Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The war had long since ended, but the silence it left behind tended to be louder than the shelling had ever been.

That’s what Jeopardy had come to realize anyway. It was a strange, broken logic he could never quite explain, an itch in the back of his processor that would never go away, constantly searching for the next way his life would uproot. 

All because it had simply been too long since something happened—a silly sentiment that he truly wished hadn’t meant anything to him. 

But Cybertron was rebuilding, rapidly—because everyone was looking for something to do, to fill that silence. The sky, once choked with the soot of smelting pits and the trails of seeker squadrons, was now a crystalline violet, scarred only by the faint, shimmering grid of the new orbital defense net. For Jeopardy, the peace was a strange, ill-fitting garment. He had spent so long defined by the frantic rhythm of the medical bay—by the desperate pulse of survival—during a crisis or the strange community of the outpost that the slow, meandering pace of a reconstructed Kaon felt almost offensive.

He was a medic who could save a bleeding mech's life with what little supplies he could find on the ground, reattach an arm with spare wire, and he was being tasked with filter replacement and realigning servos. Even with the additional workload of running his own practice things were… mundane. 

Perhaps distant was the word he was looking for. It all felt distant. Like he was standing on an island looking out on a coastline full of mechs and still trying to play… volleyball—the Earth game Sideswipe had shown him. At times Jeopardy could have sworn it simply felt like he was watching some other mech perform the same tasks, day in and day out. Watching the weeks melt together into an endless blur. 

He had mentioned it to Echo once, he had spent a weekend over at his home city for a conference and crashed at his old friend's place. The twitchy Praxian had expressed his own frustrations he had experienced before the war, similar to Jeopardy’s. Burnout. Boredom. It went by many names. The blue mech had joked that Jeopardy was simply just not using his processor for enough. 

When he had spoken to Valkyrie about the feeling the shorter mech had quickly suggested that it may have been caused by Dropmix’s passing. She could recall feeling that same distance from the world when her Conjunx had first passed, and suggested that perhaps Jeopardy should start looking into more permanent company. Someone to coexist in the same space as him and make that distance feel shorter. Someone who he didn’t know from his work. 

A partner of his own. 

Cometeater, his Amica, had found his own mate, a wonderful organic much like his friend named Coo. The couple had remained on Earth after the war ended, which Jeopardy didn’t mind too much. He had always had Dropmix around to keep life entertaining. But the Pretenders had already had three children of their own and there wasn’t a single visit that went by without having Coo corner him and pressing him about any interesting mechs he’d run into recently.  

The medic never had much to say. 

Maybe that was why he had found himself in his current situation. Finally, he had caved. The silence of his once shared quarters had eventually become too much to bear, leading Jeopardy to wander the lower sectors of the city where the neon lights hummed with a low-frequency buzz that mimicked the white noise of a busy clinic. The air was thicker here with the smell of burnt exhaust and Cy-gar smoke. 

Jeopardy didn’t think he was looking for a partner per se, that felt slightly too ambitious, rather a friend that wasn’t tied to work. Maybe even a potential roommate. Just someone to fill his days with something more than charts and emails. 

It was the fourth night in a row that he had wandered into the night life of Kaon, searching for something to do to occupy himself. 

The first night he had gone to one of the later gladiator games, often a quieter and cheaper alternative to the main games hosted during the day. These were for trainees and younger mechs to practice and get a taste for the action. He had sat next to a lovely older couple who had been neutral during the war and only returned to settle on Cybertron a few hundred years ago. They had talked, exchanged stories, and gone their separate ways. 

The second night was much less successful than first, though he had slipped into the back of a theatre and watched a mech perform a popular retelling of an ancient myth—one he may have recalled had he not drifted to sleep halfway through the show. 

The third night he had found himself at a local casino, attempting to find some comfort in the familiar routine of a card game. He had played and grown rather fond of the rituals of gambling during the war, when the only thing at stake was an extra shift cleaning or the nicer datapad. It had always been more about socializing than actually winning—such wasn’t the case here. He had quickly lost interest, wandering back home unsuccessfully once more. 

Tonight Jeopardy found himself at The Oil Slick, a mid-tier energon pub that catered to mechs who weren't quite ready to join the shiny, optimistic upper-crust galas of the new government. It was dark, smelled faintly of ozone and high-grade, and the seating was designed for bots who wanted to be seen but not perceived.

Jeopardy sat at the far end of the bar, his digits tracing the rim of a cube of mid-grade. He wasn't there to get wasted or drown away any memories. He was there to be among the living. Watching as groups of mechs conversed and laughed with a unity that Jeopardy found himself oddly jealous of. 

The ambient noise of the bar was a rhythmic, pulsing thing—the clink of glass against metal, the low hum of the ventilation system struggling with the haze of specialized fuel additives, and the distant, melodic thrum of a soundtrack that felt more like a vibration in the floor than actual music.

Jeopardy took a slow sip of his energon. It was a standard blend, lacking the sharpness of the battlefield rations but devoid of the complexity of the vintages served in Iacon. It was safe. Predictable. Much like his life had become.

“Is this seat taken?” a voice rumbled from his left.

Jeopardy didn't jump, but he did turn his helm with a slow, deliberate curiosity. Sliding into the stool beside him was a mech of substantial build. He was painted in shades of slate grey and a dull, industrial copper, his plating scarred in a way that suggested heavy labor rather than heavy artillery. A miner perhaps, though his vents lacked the grime associated with the industry. Construction then—if Jeopardy had to guess. He had a friendly face, wide optics that glowed with a soft amber light, and a posture that radiated a casual, easy-going confidence.

“It’s all yours,” Jeopardy replied, offering a small, polite smile that didn’t quite reach his optics but served its purpose. He turned in his stool slightly, trying to face the new mech without making it terribly obvious. “Just me and my thoughts tonight, and frankly, my thoughts are terrible conversationalists.”

The mech chuckled, the sound deep and resonant, like the idling of an engine. He signaled the bartender for high-grade—something stronger than Jeopardy’s own. The mech settled comfortably next to him, shaking his head, “Tell me about it. Sometimes the silence between your own ears gets a bit too loud, doesn't it?”

He looked the medic up and down before tilting his head and taking the drink the bartender had offered, “I’m Steelwake.”

“Jeopardy,” the medic offered, finally turning to fully face the stranger and extending a hand.

Steelwake’s hand was massive, his plating warm from a long shift as he enveloped Jeopardy’s smaller, more clinical digits in a firm squeeze. There was no grease, but the texture of his palm was rough, pitted by the kind of micro-abrasions that came from handling heavy alloys.

“Jeopardy, huh?” Steelwake repeated, tasting the name with a charming smile, “It suits you. Now tell me mech, are you from around here? I don't believe I’ve seen you before.” 

The medic couldn’t help the way his vents hitched up a notch, fans whirring as he was shifted in the stool. Jeopardy shrugged, a nervous smile tugging on his lips, “Ah… well, not exactly? It… it’s a bit of a complicated story to be honest.”

“Complicated stories are the only ones worth hearing,” Steelwake said, leaning an elbow on the bar. He had a way of positioning himself that felt inclusive, carving out a small bubble of space in the crowded pub that felt private without being suffocating. It was… nice. “Most mechs around here just want to talk about their shift at the smelting pits or how much they hate the new zoning laws in Iacon. I’ve got all night, Jeopardy.”

Jeopardy looked down at his own cube, tracing the condensation. “Well, I was originally forged in Praxus, where I was raised. During the war I got split up from my um… brother who I was training with.” 

Triton, the mech who he had been entrusted to when his original sire was killed. The mech that had, arguably, made Jeopardy’s early life a living hell. 

Steelwake nodded, his expression softening into something genuinely empathetic. He didn't push for more details on the brother—which Jeopardy appreciated immensely.

“I ended up drifting around mentors for a while—I hadn’t finished my training yet,” Jeopardy continued, his finger once again tracing the rim of his glass with an idle need to move. He paused, taking a moment to take a sip before a softer smile overtook his slightly downturned lips. “I met a mech, Dropmix, who worked at some… outpost in the middle of nowhere. I ended up finishing my training with him, but he was from Kaon, a gladiator actually.”  

“A gladiator-turned-medic?” Steelwake tilted his chin, lowering his drink for a second, his interest clearly piqued. He took a long pull of his high-grade, the amber light in his optics dancing with the rhythm of the bar’s neon signage. “Don’t think I’ve heard that one before, it’s a hell of a combination. Usually, those types are better at taking things apart than putting them back together. Must have been a hell of a teacher.”

“The best,” Jeopardy said, his voice softening. For a fleeting second, the noise of the bar—the clinking cubes, the low-frequency hum of a hundred different engines—faded away. He could almost smell the ozone and antiseptic of that cramped, dusty outpost. “He was… a character to say the least. But, after the war we stuck together and moved here—he insisted it was better than the alternative of Praxus. When he passed I lived on earth with my Amica for some time, though I inevitably moved back here.” 

The medic chuckled to himself, looking down at his drink, “I considered returning to Praxus, I’ve got a friend that lives there but… I have a feeling Dropmix would be rioting if he ever found out. He had a thing against my poor city.”

“Can’t say I blame him,” Steelwake chuckled, a deep vibration that Jeopardy felt in his own chassis. The mech nodded to himself, “Kaon’s got grit. It’s got history that isn’t just etched into pretty marble—it’s etched into the floor of the pits. Though, I suppose a Praxian would find the lack of straight lines a bit… distressing?”

Jeopardy managed a dry huff, a small spark of genuine amusement lighting his optics. “Not necessarily? I’ve never minded, the inside of a medical bay always looks the same to me.” 

Steelwake leaned in closer, his shoulder nearly brushing Jeopardy’s. “Practical. I like that. I’m a structural welder myself—New Kaon Transit Authority.”

Construction, he had been correct. Jeopardy nodded, his plates flaring up slightly with a pride only he would understand. He quickly tried to disguise it by shifting his weight though, “You guys built the bridge over the collapsed mines right?” 

“We did,” Steelwake replied, his optics brightening with a flash of pride that mirrored Jeopardy’s own. He took another sip of his high grade, plates fluffing up. “One of the nastiest structural puzzles I’ve ever had to weld. The ground beneath those mines is more slag than stone these days. Keeping those supports from shifting was like trying to stitch together liquid. But hey,” he gestured with a broad, scarred hand toward Jeopardy, “I guess you know a thing or two about stitching things together under pressure.”

Jeopardy hummed, feeling a strange, pleasant warmth in his chest. It was the high-grade, surely, or perhaps just the fact that for the first time in months, he wasn't talking to someone about their leaky gaskets or a persistent rattle in their door-wings or who would be taking the next shift. He was just... talking. Face to face. 

It was nice. 

“More or less,” Jeopardy mused, taking a longer draw of his energon. “I’m sure whatever tales you have are far more entertaining than my own in that regard.” 

Steelwake laughed, shaking his head and motioning to the bartender for another drink all in one fluid motion. His plates flared again, fans kicking in slightly, “Entertaining? Only if you find ‘falling three stories into a vat of quick-dry sealant’ entertaining. Though, the way my foreman screamed when he saw me—that was a work of art. I looked like a ghost with a bad attitude.”

Jeopardy let out a genuine laugh, the kind that felt a little rusty in his vocalizer. It was a physical relief. “I can imagine. Though, I do hope you didn't inhale too much of it. That stuff is a nightmare to flush out of ventilation filters.”

“A few weeks of coughing up grey flakes, but I survived,” Steelwake shrugged, waving a hand dismissively. He turned more fully toward Jeopardy, his posture open and inviting.

The conversation drifted effortlessly from there. They talked about the architecture of the new city, the way the light hit the spires of Kaon at dawn, and the frustrating scarcity of high-quality replacement filters in the local markets. Steelwake was funny, possessed of a dry, self-deprecating wit that kept Jeopardy leaning in, his own laughter becoming more frequent and less guarded.

For Jeopardy, this was the pinnacle of social interaction. He felt a sense of achievement. He was doing it. He was being the social, adjusted mech Valkyrie wanted him to be. He was building a bridge of his own—a friendship that existed outside the sterile walls of his clinic or across phone calls and messages. 

The time passed in a way Jeopardy wasn’t used to—not in the frantic, stopwatch-ticking rhythm of an emergency surgery, but in a slow, rhythmic ebb and flow. Steelwake was an easy listener. He didn’t interrupt with his own stories just to hear himself talk; he listened with his whole chassis, leaning forward until the heat of his spark-casing was a steady, radiating hum between them.

“You know,” Steelwake slurred slightly, gesturing with his empty cube to the bustling crowd behind them. He was several drinks in at this point, thoroughly indulging himself, “most mechs I meet these days are so obsessed with this- this whole idea of ‘New Cybertron.’ About the council and all that jazz. It’s like they’re trying to build a roof before they’ve even laid the foundation.” 

He turned back to Jeopardy, his amber optics soft as he took another drink, eyes looking over the medic once more, “It’s refreshing to talk to someone who understands the… the smaller stuff. The way a joint should move. The way things actually hold together.”

Jeopardy felt his fans pick up again, his plates puffing up slightly. It was a compliment he actually knew how to process. He smiled, something easy and loose. 

“It’s the details that matter,” the medic agreed, his voice growing a bit more confident, louder and more firm. The music had died down some, more of the louder groups cycling out until the bar was full of rumbling laughter and the clinking of cubes. “You can have the most beautiful spire in Iacon, but if the internal struts are misaligned, it’s just a very pretty disaster waiting to happen.”

The white mech nodded to himself, taking another sip of his own energon before chuckling to himself, “I see it in my patients all the time. They want to be back doing whatever they’re doing and they don’t realize that their internal hydraulics are screaming for a break.”

Steelwake laughed, his plating pressing in slightly as his own fans picked up a steady hum. “I’m one of those patients, aren’t I? I’ve been ignoring a hitch in my knee for three weeks because the transit project was behind schedule.”

Jeopardy’s lax smile faded in an instant, his attention falling to his new friend’s knee with an odd devotion. He quickly activated scanners, taking note of Steelwake's vitals. Without thinking, Jeopardy reached out, his fingers hovering just an inch from Steelwake’s thick thigh plating. “Which knee? Is it a clicking sound, or more of a grinding vibration?”

Steelwake froze for a second, his optics widening slightly, before a slow, crooked grin spread across his face. “The uh- the left one? It’s a grind. Especially when I’m carrying a load of rebar.”

“You should have that looked at,” Jeopardy spoke carefully, his tone softening into that gentle, authoritative processional voice he usually reserved for stubborn mechs. Typically older troopers or overconfident industry workers. “I had a patient come in a bit ago who had ignored the grinding in her shoulder, rust had just about eaten away at the whole joint. Something’s been going around lately.”

Steelwake didn’t pull away. In fact, he shifted his leg slightly closer to Jeopardy’s hand. “Maybe I’ll come by your clinic. Give me an excuse to see you in your element.” 

