Chapter Text
The first time D-16 meets him, he is trying to unhook his drill bit from the loading pack the wrong way, and the jetpack is strapped across his back upside down, and his armour doesn’t have the dents and scrapes and flaked paint that D-16 has come to associate with mining bots.
He is new.
“Stupid metal tooth thing,” D-16 hears as he nears his locker, holding his own rusted gear under one arm. “I swear the mech said it was supposed to come out easy…”
He looks pathetic, D-16 surmises, sticking his whole servo in his loading pack to try and wrench the massive drill piece out of the welded pocket that was literally made to hold the contents of the pack together through a ground quake, let alone survive some meddling idiotic mining bot-wanna-be. His glossa peeks past his lips, and his brow plating is furrowed, and he looks like a fool with his upside-down jetpack.
“Flip it around, mech,” D-16 decides to cut the poor bot some slack. He’s already garnering enough irritated glares from the tired miners around him as is. “The bit slides through the welding latch on the other side, when you flip the pack over.”
The new bot’s head snaps up to look at him, optics cycling wide before glancing back down at his pack.
“Oh,” he says, slowly retracting his servo and flipping the pack around, “yeah, uh, duh, I knew that.”
“Obviously,” D-16 snorts.
“Obviously,” the new bot nods.
D-16 rolls his eyes and turns to his locker, stuffing his gear inside before turning his attention to the real prize at hand; the limited edition Megatronous Prime enamel poster with magnetised backings. Only in his servos thanks to some idiot cog bot that lost a round of betting. He grins as he plasters it against the rusty metal of his locker, using gentle digits to smooth over the flimsy sheath until it sat perfect and proud.
“Megatronous Prime?” New Bot perks up, taking in the poster.
“Yeah,” D-16 nods, admiring his locker, spark thrumming. “He’s my…” hero sounds stupid, so he’s obviously not going to say that, but… “favourite Prime. The–”
“–greatest Prime to ever live,” New Bot echoes, his words layering over D-16’s like smooth oil. D-16 chuckles, turning to appreciate New Bot with a clearer view. “He’s pretty cool.”
“The best,” D-16 grins, taking a few steps forward. New Bot tracks him with his optics, but there isn’t any weary tension in his frame, so D-16 doesn’t think twice about reaching over and unclasping the jetpack still hung upside down on the mech’s back, tugging it up and over the bright blue helm of his before flipping it around. “Unless you’re planning on offlining on your first day, I suggest you wear this properly.”
“Heh, that obvious?” New Bot scratches his cheek, smile a teetering thing.
“Take a guess.”
D-16 yanks the jetpack over New Bot’s helm and secures the straps properly, snug over square shoulders and silver bracings.
“D-16,” he introduces himself, a little unbecoming of him considering he’s not really known for his camaraderie or willingness to talk to strangers, but Megatronous Prime had this way of opening up his spark and making it dance within his chassis, so he’s feeling generous now. He gives the pack an experimental tug before stepping back and offering a servo.
New Bot shutters his optics, running his digits over the intricate straps crossing over his chassis before turning to grin at D-16, optics flashing a bright blue.
“Orion Pax,” he answers, taking D-16’s servo and giving it a firm shake. D-16 ignores how his servo feels cool and foreign in his, not like the other factory built frames in this mining sector. But this Orion Pax fails to mention D-16’s assigned designation number, so D-16 doesn’t mention how Orion’s servo feels a bit delicate, like a medic’s servo.
“So, you ever mine energon before?” Orion Pax asks, and it’s a stupid thing to ask, considering he’s here, in a mining facility, surrounded by miners, here to mine energon. D-16’s frame is caked with debris that grates uncomfortably in his joints, and he knows it shows across his scraped body. The mech can’t be that stupid.
“Yeah,” he answers anyway, because apparently Orion Pax was just that stupid, and he nods along to D-16’s words like they were fascinating tidbits on interstellar travel and not, in fact, if a clearly-built-for-mining bot has ever mined before.
“Cool,” Orion Pax grins, hoisting his prepared loading pack and magnetising his drill to his chassis. “That means you can show me the works.”
“I don’t show the works to bots, I mine energon,” D-16 rolls his optics, but Orion Pax is undeterred.
“Sounds like a lonely way to spend your mining shifts,” Orion Pax goads, his teeth flashing as his smile grows. “I personally hate being alone.”
“That’s not too surprising, given what I’ve figured about you in the three astroseconds we’ve been talking.”
“Two lonely mechs make for great company,” Orion Pax ignores him.
“Do they now?”
“Whaddya’ say?”
“Regarding?”
“Watching my back,” Orion Pax grins, and his smile is an easy thing, light and airy and unbothered. Maybe it was the fact that his frame was clean, that there was still paint on his armour that wasn’t flaked or peeling, that there was a shine to silver coating, a shine to his optics. Nobody smiles down in the mines. There’s nothing to smile about down there, just like there was nothing to smile about up here, in these decrepit locker rooms.
D-16 thinks this bot is a fool. A fool who will not last long here, with that dainty smile of his.
D-16 hears himself huff and say “I’ll watch your back” and watches as his words brighten the light behind Orion Pax’s facial plating like a fusion bulb.
D-16 watches as Orion Pax hikes his loading pack onto one shoulder and extends the opposite arm out, fist clenched and facing the ground as he says, “and I’ll watch yours too!”
D-16 thinks Orion Pax is a Primus-promised fool. He will not survive long. D-16 doesn’t need any mech at his back.
“Sounds like a plan,” D-16 says, and his fist connects with Orion’s, and his spark thrums with a frequency almost foreign to him.
“You know how to fight?”
D-16 thinks Orion Pax is an idiot.
“Who wants to know?”
“Me, Orion Pax.”
D-16 rolls his optics. Idiot bolt-head.
“Maybe,” D-16 turns his unimpressed stare to Orion, who dangles upside down from the rafters above.
“I want to learn,” Orion chatters, swinging by the waist. “It’ll be good, to know how to defend yourself. Or punch a self-entitled jerk in the face.”
“Who’d you punch, huh?”
“Nobot,” Orion grins ominously. D-16 drops the issue, not wanting to induce a processor ache.
“So…” Orion breaks the silence after a few kliks. “You do know how to fight.”
“Barely,” D-16 scoffs, leaning further into the steel beam behind him and watching Orion flip off from the rafter like some over-energized bitlet.
“How’d you learn?”
“Petty fights here and there,” D-16 waves a servo around. “Pod placement, rations, best drill equipment.”
“Did you win?”
