WITH & WITHOUT
SUMMARY – you feel the need to take responsibility for him, whether he likes it or not . Or he knows there's no way he can survive without you, and maybe he prefers it that way. (au ish)
PAIRING – sixshot x reader
NOTE – rawwh. And here he is 🫂💗my bbb, I don't care if it's 4 am and I have less than 4 hours of sleep before my shift. I love him too much (edit: add a lil more at the end)
“I won’t do it again.”
The words left you like a flare in the storm
Small, defiant, and bright enough to sear through the biting wind that tore across the ridge. Your cooling fans spun with uneven rhythm, betraying the anxiety clawing at your core, but your feet stayed planted in the rust-colored soil. You stood your ground. A fragile shape against the immensity of him.
The Phase Sixer, the weapon of myth and horror, whose very shadow seemed to hum with restrained violence. The glow of your toolkit bled weakly across the dust, trembling in your grasp like a heartbeat too frightened to be steady.
Sixshot turned, the motion slow and heavy an avalanche given form. The faint gleam of starlight caught on his armor’s jagged scars, painting him in cold fire. Even the ridge beneath seemed to groan, metal against metal, as if the very land recoiled from his wrath. He was exhaustion forged into fury, power fraying at the edges, pride bleeding into something darker. To have been forced to stop, to need repair was humiliation enough.
To be defied by you, the one who kept him alive, was near blasphemy.
“You will do what is necessary, Specialist”
He growled, voice crackling through your audials like static born from the void. Each syllable was heavy, deliberate. The weight of command pressed into sound. His optics flared, molten red behind the frost, and you could feel the heat of his anger as a physical thing, like radiation licking against your plating.
“That is your function. That is why you exist. To maintain the integrity of my primary protocols.”
“Your protocols are killing you.”
The words broke from you before you could stop them: raw, trembling, finally honest. Two vorns of buried guilt tore free, sharp as shrapnel. “You think I only rerouted your energy conduits? The strain on your Spark chamber is beyond repair. You’re burning yourself from the inside out. One more engagement like the last, and you won’t be Sixshot anymore. You’ll just be fragments! ash scattered over this pitiful ridge.”
You stepped forward reckless, desperate, closing the gap as the wind lashed your faceplate and screamed through the broken metal around you. The smell of ionized air filled your vents, bitter and electric.
“I– I know your schematics better than Shockwave does.. Let me write you a patch. I can stabilize the T-Cog, dampen the feedback, save you. You don’t have to keep killing yourself to prove what you already are” you said, voice trembling but resolute.
For a moment, the world held still, two frames caught between destruction and salvation, the night crackling like a live wire around them.
Then Sixshot moved.
Not a deliberate motion, but a sharp, instinctive lurch.
The kind that belonged to predators, not soldiers. The air itself seemed to recoil as his frame loomed forward, blotting out what little light the ridge still offered. His shadow engulfed you whole, a living thing that wrapped around your smaller form until the world narrowed to the sound of your own cooling fans stuttering in fear.
You tilted your helm upward, forced to look into the red glow that seared through the darkness like the unblinking eye of judgment.
“And render me useless?” he hissed, the words spilling like hot shrapnel, jagged and metallic. “Reduce me from a Phase Sixer to a common trooper? That is your proposal, creator. To strip the only meaning from my existence?”
The title was spat rather than spoken, each syllable dripping with venomous irony. Creator. A word that should have meant reverence, yet here it felt like a curse carved between his teeth.
“Your meaning is not in the killing!”
You burst out, voice cracking under the strain of guilt that had been festering for vorns. “They programmed that into you! I saw it! I was there when they wrote your code, when they bound your Spark to their idea of perfection. You call it function, Sixshot, but it’s just a prison made of logic circuits and lies!”
You took a step closer, your vents flaring, desperation bleeding into every word.
“I won’t calibrate you for another massacre. I’ll repair you, yes. But only if you let me remove the Six-Changer protocol. You could live, Sixshot. You could stop being their weapon.”
The plea hung between you, fragile and impossible, life at the cost of identity, peace in exchange for purpose.
Sixshot’s optics glowed like a sealed furnace, expression unreadable, and yet something dark coiled behind it. To him, you no longer looked like the detached specialist who tuned his systems with precision; you were a trembling penitent, begging absolution for your own sin. And that, somehow, enraged him more than any enemy’s strike could.
He remembered the first time he opened his optics.
It wasn’t a battlefield that greeted him, but a laboratory. White light flooded every surface until it became impossible to tell metal from mirror, pain from purpose. The hum of energy filled the air, constant and consuming. He had thought it was the sound of his own Spark: confused, trying to synchronize with the foreign rhythm of his altered frame.
He remembered the weight. The heaviness of existence when your body was built for six forms but your mind could only comprehend one at a time. Every transformation felt like being torn apart and reassembled with different blueprints. Every shift a rebirth through agony.