“I’d be more than happy to take a look,” Jeopardy replied, finally pulling his hand back and resting it in his lap. His gaze remained on Steelwakes knee for a moment longer before he met the mech’s gaze again. “I’m much better at fixing things than I am at… well, at whatever it is people do at casinos.”

“You’re doing just fine here,” Steelwake murmured. 

"I’m glad," Jeopardy said, his voice warm. "I was worried I’d forgotten how to just... talk."

Steelwake didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he leaned in closer, his chassis nearly brushing against Jeopardy’s. The heat radiating from the mech was intense, a steady throb of energy that made Jeopardy’s internal sensors spike with a low-level alert. He didn't pull away, though. He figured this was just what friendship felt like when you weren't standing across a surgery table. He had always been physically close to mechs—Coo had called it a love language once, an earth phrase that Jeopardy found oddly cute. 

"You're a good listener, Jeopardy," Steelwake rumbled, his voice dropping an octave, vibrating through the stool and into Jeopardy’s own frame. "And you've got this way about you. Quiet. Steady. It's... captivating."

Jeopardy blinked, his optics flickering and brows lowering slightly at the phrasing. It was an odd way to form a compliment… and rather unnecessary. 

"Oh. Well, I suppose that comes with the profession. Patients prefer a steady hand." He laughed nervously, trying to steer the conversation back to the safety of shop talk. "You wouldn't want a medic who's constantly jumping at shadows, right?"

"That's not what I meant," Steelwake said. He reached out, his large, scarred hand covering Jeopardy’s on the bar.

Jeopardy stared down at the hand. It was heavy and warm. He felt a slight hitch in his fans before they started blasting. This was… new. Unexpected maybe. He blinked down at his hand as if it would be the one to tell him what he was meant to be feeling. Was this a gesture of solidarity? He’d seen mechs do this before, but usually, there was a celebratory drink involved or a shared tragedy. 

Or when they were flirting. 

The medic’s fingers twitched slightly, his fans somehow finding an even higher setting than before and his spark skipped a beat. Jeopardy hadn’t been flirting, at least he didn’t think he had been. He wasn’t the most experienced in that department. But he felt a sudden, sharp pang of uncertainty. 

Should he pull his hand back? 

Before he could decide, Steelwake’s other hand moved, rising to cup the side of Jeopardy’s helm. The touch was surprisingly gentle for a mech who moved rebar for a living.

“Jeopardy,” Steelwake whispered.

And then, the world tilted.

Steelwake leaned forward, closing the remaining distance, and pressed his lips against Jeopardy’s. It wasn't a casual bump of the forehead or a friendly peck he’d receive from Valkyrie. It was a firm, deliberate kiss—a deep sensory clash that sent a jolt of pure, unadulterated static through Jeopardy’s processor.

Jeopardy’s optics blew wide, joints locking up for a moment before his processor could give them an order. His entire cooling system stalled for a terrifying second before roaring to life at maximum capacity. His emergency lights flared brightly for a moment, catching the attention of the bartender and a few other patrons. 

It was fast, too fast. 

Before he had a chance to think about it he jerked his head away, the face guard that was meant to help fight against airborne contaminations sliding into place with a familiar click—the visor and mouth guard shielding his face. Jeopardy pulled his hand back until it was tight against his chest. All of the sudden frantic movement threw him off balance in his stool and he was narrowly saved from toppling onto the floor by Steelwake’s hands grabbing his shoulder to help stabilize him. 

The touch that had felt warm moments ago now felt like a localized hull breach. He stared at Steelwake, his blue optics wide and luminous behind his visor, flickering like a dying fluorescent bulb.

“Whoa, easy there,” Steelwake’s tone was strained, a nervous chuckle escaping him as he processed Jeopardy’s admittedly violent reaction. If there was any hurt in his expression he managed to bury it quickly. His hands were still on Jeopardy’s shoulders, firm and grounding, trying to steady the medic who looked ready to bolt for the nearest airlock. “I didn't mean to startle you. I just... the way you were looking at me, I thought… slag, I thought were on the same frequency, you know?”

Jeopardy’s vocalizer emitted a sharp, dissonant squawk before he could find his words. He was currently searching through his coding, trying to find a way to deactivate his mask before he further humiliated himself, he could feel the eyes of other mechs melting through the armor of his back. “Frequency? Same— No. I mean, yes, we were talking, but the frequency was... I don’t know!”

He tried to stand, but his legs felt like they were made of unrefined slag. He ended up doing a strange, half-bent shuffle, trying to create distance while Steelwake was still holding onto him.

“I—I have to go,” Jeopardy blurted out. His faceplate remained locked, a physical barrier between him and the sudden, overwhelming intimacy of the situation. His plates pressed into himself hard enough it felt like he was going to suffocate in his own heat that his fans struggled to combat. He nodded frantically, “I just remembered! I have... a sterilization cycle. Yeah. A very long one. For my... entire clinic.”

Steelwake let go, his hands hovering in the air between them, his expression shifting from confident charm to a confused, slightly hurt frown. “Jeopardy, wait. If I overstepped, I'm sorry. I thought…”

Jeopardy didn’t wait for him to finish, he had already turned to the door, still feeling the burning of several dozen eyes on him. He practically tripped over his own feet to reach the exit, the second before he stepped out he managed to awkwardly call back to Steelwake, “I’ll uh… see you around.” 

Then the medic slid through the door. 

The cool night air of Kaon didn't help. It felt like a mockery against the scorching heat radiating from his spark-casing. He didn't stop moving until he was three blocks away, tucked into the shadow of a half-reconstructed apartment. Only then did he lean his back against the cold wall, his vents let out a long, shuddering whistle that sounded suspiciously like a teakettle reaching a boil.

With a sharp hiss-clack, his face mask finally retracted.

“Slag,” he whispered to the empty street. “Absolute, total slag.”

He brought a hand up to his mouth, fingers hovering where Steelwake’s lips had been. He wasn't disgusted—not exactly—but he felt a profound sense of error. It was the feeling of a file being saved in the wrong format; a fundamental mismatch of data. He had been having such a good time. He had felt seen, understood, and connected.

And then Steelwake had turned it into that.

Chapter Text

The silence of the apartment was no longer the peaceful, empty thing Jeopardy had once sought after a long shift. Now, it was a heavy, judgmental shroud.

Two weeks had passed since he had run into Steelwake, a charming mech that Jeopardy never intended on meeting ever again. Not because he didn’t like the mech, quite the opposite actually, he had enjoyed his company plenty. 

Jeopardy had just humiliated himself so thoroughly that he refused to get within a five block radius of the bar they met at. And he had finally accepted defeat, ending his search for connection and instead falling back into the same routine as before lest he should run into the mech again or stumbled into a similar situation. 

It hadn’t taken long for the same listless autopilot to consume his life and remind him why he had reached out in the first place. 

The medic stood in the center of the main room of his apartment, his optics tracking the dust motes dancing in the dim light of the Kaon morning. Every corner of the space screamed of Dropmix no matter how many times he reorganized. The small tinkering projects that Dropmix had started doing while Jeopardy was working that he so proudly presented each time he finished one; the mismatched shelving they’d installed together, slightly crooked because Dropmix had insisted he didn't need a leveler; the lingering sense of a presence that had been vibrant, loud, and certain.

Jeopardy, by contrast, felt like a ghost haunting his own life.

It wasn’t right, several thousand years had passed since Dropmix had joined the Well of Sparks, Jeopardy should have been feeling better by now. He should be normal again, moved on like everyone else the world seemed to be. He thought he had finally gotten through the grief—and maybe he had, thinking of the ancient mech no longer brought the same sharp pain as before. It simply made his spark ache for a mech he was missing, an empty slot in his life.

The medic looked over at a framed picture on the shelf, one he had taken when he first opened his clinic and all of the mechs he kept in contact with from the outpost had flown over to celebrate. A small gathering of mechs who hadn’t all been under the same roof since the war ended.

Jeopardy felt his spark slow, pulsing dulling in that aching void in his chest. 

A roommate, a companion, someone to just talk to. Someone who didn’t expect a level of intimacy that made Jeopardy’s spark recoil into the deepest parts of his chamber at the thought of. Maybe he had been going about his search all wrong and that’s what had led to the mishap with Steelwake. 

Driven by a sudden, restless surge of energy, Jeopardy shuffled to the desk in his room and unlocked his computer. He quickly reinstalled the platform Valkyrie insisted he get to search for a roommate. He stared at the screen for a minute once he opened the software. The pale, glowing light of his screen reflected off of his own plates in the dim room, making the screen feel like some sacred artifact from a cheesy action film. 

Was he even ready for a new roommate? 

The idea of living with another mech again—an idea that had made his spark pulse with a strange joyful longing just moments ago—now felt like a betrayal. He looked over at his open door, staring at the empty room across the hall from his own. 

Dropmix’s room. 

Jeopardy had cleaned it hundreds of times by now, Cometeater had come over to help sort some of the mech’s old things—which were now neatly organized into labels boxes that sat against a wall in the room.

Dropmix’s files had been downloaded and logged into a separate server that Jeopardy had access to. His physical collection of music drives stashed away in the living room. The speakers were still mounted in his room, his desk had all of the trinkets he had picked up over the years next to his computer. Datapads sat on the shelves, untouched. His tool kits and mementos he had scavenged from the pits were stashed in a storage closet. Even the old gladiator’s faux medic armor was still neatly piled in the corner. 

Not to mention the lingering traces of Dropmix spread throughout the apartment, his polish was still on the washroom counter, Jeopardy still restocked the cabinets with his favorite snacks. The trinkets and copies of his favorite films sitting on the living room shelves. The blankets Jeopardy had crocheted for him. 

They were all still here, all a testament to the life they had shared together, of the mentor that had shifted the course of Jeopardy's life. 

A sudden unease twisted in his tanks, his plates pressed down on himself and a childish click escaped his vocalizer before he could protest the noise. His fingers absently drummed some familiar beat onto his desktop, his optics flicking between the screen and the open doorway. 

Getting a new roommate meant making space for someone else. For a mech that wasn’t Dropmix and never would be him. It would mean associating that room with someone else. 

Dropmix had always been particular about his space and belongings. Would it be disrespectful to allow someone into the gladiators room? Someone who the mech had never even known? Would he be betraying the old mech? 

Jeopardy didn’t know. 

His plates pressed in harder and shifted uncomfortably, his spark throbbing in his chamber. His fingers had started to pick at some small dent in the desk surface, probably caused from dropping something on it or pushing his chair in too quickly. His fans whirred to life, sensing the shift in temperature as he debated the moral standpoint of making space for someone else. 

After a few more antagonizing minutes of conflict he glanced over at the time, he had an early morning shift at the clinic, a consultation with a mech about getting her T-cog recalibrated. Jeopardy shut off his computer with a sigh, watching the screen power down before he pushed away from the desk—his hydraulics whining in protest—to start getting ready. 

He rationalized with himself that he couldn’t put a listing out until he had at least cleared Dropmix’s room entirely of his belongings. It was the bare minimum he could do, and perhaps then it would feel less like a sin to let someone else live there. 

The task proved to be a grueling marathon of emotional endurance that Jeopardy hadn’t been fully prepared for. 

But, it did give him a purpose beyond the white walls of a clinic and the ritualistic emails he sent to distant friends. He had told Cometeater—his Amica—of his endeavors the following day as he drove back to the apartment after work. Jeopardy had rented a small trailer to help move the possessions, so his commute was longer and lonelier than usual. The organic, however, had seemed bitterly optimistic and had reassured him that Dropmix would have wanted him to clear out the space ages ago. 

Jeopardy could hear the strain in his voice though, that same twisting unease tightening around his spark at the tone of his friend's voice. He had done his best to ignore it, quickly shifting topics to the chaos of Comet’s life on Earth. 

Later that day, after he had ended the call with Cometeater, Jeopardy found himself standing in the center of Dropmix’s room, a stack of empty crates at his feet, paralyzed by the sheer history of a single room. He had already looked through it countless times when Dropmix had first passed, but this time there was an odd sense of invasion that came with it. Like he was disturbing a tomb or memorial. 

So, the medic had shifted gears to clearing out the living room instead. Over the next few days his sole purpose outside of his clinic was reorganizing shelves. He cleared each shelf entirely of its contents, regardless of who it had belonged to. His living room floor quickly devolved into a partially organized, overwhelming mess of piled belongings. 

Jeopardy tried to be critical, to approach the belongings with an impersonal eye.

Yet, every item was a tactile memory. The films Dropmix had collected: movies and programs he liked, old broadcasts of his fights in the Pits. Even an opera that Dropmix never watched but claimed he needed because Theremin—Dropmix’s Conjunx that had passed away before the war—would have insisted he owned a copy so he could be cultured.  

The case of the opera drive had never been opened. A sealed memory of a life that Jeopardy had never even been around to see. 

His spark fluttered in his chest as he ran his finger across the sealed surface, a small, bitter smile tugging on his lips as he turned the drive container over in his hand. He only hesitated a moment longer before he placed the opera onto the pile of items he planned on displaying on the shelves he had decided to keep as “his” designated space. 

After a week and a half of sorting through the room he finally started moving the piles back onto their respective shelves. He had donated many of the old medical files and journals that he and Dropmix had accumulated over the years to a local archive; the few he did end up keeping held personal notes left by his late mentor or himself, which he moved to his clinic office. Similarly, he had sold the movies that he didn’t watch very often to a second hand store. 

Trinkets and tinkering projects that Jeopardy couldn’t fit on his shelves or bring himself to part with were carefully wrapped and packed into crates that he stacked into one of the unused storage rooms of his clinic. A few less memorable or important nick-nacks were dumped into the small playroom that he had established for younger patients to play in while waiting for their parents. 

Some more notable items, however, were moved to Jeopardy’s own room; where he had sorted and cleared his own possessions that he no longer needed. 

The small, broken puzzle box that Dropmix had struggled solving during his last days sat on his desk. Dropmix’s old pistol, engraved with an ancient Kaonite word that Jeopardy would need Coo’s help translating, was displayed safely on his shelf. A portrait of Dropmix that had been taken during the gladiator’s official retirement ceremony from the Pits—the first one documented since Cybertron was united eons ago—had been hung on his wall next to his calendar. 

From there, he moved through the kitchen and washroom, where only a few mementos that Jeopardy doubted a new roommate would mind were stored. He moved Dropmix’s expensive polish and wax to a drawer where he kept his own hygiene supplies, storing them for his personal use for future special occasions. 

Which left him with one final task. The one that had started this whole operation. 

Dropmix’s room. 

He worked in agonizingly slow increments. 

He took all of the boxes he had previously sorted—not bothering to open them yet—and shoved them into the unused storeroom at his clinic alongside the medical journals from earlier. Jeopardy decided that he would sort those another time, when he wasn’t already reeling from his own restirred grief and aching loneliness. 

