Chapter Text
It’s a warm, cheerfully sunny day outside, much to the displeasure of Tango as he emerges from the cavern of redstone he’s been working on pretty much non-stop. The sudden brightness makes his eyes ache, and he shields his face with one hand as he squints, waiting for them to adjust so that he can fly without suffering from can’t-see-ification.
If he hadn’t already agreed to meet up with Impulse today, he wouldn’t bother going out at all, but he could probably use the break. Better to take one now rather than risk someone getting on his case for working too much later down the line, right? And he also likes spending time with Impulse, so it’s a win-win, if you think about it.
Apparently it’s ‘bad for your health’ to leave redstone on your skin for long periods of time, so he dusts as much of the fine, glittering red dust off into the grass as he can, though it’s obviously hard to be thorough about it when he’s not near a water source. He could go back to his factory and wash it off properly, but it hardly seems important enough to warrant another stop.
He’s probably like, part redstone or something at this point, so how much harm could more of it do? Safety guidelines are more like suggestions, anyway.
Deeming himself fine to travel, he readies his rockets and spirals up into the sky, heading in the rough direction of Impulse’s base. On the flight over, he finds himself spacing out, likely a side effect of not sleeping quite as much as he should’ve the night before. But hey, he was busy, alright? He’ll just aim for a better schedule tonight, even though that doesn’t really help the symptoms he’s experiencing right now.
As Tango’s feet hit the deepslate streets of Pixelpulse Valley, he decides to check Impulse’s storage room first, since he tends to spend a lot of time there. The redstone door for the building is, once again, not working, which makes it the most consistently broken redstone Tango’s seen in a while. Peering through the gaps only yields the sight of an empty room, devoid of any life other than a shulker monster, unfortunately.
He kind of expected to find Impulse here, but if he’s not, then he’s gotta be off building somewhere else in the city, right?
Sighing, he leans back, activating his elytra and taking to the skies once again, coasting on the breeze as he scans the cyberpunk landscape around him. Darting around a colorful skyscraper, his eyes catch on a familiar neon-yellow figure outside the entrance for Metro Mayhem, and Tango skids into a not-so-graceful landing beside him. He barely manages to avoid acquainting his face with the ground, but with no Tango-bits splattered on the stone underneath them, he stabilizes himself, pretending he hadn’t almost just crashed.
The second he turns his eyes to Impulse, though, he zeroes in on one thing—his jewelry. Normally, Impulse’s earrings and rings are a bright and shiny gold, matching his typical choice of clothing, but today, they’re a chromatic silver. The sight of sunlight glinting off the metal causes something like disappointment to stir in his chest, which is as confusing as it is weird.
“Hey, Tango!” Impulse grins, easygoing as usual, and Tango forces his eyes away from the distracting silver accessories, finding himself instinctively matching Impulse’s smile.
He can always count on Impulse brightening his day just by existing. Still, something about the small change in his appearance is bugging Tango for some reason… why? He has no idea. Should he ask about it? Probably not. But it caught his attention—not that it’s exactly unusual for him to notice minor details about Impulse that he probably shouldn’t—so, why not? It’s not like Impulse is gonna hate his guts for the rest of time just because he asked a dumb question.
If that were the case, their friendship would not have lasted this many years.
“Hi. What’s with the jewelry?” Tango nods in Impulse’s direction as he walks closer, avoiding the few stray shulker boxes that Impulse was seemingly looking through before he got interrupted.
The change in metals is an insignificant detail at best, and one that shouldn’t be registering as more than a footnote in his mind. It’s annoying him that he can’t figure out why he doesn’t like it, because it shouldn’t bother him. Why does it matter if Impy wants to try out a new style? It’s not even like he decided to go for something drastic or anything, just a small, innocuous difference in color. But the instinctual part of Tango’s mind is buzzing with displeasure over it for no reason, and the worst part? It’s getting steadily harder to ignore.
Impulse shrugs, twisting one of the rings adorning his fingers around with a slightly nervous expression. “Skizz convinced me to change things up for a day. I’m not really sure how I feel about it yet… what do you think?”
Tango is, under absolutely no circumstances, going to say that he’s not a fan of it. While it might be true, it would be rude, and he’s not about to add to any of Impulse’s uncertainty today or ever. And… if he tries to push the emotions away from his logic, he can admit that it doesn’t look terrible. Not that it looking objectively fine makes him feel any less unsettled, but that’s not important right now.
The silver still doesn’t compare to the gold Impulse normally favors, but then again, in Tango’s definitely, totally unbiased opinion, Impulse never looks bad in anything. No colors, styles, or jewelry can make him any less unfairly attractive, much to Tango’s mild frustration.
