#deep-space fighters

[crapeaucrapeau]

G2HGE Part 1 : Canon-Gleaning - Post 6a : How Much Faster Than Light ? (Speed, Acceleration and Inertia, and Speculation Thereof)

Hi ! This post (???? 202X ----ERROR : Insert Date Here) is the sixth post in the Galactic Geography and History of Galactic Exploration series (or G2HGE, announced and explained with excessively verbose details here). In this chain of posts, I air out my thoughts and hypotheses on the geography of the Milky Way in the Mass Effect setting - in particular, in order to determine when the various mass relay-centered clusters were opened and accessible, based on what canon data we have. I tell you what I think, and you tell me what you think of that.

A long time ago, I did a five-part post on the various regions of the Milky Way. It was fun !

Right here, right now : How fast are starships in the Mass Effect universe ? Isaac Newton ? Why are there interludes on acceleration and inertia ? What are the constraints of FTL travel ? Do we have any indication as to the evolution of FTL travel throughout history ? What is that about constant acceleration ? Those questions will eventually lead us to what really interests me : How would all of that impact the development of clusters ?

1 - How fast are starships in the Mass Effect universe ?

You know me ; the questions we'll be asking are : What's the data in canon ? How can we complicate the picture ?

The major indication we get on FTL speeds is from a comment in ME1, when Ashley reacts to Shepard admiring her for making the trip from the Czarnobóg Fleet Depot to Amaterasu : "It was only a dozen light-years. Like a day's cruise. It's not like I was going to Earth or something." The phrasing suggests people expect to travel more than a day if they're travelling.

Moreover, Ashley tells us that Czarnobóg and Amaterasu are in the same cluster, and what being "a dozen L.Y. away" represents to the average person : "Close enough to talk regularly, too far to make it back in an emergency. I couldn't afford a fast packet flight."

(To keep you from wondering : a packet flight would be a starship travelling at regular intervals between two ports ; historically, a packet boat or a steam packet refers to boats that did so to convey mail from one port to another.) (In a cut ambient conversation from ME1, extracted by @lyricsaboutcats,the salarian businessman Rulamin mentioned trying to get "a packet" from Noveria to Ryskos to a friend, then finding that it won't be possible to get "a packet flight" for at least six days.)

(The mention of a "fast packet flight" suggests that you have a range of options among packet flights : presumably, the faster ones are more expensive.)

To provide a sense of perspective, the Tempest, which benefits from using "several once-proprietary technologies" and "[not] being weighed down by heavy armor or a main gun", has an "average speed" (see below) of 13 light-years per day, making it "easily the fastest ship in her class", i.e. a frigate-sized survey ship. Given that lighter starships can accelerate to greater FTL speeds than more massive ships, with the fastest military ships being frigates, as well as the unique conditions that made the Tempest possible, I find it probable that the Tempest is one of the fastest ships ever made by the current Citadel species. It is certainly faster than the heavier Normandy SR-1 or SR-2.

The Reapers "can travel nearly 30 light-years in a 24-hour period". This is "more than twice the speed of Citadel ships", in keeping with what we've outlined above. In addition, this sets a very hard upper limit : at the moment, there is no Citadel ship which can reach a speed virtually or absolutely equal to 15 light-years per day (which would be exactly half the estimated Reaper speed).

2 - Which starships are the fastest in the Mass Effect universe ?

In canon, there are at least two factors which have an impact on a starship's speed : its thruster type (or how much motive power they can have, given that starships "use their sublight thrusters for motive power in FTL") and its mass (or how much eezo and power is required to move the damn thing).

The Codex is fairly clear that a starship's speed depends on its type and what thrusters it has ; there are "several varieties of thruster, varying in performance versus economy" :

"All ships are equipped with arrays of hydrogen-oxygen reaction control thrusters for maneuvering." Note that those are "liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen reactions", not gas. From my own research, I found that the exhaust velocity of a rocket flame usually is several thousands of meters per second.

"Ion drives electrically accelerate charged particles as a reaction mass. They are extremely efficient, but produce negligible thrust. They are mainly used for automated cargo barges." The noble gas xenon appears to be the propellant of choice, in keeping with real life, as there is evidence that it is harvested specifically for ion drives on the planets Alingon, Uzin (in the Eagle Nebula), and Venture, and logically elsewhere. Per my research, the exhaust of an ion drive would be an order of magnitude faster than a chemical rocket's.

"The primary commercial engine is a "fusion torch", which vents the plasma of a ship's power plant. Fusion torches offer powerful acceleration at the cost of difficult heat management. Torch fuel is fairly cheap: helium-3 skimmed from gas giants and deuterium extracted from seawater or cometary bodies. Propellant is hydrogen, likewise skimmed from gas giants." If I can trust my own research, the exhaust velocity of a torch drive would supposedly be measured in thousands of kilometers per second.

"In combat, military vessels require accelerations beyond the capability of fusion torches. Warship thrusters inject antiprotons into a reaction chamber filled with hydrogen. The matter-antimatter annihilation provides unmatched motive power. The drawback is fuel production; antiprotons must be manufactured one particle at a time. Most antimatter production is done at massive solar arrays orbiting energetic stars, making them high-value targets in wartime."

Finally, in 2185, some cutting-edge technology like the Helios Thruster Module uses "metastable metallic hydrogen" both as a superior alternative to "liquid H2/O2" reactions powering "maneuvering thrusters", as well as a slower but cheaper viable alternative to antiprotons for "forward impulse".

Since the fusion torch is the primary engine type in the setting by the time ME1 rolls, we can conclude that the fusion torch allows the average Citadel spaceship, including military starships when out of combat, to travel at a cruising speed around 12 light-years per day (24 Earth hours) - "cruising speed" being defined as "the maximum speed at which a vehicle is able to travel continuously and comfortably, without using a large amount of fuel or effort". In other words, starships can in all likelihood reach FTL speeds faster than 12 ly/day, but that isn't meant to happen, as they are not designed for that, and doing so would a) make the trip uneconomical, and/or b) start damaging the ship.

The other significant limit is the mass of the starship, as "[the] amount of eezo and power required for a drive increases exponentially to the mass being moved and the degree it is being lightened. Very massive ships or very high speeds are prohibitively expensive." What is in bold suggests that mass relates to the mass effect field in two ways : it appears that the more massive an object, the harder it is to affect it ; and that the lighter one wants to make an object, the more eezo and electricity one will need.

This is apparent in the various weights of large military vessels : a dreadnought needs to be as long and massive as possible to bring the greatest firepower to bear, resulting in ships ranging "from 800 meters to one kilometer long" and weighing "millions of tons" - but this mass results in low maneuverability and the slowest speed. By contrast, frigates are the lightest and smallest large military starships, the only large vessels "able to land on planets" ; as a result, they "achieve high FTL cruise speeds because of their high-performance drives. They also have proportionally larger thrusters and lighter design mass, allowing them greater maneuverability. In combat, speed and maneuverability make frigates immune to long-range fire of larger vessels."

Given that cruisers appear be to the standard for military starships, balanced between frigates (faster, but with far lower offensive and defensive capabilities) and dreadnoughts (far more destructive and tough, but slower), it may be that most commercial vessels are in the same weight and have access to the same FTL speeds, perhaps slightly faster because of their lack of guns and armor. Thus, I posit that most Citadel starships probably fall close to cruisers when it comes to FTL speeds.

As a logical consequence of the above, some of the fastest ships you could find travelling in the Milky Way would be couriers, as the shortest travel time possible would be vital for their job ; this would be in keeping with the analysis presented here over on Atomic Rockets. We know the galaxy at large relies on "high-speed couriers" when comm buoys aren't available, as well as "diplomatic couriers". However, we know that courier ships aren't substantively faster out of FTL than other ships, since the ship of the Rachni Queen's emissary in ME2 - should you spare the rachni on Noveria - had been a courier's ship which was nonetheless ambushed by pirates and forced to land on an uncharted world.

But it's probable that the very fastest are fighters, whose extremely low mass makes them "capable of greater acceleration and sharper maneuvers than starships". Contrary to what I thought for years, fighters are FTL-capable, as what separates spaceplanes (any vessel that can fly both in an atmosphere and in space) from "true deep-space fighters" is that the former "have no FTL drive".

That being said, this probably doesn't amount to much, since fighters won't be travelling through star clusters. Fighters aren't independent ; indeed, they rely on cruisers and carriers to get them anywhere. This is logical : since you want the lightest possible vessel to reach the highest possible speed, there's probably little in the way of life support or other systems that don't anything to do with getting close to some enemy starship as fast as possible without getting shot down. In other words, fighters are irrelevant when considering how FTL speeds impact the development of clusters.

To sum up :

the cruise speed of Citadel starships is around 12 light-years/Earth day. The Tempest, at 13 ly/day, is exceptional.

this speed of 12 light-years/day is presumably the average speed one can reach with a fusion torch ; starships with ion drives are going to be much slower, because their design concern isn't how fast you can get anywhere but how cheaply.

the less massive a ship, the faster it will be in FTL. Out of military ships, dreadnoughts would be the slowest, while frigates would be the fastest. Because the Tempest is extraordinary for its size, that means the FTL speed of frigates (Normandies included) is probably superior or equal to 12 ly/day and certainly strictly inferior to 13 ly/day.

the fastest starships would be even lighter than the Tempest and only be concerned with speed - the Tempest is built for scientific survey and analysis, as well as long-term habitation. Nonetheless, the Tempest is canonically the fastest ship by far for a ship its size (for the reasons outlined above).

the fastest ships of them all are therefore likely to be fighters, but they are not going to have an impact on the economic development of star clusters because they are not independent. I posit that the fastest after them are couriers, but that's a very specific, somewhat uncommon kind of ship.

basically, you're probably going to find vessels going at different FTL speeds depending on their purpose, with very specialized (and therefore rarer) vessels at the extremes of performance ; 12 ly/day is either the average or the median Citadel FTL speed.

tl;dr : 12 light-years per day is the relevant speed for our purposes.

3 - How fast can starships accelerate ?

3.a : The basics of acceleration in canon

There is an additional consideration which is barely touched upon in canon : the rate of acceleration and deceleration.

In the Codex, we are told this : "Any long-duration interstellar flight consists of two phases: acceleration and deceleration. Starships accelerate to the half-way point of their journey, then flip 180 degrees and apply thrust on the opposite vector, decelerating as they finish the trip. The engines are always operating, and peak speed is attained at the middle of the flight."

(The reason the Codex stresses that engines are always operating is to emphasize that a starship is never moving at a constant speed - because if the goal is to remain in motion, then a starship doesn't need engines, it just needs to keep on drifting. Indeed, in the vacuum of space - i.e. a virtually frictionless environment - a starship in motion stays in motion at a constant speed in a straight line until and unless acted upon by an outside force, sir - AND THAT IS WHY SIR ISAAC NEWTON IS THE DEADLIEST SON-OF-A-BITCH IN SPACE!)

So ! The Codex informs us that a starship is either accelerating or decelerating at any given time, that its engines are always operating, and that its speed therefore constantly varies, with its maximum FTL speed during the journey achieved at the exact middle of the flight.

In the games, this is referenced in an exchange Shepard may have with Marab, the manager of the Saronis Applications store in Zakera Ward, in ME2 (link).

SHEPARD : You know, I use quite a bit of software in my line of work.

MARAB : It's a shame so few understand their own equipment. Besides the most obvious point-and-go nav interfaces anyway.

SHEPARD : You wouldn't believe how often I hear, "Why is the ship turning around ? We're only halfway there !" [MORDIN nods in sympathy.]

MARAB : [He chuckles.] Oh, I would !

In space nerd parlance, this is known as a brachistochrone, while the midpoint flip-over is alternatively called a "skew flip" or a "flip-and-burn" in sci-fi. A brachistochrone is typical of starships with fusion torches, or torchships, which indeed fits with what we've seen, as we've established that fusion torches are the standard thruster type for Mass Effect starships as of 2183. For more information on brachistochrones, let me refer you to the supreme space nerd website, the wonderful and exhaustive Atomic Rockets ; I'll be quoting select excerpts throughout.

tl;dr : Starships are always either accelerating or decelerating, and reach their maximal speed at the exact halfway point of their journey, at which point they turn around and start decelerating. This is known as a brachistochrone.

Corollaries of that piece of information worth stressing include :

if a starship's peak speed is attained at the middle of the flight - e.g. 12 hours in during your 24-hour trip where you'll be travelling 13 light-years - because it takes exactly as much time for a starship to decelerate as to accelerate, then you're also halfway to the destination at the same moment - in our example, 6.5 light-years from your starting point (see also Shepard's exchange with Marab above) ;

however, because that starship is always accelerating (then decelerating), it starts covering very little distance at the beginning of its journey before progressively picking up speed ; this means that at 25% of its travel time, it will not have travelled 25% of the distance. The reverse is also true : at 75% of its travel time, our hypothetical starship will have flown more than 75% of the journey.

Moreover, we know that the initial mass of the starship and its type of drive core (i.e. how much eezo there is in it and how much power they can inject in it) are the hard constraints on how much a ship can accelerate. Again : "Faster-than-light drives use element zero cores to reduce the mass of the ship, allowing higher rates of acceleration. … The amount of eezo and power required for a drive increases exponentially to the mass being moved and the degree it is being lightened. Very massive ships or very high speeds are prohibitively expensive."

Until now, I've talked about starships in terms of which is the fastest ; but really when we are discussing the speed of starships, we are talking about how quickly a starship can change its speed. The size of an eezo drive core relative to the vessel has an impact on the vessel's acceleration : deep-space fighters, for example, "are economically fitted with powerful element zero cores, making them capable of greater acceleration and sharper maneuvers than starships" (Source : Codex : Starships: Fighters). For the other military vessel types, frigates, which can achieve "high FTL cruise speeds", would have the second-fastest acceleration, followed by cruisers, with carriers and dreadnoughts dead last.

tl;dr : Talking about a starship's "average speed" or "cruising speed" doesn't mean much because what really matters is how much it can accelerate. Lighter starships can achieve greater acceleration.

So, uh, I have to address some things about acceleration in physics.

OH BOY HERE COMES THE INTERLUDE

Interlude : A genteel Reminder on Fundamentals of Acceleration

The speed of an object is a measure of how much distance it travels (change in position) over time ; the velocity of an object is its speed alongside the direction in which it moves. Both speed and velocity are usually noted v, and both are measured in meters (for distance) per second (for time), or m/s. You will note that "12 light-years per day" is a measure of speed, since it is expressed by units of distance ("light-years") and time ("day"). In SI base units, that should be (if I can calculate) 1.314e+12 m/s, or 1.31 trillion meters every second ; as the speed of light in vacuum (c) is exactly 299,792,458 m/s, I'll note that the cruise speed of a starship is about 4380 times the speed of light in vacuum, or 4380 c.

Acceleration is any change in the speed or direction (or both) of an object in motion ; from the point of view of physics, deceleration is acceleration. Acceleration is noted a ; since it measures the change of speed and/or direction over time, it is measured with the unit of velocity (m/s) divided by the unit of time (s), or meters per second per second (or (m/s)/s), which mathematically entails that it's the same as meters per second squared, or m/s^2.

Another unit which is going to be very useful soon is g (not to be confused with "G" [the gravitational constant] or "g" [that's grams]). g is another unit of acceleration, measuring the standard acceleration due to Earth's gravity, i.e. how much the gravity of Earth causes an object near the surface of Earth to steadily gain speed (i.e. accelerate) in a vacuum - that is to say, in a context where the only force acting upon that object is Earth's gravity. g is a constant defined as 9.80665 m/s^2 ; in Mass Effect, you probably know it because, on the data description for every single planet, g is used as the unit of gravity, with Earth as the standard at 1 g.

In classical mechanics (i.e. the Newtonian equations that don't involve anything starting to try to get close to the speed of light, since the closer you get to it, the more Einstein starts to mess with your stuff ; by convention, the threshold is 0.14 c), the sacrosanct equation is F = m*a (or a = F/m), where F is the net balance of all forces acting on an object, m is the object's mass, and a is its acceleration (quoth Wikipedia). In plain English, the more acceleration you want, the more force you'll need (and that is Sir Izzy's Second Law of Motion) - something you're likely to have experienced if you have ever ridden a bike, for example : your top speed is limited by how much energy you can pour into your pedaling (and friction, thankfully virtually absent from the deadly vacuum of space, is always slowing you down).

Now, to prepare yourself for what's to come, I'll also note two things :

in the context of spaceflight, acceleration is equal to rocket thrust divided by starship mass (a = F/Mc, where F is the starship's thrust measured in Newtons (N), i.e. in kg*m/s^2 ; and Mc is the starship's mass at a given point in time measured in kg) ; because the mass of a starship decreases during its flight as it expends propellant and fuel, any equation trying to calculate the acceleration of a spacecraft will have to take that variation into account.

also relevant to our talking about mass and acceleration is inertia, i.e. the phenomenon in the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space's First Law of Motion described above, i.e. how tough it is to change the speed of any object (such as setting an object at rest in motion), i.e. how tough it is to accelerate (or decelerate) anything. SPOILERS : inertia is dependent on mass, because the more massive an object, the harder it is to accelerate it, and the more energy will be required to do so (drop a rock and a sock, try rolling them forward on the floor ; one is significantly easier to move than the other). A consequence of this is that it requires increasingly ludicrous quantities of energy to accelerate any object with mass to a velocity close to the speed of light (c), and it would require an infinite amount of energy to accelerate any object with mass to c ; it's only because light is virtually massless that it can get to c in the first place.

But that's not a problem when you have magical eezo allowing you to travel faster than light without any physics-breaking consequence !

Thus endeth the Interlude.

The Interlude Has Ended - please return to your seats

All of that is important because all starships have an upper limit to how fast they can go, a maximum speed past which they can no longer accelerate (at which point the sensible thing is to turn off the engines), perhaps even the same speed in starships of different weight classes, for all we know ; but crucially, some starships can reach that top speed much faster than others.

So, uh, how much acceleration can the starships in Mass Effect (and the squishy people inside) take ? Well, we know that large ships like cruisers and dreadnoughts actually rely on constant acceleration to simulate gravity : "Mass effect fields create an artificial gravity (a-grav) plane below the decks, preventing muscle atrophy and bone loss in zero-gee. Large vessels arrange their decks perpendicular to their thrust axis. The "highest" decks are at the bow, and the "lowest" at the engines. This allows a-grav to work with the inertial effects of thrust. Ships that can land arrange their decks laterally [i.e. frigates and smaller vessels], so the crew can move about while the vessel is on the ground."

This is achieved because acceleration can effectively simulate gravity, what is known as the equivalence principle : inertia "pulls" you in the direction opposite that of the vehicle's motion (think about how your body is pulled back when the car or public transport you're in starts moving forward, whereas you're thrust forward if the same vehicle brakes suddenly). In effect, if you are in a vehicle accelerating at 9.80665 m/s^2, i.e. 1 g, every object within that vehicle behaves as if they were on Earth, "falling" toward the back of the vehicle.

That is what the larger starships rely upon : presumably to avoid spending power (thus fuel, thus money) on a-grav, Alliance cruisers or dreadnoughts, for example, need to be constantly accelerating at 1 g to simulate Earth's gravity, never changing that acceleration because it would change the pseudo-gravity.

tl;dr : The heavier starships use acceleration to simulate gravity. This means even the heaviest Alliance starships can reach at least 1 g of acceleration. Because lighter starships are capable of greater acceleration, they are also able to accelerate to at least 1 g.

(By the by, this suggests that whereas frigates like the Normandy may have thrusters which can fire in opposite directions to accelerate and decelerate, the larger starships do need to physically "turn around", otherwise "gravity" would shift and stick them to the ceiling ; if such a starship doesn't "park in reverse" when it leaves FTL, as it does in cutscenes (for example when Hackett's ship arrives guns first in ME3), this suggests in turn that its engines are killed, stopping any deceleration, and that the starship then turns around a second time before switching off FTL.)

The problem of course is that starships need to be accelerating much, much faster to achieve the range that has been observed in the OT : at a constant acceleration of 1 g, a starship would cover 9,144,576,000 meters in 12 hours, i.e. 9,144,576 km, i.e. 0.00000000000095 light-years - and twice that over 24 hours if we assume this is a brachistochrone, or 0.0000000000019 light-years - a very far cry from 12 light-years.

Now, there are some things we should keep in mind :

there's all the timey-wimey handwavium stuff related to FTL travel in Mass Effect ; it appears that there is a difference between the speed of the starship as perceived within the envelope by aboard observers (the subjective speed) and the speed of the starship as perceived outside the envelope (the "objective" speed). FTL is a can of worms best left unopened, but suffice to say 1 g will, in all likelihood, allow a starship within an FTL envelope to travel faster and farther than it would under normal circumstances.

there's also the hard limits of engineering : to maintain a continuous acceleration, i.e. to keep going faster and faster, the starship is going to need more and more thrust, thus more energy, which will be harder to provide and start taxing the ship at some point. Now, Atomic Rockets kindly informs me that a torchship is just about the only ship type which can manage constant acceleration, but nonetheless, there's going to be an upper limit at some point. This in fact appears to be a non-issue ; after all, the Codex takes it as a given that a starship never stops accelerating. I'd argue this is likely because of how the Mass Effect franchise enjoys the benefits of the, uh, mass effect : if the starship's mass is decreased as it accelerates, then no additional energy may be needed, and continuous acceleration may just be maintained.

and then of course we need to talk about inertial dampeners.

3.b : Inertial dampeners

Inertial dampeners, also known as inertial dampers, inertial compensators, inertia compensators, internal compensators, acceleration compensators and many, many other things, are a mainstay of science-fiction, as they're the piece of technology which explains why everyone inside a starship isn't crushed to a pulp by their acceleration to truly plaid ludicrous speeds.

Their effect can be inferred in Mass Effect every time we're aboard the Normandy (a ship whose active artificial gravity isn't aligned to its thrust but perpendicular to it) and we don't see the crew thrust toward the engines screaming for their lives whenever the ship is flying. In text or dialogue, the earliest reference I could find was in some of Joker's ambient dialogue in ME2 when you come to the bridge : "Sometimes I get the urge to turn off the internal compensators and pull a Crazy Ivan, you know ?" (i.e. he wants to yaw 180° with full inertia to send people and small objects flying).

But the technology got the spotlight during the Citadel DLC if you spend some time with Steve, where he demonstrates what happens when you turn off the inertial dampeners in the Kodiak shuttle :

CORTEZ : Before mass effect fields, there was no such thing as inertial dampeners.

SHEPARD : Yeah ?

CORTEZ : Here, feel this.

[The Kodiak roars to life and elevates off the landing pad. SHEPARD stumbles and falls into his chair.]

SHEPARD : Whoa.

CORTEZ : That, my friend, is unadulterated momentum. Want to really feel it ?

[If "Go for it" is selected.] SHEPARD : Show me.

[The Kodiak goes up and down and does a barrel roll. CORTEZ and SHEPARD's bodies move with the momentum, through they remain in their seats despite the lack of visible seatbelts. SHEPARD hoots and laughs.]

CORTEZ : See ? Doesn't take much to pull a few [g's].

[If "Keep it steady" is selected.] SHEPARD : You can turn those dampeners back on anytime.

CORTEZ : Okay, okay. Doesn't take much to pull a few [g's], and we don't want to paint the windows with your breakfast, right ?

[End of branching conversation] CORTEZ : Back in the day, pilots would wear G-suits. It squeezes your body so that the blood stays in your head in tight maneuvers. I'd wear a G-suit flying my Trident. In a fighter it's common to transfer power from the inertial dampeners to other systems.

Here is how inertial dampeners are relevant to the conversation about acceleration simulating gravity : presumably, a cruiser or a dreadnought can accelerate at a rate much higher than 1 g and still use its inertial dampeners to compensate that acceleration and simulate 1 g regardless of its actual acceleration, as long as it is in excess of 1 g. This is very nice, because human beings tend to die at some point after 4 g.

In-universe, this is logical and worthwhile as it allows a spaceship to turn off its artificial gravity and use its inertial dampeners less, instead of nullifying 100% of the effects of acceleration and wasting power on a-grav.

tl;dr : Inertial dampeners can be and probably are used to make starships accelerate at rates far superior to 1 g.

(How mass effect fields make inertial dampeners work is entirely speculative and quite beyond the purview of this very long post. Likewise, whether negating inertia has an impact on Newton's First Law of Motion and the object in motion staying in motion is beyond me, though I should note that neither the games nor the Codex show anything that would suggest this law is altered.)

3.c : What factors in a starship's acceleration ?

So let's say I am Joker and that I have a spaceship. When I want to go anywhere, I light up my thrusters to get going, i.e. accelerate ; I use eezo and the mass effect to lower my spaceship's mass to accelerate even more without changing my thrust ; and I use my inertial dampeners to survive enormous acceleration, the type of acceleration which would otherwise purée me and anyone made of pulpy meat.

Is there something else we can surmise about a starship's acceleration ? Yes. Yes, I think we can.

You see, we might expect how much a starship accelerates to depend on the variously varying variables of an individual journey : after all, sometimes you may want to get somewhere as fast as you can, whereas sometimes using as little propellant and fuel as you can and making the journey less expensive are your top priorities. The problem is that muddles what might be plausibly considered everyone's highest acceleration.

Luckily for us - and unfortunately for everyone else - in Mass Effect 3, we know how fast everyone is moving during the Reaper War, when everyone's priority is either a) get somewhere as fast as you can because you are a warship and time is of the essence, or b) get somewhere as fast as you can because eldritch starships from the depths of dark space want to kill you and everyone you love ; either way, everyone wants to get anywhere as fast as technologically possible, i.e. at a speed less than half the speed of the Reapers ; as we've seen, this fits with the idea that a Citadel ship with a torch drive is moving at 12 ly/day, accelerating then decelerating from the midway point.

This means that the range of 12 light-years in a single day is in all likelihood what a Citadel spaceship can achieve when it is moving at the maximum acceleration it can generate, because maximum acceleration is what will allow a starship (or anything) to get anywhere as fast as possible. A corollary of this is that we understand that Citadel spaceships are always moving at maximum acceleration in all circumstances, including in times of peace. Remember this : this will be relevant later.

Complicating matters is that we (ugh) have to get into the specifics of FTL travel. As I've said before, the crux of what we know is in this phrase : "Faster-than-light drives use element zero cores to reduce the mass of the ship, allowing higher rates of acceleration. This effectively raises the speed of light within the mass effect field, allowing high speed travel with negligible relativistic time dilation effects."

The problem is that there can be no causal link between the two sentences above, not with the way they are presented. Logically, we appear to have two discrete effects instead :

if, theoretically, a starship's mass is reduced to 0 kg, i.e. is made mass-less (and we don't know if the technology can do that), then this does allow "higher rates of acceleration" - but only up to the speed of light. You can't go faster than light if you have no mass because light, which has no mass, can't - that's why it's called the speed of light. (Before someone says anything : There's nothing in canon which suggests negative mass is involved, and we don't even know what negative mass would be beyond a number in an equation.) But in any case, the lighter a ship becomes, the less energy it will need to accelerate. That's your bog-standard mass effect, or Effect #1.

then something else happens that "effectively raises the speed of light" within the envelope, which allows for FTL travel relative to the universe outside the envelope, but presumably never going past lightspeed within the envelope. That's Effect #2.

