Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind   

and floats downstream   

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

Lazerbeak is cute. Ridiculously cute.

She’s also helpful, more-so than you’d ever have expected of the little beepy bot, as she hovers back and forth, cheerfully ferrying you two-at-a-time the books from your shelves as you neatly pack them away.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

“Thank you,” you say politely as she hands another hardcover favorite over, her wiggly little noodle arms moving with a disconcertingly effortless ease and lack of strain that makes you wonder just how strong she is.

The answer is probably some astronomical level of ‘very.’

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

“Where do you want this to go?” Knockout wonders, hefting a box you know he knows contains your movie collection. He’s probably vying to make sure it gets put somewhere conveniently accessible.

Right back where it was, is your immediate thought. You don’t particularly want to move. Not like this. Not under these circumstances.

You also have no choice. Not any ones that don’t involve a gruesome death that will probably be carried out by the very mechs you’ve befriended, and you did promise not to give your beepy bots any reasons for angry sonic screaming.

You’re pretty sure being ordered to kill their favorite human would be rather like that time a school teacher ordered you to release the injured bird you’d rescued from some playground bullies, refusing to let you carry her home until the end of the school day or let you at least bring her to another adult to care for. All your suggestions of alternatives had been refused, and it didn’t matter the reasoning; they didn’t want to help the bird.

She was just a gross, dirty animal to them.

You’re just a gross, dirty human to these guys’ boss. You’re suddenly the very wildlife you’ve spent a lifetime fussing over in your free time, and having to blindly trust that the two idiots who found and claimed you, are going to succeed in their endeavors of pardoned illegal pet ownership.

Because you’re pretty sure exclusively forbidden to reveal themselves to humans doesn’t go hand-in-hand well with allowed to keep one as a pet.

It’s going to take you a while to get over that one.

“In the far back of the trailer,” you answer with an emotion you’re not sure if you can call spite or not, but maybe it becomes that when you see the way Knockout’s Holo’ Av’s face contorts with a momentary grimace. He didn’t get the answer you know he wanted.

You’re a little tired of giving , today.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

Fortunately, the day is almost over. You place the last book in your box, and just like that… You’re all packed. You’re ready to go, sans vehicle actually being loaded . The ink on the paperwork for your new house title is long dried, the keys are a near comically heavy weight in your pocket, and you pretend your hands aren’t shaking.

You pretend your hands aren’t shaking and the smile on your face is real, as you politely direct your alien…Friends? That doesn’t seem to fit quite right anymore. Acquaintances? They’re a little more than that, but it’s friendliness is discolored by the whole racist-asshole-boss thing. Captors? Not something you want to think about so baldly, because your sanity for one reason, and for another… really, you could run. And really, you had your chance. You didn’t have to let Knockout keep coming back, keep entertaining him, encouraging him.

You certainly didn’t have to go and fall in love with him.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   

so he opens his throat to sing.

You shouldn’t have flirted with the hot alien racecar.

You shouldn’t have, but you did, and now here you are, moving house, and the only people in your life who know where you’re moving to are also the most recent individuals to enter your life. There’s no way to explain it other than saying that you feel very odd. Not quite hollow, because… There’s something there you think you can sustain yourself off of. If you let it. If they don’t, y’know, kill you oh god don’t think about it don’t think about it--

You’re not sure what to call them, anymore.

Perhaps just simply by their names.

“Lazerbeak, Knockout… Soundwave,” you speak with a voice just raised enough you know their sensitive audials will hear you, and find yourself catching up on the last one spoken. You’re not sure why, but somehow, out of everyone, you find yourself most uneased by Soundwave. Which is odd, because if you should be angry with anyone the most, it’s Knockout, since he’s the one who… Well, kind of led to all of this. He’s directly responsible for you even meeting other Decepticons, let alone his abusive warlord employer catching wind that he had made a forbidden squishy-person a friend. A friend his abusive employer could exploit, and Knockout had really hinted at this all from the beginning.

Hadn’t he?

Really, he had; the harder you think on it, the more you wish that things had been different, and go looking for where they even went wrong to begin with. And in so doing, discover that really, they’d never been right.

With Knockout.

You have all three alien mechs’ attention, now, as Lazerbeak drifts over in the air to hover a polite distance away, and Soundwave simply shifts his weight a bit, looking over at you. Knockout, as usual, is the most expressive, coming to stand as fully in your line of sight as possible as he folds his arms loosely over his Holo’s broad chest.

You try very hard not to think about how nice it felt to be wrapped up in those arms. It’d felt so comforting, so safe.

If he tried to embrace you right now, you’d only feel caged.

“Thanks for all the help. This is… Everything. I just have to do a final walk-through and make sure I got all the stuff cleaned that needs to be, and--”

“Right, so nearly everything is done,” Knockout interrupts dryly, sounding amused.

You’re too uneased to share his good humor. You’re pretty sure he’s still excited about all this; Soundwave and Lazerbeak are a much harder read, but you don’t think it’d be a stretch to say that they seem subdued.

You wish you were still excited.

“Nearly everything,” you concede. “There’s just a little left for me to wrap up doing.”

Just a little left of your old life to say goodbye to.

Knockout picks up the next box, and walks past without so much as a glance, except that you swear you can feel his gaze on you whenever you’re not looking. It’s unnerving, if you’re honest; his attention before had flattered you, but right now, you’re uneased and unsettled. You’re still floundering to find your balance in this ‘new normal’ that your life is taking on, and you aren’t sure where that’s going to end yet.

You tape up the box of books Lazerbeak just helped you pack, as her tall-dark-and-silent Dad picks the short, emptied bookcase beside you. And off another material piece of your life goes, another fragment you’re taking with you. You like to think the familiar furniture and furnishings will make you more at ease, going forward.