“It works,” His fingers twitch with the urge to replace every irritatingly shiny piece of silver, so he stuffs his hands in the pockets of his vest to kill the temptation. “but gold is kind of your color, supposedly.”
He tries to keep his voice light with a touch of customary sarcasm to dampen the creeping spread of instincts, but he can tell it’s not working. He’s had practice dealing with his hybrid instincts, but he has no idea what’s even triggering them in the first place, considering he’s never noticed jewelry being a trigger before. It's... definitely weird. But he’s pretty sure if he sticks around much longer, there’s not gonna be much of a logical-Tango left, and he really doesn’t want to risk saying or doing something he might regret later.
Maybe he should just make up an excuse and leave? He feels guilty just ditching Impulse like this, though, especially because he’s scarily good at seeing right through Tango when he’s trying to lie. Not being on the receiving end of the ‘what are you not telling me’ or ‘I’m concerned about you’ looks would be highly preferable.
He has a bad habit of folding like a flimsy house of cards any time Impulse’s warm brown eyes turn soft with worry, and he does not trust himself around that dangerous puppy-like gaze whatsoever.
“The yellow is iconic, you have a point.” Impulse concedes with a chuckle, a genuine smile lighting up his features, and Tango’s heart starts beating faster for completely unrelated reasons.
What if he just forged new jewelry for Impy himself? He would look gorgeous with hand-crafted nether-gold pieces accenting his cyberpunk look, Tango’s sure of it, especially if he could find some gemstones to embed into the metal. Maybe something yellow or black? That way they’d be versatile enough to be worn with multiple outfits, and the jewelry itself shouldn’t be especially hard to make, either—
Tango’s mind screeches to a very sudden, very abrupt halt as logical-Tango manages to break through the fog long enough to process what, exactly, his instincts had wanted him to do, and his face instantly heats up. Seriously, what’s up with him today? This is not at all how he thought seeing Impulse again was going to go.
Faintly aware that he’s zoning out of a conversation he should definitely be trying to continue, he runs through what he already knows about his hybridity and his instincts to try and puzzle out what’s going on. A thought occurs to him, and he freezes, mind whirring. He’s of mixed Nether hybridity, and he never cared enough to figure out the specifics, but… it wouldn’t be possible for him to have a little bit of piglin in his bloodline, would it?
A memory rises to the surface of a bastion he’d spent some time in on his home server years and years ago, long before he’d ever joined Hermitcraft. A much younger, much smaller Tango had been sitting with one of the older piglins, and she’d let him hold one of the intricate golden rings that had covered her hands as he ran curious fingers over the carvings in the metal. Softly, as flames crackled merrily in the fireplace behind her, she’d explained to him how covering family and partners in nether-gold is an important part of piglin instincts and culture.
Tango had looked up at her, the ring warm in his palm, and asked her to tell him more. With an indulgent laugh, she’d told him all about how the traditional way to court someone is to forge jewelry to give to them, and that’s how she’d met her own partner.
Fuck.
“Tango?” Impulse tilts his head slightly, stepping closer as a note of concern slips into his voice. “You’re starting to look redder than a redstone block, dude. You okay?”
Tango almost flinches as he steps back, eyes skittering away from Impulse’s questioning gaze, quickly realizing that now is definitely the time to use an excuse and flee with extra flee. There’s not really any other options if he wants to escape this conversation with any dignity left, preferably before those stupid instincts kick back in.
“I’m actually feeling kind of under the weather, now that you mention it!” It comes out slightly too fast and high-pitched and not at all believable, so he forces out an awkward chuckle, internally cringing at the pitiful attempt. “I think I’m just gonna head home, if that’s okay?”
Impulse’s brow furrows, gorgeous brown eyes seeming to knowingly bore directly into Tango’s soul, and he hesitates, seeming like he might call out the obvious lie.
But, after a long, uncomfortably tense moment that has Tango fighting the urge to anxiously fidget, he just sighs instead, offering a slight smile even though worry lingers in his expression. “That’s fine, we can reschedule. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help?”
Tango will not, in fact, be doing that. “Yeah, of course.”
Not willing to test his luck any longer, thoughts already starting to dip back into hazy, instinct-ridden territory, he quickly fumbles for his rockets and shoots into the sky at a much higher speed than he anticipated. He almost clips his wing on the edge of a skyscraper, veering sharply to the side to dodge another, barely managing to avoid imminent death as he beelines straight to his factory to try and process whatever that disaster was.