Kit buried his nose in my hair, inhaling the ozone scent of my distress. "I've got you," he urged, his voice a low drone right against my ear. "You're safe. The door's locked. Cal's clear. The walls are solid. Just ride the wave, love. We're the harbour."
Euan’s thumb pressed into my pulse point. "Stabilizing," he said softly. "Syncing to external rhythm. Breathe with me. Four counts."
"Can't," I choked out.
"You can," Euan corrected, authoritative and calm. "Input follows output. Inhale. Two. Three. Four."
I dragged air into my lungs. It tasted of them. It tasted of safety.
The wave crested. It wasn't the devastating, lonely spike I’d felt in the venue. It was shared. Distributed across the network. Kit absorbed the shaking. Alfie took the restless energy. Euan managed the data.
Alfie nudged his head up, resting his chin on my knee, looking up at me with eyes that were pure devotion. "Good girl," he whispered, teasing out the thread he’d started at the green room. "Let us carry the weight. You don't have to mix this one solo."
"That's it," Kit encouraged, his hand flattening over my stomach, right over the center of the heat, providing the counter-pressure I was starving for. "We're right here. Furniture and walls and whatever else you need."
The heat broke. Not vanished, but shattered from a monolith into manageable pieces. The frantic edge dulled. My muscles unlocked, melting into the sofa, into Kit, into the space they’d carved out.
I slumped, exhausted, sweat cooling on my neck.
For a long time, the only sound was the hum of the bus on the tarmac and the syncopated breathing of four people trying to remember how lungs worked.
"You waited," I said finally. My voice was a wreck.
Alfie turned his face, pressing a kiss to the denim over my knee. Chaste. Reverent. "Always gonna wait for you. That’s baseline."
"You overrode the protocol," Euan noted, though he didn't let go of my wrist. He seemed to be recalibrating his entire worldview based on the BPM under his thumb. "The risk assessment was... flawed. You required proximity."
"I required the pack," I corrected.
The word hit the room like a dropped mic.
Kit went still against my back. Alfie stopped breathing. Euan’s fingers tightened on my wrist.
I opened my eyes. I pushed myself up, just a little, testing my limits. The fever was a low burn now, not a forest fire.
I shifted my leg, nudging Alfie. "Up. Get off the floor."
"I'm good here," he murmured, looking like he was ready to worship at the altar of my boots for the next century.
"Alfie. Up."
It was the producer voice. The one that cut through feedback.
He scrambled up, moving to sit on the coffee table in front of me, needing to be close but afraid to crowd.
I looked at them. Really looked at them. The three men who had rewritten their own biology because a piece of paper said I needed space. Who had let me scream in a green room rather than break a lock.
"I want to try something," I said.
Kit’s hand was still on my stomach. "Name it."
I looked at Alfie. His lips were parted, breath coming fast.
"Alfie. Permission to kiss you?"
He made a sound like a dying engine. "Copy that."
I leaned forward. I didn't rush. I let him see me coming, let him track the movement. I placed my hands on his shoulders, he felt vibrating tight, like a coiled spring.