You just hope you don’t focus all the time on how much it’d suck to lose it all, instead.

You’ve already given up so much more than you were prepared to, for them, than you ever expected or could have imagined, because you hadn’t. You hadn’t thought this far ahead. You’d tried to, maybe-- some part of you feels like you always knew this was coming, from the very moment you let Knockout show up for absolutely no reason other than to chat and hang out.

Those stolen handfuls of happiness and camaraderie are finally coming back to demand payment, with interest . And it comes in the form of exchange; you have new company, now, and it doesn’t mesh well with the friends you had before. You have a new homestead, now; one that by design, won’t mesh well with the life you had before. You have a new life trajectory entirely; one that you hope you’ll stay sane enough to endure with even some semblance of a smile.

I can be happy anywhere, is what you tell yourself. It’s not a new mantra; this isn’t your first time with a big, sudden move, or even the first time your life’s fallen apart so dramatically; but it is your first time maintaining contact with the very people who ruined it, and worst of all, just like before, you can’t even bring yourself to hate them like you think maybe you should. If someone had done this to your friend, you’d be foaming at the mouth and threatening violence. You’d be doing violence.

And probably getting killed in the process. Which is why you haven’t said a word to your friends, why you haven’t told them that you’re leaving. It’s why you managed to dodge Bob and Yolanda during the actual move and refused help from anyone who so kindly offered; you’re not willing to risk their lives like Knockout risked yours.

You’re not willing to bring anyone else into this mess of a shit-show, one that plays with your feelings and heart like a chess piece to be fondled and moved around the board wherever the strategist behind the game’s machinations decide.

So you didn’t tell them you were leaving. You didn’t even say goodbye, not in any way they’d ever hear it. You took one last look at your chat inboxes, flipped through some memories, shut your computer down, then took a drill to your laptop’s harddrive and circuitry in the privacy of your bedroom. You’re pretty sure your alien pals would have given you a funny look if they’d saw you do it, and you didn’t feel like dealing with any possible implications or weird robo-gore PTSD it might have invoked.

So you just did it quietly, choking down your own tears, stuffing your emotions like the tangled ball of favored yarn they are deep into the basket of Things To Deal With Later. It’s a nice complementary collection to your mental shelf of Glass Anxiety Sculptures, each one a delicate bombshell of razor-edged shrapnel waiting to shatter at the barrest disturbance.

Your phone’s due for the same treatment, but only after you’ve finished using it to tie up the last little loose ends in the life you’re leaving behind; you need to tell your boss you’re quitting. You might even be rude and not give two weeks notice, except the final closure from doing that one thing right might just save your sanity, if you can get around the fear of running into someone you know while on the job.

Or anyone trying to reach you, through your workplace.

You watch Soundwave walk off with your furniture as Knockout carries boxes, and Lazerbeak loiters in the livingroom looking at everything like the curious child you can’t help but see her as. She’s so easily entertained; sights, sounds, textures, she finds everything so fascinating to witness and observe in your world. This must all be so fun and novel to her.

It makes knowing she’s not quite as bubbly as usual, hurt all the more. You can’t figure out if she’s showing off how happy she is because she’s happy, or… If she just wants anyone looking to think she is.

You wish you had her enthusiasm, either way.

In less than an hour, the trailer is loaded, closed, and padlocked shut. You’ve done all due diligence. You’re three hours ahead of the deadline to be totally out and gone that you set, which means you’re actually two days ahead of your buyers’ expectations. They probably hadn’t thought you were serious when you said you wouldn’t take long to pack.

With a melancholy feeling and a bittersweet smile, you press your lips to the doorframe in fond farewell.

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

“Thanks for everything,” you tell the household quietly. “Take good care of the next family.”

And then you’re turning the locks into place and flicking the switch with one hand, while your other is busy pulling the door shut behind you. The door latches with an achingly familiar rattle and click, but without the accompanying pull of home. This place isn’t yours , anymore, and it already feels that way.

‘You don’t belong here,’ everything around you seems to say, from the too-loud crunch of grit on the sidewalk beneath your shoes and the barest breeze you’re going to miss from being on this side of town.

Perhaps, you never did.

Chapter Text

~*~

Twice the sound his engine makes,

As it seals our fate;

Only once the race had started,

Did I realize, too late;

Ready or not I’d signed away,

My heart and so, my life;

And myths aren’t so very helpful,

On telling how to navigate this strife.

~*~

“Are you ready to go?” Knockout asks, making a show of smoothing out his Holo’s imaginary clothing as if it were very real textiles, brushing broad hands down the length of his front as he straightens his leather jacket. “Your kitties certainly are,” he adds dryly, all of you well aware of just what the cats had thought of being kenneled and loaded into his back-seat before the doors to the house were thrown wide open.

You’d also heard no end of what Knockout thought about it, but honestly, considering they were the ones politely kidnapping you all, you figured he could just Deal With It.

Against it all, your step still falters just a little, seeing him standing next to his own alt mode, all gleaming paint and polished metal. He looks good . In both forms. He always looks good.

No, is the answer you want to speak.

“Yep,” is the one that leaves your mouth, as you round his front bumper, and open up his passenger side door that you now know turns into the plate of armor that guards his forearm. Taking a seat on the disguised upholstery that thrums with life, you let yourself sink into the most comfortable chair your ass has ever sat upon. “Remember you promised to drive under the speed limit,” you remind, craning your head as you twist, pulling the seatbelt over your chest at the same time you look behind you, and catch the eyes of three gem-like gazes. Your kitties peer back at you from their kennels, all neatly arranged and strapped in to Knockout’s back seat. Jasmine’s is nearly twice the size of her sons’, on account of both her nearly four-inch long poof of luxurious, brush-demanding fur, and the fact that out of all three, she’s the one most uncomfortable with confinement.

