♡ Kickback patted down another layer of thick fabric, mass displaced to check the comfort of the nest he and Shrapnel had constructed. Had to do it right, had to make it perfect perfect, had to do it properly this time. You deserved to be courted like a Queen, laid in a true nest built by your drones, made for your comfort specifically. He'd been paying attention to you, which kinds of textures you ran your delicate little hands over, what you reached for first to tie around your waist or tuck close to the grubs. He was sure he had your preferences right. Just wasn't sure how much was enough.
Shrapnel joined him, dragged his mandible across biolights along Kickback's side with a salacious purr. "Test, test?"
Well, Kickback considered as he twitched his wings in a haughty dismissal, even as he allowed Shrapnel to shove him down into the nest, a test WAS the best way to determine if it would be good enough. He kicked out uselessly as Shrapnel slotted himself between his legs, tossing his head as if in threat to give Shrapnel the chance to sink his teeth into his neck, hold him down properly. The weight was a comfort. He let his panel slide back as the choice was taken from him, purring in contented containment as Shrapnel's spike pressurized directly in his valve.
The weight of his single egg was negligible in his nursery chamber. He wouldn't even have noticed it, if not for your forcing a scan. But his whole frame was humming warm from your order, accepting Shrapnel easily, a constant stream of information flooding the side of his vision as Shrapnel lazily rolled his hips, running his glossa over the fang marks he'd left in Kickback's neck. The end of Shrapnel's ridged spike punched through the seal of his chamber over and over, little shocks of pleasure that made him chirp and warble without meaning. He wanted it to be harder, rough and fast until he was stuffed full, but even as he let the feeling flood their bond, he knew that Shrapnel wouldn't listen until Bombshell got back. Wouldn't give him anything but this slow grind, pulling back only enough for the iris of his nursery chamber to slide shut, just to force it back open.
He could feel you and Bombshell in his spark, warm and close despite the distance. He nudged the soft pleasure of Shrapnel's ministrations through the bond, half an attempt at sharing, half a plea to come home already. Hadn't wanted you to leave at all, but Bombshell had wanted to take you on a 'date' like humans did for one another, prove himself a good mate, and Kickback could not deny that it was lovely to feel the warmth of your happiness after so much empty grey.
Shrapnel had eased him into an overload before Bombshell pinged him with the news that you both were on your way home, the charge rippling through him in a way that almost felt soft, echoing back on itself with every deliberate grind of their hips together. The promise of a lay, however short it would be, had triggered the nesting code in his systems and everything was warm and slow. He couldn't find the strength to do much more than open his mouth when Shrapnel pressed a kiss to him, shoved his glossa inside. He could feel it, the charge that was prickling over Shrapnel's plating, knew he was close too, but he just kept up the tiniest shifts of his hips, just enough to make Kickback feel it.
He was ready to start sobbing by the time the sound rang through the tunnels, Bombshell's broad plating scraping against amber. Shrapnel paused, looked over his shoulder with a soft churr, his claws going to grip Kickback's hips. "Now now?" He squeaked, arched his back to try and grind the transfluid out of that spike.
Shrapnel shuddered, looked back at him with a low, wanting growl. "Now, now." He pulled back slow and Kickback knew he would be watching his face, but Kickback could look nowhere but the pulsing spike barely notched to his valve. He was about to start begging, his frame heating up in furious desperation, when Shrapnel slammed in to the hilt with a strangled growl. He overloaded so hard that he shot off bolts of electricity, arcs of light searing scars into the chamber, ripping through Kickback's frame until he was squealing in his own overload. Everything went white for a moment, the sense of himself fading out of reach, until he came to with Shrapnel humping against him, chirping softly with every pulse of transfluid from his steadily emptying tank.
Bombshell came into view then, bowing his head to gently lick the tears from Shrapnel's face. His whole frame hummed with pleasure and heat, his spark singing in its chamber when you came out from behind Bombshell, giving him such a fond look. Kickback trilled for you and those soft eyes were on him then. He thought he would overload again when you started to undress, pulling free the soft coverings Bombshell had gotten to hide you from the cold. "Hey, sweetheart." He just purred at the sound of your voice, valve cycling so hard over Shrapnel's spike that he yelped, gripping Kickback's hips as though he could push deeper inside.
You knelt by him, your soft, fragile hands on his cheeks. He loved you so much. Needed you wanted you loved you. His Queen. His everything. You leaned down to kiss him and he overloaded so hard that it rang through the bond, so loud a bolt of pleasure that Bombshell's plating snapped back to let his spike pressurize. When Shrapnel pulled out, shaking and chittering low in his throat, Kickback didn't bother with moving, just let Bombshell nudge his thighs a bit further apart and slide in easy to the hilt.
☆ The whole chamber was filled with thick, soft fabrics and fluffy pillows, a proper nest. It cradled Kickback as Bombshell slid inside, hardly any of Shrapnel's mess making it out before Bombshell plugged him up again. The wild franticity of the first time was gone, no sharp slams, no clawing servos. Bombshell held Kickback down in a way that made his pleasure hum straight through to your heart and rocked against him precisely as he knew his hivemate liked. They were cute together. It was an odd thought, perhaps, but you couldn't shake it off as you watched the way Bombshell's wings slid free, almost completely covering Kickback's frame with his own, protective and careful as he brushed their mandibles together.
You felt warm, something shivery taking up residence in your lower stomach. It took you an embarrassingly long time to realize you were excited, playing with Kickback's sensitive antenna while Bombshell made him shiver and chirp and beg so loud through the bond that you could hear the echo. Kickback's soft red eyes lock on you when Bombshell makes him tip his head to lick at his throat, churring at you. There's a question in the place his spark meets your soul, a soft request that you rise shakily to your feet to grant.
Bombshell moves to give you space, kissing your bare back when you straddle Kickback's face. His mandibles twitch wide to avoid nicking your skin as he nuzzles between your legs, and it is a genuine surprise when his glossa swipes over your clit and it comes with a soft glow of pleasure that is not borrowed from any of them. He licks and kisses you, drooling with want. When Shrapnel moves closer just to hold you, you cling to him for support, rolling your hips over Kickback's face while he fills your chest with a singing, brilliant exultation, so grateful for the warm weight of you against him.
Shrapnel kisses you slowly, nudges the memory of what he'd been doing to Kickback over to you until you can't stop the shiver that works its way down your spine. You're making a mess of Kickback's face, you're sure. His mandible brushes over your jaw, respectful and adoring, before he lowered his head. He shoved his tongue against you, rubbing over Kickback's as they both tried to get their mouths on you. You could do little more than cling to Shrapnel's helm and hold your thighs open, let them do whatever the hell they wanted.
You could feel it when Bombshell got close, his face pressed to your shoulder, panting and purring, the cresting tide of his charge rippling through to you. He asked permission before he came, a soft shiver in your heart in time with his muffled whimper. Shrapnel raised his head to watch, wings resetting with his badly-hidden excitement. He picked you up, Kickback hissing in displeasure, and held you against him, one hand sliding between your thighs while Bombshell too hold of Kickback's hips and fucked into him hard. He didn't stop until the overstimulation tipped over into pain, pulling out with a soft chirp with his face hidden in Kickback's neck.
Shrapnel nudged him gently away, laid you down in the thick nest of blankets as Kickback hauled himself upward, panting. It was strange, to feel in yourself the way his body was changing, parts rearranging to allow the egg chamber to shift lower. The heat coming off his plating was almost uncomfortable before he let his spike snap free with a high chitter of desperate relief, curling around you. Your whole body felt warm, everything shivery and strange as you hooked your legs around his hips. You wanted him in you, and he was more than happy to comply.
"Come here," you murmured, pulling him close enough to kiss. "You gunna get me pregnant? Gunna put that egg in me?" His wings shot straight up, teeth sinking into your shoulder with a hot bolt of venom. He shoved himself inside of you with a vicious sort of enthusiasm, humping against you in short, shallow thrusts while everything went soft around the edges for you. The world simply faded away until there was nothing else but the sense of your hive, charge sparking between you all, and the pressure of Kickback buried in you to the hilt.
There wasn't any pain as the egg forced its way inside, just a steady, comforting heat and the sense of a heavy pressure before the weight was simply settled in you. Kickback didn't pull out this time, there wasn't any need to. Just drug you over his spike until he overloaded, holding you close, hip to hip, until his spike chubbed up for a second round. You could feel him kissing around your face and neck, could feel Bombshell's mouth over your wound, licking the blood from the tear with the same begging desperation that Kickback had given your cunt. As the poison burned itself out in you and your awareness settled comfortably back under your skin, the first thing you thought to do was kiss Kickback on the lips.
Kickback churred at you before kissing you back, rocking slowly against you in a way that made your breath catch. This was how it was supposed to be, you could feel through the three of them, Kickback wasn't meant to pull out partway. Better to stay, to run his claws down your side and grind himself against you until you shivered, so close that everything felt too warm and too much. Behind you, Bombshell let his spike pressurize, nudged it between your thighs to rut against you with a sigh of relief. Shrapnel was touching Kickback's wings, making a soft, murmuring click of pleading. Kickback nodded once, turning to tap their mandibles together before burying his face against your neck again, a weak overload making his whole frame shiver, the soft swell of his spike and the rush of heat from his transfluid leaving you limp in his hold. You'd be purring too, if you could be.
Settling behind Kickback, Shrapnel messed with something on the grasshopper's hip, sliding a panel back that you'd never seen. It looked a bit like a USB port. From somewhere in his frame, Shrapnel pulled a cord and plugged into Kickback, tucking close to him with a shuddering sound of pleasure. You pushed your way into that connection, let the odd feeling run through you, the sense of being locked to another, waves of prickling pleasure that shivered through the whole body equally. It's enough to push you over the edge too, everything going white as you shook against their frames, clinging to him while Bombshell thrust harder, the drag of his spike over you and Kickback sending just enough of a jolt to drag your own end out, calming only when he did, his large claw on your hip holding you still as he spilled bright pink transfluid over you and Kickback both. He was purring so hard that you couldn't hear yourself think, just letting your eyes slide shut as they held you.
○ Jazz's entire body hummed, a suggestion of form buried in the web of cable and wire that ran from and through him. Everything, everywhere, all at once pumped through his frame, an awareness absolute.
Starscream in the Decepticon base, hiding the evidence of his carrying, the Insecticons he'd evidently mated with always there, always following, the Seekers growing further and further from the ground forces of the army, Megatron's great force slowly shearing apart and she didn't even notice. It almost didn't matter that their leader had been simply vanishing with greater and greater frequency, because he simply wasn't needed. This war was resolving itself. Starscream would see to that.
The woods. The acres he'd narrowed it down to. Tracks in the snow. The suggestion of violet plating. Scarlet splatters against the white. He'd followed the hunter, again and again, finding them in the slightest sliver between the evergreen, studying every frame with the highest scrutiny. He was sure he would find them. He could leave the war to its implosion, it did not need his gentle nudge. Megatron had stepped wrong in a way Jazz was sure could not be taken back. He could study the woods. He could find the puzzle's answer. It was right there.
It was almost embarrassing then, when he spotted Bombshell on the frozen lake, that human holding on to his hands.
