If a fire broke out on the Lost Light, there was a very good chance it had started in Brainstorm’s lab. Lately, he seemed to be going for a streak.

Inferno stomped out the very last flame, and everyone finally started to cycle their vents now that most of the smoke had dispersed. Cleaning drones that had sensed the commotion moved in on the foam that coated the room. Hosehead needed a little bit of encouragement before he calmed down, which Siren was glad to provide, especially considering it had been his very adamant directions that had Hosehead so on edge in the first place. Surveying the post-disaster scene, Siren dismissed his fellow firefighters and turned to the culprit, ready to take notes, swapping the nozzle of his foam-filled backpack for the department’s datapad.

“So, Brainstorm! What was it this time?”

“You’re judging me. Three disasters in one week—you must think I’m incompetent. Is it so wrong to want to impress that special someone? Is it so wrong to try to bend reality to do so? If we never reached for the stars, we might never have gotten to a point where you could schmooze up to Nightbeat, you know…”

“That’s not really—” Siren shook his head. He was not about to discuss that. “I’m not judging you, Brainstorm! Not to encourage you, but you’re most of why I get out of bed in the morning! Besides, I don’t know the first thing about what it is you do here, but you probably cause disasters less than anyone else could in your position!”

“Oh, you flatter me.” Brainstorm bowed. “Let’s start from the beginning. Ever since I was a young mech, I had a gift for thinking of exciting and unorthodox ways to implement nuclear fusion—”

Siren steeled himself and got to typing. Brainstorm was an absolute punisher when it came to this sort of thing, and the worst part was that the level of detail and history was actually necessary given the complexity of his experiments. Siren knew better than to waste Magnus’ time with all the self-aggrandizing flourishes Brainstorm included, and that there were some technical aspects that could be condensed or made more concise if he put his mind to it. It would take most of the day to edit it into something presentable, but at least it gave him something to do.

He went back to the office. Nightbeat had moseyed in at some point when he was out and made himself comfortable, having adjusted the desk chair to be wide enough for him to recline sideways in it. His face was buried in his datapad, scribbling on it with his recently recovered stylus.

“You okay?” Nightbeat asked when he looked up from his writing, noting the sparse char marks Siren had accumulated.

“Oh! Nightbeat! Hi! It’s nothin’ I can’t handle!” Siren assured, hanging his backpack up next to the door and scooting Nightbeat out of the way so they could both sit upright.

“Well, that doesn’t mean you have to walk around with it,” Nightbeat said, brushing Siren clean with his fingers.

“So.” Siren looked up from checking Nightbeat’s clean-up, which was impeccable. “What have you been up to?”

“Homework. Professor Megatron takes no prisoners when it comes to assignments. I take it Brainstorm caused you some trouble.”

“Hah, yeah…”

“Sorry about him. What’ve you got on your plate now? An incident report?”

“Yep!” Siren reached out to boot up the computer and set the datapad beside it.

“Well, that’s important. I’ll leave you to it.”

They sat in near silence for the remainder of Siren’s shift, toiling away at their digital duties, asking each other for feedback a few times, but mostly just enjoying the finer aspects of each other’s company.

Done with his own work, Nightbeat peered over at Siren’s and was apparently impressed by what he saw. “I thought danger was your element. How do you manage to sound so put together with something so menial?”

“Are you kidding? Magnus will have my head if these aren’t airtight, that keeps me on guard!”

“That explains it.” Nightbeat gestured towards the screen. “Can I read them?”

Siren tilted it so Nightbeat could see it better.

“No, no, can you send me your backlog?”

Siren started to laugh but then realized that Nightbeat was being serious. He didn’t even want to spend time thinking about his own reports, and yet, to Nightbeat, they were new and exciting territory. “Yeah, I will! It might take a while to get clearance, though! And if I’m doing that, you should send me something of yours, I’m running out of stuff to read!”

“Definitely. And maybe you can go through this rec list Nautica made me and tell me what’s worthwhile, too. I don’t think she realizes I don’t read anywhere near as often as she does, or that telling someone to check out 2,000 different texts is a bit of a social faux pas.”

“And what are you asking me to do…?”

The hall lights dimmed, signaling the closing of all the high-risk facilities and marking the beginning of the simulated night.

“That’s time!” Siren said, leaning back. “I’ve still got a bit of nitpicking to do with this thing, but I’m basically free! You got any plans I can tag along for?”

“Something low-key. I've got a project in my room waiting for me.”

"Your room?!" Siren gasped. His mind reeled with wild speculation about what it could possibly be like—was Nightbeat a disorganized genius, or did each thing have a specific place? Was there someone on board who was lucky enough to be his roommate? More importantly, how often did he have guests, and what sorts of guests did they tend to be? Siren had a feeling that it was highly exclusive.

"Don't get too excited…" Nightbeat said, amused. "It's just a gadget I'm having problems with. I could use an extra pair of hands…if you can manage to stop shaking."

Siren hadn't noticed that his eagerness was that palpable. He just hadn't been expecting an invitation so soon. “I will! That sounds fun!”

Inferno showed up to relive Siren, who went to reattach his backpack but was interrupted by Nightbeat offering to do it for him. It wasn't a difficult task, but he accepted anyway. Inferno seemed less than pleased that they hadn't immediately left.

On the walk there, Nightbeat pointed out whatever they passed that piqued his interest and he had no shortage of gossip he’d picked up about people they passed, too. Siren was beginning to understand why he found leisurely treks so rewarding.