So it appears that "how much a starship can accelerate" and "how far the speed of light is raised" are separate phenomena but which are difficult to distinguish (let alone to see how they relate together) from an outside perspective. There's going to be a difference between the spaceship's perspective on its acceleration from inside the envelope, and everyone else's perspective on the spaceship's acceleration from outside the envelope.

We can actually safely assume that a starship doesn't lower their mass all the way to 0 kg and get to lightspeed at any point of the journey, even subjectively, because if they did that they would just turn off the engines - and we know that a starship never coasts, they just keep on accelerating (this always was very likely because if you reach the speed of light, time effectively stops for you, but there's no way to know if Mass Effect writers know that and take that into account). This probably tells us something about the limits of mass effect fields and the associated technology : it might just take exponential power to get to pure masslessness - perhaps even infinite power.

So, to sum up : a spaceship's maximum speed is dependent on maximum acceleration - because if they're no longer able to accelerate then they just turn off the engines and drift. A spaceship's maximum acceleration, in turn, will be dependent on :

its thrust ;

how much its drive core can lower its mass ;

and how much its inertial dampeners can cancel out its acceleration's effects on the squishy crew.

(Note that if you increase one, you don't have to increase the others. If you lower your mass, you will start accelerating without increasing your thrust or demanding more of the inertial dampeners. The inertial dampeners come into play when you're undergoing accelerations that would be putting your starship on a high-gravity world.)

We've already established that, in any context, the current generation of Citadel starships in the 2180s is always traveling at the maximum acceleration they're capable of, i.e. what gets a starship at FTL to travel 6 light-years in 12 Earth hours from an initial state of rest.

We can also deduce that it takes more than 12 Earth hours for a starship to reach the point where they wouldn't be able to pile more energy to keep accelerating. Otherwise a spaceship would accelerate in as little time as possible to their top speed, then turn off its engines and its inertial dampeners to make huge savings as it drifts at constant speed (there ain't no friction in space after all).

Another corollary is that, at 12 light-years per day, a starship's mass is lowered and a starship's inertia is dampened as much as the starship can without risking its integrity and the lives of everyone aboard - we might speak of "cruising mass-lowering" and "cruising inertia-dampening" to reach "cruising acceleration". In other words, I think it's safe to assume that, since a spaceship would be undergoing cruising acceleration, i.e. the highest acceleration it can provide at all times without damaging itself or endangering its crew, then its inertial dampeners would be handling at all times the maximum acceleration they can safely take.

"Please, crapeaucrapeau," I hear a fictional stand-in for the reader hypothetically whine, "I can't take it anymore, just stop talking about acceleration." Ah, but dear long-suffering reader, the reason I'm doing all this is that, while we've established that starships in Mass Effect are always in continuous acceleration, the fact they appear to be actually always going at their maximum acceleration entails that they are also moving in constant acceleration.

And that's interesting because we can actually get actual numbers from that.

3.d : Constant acceleration

If a starship is always moving at the maximum acceleration it can reach, then it's undergoing constant acceleration, i.e. a rate of acceleration that remains the same throughout the duration of the flight. The longer a starship flies, the faster it gets.

I should point out that Mass Effect, in keeping with its original hard science-fiction ambitions, is once more entirely coherent with the science and science-fiction it pilfers is influenced by : every single article I've read suggests that constant acceleration is indeed what anyone with a starship able to do brachistrochrones would be doing.

Constant acceleration (which we need, even with inertial compensators) leads to a speed which is proportional to that acceleration ; hence why it's assumed by everyone who mentions it in the OT that it always takes exactly as much time to decelerate as to accelerate.

We actually can squeeze what is our average 12-light-years-per-day starship's constant acceleration out of the data, focusing only on a single burst of constant acceleration during the initial half of that journey :

its initial time - t0 - is when it starts moving, i.e. 0 seconds, i.e. 0 hours, i.e. 0 days ;

its initial velocity - v0 - is how fast it is at t0, i.e. 0 ly/day or 0 m/s^2, since it is at rest relative to the frame of reference ;

its final time - t - is at the midpoint of the entire journey, i.e. 12 hours, i.e. 0.5 day, i.e. 43,200 seconds ;

its average velocity is 12 light-years per day, since it has covered 6 light-years in 12 hours ;

therefore, at constant or uniform acceleration for the duration of the flight, its final velocity - v - will be twice its average velocity, or 24 ly/day.

Assuming that this starship's acceleration - a - is constant, then its average acceleration is the same as its acceleration at any point of its journey ; therefore, a starship's acceleration can be calculated first by subtracting the starship's initial velocity from its final velocity, or v - v0 ; then by dividing the result by the starship's final time, i.e. t.

In other words : a = (v - v0)/t ; and therefore v = v0 + a*t

In our example, v - v0 = 24 - 0 = 24 ly/day = v ;

and a = v/t = 24/0.5 = 48 ly/day^2.

(Of course, the constant acceleration for the other half of the journey - the decelerating part - would be -48 ly/day^2.)

Now, if we put those results in SI units : we need to change "days" to "seconds" as the unit of time, and "light-years" to "meters" as the unit of distance. As a reminder, there are exactly 9,461,730,472,580,800 meters in a light-year, or 9.46 quadrillions.

If v = 24 ly/day, then it's equal to 227,064,000,000,000,000 m/day (or 227.1 quadrillion m/day), which is equal to 2,628,055,555,555.56 m/s (or 2.6 trillion m/s).

If a = v/t = 48 ly/day^2, then it's equal to 2.6 trillion m/s divided by 0.5 day, or 2.6 trillion m/s divided by 43,200 seconds, or 60,834,619.3 (m/s)/s (that's 60.8 million (m/s)/s).

To check if we are correct, a*t should equal v ; or 60.8 millions multiplied by 43,200 should equal 2.6 trillions — which is indeed the case.

Note that this is the starship's constant acceleration as measured by a stationary observer outside the envelope : within the envelope, where an observer is not measuring any speed that is superior to the speed of light in a vacuum, the values would be much lower, and the corresponding energy required to generate that acceleration would also be lower.

(Yet another piece of circumstantial evidence in favor of constant acceleration is that the fact the average distance covered by Citadel starships in the OT becomes comparable to the Tempest's average speed in ME:A actually makes sense : with constant acceleration, average speed is equal to range/distance travelled.)

3.e : Putting it all together

So, if we keep in mind a maximum and constant acceleration of 48 ly/day^2, here is what the average velocity/range of a starship for a full brachistochrone would look like depending on time :

One minute : 30 seconds acceleration, 30 seconds deceleration - 30 seconds being 1/2880 of a day, 0.000347 day. If a = v/t, then v = a*t ; 48*0.000347 = 0.016667 ly/day for final velocity ; its average velocity, in a constant acceleration situation is, v/2, or 0.0083335 ly/day. To calculate the final position of the starship at the mid-point of the flight (x), one must multiply average velocity (here, 0.0083335) by t (here, 0.000347) ; the result is 0.00000289 ly. Double it, and you have the full length of the minute-long FTL brachistochrone, or 0.00000578 ly, which is about 0.365526 AU, or 54,681,895.93 km.

Five minutes : 2.5 minutes accel, 2.5 minutes decel ; 2.5 minutes is 0.001736111 days. Now, wonderfully, the way the math works, you can simplify the equations by multiplying v (final velocity) by t (time) to get the final result. v = 48*0.001736111 = 0.083333328 ; 0.083333328*0.001736111 = 0.0002 ly, which is about 9.1495 AU (far greater distance than the distance between the Earth and the Sun, at 1 AU, though still short of the average distance between Earth and Jupiter).

Ten minutes : 5 minutes accel, 5 minutes decel ; 5 minutes is 0.003472222 days. v = 48*0.003472222 = 0.166666656 ; 0.166666656*0.003472222 = 0.0006 ly, which is about 36.5971 AU (an enormous distance, but a bit short of the average distance between Earth and Pluto at 39.5 AU ; keep this in mind, this will be relevant later).

Fifteen minutes : 7.5 minutes accel, 7.5 minutes decel ; 7.5 minutes is 0.005208333 days. v = 48*0.005208333 = 0.249999984 ; 0.249999984*0.005208333 = 0.001 ly, or about 82.3434 AU (greater distance than the average distance between Earth and Jump Zero).

Thirty minutes : 15 minutes accel, 15 minutes decel ; 15 minutes is 0.01041667 days. v = 48*0.01041667 = 0.50000016 ; 0.50000016*0.01041667 = 0.005 ly, or about 329.37 AU.

One hour : 30 minutes accel, 30 minutes decel ; 30 minutes is 0.02083333 days. v = 48*0.02083333 = 0.99999984 ; 0.99999984*0.02083333 = 0.02 ly, or about 1317.49 AU.

Two hours : 1 hour accel, 1 hour decel ; 1 hour is 0.04166667 days. v = 48*0.04166667 = 2.00000016 ; 2.00000016*0.04166667 = 0.08 ly, or about 5269.98 AU.

Three hours : 1.5 hours accel, 1.5 hours decel ; 1.5 hours is 0.0625 days. v = 48*0.0625 = 3 ; 3*0.0625 = 0.19 ly, or about 11,857.45 AU

Six hours : 3 hours accel, 3 hours decel ; 3 hours is 0.125 days. v = 48*0.125 = 6 ; 6*0125 = 0.75 light-years.

Twelve hours : 6 hours accel, 6 hours decel ; 6 hours is 0.25 days. v = 48*0.25 = 12 ; 12*0.25 = 3 light-years.

1 day : 12 light-years (duh) ; v = a*t = 48*0.5 = 24 ; v/2 = 24/2 = 12 = Average velocity ; x = 12*t*2 = 12*0.5*2 = 12

As you can see, the distance travelled increases exponentially to the time spent travelling. Note that the above numbers do not take into account minutiae like any trajectory other than a straight line, or the time when, presumably, the engines are switched off, the starship does a skew flip, and the engines are reignited.

Now, theoretically, assuming that starships can accelerate indefinitely and don't need to stop to get fuel/radiate heat/discharge drive charge/etc…

2 days : 48 ly ; v = a*t = 48*1 = 48 ; v/2 = 48/2 = 24 = Average velocity ; x = 24*1*2 = 24*2 = 48

3 days : 108 ly ; v = 48*1.5 = 72 ; 72/2 = 36 ; x = 36*1.5*2 = 108

4 days : 192 ly ; 48*2 = 96 ; 96/2 = 48 ; x = 48*2*2 = 192

5 days : 300 ly ; 48*2.5 = 120 ; 120/2 = 60 ; x = 60*2.5*2 = 300

But we can pretty much guess that's not the case, or the mass relays would be obsolete.

Going forward, our concerns are :

what are the non-mathematical limits to constant acceleration in FTL ?

And do whatever pieces of information we have about travel time and distance travel in Mass Effect agree with the numbers I've figured out ?

And oh, gosh, I've run out of letters again, I'll have to split this post in twain.

UP NEXT (eventually) : Camala ! Drew Karpyshyn ! Hawking Eta ! Oh, and every data point on speed and travel time in canon. Plus, all those nice numbers I calculated are shown to be… pointless. Fun !

G2HGE Index :

Post 0 : Presentation and Purpose

Post 1 : Methodology and general lamentation over the incoherent state of the lore.

Post 2a : Oldest canon date for activity in every single cluster

Post 2b : Organization and Visualization of the above

Post 3 : The oversized impact of the asari, and a surprising amount of stuff to discover.

Post 4 : The Problem with the Galaxy Maps

Post 5a : The Regions of the Milky Way : Overview and Council Space

Post 5b : The Regions of the Milky Way : The Terminus Systems

Post 5c : The Regions of the Milky Way : The Attican Traverse and Earth Systems Alliance Space

Post 5d : The Regions of the Milky Way : The Nemean Abyss and the Perseus Veil

Post 5e : The Regions of the Milky Way : The Skyllian Verge

Post 6a : You're here !

[dimalink]

CosmoMeda – Cosmos Andromeda

Pixel art for today based on videogame Verytex for game console Sega Mega Drive. It is a space shooter. There are lots of them. And these games make this console really cool! Space. It is, of course, black. But, there are there galaxies and stars. It is, also, different. And colorful. And, of course, there are aliens, they live there. And lots of space ships. You, also, fly with something like that! Travel by stars!

And this is my drawing based on same theme Verytex (megaDrive). There are lots of aliens in space! For this time, it is appeared invisible huge planet. Now it is easy to see. As big as a sun by its size. Blue-green by colors.  Blue as ice and ocean. And green as plains and grass. And from the planet, army of aliens fly out.  It is move to Andromeda sector 123. It is a mechanical planet, as it is to find out. And it flies to this certain point. And, in that place, it becomes visible. And space ships fly out form there. Aliens are interesting in sector 123. There are lots of mineral Kvark. Kvark 12. Exists there, for example.

And somewhere far away from here. A milky way. You fly from that point. Such a cosmos. Everyone flies everywhere. And everyone needs something here and there. So, looks like, in a casual place. It is always someone to find something. Out of Kvark 12, it is made a case of mechanical planet. With the right work with this material, it is very strong and good to go for space.

So, it is find out that in sector Andromeda 256, again was detected same blue-green huge planet. And, there is there Kork-14. It is, also, a such material. How are connected these two distanced sectors in space? It is a big puzzle!

And you are awaiting the adventure action. About a little airplane. Fly and shoot. Space levels. Sprites. Such a game about a space. With a science fiction story. As a Star Gate, well, almost. And it is only a picture!

Dima Link is making retro videogames, apps, a little of music, write stories, and some retro more.

WEBSITE: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html ITCHIO: https://dimalink.itch.io/

TUMBLR: https://dimalink.tumblr.com/ BLOGGER: https://dimalinkeng.blogspot.com/ MASTODON: https://mastodon.social/@DimaLink

[klumpypotamus]

Daily O’Brien - 02/06 Miles "Strength" O'Brien

There’s no really appropriate hair to make him so I tried my best. Oh well, time to play SF6 now.

[swagging-back-to]

i do unironically still believe chem trails exist.

[bobowizard]

[buckysfaveplum]

her weakness

summary: you’re an enhanced individual with strong abilities and one moral code- you only fight with them when your opponent is also enhanced. during the fight with john walker, that code gets broken when bucky is hurt

pairing: bucky barnes x female reader

word count: 3.5k

warnings: violence, blood, fighting, it’s a fight seen so yea expect things relating to that

a/n: i rewatched tfatws and this fight always makes me so worried for my bbs so yea this was born. I typed it up helllllla quick so I'm sorry if its trash, I'm not too proud of this one idk.

masterlist | send requests

Your feet followed closely behind Bucky as you approached the warehouse. Your limbs were stiff and your skin clammy. Your hand stayed firmly in Bucky’s grasp as you approached John Walker. Sam had tracked him to a storage warehouse near the square you had just witnessed brutality in.

He murdered him, in cold blood, with Steve’s shield. You couldn’t get the screams of the public out of your head, the sound of the vibranium as it slashed into the flagsmasher’s body. You would’ve thrown up if Bucky hadn’t pushed you behind him. You had seen much worse, much more gruesome violence in your line of work. But something about this was sickening, rotting away in your stomach as you tried to grapple with the truth that the shield your friend once carried with honor and pride was just used by an unhinged soldier who found joy in the worst parts of the job.

Bucky stayed ahead of you, following Sam as they entered the building. Your hand trembled in his vibranium grasp. His thumb gently brushed across the veins and bones of your hand, trying to bring you comfort before the scene he knew was about to play out.

As you walked into the large space, you saw him. He was too composed and stoic for what had just taken place. His tall and slender figure loomed as he casually walked up to you all, barely acknowledging Sam as he tried to get him to listen.

“Walker,” Sam started. The soldier brushed Sam’s stern tone off, hopefully delaying what he knew was coming.

“You guys should see a medic, you don’t look so good,” He said, walking past you.

“Stop, Walker,” Sam took a few steps closer, trying again to get him to focus.

Your jaw tightened as you watched the man pace erratically in front of you. He was muttering quietly before responding as if trying to convince himself what he was saying had any truth.

“What?” He asked, coming closer. “You saw what happened. You know what I had to do.”

Your grip on Bucky tightened, sensing Walker’s anger began to boil over. You knew a fight was coming, it always was. 

“I killed him because I had to! He killed Lemar!” Walker shouted, his arms waving now and revealing how off the deep end he had gone. 

You knew the moment you saw him in that fight. He stole the serum and took it for himself. This behavior just confirmed it. But the serum only enhanced what was already bubbling under the surface. The same John you meet on the highway. The same John who waltzed into the police station as if he had the authority or right to control Bucky and call him an ‘asset’. It was always there. 

“He didn’t kill Lemar, John.”

Bucky’s smooth and deep voice cut through the tension in the room. You felt his grip on your hand squeeze for a moment, making sure you were okay. He could always sense your anxiety in the field. Your powers made keeping your calm difficult. You would never use them in battle unless your opponent was enhanced as well. You were a skilled fighter and agent, you didn’t need them. And it didn’t always seem ethical. But keeping them at bay, in check, could prove difficult- especially in heightened situations such as this.

Walker scoffed at Bucky’s words, dismissing the truth like it was nothing.

“Don’t go down that road. Believe me, it doesn’t end well,” Bucky said.

“I’m not like you!” Walker’s voice was full of disgust and resentment. From the moment you met him, you could sense his quiet disdain for your best friend. Looking down his nose at him like he was some scum left over from Steve's life, something he’d always have to deal with. Yet at the same time, resentment. Jealousy over his power, control, and abilities in his enhanced body. As if that’s what made him an excellent fighter. Or a good person.

Your spare hand moved between Bucky’s shoulder blades, giving him a subtle and quiet support as you prepared.

“Listen, it was the heat of the battle, okay?” Sam said, taking a step closer to Walker. That shield danced in your vision, taunting you as he paced back and forth. “If you explain what happened, they may consider your record.”

Walker’s distress spread across his face, his brows furrowing and eyes scrunching as he tussled with Sam’s words.

“We don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” Sam said.

The warehouse went silent as Walker stared at the ground before him. Bucky gave you a soft, tight-lipped smile before begrudgingly dropping your hand. He slowly took a step towards the man, joining Sam.

“John…” Bucky said, calmly. 

“You gotta give me the shield, man,” Sam said.

That did it. You could feel the room shift that second.

A disturbing serene aura washed over Walker at that moment. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to you all. His eyes were dark, lacking a certain warmth and compassion you had grown so used to seeing through that blue cowl. A certain warmth that left when he hung up the shield.

“Oh…. so that’s what this is,” Walker said. “You almost got me.”

You could see his grip on the shield tighten, the leather straps twisting between his fingers.

“You made a mistake,” Sam said.

You slowly took a step forward, your hands flexing as you prepared for what was to come. Walker finally turned his gaze to you. His eyes roamed you up and down. You could’ve sworn you saw Bucky’s jaw clench, that familiar muscle tightening in distress. Walker smirked at you before glancing at Bucky. He could read the protectiveness radiating off of your supersoldier.

“You don’t wanna do this,” Walker said to him.

Bucky didn’t meet his gaze. His fists balled at his side, practically shaking with anger. He never took pleasure in a fight, every punch or kick felt like a necessity rather than enjoyment. But he couldn’t deny how much he desired to rip that shield from his grimy hands.

“Yeah we do,” Bucky said.

Sam lurched forward first, Bucky soon following suit. Your feet moved quickly, moving behind Walker as your friends attacked from the front. The man moved with a speed you had yet to see from him, a brute force you could only get from the serum.

With a harsh kick, Walker sent Sam flying away, leaving you and Bucky alone. You tried to knock Walker down from the back as Bucky grappled with the shield. As you sent a harsh kick into the back of Walker’s knees, he spun quickly and sent a jab into Bucky’s gut sending him backward in pain and knocking him off balance. Before you could back him up, Walker slammed a harsh punch into Bucky’s jaw. Your heart raced and your hands shook as you watched him drop to the ground. You sprung into action, pulling the shield back in your hands and keeping Walker from smashing it into Bucky’s face. Sam leaped in, kicking the shield up and drawing attention to him.

You slammed a kick into Walker’s back, sending him stumbling forward as Sam slashed at him with his wings. Bucky leaped up, his arm aiming to come down on the faux Captain America’s back hard but was ultimately blocked by the shield. 

You were growing frustrated. Walker never packed this much of a punch. The serum raged through his veins, lacing each kick and swing of the shield with force and hate. As you and Sam continued to trade blocks at Walker, Bucky attempted to pull him down but was quickly met with the shield swinging into the side of his face. Your legs shook. The longer this dragged out the more difficult you find keeping your emotions in check. The longer you watched your favorite person in the world become decorated with blood and bruises, the more your ethical code began to look like a suggestion. Walker deserved a swift blast to the face and more. But you held off. 

Walker slammed the shield into Sam’s back, sending him down. As your two friends recovered briefly, it was just you and him. You surged forward at the man, dodging as he swung at you. Being smaller than the two Avengers alongside you made it much easier to evade Walker’s sloppy attacks. You sent a firm kick into his chest followed by an uppercut into his chin. As he spun and tumbled, Bucky was back on his feet and meeting Walker with punches. Bucky’s attacks quickly led the pair into a tight spot, backing Walker up into a heavy piece of machinery. The pair spun in circles over the shield, yanking the vibranium disc back and forth and trading beatings in between. Sam quickly followed you over, diving in for aid, but quickly was sent flying back by Walker’s attacks. His body slammed to the ground with a grunt.

While Bucky worked, you glanced at Sam. He pushed himself to his feet slowly, preparing to dive back into the fight. In your moment of distraction, the fear and care for your dear friend overriding your common sense to keep fighting, you heard Walker’s voice pull you back. Bucky was trapped between the shield and a machine. You rushed over to help but it was far too late.

“Why are you making me do this?!” Before you could register what Walker was saying, you watched as Bucky went flying. 

Walker’s forceful swing of the shield sent him hurtling across the warehouse. Your body froze as if someone had filled your veins with cement. The dramatic scene Walker had created came to an end with Bucky’s body smashing into an electrified pole and crashing to the ground. The might of his impact snapped the pole in the middle, sparks cascaded from the steel and flooded onto the floors; leading your eyes to Bucky. 

“Bucky!” You screamed.

His body lay limp and splayed out on the cold dirty floors. His face was smushed into the cement. His limbs didn’t dare to move. Except for his vibranium arm, which twitched and spasmed under his body; blue and white sparks burst out from the plates adding to the horror.

Your breaths were heavy and shaky, your hands trembled at your sides as the vibrating blue of your powers began to spark at your fingertips; mirroring the sight of your best friend’s arm. The room was spinning, at least that’s what made sense to you. Your balance was unstable, your knees threatening to buckle at any moment. You turned to spare a look at Sam, begging him for permission. But he was already back on his feet and rushing towards Walker. 

“Go!” He shouted.

You had never been faster. Your abilities never gave you the gift of flight but in that moment they very well could have. Your legs became weak and your steps messy as you neared Bucky. You crashed to your knees beside him, pain radiated up your thighs from the impact but you couldn’t care. It couldn’t be worse than the expanding tight pain in your chest as you struggled to breathe.

Your hands quivered as they hovered over his body. With him lying so still you could finally take in the damage Walker had done to his face. Blood was splattered all over, deep purple and blue hues bloomed across his cheekbones, and a nasty split had opened on his lip. Worst of all, his nose was broken.

The sparks continued to burst from the plates of his arm, his hand jerking and spasming with an unsettling sound of grinding metal. Quickly, you placed your hands firmly on the vibranium. A deep blue beamed from under your palms, cascading the metallic golds and blacks of his arm in your glow. The excess electricity from the crash moved in waves through the arm up into your hands. You focused as all the veins in your body became electrified, an aqua glow shone through your skin as the energy you. Your once y/e/c eyes were quickly overtaken, the cool energy overriding your iris’ and leaving an intense indigo shine. With a sharp gasp and breath, you let go. His arm had stopped moving, now lying as still and motionless as he did. 

“Bucky,” you said, giving his damaged body a soft shake. “Bucky, wake up.”

He didn’t move, his face slack and limps heavy as you struggled to turn him to his back and off of his arm. Your hands rushed to his face, cupping his cheeks and holding him close as if you could shield him from more of John Walker’s savagery. If someone had the power to take your abilities and trade them for the ability to heal, you’d offer them anything they wished just for the potential to spare Bucky from his pain even for a moment. 

“Buck… come on wake up,” the fresh blood from his injuries spilled into your fingertips, the crimson caked into your cuticles and threatened not to leave.

“Plum, please,” His body twitched; your lungs finally filled with air. 

His breaths were labored but there, his chest rattled as he sucked in much-needed air. Your fingers moved to his neck, their shuddering finally stilling as you felt his pulse return to a firm and strong pattern.

The sounds of Sam’s grunts and Walker’s cries swiftly pulled your attention back to your friend. He was up in the air, a long metal cord pulling on the shield and attempting to free it from Walker’s venomous grasp. To no avail, as soon Sam was flung back to the floor and across the room. The shield clattered to the ground, equally laid between the two men. The smug and determined look on Walker’s face enraged you, the blue glow returning to your eyes. Sam glanced over at you before rushing for the shield. He needed you.

You turned back to Bucky, still unresponsive to your touches and voice. He was breathing, his pulse steady. Taking in the broken state of his body, his face battered and bloodied, you couldn’t hold back your rage any longer.

It was as if something had possessed you. Gently, you laid Bucky back to the ground, pressing a trembling kiss to his forehead.

“I’ll be right back,” you said, your voice monotone yet determined. The expressions of concern, fear, and horror that had played upon your face just moments ago were now gone. You were cold and still, as you rose to your feet and walked over to the two men fighting behind you.

Before Walker could grab the shield, a harsh blast of blue energy sent him flying back in the opposite direction. The man was studded, confused by how he could have been knocked down. He looked up to see you rushing towards him. You were steady in your movement, not running but with each step winding up for the next blow. Your hands were baked in a fierce glow of aqua as you channeled more energy through your fingertips. 

Walker scrambled to his feet, preparing for the offense. Before he could even take a step he was back on the ground with another blast from you. A loud cry fell from your lips as you slammed him down with force from your power. As you ran up to Walker, he quickly sent a firm hit to your jaw. You stumbled back, regaining your vision to see him coming at you. You jumped up, knees to your chest and feet pressing on his as you blasted him once again. 

He was on the ground with you towering over him. His face was coated in shades of black and blue, mirroring the face you were trembling over just seconds ago. Good, he deserved that and more.

You blasted him again as he struggled to crawl away. You followed him, hot on his trail as energy overflowed from your hands. The shield was long forgotten by you, only driven by your need for revenge. Bucky couldn’t even answer you, couldn’t move. He needed to pay.

