Work Text:
“What in Primus’s name are you doing here?!”
Deadlock stands beside the slab Hot Rod’s parked on, half obscured by the medical mesh wrapped around the side of Hot Rod’s face. Holding in the components, Ratchet had said, so very eloquently, so they don’t fall out of his head. Because there’s no plating left there to do it for him.
From what he can see of his face, Deadlock looks…well, about the same as he usually does, sullen and glaring at everything in sight. The only difference is his field, which is so filled with rage and anguish it almost hurts where it brushes up against Hot Rod’s. He hopes all that anger isn’t directed at him. He really tried his best to get out of the grenade’s blast radius, but there’s only so much you can do on a battlefield covered in shattered plating and spilt energon. Honestly, he shouldn’t even be online at all anymore.
When Deadlock doesn’t say anything in response to his question, he sighs exasperatedly, which makes his entire face hurt. Great. He can’t even be bratty without it hurting. “I’m serious, what if you get caught, I’m not—I’m not letting you deal with that just so I get my boo boos kissed better. Get out.” And then, in a desperate follow-up, because he really doesn’t want Deadlock to leave but he has to, “Please.”
Deadlock’s finials flick dismissively. “I got permission to be here.”
“You got—what.”
His gaze slides to the floor, and Deadlock reins his field in until it’s just barely within Hot Rod’s reach, and he tastes just the faintest hint of guilt riding along the currents. Guilt about what, though, he hasn’t the faintest clue. “I—”
The door to the medbay clicks and slides open.
Hot Rod’s spark freezes in his chest, and he tries to scramble to sit up, as though he can do that and it’ll mean a damn thing. He lurches to the side instead, vents rattling against the pain. Deadlock catches him neatly before he can slide off the slab and puts a hand over his mouth. Good timing, too, because Hot Rod starts babbling just as he does, worthless excuses and pleading and Primus knows what else just to try to prevent the inevitable.
Ratchet steps in, shuts the door, and punches the lock code back in. And then he just stands there, arms folded over his chest, glancing back and forth between the two of them with something like disappointment on his face. Behind Deadlock’s hand, Hot Rod is still babbling nonsense.
“Are you done yet?”
Deadlock tries to pull his hand back, wincing. “—you walk back through that door and don’t ever talk to me again because whatever you have to say, I don’t want to h—” and then he’s muffled again.
“Not very nice considering I just saved your life.”
Hot Rod stutters and then stops. Fair point, yeah, but isn’t the decepticon in the medbay a bigger concern for him? He doesn’t even look concerned at all. Somehow this drains all the fight out of him, and he leans heavily against Deadlock’s side, suddenly tired. And aching, Primus. His whole body hurts.
Ratchet fixes his glare on Deadlock then, and Hot Rod snickers a bit at that, until he sees his finials go flat. “Anything you want to say now that he’s shut up?”
“...Thank you for this.”
Ratchet’s arms fall to his side, like he wasn’t quite expecting that response. Hot Rod glances between the two of them with his one good optic, confused and a little afraid and a little…jealous? No, that’s not the right word. It can’t possibly be the right word. He’s just too bewildered to think of a better one.
“Don’t expect it to happen again,” he mutters, stalking to his office and shutting the door behind him.
After a solid klik of hesitation, Hot Rod reaches for Deadlock’s hand, still firmly wrapped around his shoulder to keep him upright. He interlaces their fingers together, brushing over the tip of one of Deadlock’s claws. “So. Uh. What the frag was that about?”
Deadlock’s face twists. “It’s…complicated.” Which means he doesn’t wanna talk about it, and if Hot Rod wants an explanation he’ll have to ask Ratchet, which…no. “The short version of it is that I can visit you without having to worry about it.”
Hot Rod doesn’t know what to do with that information. He’d kind of thought Deadlock just wanted him around as someone (something, really) to keep his berth warm at night. But going out of his way, putting himself at risk of capture, just to see him while he recovers…it’s hard to write off a gesture like that. It’s almost enough for him to forget about the fact that he’s seriously risking his life just standing here.
Almost.
