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Orion Pax knew that agreeing to a game night with D-16 was, in simplest terms, a dangerous indulgence.
It wasn’t the game itself, some outdated tactical simulator they had managed to dig out of the trash of the city above the mine barracks with a flickering interface and barely any function, that was the issue. No, rather it was the company. It was in the way that D-16 leaned in closer when it was his turn to move the holo pieces across the board, the way Orion could hear his vents slow when he watched him deliberate his next move. It was the way the dim lighting of the barracks cast strange, shifting reflections across D-16’s plating, and how the silence between them was filled with tension that couldn’t just be blamed on the game.
Perhaps he was imagining things. It wouldn’t be the first time his expansive imagination had gotten the better of him, leading him to misread a situation. But… well. Either way, his best friend had a way of making even this simple game feel like a battlefield.
They were sitting on one of the benches littered about the recharge pods of the barracks, the light flickering overhead while the sound of the other miners murmuring became a dull sort of white noise. The air was thick with the heat that came from overworked vents and the metallic tang of energon. If one's audials were particularly sensitive, it was possible to hear the faint buzz of the city above, the Transformers above going about their day-to-day with little thought as to the miners beneath their pedes.
“You’re hesitating, Pax,” D-16 commented, optics narrowing as he tapped a digit against the console, a smirk starting to spread across his derma. “That’s how you lose, y’know.”
Orion huffed, his optics flicking up from the board straight to D’s and then dropping back down to the holo-pieces once more. “I prefer to call it careful consideration.”
The silver mech’s smirk only grew as he leaned back, stretching his pauldrons with a casual ease that belied his predatory gaze. “Careful consideration is gonna get you conquered.”
Rather than look up at the grin he knew was there, Orion shifted in his seat and had the audacity to pout. “And yet you’re the one playing defensive,” he countered, shifting one of his pieces into a more aggressive position. However, the moment he did, his processor caught up and he realised his mistake. D-16’s optics flared in both triumph and amusement and, before Orion could retract the move, he executed a counter-play that had the board chiming winner!
Shuttering his optics and letting out a heavy ex-vent, Orion slumped in his seat and gave a softer smile. “That,” he admitted, “was well played.”
D-16 chuckled, a deep, reverberating sound that sent a guilty shiver along Orion’s spinal struts. “You’re learning,” he said, tone lilting with his approval, “but you’re still thinking too small.”
The smile on Pax’s faceplate dropped back into that pout that sent D’s optics rolling. “And how exactly should I be thinking bigger? C’mon D, can’t you-.”
His words got caught in his vocaliser, a little burst of static following as D-16 leaned in once again even closer than he had all evening. Their olfactories almost touched and Orion prayed to Primus that his friend wouldn’t notice the warmth emanating from his faceplates.
“That’s easy.” D answered, optics gleaming in the low light, like a blaze ready to consume every fragment of Orion’s already diminished common sense. “Like someone who wants to win.”
The tension was palpable between them, something unspoken lingering between their vents. It felt dangerously close to the edge of something that Orion had no idea how to navigate, the weight of it pressing against his chassis, his very spark, and tangling in the circuitry of his processor. He should say something, anything, to defuse this strange tension… shouldn’t he? But D-16’s gaze welded him to his spot on the bench.
It wasn’t the first time that they had come to the unspoken precipice of… whatever this was. Orion had felt it countless times before in the way D spoke to him in moments like this, in the way he would pause just long enough after an exchange as if waiting for something more. The way his optics would linger, bright and searching, as if he was looking for something in Orion that even Orion himself hadn’t yet put a name to. How could he?
He had no idea if D-16 knew either, this slow circling of words and intentions and precious, precious time. If he did, he didn’t act on it. Not fully. Instead, he pulled back, rising from the bench with a languid stretch, gears popping after a hard day in the mines.
“We can always play again next solar cycle,” he said, rolling the tension from his pauldrons and flashing Orion a grin that was all teeth. “And maybe next time you won’t hold back.”
Hold back? Orion’s optical ridges knitted together in confusion as his processor raked over the game once again. He didn’t think he’d held back, but-. D-16 turning away from the bench and heading towards his recharge pod interrupted his thoughts and Orion could only stare after the assured gait of his best friend. He watched him give a wave over his shoulder without looking back and ex-vented, packing up the game and shoving it back into a box under the bench. Without D by his side, Orion felt colder, but there was a charge of anticipation that refused to dissipate from beneath his plating.
Once again, Orion went over the game in his head and pondered D-16’s words again. He replayed the match, not just the moves but the words exchanged, and the moments in between where that strange tension had lingered between them. Was there some sign he was missing? Frag it all, already, why is this so hard?
He needed to clear his head. With a decisive ex-vent, he rose to his pedes and determined he needed to move, needing the rush of adrenaline that only a few specific endeavours ever managed to give him.
The archives. That was where he needed to be right now. Taking note of the time on his chronometer, he slipped out of the barracks before anyone could pin him down. If he left now, he could reach the Iaconian archives and be back before his shift began the next morning before D-16, or anyone else, realised he was gone.
As the weight of night settled over him, so did the stirring of something new. Something inevitable. He had no idea that, come tomorrow, his life was about to change in a way that no one could anticipate.