Walker’s body slammed back into machinery as you surged more energy at him. He was done, hands shaking above him as he prepared for your next blow.

“We’re better than this right? Captain America doesn’t do this,” Walker said through his split lip and shaking jaw.

You scoffed; if only he had thought that way an hour ago. You wouldn’t be here. Bucky would be okay.

“Good thing I’m not Captain America,” you said. Walker shielded his face as you wound up your aim. Energy radiated from your fist up your forearm as you pulled it back to deliver one last shot.

“Y/n, stop!” Sam shouted.

Your blast was halted by a firm hand on your upper arm. You recognized the stillness and coolness that held onto your body. Turning you saw Bucky behind you. He was shaking as he stood, breaths labored and heavy, but there he was. Sam ran up behind the two of you, shield in hand as he looked at you. But all you could focus on was Bucky.

Bucky stepped forward, shaking his head softly as he lowered your arm. 

“This isn’t you, you don’t do this,” he said. Your nostrils flared as you breathed heavily, struggling to reel your rage back in. You glanced back at Walker who lay on the ground, glaring at you smugly. Your eyes shone brighter, your fists clenching as the glow intensified. 

“Hey,” Bucky said, taking your face and turning you to look back at him. “You’re not him.”

The energy overtaking your body began to fade as you relaxed under his firm touch. The uncontrollable blue glow began to fade back into your body, leaving you panting as you tried to calm your emotions. Bucky stood before you, vibranium hand stroking your own.

“You’re okay,” you said.

“I’m okay. Hey, hey, I’m okay. It’s over,” he said, pulling you away from the scene you had created. He walked you slowly back towards Sam, you shook in his grasp. Walker struggled to stand as he watched the three of you leave. The shield taunted him as it hung off of Sam’s arm, finally back with its true owner. The Captain America.

“I’m sorry,” you said, looking at Sam. “I just….” you glanced at Bucky, once again seeing the battering of his beautiful face. Your throat swelled as you lost your words, choking on your fear.

“We got it back,” Sam said, giving your shoulder a firm squeeze before heading out of the building. His limp as he walked didn’t escape you.

Bucky gripped your hand tightly, pulling you with him as he walked. He didn’t make it far before his knees began to buckle, his body slipping as he fell. You were at his side in a heartbeat, arm hauling him back up beside you; refusing to let his body crash to the filthy ground again. 

“Hey, hold onto me,” you said. You wrapped his arm around your shoulder and his other gripped at your waist as you began to pull him from the warehouse, his feet limping and tripping as he struggled to walk. Walker’s body began to fade in the distance as you left.

“Why did you do that, doll?” Bucky asked as you walked, his voice slurred and low. Each wince and suck of breath stabbed at your side like a pecking bird, refusing to let your wound heal. 

“I don’t know, I’ve never done that. I….” you paused, stopping your feet as you gave him a moment to catch his breath. “When I saw you hit that pole, I lost it.”

“I’m okay, Y/n,” he said, yet his words seemed to hold no weight as he struggled to stay upright at your side.

“Your arm was sparking, Bucky. You weren’t moving. I-I thought that you…” You couldn’t finish, gripping him tighter as your voice shook. As if letting him go would give the world a chance to tear him from you once again. Your fingertips dug into his tact suit, determined to embed yourself in him.

“Hey, babydoll,” he said, hoisting himself up just enough to take your face in his hands. He swayed on his feet as he stood, intent on holding you close as he spoke. Your hands held him steady at his side.

“I’m here, I’ll always be here. But no matter what happens to me, I don’t want you to lose yourself,” he said, stroking your cheek. “I can’t have that.”

“I don’t wanna lose you,” you said.

“You won’t. I’m right here, I’m always coming back to you.”

You nodded softly as you rested your head on his chest. His hands moved to your hair as he held you close. Your hands wound around his center, keeping him safe in your arms. As long as you were around, no one would take him.

“You’re so good, you’re so special, Y/n. You need to be strong, even if I get hurt. You can’t drop your morals for me. They mean too much to you,” he said.

“I think you may be my weakness,” you said, your voice muffled in his chest. He tucked himself closer into you at your words, his head resting upon yours. His lips pressed a soft kiss to the side of your head.

“You’ve always been mine,” he said softly.

---

taglist:

(comment to join <3)

[areyouwell]

Logan x angel!reader where the reader had to get medical treatment after a mission because her angel wings (that are apart of her mutation) were burned and partially damaged after battle, and Logan comes in to check up on her?

Tattered

Pairing: Logan Howlett x F!Mutant!Reader

Word count: 10K

A/N: first request! so i definitely took some creative license with this... i sort of just kept adding scenes and ideas but this concept was so fierce boots i couldn't help myself. hope this is what you have in mind <3 i have also elected, from now onwards, not to use warnings on my fics unless there's explicit content in which case it will simply just have MDNI in red.

I don't have a taglist for like, oneshots or requests rn so lmk if anyone would like to be added :)

“Watch your six, Icarus!” Scott’s voice crackled from your earpiece as you swooped over the battlefield, the feathers in your wings fluttering in the wind. Glancing behind back, you realised why Scott had alerted you, three drones tailed you with six red dots seeking out your presence. Fuck, this wasn’t good. Why did nothing ever go right? Why were there always fucking complications?

You tucked your wings in tight against your back as you joined the rest of the team inside the Blackbird. You’d always been conscious of how much room you often took up, and whilst your mutation was your pride and joy, it was a common occurrence to feel a little self conscious when trying to cram multiple people into a tight space. You never occupied any of the seats in the cockpit, your wings wouldn’t allow it, and it was never comfortable for you anyway, the way they would shift and bend at unnatural angles meant you’d constantly be shuffling around to stop the awkward ache in your shoulder blades.

Icarus. That was your name. Well, not your name, but that’s what they called you on account of your gleaming golden feathers. You thought it was a little mean, to be honest. You had no intention of flying too close to the sun anytime soon, but alas, you were stuck with it, and over time, you’d come to appreciate it. They weren’t far off anyway. You did have grand ideals, and dreams to become something more than just a freedom fighter. You wanted to change the world and make it a safer place where humans and mutants could live in harmony. You knew a lot of the hard graft was political, and Hank was doing wonders for mutant reputation, but you still would like to contribute something other than stopping mutant slave trades and taking down illegal, anti-mutant organisations. 

That was the mission today. Some hate-crazed fuck had been building some kind of drone that could target the mutant gene. Kind of like the sentinels from years ago, but they’d been discontinued.

Thank fuck. 

The muscles in your shoulders tensed slightly as Ororo and Logan finally joined the rest of you, deep in conversation about the inevitable upcoming battle. You tucked yourself further into the wall, cursing lowly as you hit your head against the steel. 

Your relationship with Logan was… complicated, to say the least. The two of you instantly clicked when you met, finding yourself at ease with his gruff, surprisingly playful demeanour. You guessed he must have felt the same, since you noticed he would often seek you out during breaktimes, or take the seat next to you during meetings, sending you looks whenever Scott said something particularly leader-ish. You’d have to bite back a smile and attempt to keep your serious composure, lest anyone would think you weren’t taking the meeting seriously. 

And then there was the night things shifted between you. It was late, possibly early hours of the morning. Your muscles ached from being unable to find a comfortable position to sleep in, the beds not exactly being tailored to suit those with extra limbs, and with a huff of irritation, you’d given up to head downstairs and fix yourself an Irish coffee. And whilst there was a serious lack of Irish whiskey in the school, you knew Logan had a bottle of bourbon hiding somewhere in the cupboards, out of reach for most of the younger kids. 

You’d managed to clamber up onto the counter, perched precariously on the edge as you rifled around the top shelf, pulling down various unused cooking equipment before you finally came across the liquid gold. With a triumphant smile, you reached in further to wrap your fingers around the neck of the bottle, delicately pulling it from the depths of the cupboard. Only, it was stuck. 

The screw top kept scraping against the top of the cupboard, and you grit your teeth as your fruitless yanking sent pots and pans clattering against each other. You seriously didn’t want to wake anyone only to have them come down and find you up on your knees, balancing on the thin space of the counter, elbow deep in the top cupboard and frantically pulling at a bottle of whiskey. Fuck knows what kind of an impression that would give, but it certainly wouldn’t have been the correct one. 

Flaring your wings for balance, you completely misjudged the tips of your wingspan, knocking over an empty can of baked beans and sending it rolling onto the floor with a loud, deafening clang. You froze, attempting to quiet your breathing whilst you waited for the telltale sound of footsteps or the annoyed slam of a bedroom door. But your intense listening found nothing, the halls of the school blissfully quiet as you loosened your held breath. 

Nothing. Everyone was still asleep.

You turned your attention back to the stubborn bottle, this time trying to gently manoeuvre it around the baking bowls and saucepans, teasing it from the small little hiding place like you would a scared child. 

“Come… on.” You hissed with effort, finally freeing your vice from its trap with a final, harsh tug. Only, it was a little harsher than you’d have liked it to be. You grabbed the handle of the cupboard to your left to hold your balance, only for the door to swing open and provide absolutely no stability whatsoever. 

You felt yourself fall backwards with a frantic, whispered curse, swinging with the cupboard door, and resigned yourself to the sore back you’d get from falling to the floor. Or, at least, you would have fallen to the floor, if it hadn’t been for the sudden appearance of a warm palm at the centre of your spine. 

“Rough–” 

You yelped at the unexpected voice behind you, you entire body jumping as if you were shocked by a socket. 

“Stop screaming, it’s me,” Logan soothed with no small degree of subdued amusement. “Rough night?”

It wasn’t like he was asleep, more like dozing when he heard the soft padding of footsteps pass his door and head down the stairs. Knowing it was you, he assumed you’d just woken up thirsty and were heading down for a glass of water. His assumption proved incorrect when the clattering of pans and the clang of something hitting the floor broke the steady silence, and curiosity won over when he decided to investigate just exactly what it was you were doing. 

What he wasn’t expecting was to find you clinging onto the cupboards for dear life, his bottle of whiskey clutched in one stubborn hand and your other gripping the open door of the shelf next to you. And it was pure instinct to lunge forward and steady you before you fell to the floor, though in the following moments, he convinced himself it was purely because he didn’t want you to wake up anyone else.

“What?” You asked in bewilderment, turning your head to see his brow raise at the bottle you had in your white knuckle grip. How the hell hadn’t you heard him? You’d stayed silent for at least five minutes before resuming your attempts to pull the bottle out. How the hell had he managed to still creep up on you?

“It’s two in the mornin’ and you’re makin’ a grab for whiskey. So, rough night?” He asked again, moving his hands from your back to your waist, steadying you as you clambered down from the countertop, and he did his best to ignore the feeling of your warm skin seeping through the thin nightshirt you were wearing. At least you were wearing shorts. Though, he counted that as both a blessing and a curse. 

He liked you. Despite trying to gaslight himself otherwise, there were times when he truly couldn’t deny it. And this time was one of them. You looked a little dishevelled, hair slightly frizzy and out of place from tossing and turning, and it was one of the rare times he’d seen you without any makeup on. You never wore a lot, just enough to accent your already glowing features and cover any blemishes he thought you had no reason to feel self-conscious about. 

You were so perfectly yourself, it was tricky for him not to fall in love with you.

Not that he had, of course. This was just a surface-level crush…

Yeah. Totally.

“You uh, yeah, you could say that. One of those nights, ya know?” You offered a small, slightly dejected smile, and his heart bled slightly. He knew. More than he could say, he knew exactly what you were talking about.

“You plannin’ on drinking yourself to sleep?” He asked with wry suspicion as you leaned against the counter, placing his bottle next to the kettle you still needed to flip on. 

“The opposite, actually. Wanted to fix myself an Irish coffee. Seeing as I’m not sleeping tonight, might as well stay up.” You shrugged, finding the willpower to turn away from him and grab the ground coffee from the lower cupboard. Thankfully, it didn’t put up the same kind of fight as the bottle. 

It was getting increasingly difficult to ignore the electricity humming from where his hands were still against your waist, though his grip was lighter than when he’d helped you down. It truly wasn’t decent to detail the things you were thinking at that moment, and you had to force yourself to think of unsexy things. 

“We have a mission in two days and you’re pullin’ an all-nighter?” He asked, his brows pinching in badly concealed concern. Your heavy sigh did nothing to quench his worry.

“What’m I supposed to do? You try sleeping in a bed that’s too small with wings that stretch to either side of the room,” You huffed, flicking down the switch on the kettle and spooning a good two heaps of coffee grounds into the cafetiere. “Doesn’t matter what position. On my back or my side, shit’s so fucking uncomfortable it almost hurts.” 

“Why not sleep on your front?”

You snapped back to look at him, eyes hardening to steel. “No. Never sleep on my front.”

You’d said it with so much force he almost reeled back. There was a story there, there had to be, for you to clap back at him with such a bite there was no way it was just a personal preference. You hadn’t really told anyone about your life before the school, but from the bare snippets he’d heard from Charles, it wasn’t exactly how anyone would describe as happy. And there was fear behind that steel. Vulnerability. 

Logan sighed, leaning across you to flip the switch back up, stopping the kettle from boiling. You gaped indignantly, and before you could ask him just what the hell he thought he was doing, he spoke before you.

“Sleep with me.”

You choked, eyes blowing wide with shock. “I… what?”

Logan rolled his eyes, unable to tame the crooked curl of his lips at your complete one-eighty from irritation to stupefaction, even the feathers of your wings had puffed out slightly. “Not like that, freak,” although I wouldn’t be opposed. “Just… for company. Might help, s’all.” He offered quietly, and a blanket of realisation settled in your chest. He was awake too. It had only just occurred to you. He hadn’t been sleeping. He didn’t even look like he’d been sleeping. And it made more sense in your head for him to offer if it was something that could benefit both of you. 

It seemed highly unlikely he was offering just for you. Right?

“You sure? Don’t wanna like, intrude on your space or anything…” 

“Not intrudin’ if I offer,” he reasoned, and you guessed you couldn’t argue with that. With a heavy sigh, you looked back to the bottle of whiskey you’d fought wars to obtain, realising now that the whole cupboard situation had been for nothing. 

“All that effort,” you pouted comically, and Logan huffed a smile.

“I’ll put it somewhere easier next time. C’mon.” He nudged you before grabbing the bottle and returning it to the top shelf. You cursed his stupid height and the fact that he wasn’t down earlier. He could have retrieved it for you with so much less effort. But at the same time… if he had…

You wouldn’t be where you are now. 

You followed him back up the stairs, taking a left to the door only a few down from your own. You didn’t quite know how sleeping in the presence of someone else would help, but you were not about to say no to sleeping by his side. It wasn’t like this was something you’d thought about. At great length. And in great detail.

And this certainly wasn’t a scenario he’d entertained far too many times to count. 

Though upon seeing the double bed, that same self-conscious feeling reared its ugly head. There was no way you weren’t going to disturb him. You could barely find comfort in your own bed of the same size, let alone trying to sleep with someone else taking up space. You hesitated in the doorway, and Logan turned back to you, his head quirking to the side. 

“You ‘kay?”

“Yeah… s’just– are you sure I’m not gonna disturb you? Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I take up a bit more room than other people…” you extended your wings in emphasis, barely able to stretch them to half their wingspan before the side of the closet and the wall stopped you. Logan breathed a soft smile, and you felt yourself shrink slightly. 

“I’ll be fine, just get in.”

You huffed in resignation, tucking the feathers close into your back and crossing to the other side of the bed, unable to stop thinking about how ridiculous this was. You really should just get the fuck over yourself and go back to your room. How tricky was sleeping on your front anyway? Maybe this time you wouldn’t wake up with a panic attack and you were just being dramatic this whole time. You were fine. It really wasn’t that deep. You didn’t want to disturb him just because you couldn’t get over some stupid fucking fear. This was–

“Christ, I’m not even a telepath and I can hear ya thinkin’. It’s fine, sweetheart. You’re fine.” He implored, throwing back the covers for you to take up the space next to him, but you continued to hesitate. “You want a written invitation or somethin’? Get your ass in bed.”

“Alright, jeez…” you pursed your lips to stop yourself from smiling at his smartass comment, keeping your wings firmly against your back as you shuffled beneath the covers by his side, careful not to take up too much room. Your shoulder started to cramp up slightly, but there was no way you were about to release the tension in your muscles until you were sure he was asleep. 

Pulling the covers up to your neck as best you could, you scooted down until your head hit the pillow, shifting in yet another attempt to ease the ache in your back. You hadn’t noticed he’d turned on his side to face you until you looked back ahead and were suddenly met with his flat look of exasperation.

“Seriously?”

“What?” Your voice raised into a pitch of innocence, and Logan barely managed to suppress his eye roll of sarcasm. 

“The point was for you to be comfortable.”

“I am comfortable!”

“As comfortable as someone would be whilst constantly tensing, yeah?”

“Logan, if I don’t, you’ll wake up with feathers in your nose.”

He snorted a laugh, and you giggled slightly along with him. “You look ridiculous.”

You gaped in mock offence. “Hey!”

“Come ‘ere…” in one swift movement, you were dragged from your position on your side, and he turned the both of you until you were settled on his chest. Panic swirled in your mind as your back was exposed to the room, until a steady hand soothed your racing pulse against your spine, in the space between your wings. You felt comfort dampen your anxiety, breathing deeply into the dip between his collarbone and neck, exhaling a shaky breath. You let the seconds tick by, expecting yourself to start gasping rapidly at any moment. But the longer your heart stayed settled, the more you realised this might actually work. “Y’okay?” He asked quietly, and you nodded against his chest.

“Yeah… just surprised. Usually, I’d be thinking I’m about to die by this point,” you half-joked, and though you couldn’t see him, Logan’s brows pinched in empathy. What the hell had happened to you before joining the team? Finding the school? His fingers slowly grazed through the short, fluffy feathers at the base of your wings, carding through the stiff joints. He watched in mild amusement as you shivered slightly, those feathers puffing out and shuddering at his touch. He lightly dug his fingers into the hard muscles around the joint, and you had to clamp your mouth shut to stop yourself from sighing in release. You hadn’t realised just how much strain it was to constantly keep them tight against your back, and whilst it had proven useful to build up the muscle, it had also resulted in some nasty knots. 

Achingly slowly, your wings started to relax, heavy, hollow bones coming to rest across his body, wingtips grazing the floors on either side of the bed as you blanketed the both of you in a soft, warm embrace. Your eyes started to grow tired, lids drooping with each gentle caress of his fingers across your back. 

“Sleep, angel. ‘M here. You’re safe.” He whispered, and you didn’t have the energy to contemplate the fact he’d just used two new pet names for you. If you weren’t so damn tired, your insides would have exploded with butterflies by now, but the siren call of sleep lulled you into a sense of security, and with his steady heartbeat your lullaby, you gave in to the soft pull of rest. 

That was the night things changed between you. The day after he would barely leave your side, sticking by you throughout the morning, taking the seat next to you in the pre-mission meeting that same evening, sending you quick glances that he’d cut short whenever your eyes met. And it was the same when he entered the Blackbird, with you tucked tight against the wall. His eyes found you instantly, lips carving into a gentle smile, his hand falling to your shoulder as he walked past you. You savoured the touch, missing the contact when his hand fell back to his side, still deep in conversation with Ororo. 

“Do you want to fly above us, Icarus? Might be more comfortable,” Scott asked from where he’d taken his seat at the front of the jet, his head turning back to look at you through his glasses. You knew what he meant. There was only so much room in the Blackbird, and despite your best efforts, you were taking up a considerable amount. You took a moment to think, weighing up your options. And whilst you loved the freedom of flying, you couldn’t help but think it was a backhanded way of asking you to stop taking up so much room. He may not have meant it that way, but that’s just how it felt. 

“Uh, sure. Yeah, might be better…” You mumbled with a shrug, trying in vain to stop the hot shame from flushing your cheeks. 

Logan’s jaw tensed, his teeth grinding together, the sound resonating through his skull. He’d been trying so damn hard to get you to loosen up about your wings. And whilst he found it difficult to properly articulate just how gorgeous he thought they were, he thought he was finally making some progress after the last two days. So the way Scott insensitively asked you to fly instead of taking the jet wound him up. 

“Only if it would be better for you. Don’t do it just cuz ya think it’ll be more comfortable for everyone else,” he ground out with a pointed look to Scott, whose brows furrowed in brief confusion before his mouth fell open in horror.

“Shit, no that’s not what I meant! I just thought–”

“It’s fine, Scott,” you tried placating the panicking Cyclops. “I need to stretch them out before the mission anyway.” You smiled a liar's smile, hoping he wouldn’t see through the façade and into your genuine hurt before turning on your heel to head back down the ramp. You managed to make it roughly halfway before a hand caught your arm, stopping you short. 

“You’re not doin’ this cuz of these, right?” Logan asked, gesturing to your wings with his head, his eyes searching your expression as if he was looking to peer right through you. You offered him the same smile you gave Scott, and whilst it worked to settle Cyclops, it only served to broaden Logan’s concern. 

“Nah, I really do need to stretch them out, feeling kinda stiff today so it’s not a problem.” You said brazenly, shrugging off his concerns with faux confidence. You knew it didn’t work when his expression didn’t shift, his hand tightening slightly around your arm. You sighed, defeated. “It’s fine, Logan. Everyone’ll be more comfortable like this anyway, myself included. I won’t feel like I’m–”

“If you finish that sentence with ‘in the way’ I’ll throw you off the jet myself.” He borderline growled, and you tensed your jaw in slight irritation. Couldn’t he just let you have this? Couldn’t he just let you do this one thing to make everyone’s lives more comfortable? Why did he have to be so damn stubborn?

“Just… drop it, yeah? I’ll see you guys when we get there.” You bit, almost snatching your arm from his grip and continuing down the ramp, crouching low when you reached the bottom and launching into the skies, your wings beating hard as cold wind whipped your face. All Logan could do was watch you go, regret piercing his chest as the sound of your wings receded into the night sky. 

And that was how you found yourself already airborne when Scott’s voice crackled through your earpiece, the low hum of those three drones on your tail like the toll of death, the rapid beeping of target systems an accompaniment to the symphony. Tucking one of your wings in tight, you fell into a sharp stoop, panic rising in your chest as they followed you down. The hissing release of metal combined with the sudden roar of a rocket told you at least one of them had fired on you. You flared your wings, catching the air like a feathered parachute as you levelled out quickly, the missile shooting past you and into the ground below. The heat from the explosion fanned your face as you whipped around the wreckage of a building, those three drones still hot on your trail.

Logan looked up as you soared above, his claws drenched in blood as he yanked them out the helmet of some unfortunate soldier who’d made the mistake of thinking he could take on The Wolverine. His heart raced in his throat as those six dots wouldn’t stray from your body, drones expertly following your manoeuvres, mimicking every duck and dive, narrowly missing the corners of buildings and rising flames. Ororo’s voice crackled in his own earpiece, her tone frantic. 

“Icarus you gotta shake them!”

“NO SHIT!”

He almost winced at the panic in your voice, snapping back at Storm in a way he’d never heard you do before. Casting a quick glance to his surroundings, he saw Scott with his fingers braced on his glasses, beams of white-hot energy streaking the battlefield as he picked off one guard after another. 

“Scott!” He called, his legs pounding the ground as he ran over, slicing through the gut of a nameless, faceless soldier who stood in his way before he jogged to a stop. “Think you can get a clear shot?” He asked, his words rushed as his gaze returned to the skies, another explosion booming bright before you raced around the corner of the main building. 

“They’re moving too fast and it’s too much of a risk.” Scott called back over the din of battle, the crackle and boom of thunder overhead striking the earth with expert precision as Storm unleashed yet another bolt from the clouds above. A little too close to you for comfort. 

Logan’s breath caught in his throat as you levelled out, those tenacious six red dots still focused solely on your racing form, your wings beating and dipping with every expert manoeuvre as you once again swooped from sight. But it still wasn’t enough. 

“Lead the shot.”

“What?”

“Lead the damn shot, Scott. She’ll be comin’ back round, it’s a pattern. Just do it.” He almost pleaded, his voice cracking slightly. He knew you only had precious seconds before those missiles would fire again, and you couldn’t outrun them forever.

You crested back around the ruins of the facility, and it was only due to his enhanced sight could he see your confidence wavering, your jaw tense with concentration, though your eyes were blown wide with panic. 

The beep of the target systems increased rapidly, before blending into one long note. And it was like time came to a slow crawl. A puff of silver gas erupted from the base of the drone, a pinpoint missile dropping from the small hold to hone in on your location before Scott had a chance to take it out. 

Switching targets, Scott moved his head to the side slightly, leading the shot as Logan had said, the beam of pure, red and white hot energy shot from his glasses, quick as a blink. And for one, blissfully ignorant moment, Logan thought they’d succeeded.

But the missile was too close. The moment the pure energy collided with the steel casing, a ball of furnace orange flame and thick black smoke lit the sky. Before you had time to think, searing agony jolted your back, hellfire burning your shoulders and wings as you were thrust forward, losing control of your trajectory. Panic gripped your heart as you tried in vain to regain your altitude, but your wings weren’t responding. The stench of burning feathers and flesh singed your nose as you went down, caught up in the explosion between Scott’s beam and the missile. 

Wind roared in your ears, whipping your hair as you descended, flailing and spiralling, to the ground, trees and ruin rising to bring your fall, and your life, to a sharp end. 

“STORM!”

“ICARUS!”

Two indistinguishable voices exploded in your ears, deafening you over the din of death. You knew this was most likely it. This was most likely the end, but you felt numb peace as the wind kept you company, wrapping around you almost like a blanket as you braced your arms against your chest, pain splitting your body and mind as the open rooftop of a ruined house ripped through your suit and flesh as you struck the ground, knowing nothing more than darkness.

“No…” Logan whispered, his entire world coming to an abrupt halt as you descended past his line of vision, a cloud of black dust rolling from the wreckage of a home. You weren’t dead. You couldn’t be dead. He was moving before he’d even registered it, racing across blackened bodies and charred remains of structures. His throat tore with repeated cries of your name, pushing past collapsed beams and splinters of wood, shoving aside wrecked furniture and broken decor before he saw you.

Lifeless.

In a pool of your own blood. 

Your leg lay in an unnatural angle, your wings charred and broken, your wrist twisted in a way he knew it really shouldn’t be. His blood turned to ice in his veins, face blanching as he couldn’t see the rise and fall of your chest beneath the shrapnel and dust covering you. A jagged wooden spike protruded from the dip between your shoulder and your chest, the entry wound somewhere on your back.

He had to check if you were still alive, but he couldn't move, finding himself frozen in place. He couldn't lose you. Not when he was finally putting the foundations down for your relationship. He couldn't lose you now… 

But seeing your body broken like this… there was no way you could have survived that fall, even with Ororo’s help. She tried to slow your descent too late, a gust of wind appearing from nowhere to catch you just a second after she should have. Maybe you’d still be alive if she'd succeeded. Maybe you’d still be here if he hadn't asked Scott to shoot those fucking drones.

Maybe…

“Fuck! Icarus! Icarus can you hear me?” Storm rushed past him, followed by a horrified Cyclops, and if Logan could focus on anything other than your twisted limbs, he'd see the overwhelming sense of guilt on his face. 