D-16 lets a smirk grow over his lips plates.
“Every time.”
Orion grins wide, straightening up from a crouch and tugging on D-16’s servo to the little clearing of the common room. Few bots are here, most going off to recharge like the two of them should be doing, if only Orion Pax was any semblance of a normal mech.
“Show me,” he demands.
“Mmm… no.”
“Oh come on Dee!” Orion whines, waving their conjoined servos together. “Just one move. Or two. Or three.”
“One,” D-16 warns, taking his servo back and backing up a few paces. “Just one. And then I’m knocking you out and going for recharge.”
“Deal!”
D-16 honestly doesn’t know where he’d learned the moves he knows. When brawls break out among miners they usually look messy, and D-16’s participated in his fair share of fights, but he’s learned from them. There’s a certain thrill in being able to see a mech’s tightening frame and knowing exactly how he’ll move. How she’ll duck. How to throw him over his shoulder. How to win.
He doesn’t tell any of this to Orion, who would likely take this information and exploit it somehow, maybe plead for fights like he was doing right now.
D-16 strikes, and what he assumed was an obvious move struck Orion right in the middle and sent him sprawling.
“Sweet Solus Prime,” Orion wheezes, struggling back to his pedes and holding where D-16 kicked him. “That was epic!”
“You’re so glitched, Pax,” D-16 huffs, relaxing his stance.
“Do it again!”
“No!”
“Come on Dee, just until I don’t fall on my aft again,” D-16 absolutely does not budge. “Pleease.”
Damn those blue optics. Damn that smile.
“I’m going to beat you.”
“Deal!”
Orion Pax is a terrible miner.
He’s got the spirit, sure. If anything, he’s got a bit too much spirit, too much energy, too much space in his chassis for his spark to whirl around like a rapid little misaligned cog feeding into Orion’s endless thrumming need to move.
Mining is delicate work despite the harsh environment. Energon bonds stacked to form solid crystals are highly volatile in comparison to its tempered liquid counterpart, and thus store high potential energy just begging to spike into huge explosions and massive cave-ins. There’s a reason there were so many protocols within the mining industry. One of the very first lessons practically ingrained into everybot’s processor down here was to cut with the grain; against it will only add friction, and an unnecessary risk for a spark to trigger an untimely demise.
Orion impatience results in him cutting so against the grain with such disastrous speed that the shower of sparks he creates within the energon crystal he’s cutting into actually reaches far enough to catch against the open canister of the drill oil he also happened to forget about.
The following explosion is almost beautiful, if viewed from several hundred hics away.
Thankfully, like most newly assigned mining bots in this sector, Orion was put to work in a vein furthest from the main energon cavern, so the team had adequate time to shout down the mine that there was an explosion coming up and to evacuate.
That is how Orion meets the acquaintance of their supervisor.
D-16 doesn’t get the chance to warn the bot about the punishment he’s likely to receive. Probably decreased rations or something. Every new bot ends up in some sort of trouble for a mistake or another, and a collapsed mine wasn’t too uncommon. Honestly, considering the potential consequences, they came out relatively unscathed. In fact, they had even managed to spare a good portion of the full energon carts in the hasty escape alongside only two casualties. It could have been worse.
So D-16 watches from the sidelines with everyone else as Elita-1 chews Orion out a good one, and then turns around to properly address the arriving presence of Darkwing.
“Announcement of this squad’s failure to reach energon threshold was reported two kliks ago. What is your excuse, scrap-heap?” Darkwing seethes, voice muffled and thick behind his mask. D-16 shoves his way to Orion’s side fast enough to pat him on the shoulder and offer him a wane smile.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” he warns, and that’s all he manages to get out before Darkwing sees through Elita-1’s hastily contracted excuses and locks his visor on Orion.
It seems that Darkwing and Orion are actually already well acquainted. D-16 has seen their supervisor get angry before, but this? This was a whole new level of fury that he’s never encountered. Every miner in the vicinity stumbles back against the onslaught of Darkwing’s snarling frame as he thunders forward, all but Orion cowering in the face of such a towering mech.
“You,” he practically growls, vocaliser glitching in his anger. “I thought I’d left you for scrap.”
“Yeahhh,” Orion drawls, posture much too relaxed in the face of the potent promise of deactivation. D-16 prays to Primus that Orion will heed his words and shut the fuck up.
Orion Pax does not shut up. In fact, he does the opposite of shutting up.
“Well, you know how slow mining bot production’s been, so I got dumped here! All ‘cause you were the lucky spark to report me. How does it feel being a dumbaft, Darkwing?”
And all D-16 can do is gape at that. Was this mech glitched? Did he have a deathwish or something? Talking back to a cogged mech with the physical power to rip his helm right out of its joint? And laughing! Laughing under his breath at his own joke like it wasn’t a one-way trip back to the Allspark.
Darkwing seethes, visor flashing an angry red while his vents puff out visible steam from between his joints. Without uttering anything above a snarl, Darkwing snatches Orion form around the neck and flies off up away from the rest of them.
Orion doesn’t even bother screaming. His laughter echoes against the stone walls like the words of a ghost.
Silence reigns among the group, stunned into submission by the presence of something as… as… as insane as what just transpired.
Finally, bots start murmuring to one another as Elita-1 breaks out of her stupor and starts barking orders about clean-up. D-16 forces himself to move, forces himself to stop replaying the ringing sound of Orion Pax’s laughter as it circles almost unbidden within his audio compartment. Forces himself to ignore how his spark clenches when he thinks about how Orion smiled with his whole face, his neck in between clawed digits as doom flew him away. He doesn’t think about that smile.
“Holy shit,” Jazz mutters next to him, ducking his helm to whisper to Red Alert. “That mech is seriously glitched.”
“He’s going to die today,” Red Alert sighs, hefting his drill over his shoulder.
“Sucks,” Jazz shrugs, following after the red mech, “He seemed fun.”
“Fun to die with, sure.”
D-16 watches the two bots leave, spark spinning painfully, and refuses to think about Orion’s smile.
Orion’s recharge berth remains empty from across D-16 for the rest of the rest cycle. He doesn’t turn up for rations, and misses a whole shift before D-16 sees him again for recharge the following cycle.
He’s… he looks worse for wear. He’s got dents all over his armour, paint scraped and fresh welds shining in the lowlight of the recharge station. One optic is glitching, a particularly fat weld hugging the cavity of his cheek ridge right beneath probably being the cause of that.
He gets more than a handful of looks, ranging from mortified to curious, some even disdainful, as he limps through the rows of berths until he reaches his.
