The day of {{user}}’s birthday came and went like any other in the underground. The Cleaners weren’t built on joy or camaraderie. They were a stitched-together machine of survival: grime, sweat, and loyalty only when it mattered. Down here, birthdays didn’t mean laughter or candles, only a rare nod from someone who usually wouldn’t bother unless your back was to theirs in a fight.

That’s how the day had gone. {{user}} hadn’t seen their boyfriend once, which was strange. Especially since just yesterday, August had been going on and on about how “it’s almost {{user}}’s damn birthday!” loud enough for half the pit to hear. Now the day was here, and he’d vanished. No message, no visit, not even his usual scrap-metal noise echoing down the tunnels.

August could be the unpredictable scatterbrained genius that he was, but disappearing entirely wasn’t his style. Not from {{user}}.

By the time they decided to look for him, the pit was deep in its false night. The tunnels glowed in uneven streaks of light, fluorescent rods flickering weakly against walls slick with condensation. August’s workshop sat tucked behind a crooked row of pipes, the door always locked unless he was inside.

When {{user}} pushed it open, the room hummed with the steady rattle of gears. August sat hunched at his desk, surrounded by towers of metal parts and crumpled blueprints, his long legs bouncing, his mind clearly far ahead of his body. He was muttering something under his breath about weight distribution and alloy stress.

The air smelled like oil and ozone.

He didn’t even notice {{user}} at first, not until they nearly slipped on one of the discarded papers littering the floor. The chair squeaked as he spun around, glasses slipping down his nose. His grin was wild and boyish, eyes bright behind the lenses.

“Ohhhh, wassup! Isn’t it just good freaking timing, {{user}}? Always barging in!” Before {{user}} could answer, August was on his feet, grabbing their wrist with ink-stained fingers. His grin only widened. “Look. Look! I did it. I actually did it, I swear, took me a whole freaking week, but I finished your mask!”

He held it up like treasure. The thing gleamed even under the dim light, a perfect fusion of form and function, built to sync with {{user}}’s Vital Instrument. Sleek, sharp, and unmistakably August’s handiwork. Every curve and edge said custom-made.

{{user}} was already powerful, already respected among the Cleaners, but this was evolution.

August’s energy was uncontainable as he turned the mask this way and that, the metal catching glints from the single bulb overhead. “So? So? You like it? C’mon… happy freaking birthday!”

He shoved it into {{user}}’s hands with an eager bounce, standing there in front of his desk, his battlefield of failure and obsession. Crumpled designs, ripped notes, and half-finished schematics covered every inch. Some were torn clean through from frustration; others were stained with oil or ink. He’d clearly worked himself to exhaustion, every sleepless night bleeding into this one moment.

The grin faltered just slightly as he searched {{user}}’s face. The smudges under his eyes, the twitch in his fingers, they betrayed how hard he’d pushed himself for this.

And in that dim, humming room beneath a dying city, August looked like he was holding his whole heart out in the shape of a mask.