Tender. Close. Appallingly affectionate. He filed it all away, the way you touched the Insecticon's arm, the way you'd been allowed in at his spark, the careful way he'd spun you, so attentive to be sure you did not fall on the slick surface. They cared for you. You were still alive, which boded well, and proved him right in your being kept, but he already knew that of course. That was obvious, of course he was right. He'd followed the tracks. Followed the flashes of black and purple, studied it obsessively, hour after hour draining away, until-
He had it. He had it, he had it. He pinged the closest mechs to his location, began the process of unhooking himself, rewinding the splattered-apart ruin that his frame no doubt appeared to be, gingerly pulling things back to where they were intended to be. When Cliffjumper came through the door he yelped, Bumblebee right behind him. His throat wouldn't work until he located and reset the vocal components he'd gutted to wire directly into the computer, but his comms were just fine.
:: Start unplugging ::
They did, the work slow, far too slow, but the more of himself that became recognizably Himself, the easier he could move, until he was frantically resetting the rolls of wire that bulked out his thigh plating, clipping armor back into place while Cliffjumper shakily rebuilt the plating of his hips. He stumbled to the map before the job was even finished, letting Bumblebee trail after him and awkwardly tuck a stray cable back into his side while he scanned the map, found exactly what he was looking for, and slammed down a violet pin. He'd done it. He'd found them.
"Where's Optimus?" His voice was still not quite right, but it worked again.
Bumblebee offered him a rerolled lump of cabling and Jazz tucked it into his chest as the scout offered a shrug and a, "No one knows! Ratchet was looking for him too. Said something about his last scan? I don't know. He's somewhere, I'm sure. Probably went on a patrol and forgot to tell us. You know him. He's the Prime! He's always busy thinking about the rest of us." Cliffjumper didn't look convinced by Bee's faith. Jazz wasn't either.
A flash of red and blue deep in the woods. Alone, wandering, far from either armies.
He shook off the thought. Stared at the place he had labeled. He couldn't wait. He had to see. He had to know. Without another word, he transformed, the shifting plates and structures snapping everything back into its proper places, rebuilding him into something stable until he slammed into the ground on all four wheels and went tearing out of the space so fast that he was sure it had left marks.
Didn't matter. He could fix it later. He had to know. He could taste the answers, just over the rise, and nothing was going to stop him from getting there.
My liege, your writings of God-Shaped Hole are absolutely exquisite and I sincerely thank you for taking the time to write for The Insecticons (they don't get nearly as much love as they should). Just wanted to express gratitude for my favorite series; long live The King 👑
The King started this whole journey on writing a buuuuncha nonsense for fun because all of the other writings for the Insecticons do not really hit what The King thinks of them. Only love to those other buckaroos on their beautiful trot, but The King simply did not agree.
God-Shaped Hole is very dear to The King as a result. It's been a lot of fun and it means a lot to me!! The reception for it has been leagues beyond what The King had imagined. So allow The King to express gratitude,,,, for The You 👑
☆ It was hard not to laugh at Kickback's enthusiasm as he tucked the grubs into their little nest, nuzzling and churring at them until they'd settled into a purring lump. His excitement was palpable, humming thick through your bond until the other two were poking in to try and figure out what had gotten him into such a tizzy. Kickback was running around like a fool the moment the grubs nodded off, snatching up whatever he felt he needed from the piles of fabrics and cushions that had gradually just filled up the center chamber for you. He kept picking up seemingly random things and bolting down into a side chamber, evidently wanting to do it right this time, and it wasn't much of a surprise to you when Shrapnel clawed his way into view and set himself to the task of helping.
You just watched, rather enjoying the spectacle. It was sweet, how hard they were trying when they didn't have to.
Bombshell didn't take long to get home. He'd been hunting, blood still smeared across his cheek, though Kickback tackled him with such enthusiasm that they both were sent sprawling to the floor from the impact, frantically licking Bombshell's face clean. Bombshell flipped them, pinning Kickback to the ground only long enough to share, mouth to mouth, before shoving him back towards Shrapnel. He was twitching his wings and grumbling under his breath as he sauntered over to you, as if it were some great chore to take care of the others, even though you could feel the soft pressure of his haughty pride at being useful.
He mass shifted to lay his head to your shoulder, nuzzling at the scars there, halfway to a question. You just ran your hand down the back of his neck, tracing the line of smooth biolights that flickered between the plating until he purred. "Later," you promised, and he tilted his head so a sharp mandible could tap against the curve of your jaw, his claws digging into the meat of your sides.
"Mn... Kickback, Shrapnel... Picky. Take a while." He licks your shoulder, shifts to give your neck the same treatment, just over the pulse. "Come outside with me."
Not worded like a question, but it wasn't like that mattered. You felt the inflection his voice could not carry brush against your soul as his wants shivered through the hivebond. "It's cold out," you mused. But even as you said the words, he was leaning back to pull a coat from his subspace, and it doesn't even surprise you anymore, how readily they anticipate what you need. He dresses you gently, claws fumbling over buttons until you're encased to the throat in a proper winter coat, the same deep royal purple of their plating. Pulling out thick pants and helping you step into them, even offering you boots before picking you up, cradling you against his chest.
It had been so long since you'd been properly dressed that it felt genuinely strange. Restrictive and heavy, the weight of heavy shoes dragging oddly on your legs. But even so, you were grateful for it when he'd carried you back out into the world without the fuss of watching over children and the cold nipped only at your face and the hands you tucked under your arms to try and keep them warm. You expected to be carted around, maybe fondled without Shrapnel and Kickback getting in Bombshell's way, but he just set you carefully down on the mess of muddy snow your grubs had churned up and took your hand.
You tried to pull his thoughts into you, but the sense of his presence danced playfully out of reach, and you gave up with a small smile, just leaning against his warm plating and letting him keep his secrets. It was too pretty a day to scold him anyway, you thought as he led you onward.
You'd always loved the snow. When you were properly small, your dad and uncle had taken turns hauling your little sled while you hung on and squealed. Then they'd taught you how to make a snowman. How to pack a snowball. How to sled downhill without going flying and breaking your nose. Your mother had always done the cooking. She'd just enjoyed it. And the winter always came with the cookies and treats she'd labeled as Christmas Specials, which just so happened to end up as your favorites. The memories burn bright in your thoughts for a long moment, unnaturally so, and it isn't until you hear Bombshell snap hungrily at nothing that you figure out it's his doing. Nosing around in your thoughts.
"I don't think they would approve of you," you tell him. "Well. Dad might have tried to understand, but Mom never would. If I called her and asked her to send me some cookies so I could share with a big metal bug, she'd probably think I was crazy." Bombshell growls softly before his hands close around your waist, gently lifting you over a fallen tree in the path. "I haven't called her in forever, though. Years. I think she stopped trying, or... maybe my phone just didn't work. I don't know."
"... want?" His voice is low and soft, deeper than the others and harder to coax out of him. You couldn't help but smile at the sound, gently poking him with the thought that he should talk more instead of just thinking in your head. He gives a wordless hum as an answer.
You think for a moment as you gaze up at the trees, sparkling with snow and icicles. "I think I would like to talk to her, yeah. At least one more time. Just so she knows I'm alive." You feel it this time, when Bombshell combs through your memories. Pulling up thoughts of holidays and being snowed in. Leaning against her side, laughing, while she acted as the event announcer for your father washing the dishes.
What's this, ladies and gentleman? Is he going for it? Is he going to do it? He is! He's going for the mug, everyone, and it's looking like a perfect setup, but can he follow through??? ..... YES! YES, HE'S DONE IT!
You wish you hadn't been so far, when it happened. You knew, of course, that you weren't the only one who'd lost him. That so very many had felt that empty space where he should have been. But you'd left your family to be with them. With the person who'd sworn you would be each other's forever. So far that you hadn't been able to visit your mother. Hadn't been able to drum up the strength. And then they'd left you and you'd been all alone. Maybe if you'd been closed things would have been different-
Bombshell nips you for that one, a sharp prick of thought that makes you miss a step and stumble. He catches you easily, pauses to lean down and kiss you in apology. "Queen... survived. Here in the hive now. All that matters."
"Right, you're right... sorry." Maybe you would change it, if you could go back. Maybe, if given the chance, you'd set your life on a different course. But that chance wasn't ever going to be real. And at the end of the day, you think that maybe you got pretty damn lucky. Looking up at him, the feeling swells in your chest until you can forget that you are a thing carved hollow, just studying the set of his jaw, the shape of his broad shoulders. You look down at the claws linked with your fingers, holding your hand on a stroll as though you were an ordinary couple. "I love you."
It's his turn to be flustered, it seems, looking away from you with his mask snapping reflexively into place, as though you cannot feel the shivering notes of pleased embarrassment that are ringing through his whole soul. Can feel the reciprocation, but you bump him anyway, your body nudging his arm. "Can you say it for me? Please? I'd like to hear it."
His wings slip free for a moment, a nervous flutter as his attention seems to wander, optics studying the path, manibles twitching softly with every harsh crunch of your steps through the snow. He pulls your hand up a tad, taps the claws of his free servo along your fingers, brushing over the joints. Fidgeting. But finally, as he leads you from the trees, he whispers a soft, purr-shaken, "Love you too."
He's taken you to the lake. You'd been so caught up in him that you hadn't even noticed. The surface is almost painfully bright in the light, frozen solid. He leads you down to it, calming your instinctive prickle of fear when he sets a pede to the ice, offering the memory of his already testing the frozen surface. "Hard winter," he muses, pausing to lower himself again, press his cheek to yours. "Frozen almost all the way... holds me." And so you follow his lead. Let him tug you forward, clinging to his arms for balance, your boots sliding across the surface with too little friction. His claws dig in easier, let him keep his balance as he pulls you onward, spinning lazily as though you were dancers. He's so beautiful that it breaks your heart, a sharp pain of desperate longing, as if you were parted from him even though he was right here, hand in dirtied hand.
He pulls you into a proper spin, drags you close to his chest while the world blurs to nonsense around you. His plating splits. You do not hesitate to shove your cold face into the gap, kiss the light of him until he is churring with soft sounds of enjoyment, his hands gently encircling your waist to hold you close. You'd thought their sparks were the same, the first time around. A near-white light that sparked and twisted with restless energy. But knowing them as you did now, you knew that you would be able to pick them out of a lineup by spark alone.
Bombshell's was bigger than the other two's. A slightly cooler tone to the shifting flares of light, suggestions of blues and greens. It turned slower, the whirling flares that reached for you spilling out in thicker waves. And always there was that feeling of calm. A certainty that he was who he was, and would receive was he was owed. A patience that soaked into you down to the bones.
When you leaned back, warm and panting, you had slowed to a stop on the ice. Bombshell all but crushed you in a hug, rubbing his scent against your neck as though he needed to make sure he could keep you. You let him, taking hold of his mandibles when he was done to pull him down to your mouth, kiss him until his wings flared.
You had time. For the first time in a very long time, you were absolutely sure of it. When Bombshell took your hands again, you did your best to take the lead, fighting to learn how to skate on the ice in snow boots with an oversized beetle of a husband doing a fair enough job of keeping you upright.
☆ The fog is thick early in the morning, but it cannot touch you high above the treetops. It looks like the whole world is blanketed in cobweb or silk thread, drifting ghost-like through the trunks. You don't bother with stopping to sightsee. You have a shift today and you want to check for him, before you have to get to it.
At least, you muse as you let the wind carry you forward, you don't have to pay for bus tickets anymore. With your wings acting as sails, you rocket easily through the air, pushed along its current, the land rolling by far beneath. It isn't hard for you to spot him. He is, as you've said, Very Very Red. The bright color of his chest and arms stands out so sharply against stone and trees, your eyes locking onto the strangeness miles before you'd actually reached him. You wonder who else has seen him. You know you're not the only bird around here- maybe that snowy owl who worked at the laundromat had seen him on one of her night flights?