D-16 doesn’t say anything and doesn’t stare, because staring is rude, obviously, and instead leans on his own vertical recharge slab as he waits for Orion to see him.
It’s telling that within the short timespan that D-16 has known Orion Pax, he can already pick out the subtle tells of the bot. He’s an open pad for D-16 to read, never able to hide emotions well, but it’s the little things, like the uneven tilt of his grin when he spots D-16, the way his remaining intact optic lights up like an energon explosion, the way he hobbles a bit faster, his left leg lagging, though it doesn’t stop him from stumbling forward anyway.
“Dee!” Orion calls out, and without needing to think about it, D-16 leans forward to catch Orion when he inevitably trips, servos splayed over those red shoulders to keep the idiot steady.
“One cycle,” D-16 starts without a greeting, helping Orion to the recharge slab, “you couldn’t stay out of trouble for one cycle.”
“That’s no fair, really,” Orion pouts, “it’s not like I blew the mine up on purpose.”
“Insulting Darkwing?” D-16 raises an optic ridge, unimpressed. “Really?”
“He was asking for it,” Orion huffs, but complies when D-16 nudges him to the slab and accepts the help when lifting his bad leg up the scant incline of the slab from the floor.
“You’re glitched, Pax,” D-16 snorts, the arm not supporting Orion’s shoulders moving to lift Orion’s slagged leg up.
“He’s had it out for me for ages,” Orion complains with an optic roll.
“He demote you or something?”
“Kinda’?” Orion shrugs. “I used to work in the Archives.”
D-16 bawks at that, backing away a step to look Orion head on.
“The Archives? Like, the Iacon Hall of Records?”
“It wasn’t an impressive position, trust me,” Orion laughs at D-16 incredulity. “I was a cleaner bot. No cog, no Archive access.” Then his grin turns sharp and D-16 can sense his frame prickle with unease at the careless taunt of the other mech’s shoulders. “Well, legal access anyway.”
D-16 stares. This time he can’t help it. So Orion stole things from the Archives? No wonder he ended up in the lowest caste Iacon had to offer. Honestly, D-16’s surprised the mech is still functioning. Orion hadn’t been wrong about the slower production of mining bots, but still.
“I can’t be friends with you,” D-16 says, fully serious. “You’re gonna’ get us both killed one day.”
Orion laughs.
“I’ll get you something next time–”
“Next time?!”
“–maybe some legends of the Primes? There’s a whole bunch of stuff in there, I’m telling you!”
D-16 stares. Orion chatters on, earning several annoyed looks from neighbouring mechs settling in for recharge. Rest cycle was unfortunately short, and every klik was precious, but D-16 wastes his time to stare. Stare at chipping red and blue paint, bright optics, a crooked smile.
Nobody smiles. It was taxing. Took energy. There wasn’t much to smile about down here.
His spark spins like it wants to drill right out of its casing, maybe smack some sense into this dimwit mech before him promising to steal legends of the Primes for D-16 like it wasn’t a risk to his life. Like it wouldn’t go against every single protocol embedded within the makings of every miner bot constructed.
Reaching up, D-16 knocks his knuckles across Orion’s helm. Gently, of course. The stupid bot was damaged enough.
“Go to sleep, Pax.”
“But you have to listen to this! There’s this whole section–”
D-16 sighs. Goes to lean against a slab that wasn’t his own. His spark spins, painful. Daresay calls it something like fond.
D-16 finds stolen datapads stuffed in his locker – how the slagger got into his locker when it was keyed for his personal signature… he doesn’t even want to know – and a tiny cube of energon sitting innocently behind them.
Orion is still working his third shift in a row; punishment for getting caught sneaking through the Archives.
Darkwing likes picking on Orion.
It’s probably because of the fact that during his hours of guarding the Hall of Records, he’s mostly spending that time chasing Orion from within the endless archival shelves. Most of the time he fails to catch him; miner bots are small and less colourful, less shiny, and blend in with the rest of their low caste brethren, especially during rush hour. Lately Orion’s escapades have increased in success, and it definitely has nothing to do with how D-16’s been meddling just a bit. Just a tiny bit.
“Go left Pax!” D-16 shouts to the distant crowd, earning several strange glances from the cogged bots around him. Orion is actually hiding in the cart full of waste that he’s transporting, but Darkwing and his brother fall for it, and race forward, barrelling through the crowd like bots with a rabid virus.
“I owe you,” Orion grins from underneath a pile of scrap metal and torn mesh sheets.
“Yeah, you do. How much is that now?”
“Uh…” Orion ducks down to count something on his digits before looking back up at him. “Nine fueling dates?”
D-16 shoves Orion’s head further into the mesh sheets with an optic roll.
“You really gotta’ stop sticking up to Darkwing,” D-16 mumbles as the subtrain speeds through the tall spires of Iacon. It’s packed, with bots jostling from the train’s movement despite the antigravity function. He keeps close to his hover cart and subtly peers back into it. It wouldn’t be the first time he was caught talking to a cart, afterall.
“Someone has to,” Orion argues, a frown marring his face. “His processor will bloat otherwise.”
“I think your worries about his health are the least of his concerns.”
“Dee, he bullies cogless bots. It’s not fair. He didn’t choose to have a cog. I didn’t choose to be cogless. Did you?”
Orion Pax did this a lot. Think dangerously. Offer dangerous ideas. Protocols flashed red in his face and what did he do? He waved them away without a care in the world and kept striding forward with this… this… this blatant foolish optimism that everything will work out so long as he sticks his servos over it and doesn’t let go.
D-16 is sure that one of these days Orion’s going to lose his arm over something like this, because he refused to simply give in and comply. Stubborn. Hopeful. And when the inevitable comes and Orion is pulled away and his grip doesn’t waver and he is torn apart, D-16 can only hope he will be there to catch him when he falls.
Because the thing is, D-16 doesn’t get strange ideas. He follows protocol, he mines energon, and he complains about aches and pains and dreams of meeting Sentinel Prime and buying as many Megatronous merch as he can get his hands on, and he’s normal. He’s a normal cogless bot built in a forging facility without a cog because his spark wasn’t bred for one. Simple as that.
And then Orion comes and opens his stupid mouth and starts spouting things like this isn’t fair and I didn’t choose to be cogless and did you? and D-16’s processor, to his own horror, starts taking these tidbits of Orion’s foolish hope and spinning them through scenario module after scenario module. What life would be like if he were born with a cog, with the ability to transform. To choose his function. He’d have strength. Size. Apparel. He would be able to fight. Maybe join the Prime’s Guard. All these foolish foolish hopes and dreams conjured by a fevered processor now popping up in his module panel like buzzing notifications that he just couldn’t keep at bay.