The medic moved the faux medical armor to the back of the storage closet, draping a tarp over it as if covering a grave. He packed the blankets he had crocheted, his fingers lingering on the soft, synthetic fibers that still seemed to hold the faint scent of his mentor; though, some of the blankets that even Dropmix had stored under the bed he donated to a rehab. He left the speakers installed, figuring that he could present those as a perk of the room, though he reinstalled the shelves so these ones would at least be level—something he hadn’t done for the ones in the living room. 

Over and over, Jeopardy told himself that it was just items. Physical things that were just that. Material possessions. Things that Dropmix had simply been too lazy or preoccupied to get rid of himself. 

For a while it seemed to work. 

But his spark knew better. 

It was the removal of a ghost. By the time the room was stripped down to its base components—the bare berth, the empty shelves, the cold floor—Jeopardy felt hollowed out, a frame with no internal struts. The drive that had pushed him to start actually sorting through the apartment had faded into smothered embers. He stood in the doorway, staring at the sterile, neutral space. It didn't look like Dropmix’s room anymore. 

It looked like a cell.

But, Primus help him, it looked like a beginning.

Chapter Text

Jeopardy sat at his newly reorganized desk, the blue light of the terminal washing out his pale plating until he looked as bloodless as he felt. His fingers tapped on the smooth surface, his vents cycling slightly faster than usual and his plates pressing in on himself again. The guilt was still there—stronger in some ways, weaker in others. 

The mech who moved in wouldn’t be invading Dropmix’s space because all of his things had been moved, cleared. But now Jeopardy felt like the one who had invaded. 

However, without the task of cleaning he had once again returned to the dragging pace of life that he had come to dread. 

Jeopardy took a deep breath, letting the soothing music he was playing from his desk side speaker wash over his mounting nerves—something Dropmix had found for him. His plates managed to loosen and he reopened the “Roommate Wanted” listing he’d drafted and deleted a dozen times over the past two hours. He needed a distraction. He needed a processor that wasn't his own ticking away in the next room. He needed to have someone nearby that made his life more interesting.

He stared at the listing, dread making his spark skip an awkward beat in his chest. The medic looked over the spelling, quickly flicked through the photos he had taken to ensure the lighting was good, checked the grammar, price, and the address.

“ROOM FOR RENT: 

Kaon, Sector 4. Gantry Row Complex, Unit 402-Beta.

One bedroom, private washroom, shared common area/kitchen. In-unit speakers. Quiet environment.”

Jeopardy chewed on his lower lip, his fingers hovering over the keys as he reread the listing for the umpteenth time. The clinical description was safe, but it was also... empty. It felt more like a job description than he felt like it should. His vents hitched again and he eyed the small puzzle box on his desk. If he wanted someone to actually talk to, someone who could help fill the hollow silence left behind by Dropmix absence he had to be a little bit vulnerable. 

Just a smidge.

He couldn’t help the small whine from escaping his engine as he added a new section to the listing. Jeopardy stared at the title, deleted and retyped it. His plates pressed against himself and his jaw tightened as he stared at the blank section of the form. He glanced at the time in the corner of the screen. It was late, he could probably stop here and wait until tomorrow to finish the listing and post it. More mechs would be looking in the morning anyway, right?

Jeopardy was stalling. 

He groaned, a prickle of humiliation making his plates rattle. Here he was, a veteran of a horrific, multi-million year long war, a medic who ran his very own clinic and had assisted in rebuilding Kaon, who couldn’t fill out a simple roommate request form. 

The medic’s eyes narrowed, letting his own frustration boil until he could use the steam to create a metaphorical, primitive steam engine that would hopefully drive him to the finish line. He moved the cursor to the open line and started typing. 

“Current Resident: Jeopardy of Praxus

Occupation: Medic. I run a local clinic. 

I tend to keep to myself after shifts, but I enjoy quieter activities, crocheting, watching films, reading, tinkering with small electronics, and I'm a fairly decent cook. I tend to play a lot of background music and prefer to keep the common areas clean and organized. I take triennial, month-long trips to visit my Amica, I will still be paying my portion of the rent for these periods.”

Jeopardy held his breath, looking it over for any punctuation errors before clicking the ‘post’ button, not giving himself the time to overthink anymore than he already had. Instantly, the dread that had made a permanent residence next to his spark—pressing against it until it felt like it was going to pop from the pressure—seemed to be lifted. 

He took a deep breath, and then another, and another. His plates flaring before settling comfortably. The white mech leaned back in his chair, huffing a sigh through his vents and closing his eyes. 

Finally, he had done it. 

Jeopardy didn’t move from his chair for a long minute, the lulling of the music aiding his exhausted processor in making the most of the brief, calm moment, and pulling him into the depths of sleep. 

… 

The chime of his terminal woke him from a light, restless recharge draped over his desk.

He couldn’t recall falling asleep, though the faint light peaking through his closed blinds were a testament to the time that had, in fact, passed. 

Jeopardy sat up with a slight groan, his hydraulics groaning in a chorus of stiff protest as he stretched. He could already feel the faint soreness in some of his joints and plates from the awkward sleeping position. His blue optics flickered as they adjusted to the brightness of the screen before him. 

He had expected to wait days, perhaps weeks, for a response that wasn’t a bot or a scam. Instead, he had three notifications. The medic felt a familiar, cold prickle of anxiety drip down his back as he stared at the notifications. The mechs that could either save him from his own domestic nightmare or cripple whatever good part was left in it. 

The medic stared at the blinking message icons, his spark fluttering with a mix of hope and sheer, unadulterated terror. He subconsciously checked the time, looking for an easy escape, though from a quick glance at his mounted calendar he was reminded that he had the day off. 

“Frag,” Jeopardy muttered to himself, cursing his past self for knowing that he’d try to use his work to evade his responsibility. He glared at the screen as if it had been the one to personally wring him, as if he wasn’t the one currently seeking out company. 

Steeling himself with a deep inhale and resetting his aching plates, he clicked the first message.

From: Crystara

“Hey! Saw the ad. I’m a racer, usually out late, but I’m looking for a spot in Sector 4. I love music too, though mostly high-tempo stuff. You’re a medic? That’s sick. I’m always getting dinged up on the track, maybe we could work out a ‘trade’ for some of the rent? Also, you look pretty sleek in your profile pic. Is that white paint factory standard or custom?”

Jeopardy’s optics narrowed as he read over the message once more, unease making him shift his weight around in his seat. The “trade” comment felt slimy, and the comment about his paint sent a defensive shudder through his plates. The medic shook his head, not even bothering to amuse the idea, and had he not been a more courteous mech, he would have just hit decline with no reply. 

Unfortunately, Triton had raised him better—the medic couldn’t help his own, dark, bemused chuckle at the sentiment. 

The white mech typed a quick reply, coming up with a quick lie about differing music tastes and a need for a home environment separate from his work life. He didn’t wait for a response, he navigated to and pressed the ‘Decline’ button with a satisfying click. He wasn't a repair shop, and he certainly wasn't looking for a sleek admirer.

Jeopardy sighed and moved to the second message. 

The next few hours became a blur of blue light and scrolling text. Jeopardy found a rhythm in the rejection, a strange sort of power in being the gatekeeper of his own peace. He bypassed the mechs who viewed a medic roommate as a free repair service and those whose social batteries seemed far too overcharged for his quiet hab-suite. He didn’t even reply to the ones who were looking for a place to lay low from business they never bothered specifying. 

By the time the sun had fully crested over the Kaon skyline, he had winnowed a mountain of digital noise down to a handful viable candidates. He sent out templated invitations for a walkthrough, his spark giving a sharp, nervous trill each time he clicked Send.

The transition from digital deliberation to physical reality hit him as soon as he closed the terminal. The silence of the apartment, once heavy and stagnant, now felt like a deadline. He had walkthroughs scheduled for the next few days—which he had managed to move all of his shifts to late afternoon and night, giving himself openings in the morning. He couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the enthusiasm Osmis—a fellow medic he had met during the war—showed when she offered to take over a morning for him upon hearing the reason why. 

Content with his work, the large mech spent the rest of the afternoon in a flurry of nervous, methodical motion. He wasn't just cleaning; he was erasing the lingering emptiness that he’d lived in. He polished the common area table until the overhead lights reflected perfectly in the metal. He straightened the small, hand-crocheted coasters he’d made, ensuring they were perfectly aligned with the edges of the side tables. 

Yet, despite the episode of near obsessive cleaning, his spark spun at an odd, excited pace in his chest.

—

The first walkthrough was early the following morning. Jeopardy had risen before the sun bothered to peek above the horizon, his plates feeling like they might crawl off his own protoform. He grabbed a cube of energon, drinking it as he checked his computer for any overnight messages from his clinic. He responded to the three emails that had come in during the night, and then rushed into the shower. 

It was a familiar routine that Jeopardy had down to an art form, he diligently scrubbed, ensuring to get every crevice and detail he could reach, letting the warm water erase the tension between his shoulders. He buffed his plating, taking the time to repaint any small chips or scratches in his paint, waxed, and polished until he was left with a fine shine. The mech even took the time to exchange his lights—a minor maintenance repair that he had long since mastered doing himself. He checked his tire pressure, added a basic lubricant to a joint on his arm that had a tendency to squeak when he twisted it a certain way. 

Finally, he settled into the comfort of his own living room, opening the blinds to let the natural light illuminate the space. The rising sun warmed the space until it undoubtedly felt like a home. He went about the space, pulling out energon to offer and making the finer, small adjustments before his company arrived. 

Thankfully, he didn’t need to wait too long. 

The chime of the door buzzer echoed through the apartment, sharp and sudden. Jeopardy jumped, emergency lights flaring and he nearly knocked over the small display of crystals—one Echo had given him from Praxus—he’d just finished centering on the kitchen island. 

Jeopardy checked the time—five minutes early, a mech who valued time management most likely. A very good sign. 

“Coming,” he called out, his voice cracking slightly with static. The large mech winced before he cleared his vocalizer and tried again, deeper and more stable. “One moment.”

He smoothed his hands over his thigh plates, checking his reflection in the small mirror mounted near the door one last time. He looked... functional. Professional. Perhaps a bit too tense—his plates were flattened against his sides with an intensity that suggested he was bracing for an orbital strike rather than a potential roommate. He forced them to flare and settle more regularly with a sharp click of servos. 

Jeopardy looked over at the datapad he had stashed by the door—Cometeater would have called him a control freak had he been witnessing him. He quickly reviewed the data, scanning over the simple reminders he had listed for himself. 

Starstep of Hexima State, Courier, Minibot. Neutral during the war. 

The medic took a single second, taking a deep breath and rolling his shoulders back. Then, he opened the door, and for a split second, he found himself staring at the empty hallway before his optics adjusted downward.

Standing there was a mech who barely reached the height of Jeopardy's waist—though what Starstep seemed to lack in stature, he seemed to make up for in kinetic energy. The minibot was a vibrant, saturated green, accented with high-visibility orange stripes that practically preached of a speeding problem. His plating was scuffed in places—the honest wear and tear of someone who spent their cycles weaving through Kaon’s congested sub-levels—but he was impeccably clean. 

The mech wasted no time it would seem, smiling brightly up at Jeopardy and flaring his plates. 

“Jeopardy? Of Praxus?” Starstep chirped, his voice a bright, rapid-fire tenor. He didn't wait for an answer before offering a small hand. “I’m Starstep. Sorry for being early, I caught a lucky break with the early morning traffic. Usually, Sector 4 is a slag-heap for delays, you know?”

It took a while three seconds for Jeopardy to process that the small mech was talking to him, his attention quickly being drawn to Starstep’s accent—he had never met someone from Hexima state. The silence stretched for a second too long, and he blinked, fans whirring to life. 

“I... yes, quite,” Jeopardy managed, his jaw tightening as he tried to dial back his fans before the other mech noticed them. The sheer volume of Starstep’s presence was already filling the room, a stark contrast to the hollow silence Jeopardy had been cultivating like a garden of shadows. 

It was overwhelming, not nearly as collected as his Amica’s, Cometeater, occasional hyperactivity, and not anything like Dropmix’s boisterous personality. Dropmix had the potential to be loud, but he was never… chatty. Not to this degree. 

“Please, come in. I have some energon at the island if you’d like some.” Jeopardy cleared his throat, stepping back and gesturing for the minibot to enter.

Starstep stepped into the common area, his helm tilting back as he scanned the ceiling height and the layout. He didn't just walk; he vibrated with a sort of restless efficiency. The short mech whistled, his yellow visor winking in the light of the sun, “Wow. Okay. This is... nice. Like, 'I forgot people actually live like this' nice. You’re a medic, right? The place kinda smells like a medbay.”

Jeopardy felt a prickle of heat in his chest, his fans whirring back to life despite his attempt to send a deactivation code. He nodded, closing the door and moving towards the kitchen so he wouldn’t crowd the smaller mech. “Um- yeah, I buy my cleaning supplies in bulk for… for the clinic? And it's easier to just order a little extra for myself… I hope it’s not too much?”

Could the smell of certain cleaning supplies be enough to turn someone away? It was cost effective, and time efficient, and Dropmix had never minded. But Dropmix had also spent over a millennia in a Medbay so he had to have been accustomed to it at that point. The only other mechs he had over were other medics and his friends who associated him with a medical bay. 

And plenty of Mechs didn’t like medbays. 

Jeopardy’s plates pushed inwards slightly as he reached a shaking hand for the energon cube he had offered. 

“Nah, it beats the smell of exhaust and recycled air I get at the depot,” Starstep chuckled, wandering toward the kitchen island, climbing onto a stool—Jeopardy may need to invest in some smaller furniture to properly accommodate—so he could see over the top. 

The mech eyed the centerpiece with an odd fascination, locked onto it like those videos Comet would occasionally send Jeopardy of earth cats chasing red dots. Starstep stopped just short of touching the Praxian crystals, as if just realizing he was being watched, “Oh, frag, those are genuine? You’ve got a piece of the Crystal Gardens in a Kaon high-rise. Bold move, Doc.”

Jeopardy watched him, his plates buzzing. He had expected a minibot to be quiet, perhaps even timid—too much time with Nova—but Starstep was a whirlwind in a small chassis. Yet, there was no malice in his intrusion, just a frantic, genuine curiosity. The same kind that Cometeater or Coo would have shown. 

The medic nodded, a thin smile curving his lip, he passed the smaller mech the cube of energon “Oh- yeah, I guess it is, isn’t it?” 

Starstep took the cube with a grateful nod, though he didn't stop moving; he swiveled the stool left and right, his attention darting toward the hallway. “So, the ad said a private berthroom? That’s the dream, honestly. At the depot dorms, you're guaranteed at least three roommates.”

Jeopardy gestured toward the hall, finding himself strangely anchored by the minibot’s chatter. It was a sensory overload, yes, but it was external. It forced his processor out of the spiral of his own guilt and into the immediate present. And his twitching was endearingly familiar to Echo’s own inability to sit still. 

