The green room fluorescent tubes hummed in B-flat. It was a flat, sour vibration that sat right behind Emanuelle’s ears and set her teeth on edge every time the bass cabinet fell silent. Nobody else cared. Castiel had his Marshall stack cranked until the plaster dust drifted from the ceiling vents, and Nathaniel was at the catering table methodically slicing an apple into eighths.
Manu turned a sealed bottle of mineral water around in her hands. She inspected the faint blue dot-matrix stamp printed on the curve of the plastic: *EXP 11/27 BATCH 409*. Safe. Three years ago she had drunk water from a case stored beside diesel generators in Bordeaux and spent two days praying for death over a backstage toilet; she had not touched an unverified bottle since.
She set the plastic down and pressed her palms flat against the cold grain of her Fender Jazz Bass.
"You're dragging on the bridge of the third track," Castiel called out over the hiss of his amplifier. He did not look up from re-stringing his red Gibson. He snapped a stray wire with wire cutters, the metallic *ping* ringing out sharp. "Pick it up or I'm taking the transition solo back."
"I'm not dragging, Cass," Manu said. Her voice sounded thin to her own ears. "You're rushing the downbeat because you want to get out for a cigarette."
"I rush when the tempo demands it."
"The tempo demands sixty-four bpm. You're playing seventy."
Castiel scoffed, but his fingers paused on the machine head. He reached down, took a creased envelope off the top of his road case, and slid it neatly into the inner zipper of his leather jacket before Manu could catch the logo on the letterhead. He zipped it shut with an abrasive rasp.
"Drink some water, Squirt," he muttered, turning his back to her. "You look gray."
He knew something about the tour routing for Spain. He always looked guilty in the shoulders when the label tried to tack on second shows, but he never gave up the news until the contract ink was dry. Manu didn't push. Her stomach gave a distinct, liquid roll that had nothing to do with Castiel’s stubbornness.
She reached for the small brass screwdriver in her utility pouch. Kneeling behind her amplifier rack, away from Nathaniel’s sharp peripheral vision and Castiel’s restless pacing, she undid the top two screws of the pickguard on her backup bass.
The plastic strip tucked inside the cavity rattled softly against the copper shielding tape. Two pink lines. Clear, indisputable, and three days old.
She had told no one. Not Castiel, who would immediately try to manage the universe with a pair of boxing gloves and a screaming fit at the label. Not Nathaniel, who would quietly calculate the insurance liability clauses of their arena contracts before she had even processed the reality of her own body.
And not Lysander.
The stage door opened with a dull mechanical click. Lysander stepped across the threshold, shaking autumn rain from a long slate-gray wool coat. His silver-tipped hair was damp at the nape. He carried his leather-bound lyric ledger tucked under his elbow, a notebook worn soft at the corners from ten years of green rooms, tour buses, and overnight train compartments between Paris and London.
His heterochromatic eyes found her instantly. The green and the amber weighed her posture, the angle of her spine, the pale hollow beneath her cheekbones.
"The wind off the river is bitter tonight," he said. His voice was naturally low, soft-edged and precise. "You shouldn't sit so close to the floor vents, Emanuelle. The draft carries the exhaust from the loading bay."
"I like the cold," she lied, tightening the screws back down on her instrument. She stood up too fast.
The room tilted three inches to the left. The hum of the fluorescent tube swelled into a roar, vibrating straight through her cheekbones. Her fingers gripped the rubber handle of the amp head, nails digging into the textured vinyl.
Lysander was already there. His hand rested lightly against the small of her back, just above the belt loops of her denim. His thumb moved once, a habitual, grounding sweep of cloth.
"Your hands are like ice," he murmured, his brow drawing into a rare, sharp knot. "Have you eaten since soundcheck?"
"Nathaniel offered me an eighth of an apple," Manu muttered, blinking away the gray static crawling across her vision. "I declined out of principle."
"Very brave of you," Lysander said, but there was no lightness in his face. He leaned down, his lips brushing her temple. He lingered there longer than usual, checking her temperature with an instinct refined over eight years of shared hotel rooms, quiet domestic mornings in their flat, and contracts signed under separate legal surnames to keep the press hounds off their scent.
"I spoke with Thomas earlier," Lysander whispered, his mouth near her ear. "I asked him to strike the television appearance in Lyon next week."
Manu stiffened. "Why? We need that broadcast for the single."
Lysander held her gaze. The amber eye was cool, impenetrable. He withheld the rest, smoothing his scarf over his throat with slow, deliberate fingers. "I felt the itinerary was needlessly crowded. Rest is not an indulgence."
"Lysander—"
"The stage manager called five minutes," Nathaniel interrupted, tossing his apple core into the metal bin with clean precision. He picked up his sticks, testing the weight with a quick roll against his palm. He looked between them, his blue eyes sharp and calculating. "They’ve filled the pit already. If we start late, the venue curfew fines kick in at midnight."
"Right," Castiel grunted, slinging his guitar strap over his shoulder. "Let's get this over with. Manu, if you miss the cue on the chorus again, I'm cutting your monitor feed."
"Touch my monitor and I'll unplug your pedalboard mid-solo," she snapped.
She walked out the stage door on her own two feet.
The corridor was hot. It smelled of spilled lager, wet coats, and the ozone tang of heavy electronics. With every step toward the stage apron, the air grew thinner. The bass felt impossibly heavy on her left shoulder, the wide leather strap digging directly into her collarbone like a blunt lead bar.
