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It’s selfish, but the first thing Drift thinks when he sees the leaker upstairs is guess I’m not so special after all. Apparently he’s not the first stray Ratchet’s taken in, and not the dearest. The mech hidden away in the apartment over the surgery is curled up in a nest of foam pads and mesh blankets. Nice stuff, real comfy.
A moment later the thought is gone. Ratchet trusted him to come up here, and if Drift can do one thing right in his whole miserable functioning, he wants it to be this. This position Ratchet has inexplicably allowed him into, fetcher and carrier and receptionist, and more and more frequently a kind of nurse-in-training. He crosses the little apartment to the low bench beside the window where the mech lies, dazed but stirring.
“Doc said to tell you there’s a code blue downstairs,” Drift says breathlessly, (he got up here as fast as he could), “and to give you this. Pain patch.”
The mech blinks at him, confused. He’s shorter and slighter than Drift is, with narrow limbs and round joints, and his spark shining behind a round teal window. Delicate. Primus only knows where he came from.
“Your port?” Drift asks. He gestures with the little plug-in in his hand. It’s one of those single-use patches any mech can use - you plug it in, press the button, and it pings a code to your processor to shut off the pain for a while. The physical pain, at least. Plug-ins like this are some of the easiest things to steal off shelves and scalp to other streetmechs. But he’s not going to do that here. You don’t bite a hand as impossibly generous as this when it feeds you. At the mention of a port, the little mech draws his eyebrows together and draws himself back, venting hard.
“C’mon, it’s clean,” Drift tells him. “Ratch sent me, the doc from downstairs.”
“H-how did you get in?” The little mech asks, and then convulses with a retch.
:Ratchet!: Drift comms. :Need you up here!:
What he gets back is an automated, wordless ping, one that means medic attending emergency, can’t respond. It’s the kind of ping Drift sometimes gets from Pindrop, who used to be a surgical assistant before it all went wrong. Then a moment later: :what’s happening?:
:He’s gagging and - it’s like a fit,: Drift comms back.
The mech’s head is down and his fingers claw at his collar faring, like he could dig out whatever’s stuck in his intake. Drift doesn’t know if he should stop him.
:Lay him on his side,: Ratchet comms. :Gently.:
The mech doesn’t seem to notice Drift taking him by the shoulders and pushing some of the foam pads away. He’s too busy making horrible choking sounds that give Drift second-hand nausea. He once saw a mech cough up the rusted remains of his primary tank, and that sounded a lot like this.
Drift lays the little mech down on his side. Ratchet showed him how to arrange the limbs so the patient doesn’t roll onto their back, but this mech is moving too much for Drift to do that. The mech curls inward around his middle, choking and shuddering, his field a sick mess of grief and fear. His medical port is just below his elbow joint, and it’s wide open now. Drift attaches the patch without a second thought.
“Medic’s coming,” he says, because that’s something you’re meant to say. Reassure them. “He’s real good, don’t worry.”
Heavy pedefalls on the narrow stairs. Ratchet’s there in a moment.
“Out,” he says, not angry but brisk, taking Drift’s place at the mech’s side. He’s already pulling the spent patch from the mech’s medical port and replacing it with his own cable. “I’m right here,” he says in an entirely different tone. The mech is curled up tight on his side, optics offline, making high pleading noises between deep throat-tearing coughs. “It’s Ratchet. I’m here. There’s only going to be one, alright? Just one. Then it’ll be over.” He comms Drift: :watch the front door. Tell them I’ll be back in fifteen.:
Drift makes himself scarce.
-
Rung doesn’t have the presence of mind to think that he’s back in the Cog, or the apartment, or anywhere at all. All he knows is please please make it stop.
By now there’s nothing pushing its way up his intake but he gags anyway. His frame expects more. It’s used to more. It’s used to joors and joors of spasming agony and the crystals coming and coming and his own energon flecking his hands and drying on his chin –
He feels someone nudging at his subroutines. There’s a request in binary code, something vaguely familiar. He’s done this before. On bad days, when his frame chokes on nothing until his connectors seize and his optics spark. He recognises Ratchet’s shape at his side, the unique texture of his presence in Rung’s system. He registers Ratchet’s calm, steady voice.
He lets Ratchet through. There comes the unnerving sensation of the constrictors in his intake being forcibly relaxed, one by one. The numbness almost feels like nausea, but without the accompanying reflex.
Rung tells himself not to try and fight it. He couldn’t if he tried, and that thought brings with it a little sting of fear, but he soothes himself: he doesn’t need to. It’s harmless. It’s a perfectly ordinary override and it will not harm him. He reaches out, blinded by pixels. He knows he’s not alone here, but he needs to feel it.
Ratchet takes his hand. Rung is grateful for it.
“I’ve got one waiting downstairs,” Ratchet says softly. “Not urgent. Code blue’s stabilised. I can stay up here a while.”
Rung tries to reply, but the intake override must be interfering with his vox-box too, because the sounds he makes aren’t words.
:Don’t make him wait on my account,: he comms instead.
“I can have Drift wait up here with you, if you want.”
Rung is sure whoever that is is a nice mech. But he can’t bear the thought of anyone but Ratchet being with him right now. He’s been alone long enough. He can bear it a little longer for the sake of not being seen.
:No. Thank you. I’ll come down when I’m ready.:
:Ping me. Don’t need you falling down the stairs.:
Ratchet goes. Rung turns onto his other side, pulls a smooth mesh blanket over himself, wraps his arms around his aching chest. He offlines his optics and tries not to think about the way he can’t escape his function, even now.