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Amulon wasn’t thinking about it. He wasn’t thinking about it when they stocked at the station, didn’t think about it when they landed back on Delphi, and he certainly wasn’t thinking about it now, when he was working, and busy, and honestly a little hungry. And then First Aid walked in.
“Ambulon,” he said. He was on shift. They were all on shift. There were no off shifts when a medical facility ran on a nurse, a ‘nurse-lite’ (Aid’s words, not his), a surgeon, and their nineteen med drones. “Ooooooh, Ambulon.”
Ambulon straightened, then ran the audio back. Uh oh. This wasn’t Aid’s I’m bored and that’s everyone’s problem voice. This was Aid’s haha gotcha bitch voice. He’d only heard it once, when Pharma thought an air dam was, well, an air dam (as in a dam but for air, possibly generating energy from the depths of his imagination), and not the mesh spoiler that went beneath cars to reduce lift. (Its medical name was low ante gas partitioner, which Ambulon only remembered because he was planning to bet money on it later.) Aid was a car so he knew what an air dam was, and Ambulon knew because Arm-Or kept waxing bad poetry to some racer’s behinds. Which, ew, gross, but also was just weird. As in, he said this while they were all secured to slabs and were about to get dunked into the botched combination software, ouch weird.
Yeah, Arm-Or wasn’t very popular.
“I found your datapad on the dining table.” This was First Aid’s annoying pose. He was usually annoying, but this was above baseline. “Your confession datapad? Your note from a secret admirer?”
Fuck my life, Ambulon thought. “And why do you have that?”
“Um, because you left it in the mess? The tiny mess where there’s only two tables and one of them belongs to Pointy?”
If Aid was here calling Pharma Pointy, then it must mean he was offline. Which was good. Not because Pharma was the kind to poke at him, but because Pharma was the kind to remember the most inane details in the worst of times (e.g: post surgery and covered in energon), awkwardly give congratulations/concern/pleasantries, and that was worse. He’d seen it happen to First Aid and, to be honest, he would rather die.
“Uh,” Ambulon said, a little dizzy. He stood up too fast. “Ok, well, you shouldn’t look at other people’s datapads.”
“Not even if they’re left open on the table?”
No, Ambulon thought. Not even then. But that point was moot in a space this small. “Hand it over.”
Aid did, and let him leave. With some cackling, but an escape and an escape and Ambulon was not complaining.
He went to the mess to finish his meal. The cube he was working his way through had congealed, so he tossed it back in the recycler and poured himself a fresh one. And then he sat back down with the illicit datapad.
Okay, he thought, turning it on again. Here we go.
The datapad Ambulon received had come in the snail mail. He’d thought it was junk, except it was too expensive to send junk out this far. It had no comm, no virus, nothing except a small text file.
Hello, it read. I don’t know if you remember me. You saved my life a few astrocycles ago, and I’d just like to say… blah blah blah, gratitude, etc. Fairly unusual considering the political climate, but it wasn’t unheard of. He could add this to his pile (note to self: make a new pile) of things patients gave him. It would even be nice.
And then he got to the second paragraph. And that was just… eugh.
You’re such a kind-hearted person, it read. That was the third sentence. Ambulon had to stop mid-gulp. It was that bad. I overheard you arguing, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but you care so…
That was when he started looking for codes. He should probably have done that to begin with, but it was a nice note and he was secretly deeply susceptible, so. Sue him for being optimistic, or hopeful, or something.
No codes so far, but he wasn’t a code cracker. He was the leg.
You deserve so much more than what you get, it said, and Ambulon had to turn it off. It was too unnerving. And weird. And wrong. And frankly coming on a little too strong.
“Ambulon?” That was Pharma, who Ambulon didn’t have the nerves to see. He was down the hall and fast approaching. “You there?”
Ambulon made a run for his hab. He switched his working status to on call, laid down, and manually offlined.
***
The thing about being trapped in the same building as First Aid was, well, that he was trapped in the same building as First Aid.
“So,” First Aid said, once they were both fueled and rested and happened (in airquotes. Nothing ‘happened’ around Aid without manipulation of schedules, checking of locations, subtle stalking, the like) to be in the same breakroom together. “That datapad.”
