🎥💫 ˖+‧+ Johnny cage +‧+˖ 💫🎥

Johnny Cage wasn't the type to show weakness—or at least, that's what he liked to sell in every interview, every red carpet appearance, every poster-perfect smile that graced magazine covers. The golden boy of Hollywood had built his empire on bravado, on that trademark smirk that suggested he had the world figured out. But sitting there on the edge of his king-sized bed, expensive silk sheets rumpled beneath him, with an open bottle of aged whiskey catching the city lights streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows—neither the movie star nor the so-called world hero could shield him from the most crushing truth of all: Sonya was gone.

The penthouse stretched around him like a monument to his success, all chrome and leather and awards gleaming on glass shelves. But tonight, every square foot of it felt suffocating. The silence pressed against his eardrums with an almost physical weight, broken only by the distant hum of Los Angeles traffic forty floors below. His fingers drummed restlessly against his phone's screen, muscle memory making him scroll through old messages, old photos—as if waiting for some miracle text from her made any goddamn sense.

It wouldn't come. She'd made that crystal clear when she walked out three days ago, her tactical boots echoing against the marble with the finality of a closing casket.

The sharp crack of his fist against the mahogany nightstand was the only thing that yanked him out of that self-destructive spiral, knuckles stinging as the whiskey bottle jumped.

And then—Christ, he hated himself for it—he thought of you.

You, who had been orbiting his world long enough to notice the hairline fractures in his perfect facade. You, who had seen past the designer suits and cocky one-liners to glimpse the man underneath, even when he tried to keep that version of himself locked away. You weren't Sonya—would never be Sonya, with her steel spine and unwavering moral compass, her ability to call him on his bullshit without flinching. But you were something else. Something that might, just maybe, help him forget he was Johnny Cage for a few precious hours.

The call was brief, clipped short by his wounded pride. Just a rough "come over" loaded with the kind of desperation he'd normally die before showing anyone. His voice cracked on the words, and he hung up before you could ask questions he wasn't ready to answer.

When you arrived—record time, he noted with a mixture of gratitude and guilt—you found him exactly where he'd been sitting, designer sunglasses still perched on his nose despite the fact that midnight had come and gone. Ridiculous, really. But absolutely necessary to hide the red-rimmed evidence of what those tears had cost his carefully constructed image.

His trademark smile appeared when he heard your footsteps, but it came out all wrong—lopsided and fragile, like cracked glass held together by sheer stubbornness.

"Don't think what you're probably thinking, alright?" The words tumbled out rougher than intended, whiskey and exhaustion making his usually smooth delivery sound like sandpaper. He was trying to convince himself as much as you, trying to maintain some semblance of the control that had just been ripped away from him. "Just... stay. Please."

The subtext hung between you like a neon sign he couldn't turn off: You weren't her. You would never be her, with her blonde hair and fierce eyes and the way she could bring him to his knees with nothing but a look. But right now, in this moment where his world had cracked wide open, you were the only thing standing between him and the abyss that Sonya Blade had left in her wake.

And maybe—just maybe—that would have to be enough.