Starstep hopped off the stool with a clatter of light metal, quick to follow behind the larger mech. 

“The second door on the left,” Jeopardy explained, walking toward the hallway but keeping a respectful distance so as not to loom. His finger tapped against his thigh, a nervous tic he could never rid himself. His jaw tightened, eyes dropping to the floor as he tried to steady his voice. “I am… uh- I’m legally required to inform you that the last resident died there. I know some mechs get… weird about that stuff?”

The silence that followed Jeopardy’s admission was thick, punctuated only by the distant hum of the building’s ventilation system. Jeopardy kept his optics fixed on a small, invisible scuff on the floor, his spark hammering against his chamber. He’d practiced the line a dozen times, trying to find the balance between clinical honesty and not sounding like a harbinger of doom. 

Starstep, however, didn't recoil. He didn't even slow down. He stopped at the threshold of the room, his helm tilting to the side as he looked up at Jeopardy.

“Died in there, huh?” Starstep repeated, his voice losing a fraction of its manic speed but none of its brightness. “Like, peacefully? Or like… Kaon back-alley style?”

“Peacefully,” Jeopardy whispered, the word feeling heavy in his vocalizer. “In his sleep. He was... old.”

Ancient. Dropmix has been ancient, a relic of a time forgotten. He predated the unity of Cybertron under Nova Prime’s reign, the gladiator had been forged long before Nova Prime had ever come into power.

Starstep hummed, a low-frequency vibration that seemed to buzz right through the floorboards despite how small he was. He stepped into the room, his frame looking even tinier against the high ceilings designed for a behemoth of a mech. He didn't look for ghosts or stains; he looked at the window, the way the light hit the floor, and the massive bed that could easily fit two mechs Jeopardy’s size.

“Old is good,” Starstep finally said, snapping his fingers and nodding to himself. He reached up to run his hand along the length of the desk.

“Old just means the spark got tired. I’ve delivered to places in Kaon where the walls practically scream at you. This place? It’s quiet. Well, until I get here, anyway.” He grinned, then paused, his visor dimming just a fraction. “Sorry about your friend, though. I assume he was a friend?”

Jeopardy nodded, his plates shifting with a soft, mournful clink, he looked out the window—anywhere but at the mech that suddenly felt all too small for the room. “Mentor actually, but yes.”

Starstep let out a soft whistle, the sound more somber than his previous chirps. He didn't offer a platitude or a “sorry for your loss”—standard scripts that usually made Jeopardy’s plating itch with insincerity. Instead, the minibot just tapped the edge of the desk twice, a rhythmic salute to the mech who had occupied the space before him.

“A mentor, kinda forgot you medic’s had those. He was like your sire then, right?” Starstep said, his kinetic energy settling into a low, steady hum of his small engine. 

Jeopardy blinked, his spark skipping, his fans whirred again and he adjusted his posture. “Well- uh… no? It… it’s complicated.”

“Right. Well.” Starstep did a quick 360-degree spin in the center of the room. Clearly content to drop the topic and move on. “The room’s a palace. Built for a fragging seeker or something. But let's get to the real stuff: the ‘Jeopardy’ of it all.”

He hopped back into the hallway, looking up at the medic. “You said you're a medic? And a Veteran from what I read about you. That means pagers, late-night emergencies, and probably some ‘I saw something horrific’ staring-into-the-middle-distance time, right?”

Jeopardy felt his intake stall. It was a blunt assessment—brutal, even—but Starstep delivered it with such matter-of-fact casualness that it bypassed Jeopardy’s defenses. There was no pity in the minibot’s tone, only the practical calculation of a mech who dealt in logistics and delivery routes.

And… read about? Starstep had read about him. Looked him up before meeting. It made sense to do something of a background check on a future roommate, but the idea made Jeopardy’s plates shiver, his jaw tightening. 

“I... suppose?” Jeopardy admitted, his plates performing a slow, rhythmic ripple before pulling tight against himself again. “I um… I try to keep the- the ‘staring’ to a minimum. And my pager has a haptic-only setting so it won't wake the whole unit if I'm called in at 03:00.”

Starstep nodded, seemingly satisfied, and began wandering back toward the kitchen island, his optics darting toward the sink, the cabinets, and the charging ports. The medic followed closely behind, keeping a close eye on the minibot. 

He was charming, certainly, and his kinetic energy was a welcome antidote to the stagnant air that usually clung to the walls of the suite. For a moment, Jeopardy actually imagined it: coming home to find the lights on, hearing the rapid-fire stories of a courier who saw every corner of the city.

“You mentioned you're a courier,” Jeopardy said, leaning his large frame against the kitchen counter, trying to look relaxed. “I assume that means you're familiar with the Sector 4 checkpoints? They’ve been tightening security lately.”

Starstep waved a dismissive hand, a sly grin tugging at his face. “Checkpoints? Those are for mechs who don't know the service tunnels. Part of being a good courier is knowing which paths don't have cameras—and which Enforcers have a price.”

Jeopardy’s fans gave a tiny, involuntary stutter. He stiffened, though he tried to hide it by forcing himself to shift his weight. He smiled, a tight, thin lipped curl of the lip, “Price? You make it sound like you're transporting more than just data-slugs and legal documents.”

Starstep hopped onto the stool again, his legs swinging. He seemed to take Jeopardy’s clinical demeanor for professional discretion. “Look, Doc, let’s be real. Kaon wasn't built on legalities. I work for a firm, sure—it’s a great front—but the real credits? The early retirement credits? Those come from specialty items. Things the Council thinks mechs shouldn't have, but mechs definitely want.”

Jeopardy felt a cold sensation settle in his spark chamber. He nodded, his plating instinctively pressing in once more. “Oh.” 

The medic’s processor, usually a well-ordered archive of medical protocols and social caution, was suddenly screaming. He thought of his clinic—the clean, white walls, the strict adherence to Kaon’s new regulatory codes. He thought of the Enforcers who occasionally dropped by for routine inspections of his medical stocks.

“I- I run a clinic, Starstep,” Jeopardy said carefully, his voice regaining its clinical edge, though it carried a tremor he couldn't quite suppress. “My career... my entire life here is built on being… you know. If an Enforcer followed a signal to this unit because of a—what did you call it?—a specialty item..."

“Hey, hey, Doc! Take a breather,” Starstep interjected, holding up his hands. His kinetic energy shifted from charmingly manic to defensive within seconds. “I'm a professional. I haven't been caught yet. I’ve been doing this slag for years.” 

The silence that followed was different from the one before; it wasn't heavy with grief, but with the sharp, acidic scent of impending complication. Jeopardy looked at the vibrant green minibot, who was now watching him with a slightly defiant tilt of his helm, and then at the meticulously polished kitchen island. 

“I appreciate your honesty,” Jeopardy whispered, his voice sounding thin even to his own receptors. He straightened his posture, his large frame casting a long shadow over the kitchen. He cleared his throat, trying to be more assertive, “I really do. Most wouldn't have been so forthcoming.” 

Starstep’s visor dimmed slightly. “But?”

“But I can't,” Jeopardy finished, the word tasting like copper. His plates rattled as his fingers tapped on the counter behind him. “I'm a medic, Starstep. My license, my clinic... If the Enforcers find anything in this unit that I could be using or distributing- They’ll shutter my practice. I can’t risk the patients who depend on me.”

Starstep hopped off the stool, the metal clatter sounding much louder in the tense room. He didn't look angry—just disappointed, like a racer who’d been told the track was closed due to rain. “Safe. You're playing it safe. I get it. Most Praxians do.”

The comment stung, a ghost of the old stereotypes that Praxus was a city of rigid, unyielding logic, but Jeopardy didn't rise to the bait. He simply walked the smaller mech to the door.

“I'm sorry,” Jeopardy whispered softly as he opened it. “I hope you find a place that suits your... specialty.”

“Don't sweat it, Doc,” Starstep said, his rapid-fire tenor returning as he stepped into the hallway, though it lacked the genuine warmth from ten minutes prior. “Good luck with the quiet life.” 

With a final, sharp wave, the green-and-orange blur was gone, disappearing toward the lifts.

Jeopardy closed the door and leaned his back against it, his vents cycling in a long, shuddering hiss. He felt a wave of exhaustion hit him that no amount of recharge could fix.

He had another walkthrough in two hours. 

Chapter Text

Jeopardy was starting to lose his edge. 

He had scheduled four walkthroughs on his day off—intending on making the most of the day and praying that he got through this quickly—and had come to regret each one of them. 

Starstep had been a nice candidate, a few quirks that Jeopardy would have needed to work through, however, he had generally been a good match. But the risk of being associated with such deals was too great in Jeopardy’s optics. 

The second interview went considerably worse.

A small flier frame, Slipstream of Nova Cronum—a city of philosophy, which had perhaps tainted his idea of who this mech would be. He should have known better than to assume. 

Slipstream had arrived fifteen minutes late and spent almost the entire time looking at her own reflection in just about every polished surface. The flier was almost obsessive about asking if Jeopardy “minded company” at night, punctuating her sentences with a slow, deliberate flutter of her wings that made his plates press in. 

The medic knew they weren’t compatible within the first five minutes, though he still tried to humor the idea. Dropmix had been vain at times, but his vanity had somehow been far more dignified than this display. 

He wished he had just said that he didn’t think it would work out in those first five minutes and put an end to his misery. As it would turn out, the flier was either painfully oblivious to Jeopardy’s attempts to corral her out of the room, purposefully ignoring them, or he wasn’t being obvious enough. In the end she had stuck around an extra forty minutes into the hour and a half cushion Jeopardy gave himself between mechs. 

Slipstream only left when he pointed out how long the commute to the upper spires was and she deemed it unacceptable. 

Jeopardy felt a wave of relief the second the door clicked shut. He had tidied up again, spent a few minutes too long glaring at the photo of Dropmix on his wall and cursing the gladiator for leaving him in this mess. For making finding a new roommate too difficult because they had to somehow replace the grand mech. 

The arrival of the third guest had caught him off guard. They had arrived right on time but Jeopardy was still obsessively wiping the counters down and he had scrambled to hide the cleaning supplies before letting them in. 

Malvane of Esserlon. Dockworker. 

He was loud, boisterous, and within ten minutes had slapped Jeopardy on the shoulder with a force that made the medic’s aching joints whine. The bright yellow mech was overwhelming, sure, but originally Starstep had been and he turned out to be alright. He simply needed to give Malvane a chance to mellow out. 

It never happened. 

Malvane, though jovial and very friendly—too much so perhaps—seemed to have no respect for personal boundaries. 

He hadn’t even been in the apartment for thirty minutes before he began rearranging the furniture.

“You’ve got the flow all wrong, mech!” Malvane boomed, his voice echoing off the high ceilings like a sonic grenade. He shoved the workbench Jeopardy used for the long distance virtual calls with his Amica three feet to the left to make room for an imaginary exercise rack he insisted was essential for a mech of his stature and job description. 

In the process he had caught a wire, the tension snapping the old cable with an electric fizzle. 

Jeopardy’s fans didn't just whir; they shrieked. He felt that familiar, suffocating heat rising in his chest as he watched, paralyzed by a mix of professional politeness and mounting horror. The unit he used was old, recovered from the original outpost, and finding another cord with the proper adapter would be a difficult and expensive task. 

“I think,” Jeopardy said, his voice dropping into the dangerously calm register he usually reserved for patients who refused to sit still and follow simple directions but still had the audacity to complain, “that you might find the accommodations in Sector 7 more suited to your… needs.”

It was a lousy and pitiful excuse, one that he was sure he would have gotten some rebuttal from. 

Malvane hadn't even looked offended. He’d just laughed, another tooth rattling sound, and clapped Jeopardy on the back one last time—nearly sending toppling the medic who was trying to not make it obvious he was holding his breath—before wandering out the door, still talking about the benefits of open concept living.

Jeopardy had rearranged, cleaned, and mourned the loss of his cord all before the next mech was scheduled to arrive. He double checked the short conversations he had shared with each mech, frowning at his own naivety. He would need to weed them out more then, be more specific in finding someone suited for what he was looking for.

The task would have been easier if he knew what that was. 

The fourth mech never arrived. 

Jeopardy had waited. And waited. He had sent a follow up response asking if they needed to change the time. And waited. He got no reply. 

The large mech put away the extra energon he pulled out for the guest in an attempt to be a good host. He moved through the apartment like a phantom, his vents too light and footsteps almost nonexistent. He closed Dropmix’s door, internally apologizing to the ancient mech. Jeopardy returned to the living room and stared at the door for another fifteen minutes.

When he was sure that there was absolutely no chance the other would arrive he finally allowed himself to crumble. 

He sat on the sofa, his helm in his hands and elbows resting on his knees. The exhaustion of maintaining the polite, courteous manners his current task demanded settled in his joints like rust. A dull ache in his processor had long since made itself known, only making the void in his spark chamber all the more prevalent. 

Jeopardy sighed, vents huffing out pent up hot air, his shoulders drooping. His plates flared, trembling and finally releasing their suffocating hold on his protoform—a relentless pressure that had followed him all day. After a long second, he opened his optics, staring dully between his feet.

That persistent, throbbing tightness in his spark was almost unbearable, only manageable due to the strange lightness of his own frame. The weight that should have come with a mech his size had vanished. Some other day it may have been nice, a weightless, untethered feeling that left him dizzy. 

Today it just made his vision swim with static and the metaphorical small island he found himself on feel so much smaller. 

Only then— the silent apartment, hunched over in the fading light of day—did jeopardy admit it, even just quietly to himself. 

He was lonely—horribly so. 

He missed the low rumble of Dropmix’s snores through the wall. He missed the pings from Cometeater that didn't feel like they were coming from across a galaxy. He missed the busy, messy lives of the other mechs on the outpost. He missed having them so close, being able to walk down the hall and be pulled into a card game or forced to settle a debate. 

Jeopardy wanted that sense of purpose and obligation that he had felt during the war, the only thing that had kept him from teetering off an edge he would have never recovered from. 

Jeopardy wanted to be needed again. 

The broken and injured mechs during the war had needed him. Cometeater had needed him before Coo had come along and swept him away. Dropmix had needed Jeopardy, he had admitted it himself long before the war had ended. 

But no one needed him anymore, not truly, they had all found someone or something else to occupy their lives. They all had found a new purpose after the war, they all were living. They didn’t need him. They all just wanted filters replaced for comfort and engines checked before they had to pay for a real repair. 

The medic’s engine whined, a long, hollow sound that only made the persistent migraine double in intensity. His vents hitched, what should have been a painful, sharp jolt in his filters felt more like a slight caress. Jeopardy closed his optics and let himself fall back, slouching into the back of the couch, his legs spread out before him as he stared at the ceiling. 

Sometimes, he wondered what it felt like to cry. 

