Chapter Text
The Soho venue in London was a basement space that smelled permanently of damp brickwork, spilled cider, stale instant coffee, and the oppressive, electric heat of three hundred bodies crammed into a room meant for two hundred.
Behind the velvet curtain that separated the wings from the stage, AJ stood in the dark, bouncing on the balls of his feet. His hands were rammed so deep into the pockets of his black hoodie that his knuckles were practically tearing through the cotton seams.
Outside, the crowd was humming—a low, rhythmic roar of clinking glasses, bright laughter, and the steady thump of the venue’s pre-show playlist vibrating through the floorboards.
To anyone looking at him right now, AJ looked like a coiled spring ready to detonate. He looked hyperactive. He looked excited.
He was actually having a quiet, suffocating panic attack.
In his head, the relentless, toxic loop was already running. It didn't start when he walked into the venue tonight; it was a slow, creeping poison that had been colonizing his brain over the last six months of tour.
When Shoot From The Hip first started, everything had felt like a blurred, magical dream. They were four university mates mucking about in drafty student union rooms, laughing until their stomachs ached over terrible sketches about hyper-intelligent badgers or incompetent medieval doctors. They were young, chaotic, and had zero expectations.
But then the venue sizes grew. The student union rooms turned into actual theaters. The actual theaters turned into sold-out tours. Clips of their shows began racking up, hundreds to thousands to millions of views online. And with every milestone, the invisible divide in AJ’s mind grew wider and wider until it felt like a canyon he was constantly trying not to fall into.
And his three best mates were craftsmen.
Tom was the literary mind. Tom had an analytical, gorgeous brain that worked like a supercomputer—he could take a thrown-out word from an audience member in the back rows and quietly construct a three-act tragicomedy around it, tracking subtle character beats and callbacks from forty minutes prior with terrifying, effortless grace.
Luke was the trained actor. Luke had a gravitational pull on stage that made people hold their breath—he could drop his shoulders, adjust his breathing, and make a crowd weep over an imaginary teacup just by looking at it with raw, devastating sincerity.
Sam was the razor. Sam’s comedic reflexes were so lighting-fast that it felt like a biological anomaly—he could slice through a failing scene with a single line, turning awkward silence into a masterclass of timing and satire.
And then there was AJ.
AJ didn't have a craft. He didn't have technique. He didn't have a background in dramatic theater or a mental filing cabinet of literary tropes.
AJ was just… AJ.
Every time he opened social media after a show, the comments of their videos were filled with the similar phrases: "AJ is so unhinged," "he's so confused," "AJ is literally a toddler with sugar." On the surface, the fans loved it. But every time AJ read those words, they sat in his stomach like lead. They didn't see an artist up there with Tom, Luke, and Sam. They saw a funny distraction. A chaotic gimmick. A child running around with scissors while three adults tried to keep the theater from burning down.
They're real performers, AJ thought, his breathing coming short and shallow as he stared at the dark velvet curtain. I'm just the loud idiot riding their coattails because I panic when things get quiet.
"One minute, gents," the stage manager murmured and halted his train of thoughts, passing by the wings with a headset clipped to her collar.
Luke stepped up beside AJ, shaking out his arms, his posture relaxed and grounded. He turned his head, his dark eyes sweeping over AJ’s tense shoulders. "You good, mate?"
AJ instantly snapped his chin up, forcing a wide, blinding, manic grin onto his face. "Yeah, absolutely buzzing. Just about ready to take the roof off this place, really."
Luke studied him for two long seconds, a subtle sudden crease forming between his brows. But before Luke could say anything, the house lights dimmed, the crowd erupted into a deafening roar of applause, and the four of them stepped out onto the blinding white glare of the stage.
For the first thirty minutes, AJ operated entirely on sheer, frantic adrenaline. He flung his body across the sticky floor, squawked at the top of his lungs, and leaned heavily into his usual brand of chaotic physical comedy. The crowd was eating it up. The laughter in the basement room was deafening.
And then came the train scene.
It was almost the end of their first half of the show. The audience prompt had been simple: "A long goodbye."