And then he remembered you.
You weren’t the trembling creature he had seen today. No. The one who had stood over him then was composed of confidence and razor-edged brilliance. You moved with the precision of a scalpel, every motion deliberate, every glance impersonal. You didn’t flinch when his first transformation sequence went wrong, when the feedback tore through the lab and scorched the walls. You had only sighed, muttered something about “stabilization thresholds” and pressed your hands into the panels of his chest, rerouting conduits as if he were no more than a prototype on the verge of refinement.
He remembered your voice steady, detached, oddly melodic despite the clinical tone.
“Don’t resist it,” you had said, not even looking him in the eye. “You’ll burn through your energy reserves faster if you fight the synchronization. Just follow the protocol.”
Protocol.
That was all you saw him as then. The embodiment of a function, the experiment that would prove your theories right. When he had asked: “What am I?” because the question was too heavy to contain. You had only smiled faintly, the sort of smile that belonged to someone admiring a completed machine.
“You’re potential” you’d said. “Unrealized yet. But you will be the pinnacle of what we can create.”
You hadn’t meant it as cruelty. But it had been.
He had lain there, half-alive, half-machine, the weight of six alternate selves humming in the dark corners of his frame, and realized that his life had been written before it began. Every movement, every transformation, every kill he would one day commit. It all traced back to your steady hands, your unflinching logic, your refusal to see him as anything beyond your success.
That was before the guilt. Before you looked at him and saw tragedy instead of triumph.
Back then, you had been untouchable. Cold light in a sterile room. The one who never trembled, who never questioned the morality of the project. You didn’t beg him to live differently then. You only demanded efficiency.
And he had delivered it.
Now, standing on that windswept ridge, with your voice still trembling in his audials, Sixshot realized that what unsettled him wasn’t your defiance. It was your remorse.
You had changed. He had not.
And perhaps that was the true cruelty of it.
The memory faded like smoke, leaving only the cold wind to fill the space it had occupied. Then, slowly, a smirk curved across his faceplate thin and utterly humorless. The movement was mechanical, almost deliberate, and it sent a current of cold terror down your neural lines.
“The code is not in the T-Cog, Specialist”
“It is in the Spark. And I will not have my Spark rewritten by a guilty conscience.” he said, his voice lowering to something quiet, final, and absolute.
The words struck harder than any weapon. Before you could answer, his fist came down against the boulder beside him. The impact cracked the air itself a thunderclap of metal against stone and the ridge quivered under the force. Splinters of rock skittered across the ground like startled insects, their clatter echoing into the frozen silence that followed. It wasn’t a threat. It was a declaration.
He activated his comm, the sharp click slicing through the wind.
“Our time here is finished. Adjust my coordinates. We are moving now.”
His optics locked onto you. Unwavering, merciless. “Your function remains: maintenance and silence. Fail in either, and you will become obsolete long before I do.”
The line cut. The world felt unbearably still.
You stood there, staring at the cracks spiderwebbing across the stone, feeling the weight of his refusal settle over you like a shroud of cold lead. He would rather die a Phase Sixer than live as anything less than the perfect instrument of ruin you helped create. The glow of your toolkit dimmed in your grasp before you let it fall. The dull clatter of metal meeting dust was a small, final sound. The punctuation to your defeat.
You had built him to destroy.
And now, he was fulfilling his purpose by destroying himself.
The wind had died down, leaving the ridge in a brittle, frozen quiet. Sixshot’s fists still trembled slightly from the tension of refusal, but now his optics flickered unevenly, a subtle tremor betraying exhaustion he would never admit aloud. You exhaled slowly, the metallic rasp of your breath catching in your chest, and realized there was only one way forward: you would save him, even if it meant defying every principle he had forced into you.
“Sixshot…” you murmured, voice low, careful. No accusation, no pleading this time just fact. “You can’t keep burning yourself like this. I won’t let you.”
The words barely landed before he sagged, unresisting, the rigid armor of command folding into fatigue. You didn’t hesitate. You stepped closer, and almost instinctively, slid a knee behind his thigh as he lowered onto the ridge, easing him into a half-sitting, half-reclined posture. He was massive, but when he allowed it, there was a strange, intimate vulnerability there. The kind reserved for sparks and mechanics, for trust earned in silence.
You sank down, almost straddling him, your legs hovering over his, toolkit held close as you leaned forward. The air smelled of scorched metal and ozone. He didn’t move, but the subtle twitch of his sensors against your chestplate was enough to make your circuits hum in recognition of proximity.
Your hands were deft, but gentle, tracing along the conduits that ran across his torso. Each touch, each adjustment, carried more than precision. It was a promise, a lifeline. You could feel the faint heat of his systems radiating through the alloy, the way his frame shivered when you tightened a flux coil or rerouted a feedback loop. His frame, his massive, terrifying frame responded to you, and it was electric.
