Disclaimer: I don't own them.
Blades was fretting, Hot Spot could tell, as he watched First Aid walk slowly around their borrowed quarters, stepping now with more confidence on his second circuit of the main room, using his hands to lightly touch the consoles, chairs, the stack of boxes that said "fan belts" on the outside (and why would the Aerialbots need four boxes of fan belts? Hot Spot wondered. Unless there was something else inside, but he certainly wasn't going to be so rude as to peek.)
"He's going to hurt himself," Blades muttered, having already moved several things out of the way, and First Aid stopped for a moment, puzzled by a chair that been further from the big desk in the corner the first time around.
"No he's not," Groove said from the couch. "He's being careful. And you're just going to confuse him, moving things around like that, y'know."
Blades grumbled, but replaced the small side table with a stack of datapads that he had been trying to scoot to the side. First Aid made it around a second time and started the third, smiling slightly, barely using his hands at all. He wasn't moving nearly as stiffly as before, and Hot Spot was happy to see him up and around, instead of lying far too still, optics glazed with painkillers and struggling for every intake.
Streetwise was watching First Aid with a pleased smile too, from his place next to Groove on the couch. It worried Hot Spot a little to see Streetwise being so…stationary. Even when he was being still, Streetwise was always in motion normally, the expressions on his face always swift and darting, optics always seeking, gathering. Now he was just…quiet somehow. Not himself. Ratchet had assured him that Streetwise would be fine. The surgery on his leg was delayed until Ratchet could get some of his medical equipment repaired, but everything else was healing nicely. Maybe it was just his imagination. They were all still tired, still achingly sore, but it was getting better. They just needed time, and he needed patience, not exactly what he was best at. This healing business took too long. The base was in shambles, there was work to be done and they could help do it, but Ratchet had forbidden them to set one foot outside these quarters, for both medical and security reasons he had said.
Officially, they did not even exist yet. The creation of a new Autobot gestalt team was to be kept top secret until such team was fully trained and ready to be placed in action. The original time frame still had them in training for another nine vorns at least, but Hot Spot supposed their cover had been blown big time when they formed Defensor and started digging out buried Autobots and tossing Decepticons into the moat. They didn't have any weapons, so Defensor had had to improvise. Hot Spot wondered if they were in trouble for disobeying orders, breaking cover. He'd never been in trouble before; he'd never really had occasion to be. Hot Spot wasn't sure what he thought of the idea. No one had come to talk to them yet, but he supposed they were all still very busy.
He knew only bits and pieces of what had happened since their impromptu participation in the recent battle. The attack on the base had been a diversion, staged by the Decepticons to draw away forces that were protecting the Allspark. From some of the snatches of conversation he caught from the hallway outside their quarters and unclassified comm. chatter he had tapped into, it sounded like there might have been two diversions. Or the Allspark had been hidden on the base and the diversion was somewhere else. It was very confusing, and if Streetwise had been more himself he would have already ferreted out the truth.
He could have asked Wheeljack of course, or Ratchet, but they were both so worn and hurried when they came by to bring them energon and check their injuries. He didn't want to take more of their time or keep them away from their other patients, although it was strange, not to have Wheeljack with them all the time, hard to watch him hurry away and not be able to go with him.
"He looks like he's having so much fun, it almost makes me want to try it," Streetwise was saying, and Groove laughed. "It does look like fun – you're right!" Groove pulled himself stiffly up off the couch, shuttered his optics and began feeling his way around the room as well.
Blades groaned. "Great. This is a disaster waiting to happen."
"Actually, this might be a good training exercise," Hot Spot told him. "Learning to maneuver without optics, rely on our other senses. We should all try it." Blades stared at him in dismay.
"Hey, just havin' fun here," Groove protested as he carefully felt his way along the back of the couch. "Don't you go turning this into a training exercise, then it's work!"
Hot Spot got up and stood in the middle of the little circular path First Aid was following. Blades looked at him questioningly. "He's gotten too good at it already; he needs a challenge," Hot Spot told him, and Blades rolled his optics.
Hot Spot waited, smiling a little as First Aid drew closer, hands ready to catch him just in case, but First Aid slowed as he sensed…something, maybe an air current or temperature change, maybe a ripple in the gestalt bond they shared. First Aid reached out one hand, touched and laughed suddenly in surprise, not expecting to find Hot Spot. Hot Spot drew him close for a moment, then lifted him up and spun around a few times (just a few, and not very fast, mindful that First Aid's equilibrium sensors were still not entirely operational), and set him down facing back the way he came. Blades glared, but First Aid wasn't confused for long, lightly touching one of the desks to get his bearings and stumping off confidently the other way around. Groove and First Aid missed a collision by a narrow margin as they passed each other and Blades groaned again. Streetwise turned to look at him in exasperation. "Blades, you worry too much. They're fine!"
