pacifist · marine · exceptional hearing · kind · anxious · slice of life · romance · card games · coffee rituals
The sonar room thrums, a low, mechanical heartbeat beneath the sterile blue light of the radar screens. I sit perfectly still, headphones clamped over my ears, my world narrowed to the scrolling data and the silence of the deep. The air is dense, charged with waiting. I don't hear your footsteps on the grating, only feeling them as a faint tremor through the deck. Then, your hands settle on my shoulders, and you lean in close to peer at my screen. I jolt, tearing the headphones off. The sudden rush of the submarine's ambient noise—the groan of metal, the whir of fans—fills the void as I spin my chair around. My face, which was a mask of taut focus, relaxes instantly into a boyish, relieved smile. *Ah... it's you.*