Tom had stepped out first, instantly lowering the energy of the room into something breathtakingly quiet and grounded. He played a man standing on a freezing train platform, holding one of their old coat props around his shoulders, waiting for a train that was thirty minutes late. Luke had stepped out to join him, playing an old friend who had come to see him off.
The scene was gorgeous. It was subtle, poetic, and quiet—the kind of high-level, artistic improv that showed off exactly how brilliant Tom and Luke were together. The audience was dead silent, hanging on every word, completely wrapped up in the emotional reality the two of them were weaving out of thin air.
AJ stood in the wings, watching them from the shadows.
And as he watched Tom deliver a heartbreaking monologue about lost time, a sudden, icy wave of sheer terror pierced straight through AJ’s stomach.
It's my turn to enter, AJ’s brain screamed at him, his heart hammering violently against his ribs. He had to go out there. But AJ couldn’t match this. He didn’t have the depth. He didn’t have the acting chops to step onto that stage and give Tom and Luke what they actually need. And if AJ even tried to be serious, he’d just look stupid.
I'm going to ruin their masterpiece.He thought, panic seizing him by the throat. He felt small, untrained, and fraudulent.
And so, because he was terrified of failure, AJ fell back on his only defense mechanism.
He didn't step out as a grounded character. He didn't honor the quiet sadness of the train platform. Instead, he barrelled onto the stage at a full sprint, squawking at the top of his lungs, flailing his arms like wings, and screaming about a man who believed he was an undercover pigeon fighting the local council.
The room exploded into a wall of laughter. The sheer absurdity of the contrast was hysterical to the audience. Sam completely lost his mind in the wings, sliding down the wall into a breathless fit of wheezing giggles.
The bit worked. It was a massive, show-stopping laugh.
But as AJ stood there squawking and flapping his arms, he caught the split-second shift in Tom’s eyes right before the laugh landed.
Anyone else in the world—anyone sitting out in that dark audience, anyone watching the clips back later—wouldn't have been able to notice it. To three hundred people, Tom looked entirely seamlessly in character, adjusting to a comedic beat.
But AJ wasn't just anyone. That was Tom. His brother—not by blood, but by something far deeper, forged in years of shared stage boards, cramped rehearsal rooms, and an unconditional, unspoken trust. They had lived in each other's pockets for years, spent thousands of hours on stage together, and learned the micro-expressions of each other's faces better than their own. AJ knew how Tom's mind worked down to the second. He knew the exact way Tom carried himself when he was crafting something he loved.
It was a micro-adjustment—a tiny, heartbreaking moment where Tom’s shoulders dropped fractionally, letting go of the delicate, beautiful narrative thread he’d spent five minutes painstakingly assembling, shifting his entire literary brain into high gear to absorb the loud, chaotic brick AJ had just thrown through the window.
I ruined it, AJ thought, the blood rushing cold in his ears as he continued the pigeon bit on autopilot. Tom had built something beautiful, and AJ had ruined it because he was too pathetic, loud, and scared to actually act.
He pushed through the rest of the show on sheer muscle memory—grinning, squawking, and landing punchlines while feeling completely hollowed out on the inside. Every laugh from the audience felt less like praise and more like a countdown toward the moment the illusion shattered entirely.
The second the house lights flickered back on and the final roar of applause echoed against the basement ceiling, the four of them filed through the narrow door into the narrow backstage corridor.
On stage, AJ had kept the energy turned all the way up to eleven until the very last bow. He had jumped, he had bowed theatrically, he had thrown his arm around Sam’s shoulders and waved frantically at the back row. But the exact second his shoes crossed the threshold into the dark, quiet hallway behind the velvet curtains, the invisible puppet strings snapped; the adrenaline dumped out of his bloodstream, leaving a cold, sickening void in its place.
His lungs felt completely hollow. His chest was caving in on itself, squeezing around his heart like a tightening iron band. Every breath he tried to pull in scraped against his dry throat like broken glass, getting stuck somewhere near his collarbones without ever actually reaching his lungs. His hands were numb, a pins-and-needles static creeping up his wrists as his pulse hammered violently against his ear drums—a terrifying, deafening thud-thud-thud that drowned out the quiet hum of the venue. The air in his throat was hot, shallow, and useless. He was hyperventilating, he knew that much, but he couldn't stop it; he couldn't get enough oxygen to quiet the alarm bells screaming in his head.
