Two million, five hundred thousand solar cycles since the first riots. Three million, two hundred thousand since meeting him. It had been five hundred since he'd last bothered to leave Cybertron.
Perceptor was aware of how difficult he was to argue with. Once he had chosen a point, he wouldn't budge without being outsmarted. When it did happen, he could accept defeat gracefully. It wasn't, after all, as if he could be angry.
He rooted his choices in statistics, alliances, feasibility. It was a simple structure to follow, one that had been crucial to implement once his processor had no longer been able to make quite the same number of inspired quick decisions it once had.
Numbers were easier than mechs. He'd made a way to interpret them, true, but his processor was lacking in ‘appropriate’ response. Some mechs swapped so quickly between their feelings that they'd become indecipherable.
This was not an argument that he could be persuaded to give up. The councilors had irrational fears. He could be replaced, negotiating had so far yielded no casualties, and not one of them wanted to take his place.
If it was anyone but the Decepticons that they were dealing with, they likely would've been offended by the presence of Perceptor at the initial meeting to discuss the alliance.
It wasn't a secret how much talent the scientist had at interpersonal discussion. That is, to say, that he had none.
This alliance was important. He could accept that and use his applicable skills to assist Optimus Prime in whatever way was needed. But he had a selfish motive in this.
Before the Perceptor of millenia past had decided that his emotions were more hindrance than help, he was already considered quite detached. It was with that detachment that he had sufficed previously.
There were few exceptions, and one of them was glaringly vivid. He only had the irrational memories of his mistakes and emotional confrontations now.
⇒His conjunx.
Many people didn't believe Perceptor could get legitimately upset, not even some of his squadmates, until they saw him supervise Brainstorm. He can't recount how it felt, but he remembered the mischievous glint in the optics looking back at him and the many, many incidents.
There were similar rumors he couldn't love, either.
Brainstorm had never intentionally tried to press on that button like he had his nerves. It was, without his knowing, something that had just slowly stuck in his chest with every high flutter of those wings, mad cackling, and the look of concentration on Brainstorm's faceplates as he soldered.
It shouldn't have been so easy to fall in love with him when he despised him so dearly at times, but he'd never pried at the things that stuck out about him, and they both had the same nightmares.
Cybertron, burning. A rebellion spread into war. The endless expanse of space.
For a while he hadn't been sure that Brainstorm loved him back. He had an objective eye now, that he could use to review the memories with true detachment; he could now look at the younger version of himself and realize that he had been more than infatuated.
He'd never gotten a handle on Brainstorm's emotions. He was the burrowing type, and Perceptor couldn't make out any of those faint emotions more now than he could've then. He hadn't cared at the time, because he knew, at minimum, that Brainstorm was a poor liar.
Being shuffled into sharing a lab due to the logistics of no one else (being able to) wanting to put up with Brainstorm had been enough to skyrocket a crush to obsession. A collaboration, a proper one, was plenty sufficient motivation for that younger him to contemplate his Acts.
The acceptance was one of the most well trodden memories he had in storage. He could see Brainstorm's seams glint, remember the grease that was stuck on Brainstorm's back without him knowing. He could read the linked reports that said Perceptor's sparkrate had become alarmingly high.
He could remember the press of the jet into his smaller frame, lips that covered his awkwardly, but so, so sweetly. He had accidentally stuck his servos into that patch of grease and slid it down Brainstorm's skirt armor.
Brainstorm cackled and told him to slow down first.
Perceptor no longer felt love, lust, anger, sadness- there was nothing in him that cried out and reeked of jealousy anymore. There was the objective knowledge that his conjunx had been gone for seven hundred thousand years.
To believe that the decepticons had faded into nothing was to, in a small way, believe that his conjunx was dead. He knew logically through data, proof after proof, that Brainstorm was generally quite adept at not dying, but very adept at getting in situations that would kill him.
So Perceptor held the controversial opinion that the Decepticons were hardly gone. It was easy to believe, because he could support it with more than vain hope.
He had to.
-
Hey, thanks for reading this little preview of my TFA simpatico WIP fic Splinch Theory! It's not exactly a prank, but happy April Fools anyway. It's some SFW about something other than OC's for once.
It's written out in my doc as a kind of CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) style, but that's kinda difficult to publish and I think if I just gave you three paragraphs, I'd be killed. It might be (probably will be) getting a rewrite in a different style.
I'm still busy with life, and I'll be honest- I haven't written a word on any of my fics since like. Early February at the best. Splinch Theory hasn't had an update since January, and it was born on google docs back in December of 2024. I've got a little more, if I'm enticed to share, but it's only like 4k at the moment. Proton doesn't have a word counter. I might move programs.. again.
Almost shared my horny Simpatico cannibalism fic, haha.
