warm against mine, and when she pulled back, her eyes were half-closed with want.

"The bedroom's through there," she said. "Unless you'd rather keep things professional."

"Mariah." I cupped her face. "I stopped being professional the moment I took three minutes to fix a two-minute problem."

Her laugh was beautiful. "I wondered about that."

The bedroom was all her—bold colors, soft textures, a bed that seemed designed for exactly what we were about to do. She undressed with the same confidence she brought to everything, revealing skin that glowed dark and lovely in the ambient light. Her body was a landscape I wanted to explore for hours.

"Don't just stand there." She crooked a finger. "Show me what else those hands can do."

My hands could do plenty. I found the rhythms that made her gasp, the pressures that made her moan, the tempos that built her toward crescendo. She was responsive like music itself—every touch a note, every sound a confirmation that I'd found the right frequency.

When she came, it was with a cry that would have woken neighbors in a lesser-insulated building. Her whole body shook, waves of pleasure that I rode with her, holding her through the peak until she pulled me down and demanded more.

"Inside me," she gasped. "Now. Don't make me wait."

I didn't make her wait. We found our rhythm together—fast, then slow, then building again to something that felt like the track she'd played me, layer on layer until neither of us could hold back. She came again as I followed, both of us crying out in a harmony that needed no mixing.

After, we lay tangled while the sky lightened over the Mersey.

"That track," I said eventually. "I know what it needs."

"Yeah?" She traced patterns on my chest.

"This. What we just did. That energy. Record us next time. Sample it. Work it in."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she laughed. "You want me to sample our shag?"

"Artists have done stranger things."

"They have." She propped herself up. "Next time, yeah? You're assuming there's a next time."

"Isn't there?"

She kissed me, slow and deep. "Check your schedule. I'm playing The Basement every Saturday. Going to need a sound engineer I can trust."

I became her permanent sound engineer. And that track? She finished it exactly how I suggested. It charted in three countries.

The sample's buried deep in the mix. You'd never know what you're hearing unless you were there. But every time it plays, I remember the night Liverpool's rhythm became something more—and the DJ who taught me that the best collaborations happen after the club closes.