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Breakdown arrived in silence, slowing to a roll on the gravel driveway. His headlights illuminated the broken down walls of the slaughterhouse, greenery overtaking all available estate as Earth rebelled against their presence. Even the graffiti left behind by adventurous young Earthlings had long since faded in their vibrancy, the tags wasting away in the abandoned meat packing district.
Row after row down a line these emptied out, useless buildings went. They served as the only barrier of protection they had against discovery by the Autobots. Out of view, undetected from sensors. And yet, the sight of it all sickened him on some level—almost as though the stench of rot seeped into his veins from afar when really it sat sequestered within the confines of the derelict building.
His engine clicked off. Darkness greeted him once more as his transformation cog churned to life in his core, the light leaving him now that he had arrived.
Breakdown transformed in a languid motion, plates slotting into place with not an ounce of haste—limbs developing under him as he extracted the contents of his trunk before it could slip into his subspace arsenal.
Sliding the ratty damaged and burnt crate holding hard earned cubes of energon under his arm, he walked towards the entrance of the warehouse. Approaching it, he saw no reason to manipulate his facial sculpt into any form of expression—there was very little enjoyment or humor found in the severity of the situation—but the second his frame crossed the threshold Breakdown was all smiles.
"Knock, knock," he announced, knuckles banging against the crumbling brick. The hunched over form in the furthest corner from the entrance barely reacted, but the labored and strained howl of the over-taxed fans informed Breakdown of the continued survival of the weakening spark.
"Sorry it took me so long," Breakdown apologized, crossing the line and entering. "You wouldn't believe who I had to sock in the jaw to claim these bad boys as my prize. You'll laugh, I promise."
Venting. Fans wheezing. No response.
His steps hurried, the energon cubes hitting one another and creating a clinking sound in time to each tense piston in his frame. "Not even gonna guess, huh, Bee? It was Blitzwing. Apparently he didn't die in that explosion way back when, you remember the one. Heh, and let me tell you he was not pleased to see me."
Placing the crate down firmly on the workbench he dragged in from the outside world, Breakdown began to shift through the contents. The energon cubes were scuffed, but still viable. He didn't think that Bumblebee's tanks could process contaminated or unrefined fuel at the moment.
"I bet you're hungry," Breakdown said, distracting himself. More likely, Bumblebee suffered through a debilitating nausea—he got that. If it were Breakdown in his position, he wouldn't find anything palatable either.
But that didn't mean Bee could get out of eating.
Using his thumb to brace the cube as a digit punctured the weak rubber stopper, he cracked open the cube.
"Bottoms up, Bee," he announced, kneeling down onto the ground. Stray glass shattered under the pressure of his poleyn, which he would later brush away into a forgettable pile.
Bringing the cube up to Bumblebee's lips, the scout finally scrounged up awareness to turn his helm away from it. "D… Don't…"
Don't what? He wondered.
Don't feed him? Bee wasn't getting out of fueling that easy, maybe if the Prime was around but not with Breakdown on the case. Don't bother? Breakdown would always bother when it came to Bee.
Or… Was he trying to say, 'Don't touch me.'
From the cracked windows above, the clouds parted to allow moonlight to spill into the slaughterhouse. The beams grazed Bumblebee's frame, calling attention to the large swaths of maroon that infested his metal. It crept across his facial sculpt, marring the delicate plating.
Rust. Infectious, incurable Cosmic Rust.
Gritting his denta and squeezing the energon cube hard enough to create hairline fractures in the reinforced glass, Breakdown elected to ignore Bumblebee. Were it up to the scout, the Stunticon would have turned tail and abandoned him to die alone in this metalwork coffin. By the time the Autobots elected to give a damn about Bee, his frame would have already collapsed and become indistinguishable from the rest of the scrap littering the ground of the slaughterhouse.
"No can do," Breakdown informed him, reinforcing his statement by reaching out and cradling the side of Bee's face that didn't fall under siege to the infection. Bumblebee flinched away, trying to escape his loving digits, but Breakdown didn't allow him the opportunity to hide away.
Not now that he had finally found him again, a fated coincidence that he thanked Primus for every damn day.