If the absurd amount of locks weren’t enough of a clue that Nightbeat didn’t have a roommate, the interior screamed it. Most Cybertronian decor was utilitarian before anything else, but Nightbeat took it to the nth degree. Like Blaster, he seemed to distrust subspace, though perhaps only for particular items. What he lacked in decorative skills, he made up for in lighting—dim, blueish, and atmospheric. Siren had seen this habsuite during inspections before Nightbeat had occupied it, and he had really made the place his own without actually changing much about it. Nightbeat led them in and made way for the project awaiting him on his shelf.

“Here it is. The hardest part will probably be figuring out what's wrong with it. After that, it shouldn’t take too long. ” Nightbeat laid the project on the floor: a toolkit and a broken down digital dowsing rod that was indispensable in certain kinds of investigations. It was high-tech and, like the Lost Light that housed it, near impossible to find replacement parts for this far from home. “You can have my desk, I’ll get started on this, okay?”

“Sure! Thanks!” Siren said. It took a second for him to get comfortable—where he was sitting was where so much of Nightbeat’s magic happened, after all, but seeing how much space Nightbeat was taking up on the floor that was his impromptu workplace made him feel more welcome to use his terminal.

The room was quiet except for the ambiance of occasional typing, metal bits hitting the metal floor, and the quiet, steady whirring of the inactive hologram generator tucked into a corner.

Siren, satisfied with the quality of his report, sent it and joined Nightbeat. “Anything I can do?”

“I don’t know, I’m still in the diagnostic stage. Actually, here, unwind these wires.” Nightbeat pushed the busy work towards Siren.

They continued in tandem until Nightbeat got to an especially intricate step in the disassembly, to which Siren was too mesmerized by Nightbeat’s skill (never mind that he seemed to have no issue seeing what he was doing in the dark) to keep on with his helping.

“What?” Nightbeat asked after he decided Siren had been paused for unusually long.

“You’re just so meticulous! Like you’re disarming a bomb!” Siren said, resting his elbow joints on his knees and his head in his hands.

“Between the two of us, I think you’re the one who could actually manage to disarm a bomb. That level of pressure might get to me.”

“Might?" Siren snorted. Nightbeat phrased it in a way that sounded modest, but it was still far beyond what most considered themselves capable of.

“Shh. This part is tricky…”

They kept disassembling Nightbeat’s device in silence. They were aware time was passing, but Siren’s alarm telling him to turn in still took them by surprise. He scrambled to shut it off.

“Can I crash here?” Siren asked, concerned that, since his habsuite was inconveniently far, walking might eat into his rest time, and driving so late might keep him from being able to rest at all.

“Sure,” Nightbeat said. Siren gave him a combination thank-you-and-goodnight kiss, pleased with himself that he had actually managed to fully tear Nightbeat’s attention away from his project for a few seconds. He settled into the foreign bed and Nightbeat continued his salvage attempt as if he were alone.

Siren was a light sleeper thanks to his lifetime of emergency service jobs conditioning him to always be ready, so barely over halfway into his recharge cycle he was jolted awake by the sound of Nightbeat dropping a tool.

“My bad.”

“You're still trying to fix that thing? Why not save it for later?” Siren asked, hoisting himself upright to see the state of Nightbeat’s endeavor, which hadn’t progressed much.

“I don’t control when things get interesting, Siren. I’d prefer to be prepared.”

“Is it really that urgent?”

“No functional dowsing rod, no answers, no happy Nightbeat. I'm doing this for the sake of everyone’s sanity.”

Siren smiled, but it faded quickly. “It just looks like you haven’t gotten much done in the time I was out!”

Nightbeat averted his gaze and looked back to his project, but that didn’t help him avoid Siren’s begrudgingly true observation.

“When was the last time you recharged? And what’s your intended schedule?”

“Sleep and I have never been on the best terms.”

Siren threw his head back in frustration. “Come on, Nightbeat! You could fix that thing in no time if you got some rest!”

“I’d like to, but thoughts keep me up. I’d just be lying perfectly still, agonizing over this thing. It’s not leaving my mind ‘til I fix it.”

“I bet I can keep your mind off it. C’mere!”

With a good deal of consideration, Nightbeat discarded his stubborn stance and joined Siren. It was cramped, but neither of them minded. He made astronomically better close company when he was still than as a dance partner. Siren wrapped his arms around him, one of his hands landing on his chest.

It took a moment to be sure, but he felt the very particular kind of warmth that could only emanate from a burning spark—mystery partially solved.

The affection that Siren had no shortage of pulled Nightbeat further and further away from thinking about his broken machine until he dozed off without any agonizing. Siren found it more difficult to—had Nightbeat been aware, he surely would have pointed out the hypocrisy. Siren couldn’t help it, he was just too busy thinking about Nightbeat’s habits. He could understand occasional insomnia, but with how regularly Nightbeat had insinuated it happened, he had to wonder if it was really a long string of one-off problems that kept him up or something bigger.

When Siren woke up, he was not surprised that Nightbeat was still cycling—he probably wouldn’t be seeing him at all today. It was the first time he had seen Nightbeat’s face devoid of expression. He looked statuesque. More than that, he looked peaceful. For now, it was a spectacle because of its rarity, but Siren had a feeling that his enchantment wouldn’t wear off no matter how many times he saw it.

It was difficult to wriggle out of Nightbeat’s grasp without disturbing him, but he managed it. Careful not to trample the work in progress Nightbeat had left on the floor, he made it to the door. He took one last look. He wished he didn’t have to leave. ✧