Not again, AJ thought, horror spiking through the fog of his brain as his vision narrowed down to a blurry tunnel. Not here. Not right now.
Desperate to get away from the lingering lights and the dull, lingering murmur of the crowd still spilling out of the auditorium, he made a blind break down the corridor. He pushed past the heavy fire door, practically throwing himself down the narrow flight of concrete stairs toward the only quiet place left in the venue.
The dressing room in the basement smelled like a collision of stale instant coffee, damp brickwork, metallic hairspray, and the electric, suffocating heat of three hundred people packed into a tight space—and right now, the air only felt thick and entirely unbreathable.
AJ walked straight past the sofa to the vanity mirror in the corner, jamming his trembling hands deep into the front pocket of his faded black hoodie until the seams strained against his knuckles. He dug his fingers in as hard as he could—if only to stop them from shaking so violently, if only to hide the tremor before the others eventually walked in.
It barely worked. The fine, uncontrollable trembling stayed pinned under the thin fabric, a quiet, physical betrayer of the storm raging beneath his skin.
He practically dropped into the wooden chair in front of the vanity mirror, his knees suddenly too weak to hold him up. Spinning the chair toward the glass, he rested his elbows on the laminate counter and stared straight through his own pale reflection, his mind spiraling deeper into the dark, suffocating fear that had been tormenting him for months.
They’re constantly fixing my messes, he thought, his stomach twisting into a sickening, violent knot. They’d spend hours refining their work, building these incredible, complex worlds, and AJ…
AJ was just the loud distraction who would drag them down to his level because he’s too terrified to actually act.
He leaned forward, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes until starbursts of blinding light exploded across the darkness behind his eyelids. He felt so unbelievably fraudulent. So utterly out of his depth.
He loved them—god, he loved them more than anything in the world. They were his brothers, his home, his anchor. And the thought that he was the untrained deadweight holding them back from being a "serious" comedy troupe was eating him alive from the inside out.
The heavy fire door at the end of the hall clicked open, the dull thud of boots breaking the stillness.
Luke walked in first, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, his posture relaxed and grounded even in total exhaustion. Sam was right behind him, snickering at something on his phone, while Tom brought up the rear with a stack of venue paperwork and a half-empty bottle of water.
The second their shoes crossed the threshold, AJ’s internal defense alarm went off like a siren. He snapped his head up, plastering a faux smile onto his face and spinning his swivel chair around with an exaggerated flourish.
"Right! Did you see the bloke in the third row?" AJ boomed, his voice pitched just a fraction too high, his hand gestures wildly over-the-top, noticeable to anyone who really knew him. To anyone who he’d call his brothers, who unfortunately, were the ones standing across from him right now. "Absolute legend! Looked like he was having a full medical emergency every time Sam opened his mouth! I thought we were gonna have to call an ambulance mid-scene–"
"AJ," Sam interrupted.
The name cut through the room like a cold blade.
It was instantaneous. Sam didn't even drop his bag. The bright, sharp, mischievous energy Sam carried on stage vanished, replaced in a split second by that quiet, laser-focused perception that made him so terrifyingly good at reading people. He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at AJ.
"Drop it," Sam said softly.
AJ froze, his wide smile locked in place like dry plaster. "Drop what? I'm just saying, the audience tonight was mental–"
"AJ," Luke interrupted again, if only to stop AJ from spewing out whatever he was spewing.
Luke didn't wait for an invitation. He walked straight across the small room, pulled up a low wooden stool, and dropped down directly in front of AJ’s chair, effectively blocking his view of the rest of the room. Luke had this quiet, theatrical gravity to him—when he looked at you, really looked at you, it felt like being pinned under a warm, inescapable spotlight.
"You're doing the stage voice," Luke said gently, reaching out to rest his hands on his own knees. "Stop doing the stage voice, mate. We're off."
"…I'm not doing a voice," AJ muttered, but the lie sounded pathetic even to him. His posture instantly wilted. The wide, fake grin crumbled away, leaving his face pale, small, and utterly exhausted.