Ororo pushes off the splinters of wood and debris from your body, her movements hurried yet careful, terrified of moving you too much. She placed two trembling fingers against the side of your neck and waited. 

And waited. 

And waited…

Logan thought the moment would never end, silence blanketing the ruined room as the three of them could do nothing but watch, Jean quietly placing a hand on Scott's shoulder. 

“There's a pulse!” Storm cried, a sob of relief erupting from her throat as Jean rushed forward, her hands ghosting the top of your body. 

You were alive. Alive. How the fuck had you survived that? There was no way you could have survived that. You fell from over two hundred feet, how the fuck–

“We need to stabilise her. She's lost a lot of blood and it hasn't stopped. Can you tell what the damage is?” Storm turned to Jean, hoping her telekinesis could find something, anything that would provide more information. 

“Broken ribs, her lung is punctured, I think she's bleeding internally and we can’t remove this or she’ll bleed out… I can't do shit out here, we need to get her back to the school. Now.” Jean's voice took on a tone of authority, spurring Scott back into action, but Logan was still paralysed. It was only two nights ago you were sound asleep on his chest, only yesterday he couldn’t stand being further than two feet from you. 

Logan…

You were alive, but how long for? Was he just given false hope, only to lose you on the way? On the operating table? How much longer did you have? How much longer did he have?

“Logan…”

He wanted to blame Scott. Fuck, he wished he could blame Scott. But the truth was, he asked him to take them out. He was the one who asked if he had a shot. He was the one who coerced him to take it. Would you have been okay? Would you have been able to shake them on your own? Had he single-handedly brought on your fall?

“LOGAN!”

Logan blinked rapidly, eyes burning from how long he was staring, unblinkingly, at your broken body. Numbly, he tore his gaze from you and over to Ororo, and though her brows were pinched in concern, her eyes were hard with determination. 

“I know, but if we wait any longer, we’ll lose her. Think you can clear Jean a path?” She glanced pointedly to the rubble somewhat blocking the doorway, and it took him another second before forcing his body to move, nodding wordlessly to Ororo’s orders. He wasn’t usually one to just mindlessly obey, but he wasn’t able to think straight at the moment and was honestly thankful for the others taking charge. 

He was strong at the best of times, but self-hatred fuelled his arms to work overtime, shoving away impossibly large beams and collapsed part of the wall before there was a clear path for Jean to levitate you through. Your smouldering wings dragged along the ground, tattered and torn, gathering dust and grime along the bloodied tips. Only now had could he get a glimpse of your back, the worst of the damage caking your shoulders and wing joints in blackened crimson. Feathers had burned away, leaving your mutation raw and weeping. You didn’t know what he was talking to Ororo about on the walk to the jet. You didn’t know he was asking her if you had a favourite food, or colour, or flower. You had no idea he’d planned to officially ask you out after the mission. 

Now you might never know.

Scott slowly approached him, looking as if he were in a state of complete shock, replaying what went wrong over and over again in his head. All it took was one glance, and Logan didn’t even need to see his eyes to know they were buried in remorse. He wanted to be furious at him, but he couldn’t. He wanted to be beside himself with desperate anger, but there was nothing to be angry at him for. This wasn’t Scott’s fault…

It was his. 

The ride back to the mansion took days and also five seconds, Jean doing her best to keep you stable whilst Ororo took the pilot’s seat, Scott being in no shape to fly anything. Logan found himself too terrified to touch you as if the slightest movement could worsen your condition. In the silence of the ship, he could hear your haunting, rasped breaths, slow and shallow. The stench of charred flesh and boiled blood made his stomach clench, but not as much as the wounds across your body. He forced himself to look at them. To look at what he’d done to you because of his choices. Forced himself to sear every weeping burn, every broken bone, every blood-soaked bandage into his memory. Your wings, which once held so much majesty and beauty, now lay in tatters, and he had no idea if they would grow back. Would you ever be able to fly again? Logan didn’t know if he’d be able to look himself in the mirror if he’d taken that from you too. 

“She’s going to be okay, Logan. She’s stabilised for now and the Professor already knows the situation. Hank’s on standby and Charles has called in a favour from a surgeon. She’ll be in the best hands possible when we get there.” Jean attempted to comfort him, all the while focussed on keeping you stable from any turbulence and making sure your wounds didn’t worsen. 

“I did this…” he whispered, uttering the first words since watching you fall. Speaking his thoughts into the thick silence, the rest of the team cast glances at each other, Scott running a hand through his hair.

“No… I should have trusted your judgment. I hesitated. Fired too late. You can’t blame yourself for this…” He hissed, dragging the hand from his hair down the side of his face. 

“You both did what you could,” Ororo offered from the cockpit, her eyes still focused on the clouds ahead. “If you hadn’t done anything, she’d be dead by now. Those drones weren’t going to give up and she couldn’t shake them. She’s still here because of what happened, not despite it.” 

Logan couldn’t find the self-compassion to believe her. His eyes still trained on the scattering of feathers beneath where Jean suspended you from the ground. He wearily raised his head when the redhead called his name, her features soft with understanding. 

“Come here,” she gesture him over with a nod of her head, her hands still hovering over your body. Logan hesitated before rising from his seat, to stand by your side, across from Jean. “Place two fingers against the side of her neck,” she instructed, and his breath hitched, eyes darting from your unconscious face to Jean. “You won’t hurt her, just do it.”

Inhaling sharply, Logan softly brushed your hair back from your neck, gently placing two fingers against your pulse point. There he felt the slight, slow thump of your heart still beating. The realisation was enough to bring him to his knees, not caring about the sharp bark of pain as he struck the steel floor. He knew you were alive. Ororo had said as much, but to actually feel you, to feel the evidence of you’re still beating heart, broke through the dam of self-hatred.

His hand cautiously skirted up your jaw to rest against the side of your cheek as he pressed his forehead into your hair, his breath shuddering with the effort to keep himself from falling apart. He didn’t care that he could taste blood and dirt when he softly kissed the side of your head. Didn’t care that now everyone knew how he felt about you. His thumb lightly caressed your cheekbone, smoothing the grimy skin beneath your eye. 

You hadn’t left him yet. You were still here. 

“She’s alive, Logan. And we’re gonna keep her that way,” the conviction in Jean’s eyes was almost enough to settle his heart, but he knew the twisting worry wouldn’t loosen until he saw you open your eyes, your wounds healing, your wings bright again.

Everything ached. Everything. You felt as if you’d been hit by a bus, only for the bus to reverse back over your body, and hit you again. Your wrist barked with sharp pain when you tried to shift, your eyes still closed against the bright lights behind your lids. Something tight was almost cutting off the circulation to your left leg, and inhaling too deeply caused your chest to convulse in agony. The steady beep of a heart rate monitor helped you count roughly how many seconds you’d been conscious. You tried to think back to what could have happened, only to find the last thing you remembered was stooping in a low dive with three drones tailing you. There was an explosion at your back and–

You were falling. 

You’d fallen.

So much for not living up to your name…

With a hissing wince, you cracked your eyes open, only to instantly screw them shut at the sharp burn of bright lights unfamiliar to your retinas. How long have you been out? How did the mission go? Was everybody okay? Was Logan okay? 

With renewed determination, you attempted to open your eyes again, gritting your teeth as you blinked through the burn of adjustment. You knew this ceiling. You knew this table. From your first ever visit to the school, you’d been taken care of in this very room. You groaned slightly, exhaustion already taking its

 toll on your weary bones. Any attempt to move yourself resulted in agony spiking up your spine, white-hot pain cresting through your shoulder blades. Panic gripped your heart as you attempted to move your wings, only to find resistance. Turning your head with a sharp gasp, your eyes welled up with new tears seeing your torn, tattered feathers bound in bandages, held suspended by a sling from the ceiling. They were still attached, so there was that, you supposed, but it had been a long, long time since you’d seen them in this condition. 

You glanced down the bed to find your leg wrapped in a cast, held aloft from the mattress. Your wrist too seemed to be encased in white. You turned your neck to the other side with the intention of gauging the damage to your other wing, before your eyes widened at who you saw, head bowed asleep, in the chair next to your bed. 

Despite yourself and your situation, you couldn’t stop your lips from pulling into a fond, soft smile as Logan snored lightly. He looked truly exhausted, his hair mussed from how many times he’d run his hands through it. You didn’t think it was possible to adore him any more than you already did, but here you were, finding your heart growing three sizes at the sight. 

The doors opposite you slid open, Jean striding through with a clipboard and a thin pair of glasses perched on her nose. She stopped dead when she looked up from her notes, almost dropping her pen to the floor when she registered the fact you were awake. Silently, you placed a finger to your lips, before pointing over to the exhausted Logan in the chair. She smiled with a fond nod, 

Keeping her footsteps light, she crossed the medical bay to take a look at the readings on the screen, before crouching down next to your bed, her eyes focusing on the bandages across the bend of your wing. 

“He hasn’t slept since we got back. Storm had to force him to eat something yesterday. And he hasn’t stepped foot outside this room.” Jean explained, keeping her voice to a low whisper.

“How long’ve I been here…?” you asked, unable to raise your voice louder than a low whisper. Your throat scratched with every word, and you hadn’t realised just how thirsty you were until now. 

“A week and three days. I’m going to slowly reintroduce food into your stomach before taking out the IV, okay?” 

You barely heard the rest of her sentence. A week and three days? That was a little longer than you were expecting, to be honest. 

“Wait… Logan hasn’t slept in over a week?” You managed to rasp a little louder, your chest lurching with concern. That wasn’t healthy for anyone, even someone who could regenerate as fast as he could. No wonder he was utterly spent. 

And it was as if your voice were like an alarm clock. One moment your hushed tones were accompanied by the soft snores of the man in the chair, the next his eyes shot open, your whispered name the first words on his lips. 

Turning your head back to him, your breath caught in your throat. There was a hurricane of emotions swirling in his hazel eyes. Relief, guilt, fear, joy, remorse. A cocktail of feelings clouded his eyes and you wished you had the energy to cup the side of his face and reassure him you were alright. 

Logan’s exhausted haze cleared instantly upon hearing your voice, seeing your eyes open for the first time since he watched you plummet to the ground, and it took a moment for him to realise he wasn’t dreaming. Because he had dreams of this. In the rare moments he physically couldn’t keep his eyes open, his mind would either take him back to your fall or fabricate the moment you woke up. But wherever his dreams took him, he would always wake up with the tight ache of guilt constricting his chest. His waking moments he would spend thinking about what he would say to you if you woke up, planning out a meticulously crafted apology, but everything he wanted to say instantly flew out the window upon actually seeing you awake. 

“Hi…” you whispered, voice still raspy from disuse. And it was your weary, worn smile that tore at the chains around his soul. He couldn’t respond, as if he were the one who’d been lying unconscious for the last two weeks. 

Jean, sensing the tension in the room, stood from her crouched position by your wing, clearing her throat a little before tucking the clipboard flat against the crook of her elbow. 

“I’ll be back in a bit to check up on you and bring you some food.” She murmured, but you barely acknowledged her exit, too fixated on Logan’s expression of disbelief. 

The doors closed as Jean took her leave, blanketing the two of you in a charged silence, the both of you waiting for the other to talk first. 

“Logan I–”

“I’m so sorry, it–”

So naturally, of course, you both spoke at the same time, before falling into another equally uncomfortable silence, once again stuck in the purgatory of waiting for the other. You held your tongue this time, nodding to him with the smallest movement of your head. 

“You’re okay…” he breathed, almost to himself, as if having to remind himself again that this wasn’t in fact a dream. You were awake. You were talking. You weren’t lying lifeless with only the steady beeping of medical equipment to keep him company. Your eyes were open, looking at him with something he was struggling to discern through his addled mind. 

“I’m okay,” you responded softly, watching his features morph from self-hatred to pure relief. He shifted in his seat, head hanging low between his shoulders as he took a shaky breath, and you could see the slight shudder of his shoulders.

“I–” he started, before cutting himself off with a sharp inhale, clamping his teeth together as he struggled to raise his head again. “I thought I lost you.”

Whilst it was nothing but the softest admission, you felt spiderwebs crack through your heart, wanting nothing more than to reach for him, if only your bones didn’t feel like lead. He continued to keep his head low, his hands wringing together between his knees. “It was ’my fault. I didn’t know what to do. You couldn’t shake em and they were closin’ in and Scott wasn’t fuckin’ listenin’ an’–”

“Logan,” you interrupted as loud as you could, your throat tearing at the sudden strain on your voice, causing you to wince slightly. Your hiss of discomfort finally prompted him to raise his head, half standing from his seat to instantly be by your side should you need anything. “I’m okay. Or, I will be. My wings’ve seen worse, and my body will heal with time. I’m okay.”

He searched your face for any sign of deception, any indication that you were just saying this to spare his feelings, or stop him from spiralling into the well of self-hatred once again. He knew it wasn’t the time to ask, but his mind subconsciously filed away that nugget of your past for a later conversation, too focused on the fact his search came up short of anything he was looking for. 

“You’re okay…” he repeated, settling back into the chair by your bed. His eyes fell to your twitching hand, and with a gentleness only reserved for you, his fingers intertwined with yours, bringing your knuckles to his lips. “You’re okay.”

Your heart skipped a beat or several, and you were mildly concerned about setting off the heart rate monitor your abdomen was connected to. You don’t think you’d ever had this many wires connected to your body in your life, not even when Charles first found you. Nobody knows what had happened that day apart from him, and you refused to speak of it. 

“What do you remember?” Logan asked, pressing the back of your hand against the scruff of his cheek, as if desperate to feel you. Your brows furrowed for a moment, your quick trip down trauma lane before you opened your eyes yielding nothing of much use.

“I remember the drones and the targeting dots. I remember one… fired, I think, and missed,” you struggled, screwing your eyes shut in a vain attempt to jog your own memory.  “Uh– then there were two more? One missed and the other exploded before it hit me, but I was caught up in the blast radius. I remember falling and I remember the pain, but that’s about it…” You opened your eyes to find Logan’s expression have shifted once again back to remorse. He really thought it was his fault… didn’t he? “I couldn’t get them off me, Lo’.” You offered quietly.

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t be here if Scott hadn’t fired.”

“I… I know.”

“Logan, you saved my life.”

He placed your hand back on the bed, and you instantly missed the warmth of his palm. “I almost got you killed. I almost lost you. We could have worked somethin’ else out. Storm could’ve–”

“And what if she couldn’t?” You prompted gently, your brows creasing with empathy as you watched him try to wade through the implications of your question. 

“That’s not– I almost–”

“Almost, Logan. Almost. But you didn’t. I’m here. So please stop acting like I’m dead because I might start believing you.” You tried to sound as stern as you could whilst being physically and emotionally drained, and whilst it may have sounded a little weak, Logan knew what you were trying to do. 

He ran a hand through his messy hair which was in desperate need of a wash. Although so were you, you could only imagine. “I didn’t want our last conversation to be an argument.” He murmured, and you sighed as heavily as you could whilst not being able to inhale very deeply. 

“So melodramatic,” you joked with a half-smile, and it took a moment of his eyes scanning your face before his shoulders slumped, huffing a singular laugh through crooked lips. 

“Maybe a little…” he looked up at you through lidded eyes. “Fear doesn’t come naturally t’me. But I don’t think I’ve been more scared than when I was watchin’ you fall, knowin’ I could do nothin’.” 

You finally mustered the strength to reach for him, and he clasped your outstretched hand between both of his like a prayer. You considered for a moment what you would have done had your roles been swapped. If you were so helpless to save him from almost certain death. If you were forced to watch in nearly slow motion as the object of your heart was being ripped away from you and you were powerless against it. Because this was something more than a crush, more than admiration. You loved him. It wasn’t a sudden lightbulb moment, but rather a slow realisation of admission. You loved him. Irrevocably. Possibly irresponsibly. But certainly undeniably. 

“You don’t have to be scared anymore. I’m not dead. I’m not going to die. It’s gonna take time, but I’m okay. And I’m going to be okay.” You implored, and you could almost watch the cogs turning in his head, working on believing you and realising the truth of the situation. 

You. Were. Alive.

He nodded silently, finally accepting what everyone had been trying to tell him for almost a week and a half now. His thumb grazed the tendons of your wrist, the delicate caress sending shivers down your scarred spine. 

“How’re you feeling?” He asked though he couldn’t help thinking it was the most stupid question in the world. 

“Like I just fell over two hundred feet after being blown up.” You responded dryly. Ask obvious questions, get obvious answers. 

Obviously. 

“That checks out.”

“Thank you, Doctor Wolverine.”

How you’d managed to almost die and yet maintain your humour was a mystery to Logan, but it simply added to all the reasons he was completely taken with you. You were easily one of the strongest people he knew, in spite of your own self-consciousness. The way you felt about your wings had already proven that. They were the greatest source of your diffidence, and yet you often said how incomplete you would feel without them. He saw how you battled, every day, between loving and hating them. Not many people did, but he did. 

Perhaps that was because, to him, you were the focal point of every conversation. The spotlight in the room. The brightest star in the sky. Not only did he see you, but he saw you. 

That was when he remembered your words from earlier. ‘My wings’ve seen worse…’   

“What did you mean?”

“When?”

“When you said your wings have been worse. What did you mean?” 

Logan knew he’d struck a nerve when your wry humour dissolved from your face, and he watched you withdraw back into your own mind, another silence creating a barrier between you. It was another mental battle. He could see it. And he could only hazard a guess that you were struggling between opening yourself up to whatever traumas you’d experienced in the past, or staying closed and comfortable. 

“This world is cruel and cold to people like us…” your voice was barely audible, and despite his enhanced hearing, Logan found himself shifting closer, drawn in by your siren’s whisper. “I was always jealous of people who could hide their mutation. Or mutations that didn’t take on a physical appearance, anyway. Because hiding something like phasing or shapeshifting is easy. Hiding a pair of giant fucking wings? Get’s a little harder when not everyone around you is very accepting…” you were being vague on purpose. Taking yourself back to the day Charles found you was never easy, and it was this exact reason why you kept this to yourself. Only he knew what happened, and Jean was the only other one who’d seen your condition. 

Logan fought the urge to run his fingers through your feathers, slightly worried it would hurt you more than it would soothe you, since most of your secondary feathers had been burned away or torn off, and the exposed ligaments had been covered in bandages. You took a breath before you continued. “The neighbourhood where I lived wasn’t exactly high-end, and less than welcoming to mutants. I used to listen to a lot of music when I left my apartment, it helped to drown out the insults and hatred but uh, it also prevented me from hearing anyone following me.

“It was stupid. I was tired and forgot to lock my fucking door before I fell asleep that night. Such an idiot. And I paid the price. I can’t really remember exactly when it happened, and it’s all sort of a blur to be honest. I never saw their faces either, and I only knew they were there when they shoved a gag between my teeth and held me down, jeering about me being a disgusting mutant, the usual bullshit…” you trailed off, your words sticking to your throat like molasses as you recounted possibly the most traumatic moment of your life. Narrowly holding the top spot after recent events. “They uh, tried to sever them. My wings. Used a carving knife or a paring knife, hell it could have been a butter knife for all I knew. But it hurt. And I couldn’t fight them off. I probably still have the scars. They were barely attached by the time they were startled by something and took off.”

Logan placed his hand against your cheek, gently smoothing away the stray tear sliding down the side of your face with the pad of his thumb. 

“That’s why you don’t sleep on your front?”

“That’s why I don’t sleep on my front,” You affirmed with a timid nod, and Logan felt his heart clench painfully. He always wondered where your intense passion for making the world a safer place came from. “At least,” you continued quietly. “Until you.”

His eyes widened a fraction, and it wasn’t hard to piece together what you meant. The night, two days before the mission. That was the first time you’d slept on your front since Charles and Jean found you all those years ago. That was why you mentioned it. That was why you were so adamant about it. 

Your vulnerability was taken advantage of and used to further the cycle of hatred and violence. 

“Sweetheart…” 

You couldn’t bear to hear the slight break in his voice, the horrified empathy creasing his brows. “So yeah. That’s what I meant. When I said they’ve been through worse. So actually, this really isn’t all that bad. They’ll recover. They did last time. Might be a while before I can fly again but I think I’m okay with that for a while, not sure I want to–” your rambling was cut short by the sudden decrease of proximity between the two of you. Was he always this close? Or had he shifted? Had you simply not noticed? Too lost in your second trip down trauma lane in the space of twenty minutes? You could feel his steady breaths fanning your cheeks.

“You’re safe. With me. An’ nothin’ like that will ever happen again. ‘M gonna look after you, angel. Promise.” His eyes flickered from your gaze, down to your lips, and back up in a silent request, and your body answered for you. Your eyes fluttered closed, heart igniting at the first graze of his soft lips against yours, the pain in your back forgotten as your skin prickled with shivers. 

The moment he felt you lean up into him as much as you could, Logan gasped through his nose, his fingers skirting up the side of your neck, pausing to feel your pulse before continuing to brace his palm against your jaw. He wanted to feel you, in any way he could and in any way you would let him, your lips dancing with his languidly. And through the salves and disinfectant, through the blood and the grease, the smoke clinging to your hair, he could just smell you. Amber and wood oak swirled through his senses, and he didn’t think it fair that you smelled like a fucking autumnal forest. 

You tried to push yourself up further toward him, a fresh wave of yearning hitting you like a fall from over two hundred feet, but your ribs barked in sharp protest, and you flinched back with a harsh hiss, your features scrunching in pain.

“Easy there, angel. ‘M not goin’ anywhere.” He breathed, and whilst you could detect genuine concern in his tone, there was also a hint of smug satisfaction.

“Sorry… got kinda carried away.” You clamped your lips together at his soft chuckle, finding immeasurable comfort in the way his thumb smoothed along your under-eye.”

“Been wantin’ to do that for a while…” He murmured against your lips, and you drew back as far as you could without jostling your back too much.

“Really? How long?”

“Round a year or so.”

You blanched. “A year!?”

“Give or take a few months,” he shrugged, unable to tame the delicious grin pulling at his lips. 

“And you didn’t think to do anything?” You asked incredulously, eyes flicking between his, unable to decide just where they wanted to settle. 

“Inappropriate in the workplace.” He shrugged nonchalantly, and your eyes widened further. 

“We live under the same roof! This isn’t just a workplace.”

“Potato pot-ah-to.”

“No! Potato potato. It’s the same thing!”

He raised a sly brow. “Didn’t see ya pull back, angel. How long’ve you wanted this then?”

You clamped your lips shut, your face a picture of false irritation as he turned your own accusations back onto you, a triumphant glint dancing in his eye. “Thought s’much.”

A huff brushed his chin, though you couldn’t tame your guilty smile for long. Yes, he was absolutely right. You’d wanted to do that for far longer than you cared to admit. And the phrase ‘good things come to those who wait’ couldn’t ring more true. Though you couldn’t help thinking they should change the phrase slightly. 

‘Good things come to those who nearly die’. Yeah, that sounded more accurate. 

Your head lulled against his hand, a tugging wave of exhaustion pulling at your mind, your eyes feeling heavy with sleep. It was strange. Usually, you found it so difficult to find rest, tossing and turning until you simply couldn’t take it anymore. But not in his presence. Not when Logan was with you. 

He hummed a soft, fond smile of understanding, pulling the chair closer to the bed so he could still be near you. Pressing his lips to your forehead, you sighed in contentment, your hand holding his arm in a soft grip, silently asking him not to go anywhere. But you didn’t need to. He had no plans on leaving you anytime soon. 

“Sleep, angel. ‘M here. You’re safe.”

[extinctlesspains]

Hi, could you do that Alex and the reader are caught kissing by friends (the reader is from miyagi-do) pleaseee 🙏🏻😭 i need more fics about him

( sorry english is not my first language 😭😭)

𝐶𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡: 𝐴𝑥𝑒𝑙 𝐾𝑜𝑣𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑐

𝐵𝑦 𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠

»»——⍟——««

»»——⍟——««

𝑃𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔: 𝐴𝑥𝑒𝑙 𝐾𝑜𝑣𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑐 𝑥 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟

𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑟𝑒: 𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑓𝑓 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑠𝑡

𝑆𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑦:𝐼𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑑𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑒𝑘𝑎𝑖 𝑇𝑎𝑖𝑘𝑎𝑖 𝑡𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑑𝑜𝑗𝑜𝑠—𝐴𝑥𝑒𝑙 𝑎 𝑓𝑖𝑒����𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑟𝑜𝑛 𝐷𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑖𝑦𝑎𝑔𝑖-𝐷𝑜—𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑏𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑛 𝑚𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡. 𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝑖𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒.

𝑊𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠: 𝐾𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑌/𝑛.

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It was the night before the first event in the Sekai Taikai tournament, and the training room buzzed with the sound of punches, kicks, and the clinking of shin guards. You were deep in focus, perfecting a high block when you saw him. Axel. He was leaning against the wall near the heavy bags, arms crossed, watching you with that cocky smirk that always made your heart race.

Axel was from the Iron Dragons, a dojo as far from Miyagi-Do’s principles as you could get. They fought dirty, aggressive, and without the same respect for balance and humility that Mr. Miyagi had taught you. And yet, whenever you sparred with him—during the rare moments you found yourselves in the same spaces—it felt different. Intense. He didn’t care that you were from Miyagi-Do, and you didn’t care that he was from a rival dojo.

The chemistry between you two was undeniable. But every time you sparred, you reminded yourself that this was a competition. A battle of ideologies. Nothing more.

"Need a hand with that?" Axel’s voice broke through your thoughts.

You glanced up, annoyed at how easily he always seemed to sneak up on you. "I’m fine, Axel. Just working on my form."

He grinned, stepping closer. "I’m sure you are. But I’ve got a few tricks I could show you. You know, to mix things up a bit."

You shook your head, trying to focus, but he was already standing beside you, his presence making the air feel heavier. "Not interested," you muttered, though the truth was, part of you was intrigued.

Axel wasn’t the type to give up easily. He was a fighter, always pressing, always pushing the boundaries. He stepped in front of you, blocking your view of the mirror. "You know, you’re the only one here who still believes in all that Miyagi-Do zen stuff," he said, voice low and teasing. "I don’t get it. But it’s... kinda cute."

Your heart skipped a beat. You couldn’t explain why, but hearing him say that made everything inside you tighten. "I’m focused on what works," you replied, trying to keep your composure.

But before you could say anything else, he stepped forward, his hand brushing against yours. The contact was electric, sending a surge of warmth up your arm. You looked up at him, and in his eyes, you saw it—the same desire to break free from the rules, to explore something unspoken. Something neither of you could deny.

You both stood there for a beat too long. And then, without thinking, you leaned in. The kiss came out of nowhere, desperate and passionate, as if the world itself had paused. His hands found your waist, pulling you closer, and for a moment, there was no dojo rivalry, no rules—just the heat of the moment.

But then the door creaked open, and you both pulled apart instantly.

“Oh my God,” Sam's voice rang out, shock and disbelief evident on her face as she stood with Miguel and Robby in the doorway. "What the hell are you two doing?"