“Okay, I’m just gonna pretend that’s not gonna keep me up at night,” Hot Rod mumbles, but he leans into Deadlock’s frame. He wants to press his face into his thigh, breathe in the smell of metal and gunsmoke that he’s come to think of as home. But he can’t. Even brushing the injured side of his face against his plating nearly shorts out the optic that’s still working, every circuit registering hot, pulsing pain. “I just—”
“I’ll still leave if you want me to.”
“No! No,” Hot Rod says quickly, gripping Deadlock’s hand with an intensity that takes more energy than he has. “I mean—Primus—it’s good to see you. Really good. But it’s also practically suicide.”
Deadlock won’t look at him. “It…wasn’t my best decision, but I did take precautions. Wouldn’t you have done the same?”
Hot Rod bites his lip. He would’ve. He’s actually almost done it before, after seeing Deadlock go down on the battlefield without coming back up again. But then the base went into lockdown, and he had to spend three agonizing cycles pacing and waiting and hoping for a message on their encrypted channel. That was the first time the word love had crossed his mind, and the last time he’d let it. Now, it’s threatening to worm its way into his processor all over again.
A wave of uncertainty rolls from Deadlock’s field, and he realizes he probably took his silence as a no instead of a very emphatic yes. He opens his mouth to say so, and what comes out instead is “Well, if I went asking for permission to come keep you company, I think I’d get lit up.”
Deadlock, thankfully, snorts at that. “Worse, probably.” After a pause, he gently slips his arm away from Hot Rod, making sure the smaller mech doesn’t sway too hard before sitting down next to him. “I expected about the same here.”
“And you came anyway?”
“I couldn’t—” he snaps, letting in a shuddering vent. “I had to know.”
“Didn’t Ratchet tell you I was okay?”
“Would you take a decepticon at their word? Why would I do the same for an autobot?”
Hot Rod shrugs. “Depends on whether it’s you or not, and whether I have a gun to their head or not. Besides, if you trusted him enough to not rat you out…” He trails off, trying and failing to convince himself not to be curious. “You gonna explain that?”
A flurry of emotions crosses Deadlock’s field, and Hot Rod pulses back comfort and confusion in equal measure. His engine rattles with the effort and he has to lay back down, but that’s fine. It’s not as important to him as Deadlock is.
“He…saved my life, a long time ago. And I was desperate.”
“That’s not why I did it.”
They both look up, startled, to see Ratchet leaning up against the doorframe of his office. He looks moderately less annoyed now, although it isn’t saying much. Hot Rod doesn’t trust that he wouldn’t throw something at an injured mech just to get a point across.
“I did it,” he sighs, “because this is stupid. You already do a good enough job of trying to get yourself killed as it is, Hot Rod. Clearly. And you, ” he says, pointing at Deadlock. “Did you forget about the list, or are you just hoping you end up on there?”
Hot Rod half expects Deadlock to draw on the medic and start firing, but he just bites his lip and stares at the floor. The thought of the DJD coming after him sends a cold wave up his spine. He knows, he knows Deadlock’s about as mentally sound as anyone stuck in this war is, but that’s the worst way out for anyone, the one that will kill on either side of the lines just to have the playing field set exactly the way they want it. And if Deadlock…well. There’d be no bringing either of them back from that.
Somewhere along the line, things changed from holding out until the war ended to holding out until the next time he could see Deadlock. He’s not sure when. But one of those things is a lot easier to do than the other, and it’s not his fault it also happens to be treason.
“Ratchet, whatever you think you know about me is wrong,” Deadlock finally says, a sharp, cold undercurrent to his voice. “I make my own choices, and if you’d like to get in the way of that, be my guest.”
Ratchet looks completely unfazed. “I have millions of years of experience with getting in the way of mechs who don’t know when to stop. You wouldn’t be the first.”
Hot Rod watches Deadlock’s hand go to his subspace, reaching for his guns on instinct, but he hesitates. The growl in his voice more than covers for it. "Shut up.”