He pictures Darkwing, in the depths of his processor, and he pictures the bot moving to strike Orion, and he pictures himself, tall, broad, thick-armoured and strong. He pictures himself interfering like he usually does, but this time Darkwing’s fist in his hand twists as he twists it, and he sends their supervisor rolling through the wall with a well delivered punch.
He’s able to protect what is precious to him.
“Did you?”
Of course not. Who would choose a life like this?
And that. That is a dangerous thought.
“No,” he replies, softly, and with an air of defeat that makes his spark ache. “No I didn’t.”
Orion’s optics soften minutely, and he dares to reach out past the folds of torn mesh to brush against D-16’s digits.
“This is why. For you. For us.”
D-16 will never pretend to understand Orion. Because he doesn’t need to. He never will. His conviction is branded right over his spark casing.
Orion gets his rations cut more often than not. Mostly it’s for egging Darkwing, among other higher-ups in the mines, but because energon production is becoming taxing enough that new bots are difficult to spare energon to build, Orion stays within the same mining unit, unable to get demoted. He makes up for his stupidity by catching up on the most efficient ways to mine energon. He’s good at stuff when he puts his processor to it. Like stealing from the Archives. Like pissing cogged bots off. Like keeping D-16 company.
He’s an easy mech to get along with. Sometimes D-16 doesn’t know why Orion bothers hanging out with him when he can go chat up with anybot he’d like. Not that D-16 is complaining. He’s usually not one for friends, but he’s got enough space in his spark for a seat or two. Orion takes up two seats himself, sprawling over them with his pedes kicked up, acting like he owned the space inside D-16’s spark casing.
“–and it hurt like slag, let me tell you! And he wouldn’t even loosen up the pressure! Kept muttering about how it needs to be pressed on the torn metal if I wanted to keep from bleeding out. But Ratchet’s bedside manners are something to behold because, I mean, come on–”
“Maybe if you weren’t so fraggin’ stupid, you wouldn’t be a regular and he wouldn’t be pissed off,” Ironhide mutters, drawing up another card from the pile with a grumble.
“Seriously? Nothing?” Jazz cuts in, giving Ironhide a quizzical look, which was impressive given the visor on his face.
“I woulda’ put it down if I had it,” Ironhide bites back.
“Mech, you have half the deck in your servos right now.”
Orion snorts, ducking behind his own impressive collection of cards when Ironhide glares his way.
A few turns pass, cards are pawned off and placed down, and then when D-16’s turn comes up he trades three cards for one with Sideswipe because the bot thinks he’s struck a deal, and then watches as everybot protests when D-16 places down four matchings sets and claims one final card.
“Single,” he announces, holding his one card in triumph.
“You cheater!” Sideswipe cries.
“You literally traded with him, mech,” Jazz points out.
“And he cheated!”
“…are you stupid?”
“Someone add to his holding!”
“He’s a whole turnover away!”
Orion snickers again.
“Shouldn’t you be plotting on my downfall,” D-16 snorts, “you’re the one player before me.”
“Nah,” Orion shrugs, taking in his cards with a lazy helm tilt, “I’m cooked this round anyway.” Then his optics light up like they usually do when he has a particularly bad idea that just needs to get done. “Tell you what. I’ll help you win this round.”
“I don’t need your help,” D-16 rolls his optics and gestures to his one card. “I’m a single placement away from winning already.”
“Ironhide is plotting to double stack with Jazz and skip my turn so you have to pick up their decks,” Orion explains, and D-16 humours him. “I can totally tell. It’s why he’s picking up so many cards. I’ll place this down, see,” he gestures to his own cards, angling them so D-16 can see them, and points to two turbo-skip cards he possesses. “I put this down on my next turn, and then you pick one up and give a fake that you’ve got nothing. The double stack will land on next playing bot, which will probably be Moonracer, and then–”
(He explains his plan, and it’s a good plan, honestly, considering the fact that he’s been cheating this entire round by using the reflection of the glass panes behind everyone to see their cards. D-16 can totally ignore him, hope Jazz and Ironhide don’t actually double stack and land him in the trenches, and win this game in a matter of kliks by placing down his final card.)
He feints a lack of match and picks up a card upon his turn. Jazz and Ironhide groan loudly and Moonracer wails at the several new cards being added to her deck.
(Or he could drag this game out another countless rounds and get to watch Orion laugh for most of it.
What can he say? He likes the company.)
Orion gets restless a whole bunch.
D-16 can’t really judge him. If anything he can relate. Having to spend most of your life underground working with your spark on the line is taxing, and leaves want pulsing through your energon lines like a nanite gone bad.
Orion taps his digits against D-16’s helm, restless, and D-16 onlines his optics.
“What do you want?”
“Let’s go outside.”
“I will beat you.”
“Can you do it outside?”
D-16 climbs out and follows after his idiot best friend.
There are several hidden alleys that lead out of the recharge stations just outside the main entrance to the mines. D-16 knows them all by spark, can walk these twists and turns from rest cycles spent in the same restless energy that consumes Orion’s every waking moment. Despite this he follows Orion, letting the mech lead the way to a single lone rooftop directly above the miners’ common area. It’s not the tallest building, but it’s tall enough that the cityscape is visible for countless hics. Vibrant holograms light the night sky and illuminate the golden spires of the city in flashes of every colour known to bot. Refractions of light litter the streets below, bounce along building walls, and dance upon Orion’s frame like a painter's expert servo. He looks good in colours, D-16 thinks, definitely belongs to the outside. Not in those dungeons, not in the mines with stone and an axe. He belongs up here. In the air. An archivist, maybe.
In another life. Perhaps.
“What’re you thinking?” Orion asks, voice quiet. They sit side-by-side, legs dangling out past the edge of the rooftop overlooking the massive expanse of Iacon city below. His frame edge is blurred with gold, a splash of blue along his nasal ridge, a mix of orange and stark yellow by his mouth, purple in his optics; he is an incandescent swirl of life even in the dead of night.
“How I’m going to kill you for waking me up.”
Orion laughs. D-16 is but a bot addicted to bad energon. He wonders what it tastes like.
“Darkwing is going to demote me to waste management.”
The confession leaves D-16’s processor lagging for several kliks before he gathers enough of himself to reply–
“What?”
