08:31:30. Vivian's screenshot held its little gray moon — queued — like a blade with manners.
"Final?" her text said.
"Fight," Rita had sent. The word still hung in the air like fresh paint.
A chirp sounded down the corridor — two notes, polite and wrong-time. Victor tipped his head. "Early test," he murmured. "I've got the notch."
The elevator chimed. Footfalls, too fast to be staff, too light to be cops. Boone slid a half step, and the hallway changed shape.
Patch Guy reappeared, jacket the same, Velcro edge the same lie. Two stringers in his lee kept cameras low and hungry.
"Evening again," Patch said, smile reheated. "Management needs… access."
"Credential," Boone said, palm open, hands visible, the tone that turns verbs into walls.
Patch lifted the same wrong badge. Boone didn't touch it; he read it like weather — then placed his body where doors lose their nerve. The stringers tried to ooze left. Boone shifted a shoe. The air obeyed him.
"Don't make this theatrical," Patch said.
"We don't," Boone said. "We make it procedural."
Behind us the strobe test nipped the vestibule — brief, white, then gone — as if the building were practicing heartbeat. The stringers flinched; their cameras did the math and overexposed.
Patch leaned, too close. Boone's elbow described an idea in space — not a hit, not a threat, a geometric no. Patch discovered he could stand a different distance after all.
Another strobe kissed the corner. The light crowded my eyes — sudden, hot. Evan's hand found the small of my back and set a line there — not a grab, a map.
"Strobe," Victor said softly. "Keep chin level."
Patch took the flash for an entrance. He stepped, all teeth.
Boone's forearm arrived between bodies like architecture. "No unannounced intimacy," he said, even to a room this small.
"Let's move," Rita said, and the minute acquired edges.
The next strobe hit and stayed a breath too long. Evan's other hand found my elbow. Gentle grip, clear ask. I nodded, already moving — we slid into the stairwell bracket, half step down from the hall, out of the strobe's direct bite. The door caught, hesitated, didn't close: Boone's boot, polite as iron, kept the hinge honest.
We were in the little triangle where buildings hide their warmth. Concrete, cool. Metal rail, warmer than it should be. Evan close enough that his breath turned mine into a rhythm.
"I've got you," he said, low. Not a promise to the world — to my balance.
You do, I thought, the admission landing like heat in my throat.
The strobe flashed again, reflected off the rail, rimmed his cheekbone in white. My hand came up without consulting me and met fabric — lapel, crisp — then skin at the hollow just above his collar, warmer. He didn't steal forward; he waited, face tilted, lips a line you could read if you knew the language.
"Values slide in thirty," Vivian pinged.
Rita's phone came up, red light steady. "window plate ready," she said. "misleading lower-third card loaded. If they post, we post. Then Host reads the six."
Aisha's voice threaded through like a backbone. "Pre-commit accepted — if any Board text runs, window required. Host's education slate approved as substitute. No 'mutual.'"
Another strobe — fast, sharp. Evan's thumb traced one slow inch along my spine in the pause it left. Not down, not up — a circle that asked.
I leaned that inch — the answer we didn't have a word for, not yet. He came the same inch. Warm breath. Clean aftershave, linen, the copper taste of adrenaline under it.
"Rita," I said, without moving my mouth much. "If they post—"
"We answer live," she said. "Nineteen seconds. Consent on Record and Public Record Statement in one breath. Then we move to the lift."
Evan's temple touched mine — deliberate, not hiding, not claiming. "Together," he said. "On record."
Another chirp, another flicker. The little triangle held. My palm flattened over his chest — steady drum under cotton. His nose brushed my cheek, not quite a kiss, an outline of one. I could take this kiss, my body said. Ask. My mouth parted a little on the thought.
His hand left my back — not retreat, adjustment — and lifted, slow, to my jaw. Knuckles grazing first, then the heel of his hand warm beneath my ear. He stopped with the kind of care that makes you believe in tomorrow.
"May I," he asked, so quiet that the word was as much breath as sound.
Heat spilled low and sweet through me — want and the quieter thing under it, the one that loves being asked. "Yes," I said, the little word clean as a note.
The stairwell made a soft sound — Boone clearing the throat of space. "On your minute," he said from the hinge. "Not before."
We laughed — tiny, muffled — because the relief kept us from doing something we might enjoy too much for a hallway with cameras.
"Hold," I said. "Door first. Then…"
"Then," he agreed, with a smile that felt like putting a hand in a pocket that belongs to you.
Rita's screen pulsed — navy, smug. Vivian's text over it: They pushed it. It's live.
Rita's eyes sharpened. "It's on."
The stairwell seemed to tilt toward duty. Evan's hand squeezed once at my jaw — promise, not delay — then fell to safer geography. We stepped back that inch we had taken, the heat knitting into focus.
"Say it," I told Rita.
Her phone came up, window plate glowing. "On record," she said, and shot. "Consent on Record is verifiable; 'mutual' isn't. Public Record Statement: index isn't a record; please don't harass clerks."
A reply exploded somewhere in the void — hearts, teeth — but our feed wore its plate like a shield. The misleading lower-third square pinned itself where thieves would have to steal it along with our nouns.
"Host is ready," Vivian sent. "Six words on the throw."
"Move," Boone said gently. The door released under his boot. The hallway waited, scrubbed clean by the last flash.
We stepped out of the triangle, the stairwell letting us go with what felt like reluctance. My hand brushed his fingers as we reentered the light — not accident, not plan; a contact the size of a heartbeat. He looked at me like a man who had found a new definition for the word later.
The elevator chimed again. The doors peeled open like a quiet solution.
"Ready," Rita said.
"Ready," I said.
"Ready," Evan said, and the minute showed us its teeth.