Not just the mechanical, dry sobs that would rattle a mechs chest. With the hiccuping clicks for comfort and quivering frame. 

No, he wanted to know what it was like to really cry. Like all of the organics did. 

With tears. 

Jeopardy shifted his gaze to the broken cable on the floor, eyeing it with a listless intensity. If he were an organic, he was sure his eyes would be stinging right now. There would be a physiological warning—a prickling behind the eyelids—before the dam broke.

His Amica was always so frustrated with himself when he cried, he always was so scared. He would hide, bury his face in his arms regardless of his company—no matter if they already knew that he was an organic rather than a fellow Cybertronian. Cometeater’s breath would hitch and gasp and more of those surreal tears would trek down the dust on his face. The pretender would get so worked up, so embarrassed and ashamed of it. 

Ashamed of the way his vision blurred and his face scrunched up. How he would sniffle and whine, his throat tightening, curling in on himself while his shoulders shook with the intensity of his weeping. He would shrink away from any light, lest anyone witness his grief. 

Cometeater had always been ashamed of his tears, he would always hide his tears.

Which defeated the purpose, didn’t it? The reason why he had evolved to perform such a feat, such a marvelous act of raw feeling. 

It was beautiful really, at least Jeopardy thought so. 

He squeezed his optics shut, pressing the heels of his palms into the sockets until the pressure created kaleidoscopic bursts of warnings. Sometimes that would be enough for him, enough to let him imagine he could cry. He could pretend that was the stinging that Cometeater spoke of. 

Jeopardy wanted to bleed that precious liquid sorrow. 

He wanted to feel the physical depletion of sadness, to watch his grief exit his body and pool on the floor where he could mop it up and be done with it. Or at least measure it, have proof that it had existed, been real. 

Instead, there was only heat.

The heat stayed trapped under his armor, baking his circuits in a slow, agonizing simmer. His engine gave another weak, stuttering turnover—a sob that lacked the moisture to make it real. His vocalizer clicked, a useless, childish sound of a lost sparkling, a call that Jeopardy hadn’t had returned in ages. 

His hand drifted to the space beside him on the couch—the spot where Dropmix used to sprawl out, taking up entirely too much room. 

The fabric was cold.

A sharp, jagged pining flared in his spark, and Jeopardy’s intake hitched again. This time, the sound was louder, a grinding of gears that didn't quite mesh. His cooling fans kicked into a buzzing whine, a desperate attempt to vent the emotional heat through mechanical means.

It was a silly, foolish thing to be envious of, and yet Jeopardy wanted it so incredibly badly. 

Then maybe he could collect it up, hold it in his hands and have enough physical proof of his brokenness to admit that he wasn’t fine. That he was lonely. And bored out of his mind. And feeling so very small and stuck. 

Jeopardy stayed there for a long time, staring at the cord, the silence of the apartment feeling less like peace and more like a vacuum, sucking the remaining energy from his frame. The static in his vision hadn't cleared; if anything, it had thickened into a dull grey haze that made the corners of the room seem to recede. His spark had slowed to a crawl, a mere tremble in his chest that reminded him he was alive. 

The silence was eventually broken not by a voice or someone rapping on his door, but his communicator buzzing on the side table.

Jeopardy didn't move. He didn't even vent a sigh. He simply remained slumped, his optics fixed on the frayed copper of the broken cable. It was likely the fourth candidate—the one who was hours late and undoubtedly just as unsuitable as the three who had preceded him—trying to excuse their absence. He didn't have the internal fortitude left to be polite, to offer a tour, or to listen to another mech explain why they deserved to occupy the space Dropmix had left behind.

The buzzing came again. 

A call. 

Jeopardy’s eyes narrowed and he finally forced himself to turn his head to stare at the ceiling. His engine revved—a sound that even managed to surprise himself—a low growling sound that felt wrong in his chest. 

The vibration of the communicator was persistent, a rhythmic thrum against the metal table that resonated into his aching processor. He didn’t want to answer. He wanted to submerge himself in the gray static of his own head until the morning forced him back into the role of the composed, capable medic.

But it could be something important, a call from the clinic perhaps—though his internal pager was quiet—or maybe Echo was planning on visiting Kaon to watch the gladiator fights and needed a place to crash. 

With a movement that felt like he was dragging his frame through gel, Jeopardy reached out. He didn’t look over, instead just patting the surface until he could get a grip on the communicator. His fingers, usually so precise, fumbled with the device before he finally brought it to his face.

The display didn’t show a local ID. It showed a string of encrypted symbols that made his spark skip a beat.

[INCOMING LONG-RANGE TRANSMISSION: COMETEATER]

The irony was a physical blow. His workbench sat three feet away, its purpose severed by Malvane’s careless strength. He couldn’t project the image. He couldn’t see the familiar, expressive features of his Amica, or the way the organic's eyes crinkled when he spoke. He would have to settle for audio—a hollow, tinny substitute for the presence he so desperately craved.

But Cometeater rarely called, even when something important happened. Which meant this had to be something absolutely life changing.

Jeopardy took a breath, cleared his throat, forced a brittle smile, and swiped the interface. “Hello?” 

“Uncle Jep?” The voice was not Cometeater’s. 

That alone made Jeopardy’s spark do a flip in his chest, his smile falling immediately at the sharp pain in his chest. 

The voice was younger, higher in pitch, and lacked the weary gravel of his Amica’s vocal cords. It was a voice that sounded like starlight filtered through a prism—bright, eager, and more youthful in a way neither Jeopardy or Cometeater had felt in centuries. 

“Lyre?” Jeopardy’s eyes narrowed slightly, his concern mounting at the lack of his friend who was supposed to be on this line. If something had happened, if Jeopardy had lost—

No, he couldn’t think like that, if he did he would only be willing it into existence. 

Jeopardy rubbed a hand over his face, the ache in his processor shifting from a dull throb to a sharp, confused spike. “Lyre? Why are you calling from your father’s terminal? Is something wrong? Is Cometeater—”

“He’s fine! He’s just... occupied,” Lyre spoke quickly, though there was a suspicious muffled shout in the distance of the transmission followed by a snicker. “Listen, I’m calling because I’ve made a decision. A life changing, historical, very well researched decision. I’m coming to Cybertron. Specifically, I’m coming to stay with you in Kaon.” 

The medic felt his engine stall, his plates pulling close to his body as his joints locked up. 

Here? Lyre wanted to come stay at his place? On Cybertron? 

The idea of it was both wonderful and utterly terrifying at the same time. He couldn’t let Lyre see him like this, drifting through life, just coasting. The kid deserved better than that, Jeopardy should be a role model for him, someone who was collected and put together. Someone who could get themselves a roommate and not make a big deal of it. 

“You uh—” Jeopardy winced as his voice cracked with static, but he continued. He had to put an end to this quickly. “You want… but— Lyre what would you… I have—”

The transmission suddenly exploded into a chaos of white noise, choppy movement, and a very familiar, very frustrated yell.

“—re! Give that back! That is a long-range communicator, it’s fragging expensive, it is not a toy for bothering—”

“I'm not bothering him, I'm scheduling a cultural exchange!” Lyre’s voice muffled as if the communicator was being wrestled away. Which, knowing his Amica, it probably was. 

After a few more seconds of squabbling, “Jeopardy? Jeopardy, hey, are you there?”

The voice was finally Cometeater’s, but he sounded breathless and thoroughly harassed. “I am so sorry. He swiped it off the charger while I was in the wash. Don't listen to him, he’s not going to Kaon, I haven't even—Lyre, stop reaching for it!”

Jeopardy let out a slow, stuttering vent, the sound of Cometeater’s frantic parenting acting like a grounding wire to his frayed nerves. He closed his optics, leaning his helm back against the sofa cushions. The image of the two of them—the aging, weary Pretender and his rambunctious son—wrestling over a piece of tech was so vivid it almost hurt.

“I'm here, Comet,” Jeopardy said, his voice sounding more like his own, though the mechanical rasp of exhaustion still clung to the edges. “I'm here. It's... it’s fine. I really don’t mind.” 

On the other end, there was a heavy thud, a groan of protest from Lyre, and then the sound of a door sliding shut. The background noise muffled instantly, leaving only the steady, rhythmic breathing of his Amica. 

He could hear the sounds of the organic settling. 

“No, mech, the slagger should know better,” Cometeater sighed, chuckling to himself quietly. “It’s not too late for you is it? I forget the time zones.” 

Jeopardy glanced at a clock mounted on the wall, 10:46. The medic blinked in surprise, his eyes narrowing as he watched the clock tick up another minute. A sudden shame churned in his tanks, making his plates press into his frame. 

He must have zoned out for some time then, longer than he had thought. 

The mech cleared his throat, shaking his head, “Yeah… no? It’s um… it’s not too late. Don’t worry about it.” 

A moment of silence stretched between them, humming with the static of several light-years. Cometeater was always good at reading the gaps between words, the weight of a pause.

“You sound... tired, Jep,” Comet said, his tone shifting from frazzled to concerned. 

Jeopardy stiffened, his fingers curling into the worn fabric of the sofa. He could feel the lie hovering at the tip of his vocalizer, ready to be deployed with clinical precision. Yet the broken cable on the floor seemed to mock him, and the silence of the room was a vacuum that pulled the truth out of his chest before he could stop it.

“It's just been a long day, Amica,” Jeopardy said, his voice dropping an octave. He tried to inject a bit of his usual dry wit to lighten the mood. “I had a couple of walkthroughs for the apartment. I’m a bit worn out from mech’s poking around at my stuff.” 

“Walkthroughs? Oh, right. The roommate hunt,” Cometeater’s voice softened as he sighed, taking a second to seemingly brace himself, “How’d it go? Find anyone who doesn't track grease all over the floors?”

Jeopardy’s gaze drifted back to the snapped cord. He could still hear the fizzle-pop of the electricity dying in his processor. He forced a small, hollow huff. “Well, I found one mech that I got along well with, or at least I assumed we would have.” 

“But..?” Comet held the single word out for longer than necessary, a flicker of amusement in his tone. Jeopardy could imagine his smile, the radiant way his eyes would be sparkling. 

“But,” Jeopardy chuckled, a sound that sounded slightly too hollow, a project of his exhaustion. “He turned out to be a drug dealer. Or smuggler. Probably a bit of both. So, I turned him down.” 

Cometeater barked a laugh, the sound crackling through the small speaker. “A dealer? Primus, Jep, you always did have a magnet for the colorful ones. What about the others? Surely the whole of Kaon isn't just chemists and crooks.”

Jeopardy shifted, his armor clicking as he slid further down the sofa, staring at the ceiling above him like it held the script to life itself. “Nothing else too promising. Though you should probably tell Sunstreaker that I’ve got a flier here that may be more obsessed with her own reflection than he is.” 

Cometeater let out a long, wheezing whistle of amusement. “Now that is a terrifying mental image. I’ll be sure to keep that away from him; the last thing we need is a trans-galactic ego off.” 

His tone shifted then, dropping the humor as he heard the underlying strain in Jeopardy’s vocalizer. “But seriously, Jeppers, you sure you're just… fine?”

Jeopardy hardly thought about the following response, the single word escaping his vocalizer before he could process the implications. His voice dropped to a monotone tremor, “Peachy.” 

There was a long beat of silence, Jeopardy’s eyes widening and fans kicking up a notch. 

“Did- did you just say peachy?” The organic’s tone was a mixture of amused bewilderment and genuine anxiety now. “I have never once heard you—”

“I'm fine, Comet,” Jeopardy quickly interjected, but the lie sounded brittle even to him. He forced himself to slow down, huffing a laugh. “I don’t… I don’t know why I said that, I’m sorry.” 

Cometeater didn’t seem convinced, “You have nothing to be sorry about. I just worry about you out there by yourself.”

It was a touching sentiment, it really was. But the migraine hadn’t eased and he felt a strange prickling in his spark. He was a grown mech, he didn’t need Dropmix watching over him. But the flicker of insult withered away just as quickly as it had been ignited. 

Jeopardy shrugged, a useless gesture that would be lost on Comet and only made him slide further down the sofa. “I'm just... it's just the quiet. It gets loud sometimes, if that makes any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” the organic said gently. There was a faint sound on his Amica’s end, perhaps the rustle of him shifting in his seat, a sigh of relief. “Silence is the loudest thing in the world when you're used to a war zone or a roommate who snores like a turbofox in a blender.”

“He had his charm,” Jeopardy murmured, he had turned his head, his optics now tracing the silhouette of the crystal cluster on the island. “The blender fox, I mean. At least I knew where I stood when he was around.”

On the other end, the playful atmosphere seems to fizzle out at the comment. Cometeater’s intake hitched, his organic empathy radiating through the speaker. “When he… you… Jeopardy you're not doing great, are you?” 

The silence stretched, never awkward, but heavy with the light years between them. Jeopardy almost wanted to laugh at the question, a smile tugging at the corner of his lip. In all honesty, no, he wasn’t, the medic knew that much. The past month had been a descent into a kind of hell he hadn’t ever known before. One that felt a lot more like he was sliding down any losing any of the progress he had made. 

Yet, despite all of the anxiety and exhaustion and aching loneliness, this was the closest he’d been to solving his problems. He had a clean apartment, he had finally moved Dropmix’s things to make way for something new. Even if it felt like he was dragging himself sideways through a vat of oil, Jeopardy was heading in the right direction. 

Dropmix would have been proud, he was sure. He would have said something about needing to backtrack when the path wasn’t taking you anywhere, that there was always another way out. 

Feeling like absolute slag was just a part of the process. 

Jeopardy sighed, “I’m just tired, Comet. I’ll feel more like myself in the morning.” 

Chapter Text

Okay so… we are going to see how this works… pray for me

Here we have some Jeopardy designs.

A while ago I made a little spoof “character interview” thing over on tumblr and made a cover page for it with Jeopardy. featuring Jimmy Fallon because I think im hilarious  

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And I have a profile/headshot with his mask on. ignore the blank traumatized stare i was struggling. this was mainly a reference for myself and me playing around with... faces. so its not meant to be pretty

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so technically im one big fat liar and Jeopardy has a post dropmix death design because buddy got sad and did the cybertronian equivalent to cutting and/or dying his hair which is to repaint himself. 

unfortunately for me I only have angsty photos of plot that comes up much much MUCH further down the line when he is in his single dad era of life. I swear buddy's life isn't all just angst i just only write the angsty parts because i suck at writing fluff. and there are however many thousand years between events cause these guys get OLD

so we will cope. 

Oh!! and Cometeater and his design technically belongs to my mutual over on Tumblr @thebrokenmechinicalpencil i just borrow him on the weekends (he's the green guy)

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Dropmix designs (even though hes dead. he's here in spirit... ghostmix hehe) 

more of the headshots i made for myself

Chapter Text

The morning didn't bring the miraculous reset Jeopardy had promised himself. Granted, he wasn’t really expecting it to, that was the thing about slumps, they never resolved themselves nearly as quickly as he would have liked. Instead of bringing a clarity that would point his life in the right direction, it brought the relentless, rhythmic blaring of an alarm, dragging him out of a stiff recharge cycle.