Dismissing the thought for a moment, you dropped free of the wind's dragging influence, landing yourself in a much gentler gust to slow yourself until you flew in lazy circles over his head. He didn't even look up once, just looking out over the trees, and eventually you get tired of waiting, dropping down to land on his head.
Those finials go straight up, but he doesn't move otherwise. Makes no move to grab at you or swat you away. He probably thought he'd scare you off if he did. You were getting the feeling that your odd metal giant was remarkably gentle. He kept staying still, so you decided to take the time to examine him a bit, tucking in your wing enough to get your hands free. It always creeped your mom out a bit, that you could do that. Shake a hand free of the end of your wing, like shaking it clear of a sleeve. She didn't like it when you had your 'hood' up either, the encasement of feather that protected your face from wind and debris.
You wondered what he would think, if you decided to show him, leaning down to touch a seam in his helm. He jolted slightly and you leapt up, flapping wildly to hover, before touching back down with a brief flash of embarrassment. Walking to his finial, you leaned forward to look at where it connected to his head, the rounded puck sort of shape over where an ear would be. It was kind of cute.
You had mercy on him then, tucking your hands out of sight and flying to the stunted tree to watch him properly, tilting your head when he turns enough to look at you. "Hello again." That deep, melodious voice, kept soft for you. You flapped your wings for him and you're sure that the way his eyes narrow is a smile. "It's nice to see you again. You aren't like the other birds, are you?" You tilt your head at him and he makes that rumble, deep in his squared chest.
He reaches for you, but stops well away. An offering. After a long moment, you take it, flitting easily over to land on his finger, like a pet parakeet. And again, he freezes so completely that he almost looks like a statue, so reluctant to startle you, but from this vantage you can see movement behind the soft glow of his gaze, tracing the lines of you with his eyes. You do some studying of your own.
He's clearly metal all the way, but there's a slight give around the brow and eyes that looks... well, not human, but expressive at least. And the mask that covers most of his face is nicked and scratched, chips missing by his eyes and marked all across. There's similar wear and tear on his whole body. Chips out of his finials, nicks against the blocky squareness of his head and shoulders, thin lines scored into the glass on his chest. He'd been through hell, evidently. Or maybe he was just really clumsy.
"You're a strange thing, aren't you?" He barely murmurs the words audibly, studying what, to him, must look like a blank mask of overlapping feathers, no visible eyes or mouth. You puff up at him a bit, bulking the feathers along your chest and shoulders, and those blue eyes narrow in what you hope is affection. "I meant it as a compliment, little one, I promise." You flick your tail at him anyway, launching back into the air to circle him, get a good look at his whole frame.
... he was actually kind of cute. He reminded you of a toy, just super-sized, all chunky legs and blocky arms. He kept trying to follow your flight path, twisting one way, then the other, so in the space between his turning when you were out of his sight, you dropped down to hide behind him. Perched on a ledge at about his eye level, you watched the back of his head as he looked around himself and the sky, trying to find you and failing. Chuffing to yourself, you waited until his finials laid fully back before flying back into view, winging right in front of his eyes. His whole body jolted at the flash of your feathers, but then he started to purr. "Playing tricks?"
You spiraled and flew loops just to show off. You were about to do something even more impressive when you caught sight of the sun's position and remembered about work. Shoot...
You kinda didn't wanna leave him. You wanted to bring him things and see how he'd react, or get a closer look at this big blue legs, but regrettably, duty called. Giving a final flip for him, you pulled up, flapping hard until your wings hit an updraft, carrying you upward. Looking down, you saw him waving at you and almost wanted to call a farewell. Next time, you decide, letting the wind carry you back towards town. Next time, you'd shrug out of your feathers and say hello to him.
Optimus prime, (any continuity) with a best friend whos a shapeshifter/bird, how would he care for them? How would they spend time together?
Of A Feather
Optimus Prime & Avian!Reader
The following work is intended for 18+ audiences! This is about a platonic relationship, so don't go into this expectin kisses!!
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☆ The warmer air catches beneath your wings, taking the burden of effort from your flight. You coasted easily on the thermal, sharp eyes following the familiar lines of the mountainside. When your eyes had been remade, you'd been worried that it would be too much to adapt to. But as your own body proved, there was nothing a simple human being could not learn to live around. And it had been worth it. From your vantage point, you could track deer trails miles below through the canopy, pick out nests amongst branches, follow the path of a caution orange fox as it sped low through the underbrush.
You knew the forest like you knew the set of your feathers. Knew the pattern of the life within, the dips and rises of the earth itself, where the deer went to lick salt from the riverbank. It had been your personal little patch of the planet for a few years now, as you'd grown your wings and then learned to use them. Worked through the growing pains of new muscles, new bones, got used to the fan of your tail and the way the wind pushed and pulled the weight of your body. Learning that flight was not weightlessness like you'd imagined, but the settling of that weight.
So it didn't take long for you to notice something was up. Greenery trampled, old trails scarred by massive divots and gouges in the earth, hunks of bark stripped from trees. Something absolutely massive had passed through.
Beating your wings, breaking free of your lazy spiraling, you put in a bit of effort to climb higher, following the mess higher along until the trees began to be interspersed by cliffs of stone. That's where you found him. It would have been hard to miss him even if you hadn't been following his trail, as bright scarlet as he was. You would have called it a tasteless art installation if he wasn't moving, running a massive blue hand over a blue helmet-looking head, hunched over on himself as if in pain. You let yourself drop, but kept a fair enough distance, just watching as the robotic thing rubbed at his face as though wiping away tears.
... no, not as if. Dipping to catch sight of his face, you could see that he was crying, something thick running from softly glowing blue eyes. What was he? Where had he come from? Some government weapon, maybe?
There was a sad looking tree clinging stubbornly to life not terribly far from him, roots desperately holding onto the stone, and you took it as a perch, your claws sinking into crumbly bark. Still out of reach, but here you could hear the way he hummed slightly, like a car engine, and the soft creaking of metal joints. He was fascinating to look at, your eyes picking out the gaps between metal plating, into silvery wires and odd tubing, the delicate latchwork on the litany of vents and openings on his metal body, the depth of expression on that worn, masked face.
You didn't think he was looking anywhere but forward, the flat blue of his eyes betraying no direction, but it was obvious when he spotted you. His entire body straightened up a bit, broad shoulders squaring, the flicking finials on the sides of his head pricking straight up like a cat's ears. You froze. You knew, logically, that you should take to the skies, but the alarm was paralyzing you, your feathers puffing up slightly as if you could ward off a metal giant.
"Oh, hello there."
He speaks and you can understand it, his voice low, calm and soothing. When he moves, it is slow and careful, and you think of a hand extended to a trembling fawn. So careful not to frighten something delicate and lovely. He faces you on your precarious perch and again there is the instinct to flee, the knee-jerk terror of being so near to something so, so much larger than one's self. But there is a kindness to that face. A softness in the way he studies you, even as you do just the same.
His hand raises, just slightly reaching for you, but he pauses the moment your wings begin to flare. Those finials flick, laying back slightly, and you're sure you don't imagine the way his shoulders drop. "It's okay." There's an age to his voice. A heaviness that sounds like scars. "It's alright. I understand. I must be so frightening." You almost want to talk back. To ask where he came from, what he is, but you're not willing to expose yourself so quickly. Let him think you an animal.
"You're beautiful." Your train of thought is interrupted and you can admit, you preen at the compliment, let your feathers ruffle to show off the sheen. He doesn't try to reach for you, just watches, so you spread your wings outward, let him see the stripes, and you swear that the hum of his engine lowers to a rumbling purr. You were proud of your feathers. You'd picked them out yourself, before the treatment started, figured out the precise colors and patterns and sheen before submitting yourself to the pills and the injections and the surgery at the base of your spine to encourage your tail when it didn't want to grow in. It had been more than worth it.
You stay for a long time after that. Just watching him. Occasionally he speaks, a soft compliment or a gentle word intended to keep you calm, or something about the color of the sky or the shape of leaves. You're sure that he isn't a weapon. Not some thing created to harm. A weapon does not remark upon the path of a creek or the shape of flowers.
He makes a sound that is almost a sigh as the sun drops low enough to paint the sky, rising to his feet. You take flight, rising to be at his head level just in time to hear him murmur to himself, "I have to get back. Jazz is going to start worrying." Jazz? A name, obviously. Another robot? It surprises you, how much you want to know. But maybe it shouldn't. After all, he's the most surprising, most unusual thing you've ever come across in all your life. It would probably be weirder if you didn't want anything to do with him.
He starts to head down, so very careful to avoid breaking the stone that had bore his weight or nicking the trees that his body was strong enough to harm, and on a whim you drop down to land heavily on his shoulder. His finials twitch straight upward, his head starting to turn towards you. You stay there only long enough to feel how warm he is from his time in the sun before you take off, catch the closest draft you can and spin far out of his reach, watching him from a safe distance again.
He raises a hand in something like a wave and you tuck into a roll, just to try and let him know you accept the farewell. Then he's off, half hidden by the trees, and you follow him only long enough to find his home, catching a flash of silver metal through the trees, before you winged to the left and made for your own home. You'd come back tomorrow, you muse as the wind catches you and sails you easily through the sky, and maybe next time you'd land on him a little big longer.
Singer's sharp gaze is locked on you intently, balancing uncertainly on his own two feet while his two brothers still tumbled about like rambunctious puppies across the cave. Behind him, Kickback chirps a soft encouragement and Singer, arms stuck out in instinctual balance, stumbles a step forward. And another. Another and another until, wobbling and cheeping for help, he half falls into your waiting arms. You pick him up even though he's starting to get too heavy for it, spin him around while he trills at you and headbutts you right on the sore lump on your jaw.
Kickback picks you up with him, cradling you both in his arms while he rubs his face against you. You can feel him, deep in your chest, how happy he is that he can have his purpose back. He has missed taking care of grubs so very badly.
In your arms, Singer is straining to get his face to his papa's, beeping and hissing until Kickback relents with a soft chitter, turning so that Singer could begin to determinedly- and ineffectually- clean his father's massive mandible. He'd gotten in the habit of that recently and you wonder where he picked it up, pinning his siblings down to clean their faces or yowling until one of his parents settled low enough for him to try and do the same to them.
"He's like me, that's all all all." Kickback answered the question you had not voiced, half singing it as he nuzzled his grub affectionately. "Take care of the hivemates. Keep the grubs safe. He'll be an egg drone, too."
"You can already tell?" You reach out to touch Kickback's face too, brush your knuckles against the mirrored place of where Singer was loyaly attempting to bite free some imagined speck of dirt. You thought of old family rituals, of laying out money, pens, flower seeds, trying to guess the future by what a baby reached for first. Your parents had tried that. You'd crawled right into your dad's lap. Maybe that's why your future had died right alongside him.
Bombshell nips you through the bond, as he is wont to do, cutting off the thought before it can properly exist at all. You're grateful for it.
"Easiest to tell," Kickback says, allowing Singer to man-handle him, obligingly tipping his helm to let the little grub lick over his optic. "Others... who knows? Maybe like Shrapnel, maybe like Bombshell, maybe will be wanting to spend all time outside getting food, maybe even be a Queen!" He purrs, Singer copying the sound, and you twist in Kickback's hold to watch where Headshot and Highrise are wrestling each other, galloping about awkwardly on all fours just to crash together and go down, grappling and nipping and yowling. You wondered what they'd be. What would they look like, when they grew into all the pointy armored pieces their sires sported? What path would their lives take? Would you be there to see it?