Hot Spot felt warm, all the way to his spark, standing there, watching them. Groove wobbling unsteadily around the room with arms outstretched and optics shuttered, looking completely ridiculous and not caring for scrap. Streetwise giving him helpful advice ("try actually touching something instead of using your arms for shock absorbers, might work better there, crazy 'bot"), Blades shaking his head in what was supposed to be disgust, but Hot Spot could see him suppressing a smile.
A gentle touch on his back made him jump, and he turned and looked down at Aid's sightless optics, mischievous delight at having snuck up behind him dancing across his faceplates. Hot Spot felt his spark pulse suddenly with an almost painful aching love, but resisted the impulse to crush First Aid to him in a hug of joy and fear and relief. He settled instead for gripping his shoulders and pressing their foreheads together briefly, before gently spinning his brother around to send him off in another random direction. First Aid laughed softly and walked forward with steady confidence, but Hot Spot frowned as he reached the couch and stopped to lean on the side for a long moment.
Blades noticed too, (see, I told you this was a bad idea, his quick glance to Hot Spot said) and was immediately at First Aid's side, guiding him to sit on the couch next to Streetwise.
"He's overheating," Blades said, with a worried glance at Hot Spot.
"No need to panic yet," Hot Spot reassured him. "Ratchet said his thermostat was probably out of whack, and his cooling fans are still glitched up. He'll be fine if we just make sure he rests and cools down."
One of the first things they had done once they were mostly awake and they knew First Aid would, barring unexpected complications, most likely live, had been to coerce Wheeljack into retrieving First Aid's medical datapads from what was left of the room where they had originally been staying. They had all pored over them (as much as they could, reading for any length of time still gave them all headaches), searching for anything that might be even remotely related to First Aid's injuries and chances of recovery, while Ratchet muttered dire threats about "knowing just enough to be dangerous" and "welding their hands to their afts if they even thought about playing doctor." He had, however, shown them how to calculate the dosage and give First Aid his painkillers, and movements to do with his arms and legs to prevent his joints and hydraulics from stiffening as they healed. Hot Spot had wondered, watching Groove carefully inject painkillers into one of First Aid's secondary energon lines, if First Aid found it ironic that his brothers already had more actual hands-on medical experience than he did.
"Maybe we should call Ratchet just in case," Blades fretted, and Hot Spot couldn't really blame him for feeling a little overprotective. He was feeling that way himself, if he were honest. He came over and placed a hand on First Aid's arm, which didn't seem that warm, but when he slipped a finger under the plating (First Aid squirmed a little, it probably tickled) the cables beneath were definitely hot. Groove handed him First Aid's medical scanner and he took a reading.
"Core temp above normal, not in the danger zone," he told the rest of the team. "We'll call Ratchet if it doesn't start coming down soon. The remote alert would notify him anyway, remember, if anything was wrong," he reassured Blades.
First Aid ran his hand over the medical scanner with a little smile, and Hot Spot felt a pang. He had been so excited, to be working with Ratchet, to be finally learning to be a medic, and now…although First Aid didn't seem to be brooding, at least. In fact he seemed perfectly content, despite the discomfort of his healing injuries, once he had assured himself that his gestaltmates were ok.
Almost as if reading Hot Spot's processor (and maybe he was, although the bond from Hot Spot's end remained stubbornly blocked off) First Aid reached over, felt out Streetwise's shoulder and tapped it a few times insistently. Streetwise chuckled, and obligingly lifted his injured leg and laid it across the couch so that First Aid could check it over, testing the bend at the ankle, making sure the brace was properly placed, and feeling carefully for signs of heat or misalignment in the limb.
Streetwise, watching Hot Spot closely and too perceptive by far, said "Y'know, I don't think being blind and deaf is going to slow him down much at all. Right now he's probably thinking, 'what great experience, I get to know what it's like to be a patient and that will be great training for treating injuries in the future since I've already been through them first hand.'"