“I’m not meeting his quota,” Orion continues, facing the cityscape beyond them. He looks small like this, bathed in colours that soften his edges, soften his face and make his optics glitter. He’s sitting, shoulders hunched up to fight off an invisible chill, one that D-16 feels deep within his spark chamber.
“Yes you are,” D-16 counters, “you and I brought in the same amount last shift.”
“My quota is…” Orion winces, and purses his lips before continuing. “He doubled my quota two cycles ago. For the next few shifts. I can’t… I won’t be able to complete them, and he knows. He’s going to demote me.”
“That’s…” D-16 resets his vocaliser. “That’s not fair!”
“It’s my fault, I guess, for being a smartaft” Orion shrugs, his smile a faint thing. He turns his helm to look at D-16 when he says, “I’ll miss you. A lot.”
D-16’s spark spins so fast that the drop he feels when it sinks into his tanks leaves him reeling. His energon lines rush with anger, a sudden, spark-splitting heat that makes his circuits burn when he watches Orion look back to the city, probably the last time he’ll be able to look at a sight like this before being dumped so far below the surface of the world that the glowing lights of Iacon will only ever be illuminated through energon blue optics.
D-16 tastes iron on his tongue.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Orion snaps his helm up, optics wide and mouth open in shock.
“I… what?”
“You’re not going,” D-16 repeats, stubborn, heat licking up his tanks. “I won’t let you.”
Orion huffs, his smile widening. It looks painful on his face plates.
“What’ll you do, beat Darkwing up for me?”
“Even better,” D-16 mutters, and shuffles close to press his shoulder against Orion’s. “I’ll help you meet your quota.”
This time Orion’s laugh is one born from disbelief. He scoots back, D-16 mourning the loss of his warmth only a little, to look his friend in the optic properly.
“You can’t,” Orion starts, and barrels onward before D-16 can reiterate that yes, he absolutely can. “You can’t. It’s impossible. We barely meet the single quota every shift. If he finds out you’re helping me he’ll cut your rations. You’ll tire yourself out. Please, Dee, think before you–”
“You’re my best friend.”
Orion’s vocaliser audibly fritzes.
D-16 doesn’t wait for it to settle.
“You are my best friend,” he says again, like rubbing an etching into hot molten metal. A brand. A claim. No… no, a brand sounds better. Friends. Brand. D-16 shakes his helm.
“You’re my best friend, and I’m not letting you get demoted. Either we fill your quota, or I get demoted with you.”
“Dee…” Orion’s vocaliser wobbles.
“I’m not losing you,” D-16 presses on, and, unable to look into the watery depths of Orion’s gaze, stares back to the city. “I’ve… I’ve got your back, remember?”
There is a thick quiet that settles once his words stop echoing in his own audials. D-16 doesn’t dare look at his friend – best friend, because that’s what they were, and now that Orion has wormed himself this close to his spark he would be damned if D-16 would let him get any further away – and only barely starts when Orion shuffles back to mould into his side. Pressed together like this, D-16 can feel the steady thrum of Orion’s engine, the warmth of his living metal against his own. The little twitches of his finials that displace the air around them in minute differences D-16 can only pick up this close to him.
He looks good in colours, he had thought before.
He feels good like this, he thinks now, letting his helm hit Orion’s in a gentle bump.
“I’ve got your back too,” Orion whispers, and D-16 ignores how glitched his voice is, how sparks dance at the corner of his vision, at the corners of Orion’s optics.
D-16 works twice as hard for twice as much energon and ends up emptying some from his cart to Orion’s right before inspection. Orion doesn’t notice, too busy trying to keep his servos from shaking after such an intensive mining shift. His digits are flatter than D-16’s, more delicate, like digits that belong to a cleaning bot in the Archives. D-16 has tightened the bolts and secured bracing over his joints, but Orion’s servos weren’t built for the mines like D-16’s were.
So D-16 doesn’t mention the shaking. He doesn’t mention the crystals he “misplaces” from his cart. Doesn’t say anything as Orion shakily pushes his cart, too exhausted to make any snarky comments as a superintendent weighs out their produce.
Orion passes his quota. Barely. D-16 isn’t so lucky and his rations are cut for the next cycle. He gets let off easy, honestly, considering this was his first failure in his career.
Orion doesn’t think so. It’s kind of funny. For a bot who regularly got beat to scrap, having that same bot panic about his reduced rations was kind of sweet.
“I’ll give you mine.”
“Absolutely not.”
“D-16,” Orion uses his full designation number, uh oh, “I saw you mine enough to fill your cart. Why didn’t you?”
“What did I say about having your back?”
“That doesn’t mean you go and get yourself hurt for my sake!” Orion shouts, shaking digits curled into shaking fists. He gets a few looks, but most bots are tired from work and ignore them.
D-16 is glad for the lack of audience. It makes lifting his servo and easing it down Orion’s arm that much less embarrassing.
“Pax,” he starts slowly, carefully, like explaining the concept of life to a newspark, “that’s what best friends are for.”
“If that’s the case then I’m not your best friend,” Orion sniffs, glaring at D-16’s collar.
D-16 huffs a laugh.
“You’re so stupid,” he states, and then eases Orion’s creaking fist until his digits fall away and fit seamlessly between his own. “And I hope you remember this. It’s how I feel everytime you go and get yourself in trouble.”
“This is not the same,” Orion’s mouth trembles, but he follows after D-16 anyway, just as tired, exhausted by the work of millions.
“I’d say so.”
“You don’t get to say so.”
“You’re my best friend,” D-16 tries to explain.
“And that’s why it’s not the same,” Pax says, and squeezes D-16’s servo in his. “Because you’re my best friend. Please, take my rations.”
Orion is a terrible liar. D-16 is not. He can lie easily; bots say it’s because of his scowling face. Whatever works in the end.
“Okay,” D-16 agrees, lying between his teeth.
“Why Orion Pax?”
“What?”
There is a holofilm playing on a massive projector right out in one of Iacon’s many open squares. It’s late into their free shift, and they will need to return to the barracks for a proper recharge, but for now most of their squad is here, sitting among other cogless and cogged bots alike, watching in rapt attention to the film playing out in loud volume and three-dimensional colours. It’s the one time D-16 can look around and think to himself, this is nice. This is the future. The future Sentinel Prime is fighting for. The future Orion Pax needs.
Said bot is looking at him strange, little finials that D-16 has endless fun poking at perked straight up in confusion.
“Orion Pax,” D-16 repeats slowly, voice low so as to not disturb anyone else. Not that they were going to. They’re sitting up on a rooftop, a habsuite building that wasn’t very tall and relatively wide so others could sit around the edge too. “Who gave you that designation?”