“Oh, you don’t get to come into my medbay and tell me to shut up. Right now, I’m the only thing standing between you two and a court martial—”
“Sure, why not? Set the alarms off. No, wait—comm Prowl. He’ll love this,” Hot Rod replies, laughing as he says it. Maybe it’s the pain inhibitors, maybe it’s just how stupid this all is. He doesn’t know. “Then you’d finally have me off your hands, right? And everyone else would thank you because thank Primus, Roddy isn’t our problem anymore. Now he’s rusting in a damn cell.”
Ratchet flashes him a look that would bring Primus to his knees. “I’m trying to make sure you don’t get yourself killed, because believe it or not, I care about you. Both of you. And I am not watching either of you nearly kill yourselves again!”
Hot Rod almost lets the words sink in, almost believes, because it’d be easy. But easy doesn’t mean right. It’s the doctor’s job to care about his patients. Optimus could’ve told him to say something along those lines when he caught wind of Hot Rod being injured. Prowl could’ve told him to yell at him, and while he doesn’t take Ratchet for the ‘listening to Prowl’ type, he wouldn’t pass up a chance to yell at him. Most mechs wouldn’t.
Except Deadlock. Decepticon murderer extraordinaire, and seemingly the only one he can trust.
(Deadlock, who for some reason has enough of a rapport with their CMO that he can barge in here without worrying about his safety. Deadlock, who he’s never seen hesitate, suddenly unsure of every move he makes. Maybe he can’t trust anyone after all—but he’s not ready to accept that yet. His spark can’t take any more.)
“Shut off your optics next time, then,” Hot Rod mutters, just as a warning about imminent emergency shutdown flashes across his vision. That doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe when he wakes up, all of this will be…simpler, somehow. Maybe he just won’t wake up.
But Deadlock squeezes his hand, just before he goes under, and it suddenly doesn’t sound so appealing anymore.
“What are you going to do?”
Deadlock lays Hot Rod’s hand on his chest with a gentleness he didn’t know he still possessed. His head’s still whirling, rage and anguish and so, so much guilt. More than he can handle. Every day he seems to inch closer to deserting and he’s not sure which part of it terrifies him more: setting himself free or seeing what lies on the other side.
The question just throws all of it up in the air again. “What does it matter to you?”
“It just does, Drift. Answer the question.”
“Don’t—” he sighs in frustration, almost reaching for his guns again. It’s too easy to find comfort in the familiar weight in his palm, even though he has no intention of firing here. “What do you mean? There is no choice. I’m dead either way.”
“No, you aren’t,” Ratchet replies, though his expression says otherwise. He’s…worried. About him, presumably, but that doesn’t make any sense, besides not wanting his hard work undone by the hands of the mech he saved. He’s probably had enough of that by now.
“Be an optimist all you want. It isn’t going to change anything.”
“Neither is you being antagonistic. I—” Ratchet stops, turning away from both of them to fidget with a set of medical tools splayed across a table. “Answer the damn question. What are you going to do? Are you defecting?”
“ No .”
“So you’re just going to let him keep chasing after you. And when he gets in trouble, and you’re not there to do anything about it, and he can’t pull a miracle out of his aft—what then?”
“Then I take as many autobots as I can down with me.”
“Will that make you feel better?” From anyone else, it would sound mocking, but Ratchet’s tone is deadly serious.
He glances over his shoulder at Hot Rod’s limp form. His head’s tilted just enough for the medical mesh across the side of his face to be hidden, and if it weren’t for the scuff marks and dents sprinkled across his plating, he might even look peaceful. He only ever gets the chance to see him like that when he’s recharging, and it’s always with the painful reminder that he’ll be gone when Deadlock wakes.
Would it make him feel better? No, but he already knows that. What would make him feel better is a world where Hot Rod is safe. Where that look of almost-peace on his face is a common sight. Where his berth won’t be empty by the time morning comes.
And until the war ends, that’s impossible. The only other option would be for both of them to desert, finding their place elsewhere, but that comes with its own risks, namely the near universal hatred for Cybertronians. The one time he’d brought it up, Hot Rod had starkly refused.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he finally says, hollow and angry. “And I don’t intend to let you know when I figure it out.”
Ratchet sets down his tools, and the medbay goes silent save for the gentle noise of the three mechs inside. “I hope you figure it out before it’s too late, Drift.”
Deadlock’s patience snaps, and he books it for the door.