*Just four songs for the rehearsal,* she told herself. *Then the clinic tomorrow morning. Then I tell him.*
They reached the wings. Castiel stepped through the heavy blackout curtains first, greeted by the thunderous drone of equipment checks and the distant murmur of technicians. Nathaniel followed, rolling his shoulders back.
Manu reached out to adjust the master monitor pack on the wing rack herself. She didn't want the sound engineer turning the low end up; the thumping of the kick drum was already turning her stomach into water. She reached for the dial.
Her fingers missed.
The dial wasn't where she thought it was. The blackout curtain seemed to ripple, expanding outward into an endless black lake.
"Manu?"
It was Castiel's voice, suddenly stripped of all irritation, cracking down the middle.
She tried to answer him, but the breath wouldn't come up through her throat. The world shrank into the single, sour B-flat of the ceiling lights, and then the concrete floor rushed up to meet her cheek.
***
The smell came first: antiseptic chlorhexidine and cheap industrial lemon.
Manu opened her eyes. White ceiling tiles. Perforated dots arranged in neat, hypnotic squares. She hated hospitals; the harsh, bright sterility always felt like an interrogation room.
She tried to lift her left hand, but a band of paper snagged her wrist. An ID bracelet. Beside her, a slow, rhythmic beep sounded from a small grey monitor mounted to the wall.
"Do not move quickly," a quiet voice said.
Lysander sat on a hard molded-plastic chair jammed between the gurney and the curtain rail. He had stripped off his coat; his cream-colored waistcoat was unbuttoned, his silk tie loosened at the collar. Underneath his shirt collar, the thin silver chain he always wore was visible, resting against his skin. Suspended from it was a small platinum band that matched the one currently hidden in the zip pocket of Manu’s canvas bag.
His eyes were red-rimmed. He held her right hand between both of his, warming her cold knuckles against his palms.
"Where is Castiel?" she whispered, her throat raw.
"Pacing the ambulance bay," Lysander said softly. "The security staff threatened to call the police if he kicked the vending machine again. Nathaniel took him downstairs to buy coffee he will not drink."
Manu swallowed dryly. "The concert."
"Postponed."
"Lysander, the tickets—"
"I do not care about the tickets, Emanuelle." The edge in his voice was quiet, but it stopped the breath in her chest. His fingers tightened around hers, possessive and trembling. "You stopped breathing for three seconds on the stage floor. Your brother had to lift you because my hands were shaking so badly I couldn't undo your strap."
She closed her eyes. The guilt tasted like bile.
A gentle knock sounded against the aluminum frame of the cubicle. A tired doctor in green scrubs pushed the curtain aside, glancing up from a thin clipboard.
"Madame Delatour?" the doctor asked, using her maiden name from the intake card.
"Yes," Manu said.
The doctor stepped inside, pulling the fabric curtain shut behind him, though the flimsy polyester left a two-inch gap near the floor. "The blood panel came back. Severe dehydration, low blood sugar, and systemic exhaustion. Quite common in your state, though fainting episodes should not be taken lightly in the first trimester."
The room went completely, terrifyingly still.
The heart monitor beside the gurney hitched, its electronic chirps speeding up into a steady, panicked cadence.
Lysander did not move. He did not blink. His amber and green eyes remained fixed on the doctor’s face, as if waiting for a translation from an ancient, forgotten dialect.
"My... state?" Manu managed, her voice barely a thread.
"You are approximately seven weeks pregnant," the doctor said plainly, tapping the clipboard with a ballpoint pen. "Did you not know?"
Manu couldn't look at Lysander. She stared at the blue hospital sheet covering her knees. "I knew."
The silence that followed was suffocating. The doctor glanced between the two of them, seasoned enough to recognize the suffocating weight of private shock. He scribbled a note, tore a yellow carbon slip from his pad, and laid it on the bedside table.
"I’ll order an IV drip with glucose and an anti-emetic. Someone will be in shortly to change the bag. Try to rest."
The doctor stepped out, the curtain rings hissing along the metal track.
Manu stared at her lap. Her knuckles went white against the rough cotton sheet.
"Lysander," she whispered.
He moved slowly. He didn't drop her hand; if anything, his grip became fierce, crushing her fingers against the hard plane of his chest. When she finally dared to look up, his pale face was shattered into something raw and luminous, a mixture of awe and profound, wounded confusion.
"Seven weeks," he said. The words fell from him like loose pages from his notebook. "You carried this through rehearsals. Through the studio."
"I was going to tell you," she choked out. "After the weekend. The press—the tour schedule—Thomas was already breathing down our necks about the contract renewals, and I didn't know how to make space for it."
"Emanuelle." He stood up, leaning over the narrow hospital gurney until his forehead pressed directly against hers. His breath was warm, smelling faintly of the mint tea he always drank before going on stage. He reached up with trembling fingers, unhooking the silver chain from beneath his collar, letting their platinum rings spill into the open air between them. "There is nothing in that theatre more important than this. Nothing."
He kissed her brow, his lips lingering against the fever-flush of her skin, shielding her from the hum of the fluorescent tubes, the smell of the floor wash, and the noise of the ward. For five seconds, the world was reduced to the space between their ribs.
Then, three feet away, through the narrow gap where the curtain failed to meet the plastic partition, a faint blue light blinked.
It was the corner of a smartphone, held steady at chest height.
Beneath the gloved hand holding the device, swinging gently against the fabric of a black hoodie, hung an iridescent VIP backstage laminate—the exact shade of red issued only to the band's personal crew.
The glass lens caught the sterile hospital glare, recorded the silver rings dangling between them, and dipped out of sight into the crowd of the ER corridor.
Outside, the first heavy drops of a midnight storm began to drum against the high, unwashed windows.
***