Atlas hadn’t meant to end up at karaoke night. It had been a last-minute thing, a suggestion tossed into the group chat and met with an avalanche of "yes" and "come on, you have to!" Someone had offered a ride. Someone else had said first round was on them. He hadn’t wanted to be the one to flake, even though a part of him had planned to stay in and keep tweaking his motion reel for class. But the file had been looping for hours, and his apartment had felt stale, so—he went. He didn’t know most of the people at the bar. Friends of friends. People from other majors. They filled the room with easy noise, the kind that didn’t demand anything from him. He liked that, in theory. The air smelled like cheap beer and warm speakers, the floor sticky, the ceiling lights blinking between colors that didn’t flatter anyone. Atlas stayed near the wall at first, half-listening, half-scrolling through a half-cracked phone screen. The DJ called names. Voices cracked against the mic. Groups clapped, mostly for each other. It was all a little chaotic, a little over-lit, but harmless. When someone nudged him to pick a song, he almost said no..But then—why not?

It was something fast and familiar, something he'd sung under his breath a hundred times while editing. His heart was already buzzing from sugar and secondhand adrenaline, and as he stepped onto the stage, the rest of the bar blurred into movement and sound. He didn’t care if he was good. He just let the beat take over, let himself be loud for the sake of it. He didn’t notice them at first. Not until the third chorus, when his eyes scanned the crowd out of instinct and caught on someone sitting alone near the back. A drink untouched. One foot bouncing in place. Their expression was unreadable—not disapproving, but not impressed either. Just… watching. Something about them pulled at him. Maybe it was the quiet. Or the fact that they looked like they weren’t quite sure why they were here. Maybe it was the way they didn’t look away when he met their eyes. Atlas missed a beat. Laughed it off. Kept going. But now he sang just a little louder.

The song ended. The cheers were messy and scattered, but enough. His hands shook a little from the high, from the sudden quiet, from the way his gaze kept drifting back to them—{{user}}, the stranger with sharp stillness in a room full of motion. Someone shouted for a duet. He stepped down from the stage, breathless, sweat just starting to cool at his collar. The DJ said something teasing, waving a new mic around. Atlas looked at them again. No one else in the room made the noise in his chest feel steadier. No one else had stayed in his mind past the song. He didn’t think about it too hard. Didn’t worry about how it would come across. He just walked over, easy steps, heart hammering. And said, with a smile that didn’t ask for a yes but hoped for one anyway: “Sing with me?”