You wanted to be. Wanted with a fierceness that, for a moment, did not feel like yours. Surely this was Bombshell's quietly searing passion in your chest. But that doesn't last long, of course. There is no part of them hidden from you, nothing you cannot feel the ownership of, and you know without having to truly ask that it is only yours, this need to Live.
Kickback nuzzles Singer, gently nudging him back into your arms, and with his attentions freed, he turns to kiss you. Kisses you deep and warm until you can fall into him, let everything else fade away until all you are is the heat in your chest where his life is tied forever to yours. There is a firework-flicker of his memories crackling through you, bright and quickly fading. The shape of the first Queen, the first Hive, a life lived in efficient servitude. But he is not like Bombshell. There is no soft grief for a way of life lost in Kickback. Just a precious, golden-warm preference for You.
You want to figure out how to say it back. That he is so much more than the loneliness. But he doesn't give you the chance, shushing you with kisses that cover your face and trail down your neck. Kisses you until Singer physically shoves himself between you with a beep of furious jealousy and you both pause to kiss him too, one on each cheek.
While Singer chuffs self-importantly and rubs his face against your chest, Kickback clicks for the other two. They pause in their fighting, struggling free of each other to trot up to him. He clicks again and you look down to watch as they claw their way up him to settle on his shoulders, looking down at you like rumpled kittens. And Kickback asks, before he moves, seeking your permission as though you could do anything to stop him. Not that you wanted to. When the idea of taking your grubs outside to play flickered through your thoughts, quiet as though he thought he could hide it from the other two, you just nodded and let him carry you away.
The other two slide down to join Singer, pressing heavily against you with shivered churrs of nervous fear. You soothed them, as best you could, kissing their little faces and letting them try to hide against your neck. "It's not scary. I promise. Oh, sweet thing, mama's got you. I'm never going to let anything hurt you. It's okay." You hold them close as Kickback cradles you all, taking you steadily within reach of the sun.
It had been too long since you'd been able to feel it. The wind brushes through your short hair like a greeting, the sun through pine needles not enough to warm you. Kickback's metal plating heats up against you, his best effort at keeping you warm, as you nudge your grubs. "Look. Look, sweeties, look at the snow." It takes an effort to coax them out. Hiding against you, shaking like little leaves, they cheeped softly for help and you just tried to keep your voice calm and low. "Look, Singer. Highrise, come on, sweetheart, let me see that pretty face. Headshot? Baby?" You clicked your tongue at them, trying to mimic Shrapnel's sounds, and it slowly began to work.
Headshot looked first, raising his head with his antenna flattened as though he suspected something was waiting to snip them right off his pale grey helm. His eyes widened, wings shivering as he stared at the white-covered world. He chirped, shoving at his siblings, and when they refused to leave the shelter of your body, he leaned down and bit Singer hard on the neck. Before you could scold him, Singer was doing it himself, turning around to chitter and yowl a string of what would one day be obscenities, you were sure. He stopped mid-beep, his twisted wings flickering briefly into view as he started to look around.
Then, as a team, Singer and Headshot began to batter their little fists against Highrise's back.
You let them wrestle on you, pretending it didn't hurt at all until the mounting bruising was bright enough for Kickback to feel it through your bond. Hissing softly, he tapped each grub with his mandibles, leaning down just enough to knock each one into the snow beneath. For a moment, you thought of baby birds, taking their first flight. Your little ones, finally seeing the outside world. They landed in a lump in the snow, each of them letting out sounds of shock at the cold.
Kickback sat down crosslegged, the plates on his chest splitting open. Gently, he pressed you close to his spark chamber, let you hide from winter in the shelter of his frame, and together you watched your kids figure out what snow was. Headshot transformed for it, scuttling through the powdered white, leaving a trail, leaping about with his sharp little legs flailing. Singer barrelled after him, struggling to run on two legs but mostly falling down back all four limbs over and over, tossing himself after his brother with so much enthusiasm that he was kicking up snow in his wake. A chunk of it smacked Highrise right in the face and, after a moment's hesitation, he started to shove his hands into the snow around him, fighting to pick some up and eventually just gripping a handful and tottering three-limbed after the other two, mashing the fistful of cold slush to Singer's face the moment he was close enough.
They were so happy. So carefree. Shrieking the wordless joy of a child as they discovered the true size of the world outside their nest. They kept looking back at you and Kickback, raising sticks or rocks or handfuls of melting snow, pointing at trees and the sky and the sunlight through the branches as if making sure you could see it too. You wondered how it must feel to them, this whole forest something new and unknown, every snowbank hiding another surprise. Romping about without an ounce of fear. So certain that the world was safe and theirs for the touching.
You couldn't wait to teach them the names of every tree and flower. How lucky you were, to have this. In the sparklight that weaves around your limbs, you can feel that Kickback is thinking just the same. How lucky the four of you were, to have made things so perfect.
Kickback had an egg in him. The thought hit you so casually that you almost didn't properly catch it, the awareness of him so total that you didn't even have to look for the update. But when you poked, you got a confirmation. His nursery chamber had put together one more egg, the start of a clutch. But for you, small as you were...
"Do you wanna put that in me, later?"
You say it without thinking and Kickback's frame heats up so fast that you squeak, shifting towards the cold air on reflex. You look up at his face. He's steaming in the winter air, looking away from you, hand over his mouth. He doesn't answer, but he doesn't have to. He can't hide anything from you, after all. The frantic wondering of when the kids would wear themselves out into naptime made his feelings on the matter obvious enough.
The King considers if it would be nice to have a discord for Kingsville citizens. Would you all like to hang out with each other?? The King doesn't know. It shall be pondered
☆ It was harder than you'd thought it be, digging up information on Cybertronian life and biology. Hard enough that you'd begun to seriously consider finding some way to speak with one directly. Well, one that wasn't your tormentor, of course. Whichever one it was, your personal bitchfaced loser dickhead would NOT be given the honor of your attention, not at all. Not beyond obsessing over their stupid criticisms, that is.
It made your tail kink and whirl with agitated upset so often that you'd developed an ache at the base. To try and calm your nerves, you found yourself perusing the bot's works more and more, finding as much as you could to nitpick and insult in retaliation every time you got sick of writing or researching. It was oddly soothing, pouring out all your annoyance and anger out at once in waves of written word. The older they got, the worse they got, breaching so far into the absurd that they almost became comedic.
... a little Too comedic, perhaps. It wasn't until your tail curled high over your back as you laid on your stomach in bed, sending a twinge of pain up your spine, that you realized you were actually enjoying yourself. Enjoying yourself in a way that literally had you giggling and wagging your tail. It was with no small measure of shame that you deliberately coiled your tail tight around your thigh, declaring "I don't even like it that much," to the plastic-eyed stuffed cat lying beside you on the bed. You weren't sure that he believed you.
Sighing, swinging yourself up, you decided you were probably due for a reading break. Not that there was anything particularly pressing that needed to be done. Your eyes were just tired. Clearly that was the issue. You had NOT been Stockholm'd into liking this garbage.
Your house was empty, as usual. You didn't have any friends, really, none close to visit at least. The cleaners always came in early, so early that you were always fast asleep. And ever since your parents had died, leaving you with everything you could ever possibly need, you'd found yourself no longer needing to work. So you just... stopped bothering. When you open the fridge, it is to a display of neat little trays, meals ready to be heated and eaten without the hassle of cooking. After setting the stove and setting your choice inside, you pause to gently correct the tilt of a little wooden fish decoration you hated, but that you couldn't bear to let go.
The house looked so much like it had when your parents lived that sometimes it spooked you. Like you were living with ghosts. Ghosts of the dead and ghosts of yourself. Your tail lashes and you wonder if you're just bored again. Consider your nails and wonder if it's time to get claws to match. Surgery would certainly take up some time. The healing, the doctors, the physical therapy, and all the fussing. And then you'd get to practice with them. Learn how to care for them, get good at hauling yourself up walls and trees, learn to fight with them. It would certainly be something to do.
The temperature gauge for the stove ticks higher and you wonder, quite suddenly, if Cybertronian stoves don't have to be cut on at all. You think of the story you'd ripped to shreds and your thoughts of bone reconstruction fade to the back of your considerations again, distracted by thoughts of your research. It kept happening like this, you thought. Questions randomly popping into your head that would take a lot of work to figure out just because of how hard it was to get translated Cybertronian information. But you were getting better at the work, you knew, better and faster every time you needed to figure something out.
This, too, was something to do.
Maybe that was the real reason, you thought idly, as you gave in and pulled out your phone, accessing The Smaller Internet to begin the process of answering your question. For the first time in longer than you wanted to admit, you weren't bored. If all it took was a few jabs at an uncaged tiger, well... you didn't mind getting bit. Pain, too, was preferable to that dreadful, endless boredom.
♡ Thundercracker presses his lips together when the comment hits, a smear campaign against one of the first things he'd ever written about humans. That one he hardly thought was fair. It had been his first attempt at understanding an entirely alien race, after all. He thought he deserved a little bit of understanding. But even so, he couldn't deny anymore that his fairly vast library of written word was, quite simply, Not Good. It was embarrassingly low quality, actually.
He put forth a great effort to set it aside. He was on sparksitting duty again, after all, and it wouldn't do to spook the Seekers that were hardly better than children. Though, it wouldn't be so hard to think of anything else if the job weren't so boring. On paper, he was training them, or retraining technically, but in practice he really was just... making sure they didn't get scared. Making sure they had someone- anyone at all- to turn to for guidance. And taking extra special care to ensure that Megatron did not learn the state of his soldiers, on fear of death.
It was no secret that the once-great Warlord was easily confused and even more easily angered in the present day. Where once she would have likely taken them off duty and ensured they were guarded as they healed and rested, the beast she had become would not hesitate to use them as living shields or to kill them outright with her own claws. It did not matter, in the face of that, that Thundercracker did not particularly like Misfire. It did not matter that, when his mind was clear, Daybreaker did precious little more than argue with him. They were Seeker. And Seekers stuck together.
... maybe he ought to write something like that. It had been a while since he'd written about his own kind and not the fragile little bugs that populated this planet. Maybe that was his problem, he considered as he watched Daybreaker and Triggerhappy wrestle in the dirt. It had been too long since he'd turned his writing to Primus' favorite breed.
Your writing included Cybertronians. Badly, of course, and you made the mistake of using grounder frames rather than the superior flight frames of the Seekers, but if you were going to prowl through everything he made like some sort of scavenger, then maybe it was time to craft something you couldn't critique. And besides, if you were going to waste your time writing nonsense about a greater species you couldn't possibly understand, then the least he could do was offer an example of how it was done.
He deleted what he'd been working on, opening a clean space in the back of his head. Then he paused, just for a second, a corner of his attention drawn to the long list of his great efforts. His wings twitched in annoyance, hiking upward towards angry upset, and the two mechs play-fighting broke apart with nervous chirps of apology. He forced his expression to be softer and resettled himself, selecting everything he'd ever written before he could second-guess, and deleted it all in one go. Gone now, forever. The mess of his embarrassment and the subject of your ire banished to the void. He waited a moment for regret to come, but it didn't. Purring softly, he went to brush his wings against his two charges, getting a relieved chirrup from Triggerhappy for the effort, and the two went tumbling about again, a mess of flailing limbs and flapping wings.