You’re well aware of the reason behind why she hadn’t handled car rides well excluding the only, the singular time she was calm as a fiddle, and that had been the very first one she ever took with you. The one where you brought her home, with her kittens, right before the heat index had climbed so high you have zero doubt her heavy fur would have seen her dead the next day. She’s a cat meant for colder regions than Nevada’s arid climate.

Jasmine, the pretty mama kitty in question, meows once at you, followed promptly by Gizmo’s trilling rumble-purr. Your heart squeezes with a familiar, painful ache .

“Ugh, yes,” Knockout agrees as his Holo’ drops onto the seat, only to dissolve into literal freaking pixels of light the instant his door is shut. “I won’t endanger your precious furry Symbiotes. Even if I did go over the speed limit, they’d still be--”

“I don’t want a reason for a cop to pull us over,” you hiss. “And before you remind me of how capable you are of losing someone on your tail, I’ll remind you that a car chase isn’t my idea of a good night, nor do I want my kitties tossed around their carriers while you’re busy turning every which-way and accelerating. So be a good driver and drive safe,” you snap.

You bite your lip, and feel like crying. Even having to repeat this feels so wrong to you, because once upon a time not so long ago, you’d have just blindly trusted he’d wholly have your best interests at heart.

Against the force of your temper, Knockout’s voice only comes to your ears as a soft, beleaguered sigh. It’s not helping your nerves, and Gizmo’s quiet little concerned meow with an uplilting trill at the end, would be tattling on them if Knockout spoke cat.

Fortunately, no one’s figured out that your kitty is the easiest and most transparent window to your heart and state of being, and instead just sees the little adorable fur-bucket who drinks up all the love dumped into him.

“May I remind you that you are literally with the best driver on the entire planet; you’ll be fine,” Knockout asserts.

“Second best,” you retort on snippy reflex, mulishly sinking into the seat. You’re so tired of pretending; you had to smile for so many strangers and not-strangers this week, lie to everyone’s faces that you’re actually doing super stellar and your life quality is out of this world -- more literally than they realize -- and that your fake marriage is totally legit and all those little red flags they’ve picked up on? Naaaw, you’re fine, totally. You actually found your big personal heart’s secret wish; you found Twu Wuv, and your Princess Bride fairytale has crashed into reality complete with giants and scary politics that go over your head and some asshole Lord you now alternate between thinking of as Megatwat and Megadink.  

‘Humpertron’ had nearly made your face go blue from wheezing guffaws, and you’d refused to explain to any of your alien company why you’d gone hysteric with laughter in the middle of packing a box and having been absolutely silent up until that moment.

They’d pretty much chalked it up to an emotional mood swing, or a ‘processor glitch’ as Lazerbeak liked to claim, and you’re not sure it was really wise to let them go on thinking that was the case.

You’re not sure if you should be pleased that you’re apparently a much better actor than you’d ever realized, or concerned that it’s been so easy to fool everyone around you. Especially the people who you thought knew you, if not well, then at least… At least enough to recognize when you were lying to their faces.

Except, they didn’t.

They accepted the lies you told them like a hen took seed from the hand of the butcher, and the only thing that prevented you from vomiting from the sheer stress and wrongness of it all is the knowledge that you’re not the butcher.

The metal titan a mere portal’s step away from anywhere, anytime, is. And he’s been at your house, every. Single. Fucking. Day. He hasn’t once spoken to you, you haven’t so much as glimpsed that silver fucker’s bucket helmet or his curved, layered armor, but you’ve felt his presence, and no one in the house has been shy about mentioning said visits.

Megatron coming over isn’t exactly a secret, but you apparently are.

I leaves you feeling disconcertingly empowered and yet somehow very… very small at the same time. Whatever’s going on, you and your kitties are all still alive, and you’ve successfully managed to fool all the people around you into thinking that you’re okay.

And you’re not disappointed that you succeeded, you don’t hold any bitterness or regret or dashed little fantasies of ‘what ifs?’ and wondering what kind of special task-OP force the government would send in to deal with a credible alien threat and rescue your ass.

Except that would probably result in a lot of people dying, and a lot more issues would crop up from that, and…

Your kitties. You’re honestly convinced that none of your three favorite idiots would intentionally do you harm out of personal preference-- They’ve gone (mostly) out of their way to ensure you don’t face more danger than can be avoided. In this case, however, you’re not certain how they’d react to an outright betrayal.

If you willingly tried to ditch them, you’re not certain how they’d react.

You are certain, that you don’t want to find out.

And in the face of that possible looming disaster, really, the trashing of your own personal moral compass isn’t so bad. It’s much preferable to spill a few lies like ink stains over your shiny reputation, than it is to have a drop of innocent blood spilled.

You can’t even decide what’s worse; that your own species’ relatives first recognize the fact something’s wrong despite how hard you tried to hide it, or the fact you have to convince them to not trust their own instincts, opposite of  you’ve always advised them to do. And that it works.

Because they trust you.

They trust you, and you’re using that against them, and you’ve never felt more wretched in your life, except maybe all the other times you’ve ever had to something even remotely similar to this.

“Second best?” Knockout splutters, ignorant of your foul mood as usual, or perhaps just waiting for it to blow over. You know it will; you’re angry and miserable and upset right now, but you don’t want to stew in these unpleasant emotions forever. Eventually, you’ll come around, if only because you want to. “I’m sorry, who exactly do you think you’re driving with, right now? Did your memory get damaged?”

It did, actually, though those memories are in perfect working order. The giddiness they’d usually invoke, along with a twist of carnal lust, is canceled out by everything else crowding space in your head so thoroughly for once, you literally have no room for gutter thoughts.

Right now, you want him to know exactly how upset you are.