Bumblebee whimpered, onlining his optics to stare at him. They flickered, pixels breaking the illusion of clarity, but more than that they showed just how scared he was. It comforted Breakdown, because it meant that Bee didn't want to die. And the longer he held on, spark staying steadfast in fighting for its life—its continued existence—the more time Breakdown had to cure him.
Sliding his digits under Bee's chin guard, he tilted his helm back and centered his face toward him. Bringing the cube back up to his lips, which parted in a resigned obedience, he let the fuchsia fuel flow into his intake. Carefully, he controlled the dribble fearing that Bee would choke if he poured it too fast.
He stemmed the flow and pulled it away when a third of the cube was gone. Bee's sensitive tanks couldn't handle more than that in a single cycle. Breakdown drank the rest, not needing as much for his own ration. Bumblebee watched him, apprehensive and frowning tightly when he saw Breakdown drink from the same opening as him.
"Do…" Bee started, taking advantage of the boost in energy from the energon. "How do I… Does it look bad? Do I… Look…"
His words wobbled as he bared his spark to Breakdown. Bumblebee had always been a tad vain, proud of his alt and his facial sculpt and all the admittedly very attractive curves his body-con awarded him. Breakdown even recognized the changes his Earth vehicle mode made to his frame, having spied intimately on the bot during the war. Bumblebee loved the way that Earth left its touch on him, perhaps even more so than his original form.
Breakdown didn't recognize the frame in front of him. Bumblebee, in the time that he had vanished after the Autobots got done tricking all remaining Cybertronians about his death, had thinned out—sacrificing condensed mass for an unnatural height. Under all the bulky armor and wide door wings, the proto-metal looked as though it could barely uphold the weight of it all.
Sure, he might have looked fancier, but he didn't look happier. Even without all the rust marring his form.
But he still carried that same outgoing, demanding, fear-ridden spark within his laser core. And that Breakdown would recognize a mile away.
Leaning close, Breakdown kissed Bumblebee softly on his lips. The scout reared back, but Breakdown followed into the embrace. His fans stuttered, a heat rising to the contact point of their metal.
Smirking, Breakdown pulled back. He kept the kiss brief, for Bee's sake. "You still got it, Bee."
"You…" Scowling, Bumblebee weakly turned his helm away. It only served to reveal the pleased blush on the non-corroded side of his face. "So do you… Slowpoke."
He laughed, resisting the urge to kiss Bumblebee again. Little flatterer. Even on the verge of death, he couldn't help but to flirt. "Pretty sure that's my line."
"N-ng… no– Nope," his energy waned, exhaustion seeping into his frame. The lines on his facial sculpt deepened, a harrowing reminder that Breakdown was running out of time.
"Alright, alright," he placated, shuffling back. He remembered to grab the energon cube as he went, rising with it still in his servo. "I'll quit bothering you, Bee. Get some rest."
Bumblebee grunted in acknowledgment, practically having slipped into stasis rest in the middle of their exchange. Breakdown waited until he was sure Bee was actually asleep before backing away. He walked to the egress, stepped to the side out of sight, and whirled around to slam the empty cube against the brick wall. Glass scattered at his pedes, digging into the metal of his palm as stray rivets of energon splattered against the wall.
With his digits splayed like this against the wall, the developing rust infection in them stood out clear as day. Breakdown's lips pulled harshly down, the rust collecting at the corner of them scratching uncomfortably. Of course, it was almost imperceptible given how well it blended into the natural color of his face plates, but… There was a reason why he only ever met Bumblebee at night.
Pivoting away from the slaughterhouse, Breakdown stalked down the gravel path and clenched his fists.
Running into Blitzwing had been a stroke of luck and while the energon would last them for a long while, it hadn't been at all what Breakdown was out in search of. Either another Con had raided the Autobot stockpile before them or maybe it never held Corrostop at all, but Breakdown would not tolerate another failure.
He had one more hastily evacuated hideout from the war to explore before he threw the washrag in and turned his sights on another target. Bumblebee would hate it, would even hate him for his actions, but Breakdown didn't care.
To ensure that Bumblebee survived, Breakdown would tear down the GHOST base all on his own—squashing every detestable human in his path like the irritating little bugs they were until Prime and his little band of Autobots arrived and answered to him.
Breakdown would like to see them try and forget their existence once he's spread Cosmic Rust amongst their ranks like a fragging plague.