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The next day, you walked into the training room to get some stretching done before the tournament, your head spinning from the night before. The kiss still burned on your lips, and you couldn't escape the weight of it. Every glance from your friends, every quiet murmur in the room felt like they knew, like they were waiting for you to crack.

Johnny, however, didn’t waste time beating around the bush. As soon as he saw you, he stormed over, his eyes filled with an angry fire. "We need to talk," he said, grabbing you by the arm and pulling you aside.

You winced as he let go, feeling everyone’s eyes on you. "What’s going on with you? You're a Miyagi-Do student, not some Iron Dragons traitor!" he barked, his voice low but sharp.

You met his gaze, trying to stay calm. "I didn’t do anything wrong."

Johnny’s frown deepened. "Then why were you kissing Axel? Do you have any idea what this could do to the dojo, to the whole damn tournament?"

"I—" You opened your mouth, but the words didn’t come. What was there to say? That you had no control over the way you felt? That, despite everything, the chemistry between you two had just been... undeniable? It didn’t seem like something Johnny would understand.

From across the room, you caught Miguel’s eyes. He looked concerned, his brows furrowed as he approached. "It’s not just about the kiss," Miguel said quietly, placing a hand on your shoulder. "It’s about trust. We’re family, and this—this puts that in jeopardy."

"Don’t you think I know that?" you snapped, frustration bubbling over. "I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did. And now I’m dealing with it."

Sam, who had been standing at the doorway watching the entire exchange, stepped forward. "So, what now? Are you going to choose him over us?"

The question hit you like a punch to the gut. It wasn’t just a question of loyalty to Miyagi-Do anymore; it was about what you were willing to sacrifice for someone else.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That night, you found yourself in the gym again. You hadn’t meant to come here, but something pulled you back. Axel was already there, practicing his roundhouse kicks in front of the mirror. He didn’t notice you at first, but when he did, he didn’t hesitate.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. He didn’t sound angry, just… resigned.

“I’m not avoiding you,” you replied quickly, though the words felt false. “It’s just... complicated.”

Axel cocked his head, his eyes narrowing with a mix of confusion and amusement. “Complicated? You kissed me, but now it’s complicated?”

You winced. “It’s not that simple. You’re from the Iron Dragons, and I’m from Miyagi-Do. Johnny’s furious. My whole team is looking at me like I’ve betrayed them.”

He smirked. “So what? Screw what they think. What about what you want?”

You took a step back, feeling the pressure in the air between you. “I don’t even know what I want anymore.”

For a long moment, Axel said nothing. Then, he stepped closer, his voice quieter. “I don’t care what your dojo says, and I don’t care what mine says. I’m not backing down from this... from you.”

Your heart fluttered, and for the first time in days, you didn’t feel like you were carrying the weight of the world. "What if they don’t accept us? What if we’re not meant to be together?"

Axel leaned in close, his breath warm on your skin. "Then we make our own rules."

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The Sekai Taikai tournament was the culmination of months of rivalry, sweat, and pain. As you faced Axel across the mat in the final match, every part of you screamed at you to focus, to do what you’d been trained to do.

But as the fight wore on, you couldn’t ignore the underlying pull between you two—the way his movements were both aggressive and fluid, like a force you couldn’t fight. Every strike, every block felt more personal than it ever had before.

“You can’t hold back now,” Axel said in a low growl, his eyes fierce as he aimed a punch toward your face.

“I’m not holding back,” you replied, dodging his strike and retaliating with a series of quick jabs.

The crowd cheered as the fight grew more intense, but in that moment, you realized something. This wasn’t just about victory. This was about finding balance, not just in the fight, but in your life.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The match ended in a draw, but it felt like so much more than that. In the silence that followed, you both stood there, bruised but not broken.

When you finally faced each other off the mat, you didn’t need words. You both knew that whatever came next, you couldn’t hide anymore.

Axel’s eyes softened. “So… what now?”

You took a deep breath, the decision finally clear in your mind. "We move forward," you said, voice steady. "Together. No matter what anyone else says."

And for the first time, you felt at peace.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Weeks later, things between you and Axel were still a secret, but now it was your secret. The rivalry between Miyagi-Do and Iron Dragons hadn't vanished, but it had transformed into something different—something more personal. You and Axel had found a way to make it work, forging your own path in the chaos of competition and life.

Maybe that was what it was all about, you thought—finding balance, not just in martial arts, but in love, loyalty, and living outside the boundaries that others tried to impose on you.

[winwintea]

tetris

PAIRING ↬ gamer!park jisung x fem!reader (feat. zhong chenle)

TAGS ↬ fluff, action, romance, some angst, hidden feelings, 80s au, video game competitions, unrequited love or so he thought, best friend's girlfriend trope, winwin shows up randomly i love you my winsung anon

SUMMARY ↬ living up to the pressures of becoming a famous tetris player might be hard for a guy like park jisung. but it's much more difficult when the girl he’s got a crush on may actually be his best friend's girlfriend.

WORD COUNT ↬ 10.1k words

AUTHOR’S NOTE ↬ happy birthday queen @viasdreams !!! hope you enjoy as much as i had writing this (i suffered) and thank you to @polarisjisung for usual for being my beta reader <33. also i know tetris came out late 80s and was popular during the early 90s too but for aesthetic purposes im saying 80s

PLAYLIST ↬ saturday night - bay city rollers; tetoris - hiiragi magnetite; jessie’s girl - rick springfield; working for the weekend - loverboy; shoot to thrill - ac/dc; don’t play games - martin jensen; i’m still standing - elton john; cherry bomb - the runaways; hold on tight - aespa; one way or another - blondie; i ran - a flock of seagulls; choose your fighter - ava max

THE FIRST TIME PARK JISUNG PLACED HIS HANDS ON AN ARCADE MACHINE, HE WAS HOOKED.

When he felt the rough texture of the joystick, he felt a tremor in his chest. It wasn’t fear, nor excitement, but something in between. The flicker of the screen pulled him into a world he didn’t yet understand but felt desperate to explore.

The arcade around him was alive, buzzing with the electric hum of machines, the crash of digital waves, and the clatter of coins. Yet, in this moment, all the chaos faded into one singular thing: the falling blocks on the screen.

His fingers hovered over the controls, trembling. When they pressed down, the buttons responded with a slight resistance that grounded him, pulled him into the world on the screen. The joystick was smoother than he expected, gliding under his unsure grip. The first piece—a long, yellow bar—fell into place. Then another. And another.

For Jisung, the world seemed to shift with each line he cleared. These weren’t just blocks; they were each a piece of himself, shifting and rearranging to fit into something bigger. Each ping from the machine was a quiet reassurance, telling him that for once, he was doing something right.

The weight of his usual insecurities were being lifted, then replaced by an unfamiliar confidence. His heart raced, not from anxiety but from a kind of joy he didn’t think he was allowed to feel. This machine didn’t care about how shy he was, how awkward his words sounded, or how he tended to shrink away when the world got too loud. All it asked was that he see the shapes, find the patterns, and keep going.

For the first time in his life, he felt like he’d found something. A purpose.

Jisung didn’t think of himself as anything special, and most of the time, neither did anyone else. He was the kind of person who slipped into a room without making a sound, his lanky frame perpetually hunched as if apologizing for taking up space. His dark hair often fell into his eyes, a convenient shield against the world’s attention. At school, he was known only as “that tall, quiet kid.” Teachers liked him for his politeness. Classmates tolerated him for his unobtrusiveness.

His best friend, Chenle, was the exact opposite. The sun to Jisung’s shadow, always shining and dragging Jisung into the light whether he wanted it or not. When Jisung hesitated, Chenle jumped in headfirst, loud and full of laughter. Their friendship didn’t make sense to most people, least of all Jisung, but somehow it worked.

“C’mon, slowpoke!” Chenle called over his shoulder, his voice easily cutting through the noise of the crowded street. “Pixel Haven’s gonna get packed if you don’t move!”

Jisung trailed a few steps behind, his hands stuffed deep into his hoodie pockets. Friday nights at the arcade were a tradition Chenle had started months ago, and Jisung tagged along because… well, because it was Chenle. He didn’t really play the games. Watching Chenle dominate the machines or charm the employees was enough for him.

Pixel Haven came into view, its neon sign glowing pink and blue against the dim evening sky. Inside, the arcade was a sensory overload of flashing lights, cheerful 8-bit melodies, and the unmistakable clink of coins being fed into machines.

Chenle pushed open the door, holding it wide. “Hurry up, man! They got a new game in!”

Jisung shuffled inside, his head immediately dropping down to look at his sneakers. Even though the arcade was bustling with busy teenagers, he felt like every pair of eyes could land on him at any moment. He stuck close to Chenle, who bounded ahead like an excited puppy.

The arcade was Chenle’s kingdom. He knew everyone. He always high-fived the regulars, playfully bantered with his street fighter competitors, and was always trying to introduce someone to Jisung. But Jisung was content being a silent observer, finding a quiet corner to lean against while Chenle made his rounds.

Unfortunately for Jisung, Chenle had other plans.

“Hey, Jisung, check this out!” Chenle pointed to the brand new Tetris machine, it’s screen cycling through vividly colored blocks. “Bet you’d be good at this.”

Jisung blinked at the machine, his lanky frame stiffening as if the suggestion were a spotlight being aimed at him. “Me?”

“Yeah, you.” Before Jisung could protest, Chenle shoved a quarter into his hand and practically dragged him toward the machine. The crowd around it thinned slightly, making space as Chenle announced, “Alright, people, make way for my boy here. Jisung’s about to show you how it’s done.”

Jisung’s ears burned as a few heads turned toward him. He could already feel the weight of their eyes, his anxiety prickling at the edges of his mind. “Chenle, I—”

“Stop overthinking,” Chenle interrupted, patting his shoulder. “Just play. I promise, you’ll love it.”

Jisung stared at the glowing screen. The cheerful music beckoned him, the falling shapes almost hypnotic. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward, sliding the quarter into the slot. The machine chimed, and the first piece appeared at the top of the screen.

Although this was his first time, the controls felt familiar. The buttons responded with a satisfying click to his every touch, the joystick smooth under his palm. He hesitated for a split second before rotating the first piece and sending it down. It clicked into place.

Then another piece came, and another. His fingers moved instinctively, rotating, shifting, dropping. The lines started clearing, one after the other, and the game's upbeat sounds grew more frequent.

The world around him faded, the noise of the arcade blending into a dull hum. His focus sharpened, each piece fitting perfectly into a strategy that seemed to form effortlessly in his mind. Shapes became patterns, and patterns became solutions.

“Holy shit. He’s actually good,” someone murmured behind him.

“Good? Are you kidding? He’s crushing it!” Chenle exclaimed, his voice cutting through the growing excitement.

Jisung didn’t register their words, his eyes fixed on the screen. The pace quickened, the pieces falling faster, but he kept up. His long fingers danced over the controls, rotating pieces with precision and dropping them into place. A four-line clear flashed on the screen—a Tetris—and the small crowd erupted into cheers.

Jisung blinked, momentarily snapping out of his trance. He looked over his shoulder, startled by the group that had formed behind him. Chenle was at the front, grinning like he’d just won the lottery.

“Keep going!” Chenle yelled. “You’re on fire!”

A small smile tugged at the corners of Jisung’s lips, the rare feeling of pride warming his chest. He turned back to the game, determined to see how far he could go.

For the next few minutes, Jisung played like he was in a world of his own, the lines stacking and clearing in rapid succession. When the inevitable “Game Over” finally flashed on the screen, a ripple of applause broke out behind him.

Jisung stepped back, his cheeks flushed, his heart racing. Chenle clapped him on the back, his laugh loud and contagious. “What did I tell you? Tetris wiz, right here!”

Jisung glanced at the score on the screen—higher than he’d expected, but the number barely mattered. For the first time, he felt like he belonged, like he’d found something he was actually good at.

And judging by the awed looks from the small crowd, they thought so too.

Jisung didn’t know much about you, other than the obvious. You worked the counter at Pixel Haven most nights, moving between tasks with effortless ease. Always handing out quarters, fixing the occasional glitchy machine, and keeping the arcade running smoothly. And, of course, you were Chenle’s girlfriend. That part was impossible to miss.

Chenle had introduced you once, casually slinging his arm around your shoulders as he bragged about beating the high score on Galaga. Jisung remembered offering a small, awkward wave while you smiled politely, your attention more on Chenle than him. Since then, you’d only been a background presence, someone Jisung saw but never really thought about.

Until tonight.

He’d run out of quarters after his third Tetris run and found himself lingering near the counter, clutching a few crumpled bills in his clammy hands. Chenle was off challenging someone at Street Fighter again, leaving Jisung on his own.

You were busy at the counter, sorting a handful of tokens while chatting with another customer. The neon glow from the sign above cast soft shadows across your face, and for a moment, Jisung hesitated. Asking you for change felt… strange. You weren’t just the person behind the counter. You were Chenle’s girlfriend. That fact alone made this simple interaction feel like crossing some unspoken line.

But he needed quarters, so he shuffled forward, his head down, and placed the bills on the counter.

You looked up, and for the first time, your eyes met his directly. “Oh, hey,” you said, your voice light and friendly. “Need some quarters?”

He froze, the words stuck in his throat. You were smiling. Warmly, like you genuinely wanted to help. Jisung nodded, sliding the bills closer to you.

You took them, your fingers brushing his for the briefest moment as you counted out the quarters. “Here you go,” you said, placing them into his outstretched hand. “Good luck out there.”

That smile. It wasn’t just a gesture. It felt different, even if Jisung knew it probably wasn’t. You were like this with everyone, weren’t you? Friendly, approachable, easygoing. It was why Chenle liked you so much.

But still, Jisung felt something shift inside him. Your smile lingered in his mind as he turned away, clutching the quarters tightly in his fist. His chest tightened, but not with the usual pang of nerves. Instead, it was with something he couldn’t quite name.

It was strange, the way that tiny moment replayed in his head as he walked back to the Tetris machine. He told himself it didn’t mean anything. You were just being nice, just doing your job.

But as the night wore on, Jisung found himself glancing toward the counter more often than he meant to. He tried not to think too much about it, but something small and misshapen had taken root in his chest, fragile but undeniably there.

You were Chenle’s girlfriend. He barely knew you. And yet, your kindness had left a mark he couldn’t ignore.

The arcade quickly became Jisung’s second home. Every chance he got—between school, homework, and the occasional group hangout he reluctantly attended—he found himself back at Pixel Haven.

At first, it was a way to pass the time, a distraction from the things that weighed him down. But soon, Tetris became more than that. The falling blocks weren’t just shapes anymore; they were puzzles waiting to be solved, challenges daring him to do better, to think faster. He didn’t just play the game—he immersed himself in it, memorizing patterns, calculating strategies, and finding a strange sense of peace in the rhythmic clearing of lines.

The change didn’t go unnoticed.

“Dude, you’re, like, a full-blown Tetris addict now,” Chenle teased one night, leaning casually against the machine as Jisung started yet another round. His hands were full of snacks he’d grabbed from the counter, and his grin was as wide as ever. “I should start calling you ‘The Tetris Wizard or ‘TetWiz’ for short”.

Jisung flushed, his long fingers hovering over the controls as the pieces began to fall. “I’m not that good,” he muttered, barely audible over the hum of the arcade.

“Are you kidding me?” Chenle laughed, nearly spilling his soda. “You’re insane at this. Like, next-level insane. You’ve got the whole crowd thing going on, too.”

Jisung paused mid-game, glancing over his shoulder. Sure enough, a few regulars had gathered nearby, casually watching his progress. Their murmured admiration sent a wave of heat to his cheeks.

Chenle clapped him on the back. “See? WizKid status.” He took a swig of his drink, then grinned mischievously. “Hey, you know what? There’s a tournament coming up. Local thing. You should totally enter.”

The words hit Jisung like a truck. No, like someone dropped a T-piece on his head. He fumbled with the joystick, sending a block spiraling into the wrong position. “What? No. No way.”

“Why not?” Chenle’s voice rose in playful disbelief. “You’ve been killing it lately. This is your chance to show everyone how good you are. Plus, think of the bragging rights. I’ll tell everyone I trained you.”

Jisung’s heart pounded, the idea of playing in front of a crowd making his palms sweat. He’d barely gotten used to the small groups that gathered at the arcade. A tournament meant real attention. Real pressure.

“I… I don’t think I can,” he stammered, his gaze fixed on the screen.

Chenle rolled his eyes but didn’t push. “Alright, alright. Baby steps, TetWiz. But think about it, okay? You’d crush it.”

Jisung nodded absently, but the thought lingered long after Chenle wandered off to bother someone else. A tournament? It seemed impossible, unthinkable. Yet, as he continued to play, clearing line after line with growing precision, a small, persistent voice in the back of his mind whispered something different: What if you could?

The flyer for the Pixel Haven Tetris Tournament taunted Jisung from his desk, its bright colors and bold letters shouting promises of prizes, glory, and recognition. He’d stared at it for days, the weight of Chenle’s encouragement and your casual, kind words tipping the scales of his indecision.

“You’d do great,” you’d said just a few nights ago when Chenle joked about Jisung’s reluctance. There wasn’t much to your comment—just a simple smile as you slid quarters across the counter. But it stuck with him, a quiet nudge in the direction he wasn’t sure he could take.

When he finally signed up, his hand trembled so much he nearly misspelled his own name.

The tournament day arrived far too quickly. Pixel Haven was louder than ever, filled with spectators and players buzzing with excitement. The Tetris machine had been moved to the center of the arcade, its screen glowing like a beacon under the dim, colorful lights.

Jisung stood at the edge of the crowd, his heart pounding in his chest. His palms were clammy, his legs stiff, and every sound around him felt amplified—quarters clinking, machines chiming, people shouting.

Chenle found him near the snack counter, looking pale and uneasy. “Hey, TetWiz,” he said, clapping Jisung on the shoulder. “Don’t psych yourself out. You’ve got this.”

Jisung shook his head, barely able to meet Chenle’s gaze. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Of course, you can!” Chenle’s voice was loud, confident, and exactly what Jisung wished he could feel. “You’re the best player here. No one’s even close. Just… pretend it’s like any other Friday night.”

“Except with an even bigger crowd watching,” Jisung muttered under his breath.

At that moment, you appeared, slipping out from behind the counter to join Chenle. Your presence was calm, grounding. “You’ve got this,” you said simply, your eyes meeting Jisung’s.

His stomach twisted. You were Chenle’s girlfriend. 

Off-limits. 

But your words carried a strange weight, one that settled the storm in his chest just enough.

The tournament began. Jisung’s hands trembled as he approached the machine, the controls suddenly feeling unfamiliar under his fingers. The room seemed to close in around him as the first piece appeared on the screen.

The opening rounds blurred together, a mix of adrenaline and fear propelling him forward. Each cleared line earned cheers from the crowd, but Jisung barely registered them. His focus tunneled in on the screen, every move a desperate attempt to keep the pieces from piling too high.

By the time he reached the finals, his nerves were raw, his breaths shallow. Chenle stood nearby, shouting encouragement, and you offered a quiet thumbs-up that somehow cut through the noise.

The final match was intense. His opponent was fast, their moves sharp and deliberate. The pieces fell faster than ever, the music speeding up to a frenetic pace that matched Jisung’s racing heart.

You can do this, he told himself, gripping the joystick tightly. He visualized the patterns, the strategies he’d practiced endlessly. The lines cleared one after another, the Tetris flashes lighting up the screen.

When the final piece fell into place, and the victory chime rang out, the room erupted into cheers. Jisung blinked, his mind struggling to catch up with what had just happened.

“You did it!” Chenle shouted, throwing an arm around Jisung’s shoulders. “First place, TetWiz! I told you!”

Jisung stared at the screen, his name flashing in bold letters at the top of the leaderboard. His hands shook—not with fear, but with something new. Pride.

You approached him, your smile soft and genuine. “Congratulations, Jisung. That was amazing.”

He swallowed hard, unable to find the words to respond. But as the applause continued and the weight of the moment settled in, something shifted inside him. For the first time, he allowed himself to believe that maybe, he was capable of more.

Jisung wasn’t sure when it started. The way his chest tightened whenever you were near, or how your smile lingered in his thoughts. Maybe it was during one of those small, fleeting moments when you actually listened to him. Not the way most people did, with polite nods and half-hearted attention, but really listened.

You never looked bored or impatient when he talked. Never when he stumbled over his words trying to explain a tricky T-spin maneuver or the satisfaction of a perfectly timed Tetris. Instead, you leaned on the counter, your eyes warm and curious, asking questions that made him feel like his passion wasn’t just valid but worth sharing.

And that was the problem.

Because as much as he admired you, as much as his chest filled with warmth during those rare conversations, there was always Chenle. Loud, confident, and so completely your match.

Jisung couldn’t deny it: Chenle made you laugh in a way that lit up the whole room. He’d see you together. Your arm looped through Chenle’s, his jokes drawing out those bright, unrestrained giggles. All of it felt like a sharp, twisting ache in his chest.

He hated the feeling. The guilt. The jealousy.

Chenle was his best friend, the person who dragged him out of his shell, cheered him on, and believed in him when he barely believed in himself. And you—kind, patient, radiant—you were Chenle’s girlfriend. That was the unshakable truth.

So Jisung did the only thing he could think of to cope. He played tetris.

Hours at Pixel Haven turned into entire evenings, his focus narrowing to the Tetris machine like it was his lifeline. The rhythm of the game, the familiar patterns and strategies, became his escape. When the blocks fell into place, clearing line after line, the noise in his head quieted.

He didn’t have to think about the way his heart raced when you smiled at him or the pang of envy when you rested your head on Chenle’s shoulder.

Chenle noticed, of course. “Man, you’re really going hard lately,” he said one night, watching Jisung rack up yet another high score. “Not that I’m complaining. You’re basically a celebrity here now.”

Jisung forced a smile, his hands tightening around the joystick. “Just… trying to get better.”

Chenle didn’t press further, but Jisung could feel his gaze shift, a flicker of concern hidden behind his usual grin.

And then there was you.

Sometimes, you’d wander over to the Tetris machine during a quiet moment at the counter, watching him play with that same patient interest that made his heart ache.

“You’re amazing at this,” you’d say, your voice soft and genuine.

And Jisung would mumble a shy thank you, barely able to meet your gaze. He wondered if you noticed how fast his hands moved on the controls when you were nearby, or how the screen blurred just slightly because his focus wavered.

He told himself it didn’t matter. It couldn’t. You were Chenle’s, and he had no right to feel the way he did.

So he buried it, block by block, line by line, throwing himself deeper into the game as if sheer determination could erase the feelings growing stronger with every interaction.

But no matter how many lines he cleared, the ache in his chest remained.

Chenle wasn’t the type to dwell on things. He lived in the moment, taking life as it came, confident and carefree. But lately, something about Jisung had been bothering him.

It wasn’t just the obsessive way Jisung threw himself into Tetris, though that was part of it. Chenle had always known Jisung to be shy and focused, but lately, he seemed… different. Distracted. Like his thoughts were someplace—or with someone—else.

And then there were the looks.

Chenle didn’t want to read too much into it, but he’d caught Jisung’s gaze more than once when you were around. At first, he brushed it off. Jisung was awkward around everyone—why would this be any different? But the more it happened, the harder it was to ignore.

One night, after another long session at Pixel Haven, Chenle finally decided he couldn’t keep quiet.

Jisung was hunched over the Tetris machine, his face illuminated by the screen’s soft glow. The arcade was quieter than usual, most of the crowd having thinned out as the evening wore on. Chenle approached with his usual grin, though this time, it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Hey, TetWiz,” he said casually, leaning against the side of the machine. “Taking over the world one line at a time?”

Jisung glanced at him, his hands never leaving the controls. “Something like that,” he mumbled.

Chenle studied him for a moment, his grin fading. “You know,” he began, his tone light but laced with something sharper, “you’ve been acting kind of weird lately.”

Jisung’s fingers faltered, and the game over screen flashed before he could recover. He let out a quiet sigh, stepping back from the machine. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Chenle said, crossing his arms, “you’ve been avoiding me, for one. And for another… I’ve noticed the way you look at her.”

Jisung froze, his heart sinking. “What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Chenle raised an eyebrow. “Don’t play dumb, Jisung. You think I haven’t seen it? The way you watch her when you think no one’s looking? How you act all nervous when she’s around? Come on, man. You’re my best friend. If there’s something going on, just tell me.”

Panic surged in Jisung’s chest. He shook his head quickly, his gaze dropping to the floor. “There’s nothing going on,” he said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “I don’t… I don’t feel that way about her.”

Chenle’s eyes narrowed, his usual easy going demeanor slipping away. That wasn’t what he was suspecting. He actually thought you had said something to Jisung that made him uncomfortable. But having feelings for you? Chenle forgot that was even an option. He suddenly felt a surge of jealousy. “Jisung, I’m not stupid. I know you better than anyone.”

“I don’t!” Jisung’s voice rose slightly, the desperation clear. “I—I swear, Chenle. It’s not like that.”

The tension hung heavy between them, the arcade’s neon lights casting sharp shadows across their faces.

Chenle exhaled slowly, his expression softening just a little. “Look, I trust her, okay? I trust you. But if there’s something you’re not telling me… just be honest. Don’t let this mess things up.”

Jisung’s throat tightened, guilt clawing at his insides. He wanted to tell the truth, to admit the feelings he’d tried so hard to bury. But the fear of losing Chenle—his best friend, his biggest supporter—was too much to bear.

“There’s nothing to tell,” he said quietly, his hands clenched at his sides.

Chenle studied him for a long moment, his jaw tightening. Finally, he nodded, though the tension in his posture remained. “Alright. If you say so.”

But as he walked away, leaving Jisung alone by the Tetris machine, the rift between them felt wider than ever.

For the first time in years, Jisung wasn’t sure if Chenle still believed in him—or if he even believed in himself.

The state Tetris championship was a dream Jisung never dared to dream. And now, as his name sat proudly on the qualifying list, it felt more like a nightmare.

The arcade was quiet that night, the usual hum of voices replaced by the occasional beep of a forgotten pinball machine. Jisung sat slumped on a bench near the Tetris machine, the glow of the screen casting long shadows across his face. His hands fidgeted with the crumpled flyer announcing the championships, the bold letters seeming to mock him.

State Champion. The words felt impossibly big, like they belonged to someone else.

The weight of it all—the expectations, the pressure, the growing distance between him and Chenle—pressed down on him like a heavy block he couldn’t clear. His chest felt tight, his thoughts spiraling in an endless loop of self-doubt.

He didn’t even hear you approach.

“You okay?”

Your voice was soft, cutting through the quiet like a gentle melody. Jisung jumped, his head snapping up to see you standing nearby, concern etched across your features.

“I’m fine,” he said quickly, but the tremor in his voice betrayed him.

You didn’t buy it. Instead, you sat down on the bench beside him, leaving just enough space to respect his shyness. You glanced at the flyer in his hands, then back at him.

“It’s a big deal, huh?” you said, your tone light but understanding.