“Second best,” you assert firmly. “I can think of someone who drives smoother, better, and more comfortably.” He can also read the room, you think bitterly. Knockout’s solution of simply ignoring your temper this whole ass long week isn’t the worst thing he could have settled on, but it isn’t helping your mood much.

“But surely not faster,” Knockout purrs back, the lights of his over-complicated radio setup brightening then dimming with a faint pulse of emphasis in time with his voice.

You pause to consider that as you watch trees scroll past without really seeing them, your old house already well behind and out of view. As it happens, you don’t know if Soundwave can beat Knockout in a race. Thinking back on how fast you watched him zip into thin air as a fucking jet, you suppose it’s possible.

“He might be,” you shrug, enjoying the way the lights all around you flare brighter, and stay bright. It’d be painful on your eyes if Knockout’s natural light show wasn’t all based in in the gentle hues of deep vermillion. “But he definitely drives better.”

“Well, there’s one way to prove you wrong. Who is it? Let’s set up a private little race, driver to driver,” he purrs, probably thinking you were goading him into exactly this, because he knows you know how much he loves to race.

You hadn’t been thinking of that, actually, but now you are, and you’re staring at his radio and all the alien glyphs displayed on it with the weirdest sense of smug malice, because you know he’s going to quickly come to hate his own idea.

You also have no reason to say no, this time, unlike all the other instances he’s tried to coax you into letting him take you out for another too-dangerous illegal street race.

And you’re totally going to jump on the opportunity.

“I can’t promise anything, but I can ask if he’d be willing to drive against you,” you offer. “Are you sure? I mean, it’d be pretty embarrassing if you lost.”

You’re certain it would be.

You’re also absolutely certain you’d eat popcorn watching.

“Set up the race,” Knockout purrs. “I can take any --”

“Sweet; comms on,” you state quite plainly, as Knockout trails off with a distinct note of confusion. You’re less certain on if your chosen track champion will even agree to this frivolous idea.

~”Beaky Speaky: WOOO! I thought you were gonna ignore us the whole drive.”~

You had, in fact, planned to do exactly that. You don’t choose to dim her Spark by informing precious Beaky otherwise.

“Just had a question for your Dad,” you say casually, ignoring the painful pinch in your chest ow ow ow, as Knockout’s engine makes a very odd, grinding noise like gears just ground together. Double ouch. That sounded painful.

“What?” comes your sexy hotrod’s spluttered voice over the radio as his engine revs.

~”Query: what is query?”~ comes the one under your ears, from the headphones around your neck.

Coasting high on the absolute dopamine-thrill of being in utter control of the moment, you allow yourself a self-satisfied smirk as you sink into the comfortable seating, and glance back at your kitties.

Gizmo is still sitting up and staring expectantly at you; Jasmine’s laid down to accept repose, but still stares at you with hopeful intent. Tia’s the only one who made themselves totally comfortable, curled up and sound asleep on his towel.

You hum with satisfaction.

“Knockout wants to know if you’d be willing to race him one-on-one to prove who’s a better driver,” you invite, absolutely curious to see what happens.

~”Challenge: accepted,”~ Soundwave replies immediately, only to promptly continue-- ~”Correction: offer for recreational sojourn, accepted. Challenge presented: very little.”~

Well, that answers that.

“Why, you--!” Knockout growls, his engine revving so loud, you let out a squeak and clamp your hands over your ears at the volume.

~”Yes; me, ”~ is the emotionlessly smug reply that comes in over your headset’s speakers, and you clap a hand over your mouth to hide your toothy grin and mirth. And maybe muffle laughter you didn’t choke back fast enough, this time.

“Oh, I am going to make your filters clog with my exhaust,” Knockout growls. “You’ll regret that. I am the best driver on the track, and I have the record to prove it.”

~”Beaky taunting: prove it on the track, then,”~ she answers, the only difference between her voice and Soundwave’s the speed at which she speaks, and the way she chooses to pitch the volume of her output.

“I will, and you’ll capture the video evidence,” Knockout informs her primly.

Feeling somewhat reluctantly soothed from your earlier ill temper, you try to let the good humor settle over you. It almost feels comfortable, easy, like it was before. Almost.

You might have left your old life behind…

…but this one’s at least not boring. As long as you keep yourself busy enough to keep ahead of your own thoughts, maybe things won’t be so bad.

Maybe, you think as you look out Knockout’s tinted windows, studying the passing terrain as he navigates through the city outskirts, this won’t be so bad. ‘Adopted by aliens’ isn’t the worst plot twist life could have thrown at me.

You just hope your optimism isn’t misplaced.

As Knockout continues to bicker with a goading Lazerbeak and a smartass Soundwave, you let yourself sink into the seat, and relax with a sigh. In less than a half hour you’ll be at your new house, Breakdown will be opening up the trailer he’s hauling to the polebarn, and your kitties will get to run around more space than you’ve ever been able to give them.

~*~

Every time he thinks he’ll have a chance to speak with her, alone, his hopes and expectations are dashed.

Knockout’s pretty little human has been lovely eye-candy as ever, but lately she’s also been pretty frustrating, and he’s only halfway to blame.

He’s only halfway to blame, and the other half is busy making good on ruining any chance what-so-ever of private conversation for the drive to their new ground base. Or, as Butterfly liked to call it, her new house.

She’d stopped calling it a home.

“Okay, favorite color?” Butterfly asks next, having kept up this litany of frivolously unnecessary questions he’s astounded the two goons on the other end of the communication’s line are even bothering to answer.

~”Beaky answers: right now it’s blue! Unless Megatron is asking, then it’s yellow.”~

Nonsense, to answer more nonsense, Knockout thinks sourly as he turns off onto an exit, feeling his engine turn over with an unhappy rumble in an unnecessary cycle of gear-shifts as he coasts down the curve of the exit ramp.

He’d very much like to know how his human got so cozy with the annoying little spy-bot.