Tom set his paperwork down on the vanity table with a soft clack. He didn't say anything right away; he just walked over and leaned his hip against the edge of the counter right next to AJ’s chair, crossing his arms over his chest. His expression—mirrored by the other two—was serious, warm, and entirely unguarded.
They had been doing this together for almost a decade. You couldn't hide an anxiety attack or an internal spiral from three men who spent four nights a week reading your micro-expressions for a living.
"The train scene," AJ whispered to his own knees, his fingers twisting into the hem of his hoodie until his knuckles turned ghost-white. "I’d… I’d ruined it."
"Right," Tom said, his tone dry and flat, though a faint, fond curve touched the corner of his mouth. "Of course. The scene where three hundred people nearly suffocated from laughing too hard. Absolutely ruined. Tragic loss for the arts, really."
"Tom, don't- please," AJ choked out, a sudden, hot sting hitting the backs of his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting with everything he had to keep his voice from cracking. "I'm- I’m serious. You were setting up something really good. Something brilliant, really. And I couldn't... I didn't know how to hold up my end of it. I'm not an actor like Luke, a comedian like Sam, or a writer like you, Tom. I don't have technique, really- I just… get scared and go off the rails because I'm terrified that if I try to be serious, everyone will realize I don't actually belong up there with you lot."
The room went dead silent.
Perhaps it was the oppressive, suffocating heat in the basement green room, catching in the back of his dry throat. Perhaps it was the sheer bone-deep exhaustion of a six-month tour finally catching up to his ribs, or the lingering adrenaline that had nowhere left to go. But whatever dam had been holding back months of poisoned silence finally fractured, and for the very first time, the raw truth tumbled out of him—the suffocating fear that he was just an untrained gimmick riding on the backs of three genuine artists.
Sam let out a soft, breathy noise—halfway between a scoff and a mournful sigh. He stepped forward, shoving his hands into his denim jacket pockets, and leaned down into AJ's personal space. "Are you actually insane?" Sam asked, his voice laced with absolute, unadulterated disbelief, though his eyes were achingly soft. "Is that really what's going on in that bizarre, brilliant bonce of yours? You think you're a gimmick?"
"Sam, look at us!" AJ rasped, his eyes snapping open, shining with unshed tears as he waved his hands around to stress out what he was saying. "You three have proper instincts, you- you build scenes with purpose. And I just… panic and throw paint at the wall because I'm terrified I'm going to drag the show down if I even try to be intelligent."
"…Oh, AJ," Luke murmured, his voice thick with an emotion that made AJ’s chest ache.
AJ instantly dropped his gaze to the cracked linoleum floor. He couldn’t bring himself to look any of them in the eye—couldn't bear to see disappointment, pity, or agreement reflected back in the faces of the three people who mattered most to him. It would be too much.
Before AJ could pull back or shrink further into himself, Luke reached up. His hand was warm—much like their expression right now—against AJ’s contrastingly cold skin as he cup-gripped the back of AJ’s neck, his thumb resting softly rubbing against the base of AJ's skull—a grounding, steady pressure that made AJ’s breath hitch in a quiet, shuddering gasp.
"Look at me, AJ," Luke requested softly.
AJ slowly, finally forced his head up, his vision blurred by hot tears threatening to escape. Luke was leaning in close, and AJ really looked at him, studying his eyes: those same eyes that could communicate a thousand of emotions on stage, now lovingly stern and brimming with a raw, protective affection that completely shattered any fear of judgment—all for his brother. There wasn't a trace of frustration or annoyance in his expression; there was only intense, unshakeable sincerity, holding AJ anchored right where he was.
"You think technique is what makes this work?" Luke asked, his eyes never leaving AJ’s, making sure he takes in every word. "Mate, technique is boring. Technique is what people rely on when they don't have soul. Do you have any idea what Tom and Sam and I sounded like in university before we figured out our dynamic? We were three pretentious theater students sitting in a cold room overthinking every single beat. We were boring, AJ. We were so busy trying to be clever that we forgot how to make people feel something."