Jisung hesitated, his gaze dropping to the floor. “It’s too big,” he admitted quietly. “I… I don’t think I can do it.”

The words felt like a confession, raw and vulnerable. He didn’t know why he was telling you this. Maybe it was the way you always seemed to listen without judgment, or the way your presence felt steady and safe.

You tilted your head, your eyes warm. “Why not?”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Because… because what if I mess up? What if I let everyone down? Chenle’s been calling me a ‘wizard,’ hyping me up to everyone. People actually watch me now, like I’m supposed to be… someone. But I’m not. I’m just…”

“Jisung,” you finished gently.

He nodded, his throat tight. “Yeah. Just Jisung. And I don’t think just Jisung is good enough for this.”

For a moment, you didn’t say anything. The hum of the arcade filled the silence, a soft, steady rhythm that seemed to match his unsteady breathing.

Then, you leaned forward, your voice quiet but firm. “You know, when I watch you play, it’s not just about the score or the tournament or any of that. It’s the way you light up when you’re in the zone, like nothing else matters. It’s like… you’re in your own world, and it’s incredible to see.”

Jisung blinked, his heart skipping a beat. “I… I don’t know,” he stammered.

“You don’t have to know right now,” you said with a small smile. “But Jisung, this isn’t about being a wizard or a champion or whatever anyone else thinks. It’s about you. Your love for this game, your talent. That’s what matters. Not winning. Just you doing what you love.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, his voice barely audible. Jisung’s heart raced as your words lingered in the air, wrapping around him like a lifeline. He hadn’t expected you to understand him so completely, let alone say the exact thing he needed to hear.

For a brief moment, he forgot about everything else. The tournament, the pressure, even Chenle. All he could focus on was you. The warmth in your voice, the way you looked at him like he was someone worth believing in.

The weight in his chest shifted, and before he knew it, his thoughts spilled over.

“I—” He paused, the words catching in his throat.

You tilted your head, curious but patient, your expression inviting him to continue.

He could feel it, the overwhelming urge to tell you. To say something, anything, about the way he felt—the way you made him feel. How his heart ached and soared all at once whenever you were near.

But then, just as quickly, reality crashed back in.

Chenle. His best friend. Your boyfriend.

Jisung swallowed hard, his jaw tightening. He couldn’t do it. No matter how much his heart screamed at him to say the truth, he couldn’t betray Chenle like that.

“It’s nothing,” he said quickly, his voice barely steady. He forced a smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Thanks. For, you know… everything.”

Your smile softened, and you nodded, as if sensing that he wasn’t ready to say more. “Anytime,” you replied, standing up to head back to the counter.

Jisung watched you go, his chest heavy with unspoken words. He let out a shaky breath, his hands clenching the crumpled flyer in his lap.

But he wasn’t the only one watching.

Unbeknownst to either of you, Chenle stood near the doorway, hidden by the dim light and arcade cabinets. He had arrived just moments ago, intending to meet Jisung and hang out like they always did. But instead, he found himself rooted to the spot, watching the two of you.

At first, it didn’t seem like much—just a quiet conversation between friends. But the way Jisung looked at you… it wasn’t hard for Chenle to see what was really going on.

It wasn’t the look of someone simply grateful for support. It was something deeper, more vulnerable. Something Chenle had never seen in Jisung before.

His chest tightened, a mixture of emotions swirling within him. He wasn’t angry—not yet. But there was a pang of something sharp and unfamiliar, like jealousy’s distant cousin.

He trusted you, and he trusted Jisung. But trust didn’t erase what he had just seen.

Chenle stepped back into the shadows, his thoughts racing. He couldn’t shake the image of Jisung’s expression—the way his gaze lingered on you, filled with something Chenle couldn’t quite name but knew wasn’t meant for him.

For the first time, Chenle felt uncertain. About Jisung. About you. About everything.

And as he walked away from the arcade that night, the unspoken tension between the three of you began to grow, pulling tighter with each passing moment.

The auditorium buzzed with energy, the hum of anticipation vibrating through the air as rows of arcade cabinets lined the stage, each boasting the Tetris logo in bright neon. Competitors adjusted their machines, the crowd murmured excitedly, and Jisung stood frozen at the edge of it all, feeling impossibly small.

The state Tetris championship. He was really here.

Jisung’s stomach churned, his nerves nearly overtaking him. He gripped the strap of his backpack, his fingers twitching with a restless energy. His mind wasn’t just crowded with thoughts of the game but with everything else—Chenle, you, the weight of unspoken feelings.

Before he could spiral any further, a voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Hey, you okay?”

Jisung blinked and turned to see a tall, relaxed guy about a few years older standing next to him. The stranger held a can of pop, his messy hair framing a face that somehow managed to look both half-asleep and mildly curious.

“I—uh…” Jisung stammered, caught off guard.

“You look like you’re about to throw up,” the stranger said bluntly, taking a sip of his pop. “Big deal tournament jitters?”

Jisung hesitated, but something about the guy’s laid-back demeanor made him exhale a little. “Yeah, kind of,” he admitted.

“Let me guess,” the stranger said, leaning against a nearby wall. “Scared you’ll lose? Or scared you’ll win and, like, your entire life will change forever?”

“Both,” Jisung muttered.

The stranger raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. “Yeah, fair. Tetris is wild like that.”

Something about his casual tone loosened Jisung’s tongue. Before he knew it, he was rambling.

“It’s not just the game,” he confessed, the words tumbling out. “It’s everything else. My best friend…he’s been supporting me, but I think I’ve messed things up between us. And then there’s this girl…” His voice trailed off, his ears burning.

The stranger tilted his head. “Oh, so it’s love and Tetris. Double whammy.”

Jisung winced. “I don’t know what to do. I like her, but she’s with my best friend, and I feel like the worst person in the world. And now I’m here, and I’m supposed to play like none of this matters, but it does.”

The stranger stared at him for a moment, then sighed, setting down his soda. “Okay, look. I’m not great at advice, but here’s what I’ve got: You’re not gonna fix your love life today. But this tournament? It’s yours. You’ve got one job—play your absolute fucking best. Worry about the rest later.”

Jisung blinked, the simplicity of the advice sinking in. “That’s it?” 

“Yep.” The stranger smirked. “Oh, and maybe stop thinking about her for like, five seconds while you play. Otherwise, you’ll never clear a line.”

Despite himself, Jisung let out a nervous laugh. “Thanks, uh…”

“Sicheng,” the guy said, giving a small wave before walking off with his soda.

Jisung stood there for a moment, the stranger’s words echoing in his head. One job. Play your absolute fucking best.

The announcement of his name jolted him back to reality. Heart pounding, he made his way to the stage, the crowd’s cheers swelling around him.

He spotted Chenle instantly, standing in the front row and waving wildly, his energy uncontainable. “Go, TetWiz!” Chenle yelled, his voice cutting through the noise.

Jisung’s chest tightened. Despite everything, the tension, the doubts, Chenle was still there, cheering him on.

And then he saw you, standing beside Chenle. Your smile was quieter, softer, but it carried the same weight of belief that you’d shown him back at Pixel Haven. Your eyes met his, and you gave a small, encouraging nod.

Jisung took a deep breath, his hands gripping the controls as he sat down.

The countdown began.

Three.

The noise of the crowd faded away.

Two.

His fingers hovered over the buttons, his mind sharpening to a single point of focus.

One.

Play your absolute fucking best.

The game began, the familiar shapes dropping from the top of the screen like old friends. His nervousness melted away as he found his rhythm, the blocks slotting into place with satisfying precision.

The crowd roared as he cleared line after line, the tension building with each level. But Jisung didn’t hear it. For the first time in weeks, his mind was clear, his focus solely on the game.

This wasn’t about Chenle, or you, or even the title. This was about Jisung—the quiet boy who found a spark of something extraordinary in the chaos of falling blocks.

Then the final round began, and the stakes had never felt higher. Jisung sat at the machine, his hands steady but his heart pounding as the screen lit up with the familiar grid. Across from him, his opponent—a seasoned Tetris player with years of experience—cracked their knuckles, exuding a calm confidence that only added to Jisung’s nerves.

The crowd quieted as the final countdown began again.

Three.

Jisung tightened his grip on the joystick.

Two.

His gaze locked on the screen, blocking out everything else.

One.

The pieces started to fall, faster than in any game he’d played before. The early levels felt manageable, his fingers moving on autopilot as he cleared lines with precision. But as the speed increased, so did the tension.

His opponent was good. Better than anyone Jisung had ever faced. They kept pace with him, their screen just as clear, their movements just as calculated. It wasn’t just a game anymore; it was a test of endurance, strategy, and nerves.

The minutes stretched on, each line cleared pushing Jisung further into uncharted territory. His heart raced as he reached the kill screen level—the point where the game’s speed maxed out, and most players couldn’t keep up.

Most players.

Jisung’s vision narrowed, his world shrinking to the grid in front of him. His fingers danced over the controls, rotating and dropping pieces with a precision that felt almost otherworldly. The crowd was a distant roar, his opponent a vague shadow in his peripheral vision.

He wasn’t thinking anymore; he was flowing.

When the final piece dropped into place, clearing a line and bringing his score to a record-breaking high, the machine emitted a triumphant chime.

For a moment, there was silence.

Then, the auditorium erupted.

The crowd leaped to their feet, cheering and clapping, the noise echoing off the walls. Lights flashed, cameras clicked, and Jisung sat there, stunned, as the reality of what he’d just accomplished began to sink in.

He’d won.

Not just the championship, but something deeper. For the first time, Jisung felt the rush of pride, not just for the victory but for the journey that had brought him here.

Chenle’s voice cut through the chaos, louder than anyone else’s. “You did it, Ji! He fucking did it!”

Jisung turned to see his best friend grinning so widely it looked like his face might split in two. Despite the tension between them, Chenle’s joy was pure and infectious.

And then his eyes found you.

You weren’t shouting or jumping like the others, but the pride in your expression was unmistakable. You clapped along with the crowd, your smile warm and genuine as your gaze met his.

Jisung’s chest swelled, the mix of emotions nearly overwhelming. He stood slowly, his legs shaky, and accepted the medal from the tournament official with trembling hands. The announcer declared his name, calling him a prodigy, a champion, but none of it felt as real as the faces in the crowd—Chenle, you, and everyone who had supported him.

As the applause continued, Jisung looked back at the Tetris screen, now frozen on his record-breaking score. For the first time, he saw himself not as “just Jisung,” but as someone capable of achieving something extraordinary.

The crowd had finally begun to disperse, the cheers fading into the background as competitors and spectators alike spilled out into the night. Jisung stayed behind, lingering near the now-quiet Tetris machine. His medal hung heavy around his neck, a tangible reminder that this wasn’t just a dream.

He turned the medal over in his hands, his mind still reeling. He should have been basking in the glow of his victory, but his thoughts kept circling back to you. How your smile had stood out even among the applause. How your quiet presence had kept him grounded.

“Jisung?”

Your voice startled him, and he looked up to see you standing a few feet away, hands tucked into the pockets of your jacket. The faint hum of the arcade machines illuminated your face in soft, flickering light.

“Oh, hey,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

You stepped closer, your gaze falling on the medal around his neck. “Congratulations,” you said, your smile warm but understated, as though you understood he wasn’t one for grand celebrations. “You were incredible out there.”

His cheeks flushed, and he looked away, scratching the back of his neck. “Thanks. I… I still can’t believe it.”

“You should,” you replied, your tone gentle but firm. “You worked so hard for this. You deserve it.”

The sincerity in your voice sent a wave of emotion through him, and he found himself meeting your eyes. For a moment, everything else fell away. The noise of the arcade, the lingering spectators, even Chenle.

“It means a lot,” he murmured, “that you were here.”

You smiled softly, stepping even closer. “Of course I was. I wasn’t going to miss this. You’re… special, Jisung. You have something really rare. Not just your talent, but the way you put your heart into everything you do.”

Your words hit him like a gentle but powerful wave, and for the first time, Jisung felt like you saw him, not as Chenle’s shy best friend, not as the Tetris Wizard, but as him.

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but the words stuck in his throat. Instead, he reached up and touched the medal lightly, as if offering it to you.

“This… it’s not just mine,” he said quietly. “You helped me get here. You believed in me when I didn’t.”

You shook your head, your smile deepening. “That was all you, Jisung. I just… reminded you what you already knew.”

The air between you shifted, the unspoken feelings thickening the silence. It wasn’t the boisterous, high-energy dynamic you had with Chenle. It was quieter, steadier, like a river carving its way through stone.

You reached out then, your fingers brushing his lightly as you adjusted the medal around his neck. The small, intimate gesture sent his heart racing, but he didn’t pull away.

“You’re going to do even greater things,” you said softly, your voice carrying a certainty that made his chest ache.

For a fleeting moment, Jisung thought about telling you everything. Telling you how much he cared for you, and how much this moment meant to him. But he stopped himself, the memory of Chenle’s unwavering cheers still fresh in his mind.

Instead, he held your gaze and said, “Thanks. For… everything.”

Your smile lingered as you stepped back, leaving a small but undeniable space between you. “You’ve got this, Jisung. Don’t forget that.”

And with that, you turned and walked away, leaving him standing there, the warmth of your touch still buzzing on his skin.

Jisung let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, his hands brushing the medal around his neck. His feelings for you weren’t just a crush. They were something deeper, something that scared and exhilarated him in equal measure.

But for now, he would hold onto the moment, replaying your words in his mind like his favorite song.

As you disappeared into the crowd, Jisung stayed rooted to the spot, the medal’s weight now feeling symbolic of something much heavier. His fingers grazed the cool metal, his thoughts swirling in an uncontrollable storm.

He should have felt elated, on top of the world. And part of him did. But the other part felt like he was standing on the edge of something far scarier than any Tetris grid.

She believes in me. She sees me.

The thought filled him with a quiet joy, but it was quickly followed by a pang of guilt. Chenle had been there too, cheering the loudest, always his most loyal supporter. And Chenle was your boyfriend.

Jisung closed his eyes, trying to silence the war inside him. How could he feel this way about you while knowing it wasn’t his place? He’d spent years being the guy who didn’t take up space, who stayed on the sidelines, who let others shine. Was it selfish to want something or someone so badly now?

“Hey, champ.”

The voice startled Jisung, jerking him out of his spiraling thoughts. He turned to see the familiar figure of Sicheng standing a few feet away.

“I, uh…” Jisung stammered, wiping his palms on his jeans. “Didn’t know you were still here.”

Sicheng shrugged, “Yeah, well, figured I’d stick around and see how the hero handles his post-victory glow. Looks like you’re more ‘existential crisis’ than ‘glow,’ though.”

Jisung blinked, unsure whether to laugh or deny it. “It’s… complicated,” he admitted, his shoulders slumping.

Sicheng nodded as if he understood completely. “Love and Tetris, man. Both are way harder than they look.”

Jisung couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped him, the tension in his chest easing just a little. “I didn’t say it was about that.”

“You didn’t have to.” Sicheng grinned, leaning against a nearby arcade machine. “You’ve got that look. You know, the one that says, ‘I’m hopelessly in love and it’s ruining my life.’”

Jisung groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to someone as wise and experienced as me,” Sicheng said, his tone deadpan.

Jisung peeked at him through his fingers. “What would you do, then? If you were me?”

Sicheng tilted his head thoughtfully, “I’d probably mess it up completely, to be honest. But here’s the thing—you’re not me. You’ve already done the hard part. You put yourself out there tonight. You faced something scary and came out on top. Maybe it’s time you do the same with… other things.”

Jisung frowned, the words sinking in. “But what if it goes wrong? What if I lose what I already have?”

Sicheng shrugged. “Maybe you will. Or maybe you won’t. But if you keep letting fear decide everything, you’re just gonna stay stuck at the start screen forever. And trust me, that’s no way to play.”

Jisung stared at him, the simplicity of his words somehow cutting through the noise in his head. “You’re… surprisingly good at this,” he said, half-joking.

“I have my moments.” Sicheng smirked, pushing himself off the arcade machine. “Anyway, I’m out. Congrats again, champ. And, uh, good luck with… whatever you decide.”

As Sicheng walked off, Jisung found himself standing a little straighter. The stranger’s words had left him with no concrete answers, but maybe that was the point.

Jisung glanced down at the medal one last time before tucking it under his shirt. For now, he’d focus on the present. The victory he’d earned and the path it was opening up.

But deep down, he knew that the harder game was just beginning.

Jisung didn’t see Chenle after the championship that night. 

The victory should have been enough. It was everything he’d worked for, proof that he wasn’t just the quiet kid in the background. But his mind kept circling back to you—your smile, your words, the warmth in your eyes that seemed to see right through his fears.

Why does it feel like this isn’t enough?

Jisung sighed, his heart heavy with the weight of unspoken emotions. He thought about Chenle. The guilt gnawed at him. Chenle had cheered for him louder than anyone, had believed in him when he couldn’t believe in himself. And yet, every time Jisung saw you two together, it felt like a knife twisting in his chest.

He shook his head, trying to push the thoughts away. This isn’t fair to Chenle. He deserves better than this.

But the memory of your touch, the way your voice softened when you spoke to him, was impossible to ignore. It wasn’t just a crush. It was something deeper, something that made him feel seen in a way he never had before.

“Hey, Wiz.”

Jisung jumped at the voice, turning to see Chenle standing behind him. His best friend’s grin was still as bright as ever, but there was something different in his eyes, something quieter, more serious.

“Oh, hey,” Jisung mumbled, trying to mask the whirlwind of emotions on his face. “What’s up?”

Chenle didn’t answer right away. Instead, he gestured toward the exit. “Come on. Let’s talk.”

Jisung’s stomach sank, but he nodded, following Chenle out into the cool night air. The buzz of the arcade faded behind them as they walked a short distance to a nearby bench. Chenle flopped down first, his usual energy replaced by a rare stillness.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Jisung fidgeted with the edge of his medal ribbon, waiting for Chenle to break the silence.

“I saw you,” Chenle finally said, his voice unusually calm.

Jisung froze, his heart lurching in his chest. “Saw me?” he echoed, his voice tight.

Chenle leaned back, his gaze fixed on the starry sky. “You and her. After the tournament.”

Jisung’s throat went dry. “I—Chenle, it’s not what you think—”

Chenle cut him off with a small, tired laugh. “Relax, dude. I’m not mad. And I know you wouldn’t do anything. You’re too much of a pussy to make the first move.” He turned to look at Jisung, his expression softer than Jisung expected. “I mean, yeah, it stings a little. But I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”

Jisung blinked, confused. “Thinking about what?”

Chenle sighed, running a hand through his hair. “About us….me and her. Don’t get me wrong, she’s great. But... I don’t think we’re great together, you know? We’re fun, we laugh a lot, but it’s not... deep.”

Jisung stared at him, struggling to process the words.

“And then I see the way you look at her,” Chenle continued, his voice quieter now. “And the way she looks at you.” He let out another soft laugh. “I’d have to be blind not to notice it.”

“I’m sorry,” Jisung blurted out, his guilt spilling over. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I swear, I tried not to—”

“Hey, stop.” Chenle held up a hand, cutting him off. “I’m not mad, okay? It’s not like you did this on purpose. Feelings are... messy. Trust me, I get it.”

Jisung’s shoulders slumped, the weight of Chenle’s understanding both a relief and a fresh wave of guilt. “So... what does this mean?” he asked hesitantly.

Chenle shrugged, a small smile tugging at his lips. “It means I’m stepping back. You two have something real, Jisung. Something I don’t think I could ever have with her.”

Jisung stared at him, his chest tightening with a mix of emotions. “Are you sure?”

Chenle nodded. “Yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’ll probably be a little salty about it for a while. But at the end of the day, you’re my best friend. I want you to be happy.” He clapped Jisung on the shoulder, his grin returning in full force. “And who knows? Maybe this means I’ll finally have time to beat your high score.”

Jisung let out a breathless laugh, the tension easing slightly. “Thanks, Chenle. For everything.”

Chenle stood, stretching dramatically. “Don’t get all mushy on me now. Just... don’t mess it up, okay? She’s too good for that.”

Jisung nodded, his heart lighter but still full. As Chenle walked away, Jisung sat for a moment longer, staring at the medal in his hands.

Jisung’s heart pounded like it had during the tournament, maybe even harder. He clutched the edges of the medal still hanging around his neck, his thumb running along the engraved letters as if they could grant him the courage he desperately needed.

He found you sitting at the counter in Pixel Haven, a quiet lull settling over the arcade now that the evening rush was over. You were tinkering with a small machine part, your brow furrowed in concentration, and Jisung couldn’t help but feel his chest tighten at the sight.

“Hey,” he said softly, his voice barely audible over the hum of the arcade lights.

You looked up, surprised but smiling as soon as you saw him. “Jisung! What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out celebrating your big win?”

He hesitated, shifting on his feet. “I needed to talk to you,” he admitted, his voice trembling slightly.

You set the part down, giving him your full attention. “Is everything okay?”

Jisung nodded, but the lump in his throat made it hard to speak. He took a deep breath, the memory of Chenle’s words earlier that night giving him the final push.

“I—there’s something I need to say. And I don’t know if it’s the right time, or if I’m even allowed to feel this way, but I can’t... I can’t keep it in anymore.” He paused, his hands gripping the medal tightly. “I like you. I’ve liked you for a while now. And I know Chenle’s your boyfriend. Well, was—but I had to tell you.”

Your eyes softened, and you stood, closing the space between you. “Jisung…”

“I’m sorry if this is too much,” he continued quickly, his words tumbling over each other. “I just... you mean a lot to me. More than I can explain. And if you don’t feel the same, that’s okay. I just—”

“Jisung.” Your voice was steady but gentle, cutting through his nervous rambling.

He stopped, his breath hitching as you placed a hand on his arm.

“I like you too.”

For a moment, the words didn’t register. He blinked at you, his mind struggling to catch up. “You... you do?”

You nodded, a small smile playing on your lips. “You’re kind, thoughtful, and ridiculously talented. And more than that, you have this quiet strength that I admire so much. I’ve been drawn to you for a while now, even when I didn’t fully realize it.”

Jisung’s cheeks flushed, his heart soaring as your words sank in. “Really?”

“Really,” you said, your smile widening. “But we’ll have to take things slow. This is all new, and I want to make sure we’re both ready.”

Jisung nodded quickly, his nervous energy giving way to a shy grin. “Of course. Slow is good.”

You laughed softly, the sound filling the quiet arcade. “You’re adorable, you know that?”

Jisung’s blush deepened, but for the first time, he didn’t feel the need to hide it.

As the two of you stood there, the arcade lights casting a warm glow, Jisung felt something shift inside him. It wasn’t just the joy of hearing you say you liked him too. He’d taken a risk and won.

And this victory? It felt like the best one yet.

This was it.

The moment he’d worked toward for months.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer’s voice boomed over the speakers, “Park Jisung is on the verge of breaking the world record for highest Tetris score! Can he do it?”

Jisung’s heart thundered in his chest, but it wasn’t fear anymore. It was adrenaline. Focus. Determination.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of you and Chenle in the crowd. You were leaning forward, your hands clasped tightly in anticipation, your eyes shining with pride. Beside you, Chenle was shouting encouragement so loudly it drowned out the rest of the noise.

“Come on, Wizard!” Chenle yelled, his grin so wide it could’ve split his face. “You’ve got this! Show ‘em how it’s done!”

Jisung’s lips twitched into a small smile. Chenle’s voice, your presence, the energy of everyone around him, all pushed him forward.

The final minutes were a blur of movement and sound. The blocks sped up to an almost impossible level, but Jisung’s hands didn’t falter. His brain worked in overdrive, every decision precise and calculated. He could feel the rhythm of the game in his bones.

And then, with one last perfect Tetris, the machine let out a triumphant chime.

The words NEW WORLD RECORD! flashed across the screen, and for a moment, the room seemed to freeze.

Then the crowd erupted. Cheers and applause filled the arcade, the sound almost deafening. Jisung sat back, his hands trembling as he let out a shaky breath. He’d done it.

You were the first to reach him, weaving through the crowd with your face lit up in a beaming smile. “Jisung, you did it!” you exclaimed, throwing your arms around him in a tight hug.

For a moment, he froze, still overwhelmed by everything, but then he relaxed into the hug, his face flushing as a shy grin spread across his lips. “I... I guess I did.”

You pulled back just enough to look at him, your hands still on his arms. “No, Jisung. You didn’t just do it. You literally broke a world record. That was fucking incredible.”

Before Jisung could respond, Chenle burst through the crowd, practically tackling him with a clap on the back. “That was insane, dude! You’re officially a legend!”

Jisung laughed softly, his nerves easing as the weight of his friends’ support sank in. “Thanks, Chenle. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Chenle scoffed, his grin turning playful. “Obviously. I mean, who else would’ve dragged your sorry butt to the arcade every week?”

You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling too. “And who else would’ve cheered louder than the announcer himself?”

Chenle puffed out his chest dramatically. “It’s called dedication. But seriously, man.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to something softer. “I’m proud of you. I always knew you had it in you.”

Jisung blinked, his throat tightening with emotion. “Thanks, Chenle. That... that means a lot.”

“And me,” you added, your gaze locking with Jisung’s. “You’ve worked so hard for this, Jisung. You deserve every bit of it.”

Jisung’s face burned, but he managed a small, grateful smile. “I... I couldn’t have done it without you either. Both of you.”

Chenle grinned, clapping Jisung on the back again. “Okay, enough sap. Let’s go celebrate! First round of drinks are on me!”

“Chenle, you’ve never paid for drinks in your life,” you teased, raising an eyebrow.

“Today’s a special occasion!” Chenle shot back, already heading toward the counter. “Besides, I’ll just borrow some cash from Jisung’s prize money.”

Jisung chuckled, the sound lighter than it had been in months. He looked between you and Chenle, his chest tightening with a strange mix of gratitude and joy.

In this moment, he realized that no matter how far he went. No matter how high he climbed in the Tetris world. He wouldn’t be alone.

He had Chenle, his loud, chaotic best friend who always believed in him, even when he didn’t believe in himself. And he had you, the person who saw him, really saw him, and made him feel like he could be more than just the quiet kid in the background.

For the first time, Jisung felt like he wasn’t just playing to win. He was playing for the people who mattered most.'

Though it stung at first, Chenle proved himself to be the supportive and selfless friend Jisung had always known. It didn’t take long for him to bounce back—literally. A chance meeting at a K-TV bar introduced him to a bubbly, energetic girl named Yizhuo, whose laughter was as infectious as his own. Their chemistry was instant, and soon Chenle was filling the arcade with stories of his new escapades. He still teased Jisung relentlessly, but it was clear he harbored no ill will.

The trio’s bond remained intact, stronger than ever, though their lives began to diverge.

Jisung, now a bona fide legend in the gaming world, found himself swept into a whirlwind of tournaments, sponsorships, and interviews. Though he remained shy and soft-spoken, his quiet charisma and undeniable skill won over fans around the globe. He still made time to visit Pixel Haven, the arcade that had started it all, but his visits were less frequent now, as his journey took him to stages he’d only dreamed of.

