inspired by my yandere Terrorcon headcanons(✯ᴗ✯) ik it's been a bit but uhh life happened🏃🏻♀️🏃🏻♀️🏃🏻♀️
18+ mass-shifted mech
Playing with Fire — Rescuebots Heatwave x f!Reader
• The walk back to your dingy apartment is routine now. You've memorized where the steps on the pavement are to avoid tripping over your feet and breaking your nose. And while the lampposts usually help, they sometimes keep the path lit up but almost always turn off for a good minute. Usually successful at making you nearly shit your pants when you're six feet away from your complex's doors. It's only when you get inside the building that you notice a familiar, mass-shifted color of red. You don’t see him until the third floor. Which is already weird—he doesn’t patrol this sector, especially not after dark. You’d know. He repeatedly told you.
Yet there he is.
Massive, immovable, red-armored and glowing faintly in the flickering stairwell light, like someone summoned a fire god purely out of boredom.
“Lost?” Heatwave asks.
You grip the rail a little tighter. “...No. I live here.”
His optics dim, and you swear you catch the barest flicker of irritation. “Right. Forgot you moved. Again.”
Okay. Yeah, definitely irritated.
“Heatwave, what are you doing here?”
“Patrolling.”
“In my apartment building?” you squint your eyes at him.
You stare at him now. “You mean me.”
He shrugs, arms folding across his wide chestplate. “There’s been suspicious activity in the area. Just taking precautions. Y’know—for the civilians.”
“Did I say that?”
Your lips part as you gape at him. Heatwave gives you the flattest, sassiest stare a walking inferno of a rescue bot can possibly give. Blinking slowly, deadpan with his chin slightly tilted up.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says bluntly. No protocol. No clever excuse. Just raw accusation, laced with something that sounds a lot like hurt.
“I’ve been busy,” you snap, and immediately regret the sharpness. You attempt to soften your voice after sighing, “I’m not avoiding you, I just—needed space.”
He steps closer and you step back. Watching as he enters your personal space, testing each other's meaning of comfort. “Space from what?” he asks, tone dangerously even. “From safety? From someone who actually cares if you live long enough to see tomorrow?”
“That’s not fair.”
You blow out a breath, wrapping your arms around yourself. Fingers digging lightly into the fabric of your coat.
“What’s not fair is you walking into hotspots without backup.” His voice hardens, the fire underneath cracking through. Optics tracking your subtle movements as always, “What’s not fair is me getting comm silence for three days, while some second-rate junkpile bot flirts with you at your building’s checkpoint.”
You lean back, eyes widening, “You were watching me?”
Heatwave tilts his head. The light catches along the edge of his helm, sharpening him into something feral in the shadows. “Of course I was watching you.”
You take a breath. It isn't really helping much.
“Why?”
The silence drags just long enough for your stomach to knot. And then he says, so calmly you want to scream—
“Because I’ve seen what happens when I don’t.”
• You stare at him. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even flinch. And that’s somehow worse than someone yelling. Worse than someone grabbing you. Worse than admitting what you already feel every time his shadow lingers too long by your door. Because Heatwave would never do those things. This giant emotionally repressed brick of a firetruck would rather go about it in such roundabout ways.
You whisper, scoffing almost. “You’re not my keeper.”
He exhales. It sounds like a vent system rebooting under strain. “No. But I should be.” The red bot suddenly looking larger even in such a mass displaced form.
Blinking, you try to say something. An equally sassy retort but the rescue bot beats you to it anyway.
“I’ve carried you out of burning buildings,” he says softly. “Pulled you out of collapsed tunnels. Caught you mid-fall. I know how breakable you are. And every time I think I’ve covered every angle, you prove me wrong. You make me prove it again.”
“You’re making this weird.” You're shaking your head, like you don't want to believe this. Him.
“I’m making this real.” His voice drops low—warning, craving, something sharp wrapped in longing. “You think this is just a game? That I only care when you’re in danger? No. I care especially when you’re not. That’s when you run. That’s when you vanish. That’s when people forget what you’re worth.”
He takes another step.
You feel the heat radiating off his armor as your back cleanly presses against the wall.
“You’ve got the whole world treating you like you’re expendable,” he murmurs. “But I don’t. I can’t. So yeah, maybe I show up where I’m not supposed to. Maybe I monitor your comms. Maybe I reroute emergency dispatches just to hear your voice.”
Your heart skips, mouth drying.
He smiles, barely.
You whisper, lip slightly trembling. “You’re insane.”
“But I don’t do it because I’m crazy. I do it because someone has to make you a priority." Heatwave pauses, for effect. For theatrics. Who knows anymore. "And I volunteered.”
He leans down, optics burning low and deep like a controlled blaze.
“Maybe.” His engine hums along with his vocalizer. Servos hissing as he raises a digit, not touching you—just hovering by your cheek like a forcefield waiting to close. Monitoring your own field and running diagnostics in real time.
“But I’d rather be insane and know where you are,” he breathes, “than sane and find you in pieces.”
A beat of silence.
Then, he steps back. Like he didn’t just collapse your entire sense of personal safety in one hallway.
• You try to speak, but nothing comes. Heatwave doesn’t wait because he's leaving. He turns, shoulders tense with restraint, and starts back toward the stairs—leaving you frozen, heart hammering in your chest, the scent of ozone and heat still clinging to the air. Brushing against you and still feeling like it isn't enough. This was payback for all those times you kept trying to high-five him—failing, cling to him and failing again. It was as if you've gotten so used to physical contact you feel bereft of him now.
But just before he rounds the landing, he glances over his shoulder.