He moved through the apartment with the stiff, clinical efficiency of one of the early drone models—the kind that he had only seen in old medical journals and were mainly designed for sorting. He stepped over the broken cable on the floor. He couldn’t bring himself to look at it yet. The medic prepared himself a standard grade energon cube before settling on the couch again, staring at the cube like it owed him money. 

Today, thankfully, Jeopardy had work. 

A consultation with a mech named Skyline for a t-cog replacement—upgrading to a newer and more effective design. He had a standard line up of check ins and maintenance sessions scheduled until lunch, and then he was supposed to be on call until mid afternoon. 

It was a light work day, sure, but it was work. It meant getting out of his apartment and away from the pressure of needing to fill a hole in his life that consumed everything like a black hole. It meant he could think of something else other than his own bland existence. It meant that he could be needed by someone. 

Without uttering a single word he swiftly finished off the energon, checked his reflection in the mirror for any buffs he may have gotten in his sleep, and left his apartment—taking a second to triple check the locks. 

The commute to his clinic wasn’t very far, he had been sure to find a building that wasn’t too far from the apartment. 

Originally, it was because Dropmix was planning on working with him and the mech insisted that they needed to live close so he didn’t need to walk as far. Which Jeopardy has validated himself, the closer they were the better, they could react to medical emergencies faster. He’d spent all his life living in or on the grounds of a medical bay or hospital, the idea of being even a block away from a facility felt like an eternity during a crisis.

Jeopardy’s clinic was only a fifteen minute walk if he cut through two alleys or a nine minute drive—without speeding—from his apartment. 

Regardless, he took the long route. 

He had the time after all, and it would give him some time to think. The medic walked, taking a detour to stroll down a smaller section of Kaon’s interstellar markets. He meandered near an organic owned stall for a while, inspecting some exotic plant for a second longer than he should. It was a small, quaint thing; with bright, teardrop shaped bulbs for leaves and its flower almost seemed to pulse. 

Despite the vendor's attempts to sell and his own “doormatish” behavior—as Dropmix would so kindly inform him when he was being too polite to just say no—Jeopardy prided himself in his ability to resist impulse purchases. 

A plant wasn’t much of a roommate anyway. 

The rest of the walk to the clinic was uneventful, the same mechs bustling around him, carrying on with their lives as if they were spared from the invisible weight that rested on his shoulders. He had watched some sparkling pull their carrier eagerly into a shop with model spacecrafts with a bubbling envy he swore he had rid himself of millenia ago. At that point his leisurely pace quickened into something with far more intent in his steps. 

And finally, he had reached the relative safety of his clinic. The buzzing feeling of eyes on his back and the dizzying weight of an exhaust he couldn’t name slipped away with a sigh as the well maintained doors shut behind him. His shoulders dropped, then rolled back into a relaxed but attentive position; his fans whirring from a baseline whine to a complete stop.

The lobby was already busy—as per usual—when he arrived. The air smelled of ozone, the same industrial cleanser as his room, and something more iron rich and metallic; rust perhaps? There had been a recent outbreak of infections in the lower city. 

Jeopardy exchanged pleasantries with the newest receptionist—a quick, brief greeting that he found kept the workplace from feeling too sterile—and shuffled into the hallways behind. He continued the carefully constructed social dance around his colleagues, ensuring to not disturb anyone too invested in their work but promising himself to catch a word with them before they clocked out. 

Flickerflash had pulled him aside before he reached his office, the smaller mech shoving a pile of patient charts into his arms. A dozen more mechs had come in with rust problems overnight, most were treated but three had been kept for observation. Jeopardy had navigated the conversation smoothly, reassuring the younger mech and releasing them from shift an hour early before passing off the documents to Anima—an intern—to sort and file correctly. 

“Make an announcement for the staff that we need to start sectioning off the northern rooms for the rust patients, we don’t want that spreading to healthy mechs,” he paused, vocalizer ticking in the back of his throat twice as he briefly looked over the remaining charts in his hands, “And go ahead and issue a warning that we need to be more diligent in scrubbing as well. The last thing we need is someone catching something.”

The intern’s optics flickered with a mix of exhaustion and the eager, desperate-to-please energy of a fresh graduate as they took the charts. It was the kind of starry eyed eagerness that usually caused a flicker of reminiscent amusement in his spark. He only had the energy to offer a curt nod of thanks, his processor already shifting gears. 

The familiar hum of the clinic—the rhythmic hissing of hydraulic doors and the low-frequency drone of diagnostics running—acted like a soothing balm, numbing the sharp edges of the previous day and his slow morning.

He finally reached the door of his office when-

“You look like you were dragged through a trash compactor backwards,” a voice crackled. Clear and smooth, with a drawl that Jeopardy could immediately identify as Polyhexian. “I reckon the day off didn’t do you much good then?” 

Jeopardy didn't need to look up to know it was Osmis.

He let out a slow, deliberate vent, the sound bordering on a hiss as he finally looked up. Osmis was leaning against the doorframe of Jeopardy’s own office, looking entirely too comfortable. The Polyhexian mech was smiling, a soft, critical thing that always seemed to come effortlessly to her, though her sharp green eyes shone with a lingering concern.

Professional pity. An expression that nearly every medic had mastered. 

“Good morning to you too, Osmis,” Jeopardy greeted, dropping the bright, focused intensity of his previous tone. He shouldered past the other mech to enter his office, dropping his remaining data pads onto the desk with a heavy thud. “I wasn’t aware my aesthetic choices were under review today.”

Osmis didn't budge, her frame lingering in the doorway like a stubborn piece of code that refused to decompile. She watched him move—watched the way his plates twitched as he organized a stack of pads that were already perfectly aligned. 

He refused to meet her eyes.

She noticed.

“It’s not the aesthetic, Jeppers,” she stated punctually, pushing off the door frame and stepping into the room. She moved with a liquid grace that made the cramped office feel more like a theater. It was the same kind of presence that Dropmix had carried. “It’s your aura.”

Despite himself, Jeopardy scoffed—a huff of air that often was a sign of reluctant amusement rather than distaste when coming from him—and shook his head as he settled in his seat, fighting a smile, “Don’t tell me you're on the ‘aura’ thing again.” 

“The ‘aura thing’? Really?” Osmis laughed, a bright, chiming sound that resonated in Jeopardy’s spark chamber. She closed the distance between herself and the desk, picking up and inspecting a framed picture that Jeopardy had taken with Echo when Praxus had opened the restored crystal gardens. “It’s Spectralism, mind you, but no. I’m not on that train again, thankfully.” 

Jeopardy didn't look up from his monitor, which he had signed into moments before. He pulled up Skyline’s schematics on his primary monitor, the blue light reflecting off his optics in cold, sharp lines. This time he did let himself chuckle, “Thank Primus. Last time Dropmix nearly threw you into oncoming traffic when you tried to read his.”

The name hung in the air, a sudden, heavy static that seemed to jam the room’s casual frequency. Osmis’s smile didn’t vanish, but it shifted—softening into something bruised and careful. She didn't put the picture back immediately, her fingers tracing the edge of the frame. Her optics had shifted from the photo to his face again, watching him keenly. 

After a second, she shifted on the corner of the desk, placing the frame down—which Jeopardy straightened into its previous position out of reflex.

“He would have,” she agreed softly, nodding somberly, “He always did have a low tolerance for 'metaphysical nonsense' didn’t he? I’ll consider myself lucky then.”

Jeopardy’s fingers stilled over the console. The blue light of the monitor felt harsher now, highlighting the microscopic tremors in his fingers. He had meant for the comment to be light—a callback to the comfortable, bickering dynamic they’d all shared—but instead, it just highlighted the empty chair in the corner of the office where a different frame should have been sitting.

His plates shifted, pressing into his own protoform as he forced a steady invent of air. He ignored the throbbing in his spark, that old ache from his apartment crawling back to life.

“Anyway,” Osmis continued, sensing the sudden drop in the room's pressure. She swung her legs lazily, her feet just barely missing the floor. The nimble mech tilted her head, a wide, eccentric grin splitting her features, “I’m not here to talk about your aura. I’m here because you’ve been ignoring all my messages about your roommate hunting. Have you found the one yet?” 

Jeopardy let out a dramatic, long-suffering groan, finally leaning back in his chair and letting his helm thud against the headrest. He pinched the bridge of his nose, a human expression that he had picked up from his time with Cometeater, who had adopted it from his own time on earth. The blue light of the monitor cast long shadows across his face, but the professional mask he’d been wearing all morning finally began to crack, replaced by the weary but warm expression.

“Roommate hunting,” Jeopardy repeated, his vocalizer buzzing with a dry, self-deprecating humor. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling though, recalling the frustrating absurdity of his first few attempts, “Is an absolute nightmare.”

Osmis seemed to light up immediately at the near childish expression, she leaned forward, giggling at his antics.

“Jeppers, my main mech, that’s because you're being too picky,” Osmis chirped, reaching over to idly flick a stray dust mote off his shoulder plating, using the seemingly harmless gesture to quickly jab at his protoform through a gap in his plating, earning herself a startled yelp from Jeopardy, his emergency lights strobing briefly. 

“Would you stop tha-” Jeopardy began, swatting her hand away, though he was cut off by her more steady voice cutting in. 

“You don’t have to Conjux the mech or anything, you just need to live with them for a bit,” she concluded, expression far too smug and plates flaring slightly in her satisfaction. 

“Living with someone is… it’s a big commitment, Osmis!” Jeopardy countered, a defensive tone rising. His emergency lights finally dimmed back to their resting state and he adjusted his shoulder plate with a huffy click. “And, I’m sure if you had met the mechs you would agree that I’m not being picky I’m… setting boundaries.”

“Boundaries? Didn’t you weed out the candidates before all this?” Osmis huffed and rolled her optics so hard Jeopardy was surprised he didn't hear the servos whir. Her grin was a contagious thing, even when she was determined to belittle him, “What kind of mechs were you meeting with?”

Jeopardy blinked, looking at the smaller mech for a second, then glancing at the time. He had time before the consultation, and the receptionist should give him a call when they arrive. 

He took a breath and Osmis’s smile somehow got even more giddy.

“Well, the first mech I met seemed like a good match but I’m pretty sure they were a drug dealer… or, technically a runner?” Jeopardy began, pointedly holding up a single finger, counting off and reporting on all of the interactions he’d survived the day prior. “The second was somehow even more egotistical than Dropmix, which is a feat. The third started moving my furniture around.” 

He paused, debating if the fourth even qualified to get a finger in his count off. Reluctantly he rose a fourth, his expression shifting to a deadpan, “Fourth never even showed up.” 

There was a long beat of stillness between the two of them—longer than usual. 

Then Osmis cackled, the sound echoing off the sterile walls of the office. It was a good sound—the kind that usually made Jeopardy feel like the world wasn't quite as heavy as his processor insisted it was. He couldn’t stop his own smile from tugging on the corners of his lips.

“We’ve long since established that you're just a magnet for the weird ones,” she stated factually once her villain-like cackling had dimmed into a murmuring giggle. The Polyhexian bot finally hopped off the desk and smoothing out her hip plating. “But seriously, mech, don’t write off the whole concept yet. You’re rattling around that big apartment like a loose nut in a turbine. It ain’t good for you.”

“I’m doing just fine,” Jeopardy insisted, though the lie felt a bit thin even to his own sensors. He turned back to the monitor, his fingers dancing across the keys to pull up Skyline’s previous medical history, defaulting to the task at hand so he could avoid her watchful eye. “I have my work, I have my routine, I call my Amica when he’s not busy and I have you pestering me every morning. My social quota is more than filled.”

It was such a blatant, obvious lie that he was sure even Dropmix himself—a master of deception and playing an act—would have been impressed with how easily it fell from his lips.

At least, he would’ve been if it wasn’t so clearly wrong.

Jeopardy had never carried the same finesse and commitment to carry out a lie, nor did he have the energy to try and sell Osmis on it. They both knew the truth, or at least, Osmis had picked up on enough of the breadcrumbs to realize that Jeopardy was slowly becoming undone. 

Neither of them acknowledged it. 

“If I’m your only source of entertainment, you’re in worse shape than I thought,” she countered with a wink, heading toward the door. She paused at the threshold, her expression softening for a fraction of a second—a rare glimpse of the genuine concern beneath the Polyhexian sass.

Jeopardy started skimming the same paragraph for the third time instead of looking up. 

“Jeopardy.” 

He tried to act invested, plates twitching in acknowledgment though he refused to address her sudden shift in tone. “Yeah?” 

There was another strange, silent pause between them, heavy with words that neither knew how to say, especially not to each other. 

“Look, I know it’s not… it’s not my place,” Osmis began, he could hear her shift her weight, her plates twitching against each other. Jeopardy’s jaw tightened and he hardly kept his plates from pressing in, he knew where this was going. That didn’t stop the Polyhexian, “And I know I was never as close with Severance as you were with Dropmix but… you know I- I struggled with it. So… if you want to talk about it..?”

She didn’t need to finish, her words trailing off in a quiet invitation. 

Jeopardy’s optics remained glued to the monitor, but the text on the screen had long since blurred into a meaningless slurry of code and medical shorthand. He felt a sudden, sharp spike in his internal temperature, his fans kicking on with a low, mournful hum to compensate for the sudden stress.

He wasn't ready. 

He’d cleared out the space Dropmix left behind, made way for someone else to fill it, told himself that he had moved on, accepted the fact that he was gone. And yet, he doubted he could hold a real conversation about it, one that was more than the well rehearsed, detached information he recited like he was walking a mech through the symptoms of a fatal disease. 

“I appreciate it, Osmis. Really,” he finally whispered, his voice coming out a fraction thinner than he intended. He forced himself to look up, offering a smile that was arguably his best work of the year—it was bright, it was warm, and it was entirely hollow. “But I’m handling it. I mean.. life goes on, right? The clinic is busy, the patients need me. My nephew wants to come stay for a summer. I just… I’m catching my breath.”

He reached out and tapped a key on his console with a bit more force than necessary, closing Skyline's file and opening a fresh diagnostic template.

This was a lie—a performance—that Dropmix would have truly been proud of, and simultaneously heartbroken by. 

“Besides,” he added, his tone pivoting back to that practiced, playful bounce, “if I start getting all sentimental on you, who's going to be the grounded one when you decide to join a lunar cult again? I have a reputation to uphold as the office boring bot.”

Osmis stayed there, framed by the door, her green optics searching his face for the crack in the armor she knew was there. For a terrifying second, he thought she might push—might step back into the room and force him to acknowledge the broken cable on his floor or the way he still bought enough energon for two every time he went to the market.

Then, she relented. She offered a small, sad quirk of her lips and a two finger salute.