You, on the other hand, had left Pixel Haven behind for a new chapter of your own. Inspired by the energy and community of the arcade, you decided to pursue a career in game design. Late nights were now spent sketching out ideas for games that combined strategy and storytelling, with a little bit of heart and soul, something you’d learned was just as important as the mechanics.

Jisung was your biggest cheerleader, always eager to hear about your latest ideas, even if his input sometimes boiled down to, “As long as it’s not as stressful as Tetris.”

Chenle, ever the social butterfly, had shifted his focus to broadcasting. His infectious personality made him a hit on television screens, where he’d commentate on retro games, pull off absurd challenges, and occasionally rope Jisung into appearances. “The TetWiz and Lele Show,” he called it, though Jisung mostly just sat there, looking flustered as Chenle stole the spotlight.

Still, every once in a while, the three of you would reunite at Pixel Haven, now under new management but still holding its nostalgic charm. You’d share snacks, reminisce about the good old days, and maybe even challenge each other to a game or two—though no one dared to take on Jisung in Tetris.

And as Jisung watched you and Chenle laughing over some ridiculous bet, the soft glow of the arcade lights reflecting in your eyes, he realized that life was a lot like Tetris. The pieces didn’t always fall the way you wanted them to, but with patience, a little bit of courage, and the right people by your side, you could make something beautiful out of the chaos.

GAME OVER.

TAGLIST ↬ @lyvhie @aquaphoenixz @galacticnct @yizhrt @polarisjisung @multifandomania @spacejip @peterm4rker @viasdreams @mango-bear

[astrolovecosmos]

5th House + Romance

The 7th House tends to get all of the attention when it comes to couples, relationships, and romance. But the 5th House rules over our love affairs, flings, close encounters, dating life, and romance overall. Below are blurbs about the signs in this House:

Aries in the 5th House: Can't resist an instant connection or chemistry. Falls for love at first sight stories. May be attracted to passionate ideas or people. Interested in stories or themes that involve the lover and the fighter. May be highly independent in their love life and embrace being single or at least being more separate from a partner or crush somehow. Can easily get bored in their dating life or burn through relationships. Having a partner who recognizes and appreciates their individuality is important for keeping the flame alive. At times they may be a selfish lover or demanding. They could have high standards or not, but what matters the most is someone who can keep up with their energy. May be an impatient, lively, youthful, daring, flirty, and physical date. For them dating should be fun, maybe a little competitive or a challenge, creative, and exciting. They get turned off by those who threaten their independence, anyone that attempts to boss them around, the overly cautious or practical in love, and an embarrassing date. Some can get competitive in their love life while others prefer to be the prize.

Taurus in the 5th House: Sensual, physical, and visual things is what grabs their attention. This may mean a large focus on looks, may be all about smell, needs someone who is good with their hands, loves gifts or being spoiled, and needs plenty of time and comfort. Is all about sweet, traditional, and/or giving romance. Is attracted to ideas about loyalty. Their romance is all about chocolates, silk, champagne, candlelight, massage oil, beautiful settings. Will be turned away by those who pressure them, rush them, and/or are unreliable or too unpredictable. This placement needs to feel safe in their dating life and among love interests. They can also be unforgiving in their love life, finding it hard to get over a bad impression or big mistakes. There might be a focus on money or materialism in their dating life somehow. Can crush hard but always plays cool about it. They aren't one to rush into commitment quickly. Their love life may seem slow or predictable, but this is due to their caution, standards, and strong heart.

Gemini in the 5th House: Gemini and the Air element is famous for needing strong mental connections in their relationships and being attracted to witty, social, clever, talkative, and/or intelligent people. Their romance is all about the mind and conversing but also spontaneity, trying new things, having fun, flirting and teasing, sharing and listening, and low-key lewdness. They are excitable in love or lust. They can also easily get bored and restless in their dating life. They usually make for a funny, charming, easygoing, and playful date. They may approach dating in a mischievous, shallow, and/or careless way. They may love their space and independence. But the desire to connect and learn from others is strong. They may highly value friendship or find that their dating life heavily involves them somehow. This person's date better get along with their pals or be as social or anti-social as them. They need someone who is on their wavelength socially and mentally. Is associated with having a very active and busy love life filled with stories. But the observant and detached side of this sign may love from afar or romanticize ideas and people more than interacting with them.

Cancer in the 5th House: This placement is likely attracted to those who need their help or care, the few they can make a deep connection with, the caring, the vulnerable or sensitive, and/or the mysterious as long as the individual isn't as private as them. Romance to them is about affection, sharing, melding, emotional reactions and expression, feeling needed and wanted, the ocean and moonlight. They may take their time to open up to someone and may not have an overly active love life. But this placement can certainly be romantic, a daydreamer, an admirer, and potentially possessive and smothering but with lots of passion. Despite Cancer's guarded nature it wouldn't surprise me if this placement was at least vocal and active in the dating world somehow, even if indirectly. Will be turned off by those who are flaky or unpredictable, the cold or detached, anyone that makes them feel too misunderstood, and the insensitive. They are highly sentimental in their love life. They usually make for a thoughtful, understanding, welcoming, and memorable date. Doesn't take rejection or breakups well but is good at hiding their distress or obsession. Might not be comfortable being single but also their protective side won't let them settle or rush into anything. Also, family may be a distraction from their love life or take priority over it.

Leo in the 5th House: Romance to them needs to be loud, warm or hot, passionate, lively, and has plenty adoration. They want a love life that is filled with activity, potentially drama, celebration, affection, and physical intimacy. They want to date those who make them feel special and give plenty of attention and praise. Leo in the 5th House makes for a playful, confident, dazzling, fun, brave, potentially chivalrous, generous, and sometimes impressive date. They have a love for the chase but also a greater love for admirers. Their ego may also be addicted to making a good impression on their crushes and dates. Some can be quite melodramatic in their love life, making mountains out of molehills or getting into the most scandalous happenings. Dating may be a game, performance, or work of art for them. Because of the fire element and Leo's strong connection to the self and ego, it is worth notating that this placement can be selfish, demanding, and arrogant at times in their love life. But there is also a part of them that may heavily focus on integrity, respect, being good-hearted, and doing right by people they're courting. Leo is a sign of nobility and honor after all. This placement likely has high standards and rightfully so as they believe they will bring a whole lot to the table.

Virgo in the 5th House: Their romance can have unexpected spice and bitterness. Virgo in the 5th House will certainly have a practical, high-standard, and intellectual approach to their love life. But they are sensual, curious, eager, and expressive in the bedroom or in romance. They can be perfectionist in their romance and love affairs somehow. This could manifest in their appearance, the planning of their dates, or general expectations. Makes for a polite, dependable, clever, attentive, knowledgeable, and potentially talkative date. Will want to learn everything about their date or crush right away. Can seem cautious, reserved, prude, or fickle at times but their head is likely noisy with thoughts and daydreams about their object of affection. Romance for them needs to be tempting, clean or messy or both somehow, filled with a lover's praise, trusting, maybe involve acts of service, relaxing, maybe an escape. Winning over someone, impressing someone, and spying on their crush are all activities they may enjoy, but nothing compares to "saving" or "fixing" their love interest. Won't stand for an overly vulgar, rude, disorderly, or uncultured date. May be turned off by those who love the spotlight, are cocky, or are reckless. Can have a flexible and self-reliant side in their love life but ultimately is after a long-lasting relationship.

Libra in the 5th House: Romance for this placement needs to be intoxicating, dreamy, sweet, maybe a little edgy, harmonious, pleasurable, and beautiful. May easily fall in and out of infatuation. Libra is famous for their indecision, and they may struggle to take action and make decisions in their love life. This placement at times prefers it when others make the first moves but at the same time, they are likely to entice their crush or manipulate events so that it seems like others are making all the big moves when in reality they've been scheming. Can be quite a flirt or charmer. May get a thrill out of getting others to like them but not actually be interested themselves. They could also be shallow in this area of life at times. When dating they try to be accommodating, understanding, accepting, supportive, and romantic. While they may love a game of cat and mouse, they won't hesitate to initiate bouts of romantic gestures, words, and ideas. They have a great desire to make their lovers happy and to keep the peace among their dating life. They can be determined to end on "good terms" or "mutually" with exes. Mutual sharing, compliments, sophistication, lovey dovey things, long conversations, and fairness are all things this placement values in romance. Can have a surprising competitive, jealous, or critical streak in their love life. May seem like their dating experiences are ideal but know that loneliness and self-doubt may be an element that holds them back in romance. Other placements in the chart such as Venus and Mars can shed more light on things like commitment, intimacy, and relationship dynamics but those with this placement are likely to have a very romantic, active, or appealing love life.

Scorpio in the 5th House: This individual may be hard to get to know romantically. They can be secretive and/or mysterious in the dating world. Scorpio is associated with depth and intimacy and in the dating world they may feel as if sometimes they are too much or that others are too little. Their style of romance is intense, passionate, magical feeling, may involve power dynamics, dark, filled with sex-appeal, acts of devotion, affection, potentially pain, and secrets. This placement can be attracted to forbidden love, love stories that involve taboo subjects, or ideas and themes filled with betrayal, sacrifice, death, rebirth, empowerment, and rawness. They can be a jealous and controlling lover or date. They will take faithfulness and promises seriously. They rely on their magnetism, intuition, and bravery in the dating world. They get turned off by a controlling partner, the shallow, vain, or fake, and unreliability. Takes breakups hard and isn't good with change in this area of life. Can be unforgiving in love and isn't known for smooth or peaceful breakups. Their love life can be turbulent, dramatic, unknown, or even dry many times. It depends on what stage of fascination, obsession, and heartbreak they are in. Can be attracted to vulnerability and sensitivity but also toughness, competitiveness, and confidence, especially physical confidence. Keeps love and lust very separated which can make them seem misleading or manipulative... and sometimes they may be manipulative. Anyone with good or bad character can have this placement, but being the other man or having a mistress certainly can thrive here. Someone with this placement can also be a compassionate, giving, trustworthy, protective, and stable partner.

Sagittarius in the 5th House: The hunter in the dating world. They can be determined to obtain their love interests and may be attracted to those who are hard to win over. Romanticizing people, places, or ideas based on their rarity, exoticness, or newness may happen here. Romance to them needs to be thrilling, insightful, maybe challenging or like a game, exploratory, a journey. Turn offs include smothering, their date not getting along with their friends, coldness, secrets or deceptive behavior, and an overly sensitive date. They may be tempted by risky situations, ideas, or people. Loves the idea of a little bit of danger or the strange. Has no problem rushing into things or making the big moves. May be a lover who over-promises, exaggerates, or is impatient. Is honest, flirty, possibly crude, and passionate with some swagger or smoulder. Can be attracted to adventurous types, intellectuals, and "the enlightened". Can be free spirited and good-natured but also reckless and selfish in their love life. Sharing ideas, keeping things straightforward, some humor or playfulness, and respecting each other's space is how you can win their heart.

Capricorn in the 5th House: Romance for this placement is a soft spot for them. A part of them dreams about the sentimental, roses, tender touch, messy passion, and vulnerability. But another part of them is very practical, rigid, and cautious in the dating world. They are likely private or quiet about their love life. Capricorn in the 5th's style of romance may be surprising to some, here they may indulge in themes of powerful attraction, high libidos, a little bit of wealth, luxury, or authority and power, earthy themes, erotic ideas, encouraging vibes and dynamics. This person may be hesitant to commit but they are known for their loyalty, dependability, and integrity. They will work hard to maintain their relationships, even the shallower ones. They fear having a bad reputation in the dating world. Likely to always be on time for a date. They can take love and dating very seriously, possibly rejecting or scaring away suitors frequently, especially when younger. They may feel stressed easily in this area of life, maybe feeling pressured by family, friends, or society to date or settle. They can be hard on themselves in the dating world. They strive for approval from their love interests. They may desire sanctuary, reward, and/or control from their love life somehow, and appreciates lovers who help them to relax or try hard to understand them and reassure them.

Aquarius in the 5th House: When you hear about this person's love life you would "have never guessed", and neither could they... which they probably love! This placement is associated with having an unpredictable, chaotic, potentially detached or dispassionate, or conflicting love life. Their style of romance can be "different" somehow, they may embrace the weird, loves an irresistible force or may be one sometimes, adores those who fight for what they believe in, wants romance to shake things up, can involve a melding of minds, involves late night walks and talks, abstract ideas and debates, experimentation, and psychedelic or spiritual vibes. This placement falls for individualists and conversationalists. They have heart-eyes for those who are comfortable in their own skin or embrace their strangeness. Also loves a nerd, a dork, a geek, an intellectual. They can be quite sincere and loyal in their love life but a shallow and even egotistical side of theirs may give them the urge to show off their shiny, new, unique girlfriend/boyfriend who isn't like anyone else's. This placement may get easily distracted in love, value friends over lovers, is hard to get to know, may be overly independent for some, and struggle with rebellion vs. pressure dynamics in the dating world. They hate to be judged in this area of life and may have deep fears of rejection. This placement is associated with dating friends or somehow being highly involved in their friend's love life. Maybe they play matchmaker, help couples get back together, or play messenger. Their dates MUST get along with their friends and get their pals' stamp of approval. Some with this placement may also live through their friends' love lives vs. nurturing their own. This sign can struggle with emotional attachment and closeness, intimacy, and emotional expression in their dating life. Unless personal planets indicate otherwise, this person likely won't open up emotionally until years after dating. Can feel conflicted about their need for stability and need for change and newness in love. Embraces the extremes and unknown as long as they can do things on their own terms. Is turned off by rules or bossiness, staleness, the overly judgmental, and clinginess. Can appreciate beauty, loves quirkiness, but is mesmerized by a crazy mind.

Pisces in the 5th House: Romance is their middle name. If their real love life isn't active then their fictional one certainly is. Despite other chart placements this person's love life doesn't leave out the fantastical, magical, ardent, sensitive, and spiritual. This person is a secret or vocal hopeless romantic. Their style of romance is rom-com, fairytale, messy, sparkly, dramatic, grand, sentimental, sweet, mystical, intuitive, eternal and changing. They have an active imagination and may get as much of a thrill from writing love songs and reading romance as going out on dates. When on a date they need an emotional connection or something that feeds their imagination. They can also easily fall for sob stories or playing the hero. They may also get addicted to infatuation or the way someone makes them feel. They need to be careful of being taken advantage of in the dating world. They may also easily lose themselves in their partners. They put their crushes on a pedestal and sometimes needs a reality check in their love life. They can be a sensitive, moody, alluring, empathetic, and easygoing date. They win you over by getting to know you emotionally and intimately. They won't settle for a boring, aloof, or stale relationship. The romance always needs to be alive.

[ancientgoddessofegypt]

The Sun & The Nakshatras.

Here My Take On The Sun In Each Nakshatra. Staring with Ashvini thru Chitra!

Let me know what you think!

Ashvini Suns

Very fun light-hearted individuals when you give them a try. Have a hypnotizing presence that can go overlooked. Not for everybody and they don't try to be. Def needs a friend who fully understand them because they can be misunderstood a lot. There character plays nicely with more arrogant personalities, this is so that they can make space for their own confident nature that people typically mistake as egotistic. They know what they want and want it right then and there. Can have a tempting vibe to them. Can be promiscuous or charismatic, if they're both we might have a problem (all jokes).

Bharani Suns

Intellectuals. Have this inner knowing that somethings up. Can be gentle, carefree and fun or can be your worse nightmare. Your pick. The universe picks them as the harbringers of light. Destiny awaits them to conquer the messages aligning with the stars, and they use this gift of knowledge in the fruits of creation. Creativity is their strongest suit. They can merge religion and knowledge from outside things into some practical magic. Destined for greatness even at an early age.

Krittika Suns

Strong prominent auras. They are capable of shining a light in a room when it is time to remove what no longer works. They are fiery in nature, and are connected to the lightening that strikes within everything and everyone. The Krittikas with the sun placement deal with issues with males in society if they are a woman, if they are a male they may deal with power plays and might not like dealing with individuals to much. They can have a temper on em. When they utilize their power, they can make the world shake with just their energy alone.

Rohini Suns

Sweet like candy bar. The definition of a muse. Talented individuals. Have a liking for things that get their minds going. Super patient and can hold a conversation about anything. Philosophers who just want someone to listen to them. Rohini suns can definitely keep you on your feet with how they move. There is a intriguing energy when it comes to them. You have no idea who they truly are under the surface.

Mrigashira Suns

Mystifying with their words. Their vibration. & Their sword. Practical minds, divine creators. These are definitely people you want to get to know, and possibly understand a bit more. Their behavior comes solely from the mind but their environment is what inspires them to continue on and evolve. They have a lot of options in this life, and they try to use as much of it as they possibly can. Genuine spirits who's heart is just that of gold. However, once you cross them, it'll be hard to get to know them again.

Ardra Suns

The most useful. Can be a beacon of joy, a lover, a fighter, a friend. Someone you can truly depend on. They have issues with people who voice their opinions too much when it comes to their expression. Ardra suns have a glow to their auras that most can find pretty intriguing, but they've got to keep new company every so often due to jealousy and other tangent things becoming an issue after a while. If they aren't careful with the company they keep, they can go down to ruin. But if they commit to being true to themselves, and finding solace in their divine nature they can conquer just about anything in this lifetime.

Punarvasu Suns

Like the ocean, they're waves morph into the wisdom of the merits deep inside of their big bodies of divine magic. Their words are impeccable, their energy is soothing and magnetic. They are enraged with a guilt from past lives, family members, or things out of their control. They are mother natures favorites, and they are gifted in the worlds of writing. Journals, Poetry, Film, all the like... They are storytellers who's worlds bring us to our knees. They are angels in disguise and need a voice hear and there. Mystical in expression, Odd in one, and pretty special in another.

Pushya Suns

The muses of the water. Mothers gift to the Gods. There is a deep bond to the roots of the tree, and they give their all to bring forth this beautiful energy from within. They take knowledge very seriously, and go out there way to search for it in many regions if they would like. A natural at connecting the dots. A open minded individual who's heart is sure to keep beating for the thousands of children and people who need it most. Love is infinite, and they give their all to let you know it.

Ashlesha Suns

Seduction is their foreplay. Very magnetic. Their powers and abilities manifest in getting what they want when they need it, and can have it in the palms of their hands by tomorrow. That is because their minds are like that of the serpent. They use their minds to go after what they need by hypnotizing you as a form of conquest. You think your tantalizing them until they finally strike. You never see them coming. Can be sweet and charming, but can also strike you like a siren.

Magha Suns

A strong & deep bond with the universe. Individuals who know how to create a good power play. You can't one up these people. A very dignified, regal presence. Ancient in devotion, which means they put power displays of ancestral divination in all that are, and all that they commit themselves to. In this heaven that they live in, they must commit to the soul in so many ways. So that they can move higher into devotion to source, their creator. It is so deep, that they will push many mountains just to receive the divine insight of the ancestors, so that they can build castles & creations for the like-minded. Powerful energies connect them to higher planes.

Purva Phalguni Suns

The kings & queens of diamonds and rings. Luxuries and all things that glitter. This venus nakshatra has is AAALLLLL. and they know it too! Natural born creators whose soul purpose was to make art, be noticed and be heard! Can be well known for their looks, their attraction, their mystery, and their artistry. Can be animated, fun, loving, sensual creatures. Definitely keep your eyes peeled for em, their devoted to themselves like the gods & goddesses that they are! Playful spirits with an easy going energy. High maintenance personality.

Uttara Phalguni Suns

Devoted to the ancestral knowledge of creation. Very deep bonds with people that they truly care about. Can have the whole entire universe if that is what they claim. Can have books full of knowledge inside of them, go on, ask them anything! Star power is infinite, and they shine the brightest when they do what works. Their energy is enchanting, oozing with delight. Carefree, bright, and intriguing souls who's very purpose is to shed light on the things that matters most. They are loving, divine creatures who captivate you with just their very essence.

Hasta Suns

Temptress energy. Devoted to themselves & God. The original muse. They can keep the world talking about them, thats just their nature. No, they aren't the gossipy type. Just the one to really get things going when they have something in mind they want to manifest. Speaking of manifesting, they are impeccable with attracting things to them. Their known to have magical hands, after all ;)

Chitra Suns

Known to be the bright one, their energy is polarizing to say the least. They have a unique beauty to them. Something that no one could compare it to. Their energy is a one of one. Magnificent beings who came to let the world know that they exist. Like a goddess, they deserve offerings. Their energy is the prize and they know this too! Highly intellectual but you just don't know it yet. The definition of a bad b! On everyone's mood boards too! Can have what they want with just a blink of an eye, because their faces are just that damn good looking. ;)

This is pt.1 on my astro observations on the sun signs in these nakshatras. will post the others soon!

[eiralunaire]

Headcanons of Damian Wayne. Part Two.

12. His Confusion About Love (But He Feels It Intensely).

Damian never understood how others could talk about love so easily. In his world, love wasn't a priority: it had always been training, fighting, and controlling. But with his girlfriend, things were different. Sometimes, in the midst of his emotional intensity, he didn't know how to handle his feelings. While he remained stoic on the outside, inside his head kept spinning: *“Is this love? Is it normal to want to be with someone all the time? It shouldn't be so complicated...”* However, what he did know, for sure, was that he had never felt something so strong for another person.

13. The Typical, but Different.

Although Damian is a reserved guy and doesn't usually make the typical romantic gestures, when he's with her, he feels weird, but happy to try. For example, one day, without warning, he takes her to an art exhibition that he knows she's interested in, or invites her to a park to see the stars, even if to him it all sounds a bit cheesy. He does it because he knows she likes it, and if it's something that makes her smile, then it's a worthwhile effort. Sometimes he catches himself thinking that, somehow, those little moments can be more important than a fight or a mission.

14. The Warrior Prince's Insecurity.

Even though Damian never says it out loud, there are times when he feels like he's not enough for his girlfriend. It's not because she's done anything to provoke him, but because, deep down, he can't help but compare himself to the perfection of what he thinks he should be. The son of Batman. The leader of the League of Assassins. The best fighter. And yet, sometimes, he feels out of place when he's by her side, because she has that ability to be light, cheerful, and genuine. He, on the other hand, is so used to carrying the weight of the world that it's hard for him to open up completely. But as she accepts him for who he is, he begins to learn that he doesn't need to be perfect to be enough for her.

15. Simple Details (That He Would Never Forget).

Damien is great at noticing details, and it's not just because he learned it as part of his training. In the case of his girlfriend, he pays attention to the little things that, to her, might seem insignificant: the brand of her perfume, the way she strokes her hair when she's nervous, or how she always has a habit of putting her coffee cup in an exact position on the table. While he won't say it out loud, Damian likes to know that, in those moments, he has a kind of silent power. Not just because he protects her, but because he understands what makes her who she is.

16. Escaping the Darkness Together.

Deep down, Damian is aware of the shadows that haunt him. The darkness of his family, of his training, of everything that comes with being the son of Bruce Wayne and Ra’s al Ghul. But in his girlfriend, he finds something that has nothing to do with that. With her, he can just be Damian: a boy who is falling in love, a boy who feels… good, without having to be the assassin or the leader of the League of Assassins. He likes how she gives him space to be himself, how she is able to bring something as essential as fresh air to his life, even when everything he knows is shrouded in layers of gray and complexity. With her, he feels less trapped in his destiny.

17. Any Excuse is Good to Be Near.

Damian is not the type to go out of his way for texts or calls, but when he is on a mission or out, he always finds the perfect excuse to send a message, even if it is just to say *"I'm here, everything is okay."* It is hard for him to admit it, but he needs to know that she is okay, that she is not alone. If she ever mentions something that's bothering her, he'll think about it for hours, searching for a way to fix it, even if it's something as small as the fact that she's out of his favorite marshmallows.

18. "Don't Let Me Go"

Sometimes, when the situation gets more tense or they're on a mission, Damian has moments where he unintentionally shows a more vulnerable side. "Don't let me go alone," he tells her quietly. He doesn't do it to sound weak, but because he doesn't want to face danger without her nearby. The funny thing is that, despite his image of a strong man, those moments serve to remind him that he doesn't always have to carry all the weight of the world. With her, he has an ally, and that's more than he ever thought he could have.

20. His Way of Saying "I Love You".

Damian would never say those two words in a conventional way. For him, love is not expressed with phrases. It is expressed with actions. It may be that, at the end of a long day, he surprises her with a cup of her favorite tea, or that he defends her from anything that bothers her without her asking. And when he finally says it, if the time comes, it will be something like, "I don't care what happens, but I will never let you get hurt." Because, in a way, that is his way of being vulnerable, of saying what he feels without saying it directly.

21. Being Together Is The Only Thing That Matters.

In moments of calm, when they are at home, everything else disappears. It doesn't matter what happened during the day, or the battles that Damian has faced. The only thing that matters is being near her. Whether it's watching a movie, having a coffee in silence or just talking about any nonsense, he values ​​those moments of simplicity. And although he never says it, in his mind, those are the moments that really make it all worth it. Being with her is his way of escaping, and despite all the chaos that surrounds him, he knows that, finally, he has something that truly belongs to him.

[dimalink]

Igrek in void – ecosystem in space

Pixel art for today based on videogame Gaiares for game console Sega MegaDrive. So, this a MegaDrive itself with lots of such style shooter games, fly and shoot! Fly and shoot! Such games for positive. So, before, you can play all of these all the free time. And, now, only by weekends.And, mainly, nothing else changed! As said a guitar player from Cream. Everything that changed – I exchange my stylish glasses for glasses, that helps to see better. And, that’s all. Cool science fiction 16 bit shooter!

And, such games make a success for MegaDrive! Before us, of course, - a science fiction action movie! Future. Space ship. Some fantastic places. So, cool – to see all of these at your screen of tv or monitor.

And this is my drawing based on the same theme. Space fortress. It is a huge mega galactic structure. A big wall and behind it – whole closed part. It is like medieval fortress, but in space. And there - there is a water! So, lots of water! Amongst the space void! It is very useful! And, even more, -there are some mechanisms to make a water. And control for ecosystem. And this fortress is, something like, not moving.

Your Yigrek fighter fly there. And doors are closed behind you. You speed down, to see everything, and for easy turns. And radio connection is break with the base. So, here, there are radio not going walls and floor. Maybe, if to get upper, then you can to get a signal. And send data and receive some advices.

And you don’t know, how to get out of this place! One exit only – to fly across – though all of these base. And, so, already, some defense systems are working. And, circle form robots are shooting at you with laser light! Looks like, they are, also, are built in this place. In a good amount. In automatic mode.

This is station is a self stable system. Mechanical and biological. Mechanic does a rather good environment for habitat a biological lifeform. And this is fascinating!

It is interesting, is here anyone alive, except of robots. And, what is the mystery about this station! And for what purpose, station is here! Is it hiding from someone in this empty space corner. Or, is it moving someplace. Or is it in wait. And, maybe, it is a trap. Or opposite - such a lighthouse for biological lifeforms.

Dima Link is making retro videogames, apps, a little of music, write stories, and some retro more.