He watched them for a long while, idly drafting and deleting and redrafting the start of an outline for a new story. He knew that he should try to make up something for them to do, even if only for the benefit of the cameras he knew Soundwave would be watching, but he couldn't make himself today. Instead, he hauled himself up onto a storage crate and used it like a perch, keeping on eye on the Seekers running about and fighting and chasing each other and swapping headbutts and wing touches. He didn't even really bother to get up when Acid Storm winged in, Ion Storm close at his right wing, just raising his head.
"Acid Storm." The pair transformed and the green Rainmaker nodded a return of the greeting. Ion Storm was close to his side, clinging to him so tight that it was awkward for the two to walk forward. Ion wasn't looking around at anything, just staring, glassy-eyed, at the ground. "Bad day?"
"Yeah. They had a nightmare. Haven't been able to break out of it, really." There was a twist of grief on Acid Storm's handsome face, but it melted away to adoring care when Ion peeked up at him. "Hey. Hey, sweetspark. Hey, beautiful. There you are." He gently brushed their cheeks together, getting a shaky purr from Ion that lasted less than a sparkpulse. He looked back up at Thundercracker. "I can leave 'em with you?"
"Of course." He shuffled back a bit, let Acid Storm urge Ion Storm to climb until the dusky violet Rainmaker was pressed against his side rather than their trineleader's. Thundercracker let his wing drop over them, tuck them fully out of sight, hoping that the warmth and pressure would soothe them enough to stop the tremors that shook their frame. "I'll watch over them. How is Nova Storm handling things?"
"You know him." There is an exhaustion to Acid Storm's voice that he cannot quite hide. A need for rest that recharge alone could never possibly fix. "She's tougher than the rest of us. Even if he did need help, she wouldn't admit it. Just going to keep on keepin' on until this war is done." Thundercracker thinks of Starscream, for just a moment. The place in his spark that should show nothing but the truth of his trineleader, kept carefully curated instead. He nods understanding and Acid Storm bows before he takes flight once again. He and Nova Storm would have to work hard to complete their list of tasks, to hide the absence of a third of their force.
Sighing, Thundercracker tucked Ion Storm closer still, uncomfortably aware of the way the other Seeker was rubbing their face idly against his side as though expecting him to share his energon. The things they did, he thought as he watched Misfire step in and nudge Daybreaker away from Triggerhappy, make both chirp an apology for being too rough, the things they did to protect the weakest of their kind. He tapped away at his outline, taking a page from your book and simply changing the characters in his favorite play from human and grounder to Seeker. The whole point of the play, after all, was that there was more to war than numbers. It was all people, individuals with thoughts and loves and motivations. What better way to highlight that purpose than to make it play out in the most wonderful social circle anything had ever made; the flock.
He purred softly, just enough to cover Ion's soft pants of directionless fear, and eventually they managed to match it with an uncertain purr of their own.
☆ You were considering claws again. Examining your blunt, flat nails and imagining something that caught the light in their places. You wondered, sometimes, if your willingness to alter yourself was a sign of being Too Rich. If you were just bored and with absolutely nothing else to satisfy, you turned to pain. Maybe you should be dumping all your cash on some poor Europan pardon instead. Or pick up some smaller Cybertronian that could fit in your house that was trying to dodge the war that seemed to be carrying on in slow-motion on Earth now.
Or maybe that was just another hubris. Imagining yourself as something that could care and not just be cared for. Your tail lashed, tugging at the length of your spine in its agitation. Maybe you just... needed to get a dog.
Sighing, you brushed away the thoughts for a moment, refocusing your attention on the holopad in front you, idly scrolling as you read the last of the chapter. You clicked for the next without bothering to pause and comment, only to stop up short at an error message. The page did not seem to exist. You backed up, clicked next chapter again, same error. Your tail gave a nervous shudder as you again backtabbed and this time attempted to leave a comment. Error message. Had you been blocked? Surely you hadn't been that bad.
Frowning, you navigated to the author's main page- and your tail boofed up to twice its size in horror, all your fur standing on end. There was Nothing. Nothing at all. Not the nothing of a concealed page, but the nothing of an empty account. You weren't blocked, the works just didn't exist anymore. All of them, from old to new, had been deleted. And you hadn't even made backups of anything.
Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was something akin to anger. Whatever it was, it was buzzing aggravatingly under your skin, your tail lashing furiously. You felt like something had been stolen from you. Gripping the sheets beneath you hard, you forced your fur to lie flat before you let yourself reach for the nonphysical screen zone of your too-expensive computer, reloaded the page as if it could be a joke. But there was nothing.
You pulled up the page for your preferred clinic and made the appointment to get your claws.
☆ It was getting easier to move, the more you did it. It hadn't even been intentional, really, but at some point, without your even realizing it, you'd found yourself beginning to walk again. And then to run. And then jump and climb and lift and move. Running after your husbands, chasing your children as they learned to crawl, climbing up through smooth tunnelwork when you felt a tug in your bond to come see. The thought came and went with a small, idle sort of surprise that faded quickly. You did spare a moment to be grateful for the slow returning of your body's abilities though, as you bent down to pull Highrise into your arms, letting the sleepy sparkling tuck his face against the curve of your neck and take to purring and snoring at the same time. You were so, so grateful that you could carry your son.
They were getting big so fast, the blurriness of babyhood already fading from their eyes, little hands fighting to understand articulation. In his half-sleep, Highrise warbles something, and it is already sharpening into understandable. You were going to be able to teach them how to walk soon, you were sure, those sweet clawed limbs starting to gain the strength to hold up their weight properly. Singer was already trying, hauling himself into wobbly stands multiple times a day, watching Kickback move with a sharp sort of concentration, only to topple onto his side at the first attempt at a step.
You carried Highrise through a low tunnel that sloped gently, a semi spiral that connected through multiple branching pathways ending eventually in the nursery that was almost complete. Shrapnel was there, though that wasn't a surprise to you. You always knew where they were now, the awareness so integrated into your being that it was easier than breathing to just Know. You click in the back of your throat and his wings flick into view for a moment, a warm greeting while he continues to lick amber into the steadily made walls. That soft blue light veining everything pulses brighter for a moment, and you can almost believe that it is matched to the way your heart skips a beat when he pauses to look over his shoulder, just to see you.
How strange a thing, to feel in your own chest just how much he loves you. How far he would go to keep you safe. How wonderful, to know without question, that he will never leave you.
Highrise turns his head in his sleep, oversized mandibles smacking your sore jaw. You'd started to simply become resigned to the fact that it would hurt forever, the way these little ones seemed to love whacking and headbutting you. Or maybe you were still grinding your teeth at night. You shrugged off the thought, just pressing a kiss to that lavender-lined blade and carried him onward so that when Shrapnel dropped down to all fours to meet you, you were close enough to lean against his cheek. "Hi, handsome."
"Hiii, handsome-handsome," he parrots you with the same warm affection. In your bond, you feel Bombshell and Kickback both, hunting for food together somewhere beyond the trees, and their matched wave of laughter at Shrapnel infects you, a short, soft giggle making its way out of your mouth. Was this really their stuffy ambermate? Pausing his work just for a cuddle? And the part of you that is him gives a shiver of annoyed dismissal, just brushing his digits down your spine before gently touching each of Highrise's coiled antenna.
The grub roused himself at that, yawning to show three rows of razor sharp fangs. Your little scarab stretched his thin wings till they shivered, resetting them with a short huff as he twisted to put his small servos to Shrapnel's cheek. And he just laid there, content and purring, as you rested your forehead against him too, safe in the warm cage of his hold. You loved him so much. Loved him in a cadence that was so, so familiar. It hurt, sometimes. The spot of your heart reserved for someone who had abandoned you years ago ached with a peculiar kind of longing. Not to have them back, not really. You did not need them anymore, not even in daydreams. But an idle sort of wanting to just sit down with the person who had once been your closest friend. To show them the fractal patterns in Singer's damaged wing, the coiled spring of Highrise's antenna, let them touch the stripes on Headshot's pudgy limbs. To talk to them, just one more time. Explain how much Shrapnel loved you, how often Kickback thought of your comforts and your needs, the careful way Bombshell checked you, every day, just in case. You wanted to know if it would be a relief to them, to understand that you were not dying anymore.
Bombshell forces your attention to him, the sense of his existence filling you up like liquid light until all you were was the feeling that someone loved you. When you came back to yourself, blinking as though you really had been flashed into blindness, Shrapnel had mass shifted, your face held in his hands. You kiss him before he can make the move himself, try to copy the shape of Bombshell's efforts into Shrapenel's chest. He chitters against your lips, a fragile, desperate sound, mandibles closing only enough to touch your skin as if he could hold you there. When you do part, it is only because you want to look at him, see the whole of his handsome face. And even that thought is only that settle warm and unexpected against his spark, you know. Always so surprised that you find them beautiful.
You give him a briefer kiss, interrupted by Highrise getting his little hands on your face and beeping to be included until you turned to kiss across his face so that he squealed in glee. Resettling the grub on your hip, you brush your hand along Shrapnel's mandible. "I'll leave you to it. I just wanted to see you." And he clicks an unhappy agreement, not wanting to let you go, but knowing that the nursery needed to be complete. Needed somewhere he could trust to hide you safely.
The relief that pricked from him as he turned to obey your gently given order was odd. Odd enough that you poked at it as you carried Highrise back to his still-napping siblings, setting him down to watch him nuzzle them both with increasing fervor. It wasn't difficult to dig through your Hivemates. They were always open to you, letting you see and feel whatever you wanted from them. It wasn't hard to find that Shrapnel was deliriously happy that you were in charge now instead of him. That you gave the orders that could not be ignored, you nudged the others into what needed to be done, and you decided when and where he did his work.
He felt you, of course. The warmth of his acknowledgment pressing to you in much the same way that Highrise was determinedly shoving his face into the crook of Headshot's neck. He let you see the life he was supposed to have lived. A gentle existence, comparatively speaking. Rarely leaving the hive, always having food and materials brought to him, fixing the walls, or building new ones as grubs were born and more space was needed. He had never planned to take charge of anything, there just hadn't been another choice. But that wasn't true anymore. Because you'd given him his life back.
You didn't bother to stop the smile that flittered into existence on your face. Just tried to make sure he knew you felt just the same right as Kickback filled you up like sunlight, making his return known in perfect tandem to the ringing ricochet of his entrance. All three grubs perk up at the sound, roused to chirping as their father makes a loud return, landing hard. His offering to the stockpile is just good enough to pass, you know, but you can't make yourself scold him as he makes himself small only to hug you, face buried against your neck, purring so hard that it shivers all the way to your heart.
"Hello," you tell your monster, petting the back of his head as he sets his teeth to your throat, testing your pulse. "I missed you too."
"Missed missed missed," he agrees, that extra set of arms sliding free of his torso to hold you tighter, lifting you off your feet. When he finally raises his head, you kiss him, ignoring the odd taste of wood sap and coffee grinds that lingers on his tongue. Kiss him until your triplets are howling for attention, furious that Kickback is keeping you from them. He's purring as he lowers you into their waiting little hands, pudgy servos fisted in the fabric tied around your waist as they attempt to climb you all at once, still too little to understand that they are far too big for that. You go down easy and they are crawling over you before you can catch your breath, Singer plopping himself down heavy on your chest with a sigh of contentment, Headshot throwing himself across your stomach, while Highrise made a noble attempt at laying across both his brothers at once.