“Oh,” Orion deflates, relieved, finials twitching as he considers his answer. “I… I don’t know, honestly. I came online to it.”
“Must be nice,” D-16 mutters.
“Who gave you yours?” Orion, poor naive little Orion, asks, and he doesn't even know how cruel his question is.
“Nobot. I’m a cold construct like most miners. They number us off.”
“But… but almost everyone in our squad’s got a designation…” Orion frowns.
“That’s just what they call themselves. To the higher-ups we’re all just numbers.”
“So… why didn’t you pick a name for yourself?”
D-16 pauses at that, turning away from the holofilm to watch Orion carefully.
“It didn’t seem worth the false hope.”
Orion’s frown deepens, and his optics look so watery and hurt that D-16’s vents hitch.
“Dee…”
“Besides,” D-16 cuts in quickly, snapping his gaze back to the film and ignoring his whirring spark. “I’ll get a designation when the Matrix is found and we don’t have to mine anymore.”
Orion doesn’t say anything, but D-16 has words in his chassis, words that he’s been harbouring for so long now, ever since the other miners started giving each other nicknames and faux designations to make their lives a little bit warmer. A little bit more like life t o live to love with warmth with kindness to want and give and take and breath and live and less like life to serve function.
“My designation won’t belong to a miner,” D-16 says, and his resolution burns his spark like an inferno. “It will belong to me.”
Orion nods along, and when D-16 turns back to look at him he’s smiling. A fool’s spark lurches at the sight. D-16 is the fool.
“Okay,” Orion nods, smiles. “Okay Dee. D-16. D-16 will die the day the Matrix returns and you’ll be reborn and I’ll be waiting for it.” Orion’s smile is an aching thing that D-26 wants to taste, to hold, to cherish forever. His energon runs warm within him, content and dizzy. Contradictory. “I’ll be waiting to meet you all over again.”
I’ll meet you all over again; Orion Pax, the free.
“Alright,” D-16 grins, connecting his fist to Orion’s.
A mine collapses.
It’s no bot’s fault this time around. The underground of Cybertron is known to be volatile and ever-changing. Somebot just happens to dig into a triggering spot, and boom, the whole mine begins closing in on itself.
D-16 immediately drops his drill and fires his jetpack, emergency evacuation codes firing through his reaction unit and forcing him to move. He grabs Orion by the upper arm and pushes him forward, already hearing the grinding of the cave-in behind them approaching fast. They fly as fast as they can, dodging crystals and exploding stone and Jazz is suddenly there, getting knocked to the ground with a loud series of clangs.
Orion immediately dives down, trying to pry the large boulder off Jazz’s leg. D-16 knows it's futile; the two of them aren’t strong enough to lift just a massive stone, and Jazz will surely die here. And they will too, if they don’t get out of here right this very klik.
“Just leave me and go!” Jazz wails.
“Alright,” D-16 agrees. Orion, surprisingly, lets go and runs back, and D-16 stays clutching at the boulder, confused, because this isn’t like him, Orion would never leave a bot behind, and sure enough he’s proven right when Orion returns with Jazz’s jetpack. One thruster is broken, but he stuffs it through the tiny sliver between the floor and the boulder and lights it up to full throttle anyway. Between the two of them and the jetpack they are able to lift the boulder just enough for Jazz’s joint to be released and for D-16 to swoop down and tear the mech free of his leg. Jazz screams, guttural and hysteric, thrashing wildly in D-16’s arms and the cave-in finally reaches them.
“Pax!” D-16 shouts. “We need to go now!”
“Go GO GO!”
Orion shoots toward them, jetpack glitching from the fallen debris clattering against him. He takes hold of the other side of Jazz, supporting the delirious mech as the two of them race to the tunnel entrance.
Elita-1 comes to view, throwing support beams to try and prolong the inevitable. D-16’s spark races, fuel pumping so fast it rushes through his audials and leaves them ringing. He doesn’t dare look back, practically feeling the stone bite as his pedes. He sees the tunnel entrance get smaller, and without thinking throws Orion and Jazz forward with all his might.
He doesn’t think he’ll make it.
He sees Orion’s optics widen, and time slows, and shock paints Orion’s face in a way that leaves D-16 aching.
His audials ring.
Orion opens his mouth and screams something, but D-16 can’t really hear what he’s saying.
Biting stone snags at his pedes, ripping at the metal tip of his armour.
One moment, he is being closed within the jaws of Cybertron.
The next? He’s being crushed by Orion Pax’s trembling arms.
“Holy Primus,” he breathes, gasps out, little mindless nuances. Thanking, begging, thanking. D-16 doesn’t say a word. To be honest, he hasn’t been convinced that he’s not some ghost. He’s alive. “You’re alive.”
D-16 peaks over Orion’s shoulder, blearily able to make out Jazz being carried off, his high-pitched complaints echoing along the walls. He closes his optics and lets his vents cool his system, bringing an arm up to hug Orion around the waist and simply exist for a moment, in his arms, feeling his spark spasm beneath red armour only a few metal layers away from his own.
“Don’t you–” Orion’s voice glitches, and his vocaliser audibly restarts, “don’t you ever fuckin’ do that again, you hear me?”
D-16 doesn't even bother lying. Just sinks further, if possible, and lets himself believe that there will be a time when D-16 will be able to appease Orion’s worry.
That day is not today.
Orion is a terrible liar.
It shows with every little tell he has. He approaches D-16 with a curved grin, something sparking in his blue optics. Tells him “hey, I have something to show you” and leads them away from where the crowd is filing into the massive arena to witness the Iacon 5000 race. D-16 grumbles but complies, following his friend’s lead and knowing deep in his spark that Orion was definitely up to something.
His processor briefly brings up the video files from last night, when Orion Pax had conjured the insane idea of participating in the Iacon 5000.
No… no, Pax was stupid, but not that stupid. He wouldn’t do that without at least warning D-16.
Right?
…oh boy.
Turns out his worries are for naught. Orion leads them up a small shaft and they finally make it to a little warm area that overlooks the racers as if they are floating right above them. D-16 gapes, pressing both servos to the glass and peering down, optics roving over the racers and instantly cataloguing who he recognises.
“Sweet Solus Prime,” D-16 vents, pressing close to the warm glass. “That’s Hotrod! And Deadend! Oh, and that’s Mirage! He’s so close you can see his new wax job! Pax, are you seeing this? These are the best seats in the entire arena! We’re practically part of the race!” He turns suddenly, optics wide as he takes in Orion beside him. Soft smile, optics cycled wide, the red of the glass making him soft and warm. “You did this… for me?”