Groove laughed a little at that. "You're probably right." No one argued. Streetwise probably was right. They had never known him to be wrong so far, when it came to what they were thinking. Hot Spot wished he could be so sure. It was frustrating, not being able to ask him, to know for sure if First Aid was in pain or afraid. Not that he would tell them if he was. Despite the chaos of the battle, they had all learned quite a bit about what First Aid had NOT been telling them when they merged as Defensor. They would need to talk about that. Hot Spot rubbed his head a bit. There had to be a way to communicate with him, but attempts to uplink directly just gave both ends of the link blinding headaches. Hot Spot could sense him with the gestalt bond, feel his spark pulse, but his thoughts and emotions were walled off. They had tried writing, and First Aid had obligingly traced out several perfect glyphs. Perfect, backwards, and they made no sense at all. "Hmm, output's a bit scrambled," Ratchet noted, but didn't seem too concerned about it, and so Hot Spot tried not to be concerned either.
First Aid had satisfied himself that Streetwise was healing well, and now Blades was trying to get him to lie down on the couch, but First Aid was having none of it, huffing air through his vents a little in a way that clearly said "enough already." Hot Spot had thought he had known his brothers down to their last microchip, but First Aid, he was beginning to realize, was not only far too yielding and accommodating for his own good, he was also stubborn as Pit. An odd combination, but there it was.
"You've been hogging him Blades. It's my turn," Groove said, and tugged a little on First Aid's hand from his position on the floor in front of the couch. This time First Aid cooperated, sliding down to snuggle next to him.
Hot Spot sat on the floor in front of them both and felt First Aid's arm again. It was warmer than before, but when he took another scan his core temp had dropped closer to normal. The excess heat was working its way to the surface to dissipate, he had read that somewhere in one of the medical texts, making First Aid's surface plating feel hotter even as his core cooled.
Groove tucked First Aid more securely under the crook of his arm, careful of the raw half-healed patches on his back, and turned up his own cooling fans a few notches. First Aid sighed a little in relief as the light breeze drifted over his chassis. Groove began humming softly, and Hot Spot recognized the melody, one of Wheeljack's favorite songs, about a long journey taken and a long journey's end, and sharing a cube of energon with old friends.
Wheeljack used to sing to them all the time, back on their little nameless planet where they had been built (it seemed a very long time ago now, a life already put behind them). It had been the only way, Wheeljack often claimed, that he could get Hot Spot to slow down long enough to initiate his recharge programs. Groove was very good at singing. Hot Spot liked to listen to him. Hot Spot thought he was a good singer too, but no one else seemed to agree. "That's ok Hot Spot, you're good at lots of other things," they would tell him, and laugh, and let him sing along anyway.
Blades grinned at him from the couch, where, deprived of First Aid to fuss over, he had settled for pulling Streetwise against his side in a one-armed hug. Hot Spot shook his head, knowing what Blades was thinking. He wanted to sing too, but he'd spare them for now. Plus he had never managed to get the knack of singing quietly. Not that it would bother First Aid, Hot Spot thought with sad amusement, but they all couldn't get used to him not hearing, and tended to whisper and shush each other when he was drifting off to recharge anyway.
Groove suddenly trailed off, and Hot Spot looked at him questioningly.
"Huh," Groove said, and hummed a few more notes, much slower than before. This time Hot Spot could hear First Aid humming as well, his voice searching a little each time before matching up with the notes Groove was producing.
"Can he hear us?" Hot Spot leaned forward in sudden hope. "Aid?"
Groove stopped long enough to say, "I don't think so Hot Spot. I think he's doing it by feel, the sound vibrations." Hot Spot noticed then that First Aid had placed one of his hands next to Groove's vocalizer. First Aid's expression was expectant, clearly hoping Groove would keep going, and he smiled when Groove resumed the song.
"Wow," Streetwise said softly as First Aid continued to hum, becoming more accurate with every note until he matched Groove almost perfectly. "That's pretty amazing." Hot Spot nodded, feeling strangely comforted. First Aid still couldn't hear them, but it didn't feel like he was quite so cut off now.
First Aid's optic shutters drifted closed, although he still hummed, but as the song neared the end he sighed and curled up closer to Groove, just "listening" as his systems gradually edged into recharge.
"Is he out?" Streetwise whispered, and Hot Spot smiled. Whispering again.
"Not quite, but just give him a few more kliks and he'll be sound," Groove answered, also whispering.
"Well, Blades sure is," Streetwise muttered. "Can someone get him off of me? I'm kinda getting squashed here."
Blades was indeed soundly recharging, leaning heavily on Streetwise, who had nearly disappeared into the deep cushioning of the couch. Hot Spot laughed and rescued Streetwise, hauling the oblivious-to-the-world Blades down to join them on the floor. Streetwise extracted himself from the couch and slid down next to Groove, and they all curled up together contentedly. Hot Spot waited until the other four had all dropped into recharge before drifting off himself, feeling the reassuring pulse of his teammates' sparks, strong and steady all around him.