“What, you can’t have your own differing preferences?” said human asks, frowning with that offput distaste on her pretty face, the same one that appears every time their liege is so much as implicated in conversation.

~”Beaky answers: of course I can. But it makes him happy, and that’s really hard to do.”~

Knockout has a harder time dismissing that unexpectedly sentimental answer out of hand, and he wonders since when was the yappy bot (a much more appropriate nickname than ‘flappy-bot’ in his opinion) so comfortable with him, she didn’t care about chattering where he could overhear?

He’d had no idea the little brat had such a bubbly and infuriating proclivity for chatter. With her typical company, he supposes she must simply be starved for meaningful conversation. Lazerbeak, unlike her Sire, seems to at least value some essence and substance to the stuff of life more than just her gear-grinding work.

“Why does yellow make him happy?” Butterfly wonders, her lips pursing as she seems to sink even further into her own thoughts, and Knockout bites back an annoyed sigh. This isn’t remotely what he wanted to spend the drive talking about.

~”Beaky answers: because yellow’s the color of love and happiness,”~ comes the somewhat poetic and equally nonsensical--

-- wait.

Knockout’s gears nearly grind themselves in an exceedingly painful manner, and the maneuver to prevent the godawful lurch and hitch in his systems serves to actually drop him several points in speed.

“Are you serious?” he splutters, because that can’t be what he’s thinking of. It’s much too sentimental, far too nice, and certainly not their liege’s nature. “ Yellow is his favorite--?” Knockout doesn’t get to finish his question, because a sassy trill in binary cuts him off with shrill volume as Butterfly winces.

“Ow, Beaky. My ears are sensitive,” she reminds tiredly. It’s not remotely the first time Knockout’s heard his human scold the Minicon for her audial-shredding vocalizations.

~”Sorry, Beaky mulishly and sincerely answers,”~ comes the suck-up reply that so, so unfairly works. Butterfly’s sour expression immediately softens at the apology. ~”Beaky requests: ask me about it later, in private.”~

If Knockout were in bipedal mode, he’d roll his eyes.

“Okay,” his human agrees without any hesitation, a sort of subdued curiosity in her voice he’s not sure how to interpret, except to be miserable at the realization that, once again, Butterfly is going to ditch him for the little yappy spy-bot. That she now avoids the drone’s Carrier as hard as she does Knockout himself, is little solace.

“Well as long as you’re being so generous with your time,” he starts with a drawl, watching the way Butterfly’s gaze immediately slants to his radio as her face goes blank, “Then I’d like to request a private conversation or three with my favorite human.”

“I’m your only human,” is the too-fast answer he gets in response, and it’s nearly enough to send every one of his circuits into frazzled overcharge as fuel hits his engine with a heady rush.

The rev of power under his hood and vibrating through his frame has the human on his seat sitting up straight with a squeak, glassy optics gone wide.

“Seeing as I have an entire planet’s population to pick from, I’m going to restate that you are, indeed, my favorite,” he stresses, wondering just how far he’ll have to press the flattery in order for her to realize it’s genuine.

He might not be the most honest of mechs, but when it comes to a matter of preferences, he’s not shy about voicing his. Provided they won’t get him killed, of course, or even lightly maimed. Usually. The latest exception to that rule, is sitting cluelessly in his passenger seat.

Light maiming he doesn’t need to worry about at least, since that already happened. Having spent his week helping his moody human box her life up, there was no time to coax her into her paints and brushes. His front bumper looks just as marvelously trashed as before, except that all his dents and wire-fine scratches have finally healed.

Considering the way she’d reacted to discovering her precious paint cabinet had been ‘ crushed like a soda can,’ he doesn’t exactly blame her. If Knockout’s being perfectly honest with himself, there’s a part of him that almost welcomes her anger, because he knows he deserves it.

Mostly, though, he wishes she’d keep her grudge turned squarely on the ‘bot who deserves it, which is Breakdown for being such an utter aft.

Which would be less frustrating just now, if Knockout wasn’t painfully aware of the painfully confusing truce the two had called. He’s not convinced there isn’t a certain third party threatening blackmail behind encrypted, private comm-line frequencies, orchestrating the whole thing.

Because out of every fragging ‘bot who could have showed up to haul the trailer Butterfly rented for packing up her household furnishings and belongings, Breakdown wasn’t the mech Knockout was expecting to roll up into the driveway. He was highly doubtful it was a volunteer position.

He’d also been the only person not surprised, which told him everything he needed to know about how this was all going to go down; Soundwave was already making good on his efforts to isolate Butterfly and cut her off from contact with her actual friend.

Because he refuses to think of the two thorned stooges as her friends. They’re not. Friends don’t kill each other .

And he knows one little order is all it’d take to turn this comedy into a tragedy.

It’s tragic enough Butterfly can’t take an honest compliment.

She rolls her eyes at him, leaning back in his seat as she huffs.

“Yeah. No one can wrap electrical tape like me,” she quips, provoking another unhappy engine-rumble as Knockout watches an ambitious minivan pass him on the left, cruising a mere four miles above the speed limit. A minivan.

“Well, I won’t be asking you to handle any tape this week. I’d rather just talk,” Knockout states plainly, because he’s growing more than a little tired of dancing around the issues building between them. Unlike Breakdown, she seems perfectly content to leave things not only unspoken between them, but perfectly unaddressed. She’s not moving on; not with her words, not with her actions, and certainly not with her volatile mood swings.

“That’s nice, because I’d rather avoid any more radioactive exposure,” she answers primly, reminding him of yet another headache.

One that brings to mind unpleasant and all-too-recent memories, like the cold itch of fear, and the way it’d felt to have his back catch up against the wall of the garage. Worse, the feeling of violation that went paired alongside the painful pinch of fresh punctures in his chassis’ plating, one certainly worse than the other. He’d been cornered the absolute instant Butterfly had fallen into deep recharge that first awful day of disaster.