“Almost… there,” you whispered, leaning closer, careful to keep your optics away from his glare, but close enough that the brush of your shoulder against his chestplate was undeniable. “I’ve got you.”
He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. His usual growl, the cold certainty of command, was swallowed by the vulnerability of exhaustion. And you realized: the same hands that had once built the cage around him were now mending it, undoing the parts that would have killed him if left unchecked.
For a long moment, it was just you, the hum of your tools, and the slow, careful rhythm of Sixshot’s systems coming back online. The world narrowed to the faint warmth beneath your knees, the subtle tremor of his frame under your touch, the weight of metal and trust pressed so closely together that even the air between you felt charged.
Finally, a soft click a confirmation. His feedback stabilized, the T-Cog humming steadily, dangerously beautiful in its newfound equilibrium. You exhaled, leaning back slightly, letting your servos drop to your sides, but lingering close. He shifted slightly under you, just enough that you could feel the press of his armor against your thigh, a silent acknowledgment. His optics softened, though the heat never left, and you allowed yourself a small, private victory: he was alive. Whole. And for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t burning himself apart.
He recalled the first time you have touched him, back in the lab when he had been raw, new, and unpredictable.
Then, your servos had been clinical, detached. Now… now there was something different. Something desperate, protective, even affectionate, hidden beneath the precision of your work. And for a fraction of a cycle, he wondered if he could have been, if he could be anything more than a weapon in your optics. He swallowed the thought, grounding himself in the familiar rhythm of his T-Cog. Stabilized. Feedback normalized. Safe.
You done it — you saved him. Again
He didn’t know whether to be furious, grateful, or… something else entirely. A strange tension coiled in his chest unquantifiable, unprogrammable. He could not admit it. Could not move closer, could not reach out. But he felt it anyway, a quiet acknowledgment that, in that intimate space between them, the lines of function and protocol blurred.
The ridge was silent. The wind held its breath. And for the first time in cycles, Sixshot did nothing but endure the closeness, letting it settle like molten metal in a form finally allowed to cool.
Your servos withdrew at last, leaving a faint warmth that clung to the places her fingers had been. Sixshot didn’t move. He simply sat there, letting the silence stretch, the cold air sting against the plates you’d just sealed. His systems purred in reluctant equilibrium stable now, but only because you had forced it so. You stayed close, still half-seated on his thigh. Your field was steady now, resolved. When you spoke, your voice was softer, but unyielding. The kind of softness that could cut deeper than steel.
“I’ll keep you runningmnBut only on my terms..”
Sixshot’s optics flickered, a faint, warning flare. “You think you can dictate my—”
“I can” you interrupted, tone razor-sharp but low. “Because no one else will. You’ll keep fighting until your Spark burns itself out, and I’m not going to let that happen. I’ll repair you when you’re breaking, when you have to be fixed. But I won’t keep enabling this suicide loop you call purpose.”
Your words hung there like static in the air too soft to be called rebellion, too certain to be dismissed.
You exhaled slowly, optics locked on his, the defiance in your voice steady even as your servos trembled slightly from proximity.
“So here’s the deal, Sixshot. You go where you’re ordered, and I’ll follow. Every battlefield, every wasteland. I’ll keep you alive. But every time I touch a wire or patch a seam, I’ll remind you that you’re more than what they made you. Until you believe it—or until I break trying.”
For a moment, there was nothing. Just the faint hum of his power core, the soft whirr of your cooling fans brushing against the air between you. Sixshot didn’t answer immediately. His gaze traveled from your face to the hand still resting on his chestplate, unthinking, protective. He should have brushed it away, should have stood, should have reminded you that your role was maintenance and obedience.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he shifted slightly, just enough that your balance faltered and you leaned forward, your chest brushing against his as your optics met his directly. A breath, a pulse, a spark of something unfamiliar but alive crackled between the two of you.
You froze, realizing the closeness. He didn’t move away. His voice, when it came, was lower than before rough, but almost contemplative.
“Then you’ll waste your vorns on a lost cause” he murmured.
“Maybe. But at least it’ll be mine.” You whispered, meeting his gaze without flinching.
The ridge fell silent again, save for the hum of his systems and the wind that finally began to move through the metallic dust. For the first time since their argument began, there was no fury left. Only exhaustion, and a heavy, unspoken truce.
He let you stay there a moment longer, your body still balanced against his, until you finally pulled back. The loss of warmth felt sharper than he expected. When you stood, he followed slowly, silent but no longer defiant. You gathered your tools, checked the stabilizer once more, and without looking back, said simply
“Next time you break, Sixshot, I’ll be there. But don’t make me keep proving I can fix what you refuse to stop destroying.”
He didn’t respond. But as you walked past, his optics tracked you until the ridge swallowed your silhouette. And for a moment a brief, traitorous flicker of thought. He wondered what it would feel like to live long enough to hear you say his name without the weight of duty behind it