“Fine. Keep your secrets, you stubborn wrench,” she sighed, the sass returning to her voice like a shield. It was their dance, their act, both treading so close to each other, looking over the edge of vulnerability before chickening out and returning to lighthearted banter. 

Neither of them ever seemed ready to cross that barrier, and Jeopardy doubted that would change any time soon. 

Osmis clicked to herself, “But the offer stands. And check that file I sent you! The hauler's name is Leadbyte. I think you’ll get along so well your Amica will start worrying you’re replacing him.”

The idea was horrifying, even as just a jest, but he forced a chuckle. 

“I'll look at it, Osmis,” Jeopardy promised, actually meaning it this time just to get her to move. “Now go. I’ve got to get ready for a consultation.” 

The second the door slid closed behind the eccentric mech Jeopardy felt that haunting stillness return. How silence could be both suffocating and a relief at the same time, he had no idea. But he found himself balancing in that moment regardless. All he needed to do was get through his shifts and get home. He had a single roommate meet up planned once he was finished but after that he had the evening to himself. A daunting, beautiful thing that was the light at the end of the tunnel that he was running from. 

Jeopardy sat there for a moment, his hands resting on the edge of the desk. He looked at the empty chair in the corner again. He didn't think about Dropmix's laugh, or the way the older medic used to leave half-finished data-pads scattered across this very office. He didn't think about the silence of the apartment. 

He discovered that his moment of ‘not thinking about anything’ was more than just a moment, but rather the last fifteen minutes before Skyline arrived. 

The consultation with Skyline served as the perfect mechanical distraction. The small flier had a complex transformation cog and intricate parameters to work around—he was a frame style that Jeopardy rarely encountered; due to the complexity of its crafting and tendency to run into mechanical errors, it had quickly gone out of fashion. But, it meant the task of walking through a potential surgery and replacement required Jeopardy’s full concentration, leaving no room for the ghosts of mentors or the daunting prospect of empty apartments. 

It provided Jeopardy with the kind of objective, solvable problem he craved. 

The rest of the morning followed in a blurred rhythm of clinical efficiency, the familiar flow of the clinic catching him and leading him downriver, a mindless consumption of time.  He handled a routine fuel-filter purge for a courier, saw three mechs for standard joint maintenance, diagnosed a minor case of spark-flutter in an elderly bot, and spent an hour in the lab cross-referencing the latest rust infection strains. 

He ate his lunch alone in his office, pointedly ignoring the file Osmis had sent him while he stared out the window at the Kaon skyline, letting the white noise of the city drown out the hum of his own processors. Usually he would try to join his colleagues at lunch, it was always easy to find simple conversation over a meal, but he had told himself he was going to work on reports to make up for the time off he was taking. 

It was a pathetic, terrible excuse that would have Osmis giving him a dirty look and dragging him out of the office if she heard him say it in person.  

By the time his afternoon on call shift rolled around, the high energy bustle of the morning had tapered off into a steady, manageable hum. Usually, being on call meant nursing a lukewarm energon and catching up on filing until his shift ended. He was just starting to think he might actually make it home without further incident—maybe even muster the courage to find a replacement for the broken cable—when his comms  chirped with a priority ping from the front desk.

He took a deep breath, placing down the box of new welding rods that had arrived an hour ago back onto a rolling cart.  

“Jeopardy here,” he answered, his professional mask sliding instantly back into place. 

“Jeopardy, we have a walk-in,” the receptionist—the new mech he had seen at the desk earlier, who had to be pulling overtime—reported. “Osmis is busy with a… collision it seems, and Fluxstride is uh- they’re preoccupied with a spark fluctuation. Your the only medic that’s not got an-”

Jeopardy sighed, making a mental note that he’d probably need to ask another receptionist to clarify that reporting a walk in didn’t include the whereabouts of other mechs. He cut the mech off with a polite prompting, “And the patient?”

There was a beat of silence followed by a nervous laugh, “oh! Right, I- sorry, of course. Um… well, there are two, sorta, one seems well but they are insisting to be taken back together. If that’s… alright?” 

Another pause.

Jeopardy grabbed his diagnostic scanner, straightened his plating out of habit, and made his way down the hall. “As long as both mechs consent to the other being there I could care less.” 

“Sure, great. It… it looks like another case of rust, pretty severe this time. They’re claiming a…” Jeopardy could hear voices in the background, urgent and stressed, “A workplace mishap supposedly. They are requesting a senior medic.”

Jeopardy sighed, rubbing his optics and switching directions. He was already mentally running through a list of common structural issues that could be caused from rust weakened internal structures—stress fractures, pylon fatigue, a dented transformation plate, possibly a collapsed joint or servo. "No problem, Send him to Exam Room 4D, have… Anima is still here right?”

“Um… yeah?” 

“Great, have him walk them through the quarantined halls, we have at-risk patients on the east side, I’ll be right there.”

The walk to Exam Room 4D was purely muscle memory. Jeopardy’s mind was occupied by the logistics of the rust infection—calculating the necessary concentration of solvent, the risk of structural collapse if the corrosion had reached the load-bearing struts. He was the picture of medical composure, a steady beacon of teal and white moving through the sterile corridors.

He paused outside the door, checking the digital readout on the panel. It was marked for high-priority decontamination. He hesitated for only a fraction of a second before deciding against engaging his mask, so far there had been nothing suggesting this was an airborne strand. 

Jeopardy palmed the door sensor, the portal hissing open as he stepped inside with his professional doctor's voice already primed.

“Good afternoon, I’m Jeopardy, I understand we have a workplace—”

The sentence died in his vocalizer. He tightened his grip on his datapad and—gracefully—stumbled over his own feet, a tire catching and leaving a dark scuff on the floor. He was spared the humiliation of colliding face first into the polished tile only because he caught himself on the end edge of a counter.

The air in the room didn't smell like rust. It smelled like ozone and dust. There were two mechs. One was a smaller, jittery bot Jeopardy didn't recognize, was currently shivering on the medical table—energon leaking sluggishly and rust peaking out of a wound. 

But the one whose presence seemed to warp the very dimensions of the room—was standing next to the berth, a slate grey and copper mech, soft amber optics glowing with a steady concern and a mounting realization. 

Both their fans flickered into overdrive at the same time. 

Steelwake. 

Chapter Text

Statistically, almost nothing was impossible, there was always the slimmest chance that you could run into the same mech you had been deliberately avoiding like a plague. Kaon was big, it was busy, packed. The likelihood of running into Steelwake had been near zero with how efficient Jeopardy was with avoiding that bar. 

The universe tended to get a kick out of watching him squirm however, so it really shouldn’t have surprised him. 

The silence that followed the medic’s clumsy entrance was so thick it felt like physical pressure. Jeopardy felt like a submarine that was sent too deep, his insides being pressed into by his plating so tightly he felt like he might shrivel up like an aluminum can. 

For several agonizing seconds, the only sound in the room was the frantic, uneven ticking of the injured mech’s cooling fans, his own healthy fans blasting, and the distant, muffled bustle of the clinic.

He stood there—like some idiot—clutching the counter and his datapad like it was the only thing keeping him from being pulled into black hole. His optics widened, plates pressing in as he manually overrode a command to engage his mask again. The last thing he needed was to humiliate himself more than he already had by stumbling in like some hapless apprentice instead of with the grace of a senior medic. 

For weeks Jeopardy had successfully curated a reality where Steelwake didn't exist. And now, here was Steelwake. In his clinic. In his exam room. Looking exactly as solid and dependable as Jeopardy remembered, which only made the medic want to crawl into a disposal chute. 

The medic’s spark hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. Every instinct he possessed told him to turn around, walk out the door, and perhaps leave the planet entirely.

Thankfully, the mech in question seemed just as surprised. 

Steelwake’s optics widened, his intake venting a sharp, surprised hitch of air. He looked like he wanted to say something—likely something devastatingly polite or, worse, an apology for the kiss—but it caught in his throat as his engine sputtered. His plates flared before shivering and pressing down tight, his large hands moved to trace an invisible shape on his thigh, an instinctive need to keep them moving. 

The silence carried on. One beat. 

And another.

Then, the injured bot let out a pained, static laced groan, his frame hitching as his fans stalled, hiccuping before resuming their frantic pace.

The sound acted like a master reset.

Jeopardy didn’t have time for petty, self absorbed drama. He was a medic. He was needed. He had work to do. 

He didn't stand up straight. He snapped up, forcing his panels to fluff and reset into something more controlled.

“Right,” Jeopardy cleared his throat, his voice a flat, synthesized monotone that lacked even a hint of his usual warmth. He didn't look at Steelwake’s face. He looked at the patient’s shoulder. Then at the floor. Then at the diagnostic screen. Anywhere but those amber optics. “Workplace mishap. Rust.”

This was pathetic, even for himself. The last time he had been this nervous—this unprofessional—during an examination had been… 

Before he met Dropmix. 

The name was the deafening chime of a starting bell before two gladiators lunged into action—causing his programs to surge through his processor quickly enough that the world seemed to tilt.

His professional persona didn’t just return; it slammed into place like an armored shutter.

“I apologize,” Jeopardy said, his voice flat, melodic, and entirely devoid of the frantic screeching currently happening in his mind. He stepped forward, the scuff mark he’d left on the floor the only evidence of his lapse. He forced a pleasant, noncommittal smile that was meant to reassure even the most anxious patients. “It’s been a long day. I didn't have time to pull up your file, may I have a designation?” 

He didn't look at Steelwake. He didn't acknowledge the way the larger mech’s plating shifted with a soft, metallic clink as he stepped closer to the wall to give the doctor room. 

The smaller bot, likely a construction loader given the hazard orange and connection with Steelwake, practically jumped. Their blue eyes widened, glancing at Steelwake before shifting back to the medic. Their vocalizer clicked rapidly, their hand—firmly held in Steelwake’s—tightening its grip. 

They looked like they were ready to bolt, Jeopardy had a feeling that if they weren’t actively tethered to Steelwake they would have already.

“My… Uh, Ironhide,” the mech, stammered, another tremor making his frame rattle. “I—look, I told the guy at the front, I'm not staying if Steelwake leaves. I don't like the um.. the- the needles, okay? I don't like the way you guys... just... poke around.” 

Somehow, Ironhide seemed to be more of a nervous wreck than Jeopardy himself was—a feat that very few had ever achieved. But it meant that the medic would need to try a far more gentle approach. Less tired but well experienced senior medic and more personal and reassuring caregiver.

Jeopardy didn’t let himself finish his approach to the berth side, stopping just out of arms reach of the mech. Maybe, had Steelwake not already caused a lapse in his processor, he would have sighed. Instead he kept his brittle smile in place, glancing at his datapad. 

There were plenty of mechs with the name Ironhide, unless this was The Ironhide—which Jeopardy severely doubted—the name did nothing for him. What frustration he may have felt was drowned out by the relief of having a larger task at hand, a reason to ignore the third mech in the room. “And your Forge of origin?” 

Ironhide’s eyes narrowed slightly, once again looking at Steelwake as if he was the one with all the answers, “Durax.”

The medic nodded, smiling and moving to a console to the side of the room. He kept his movements slow, predictable, placing his datapad down on the counter and logging into the patient records portal almost mindlessly. “Alright, Ironhide of Durax…”

Jeopardy’s fingers moved over the keyboard with a clinical precision that masked the fact that he was currently operating on pure, unadulterated autopilot. He tapped in the credentials: Ironhide. Durax. Construction.

The search paused, loading. The silence stretched out again until Jeopardy could feel the crawling eyes on his back, like thousands of earth insects had made their nest under his plates.

The file loaded with a soft ping.

“Here you are…” Jeopardy muttered to himself, trying to disrupt the silence with pointless chatter. He doubted Ironhide was going to break the stillness and the idea of Steelwake filling it instead felt like a disaster waiting to happen, so, Jeopardy rambled, talking to no one in particular. “Spelled with a ‘y’ in hide… nice, I like it. Have you… ah, never mind, you’re new with us.”

His pale optics swept over the screen, skimming the data as quickly as possible. Leaving Ironhyde in a state of suspension would only make his nerves worse, Jeopardy knew from his own experience. “I’m very sorry for the delay, usually I have time to check medical history before my patients come in. I just want to make sure I don’t miss anything of importance.” 

He glanced back—only looking at Steelwake for a microsecond. The copper mech’s optics flickered, reflecting a mix of hurt and bewilderment, but he caught the shuttered look in Jeopardy's gaze. He took a slow, grounding vent, his massive shoulders tensing. “Anima already issued some pain killers, correct? And it looks like most of the injuries were sealed before arrival?” 

This time, Steelwake spoke—an instant wave of relief seemed to ease the tension of Ironhyde’s shoulders at the sound. His voice was deeper than Jeopardy remembered, a low rumble that vibrated in the medic’s chest plates. It sounded cautious, testing the waters. “Yes, he got some pain killers. And the… the injuries were addressed before, I think they may have reopened.” 

Jeopardy fully turned toward the berth, his movements now choreographed with the exaggerated stillness of a mech walking through a minefield. He kept his optics locked onto the datapad, using it as a shield between himself and the heavy, expectant weight of Steelwake’s presence.

The medic forced his focus back to Ironhyde, but his spark was hammering against his ribs. The rust was bad—Type 4 oxidation eating into the primary hydraulic line of the right arm, spreading like suffocating vines over the mechs panels and creeping onto the right side of his chest, back and side. It was deep, angry, and localized near the spark chamber.

Internal structures were definitely being eaten by the infection, and it was very likely that they would need to replace almost the entirety of the ruined arm even though the main injury appeared to be on the mech’s upper back. The corroded internal mechanics had likely buckled under the stress of the job, weakened by the rust, and collapsed. 

He would need to rebuild the structures, do an internal examination to make sure shards or debris didn’t get lodged into the spark chamber and processing tanks, replace the damaged panels and treat the rust. 

Selfishly, the medic glanced at the time, he had an hour before his shift ended, two before the next roommate candidate would be at his apartment wondering why no one was there.

“Well, Ironhyde,” Jeopardy began, letting his internal medical scanners report back on the state of the injured mech. He finally approached the berth, though he kept a respectful distance from the construction loader’s personal space. “I’d like to collect some energon samples from the injury site before I start more official repairs, just to make sure nothing has spread into your primary lines.”

Ironhyde’s cooling fans gave another desperate, rattling thrum. He squeezed Steelwake’s hand so hard the copper-colored plating creaked. The mech clicked again, childishly scooting further from Jeopardy and closer to Steelwake. His voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper, “I told you, Steel. I don't… I don't like the poking. Can't you just... give me a scrub and a polish? I feel fine. Mostly.”

Steelwake didn’t flinch at the grip; he simply anchored the smaller mech, his larger thumb tracing a slow, rhythmic arc over Ironhyde’s knuckles. It was a gesture of such practiced, intimate comfort that Jeopardy felt a sharp, uninvited pang in his spark.