Cornered and assaulted , the absolute instant he refused to answer a question in a satisfactory way; and he doesn’t care if he technically granted permission for this sort of thing, he doesn’t care if Soundwave has every privilege and right to access his databanks-- Knockout hates him.

He hates him, and he can’t fathom how a monster who forces his way into the very minds of his victims can hold any shred of appeal to his soft-Sparked human.

He can’t, and he won’t, and the knowledge that Soundwave’s investigating her past incidents of Energon exposure aren’t helping his psyche. Her lack of seeming care regarding it is even worse, and he can’t fragging understand where all this is coming from.

Frag it all, doesn’t she understand what danger she’s in?

The last thing he wants to see is Shockwave catching wind of her state, and vying to run experiments. Ones far, far more invasive than Knockout’s frequent, passive scans. As long as she presents no visible mutations, there’s absolutely no reason to make a lab rat out of her.

There’s absolutely no reason to do a lot of things, but Knockout’s growing convinced that this human was hand-picked by Primus.

Hand-picked by Primus to be a pain in his aft, because just as he can’t get through her thick skull the warnings of danger he’s been trying to convey to her from the very beginning, his concern doesn’t seem to reach her anymore.

His human’s temper would be a lot more attractive just now, if he wasn’t so fragging worried for her life.

Something he’s not even allowed to be upset about visibly, because doing so only inspires her to remind him that it’s all his fragging fault. And on that point, he can’t quite fully disagree. However, it’s not all his fault, and the fraggers she’s been getting cozy with are equally if not more-so to blame.

“As I’ve stated before, numerous times,” Knockout begins with a valiant yet futile attempt at curbing the acidic tone that creeps into his voice whenever he’s frustrated, “You’ve never once shown any signs of abnormal--”

“Except, y’know, the whole Electromagnetic aura thing and feeling like ‘emotional vomit’ is suddenly so much more literal than that phrase was ever supposed to be? I’m pretty sure until you showed up in my life, I never once had to deal with feeling other people’s emotions like they were literally my own.”

The grinding noise his engine creates, makes her flinch.

~”Beaky asserts--”~

“Oh shut up and let me talk to her,” Knockout snaps, as his human’s optics go wide and round. “You’ve hogged her all week.”

~”Angry exclamation: you hogged her for two years!”~

“I barely got to see her for most of those years!” he splutters, indignant. What kind of response was that? “I mean it, shut up so I can--”

“How about everyone shuts up, I pretend to take a nap, and--”

“No,” Knockout growls, then changes lanes as his speed picks up. “No, I’m quite tired of--”

“And I’m tired of being interrogated every time I’m not actively making myself look busy!” Butterfly snaps. “If you wanna talk, then fine, we’ll talk, but not here where I’m a captive audience in your passenger seat with an audience around my neck because these comm lines don’t actually turn off just because I like to think they do,” she hisses at his radio with open venom, barring her dainty little human canines to go with her volatile mood.

It matches the unpleasant, stinging buzz to her aura’s frequency as Knockout resists the urge to recoil, feeling like his mesh is crawling with scraplets at the unpleasant sensation.

“I don’t know why you even keep those things with you,” he snaps.

“Because it’d be even stupider for me to give them up than it is for me to keep them,” is her immediate retort, hardly the first time Butterfly has defended her absurd habit of wearing the stupid ‘scale like a fragging collar. All that’s missing is a leash.

~”Beaky wondering: are you two done bickering? I’m bored.”~

And as if that actually matters, Knockout’s appalled to watch his human bite her tongue, looking chastised, before she sighs and slumps in his seat, looking out his window.

“Probably not, but I welcome any distraction,” Butterfly answers plainly. “Pretty sure he and I will be bickering until the end of time.”

And frag it all if the thought doesn’t make his Spark pulse with an aching longing, because Knockout would very much like that.

Unfortunately for him, he only has a narrow window of time to patch things back up with her, before injury, disease, or old age takes her from him. He’d rather spend his time enjoying what few years of life her short-lived species has, than wasting it all in pointless argument.

Time, despite all his human likes to hand-wave concerns over how much abundance of it they have, is the one resource she’ll never, ever have enough of.

Primus really was an aft.

Chapter Text

So, you like your new house.

You really like your new house, if you can overlook the two glaring flaws that ruin it for being an absolute perfect dream-come true. The first being the mind-numbing, migraine-inducing soundscape of the house’s electrical wiring. Fortunately, that’s something you can fix by simply downgrading hardware and dialing the household setting back in time about sixty years.

The second, is unfortunately much, much harder to fix.

It comes in the form of metal titans parked in your shiny new polebarn, two of whom immediately take advantage of the space you’d picked out for exactly this purpose; the moment the door rattles shut on its tracks behind Knockout, Soundwave transforms. The instant you’ve gotten the last kitty carrier out of Knockout’s back seat, he transforms, panels flipping and rotating in front of your face by mere inches, your eyes going wide.

Holy shit.

Life peril aside, this is still never not going to be the coolest thing you’ve ever been cursed to witness, because something this epic shouldn’t cost so dearly.

You look up with still-wide eyes, momentarily caught off guard all over again, like it’s your first time seeing Knockout reveal his true nature to you. Your mind isn’t yeeted back a few years in time, however, as you drag your gaze from the concrete ground up shiny, glossy black panels of armor that artfully shape themselves around gleaming silver metal. Everything’s accented by a modest inclusion of red lighting, lines and dots giving just enough emphasis on Knockout’s masculine form of metal musculature to guide the eyes.