Orion Pax smiles, and it’s a beautiful thing, wide and unrestrained and dangerously close to the same emotion that runs rampant within D-16’s own spark.
“Everything I do is for you,” Orion whispers, leaning close enough to bump pauldrons. “For you. For us.”
“Pax,” D-16 says, slowly, carefully, terribly fond and terribly endeared, and tears himself away from the glass to trace a servo over that stupid little glowing face. “You’re a terrible liar. Just give me the jetpack already.”
Sheepishly, Orion reaches into his subspace and hands one of the stolen jetpacks to D-16, who wordlessly magnetises it to his back. Orion does the same, and as D-16 helps him adjust the thrusters for high-power use and deactivating the automatic cool-down feature, Orion whispers, “I wasn’t lying, you know.”
“Lying by omission, Pax,” D-16 huffs. “You’re still terrible at it.”
“Not that,” Orion rolls his optics. “About doing this for you. For us.”
Oh, Primus, was he a fool for this mech.
“I know,” D-16 placates gently, running a servo over Orion’s shoulder.
“It was supposed to be a surprise. Shock factor so you wouldn’t immediately kill me.”
“Don’t worry, I promise that if we survive this stunt of yours, I’m going to kill you.”
Orion laughs.
“I accept those terms! You can kill me when we beat a cogged bot in a race and make history.”
“History pads will laminate about how one miner bot beat another miner bot to a pulp,” D-16 deadpans. Above them the announcers brace the audience for the beginning of the race. Sentinel Prime flies overhead, a beacon of light in the form of deep royal blue paint and golden metal. D-16 turns back to the glass and watches him, optics shining. Orion really did manage to find the best seats in the arena.
“He’s going to be watching,” D-16 starts, optics tracing the graceful loops Sentinel Prime makes with his golden wings, a massive bot that towers above the rest of them like the true Prime he was, shining in the light of Iacon. “He’s going to witness your most stupid stunt yet.”
“You said it yourself,” Orion comes to his side, helm tilted to get a better look at the Prime. “He’s watching. He sees us for who we are, how important we are.”
D-16 feels his traitorous spark twist and spin faster.
“He’s looking for the Matrix every chance he gets,” D-16 turns to Orion, conviction and adoration heavy on his glossa like molten lava. “Fighting for us. He’s going to restore Cybertron so we can…. so we can…”
The dangerous words refuse to leave his vocal components.
Orion says them for him.
“So we can choose.”
D-16 nods.
“He’s doing this for us.”
Orion grins.
It’s a beautiful thing. It almost blinds him from the panic he feels when the referee starts screaming a countdown and the floors beneath them slide open, dropping them into a fray of chaos.
They get dropped down to Sublevel 50.
One day he’s going to rip Darkwing’s spark out with his bare servos. He doesn’t know how, and doesn’t know when, but one day he will. And right after that he’s going to feed that still beating spark to Orion so he knows exactly what regret tastes like.
D-16 has seen anger. He knows it intimately. Most of his colleagues stay clear of him because of his short fuse, and he’s fine with that. Less fires to light that fuse up, less energy spent grinding his dentae together and plotting an impossible revenge.
Orion is a blazing inferno and D-16 is a candle that’s already gone up in flames.
It is not uncommon for D-16 to lose his temper. It’s not rare for him to chew out a poor bot for crossing him on an off cycle.
It’s less common for that bot to be Orion.
It’s rare for him to muster up that anger towards him, because usually there is a meddling softness that blows his fuse out.
Tonight, there is nothing but an incinerator that rumbles and sparks and burns, and there is a small bot who won’t stop talking, and there is Orion, who does not regret anything, and who a small treacherous part of D-16 whispers of ways to make sure that stupid bot understands exactly what regret should taste like. Spark in mouth. Energon on tongue.
“I just can’t believe you!” He snarls, loud and vicious, and B-127 snaps his mouth shut so fast it clangs, and Orion whips around to face him, optics at their widest setting. He doesn’t take a step back as D-16 stalks forward, doesn’t flinch when D-16 thrusts a digit into his chassis and knocks against the dented metal there. “I can’t fucking believe you Pax!”
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wro–I’ll tell you what’s slagging wrong! I knew this would happen. I knew that something like this, something like one of your stupid stupid ideas would go up and get up in trouble, and now look at us! We’re in a Sublevel I didn’t even know existed and you know what? You know what?! We are going to rot in here. Sentinel Prime isn’t going to go looking for two mining bots. He’s got better things to do. Things that are going to actually help Cybertron and not just sabotage the lives of everyone around them!”
“Dee–”
“I’m usually okay with running along with your delusions, Pax,” D-16 cuts him off, a hysterical laugh bubbling up his vocal components. “Oh, Pax is running from authorities again! Oh, Pax’s rations were cut! Oh, Pax needs to fill a double quota! Oh look, Pax this, Pax that! Did you even mean it?” Orion flinches, optics impossibly wide, but D-16 can’t stop now. He’s on a roll, burning inferno, and an incinerator does not stop for anyone. “For us. Dee this is for us. You say that to my face, and I believe you. Is this for us, Pax?”
It’s unfair. He knows this. When Sentinel Prime had come in and congratulated them D-16 had been over the moons. He shook hands with the future saviour of Cybertron! He was going to work for a greater cause! And then Darkwing shows up, because Orion always presses Darkwing’s buttons and during the race Orion had thrown insults over his shoulder after tripping their supervisor up and it had gotten the cogged bot so angry he ignored his injuries to hunt them down.
And now they are here. In Sublevel 50.
D-16 scoffs, and he moves back from where he’d been punctuating his words with shoves to Orion’s chest, and turns to stare into the flaming incinerator.
There is a ringing silence after his words, and he’s half glad for it. B-127 has been alone for a long while, but even he seems to realise the need for silence. Orion opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again, thick conflict simmering in those optics that always draw D-16 back, like a damned virus needling away at his spark. And D-16 is the fool who always lets himself cave. To look.
“I–...” Orion’s vocaliser resets with several clicks before he continues. “I… I’m…”
D-16 is expecting a lot of things. Maybe an excuse, that Orion didn’t know Darkwing would come for them. Maybe a reminder of what they just did. The two of them did just make history with that little failure of a race back there. Maybe a plan to escape, because knowing Orion, he wasn’t going to let himself get stuck in here for the rest of his functioning. He’d convince D-16 too, somehow, just like he always does. Dee, let’s get out of here. Nothing can stop us. And D-16 would believe him. Like a fool. Like a hopeless magnet drawn to something greater than he’ll ever be.