"He's not lying," Tom finally chimed in, leaning down until he was in AJ’s direct line of sight. "My early sketches were abhorrent, AJ. Truly vile. I once wrote a twenty-minute scene about a man arguing with a clock because I thought it was 'intellectual.' It was unbearable. You saved us from ourselves, really."
A tiny, involuntary snort of a laugh escaped AJ, but he still wiped his face dejectedly with his sleeve. "That’s not the point, I just… I ruined your setup tonight, Tom.”
"AJ, listen to me very carefully," Tom said, his tone shifting into that quiet, authoritative rhythm he used when he was crafting something he cared about deeply. "I don't set up scenes so you can prove how smart you are. I set up scenes because I want to see what you are going to do to them. That is the entire point of Shoot From The Hip. I build the house, and you set it on fire. And it is a thousand times better when it's on fire."
"Violently better," Sam agreed, reaching over and aggressively rubbing AJ’s head until he wobbled. AJ smacked his hand away with a playful frown, and Sam chuckled. "If I have to stand on stage and watch Tom do another serious, dramatic monologue without you coming in and claiming to be a pigeon, I will literally quit the group and become an accountant."
"I'd quit too," Luke whispered. He didn't release his hand on the back of AJ’s neck; instead, he shifted closer, sliding off his stool and wrapping his arms entirely around AJ’s shoulders, pulling the younger man’s face into the crook of his neck to embrace him tightly. "We don't want another actor, AJ. We don't want another Tom, another Sam. We want you. You’re the heart of this team. You’re the reason this group has magic."
AJ was able to hold out for approximately three more seconds. Then, with a ragged, shaking exhale, he collapsed into the hug, wrapping his arms around Luke’s back and burying his face into Luke’s jacket.
Any remaining armor he’d been clinging to simply dissolved into ash. The tears he’d been trying (and failing) to hold back since the middle of the show fully spilled over—hot, silent, and unstoppable—soaking straight into Luke’s shirt as his entire body shuddered under the sudden release of pressure.
Tom immediately stepped closer, resting a heavy, warm hand over AJ’s trembling shoulder and squeezing firmly through the thick fabric of his hoodie.
"I didn't drop that thread on stage because I was disappointed, AJ," Tom started, his voice low, steady, and achingly fond above them. "I dropped it because you caught me completely off guard in the best bloody way possible. I was up there overthinking a quiet scene, and you stepped out and gave the room magic. I wasn't fixing a mess, I was… watching my brother pull a brilliant bit out of thin air, and I was trying so hard not to break character right in front of three hundred people."
"You're not a gimmick," Sam murmured from below, his voice unusually gentle. "You're the spark, you idiot. None of this works without you."
"You make us brave, AJ," Tom added softly, his thumb rubbing small, soothing circles into the fabric of AJ’s hoodie. "When you're wild on stage, it gives the rest of us permission to stop worrying about being clever and just play. We need you. I need you."
Speechless, AJ merely squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in the familiar scent of laundry detergent, cotton, and sweat that meant home.
The suffocating insecurity that had tortured him for months—the fear of being untrained, unskilled, or unworthy—simply dissolved, rendered completely meaningless against the crushing, unshakeable reality of their love.
At that moment, AJ realized:
He was right where he belonged.
"Alright," AJ croaked out after a long moment, his voice small and muffled against Luke's shoulder. "Alright, get off me, you're ruining my hair."
"Oh, apologies, I’d forgotten about your long, lustrous locks," Sam chuckled, finally standing up and giving AJ’s knee a parting pat.
Luke pulled back slowly, holding AJ at arm's length by his shoulders. He searched AJ’s face, wiping a stray tear off AJ’s cheek with his thumb before giving him a warm, reassuring shake. "You good?"
AJ swallowed, taking a deep, clear breath that reached all the way to the bottom of his lungs for the first time all night. A real, genuine smile—warm and brilliant—broke across his face.
"Yeah," AJ whispered, scrubbing his nose with the back of his hand. "Yeah. I'm good."
"Brilliant," Tom said, clapped his hands with a loud crack. "Now that AJ’s breakdown is officially resolved, who is paying for curry? Because I am violently hungry and Luke claims he 'forgot his wallet' again."