Eyes you yank up, and then up some more, feeling your face heat as you repeatedly shove down all your repressed thoughts of sexual frustration and needy, achey desire. Frustrations and fear aside, not a single damn thing has managed to shake your ridiculous, stupid, impossible crush, and you sure as hell aren’t ready to face it now any more than you were a week ago.

You barely meet Knockout’s red optics, so openly studying you as he looks down from an impossible height above you, standing just a little shorter than the ceiling, before you find your resolve faltering. You let your eyes slide off his face, unable to hold his gaze, and instead peek over at the fourth mech that makes up your company for the day.

The one you’re still not certain whether you should be openly angry at, or just… Leave the guy alone.

You’ve been leaning towards the latter, especially after what Beaky told you about his past run-in with humans. The mere memory of which, is enough to make your stomach twist uncomfortably as your entire body recoils with a reaction like the first time you saw your own skin illustrating for you what the definition of ‘road pizza’ meant in visceral, graphic detail.

Fortunately, there’s no body-wracking pain or mind-scrambling painkillers to go with it, and you quickly force yourself to think about literally anything other than what it must have been like to be strapped down to a table and cut open while wide awake--

Gods you might just vomit.

You’re ignoring Knockout’s self-congratulatory praise on the uneventful and timely drive over, to instead walk towards the blue and silver armored vehicle parked in silence in nearly the exact center of the polebarn.

Nearly, because he chose to park nearest to the human-sized door that leads to your house, where most of your shit is gonna go, without you having to ask him to.

“Hey, Breakdown,” you greet, forcing volume into your voice and biting back the instinctive press of irritation. You still have a grudge with this fucker, you’re not over the headache he caused you and literally everyone else, or the money it cost to repair your old house’s ceiling-slash-floor. You’re also not over the bad taste in your mouth or the humility you’d endured, lying through your teeth to the carpenter and pretending to be the ditziest dumb-clueless-female stereotype you’d thought only existed on the big screen for the longest time, until you’d met people like that.

So you don’t think about that, or about wondering if the latest lie in your life might circle back around like the other lie tangling up your life, the one that says you’re fucking married.  

And jokes on you, neighbor-Bob already told your boss-Bob and boss-Bob has already hand-waved not only letting you go the day you submitted your two weeks notice, but sent you off with a lovely bottle of mead you’re probably going to drink by yourself. You almost threw it out in a fit of emotional distress, but it was a good year, you do have a sweet tooth, and he did happen to have picked out your favorite type of alcohol.

So you kept the mead.

You kept the mead, and you’re already thinking about how it’s going to feel to completely dull your brain down into relaxed delirium and knock yourself out the fuck for sleep tonight, once all absolute responsibilities are tended to.

Like getting your kitties safely settled for the night.

You come around to what would be the driver’s side on a real car, and look through Breakdown’s window. There’s no need for a hologram in his cab space, since his windows are tinted as dark as Knockout’s. He doesn’t answer your quiet greeting.

You blink, aware of Knockout and Soundwave settling behind you; from the sounds of things, Soundwave’s probably just standing still while he watches Lazerbeak un-dock and fly around, and Knockout’s probably stretching.

You, however, are resisting the urge to reach out and touch the matte blue paneling in front of you, vividly aware of just how unwelcomed your touch would be to this mech.

“Breakdown?” you repeat, then realize you dropped your voice into an unintentional whisper, quickly clear your throat, and try again. “Uh… Breakdown? My violent, drywall-destroying headache? Hello?”

No fucking response, calling to mind unpleasant memories of the last time an unresponsive ‘bot in vehicle mode had neglected to answer you, and before you can stop the impulse, you reach out and rap he side of your fist lightly against his door, just beside the handle.

“Hey, Breakd--” and you finish with a startled scream, because every fucking panel on his body pops free and then freezes at the same time a fucking cannon pops out of the top of his cab. Sans the weapon powering on with an angry harmonic buzz, he looks like an explosion frozen mid-frame a split second after detonation. You can see fine seams and gaps of shadow through every distorted shape, and the faintest, vaguest sense of a humanoid form, curled up into his chunky, oversized vehicle mode.

“FRAGGING PRIMUS,” he answers you, before curling himself back down tight into his disguise, the antenna on top of his roof quivering as his headlights flash brightly, then dim. “Don’t fragging touch me you greasy little blood bag.”

Yep. He’s just like a grumpy marine woken up from an afternoon nap, and you’re not going to analyze your brain’s decision to catalog this abrasive motherfucker in the same category as you’re far more worthy, human soldier friends.

Friends you’re never going to see again.

Friends you’re--

--not going to cry about right now . You’ll have time for that later , you tell the rising swell of emotions that threatens to swamp your headspace, focusing instead on the angry-scared-defensive buzz of energy twisting in the air around you. It’s very… unpleasant.

You’re possibly never going to get used to this distinctly alien behavior from your alien company. You can literally feel their emotions, and it’s the weirdest shit ever as you stare at the nearly-literal tank in front of you, the one who feels like a nervous highschooler about to give their first ever speech to an audience.

“Well, don’t fall asleep on the job then, you useless bucket of bolts,” you answer mildly.

“You fell asleep?” Knockout snaps, walking up behind you both.

“I did not fragging fall asleep,” is the immediate, growly retort. “I was… Browsing the holonet,” Breakdown mutters. “I didn’t expect the fragger to touch me.”

“Well, I didn’t expect you to go non-responsive! I don’t need to worry about another one of my metal idiots dying!” you snap.

And immediately regret saying that out loud oh fuck, fuck, fuck . You’ve never told them how you’ve internalized your thoughts and feelings, short of that one heart-to-Spark conversation with Soundwave and Beaky you’d had what feels like lifetimes ago. It was barely a week ago.

“Don’t call me an idiot,” Breakdown growls back immediately, his engine turning on with a threatening rumble you no longer have to worry about, because now your only immediate neighbors are parked airplanes and an abandoned lot grown over with plants.