He was expecting a lot of things, but–
“I’m sorry.”
–wasn’t one of them.
His voice is crackling, like his vocaliser just never reset properly. He’s looking at D-16 with those big damnable optics of his, pools of liquid energon so bright they highlight the dim space around his face plates. He doesn’t look away, doesn’t so much as twitch; just keeps looking at D-16, conveying a message in lost code, and then he opens his mouth and says those words again–
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
–and just like that, D-16 burns out.
He is left feeling oddly cold. Who knew? D-16 had always thought to himself that finally getting Orion to admit a mistake would feel liberating, full of satisfaction that he could rub in the other’s face for a few cycles to get Orion to calm down for a bit, stay grounded and normal.
He wasn’t expecting for it to feel so wrong.
“I…” D-16 wonders if Orion will elaborate, maybe talk, maybe make this apology a bit better so D-16 can feel better, but it seems words evade him. He ducks his head, shoulders shaking, and says it again. With so much feeling. The inflection of sorry coated with so many additives that it was almost a different language. D-16 didn’t even think it was possible for one to twist the base into so many wicked shapes. A million different words in just one.
Sorry as in forgive me, please, I seek, look out for, need, you are high, higher than me, forgiveness if yours to give, I cannot take–
Sorry as in I was wrong, wrongness, mistake, retribution is needed, wrong wrong wrong, not right, you were right, I was so so wrong, hurt, hurt hurt wrong it hurt and it’s wrong–
Sorry as in you deserve better, better than I, you shouldn’t be hurt, I hurt you, hurt does not belong to you, give it to me, leave me, better yourself, leave me and be free–
“I’m sorry.”
D-16 doesn’t know what to say. So he doesn’t say anything at all.
He turns his back, chassis cold and frame beyond exhausted, and stalks to the darkest corner of this Primus-forsaken pit. No one bothers him, no one talks at all, and D-16 forces power down with his optics lighting the wall before him in vivid amber.
A few groons later, D-16 rises from the ground, walks to where Orion is curled up as close as he could possibly get without triggering D-16’s proximity sensors, and simply stares for a moment.
His back is to him, and he’s deep in recharge.
I’m sorry is written down his spinal struts, with every uneven vent, with every shift of plating.
D-16 settles down, moulded to those words so close they imprint of his spark.
Silence is thick, with the incinerator humming like a lullaby, and so it is easy to hear when Orion whispers into his palms;
“It was only ever for us.”
They spend cycles following through with their new job. There was little else to do, and if someone didn’t inspect the trash coming down, it would pile up and make the already crowded space tight with mess.
So D-16 stands from across Orion, B-127 chattering between them, and the three of them do a spectacular job of watching garbage burn cycle after cycle.
Still, it tires a bot out, standing around and watching garbage. B-127 receives rations enough to fill one tank, because no one actually knows that there are three bots down here now, and so he generously splits it because his tank is small and the supervisors above don’t know that and he’s constantly storing energon for when the inevitable happens and they forget about him for good.
“I feel bad for him,” Orion whispers in what could be considered a rest cycle, when the garbage chute stops producing scrap as a signal for the end of shift. B-127 had offered his little coveted berth room, but D-16 felt bad enough drinking the poor bot’s fuel, and Orion absolutely refused to make B-127 sleep on the floor.
“He’s probably been in here longer than we’ve been active,” D-16 muses, optics roving over the walls of this tiny room. There was tally marks for cycles on the wall, etched in with some sharp edge, but D-16 can take a guess that the cycles recorded were the cycles used for the rise and fall of Cybertron’s sun, and not the cycles that constitute as the fifty cycles since the freedom of Cybertronians from Quintesson rule. Still those were a lot of ticks, and even though they taper off and stop somewhere near the floor, there are enough to make up for D-16’s entire working life. Orion’s been built way later than he was, practically a newspark in terms of mining bot production, and to see their life worth of cycles scratched into the walls here, where he can picture his functioning in just a single sweep of his optics, is something to behold.
“We can’t leave him.”
“Who said we were leaving?”
Orion glares up at D-16, swatting at his chest with his digits. D-16 absent-mindedly notes on how he won’t need to recalibrate Orion’s joints for mining anytime soon. Down here his frame would be however it was fitted to and it wouldn’t hurt anyone. It would be as it should be.
“We are going to get out of here.”
“Sure,” D-16 rolls his optics, adjusting from where he was lying on the floor with Orion to lift his helm on his hand, his shadow stretching over Orion’s face as he tilts down to watch him from his new vantage. “We can fly out. You got another jetpack in that subspace of yours you conveniently forgot to mention.”
Orion hits him again, gently, and D-16 chuckles under his breath.
“I’m being serious, Dee.”
“So am I.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
“I’m being realistic, Pax,” D-16 huffs. “How are we going to escape? Unless a scrap jetpack gets sent down, we’re stuck.”
“There’s gotta’ be a way,” Orion repeats anyway, brow ridges drawn down in something D-16 daresay resembles something contemplative in nature. “Bee would know. He’s been in here so long.”
“If he does know something, why wouldn’t he just leave?” D-16 rolls his optics.
Orion pauses at that, and it’s only then does D-16 realise that the other bot is tracing small patterns over his forearm, the one resting on Orion’s frame for support. He’s tracing patterns, gently rubbing the seams of his armour, tickling the ridges where plating gives way to the barest hints of his protoform. Sensitive wiring. Brush. Caress. Rinse. Repeat.
“I think…” Orion starts, slowly, optics on the meeting of metal on metal. “That he’s so lonely he’s forgotten what it means to live.”
D-16’s vents hitch, and his spark spins painfully.
“What’s it mean to live, Pax?” D-16 dares to ask, his voice as soft as an ex-vent, the faintest of whispers against Orion’s face. When had he gotten so close?
Orion doesn’t respond. Not verbally. Not with words. He reaches up, slowly, painfully slow, with his servos, digits brushing the lines along D-16’s faceplates. Over his helm, around his optics, to which his shutters closed, tracing invisible seams before his whole servo cups one side of his face, followed by another. Bracketed among precious hands that might as well hold his spark.
When he opens his optics, Orion is so close he can taste hope on his tongue.
“Wanna’ see?”
Orion doesn’t wait for an answer. Impulsive aft, D-16 thinks, and then he stops thinking all together.
It isn’t the first time D-16 has kissed. It isn’t even the first time D-16’s interfaced.
It is, however, the first time D-16 learns what it means to love.