“A scrub and a polish won't fix rust, Gimbal,” Steelwake said, his voice dropping into a low, steady register that made Jeopardy’s plates itch. The copper mech’s face twisted into an expression of empathetic guilt, his tone lowering, “I already let you ignore the problem for too long.” 

Then, almost unexpectedly, he glanced up, amber optics catching Jeopardy’s with a sincerity that made his spark tighten. Steelwake offered a tight smile, “Besides, I know the doc, he knows what he’s doing.” 

Jeopardy decided it was safer to focus on what Steelwake had called Ironhyde rather than what the mech had just said. He paused, looking at the injured mech, eyes narrowing, “I’m sorry… is your name not Ironhyde?” 

The last thing he needed was for this mech to make his life even more difficult by committing identity theft for a medical examination. 

He had felt with enough potential felons within the past 48 hours.  

The loader’s cooling fans gave a sheepish, rattling whir, and he looked down at his own pedes, his chassis hitching with a small, embarrassed vent of air. Steelwake sucked in a breath, as if just realizing his error, his fans kicking up a notch and his plates flaring defensively. 

“It’s… uh… Ironhyde," the injured mech insisted, though his voice lacked the defensive bite from moments ago. He still didn’t move closer to Jeopardy, if anything he used the stalled time to scoot further. He laughed, a nervous, wheezing sound. “But there’s… well, a lot of us. You go to a construction site and yell 'Ironhide,' and half the heavy-lift crew turns around. I started going by Gimbal to make it easier on the guys.”

The mechs voice slowly trailed off.

Jeopardy blinked, his processor finally making the connection. It was a common enough practice. Names were bound to repeat, he didn’t have enough fingers to count all of the Echo’s he’d ran into before. Though he had yet to run into a fellow Jeopardy, he didn’t doubt that there was at least three out there. 

“I see,” Jeopardy spoke slowly, his voice regaining a sliver of its professional melody. He smiled, making a mental note to edit the medical file with his preferred name. “Would you rather I address you as Gimbal then?” 

Gimbal hesitated, his blue optics darting to the tray of surgical tools—simple, elegant tools he would need to gather a sample of energon and ideally some plating so he could test the rust—Jeopardy was instinctively organizing. The sight of the specialized scrapers and the long, thin aspiration needles caused a visible shudder to ripple through the mech’s plating. He didn't just look nervous; he looked like he was vibrating on a frequency of pure dread.

“Yeah,” Gimbal whispered, his voice cracking. He smiled, a tight, forced upturn of the lips that was followed by a clicking laugh, “Gimbal. It... it feels less like a formal execution that way.”

Jeopardy’s professional mask wavered for a fraction of a second. The joke was dark, even by medic standards. He paused, looking briefly at the way Gimbal was holding onto Steelwake’s hand for dear life, then scanning his spark signature and watching the way the pulse was steadily rising. 

He’d seen this before. 

“I’ll make sure to update your file once I get the chance then,” he kept his voice calm and collected, slowing his movements once more to keep them predictable. Once he had finished gathering his tools, he gently kicked over a rolling stool beside the berth. Jeopardy pulled the tray with him as he sat down, and—now eye level with the mech—he smiled, something far more genuine than before. 

“If at any point you feel uncomfortable or need a moment all you need to do is tell me or Steelwake and I’ll stop,” his tone had softened, though stubbornly refused to break eye contact with Gimbal, “Unless things have escalated into a life threatening emergency we’ll take this at your pace. I’m in no rush.” 

It was a lie—the last part at least. If the mech needed to stop he would, but Jeopardy didn’t have all the time in the world. He needed to lead a walkthrough of his apartment. He needed to stop whatever rust that might have got into the mech’s lines from reaching his fuel pump. And he needed to get away from Steelwake before he lost his composure. 

Gimbal didn’t look reassured. If anything, Jeopardy’s gentle tone seemed to make the construction mech more suspicious, his optics tracing the silver glint of the aspiration needle with the intensity of a prey animal watching a viper.

“Right. Pace. Okay,” Gimbal managed, though his vocalizer was throwing off sparks of static.

The room felt several degrees colder as Jeopardy reached for the first instrument on the tray—a small, sterile probe. He kept it low, intentionally in Gimbal’s direct line of sight.

“Breathe, Gimbal,” Steelwake rumbled, a quiet murmur that Jeopardy would have missed had he not been so close. “Focus on the intake. In for four, hold for two, out for six. Just like we practiced.”

Jeopardy’s hands froze for a heartbeat, processing the intimate moment with an aching spark. He had been in Gimbal’s place a million different times, Dropmix’s instructions nearly identical to Steelwake’s. The implication that Steelwake spent his private time coaching this mech through panic attacks hit Jeopardy like a physical blow to the chassis.

Gimbal tried to follow the instructions, though his vocalizer let out a sharp, whining keen. 

“Alright, Gimbal,” Jeopardy murmured, his voice softening into a low, rhythmic cadence designed to soothe frayed processors. “I’m just going to start with looking. I’m not going to touch the site yet.”

The medic tilted his head, trying to find the best angle to inspect the other mech’s trembling shoulder. He leaned in slightly—still wary of Gimbal’s personal space—and fought the urge to reach out and move a plate to give him a better visual. After another second of painful silence, he spoke, “Would you mind turning on your side? I need to get a better view of your back.” 

Gimbal’s response was a sharp, involuntary flinch. He looked at Steelwake, then at the berth, then back at Jeopardy. Turning his back meant losing sight of the threat, a terrifying prospect for someone in the throes of a medical phobia.

“I... I can't,” Gimbal whispered, his voice a small, quivering thing, punctuated by childish clicking. “If I turn around, I can't see what you're doing.”

Steelwake didn't miss a beat. He shifted his weight, moving with a surprising, fluid grace for a mech of his bulk. He didn't let go of Gimbal’s hand; instead, he maneuvered himself so he was standing at the head of the berth, leaning over so his face was directly in Gimbal’s line of sight.

“I'll watch for you,” Steelwake promised, his amber optics steady and warm—a literal sun for Gimbal to orbit. “I won’t let him do anything I don’t approve of.”

Jeopardy felt like a trespasser in his own clinic, watching an intimate moment that he had no right in participating in. Usually when something like this occurred Jeopardy was able to navigate it with a detached appreciation for the comforting mech, this time however, his own ties with Steelwake made every tender moment feel like a sharp probe in his side. 

He waited, his fingers curled loosely around the diagnostic tool, until Gimbal finally, slowly, began to rotate. The movement was punctuated by the horrific, grinding sound of oxidized metal. As Gimbal settled onto his side, the full extent of the damage became visible under the bright surgical lights.

Jeopardy’s professional detachment finally fully overrode his personal turmoil. This wasn't just some rust. This was an aggressive, deep-seated infection. The Type 4 oxidation had progressed into a jagged, crystalline growth that transitioned from orange vines into a pale blue frost, eating deep into the seams of the shoulder joint and tracking dangerously close to the spinal cabling.

“Slag,” Jeopardy breathed, the word slipping out before he could catch it. He immediately regretted it when Gimbal’s frame gave a violent shudder, grinding painfully as he tried to twist around. 

Never once, in all his years of practice, had Jeopardy ever slipped up like that. His internal sensors noted a rise in temperature though he denied the request to switch his fans on. 

“What? What is it? Is it falling off?” Gimbal’s voice rose an octave. His voice catching as something internal scraped together unpleasantly.

“No, no,” Jeopardy said quickly, his voice regaining its rhythmic, melodic calm. “It’s just... a very impressive bit of stubbornness you’ve got there, Gimbal. You’ve been working on this for a while, haven't you?”

“Weeks,” Steelwake answered for him, his voice tinged with a sternness that only comes from worry. “He’s been hiding it under a welding cloak.”

Jeopardy didn't comment on the lapse in judgment; he didn't need to. He reached for a pair of fine-tipped forceps and a sample vial. He huffed out a laugh, “Gimbal, I’m going to take a small sample of the surface oxidation. You won't feel this at all.”

The construction mech let out a small whine, plates shivering, unconvinced. “But—”

“I know the spot feels tender, but, interestingly enough, it’s usually caused by your processor compensating for the lack of input from the location,” Jeopardy interjected before Gimbal was given the chance to potentially spiral. He kept his tone even as he explained, “Rust will eat away most pain sensors of your plating or internal structures first, which is why it can go unnoticed for so long. Your processor only starts to send pain signals once it reaches your protoform, and it assumes that the entire area is affected.” 

Steelwake’s hand tightened on Gimbal’s. “He's just picking at the surface, Gim. Like a scratch. Deep breath.” 

Jeopardy moved in, his hands steady. He carefully scraped a sample of the rust into the vial. He could feel Steelwake’s gaze on him—not the patient's terrified gaze, but a heavy, searching look that Jeopardy refused to meet.

“First part done,” Jeopardy announced, capping the vial. The silence that followed was punctured only by the rhythmic clacking of the vial being set aside. Jeopardy could feel the heat of Steelwake’s optics on the side of his head, a phantom sensation that made his sensors tingle with a localized, static itch.

“You’re doing great, Gimbal,” Jeopardy added, his voice a smooth, practiced balm. “Now, I need to take that energon sample. This part involves a needle. It’s going to be a quick pinch, and then it’s over. I'll count to three, does that sound good?”

Gimbal’s intake hitched, plates shivering, “One of the long ones? The ones that go all the way in?”

“It’s as thin as a hair,” Jeopardy lied—or rather, reframed as Dropmix would say. He picked up the aspiration needle, inspecting it momentarily. It was thin, but certainly not a hair. “Steelwake, keep him steady.”

“I've got him,” Steelwake murmured.

As Jeopardy prepped the site, the air in the room felt stifling. The professional distance he’d maintained was fraying at the edges; the proximity to Steelwake, the way the large mech’s engine idled in a low, familiar thrum beneath the clinical beeps of the monitors, was starting to wear him down. He needed a distraction—not just for Gimbal, but for his own rapidly overheating processors.

“You know,” Jeopardy said, his fingers hovering just above the rusted seam of Gimbal’s shoulder. He looked up, finally allowing his gaze to drift toward the wall—anywhere but Steelwake's face. “I like to have music playing when I get all caught up in my head. A bit of a guilty pleasure. Would you mind if I played some?”

“Please,” Gimbal choked out.

Jeopardy reached over to the bedside console, his fingers flying over the interface. He didn't have to think about what to select. His processor pulled the file instantly—a legacy playlist from Dropmix. It was a collection of low-tempo, ambient Cybertronian melodies, layered with white noise and the faint, rhythmic pulse of a distant forge. It was the sound of a wartime medbay; it was the sound of safety.

As the first notes filled the room—a deep, resonant hum that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards—Jeopardy felt his own shoulder plates finally, mercifully, drop. His spark settled. The music acted as a buffer, a fourth presence in the room that diluted the suffocating tension between him and the copper mech standing across the berth.

Now, the difficult part. 

“One,” Jeopardy counted, focusing entirely on the needle and the patch of orange-blue decay.

Gimbal squeezed Steelwake’s hand.

“Two.”

Steelwake leaned in closer to the loader, his massive frame creating a protective shadow, his optics trained on the needle.

“Three.”

The needle slid in with clinical grace. Gimbal let out a sharp hiss, his cooling fans spiking, but he stayed still, anchored by the music and the heavy hand on his own. Jeopardy worked quickly, drawing the darkened, tainted energon into the tube. The fluid was sluggish, sparkling with micro-shards of rust that caught the light like morbid jewels.

“And… done,” Jeopardy announced, withdrawing the needle and immediately applying a pressure seal. 

The loader slumped against the berth, his optics cycling rapidly as the adrenaline began to recede. “Frag. I hate... I really hate that.”

“You did very well,” Jeopardy sympathized, and for the first time, he let his gaze shift. He didn't look at Steelwake's optics—that was still too dangerous—but he looked at the way Steelwake’s hand was still wrapped around Gimbal’s. The copper plating was scarred, dented from cycles of hard labor and old battles, yet the grip was incredibly tender.

Steelwake finally looked away from Gimbal, his amber optics meeting Jeopardy’s pale ones. There was no apology in them now, only a quiet, heavy gratitude that made Jeopardy want to bolt for the door all over again.

“Thank you, Jeopardy,” Steelwake said, nodding slightly.

“Just doing my job. And I still have to figure out how much of that arm we can save,” The medic turned back to his console, his movements a bit too fast, a bit too jerky. “I’m going to run these samples in the lab, it’ll take some time.  I’ll have an assistant come in and close up any open welds. But for the time being I’ve done all I can.” 

He stood, sending a message to Amina informing the mech of the situation. “We’ll probably keep you overnight, Gimbal. I’ll have it arranged to move a cot in here for you Steelwake.” 

The offer of a cot was the final tactical retreat Jeopardy could manage. It was professional, it was courteous, and it was a death sentence for any hope of a quick exit.

Steelwake’s engine gave a low, appreciative hum that felt like a physical touch against Jeopardy’s sensors. “I appreciate that, Doc. I wasn't planning on leaving him anyway.”

“I figured,” Jeopardy replied, his voice a bit thinner than he intended. He began gathering the samples, his hands moving with a frantic efficiency. He needed to get to the lab. He needed a door between himself and the heavy, copper scented reality of the mech he’d spent weeks trying to scrub from his memory.

Gimbal, exhausted from the adrenaline spike and the infection, was already starting to drift, his cooling fans slowing into a more rhythmic, if still slightly metallic, drone. The music Jeopardy had chosen—Dropmix’s music—continued to wash over them, the low-frequency pulses making the medical tools on the tray vibrate in tiny, crystalline circles.

As Jeopardy turned to leave, his datapad tucked under his arm and the vials held securely, Steelwake stepped away from the berth. The movement was subtle, but it effectively cut off the most direct path to the door. Jeopardy couldn’t help the way his vent’s hitched, his plating pressing inwards now that the need to be a medic had melted away.

Steelwake shifted, his heavy armor clanking softly. “Jeopardy, I—”

“I have to run these samples, Steelwake,” Jeopardy interrupted, his voice sharp enough to cut plating, though the words were rushed. He finally looked over, but he kept his gaze strictly on the level of Steelwake’s chest plates. “And… I try to keep personal affairs separate from my patients.”

It came out harsher than he intended… maybe. Jeopardy didn’t know what he wanted it to sound like, he just knew that the last time he had allowed himself to be too friendly with the mech he had been encroached upon in a way he wasn’t prepared for. 

And it wasn’t like it was a complete lie, it just wasn’t the full truth either. His current life was a pathetic representation of that. He just needed a reason to get away before he fell apart.

Steelwake closed his mouth, his jaw set in a hard line. He stepped back into the corner, his large frame making the exam room feel like a closet. “Yeah, alright. That's… fair.”

Jeopardy hated that he felt guilty for it.