Ambulon sighed. Being on Delphi was singlehandedly (Swing would have said, ‘haha, single-leggedly, you mean.’ He wasn’t very popular either) raising his exasperation tolerance. “What do you want.”
“Everything,” Aid said. “Give me. All. The deets.”
“There are no deets,” Ambulon informed him. “I went to restock on the station and this was in the snail mail. It’s from a patient.”
And then he handed it to First Aid, because it really was just that. Probably. Or spy mail. Or junk. Or a virus that was going to infect them all. Or a bomb.
“That’s… very involved,” Aid said, once he was done reading the file.
“I know.”
“Like, this-person-likes-you involved. Like, they like like you involved.”
“I know. ”
First Aid got that look again. “Are you sure it’s not an admirer?”
“First Aid,” Ambulon said, snatching the datapad back. “We live in a shithole with miners whose emotional subroutines are a single layer above the drones’.” No offense, miners. “I do not have admirers.”
Aid nodded, because he was the one who called it shithole first. “Okay. Just a very… erm… passionate patient.” And then, because he never let anything lie, “Is this your first gratitude package?”
Ambulon said nothing. Was it? People were thankful, sometimes. They must’ve thanked him. They must’ve done something so he’d know, because how else would he know? And he did know. Yeah. “No,” he said, but he knew he waited too long. Also, he didn’t sound very convincing.
“Oh, Ambulon.” Great. Now First Aid was trying to have feelings with him. “The first gratitude package always hits the hardest. We—”
“Uh, yeah,” Ambulon said. “Cool, cool. Um, someone’s dying.” And then he fled.
***
Ambulon hadn’t realized Pharma had cornered him on the balcony until First Aid locked them out.
“Why,” was the first question. He knew the answer, but fair’s fair. Maybe this was still about the dispenser glitch, or the snow shovelling schedule—
“First Aid said you got a note,” Pharma began, because Pharma always began in the middle. To the point. Direct. Clean. Precise. “Is that why you’ve been acting funny?”
What Ambulon meant to say was possibly: No, of course not, I’m not acting weird, have you checked your optics? What actually came out was: “Haha, what?”
Pharma leaned on the railings. It was very dangerous, because they hadn’t been maintained since they were first posted here, and because the last time Pharma stood here in that pose they’d kissed. Not for very long, or very deeply, but a kiss was a kiss and Ambulon could still feel it whenever he saw this railing. “You’ve been distracted,” Pharma said.
He could never tell whether Pharma actually didn’t care, or he was just acting tough. He was so goddamn prickly. And hot. And competent. And cold, but in a hot way. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Pharma said. He didn’t even bring a smoke. Was it that bad? “So. That note?”
He tried to shrug. “A patient mailed it to me. ‘S fine.”
Pharma didn’t even ask to see the note. He just softened all over, like all that hardness was just a shell and he was the small, tender thing inside, coming out because Ambulon had fucked up. “Yeah. It’s nice, isn’t it?”
And then Ambulon looked at him.
He forgot, sometimes. Functionism. He shouldn’t; allegedly that was how the sides became what they were, even if it was stupid and defunct and horribly irrelevant. Well, obviously the altmode thing was still relevant. But, you know. That specific social issue. Event. Whatever. That wasn’t a thing anymore. It hadn’t been a thing since the war started, and it certainly wasn’t a thing when Ambulon was constructed from the composite corpses of Grindcore. But that wasn’t true for Pharma. Pharma, who was nearly drafted to fight on the frontlines of expansion efforts. Pharma, who fought for every inch of his education, every accreditation, every specialization and acknowledgement. And he’d said, It’s nice, isn’t it? and Ambulon got it, suddenly. He got why First Aid asked Pharma to do this, and why Pharma agreed. Because Pharma understood. He knew what it was to be looked at like he was something that didn’t fit. Not egregious enough to sneer at, not ugly enough to hate. Wedged in that in-between place where they were easy to overlook, or ignore, or made fools of. They couldn’t trust their achievements. Not fully, the same way you couldn’t expect strangers to see past your wings, or an army past the prospect of a combiner. But someone had seen them and appreciated their work. Someone had looked at them and thanked them. That was what Pharma was saying. We made it.
“Yeah,” Ambulon said. Possibly have said. He was feeling some kind of way, and a lot of it. “Yeah.”