WEBSITE: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html ITCHIO: https://dimalink.itch.io/

TUMBLR: https://dimalink.tumblr.com/ BLOGGER: https://dimalinkeng.blogspot.com/ MASTODON: https://mastodon.social/@DimaLink

[bones4thecats]

Hello! Thank you for the answering my previous request, it was a lovely read. If you are still open for requests at the time of me sending this, I would like to request some general relationship headcanons for TFP Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, and Shockwave with a Cybertronian S/O. Thank you for your time and I hope you have a good day! - ❤️‍🩹Anon

Relationship Hcs With TFP Decepticons

Characters: Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave and Shockwave Requester: ❤️‍🩹Anon A/N: It's nice to hear from you again, ❤️‍🩹Anon! Thank you for the compliment on your past request! Anyways, I do hope you enjoy this Transformers Prime request. By the way, be on the lookout for titles that are naturally feminine, I couldn't find many gender-neutral ones. P.S: The character labeled in the last bit of hcs is completely fictional. ⚠️ Spoilers/Trigger Warnings for: Transformers Prime Series and Movie ⚠️

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»»————————————-　Megatron　————————————-««

👑 This guy is known for his tyrannical behavior, but he does tone it down when it comes to you being around him. Megatron does care about his S/O dearly in his spark

👑 Megatron started the war because of the unjust ranking in society, but he also started the war because he did not want you to be shoved around like nothing anymore. He may have been a respected gladiator in the Pits of Kaon, but even that title can only go so far in a corrupt society

👑 Over the course of the war, Megatron appointed many to his side, which was called the Decepticons. And throughout the claiming of titles, he dubbed you his right-hand. After all, a Lord is nothing without a Lady

👑 He may not seem like it, but this ruler is fairly good at treating his lover as an equal. Megatron may be a psychopath during his reign over the Decepticons, but he has morals deep down in his spark

👑 Anyways, when the war did begin to go against both sides and Cybertron fell when it came to life, Megatron was the first mech to realize it. And when he saw how the supposed-quick-war was growing longer with every passing cycle, he rushed you off the planet and onto the Nemesis ship first, with him and his most trusted followers joining

👑 Throughout his time out in space locating the mystical Dark Energon, you attempted to stay in direct contact with him the best. Before he ventured to far away, leaving the Nemesis in control of you and the official second-in-command, Starscream

👑 It was painful ruling alongside the egotistical seeker, but when your sparkmate returned, you lunged at the opportunity to rule alongside him instead

👑 While he was under the influence of the dark energon, he attempted to keep you far away from him, which showed just how much he valued your existence. You may have been an amazing fighter, but he could overpower you with ease

👑 Megatron's death was also the thing that caused many to see just how close you two were. When his limp and sparkless frame fell from the Nemesis, through the atmosphere of Earth, and down into the vast and deep ocean below, you cried in agony while multiple Vehicons carried you away. All Autobots, including ones like Ratchet and Arcee, were shocked to see you crying over his death. They suspected that he was an abuser, when it reality, he was better than that... he was your dream mech...

👑 Before your escaped, you were taken away by the Autobots, locked away in your once thriving ship with your medic Knockout and the many Vehicons who stayed loyal. Though, it seemed that the Autobots, especially Optimus, felt pity for you

👑 And while he laid apparently deceased in everyone else's mind, you felt his spark pulsating through your bond. You were shocked when it was announced that Megatron somehow had come back from the dead, but you knew once you looked at him that he wasn't the Megatron you once knew and loved

👑 During the fight, you were one to fight alongside the Predacons, using your advanced fighting skills when in flight-mode to attack easily. After the actual fighting, Predaking looked at you and nodded, making you fly off and to the surface of the hopefully-near thriving Cybertron

"Megatron...?"

"Y/N."

"Megs!"

👑 You lunged forward in a sprint and allowed the large mech to pick you up, spinning you around and hug you as you wept into his now-spikier armor. You then rose your head and relaid it down on his forehead, only looking away from him when you heard the coughs of a certain scrawny-stiletto wearing seeker

👑 Starscream merely backed away scared as you and Megatron glared and the titular mech yelled at him in anger. And before you flew after your lover, who was exiling himself after saying the Decepticons were no longer working and he was turning his title in as a warlord, you smiled at the Autobots and handed Knockout a small tablet with a photograph of the main 'cons, then it changed to one of you, Knockout and Breakdown

👑 The red mech smiled and gave you a small hug before you heard Megatron yell for you, making you transform after sending your goodbyes and flying away. A new life to start with your lover, away from war and away from the blood-soaked regime of your old lives

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»»——————————-　 Starscream 　———————————-««

💫 He first met you while he was controlling a large armada of fellow seekers in the Cybertronian Air Command. You were a new recruit and gained a close bond with the raspy-Decepticon, quickly rising in the ranks before becoming Lieutenant-General of the Air Command

💫 While under the control of Megatron, he showed quite a favoritism to you. And believe me when I say this; Starscream hated how close he acted towards you

💫 It was when Soundwave revealed you and Starscream's spark-bond that Megatron stiffened slightly around you, but did still act fairly cordial. Until his motives began to worsen over the next few hundred years

💫 Many view Starscream as a very manipulative and fearful being, and they're not wrong there. At first, he tried manipulating you, but you eventually grew onto him like a mold

💫 He also has used you like a Cybertronian-Shield multiple times. But, you always were at the ready with a weapon when against the Autobots and their meddlesome human allies

💫 Speaking of him using you as a shield, while he may use you as one when it comes to some battles when he is obviously at a disadvantage, when it comes to his beatings against your leader, you become his defendant. At least when it gets bad enough to be possibly life-threatening

💫 Starscream puts on a macho-mech persona, which he only lets down when his life in in danger or when you are in a major accident. Like when the Autobots were fighting against you and Shockwave while retrieving a Predacon's fossil. He had immediately noticed you were going to have a small concussion

💫 He was the one who went out with Soundwave to defend you, he could care less about Shockwave's spark. He needed you alive, not him.

💫 You guys are one of the cutest duos on the Nemesis. Whenever a Vehicon walks by you two speaking with a smile lodged on both of your faces, they just look at one another and chuckle

💫 It's your gentle-nature that makes Starscream feel unworthy of having you around. He views himself as inferior, and this only grows when he serves under Megatron. The larger mech makes him feel completely worthless, especially by comparing him to others, specifically Shockwave and Soundwave

💫 Unlike Starscream, you helped fight against Unicron when he possessed Megatron. You helped Shockwave gather his three Predacons to send them off, before going off to use your flight to your advantage before leaving to find Starscream

💫 He angered you slightly when he tried convincing Megatron to take over Cybertron again, and after he flew off, you sent him a comm saying you hoped he lived a fulfilling rest of his life. He just chuckled and wished you and Starscream a good future, making you smile and look at your spark-mate

💫 Smiling at the Autobots nervously, Starscream transformed and yelled for you to follow suit. You sighed and threw a vile of finished synthetic-energon at Ratchet, making him gasp and chuckle as you winked and flew off. What an exit... one worthy of his old lab partner and good friend

💫 As Starscream chanted about being the new leader of the Decepticons, you heard the Predacons approach and stared wide-eyed as they glared at Starscream but not you... damn you were always favored more than him🤣

"Y/N...? Why are they glaring at me so much...?"

"Pretty sure they wanna eat you. You might wanna start running, Hon'."

💫 You just looked at the three mechs and told them to go easy on him, and they just huffed before nodding and chasing him. Leaving a smiling Cybertronian behind

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»»——————————-　 Soundwave 　———————————-««

🔊 Ah, the loving silent mech himself.

🔊 He, unlike others, did not meet you before the war began. Instead, you were assigned to be his fellow third-in-command, except you were more located outside of the ship and leading attacks than him

🔊 Soundwave is fairly difficult to get to know at first, since he doesn't speak and doesn't show any reaction. Y'know- with the visor-face and all...

🔊 But, when you did get closer with the mech, it was known to all on the Nemesis that you were held in high regard not only to Lord Megatron, but to the third-in-command as well. Not even Starscream dared to lay a servo on you, fear of retaliation from both of the powerful mechs overwhelming him

🔊 Now, if you are smaller than him, he does make sure you stay out of others ways or get jobs that fit the way you are built and can handle. Normally, the smaller the Cybertronian, the thinner amount of weight they can handle

🔊 Though, if you are bigger, he trusts you to handle yourself a lot more. He would watch over you in battle, sending you codes that could help you in defeating the Autobots and retrieving whatever Megatron needed

🔊 Soundwave also is a very busy mech, so most of the time he has work to do. So, in those kinds of situations, he sends his precious minicon, Laserbeak, out to observe you. Ordering him to send a distress single if you were in danger and he couldn't do anything to help

🔊 When he was kidnapped by the Autobots, you were beyond unstable. Throwing items back and forth across your shared room, successfully scaring all that passed and heard you mixture of angry screams and cries of agony

🔊 Him coming back made your mood lighten up, and it caused even Megatron to slightly smile seeing you run up to him and hug him tightly, before cringing at the sight of the Autobot medic, and your old friend, Ratchet, being thrown in cuffs and pushed away to a holding cell

🔊 You stayed right beside him as best as you could, helping out with everything until those wretched humans came around and had a second Ground-Bridge opened, wrapping both you and him in the warp. Before carrying your screaming frame as his struggling one inside

🔊 Soundwave slightly strutted before lunging at the three mortals, unsuccessfully ending them. This made you gasp and stutter in realization... you were stuck in the Shadowzone with no way out of it and no-one except those humans to know where you were

🔊 Falling to your knees, you began to weep as Soundwave kneeled in front of you and held you close. A low tune being played over his speakers

"Will we ever get out of here...?"

"I will stop at nothing to get us out of here, Y/N." Soundwave said, his natural voice running through your audials.

"I love you..."

"And I love you as well."

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»»——————————-　 Shockwave 　———————————-««

🧪 Shockwave and you met in another fairly odd way

🧪 As a very head-strong member of the Cybertronian Sea Special Ops, and holding the rank of a Major, you always kept your mind right on the target. And when you were sent in by your General, Preon, to observe a supposed operation of a revolution against the Council

🧪 You disguised yourself with a device modeled by one of the engineers, and when you came into contact with the one-eyed mech, you were enamored. And you couldn't lie, hearing Megatron's speech of freedom from the damaging oppression laid stuck in your head

🧪 Over time, you began to use your Black Ops skills to escape detection and help Shockwave gain different objects he needed for his experiments. And when you revealed your treachery to the Cybertronian Council, he felt a pang in his spark that was unfamiliar

🧪 While first deeming it illogical, Shockwave did enjoy being in a close relationship with you. You were highly skilled in battle and in everything scientific

🧪 Shockwave is a very distant mech because of his work. He serves the Decepticon cause very well, to the point where many say he comes in a dual battle against Soundwave's loyalty to the cause

🧪 Despite the complaints of Megatron, you stayed on Cybertron, and got damaged when fighting against Arcee and Cliffjumper. And even he had to admit, you grew on him a lot faster than he initially believed. The cyclopian-mech did also prove to be better at being a doctor than he or you thought

🧪 Shockwave does care about you in a unique way. While he doesn't show it outright like other Cybertronians, he does prove how much he cares about you with simple methods. He does three main things; he is extremely honest, sharing his opinions on all matters, Shockwave also trusts you with tasks he wouldn't trust anyone else with, such as caring for the Predacons while he is outside gathering more fossils, and he loves to show his loyalty. He could care less about everyone else, you are his top-priority when it comes to dangerous situations

🧪 If you ever had doubts of your bond, he immediately addresses it. He may be working while speaking, but he does show his devotion to you first

"Shockwave... do I... mean anything to you...?"

"That's one of the most illogical things I have ever heard." Shockwave replied. "If I saw no use in having a relationship with you, I would never had proposed our spark-bond coming to light. I don't ever want to hear about you doubting yourself, Y/N. Understood?"

🧪 He's not the most ideal mech to be bonded to for life, but he isn't the worst

[yoredoesmore]

can we recieve a fanfic where reader is petty and could take his vice captain job (soshiro hoshina)

if she really tried? So kind of like enemies to lovers trope, and how he realized she actually didn't despise him was he overheard a conversation with okonogi, while Y/N was like simping and head over heels for him

a/n: i took my time writing this because i never wrote enemies to lovers before :’) i hope you enjoy it!

pairing: Petty!Hoshina x Petty!Reader

genre: enemies to lovers trope

[wc: 2,4k ]

Too Sweet | Hoshina Soshiro

“Did I tell you guys about the story of how I almost became Vice Captain?” You yelled into the round, beer glass lifted high up in the air.

“You? Vice Captain? No way!” Kafka laughed, wasted as much as everybody else around you.

The stench of alcohol and meat lingered in the air and the tension was packed and steamy. Two hours ago, the Third Division managed to neutralize a Daikaiju with a Fortitude Level of 8.3. Of course you could not have done it without the Kaiju on your side, Kafka, but it was indeed a group accomplishment. Thus, everybody felt lifted in both spirit and mind– and the alcohol only added to the cheerful atmosphere.

“Oh yes! Captain Ashiro was gonna pick me instead of mushroom head over there but he flashed his little katanas and bat his pretty little lashes to secure the spot for himself. Talk about tactical maneuvers!”

The entire table immediately fell into a fit of laughter, unable to hold themselves back anymore from the jokes that came at their Vice Captain's expenses. Even after another ten minutes, the mockery took no end. You continued to tease and joke about Hoshina, despite him only being a couple tables away from you, as the joy was too sweet. But as the time passed you eventually forgot about his existence, until he spoke up to remind you.

“You talk quite big for someone who can barely hold a gun. Don't think I didn't notice your little accident during the fight against that group of Yoju two hours ago.” Hoshina made sure to pronounce the word Yoju, not just to tease you but simply out of spite. Deep down he knew that the alcohol was speaking out of you, yet that did not stop him from feeling slightly irritated by your remarks.

“Maybe if you hadn't been standing right in front of the Yoju, I would have managed to get a better shot at the thing. Being a close distance fighter while everybody around you needs a clear field of vision to work must be quite tiring, hm? Maybe I would have been better off as the Vice Captain after all.”

Hoshina’s face twisted into a serious grimace upon hearing your words– a nerve had been struck. Even the others knew not to speak up anymore, the drastic change in atmosphere indicated that a fight was about to go down.

“Then how come everybody else managed to do their job just perfectly, huh? Maybe something distracted ya, Vice Captain?” Hoshina's words stung sharp in your chest. Especially him calling you that made the aftertaste of alcohol in your mouth even worse.

The both of you were now standing right across from one another, only a couple inches keeping you apart.

“Are they..about to fight??” Kafka asked Reno, worry lingering in his voice.

“Putting all my money on L/n.” Was all Reno had to say, leaving Kafka shocked.

“That ugly ass bowl cut of yours must have distracted me.”

Silence.

It was a silence that swept over the room that had everybody on high alert. One little slip of their mouth– or even the slightest bit of laughter falling out of their lips, would meant certain death. Your comment about Hoshina's hair came out way too fast, as if you have been waiting to mention it. The annoyance was evident on the Vice Captain's face. Never in his life has he been provoked to punish someone as much as he was now.

The man stepped closer, leaving little to no space between the both of you as he spoke up again.

“Is this funny to you, L/n?” Hoshina slightly tilted his head to the side as he spoke. The tone he had chosen to ask that question forced shivers down everyone's back. Hoshina was a patient man who did not let his emotions get the best of him most of the time but right now it was clear as ice that he was pissed.

“Maybe we should stop the-”

“Fucking hilariousss.” You dragged the s’ to really make it sting.

And from then on all went downhill…

×

“I did What?!” Your screech was so loud, it almost cut Okonogi’s ear off clean.

“Yep. The two of you almost got kicked out of the bar, if it hadn't been for Izumo and Kaguragi going between you– the only rationally thinking adults at yesterday's get together might I add.” The woman fixed her glasses as she made the remark.

Your eyes sat no longer in their sockets but rather on the floor, rolling around like giant marbles.

“Fuck..fuck!” Embarrassment rushed through your body, the images of yesterday's fight slowly returning to your mind. To think that you would act out in such way, simply because of a couple glasses of beer– it made you feel ashamed.

“That fucker knows how to push my buttons, dammit!”

“Oh please.” Okononig finally looked up from her laptop, all attention now on you.

“Even without the alcohol, Hoshina is able to draw out the most aggressive reactions out of you. You two always nag on each others throats, how come?”

Your eyes refused to meet hers as she waited for an answer, your gaze drifting towards anything in the room but her frame. How did you end up like this? It was a good question, unfortunately, you yourself did not know the answer. The tension between you and the Vice Captain has become so palpable that the wall it has created kept the both of you far away from one another. Every interaction, every conversation and even the smallest comment– your encounters would always end up in some kind of fight.

“That idiot..if he wasn't so damn cute I would have fucked him over a long time ago."

“Understa– what now??” Okonogi thought that she misheard you, that she has been listening to so much of your complaining that her ears were playing tricks on her. But one look at the dreamy face you were making was enough for her to know that you were indeed dead serious.

“He always has that stupid smirk on his face, it's driving me crazy!” You allowed your body to slump down onto the couch as you started to reveal your true feelings.

“Ugh, Konomi! He is so annoying. He thinks that just because he has a cute face he can act all cocky with me! I could take his spot as Vice Captain anytime I want, snap, just like that! He should be more careful around me!”

Either the alcohol was still speaking out of you or your mental state was much more fragile than Okonogi had thought. She did know that you had a little crush on the Vice Captain all the way back then when you first started out but to think that your feelings have not changed, despite the lack of chemistry between the both of you. It was truly impressive yet also worrying.

“Then why not just take his spot?” The woman asked a rhetorical question, sarcasm hanging in her voice.

“I like it when he gives me orders.”

“Y/n..”

“I'm just kidding, gosh!” You sighed and allowed your hand to fall over your face.

“But…I do like the way he acts when he's in control of a situation, he's too sweet.” A giggle slipped from between your lips. “Hoshina is the best when he goes all serious, be it in a fight against Kaiju or when arguing with me. The look on his face is somethin’ else I'm telling ya! And when he grabs me by the arm to push me away, gosh! I just want to melt!”

Okonogi found herself unable to come up with an answer to your slightly concerning confession. It was such a cliche, constantly arguing with the person you liked simply to see a specific side of them but at the same time she found it cute. To think that the Platoon Leader knew no other way to interact with her crush than to annoy him, it was childish but sweet. Like a highschool romance maybe?

“Don't ever tell him how much you admire him, it will definitely go to his head.” The woman returned to her workload yet she continued to pay you some of her attention

“Ha! Never, not even in my dreams. Okay, maybe in my dreams.” You giggled “If he held my real tight maybe and..oh Okonogi! This man has me in a chokehold, ugh.”

You went into an endless ramble about what specifically you liked about the man. His voice, his way of thinking in battle oh and not to mention his body– one could have thought you were talking to your diary. But your friend did not mind, as she found listening to a second voice instead just the one in her head while working rather refreshing.

“Oh and one time I caught him mid workout late at night and you wont believe how good he looked in that fucking compression shirt. I was ogling so hard, he caught me and I had to pretend to be mad at him for making so much noise late at night.”

“You gotta tell him how you feel someday, Y/n.” The woman replied but her words fell onto deaf ears. You had built up too much tension to now come out with your true feelings. Especially after yesterday's fight, you now had to avoid the man for an unseeable period of time before interacting with him in any type of way. The only way you could ever end up together was if he, for some reason, made the first move but that thought was a fantasy and nothing more.

“Thank you so much for listening to my bullshit rant, Konomi.” You gave the woman a long hug from behind while she remained seated.

“Always here to listen to you.” She smiled. And with that you left her shared office.

On your way back to your room, you encountered many cadets who greeted you with a smile. You returned their kindness, making sure to smile and wave at any soul you encountered. But once the space you walked through became less lively, less and less cadets now passed you by until you were all alone, so did the change in atmosphere become more suffocating. You felt a presence behind you, poking and scratching at your back.

At first you tried to ignore it, not paying your alarming thoughts any attention, until you were fully convinced to have heard something move behind you.

“Who's there-” Your entire body immediately froze upon locking eyes with Hoshina.

“Oh great, it's the Vice-” Hoshina grabbed you by the wrist, stopping you mid sentence, and pulled you into the closest room. His ambush came so fast and sudden, you barely had time to fight back. The man made sure to close the door behind himself as he had you where he wanted you to be, a dangerous smirk sat on his face.

“What the hell do you think you are doing!” You spat, the entire situation seeming so random to be real.

“I'm going to enjoy this immensely.” There was something playful in the Vice Captain's voice, something that even you feared. Before you could even progress what was about to happen, Hoshina placed himself right in front of you, head slightly tilted to the side and arms crossed over his chest.

“So, ya like it when I give ya orders, huh?”

Everything in your brain came to a temporary halt as you heard those words come from his mouth. Embarrassment wasn't even enough to explain the sheer humiliation you felt in that very second. Every inch of your body was telling you to run and hide into the nearest corner available. Did he..overhear your conversation with Okonogi?!

“Came by to tell Okonogi that I needed some info on somethin’. Didn't get the info I wanted but def left with sum I needed.”

“I have no idea what you're talking abo-” Once again you found yourself being cut off by the man. Hoshina pushed you back against a table, causing you to stumble and plop down onto it. He then positioned himself between your legs and moved his body closer to yours. His actions seemed like something out of a movie, a scenario one would strictly encounter in the world of fiction, yet he was right in front of you, playing with your heart and sanity.

“Here I was wondering why ya always rushed to get on my nerves. Guess our little Platoon Leader has a crush on her Vice Captain, hm?”

Your brain stopped functioning the second you felt Hoshina's hot breath against your lips. Now that you were seated on the desk and he stood right in front of you, you were about the same height. Forced to stare into his eyes, you found yourself choking on your own words.

“Oh p-please. You probably confused my voice for someone else's.” You tried to save yourself but your efforts were in vain. As your gaze started to drift away from his, Hoshina opened his eyes and placed his fingers under your chin, forcing you to look at him again. He was surely enjoying this, especially after the humiliation you put him through yesterday.

“Look at me.” He ordered, a smug grin on his face.

“All this time I was wondering where all this hate for me was comin from. Ya had me feelin real bad after every damn fight, felt like an asshole and everything.” He chuckled.

“Oh you are an asshole.” You rolled your eyes, the fight in you still alive.

“Yeah but you like this asshole, a lot even.”

As the tension grew thicker you realized that there was no going back from this. Your feelings were laid out all over the room with nowhere to hide. But although you felt humiliated and exposed, a part of you felt relieved that you could finally drop the act. You reached out for Hoshina's wrist and held onto it tightly.

“So what if I like you.. If you let your guard down for even a second, I will still take your position as Vice Captain and kick your fucking ass.”

Hoshina's eyes widened for a second, surprised that you were still going at it, but he liked that about you. That is why he tolerated all the mockery and jokes, because he too was desperate to see a certain side of you.

“How cute. Unfortunately, you are in no position to open your mouth that much.” His fingers grazed over your lips ever so lightly, applying the smallest amount of pressure onto them. His touch had you weak, yet you could not allow yourself to let your guard down. If you showed Hoshina even one second of weakness, he would use that to tease you for all eternity.

He of course knew that and therefore tried to get as much out of this situation as possible.

It was an opportunity too sweet to ignore.

[cherry-romper]

What they're like

+ Kafka, Reno, Iharu, Haruichi, Aoi, Hoshina, Gen

Kafka;

What a fucking himbo

Is so incredibly dedicated to his dream it's so admirable but can be a yapper about it - mostly to do with Kaiju anatomy, his yap sessions end with everyone scrambling to take notes.

Isn't aware of how much people respect and care for him.

Sometimes can be a little overbearing, he DOES NOT have an inside voice. Reno and you often keeps him in check but he insists he's not talking loud.

Tells the DUMBEST jokes: "What two words, when combined, hold the most letters?" Then he'd piss himself telling everyone it's "post office"

Is unaware of his improving strength and tends to expect things to be heavier than they are and ends up launching things across a room.

Sometimes gets withdrawals from quitting cigarettes, especially after a stressful day and can get kinda irritable, but being around you and his friends helps curb the cravings. 

Reno;

Opinionated, always willing to give out advice but doesn't often give it without being asked.

Loves doing things for people. Will go out of his way get people stuff if they need it but also knows how to put himself first.

Often quiet in social situations, more of a people watcher than pleaser

Very focused of improving, you can often find him in the training room or library when he has free time

Pushes people to do their best.

Is so down to help people if they ask him no matter what it is.

Once he's started something he'll see it through no matter what.

He's stubborn to a fault

Iharu;

Hot headed but level headed

Easy to talk to, but often only talks about work - kinda to be expected.

Lightens up every room he's in

Doesn't like to see his comrades down in the dumps so will try his hardest to put a smile on their faces

The hypeman of all hypemen

Smart asf, doesn't need help studying but is so down for group study sessions

Can be quite envious of others constantly improving, sometimes you'll find him staring off Into space thinking about improving, lost in deep thought - often he won't even notice you till you shake him out of it, he will shout at you for "not announcing" yourself.

 Can be quite flirty on and off the field but mostly when his adrenaline is pumping. Back and forth banter and teasing insults do something to him.

Haruichi;

Rich boy with really good manners

Cares about his comrades and treats them to meals when they all have the time

Has a skincare and haircare routine

Sleeps with a silk pillow

Absolutely loves having little rivalries with people, it pushes him to be a better fighter.

Completely dedicated to the force but the reservations about his family and the company he'll inherit one day sometimes hold him back from giving his all.

Takes mental notes on how the suits could be improved while he's fighting.

Aoi;

Built like a brick.

Abs like a washboard.

As dense as his body is, he's very agile and quick to move.

Heaviest footsteps known to man

He absolutely loves his peace and quiet, though he's used to having to share his space and time.

Is big on respect but it's something he believes should be earned and not given.

Being ex-military, he's BIG on routines. Doesn't realise he even has one but you've noticed his little patterns.

Light sleeper, but quick to fall asleep. Once his head hits the pillow he is OUT.

Hoshina;

Is terrifying when he's serious and knows it. He loves pretending to be serious to scare people, he finds their reactions hilarious. 

Finds everything funny. Will laugh just to fill silence. 

Always smiling, its almost uncanny. 

Loves his comrades but isn't one to admit that. 

Sometimes he'll go quiet in social situations and just watch everyone messing around, those little moments are his favourite and he treasures them.

Will linger over peoples shoulders when they're studying then make disappointed faces at their work, known nothing they wrote is wrong, he just finds it funny that he made them paranoid. 

Narumi;

Will only give you the time of day if you're good. If you're average or below when it comes to combat, he will not even know your name.

Egotistical beyond comprehension. 

Cocky and sarcastic, gets away with talking back because he's the strongest. 

Adores back and forth teasing. If you can match him in combat he expects you to match him in wit too. 

Finds comfort in his own mess, reminds him he's still alive (he's just lazy)

Likes making little nooks/nests out of pillows to sleep/game in. Also a big fan of pillow forts.