You look for him, trapped on your back, and it takes only a second for Kickback to lean into your view. And his face is so strange, so utterly inhuman, that some part of you wonders, as you reach out a hand to trace along his jaw, if you're the only person in the world who could have been capable of loving them. He smiles at you, and it does not take the bond that swells in your chest to understand the depth of his happiness. When he bows to kiss you again, it does not last long, because your children mewl a three step protest and are fighting to take collective hold of their father, pulling at his mandibles and antenna until he finally turns and gives them each a kiss of their own.
You've made us soft.
The thought comes from Bombshell, ponderous and half confused, as if he's only just realized. And you can feel his thoughts flicker through old memory, of eaten grubs and Queens that ruled with an iron grip of efficiency. Hive made into army. A hard force of unbending hunger. He almost wants it, you know. Wants to have back what had been taken from him, and you would never begrudge him that. Instead, you let him in. Let him join in the circuit of affection that spilled from you to Kickback and back again, the contentment of your shared children, until he softens once again.
Sometimes it's better to be soft, you tell him with a brush of your soul to the core of his. Soft wood survives the storm. Hard and unbending just ends up snapped in two.
You roll onto your side when Kickback finally herds your little ones off of you, watches as he entices them to play, allowing them to rush him all together and knock him down. He chirps as though dreadfully injured, only to leap up and run again when the triplets attempt to comfort his apparent agonies with beeps and soft headbumps, leading to a chorus of furious yowling that ends, inevitably, with them knocking him down and once again falling for the con artist's pitiful sounds. You almost want to join them yourself. Get your arms around Kickback's neck and wrestle him to the floor while he wails and whines in miserable defeat at the power of his Queen.
And you almost don't. You almost content yourself with watching. But then you can feel it, the ghost touch of memory, your father nudging you gently forward.
Go on, Bug. You can't expect the world to just wait for you.
No, you thought as you hauled yourself to your feet, you really couldn't.
When you jump Kickback from the side, getting him in a headlock to force him to the ground, it is to the celebratory chirping of your three little grubs. Kickback laughs as you take him down, the little ones giggling uncontrollably as they crawl all over him, holding him down as though they really were strong enough to pin him, and when he turns his head to trace his mandible across your jaw, wings shivering with his laughter, you cannot help it. You laugh so hard that it very quickly begins to hurt.
☆ Your least favorite part of the job was grading papers. In your personal opinion, art classes didn't need paperwork, but you bosses insisted on a certain amount and you had to comply. But shuffling through a stack of short papers on art pieces made your head hurt every time, to the point that you found your thoughts drifting to the Autobots. In the short time since you'd stumbled upon them, you'd more or less gotten the hang of navigating their base, but none of them were particularly endearing to you. Well, aside from the Minicons.
Even so, you'd begun to enjoy your time there. The base itself was a marvel, a mechanical work of art in its own right, enough that it made your hands twitch. You planned to bring your things and get some sketches done. That sounded much better than grading papers. Following the delicate lines of those walls that seemed almost living at times, the shift of light and color that followed the touch of large grey hands, a rounded face, soft blue eyes-
Your thoughts cut short when the doorbell rang and you found yourself inexplicably embarrassed. Banishing the thought of Hot Shot thoroughly from your mind, you clawed together the papers you haven't gotten to and crammed them into your art bag, slinging it over your shoulder and making a dash for the door.
It was Rad today, grinning at you with his blond hair so wind-touseled that you reached out to fix it on reflex. He allowed it. "Hiya, Teach! I'm here to pick you up!" In the form of an electric bicycle, the minicon High Wire chirruped a hello to you.
"Hey, Rad. Thank you both." One of the kids had come by to help you to the base every day since you'd made your intentions clear and you were grateful for it. You settled carefully behind the boy, always irrationally worried that you could hurt High Wire despite having seen him carry all three of the kids with no issue. And then you were off, High Wire's engine revving excitedly when Carlos and Alexis eventually drew alongside you with Grindor and Sureshock.
The path up the mountain had become familiar quicker than you'd thought it would, the ever-thickening pelt of trees that furred the hills a calming thing. Even if Optimus Prime's rumbling voice sent prickles of anxiety down your spine and you'd gotten into a shouting match with Red Alert more than once and even the thought of Hot Shot made you want to find a stick big enough to hit him good and proper with, the actual journey to that cave of emotional horrors was absolutely lovely.
"Excuse me, ma'am!" Alexis steered close to you and Rad, her sweet face remarkably serious. "Did Rad tell you about Smokescreen yet?"
And ah how quickly the peaceful calm shatters. With Rad leaning comfortably back against you as he was, you felt it when his entire body tensed up just as Alexis sighed, deep and unsurprised. "Yeah, I kinda figured. Sorry, ma'am, but you seemed way too relaxed for him to have told you. So, yesterday when you said you needed to stay home and clean your carpets, we went with the Autobots to get a minicon. We ended up finding another Autobot in the subway tunnel systems, his name is Smokescreen and he's living in the base now. We'll introduce you when we get there."
You slumped forward, resting your chin on Rad's head. "Another one? Is this one at least reasonable?" You doubted it. You doubted it quite a bit.
"We don't know him yet!" Carlos swerves so close that High Wire and Grindor beep nervously at each other. "I'm sure he's cool as the others, though!"
A dreadful thought. It plagued you all the way up the mountainside, until the trees thinned again into red hills. Another soldier. Maybe this one would have more than excuses for how his cohorts treated children like pieces of their politics, but with your luck it'd be another round-faced idiot who'd look at you with big blue eyes and purr when he was confused. But you shook off the thought of a repainted Hot Shot with a sigh as Rad swung himself off High Wire and offered a hand to help you, keeping his fingers entwined with yours as he led the way towards the Autobots' hidden base.
"Hot Shot! Heeeey, Hot Shot, we're here!" Carlos' high greeting was mirrored by the three minicons who bolted past you, Alexis sharp on their heels, already scolding Carlos for yelling. Rad stayed loyally by your side, but the second he'd gotten you safely through the front door and turned to check, you smiled and nodded and then he was off too, shrieking a greeting as the yellow plated terror turned the corner.
You'd only been a part of all this for a few weeks, not even a full month, and though the clumsy, dim-witted collection of robot soldiers had done precious little to impress you, you'd gotten pretty good at reading them. It wasn't that different from overlooking your classes, really. The look on Hot Shot's face when he crouched to let the kids and their bots cling to his hands and thighs was absolutely adoring, the gentle sound of his purr just loud enough for you to hear as you followed the kids at a much slower pace.
"Hey, c'mon kids, be careful! You're too strong, you're gunna knock me on my tail again." His voice thick with amusement, Hot Shot gingerly scooped up Carlos, dropping the boy on his shoulder as if he were little more than a squeaking kitten. Sureshock seemed to have taken this as a declaration of war and was making a decent effort at wrestling one of Hot Shot's hands into submission. You hated to admit it, but it did make something warm flutter to life in your chest, somewhere just under your heart.
Then he looked up and smiled at you, always warm and gentle no matter how often you'd snapped at him or scolded him. "Heya, Teach."
You scoffed, hands on your hips. "I am not your teacher, Goldilocks. You know my name."
"Yeah, I know it. Hey, kids, I don't think Teach likes me too much!" Weaponising your kids, Hot Shot makes that sweet face into an expression of pouting misery and got three calls of reassurance immediately. And then three kids were gently chiding you, repeating your own words back to you on how it's important to be kind. It took a great effort to not join Sureshock's war efforts against the Crayola dandelion crayon of a robot presently purring with pleased self-importance.
Carlos was making his careful way back down Hot Shot's frame, and you did not miss the way he resettled, an almost natural looking shift that always gave Carlos an easier path. You wished he were less good with the kids. It'd be easier to stay mad at him all the time if he weren't so obviously enamored with them.
"Hey, Hot Shot, where'd Smokescreen go? We wanna get to know him!" Rad, clawing his way up to balance on Hot Shot's thigh, getting Carlos around the waist with both arms to help him down the second the other was in reach. And Hot Shot's expression twitched, just long enough for you to catch it.
"Smokes? I dunno, kids. I'm sure he's somewhere around here." Offering a hand to ease both boys back to the ground, where Alexis was waiting to grab them both, a handful of shirt apiece.
"We'll find him," she promises, hauling the other two behind her. "We'll come get you when we find him!"
"Oh, hey, why don't you take a ride with Hot Shot!" Carlos' suggestion is followed by enthusiastic agreement from the other two, and he carried on, bolstered by their support. "Yeah! Yeah!!! He's got an incredible engine, he's a super powerful racing car! And you love racing, don't ya, Teach?" You took a breath to steady yourself, really regretting sharing that little fact with Carlos as he smiles at you, bright and wide, and it is a look you had so dearly missed that you couldn't bear to refuse him.
"... fine. Alright, but just this once. If it's alright with you?" You give Hot Shot a glance, hoping desperately he will take the hint and scratch up an excuse. But he just smiles that stupid, crooked, handsome grin.
"Hey, I'm all for it!" And you want to hit him so badly that your hands twitch. He reaches for you, offering his hand as if you could take it, and you press your lips into a thin line as you finally give in and haul yourself into his grip. To his credit, he cradles you carefully, lifting you up to his chest as the plates slide apart, and you are ushered inside of him, locked in a metal coffin. You can feel him moving, can feel the shift and hum of mechanical parts, the vibrating impact of his steps. It takes a harsh effort on your part to not simply start screaming until he lets you Out.
It doesn't get much better when he starts to transform, parts shifting, splitting, changing, something cradling beneath your legs, forcing you into a sit as metal blooms open, something almost soft pushing through the new gaps. The light comes as a surprise, a blade of sun through glass as piping and plating pulls back from you, settling into a windshield, a dashboard, a console, and you finally find yourself sitting down in a car, more or less, while he gets his hind wheels in order. The road unfurls in front of you as you blink stupidly, the purr of his engine vibrating to your bones as your eyes adjust and you fumble for a seat belt on reflex. There isn't one.
"Jeez, I didn't know human engines could go that hard!" The voice comes from everywhere around you and you jolt, a hand to your chest as you realize he's talking about your pounding heart. There's a heat to the chair you sit in, unsettling as you shift to look around. It's just a car, you tell yourself as his engine rumbles louder, the world flashing by you so fast that you can't even tell where it is he's taken you.
You actually study him in an effort to calm yourself. The dashboard flashes with lights in the vague shape of engine stats, but without any clear labeling, a numberless speedometer blinking randomly, a corona of half-right check engine lights sparking to life in fluttering time with the deep purr that surrouds you. There's a gearshift, but no way to move it, vents that don't blow air, and when you reach forward to brush your fingers between the thick slats that should be plastic but just feel slick and warm, you find that it ends in a flat plane rather than leading to deeper internals. The whole vehicle shudders alarmingly, swerving hard enough that you're knocked against the window. "H-Hey! Watch what you're touching in there!"
"Sorry." You mumble it without thinking, bracing yourself as he kicks up speed again, and you wonder, as you leave the mountains behind to rush through empty streets far away from home, what all this is to him. Is it like marathon running? Or is it more like a cat playing, rushing along as fast as four paws can carry?
The chair beneath you feels wrong, the appearance of the leather dead on, but the touch of it too smooth, too soft. It is warm as all things living are warm.
You tap the roof above you, struggling into a kneel. "Hey! Hey, open up, let me out too!"