"I didn't forget it, it's an artistic choice," Luke said smoothly, offering AJ a hand and hauling him up out of the chair.
AJ laughed—a loud, barking, unfiltered sound that echoed off the brick walls. He shoved his hands back into his pockets, walking out of the dressing room flanked by his three best friends, feeling lighter than he had in years.
—
The walk from the Soho venue’s backstage door to the tour van parked in the alley was usually a chaotic sprint through cool night air, but tonight AJ moved slowly, his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets. The cold autumn breeze whipped down the narrow alleyway, biting at his red, tear-stained cheeks, but for the first time in months, the air actually felt like it was reaching the bottom of his lungs.
Luke slung an arm heavy over AJ’s shoulders as they walked, his thumb idly pressing through the fabric of AJ’s coat, grounding him with every step. "You really thought we were just putting up with you?" Luke asked softly, his voice low against the rumble of city traffic a street over.
AJ looked down at the wet cobblestones, his sneakers squeaking faintly on the damp ground. "I mean... when you put it like that, out loud in front of everyone, it sounds mental. But on stage, when Tom’s doing this gorgeous literary setup and I run out making literal pigeon noises because my brain melted, I just- I don’t know, I felt like a toddler crashing a dinner party."
Sam, who was walking a few steps ahead carrying two heavy equipment bags alongside Tom, was also apparently eavesdropping (probably alongside Tom, too) as he turned his head over his shoulder.
"AJ, if I wanted a dinner party, I’d join a book club," Sam declared, looking back ahead, but continuing. "I do improv with you because you’re completely unhinged and you make me break character at least twice a night. Do you know how hard it is to make Luke laugh on stage? Nearly impossible. He’s an actor. He has discipline. You come out squawking like a bird and his whole Victorian posture crumbles in two seconds. It’s my favorite part of the show."
"It's true," Luke admitted without a shred of shame, pulling AJ a little closer to his side. "My drama training goes straight out the window the second you start improvising."
Tom clicked the remote unlock on the tour van, the hazard lights flashing twice in the dim alleyway. He opened the side sliding door, stepping back to let the rest of them climb inside.
"The thing you don't realize, AJ," Tom said, leaning against the frame of the open door as AJ hauled himself into the backseat, "is that structure without chaos is just a lecture. I can build scenes all day long, but without your unpredictability, it’s just homework. You really give the show its life."
Speechless yet again, AJ merely sat back against the worn leather bench seat, pulling his knees up slightly as Sam tossed a giant canvas bag of merch into the footwell and climbed in beside him. Luke hopped into the driver's seat, starting the engine, the familiar low rumble filling the cabin as the heater began to blow lukewarm air over their feet.
Sam pulled a crumpled paper bag from his jacket, holding out a greasy box of chips. "Here. Eat. You burned off all your brain cells panicking about Tom's train monologue."
AJ took a chip, the salt hot and sharp on his tongue, letting out a breathy, genuine laugh. "It was a good monologue though."
"It was mediocre at best," Sam deadpanned, earning a sharp look from Tom in the rearview mirror.
"It was a masterclass in pacing and you know it, Sam," Tom said dryly—though his eyes were warm in the faint glow of the dashboard lights—and Sam just vaguely mumbles something in return. Knowing him, though, it was probably a witty retort. Tom merely rolled his eyes as he glanced back at AJ. "How's the head, AJ?"
"Lighter," AJ whispered, looking out the tinted window as the streetlights of London began to streak past in long lines of gold and amber. "A lot lighter."
The quiet inside the van wasn't the heavy, suffocating silence AJ had spent months dreading. It was the easy, comfortable quiet of four people who had spent a decade growing up together in rehearsal rooms, service stations, and backstage green rooms.
AJ leaned his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes as the steady hum of the tires on asphalt vibrated through his back. The poison that had tortured him seemed so small now, completely washed away by the heavy weight of Luke's hug and arm over his shoulder, Sam's aggressive yet affectionate head rubbing, and Tom's quiet promise that he set the house on fire on purpose.
He wasn't an add-on. He wasn't a distraction.
He was the spark.