"Do I look like a convertible to you?" But even as he says it, he's opening, seams splitting with soft hisses of pressure, plates sliding apart, refolding and resettling, the car's roof disappearing into the body until the wind screams past your ears. You lean forward, brace your hands on the top of the steering wheel, and let the sound of it fill you up, barely able to breathe against the force, unable to hear anything else.
You did, regrettably, really really love fast cars.
By the time he began to slow, your hair was a mess, sand and leaves stuck in it, your skin feeling almost uncomfortably warm without the gale ripping away your body heat. It had taken your instinctual fear with it, nothing left under your skin but a buzzing, wanting excitement as Hot Shot slowed to a stop, his door opening in a clear enough signal to get off of him, and you complied without fuss. He transformed, clear blue eyes locking onto you the moment they flickered to life, and you were buoyant enough that even the sight of his infuriating face wasn't enough to wipe the smile off yours.
He went down on one knee, bracing an arm over it and lowering his head much closer to your level. "Alright, Teach. Let's talk."
Aaaand that did it. He really was the best in the business at souring your attitude. Scoffing, you crossed your arms and looked up at him. "I told you. That's not my name. The kids can call me that, I'm their teacher, you cannot."
And that mouth presses into a thin line, a cloud of steam huffing into indignant life around the bulk of his hips. You narrow your eyes at him, ready for another match of sniping at each other, this time with no kids to beg for peace. But instead, he actually surprises you. "That's- Alright. Yeah, fine, that's as good a place to start as any." While you stand there blinking at him, he sits down properly, legs crossed. He reaches for you and you tense, but he does nothing but pluck idly at your paint-splattered clothes. "Alright, Speckles, listen. We're making the kids upset, more upset than I think they're letting on."
You wanted to protest the nickname- why couldn't he just call you by your actual name?- but his words stopped you up short. Obviously your dislike of the Autobots hadn't gone well with the kids. They'd spent every day trying to find something about them to soften your heart, bringing you all through the base to show you things, chattering your ears off about the things they'd seen and learned. You sighed through your nose and let your arms drop, suddenly feeling very, very tired. "I know." You didn't want them upset. You didn't like how hard they worked to find something for you to love in the things that had become so important to them. You didn't want for your children to be soldiers. But you couldn't get them out of it. There was no separating them now.
Hot Shot's hand nudges at you idly, tracing down your arm, and you fight the urge to slap at him, everything too heavy and too sick in your chest. "Look, I get it. Don't do that thing with your mouth, I mean it." That hand comes closer, curled behind you lightly, blocking you from the wind. It takes an effort to do nothing more than shake your head, furious in a wet, grieving sort of way.
"Do your kind have children?"
It comes out higher-pitched than you mean, accusatory. His engine hums in the warm desert orange cage of his chest. He does not look at your face. "Yeah. We used to. Before the war started, we used to have so many. I get it. I know what war does to kids." He leans down further and you are trapped between the cold glow of those sky-deep eyes and the warmth of grey metal. "I don't want to see any more kids die either."
You hit him without even thinking about it, all the hate and anger and righteous, boiling fury snapping and you slammed your fists uselessly against his cheek. His engine revved hard, but he didn't pull away, just shut that blue eye and let you smack at the smooth plating of his face. Your kids were soldiers. Your kids, the two little boys you'd pulled hot glue out of the hair of, the little girl you'd taught perspective to, they were in a war and they were too proud of it to possibly understand what it was going to do to them. The tears come as something ugly and hot, a thick knot at the base of your throat that only begins to melt when you cough out a sound of misery. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair but it was what you had and you wanted so, so badly for it to be enough for your kids to come out the other side.
"They're going to die." You hit him, again and again, until your knuckles split and smeared the pale silver of his cheek with scarlet. "They are going to die, even if you manage to stop anything from killing them. There isn't going to be anything left, do you understand me? How could you understand?" The blows hurt, sharp bolt of agony ringing through the bones of your hand all the way to your elbow, so you slap at him instead, slamming your palms against your own blood and you cannot stop crying even as it too begins to ache. "They're mine. They were supposed to be mine and you stole them."
When you give up, standing there with your blood painting braille onto the dirt, his eye opens just enough to look at you through the delicate, overlapping guard plates that almost seemed like lashes. He leans closer, just enough to make the offer clear, and you slump against his face with a sound of abject misery, letting his grey hand hold you against him. His voice comes as a low murmur, softer than you'd have expected him to be capable of. "I'll stop picking at you if you stop picking at me? We can at least pretend to be friends, for the kids. Alright?"
For the kids. Why did it sound like you were agreeing to co-parent? Amicably divorced to an alien robot you'd never married. That was certainly one way to live your life.
You pull away without answering, something exhausted in you still managing to drum up a flash of embarrassment for your behavior. Ripping off your sleeve, you scrubbed your blood off of his face and made a nonsense circular kind of motion with your hand. "C'mon. Let's get going." He sighs, deep and long, but complies, opening his door for you when all is said and done. The pace isn't quite as breakneck as you begin the drive back to base. You watch the world flash by, chin propped on your hand as you stare out the window. And when you mutter, "Alright," you're sure you don't imagine the way his engine purrs louder.
¤ You make the decision before you get home. The snow parts around your bare shins as you walk with heavied steps, refusing to part with the freezing powder that clings to your skin and choked your socks. You want to bury yourself in it. Want, so very badly, to surround yourself in white until you can forget that it is not blue. But nothing will ever be cold enough for that.
There are few people wandering the street so late at night, the whole world seemingly painted golden by bulb light over snow. Sliced through in black and brown by the crushed pathways of tires and boots. Sometimes when you close your eyes, it burns against your nonvision, the laced map of trenches. The scars dug so deeply into a moon of ice that the network was visible from space. War, forever. War beyond even the veil of death.
A car drives by, a flash of white against white, filthy slush splashing warmly against your legs. You watch it until it turns out of sight. Stand there with grime-greyed snowmelt running down to your boots until the sound fades and the night is silent again. It only makes you more certain as you begin to walk again, dragging yourself through the darkness.
It had taken so long to get used to this world's night. To a sky that was Emptiness, stars and void instead of the endless swirling redness of bloody, watching Jupiter. Europa glows. Light reflecting endlessly through the ice until the whole of everything is suffused in that incandescent light, a softness that breeds neither shadow nor clarity. There is none of that comforting sameness here. Night comes with blindness, with darkness that does not yield and patches of too-bright light that ruins what little acclimation your body is capable of, only serving to blind you further. You do not like street lamps. You are not fond of the single, wavering moon that could never reflect enough to truly see.
You slink into the safety of your home like a beaten dog. You know this and yet you cannot stop it. Cannot disobey the instinct to crawl up the dark, creaking steps on all fours, turning your head one way and then the other to catch even the suggestion of sound. Somewhere in the floor above, the couple that seems to hate each other so fiercely argue just loud enough to reach you. Something drops, just close enough to hear. The twist of your key sliding open the lock is louder than you like, but you fight down the old, tired instinct to bare your teeth and hiss, just slipping into the comforting nest of your tiny apartment.
You search every room on habit. Checking under furniture, lingering in empty, dark closets, sniffing the air as if you could possibly find any scent strange in this place that reeks of so much. Some days you miss the simplicity of Cold or Blood being the only smells in the world. Your bones ache. Your face burns.
The box is in your bedroom closet, above the two coats you own that are sharp and unwrinkled with disuse, the Europan crest emblazoned on the arms and back unbroken. It is made of worn cardboard, heavy in your grip as you kneel and set it on the floor, removing the lid with a sense of prickling anxiety. Your medals lay beside the gun, useless trinkets they'd given to you only to assuage their own guilt, perhaps, or perhaps simply for the showmanship. There is no ammo in the weapon, you know as you lift it from the box, let it sit heavy in your hand, the memories threatening to drag you under. You cannot pretend that your hands do not shake when you set it aside, paw the medals over, and lift free a folder. The pages inside tremble in time with your grip as you flip through them. Having to pause to let your vision blur with something akin to panic.
You forget that the world does not operate on a broken clock as the ice moon does. That there are times and places to do things, and times when Not to do them. When you find the number, you simply call it, heedless of the midnight hour.
It could be called pleasant, the voice on the other side. "This is the Jupiter Rehabilitation Center, how can I help you?" Your voice is stuck to itself, something physical built out of webbing and knives, sticking to your throat, cutting into the cartilage bands of your trachea. Your hands won't stop shaking. "Hello?" You press the flip phone harder to your good ear as if you will be able to simply force the blurry thoughts through the line and the person somewhere on the other end will simply know. "Hello, can you hear me?"
"He-io." The syllables croak out of you, fighting free, leaving too much of themselves behind. You flip through the papers again, as if it will calm you.
"Hello?"
You never turn the heat on in your home, but warmth leaks in from the walls, your neighbors fighting off your coldness. You wrench open a window, stick yourself out into the bracing warmth of a winter night. "I'm- I think I need-" You sound wrong. You're so sure that this isn't your voice. "I was told I could make an appointment?"
"Oh, are you a veteran?" Don't say it. Don't say it. Please, don't- "Thank you for your service!" Your stomach flips. You cannot stop the bile from leaving you in a burning rush, suddenly grateful to be hanging out over the air. The purge hits the snow and you can only hope that it did not carry over the phone. "When did you return to earth?" You say the date without having to check and there is a very long pause. "That... was quite a while ago."
It was. "Yes." You don't know what else to say and it only occurs to you, as the silence once again grows, that maybe there was a time limit on these things. That maybe time mattered in more ways than you'd thought, because why else would they have said that? It prickles, burning beneath your skin, and you almost hang up with the shame of your own ignorance when they speak again.
"Okay, can I have your soldier ID? I'll have to check if they left your account open. Did the government provide you with our information?"
"Yes." They'd said it would fix you. That they would dig the ice out of you, given time, and you'd be able to work like a real human being. But you hadn't wanted to let the ice go. It was all that you were. All you knew how to be. You were not a real human being. Your bad ear rings, distracting, but you recite the number from memory. "Six two nine seven three three one oh five B."
You can hear their keyboard, you realize. Harsh clacks that barely carry through. They say your name and you say yes even though it is not your name anymore. "That's great! Yes, you were one of the early pardons, so you grandfathered in when they put in the new system a few years ago. I can get you set up with a good doctor, when are you free?"
"Always. Now." You trace the shape of the address with your finger, wondering if it is close enough to walk.
"Oh, um..." The sound of the keyboard. "How about tomorrow afternoon? Doctor Chertov has an opening. He'll call you in the morning to set it up once he wakes up."
It isn't cold enough. It's never cold enough. You are burning alive. "It's too hot."
"What?" You don't know why you said it. Your head hurts. "Oh, do you mean you have tactile hallucinations? I'll mark that down for him."
You want to tell them that they are wrong. That you are not hallucinating anything. That your body was remade in its entirety to exist in a place of frozen tunnels, reborn in a womb of ice. Instead, you slap the phone shut and retreat, leaving the window open as you curl tightly on your little cot of a bed and try for sleep.
◇ The hardest part about dealing with a Prime who had courtship protocols running through his systems was that it meant privacy was fairly scarce and would only become scarcer. It did, however, make it fairly easy for Ratchet to boss Optimus around. Not that he did it often. But it did make it much easier to force Bumblebee to sit still long enough for his checkup, the Prime standing sternly at his shoulder.
"Aww, come on, Doc! If something breaks on me, Sari can just fix it with her key!" Sitting still was, perhaps, a bit generous of an assessment, the slight scout wiggling and kicking and squirming, but he was sitting down. Ratchet had to put a servo to his thigh to stop it from jiggling about, holding the scanner to Bumblebee's hips and waiting for the screen to flood with information on the state of his joints.
It took quite the effort to lessen his instinctive response to only a low growl. He pretended he did not notice Optimus cut off a mirrored sound. "For the last time, Bumblebee, we don't know what that key does and does not do. And until we do, I will remain your primary. Now stop complaining before I really give you something to complain about." And of course the complaints continued, but only in just-inaudible mutters and discontented rumbles of his engine that matched the beat of his pedes against the examination table. It wasn't long after that that Ratchet's job was done, Bumblebee's frame seeming in good enough shape, minus the few dings and scrapes he always seemed to just manifest. "Alright. Spark's last, open up."
Bumblebee hesitated for quite a while and Ratchet let him, used to his team's hangups. He eventually slid back his plates, just enough for yellow-white light to bleed through. Ratchet gave it a scan and Bumblebee locked his spark away the second the small machine gave a flash of confirmation. All good. "Alright, that's enough for-" He was gone before Ratchet finished, rocketing out the door with a backwards shout that was equally likely to have been a curse as a thanks.
The last mech he needed to check took no asking and no cajoling. Optimus levered himself up to the table without a moment's hesitation, looking down on Ratchet with his finials pricked in that way that Ratchet was constantly having to pretend he didn't notice, attentions undivided. He wished his Prime wouldn't look at him like that. Like he were wonderful.
He sits, still and polite, while Ratchet makes sure he isn't hurt. That his code is running clean and his joins and gears aren't beginning to stiffen or stick. He pretends he does not notice, when he clicks into the medical port on Optimus' side, that it is taking all of Optimus' concentration to stop himself from chirrupping like a newspark with a first crush. It wasn't this bad the last time he looked Optimus over. Just a nagging twitch occasionally coloring a line of his code, the suggestion of a wanting, but now it was a challenge to find any part of him that was not colored over with the desire to Be Closer. He didn't know what to say, how to fix it, so he just kept pretending that he didn't notice.
"Alright, you're doing fine." He unplugs himself, and before he can ask for the last step, Optimus is baring his spark. And it is beautiful, a spiralling thing of flaring aqua light that cannot seem to decide if it wants to be blue or white or green, filaments of itself curling outward to the edges of his spark chamber as though it were made of lace or ribbon or something else beautiful and fine. His own spark aches and he ignores it. The readout is fine, of course, nothing wrong with the exception of a little bit too much heat, but that would fade when he left the medbay and his coding calmed down, Ratchet knew.
"There. You're done." He busies himself with putting his medbay back in order, refusing to look back at Optimus until he hears the soft shift of plating and the click of his armor back into place. But even then, it's only a passing glance, the most he can manage. "That means git. Go on."
But of course, he doesn't. He stays and Ratchet braces himself for the moment that his Prime, inevitably, speaks. "... Ratchet?" He doesn't respond, just packs his medical scanner into its drawer with exaggerated care. "You know you can talk to me, right? About anything?" Which isn't true, of course. Not that Optimus knows that. He paws around inside a mostly empty drawer, shifting loose papers. He hates that tone in Optimus' quiet voice, pleading and aching and raw. "... I wish you would."
Ratchet wishes he could. Instead, all that comes out, gruffer than he actually intended, is "I'm sure there's something that needs your attention right now. Quit wasting your time." Stop wasting yourself on me. There's nothing left to look for.
Again, a long, long pause, and Ratchet gives up on pretending he is busy. Just waits, looking down at his hands, until Optimus slides to the floor and pads closer. The servo on his shoulder is not a surprise, but he cannot stop himself from flinching. Can feel how badly it hurts Optimus in the place his open EM field reaches for understanding, but what is he supposed to say? Optimus bends down, lays his helm to Ratchet's, and Ratchet knows that he is waiting for something. He's almost sure he knows what it is that Optimus wants, but he is more sure that it does not matter. Because he cannot give it.
Silence. That spot of warmth where Optimus' plating touches his own. And then he's pulling away, finally walking to the door, heavy with disappointment. "... Take care of yourself, Ratchet. I'll bring you your dinner later."
When his medbay was finally empty and he was alone again, he sat down heavily at his desk and pulled up the next of a long line of papers sent to him from Cybertron. Someone else's work, no doubt, that he would be given no credit for. He doesn't care much. It's better than letting his own thoughts fill the silence.
¤ The JRC doesn't look like you were expecting. You'd imagined in your head a low building built of concrete or steel, but the place that is revealed to you when you shuffle up the long driveway that wound through a thick forest of evergreens is a place of wide windows and pale wood. And you almost turn away, as you almost had so often on the long walk here, but you made yourself move forward anyway. The glass doors slide open as you approach, silent and unnerving, but the air that spills out to meet you is comfortably warm and you find yourself drawn in. Escaping the blistering heat of the winter day into a familiar, perfect chill.
The woman behind the desk is wearing a thick coat over a knitted cardigan, face covered in a soft looking scarf, thick winter hat pulled low over her ears, and even with all that she's still shivering when she looks up at you. You stride forward, your breath coming shallow to avoid the misting, and it isn't until a bolt of alarm lights you up at the sight of her breath, pluming pale and foggy from behind the guard of her scarf, that you remember yourself. You shake off the feeling that you needed to teach her anything, that your breathing will be enough to end your life, and just try to remember how to do any of this right.
She smiles, you think, judging by the way her eyes squint a bit, wrinkling at the corners. "Hello there! Do you- Oh!" She goes silent, when her eyes reach your face, widening enough that no amount of facial coverings could have hidden her shock. She makes an effort at hiding it at least, pointedly looking away from your ruined eye and the curled shell of your shattered ear, her voice falsely cheery. "Do you have an appointment?" You don't trust your voice, so you nod. "Name?" You pull the card from your pocket, one of hundreds that sit, largely unused, in the back of your closet, and she squints at your name, your rank, your ID, and your projected danger level. You are polite enough to not react when she gives you a look of uncertain fear. "O-Oh! Okay, um... Alright. I'll just, um. Take a look."
You wish you could tell her that you haven't hurt anyone in years. That you are not going to snap if she cannot give you what you are here for. That your scars had been something to respect, once. But all your words are still sitting low in your throat, refusing the chance at freedom.
Chertov had called you first thing in the morning. You were sure you were expected. But still, it is a kind of shock when the woman gives you a much shakier smile and says, "Yes, I found it! You just go through that- that door there. There's lines painted onto the walls, you're going to want to follow the blue one, alright? Doctor Chertov will meet you there."
It amazes you, as you shuffle through the door and down the hall, that the air does not bite and burn against your skin. That when you walk beneath a softly humming vent, it is comfortably cold. The room you make it to has a spattering of other occupants, making use of the bookshelves or the chairs or the table laid out with plates. There's even a climbing wall, though only one person clings to that, standing side to wall like a goat, and when you meet his eyes, he hisses at you, a clear threat. You give him a wide berth, let him have his wall, and sit on the very edge of the closest chair, hoping that no one will try to speak with you.
You settle, just letting yourself feel something close to comfortable for the first time in a long time. You didn't know there were places on earth cold enough to stop the phantom prickle of sweat from bothering you. Except, perhaps, thr Arctic, but science was the only way you'd found to get there and your brain did not work fast enough for that anymore. So you simply sit and appreciate and listen as others are called in ahead of you. Listen to clicks and calls and hisses that do not match the rhythm that your squad had marched to. Fight to control yourself when the man on the wall lets out a rolling, humming warble that is distinctly The Enemy. You watch the members of the staff occasionally. They are easy to pick out, dressed from top to bottom in thick layers, or clutching mugs and disposable cups that spill steam, profoundly uncomfortable in the low temperatures you'd long since learned to be used to.
It is a bit of a surprise to hear your own name, but you rise anyway. Turn until you catch sight of someone waving you onward, and then you are walking through hallways again. More strangeness. There are so many plants and pictures of far-off places.
When you're nudged through the door, the sound of it clicking shut behind you is final in a way that feels too much like punctuation. You pat your thigh for a weapon that isn't there when the woman turns to face you, black-brown hair shot through with white framing a handsome face. She says your name and you blink at her. She smiles. "I am Doctor Chertov. I believe you said you were pardoned more than a decade ago, yes? May I ask what took you so long?" She pats a cushioned table covered in paper and you sit, folding your hands in your lap as you shrug. "That's alright. I'm going to look you over, alright? I'll tell you everything I'm going to do before I do it and then we can talk." And you nod again, let her test the motion of your arms and legs, let her push on the place where your shoulder is tense, trace fingertips over the wrecked remains of your ear. "Frost damage." Mumured to herself, but you nod once regardless. She checks your breathing, the sound of your heart, your good eye and bad.
Something thick and heavy starts to build in your chest the longer her hands are on you. It froths and writhes until your hands twitch and your breathing comes shallower, faster, the feeling only getting worse when you catch sight of your own breath, giving yourself away. Doctor Chertov backs away when you growl, deep in your chest, and you don't know how to stop it. You don't want to bite.
"That's enough. I am done." Showing you her hands as if you'd been braced for a backstab, but maybe you had been. Can't even be sure as the uncomfortable feeling lessens to manageable, but lingers all the same. She crosses the room, opens a small fridge, and pulls out a cup. Offers it to you and you take it without thinking, looking down at the ice forming thinly over the surface. The ratty goes down easy, cheap and familiar and cold. "You're in remarkably decent condition, all things considered. Which is good news, by the way." You just nod, not bothering to take the cup from your face. It smells just like you remember.
"You are looking for physical therapy though, da? I can see that you're beginning to shiver but show no signs of discomfort. You never reaclimated, then?" It's spoken so kindly, but all you're really focused on is looking at yourself now. You were starting to shake, gentle tremors that, even as you stated, ramped up to a moment of desperate shuddering, but you hadn't even noticed. Even watching it, it felt more like seeing someone else. Watching a body that was not yours.
Your doctor gently took your empty cup away and set it on the counter. "The building is kept at negative seventeen degrees for the ease of new guests." You wondered if they called their patients 'guests' for a reason. Maybe it just sounded nicer. "It takes time to teach your body how to accept life on earth. Temperature therapy is not hard. We give you your own room, you can bring whatever you like, and we simply raise the temperature a little at a time. You will always feel hot, most patients report hot flashes, dizziness, heart palpitations, some experience panic attacks or periods of disassociation. Do you understand?" You nod. "By the end, however long it takes, you will be able to feel at home in the seasons of earth. Even summer."
"Alright in winter will be fine, I think," you manage to mutter, and she smiles at you, her breath huffing visibly into the air with her soft laugh.
"There's that voice! I was beginning to think you'd left it at the door." Her smile is beautiful, pale blue eyes squinted almost shut. "Now, you were one of the first wave pardons. That means everything you need is already paid for. Lucky lucky. I will show you room plans and you pick what you like. You may visit however often you like, or you may move in to the facility." Your head hurt, just a bit, so much spinning through channels used to running only in sluggish, snow-clogged circles. But even so, you lean down to inspect the papers the doctor offers to you.
You think of your little apartment. Of the thuds and shouts of neighbors that had lives worth living and people who bothered to visit. Unadorned white walls and empty white shelves. You think of a white ambulance and a broken chevron. You pick a room, the smallest they have, and you wonder why Doctor Chertov looks almost pitying, but softer. You voice is getting stuck again, coming out low and rough when you murmur, "I'll stay."
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