“No? You should stop acting like one, then,” Knockout drawls.

The unhappy vibrations in the air assaulting your sense of self, are nearly contagious in their displeasure as the sensation increases like a building thundercloud. A charged pressure takes over the space around you as you put a hand to your face.

Not again, you think with an unvoiced groan, and hear the faintest whoosh of Lazerbeak zipping by overhead with a fading, trilling note, probably going at top or near-top speed. At least someone’s having fun.

“I’m gonna stop you both right there,” you interrupt, having no desire to listen to another spat between the two mechs you can’t figure out are still dating or went through a really nasty breakup. “I just want to get my shit unloaded so you can get your sorry aft out of here. Deal?” you ask tiredly.

Breakdown scoffs at you, then promptly drops your trailer off his hitch with a casual shrug of his suspension. The front fork lands on the ground with a loud TUNK and a cracking sound that has your left eye twitching.

“Whatever, fleshie,” he starts, sounding entirely unconcerned and possibly unaware of the damage he just caused to the trailer  that you fucking RENTED. “I’m just--”

“If that hitch is bent, I’m bending you,” you snarl, pivoting on a heel as you march alongside his stupid perfectly painted panels, round his big ass nearly-as-tall-as-you-are tire with tread deep enough to lose a finger in, and stare.

You stare, because at first, you think that the gods have finally taken pity on you, and Breakdown is spared another shrieking dress-down. Unfortunately, as you continue to stare, your keen eyes take note of the slight bend to the once-perfectly-straight bar that extends forward from the triangular frame of the trailer’s forward hitch assembly.

A forward hitch assembly that’s now sporting a lovely little bend on the main axel, to go with that cock-eyed ball-cover, and it all neatly matches the fine little crack in once-flawless cement that now also has a little chip in it.

Every little flaw and detail of distress stands out to you like he’d twisted the trailer’s frame up into modern art that’d make the guy from Iron Giant cry, because it wouldn't look pretty. No, it would look a lot more like how you’d like to make Breakdown look, because god-fucking- dammit this ‘bot is more expensive than a teenager’s car insurance premium after totalling three cars.

“Breakdown.” Your voice comes out strange, even to you. Distant. Too-calm, while clearly indicating absolutely anything but a calm disposition just now.

Knockout has frozen in place and is looking at you with wide, perfectly circular eyes that might have inspired humor in you if you were in absolutely any mood to be humorous, when you have three kitties meowing to come out now, and a rented trailer in need of repair that’s going to cost you even more money from your dwindling little nest-egg that isn’t looking so stable anymore.

“What?” big-blue-and-dumb snaps.

“You have three seconds to drive off, before I stab your tire with a pencil,” you say flatly, still staring at the bent hitch.

“What?” he repeats, this time sounding flabbergasted.

“Three,” you begin, as you reach your hand up towards the back of your head, where exactly the promised implement of destruction awaits your suicidal grasp. Currently, it’s still half-assedly holding your frazzled hair up into your trademark lazy, get-shit-done bun. “Two,” you continue, yanking it out of your hair as your peripheral vision catches the sight of Lazerbeak zipping back over to you all, no doubt to see what’s going on.

Breakdown laughs at you.

“The frag do you think a fragging toothpick is gonna-- OW!”

“One,” you spit out, though your angry hiss is lost under the sound of Breakdown’s engine revving as he jerks forward, the smell of his exhaust fawning over you as he drives off. The pencil is yanked out from your hand as the tire rotates away, and you step back with a scowl to watch him go.

He only drives about ten feet or so before stopping to transform, and you watch with only the tiniest twinge of guilt as the big idiot twists his left leg at the hip and knee, looking behind his calf.

“You stabbed me with a fragging pencil?” he blurts, that singular yellow optic staring incredulously at the tiny stick of gaily painted yellow that protrudes from the black tire that’s almost entirely covered by his leg plating. “A fucking pencil. You realize I can just, step on you, right? You’re so fragging tiny, breakable and fragile and--”

“And well aware that I’m marked as an accessory to High Command, and thus off-limits to your petty mood swings,” you quote with mean bitterness as you bare your teeth at him, and cross your arms. “And you just cost me however the fuck much money the rental company is going to hit me for, because you broke the fucking trailer you fucking dumbass. Can you do anything without breaking stuff? Is that why your clueless aft is named Breakdown?”

Maybe you should have stopped talking when his eye started twitching. Maybe you should have stopped talking when Knockout sent you a panicky-looking double-take, then quickly held up his hands in a cease-and-desist gesture you likewise ignored.

Maybe you should have stopped talking when Breakdown began marching towards you, looking every inch the pissed off metal titan he is as his steps thunder in the empty space of the pole barn, every mechanical whirr and pneumatic hiss of his alien body a sharp symphony of approaching doom. Not that he has very far to walk, because in two lazy strides he’s right in front of you, glowering down from his head’s perch behind his massive metal not-boobs. He can either lean forward to stare at you full-on, or peek like he is now menacingly from behind the bulk of his own body.

It’s therefore a comedic doom that you look up at with a scowl and crossed arms, because no matter how big and strong and swole this pissy fucker is, he’s not as scary as the ‘bot behind you.

You know, the one who’s sharp, pointy silver pedes are suddenly in the corner of your vision in both eyes, because without making a single sound he’s walked over to join your little tete-a-tete in the middle of the pole barn, instead of loitering over by the entrance.

You jump a little. But only a little , and not nearly as much as Breakdown does, because that big ass mech actually flinches, taking half a step back as he seems to resist the urge to scowl openly, and instead reluctantly turns his surly saffron gaze down towards you.

“You don’t wanna fragging know why I’m named Breakdown,” said mech answers, though his gaze is no longer trying to melt you into the floor like long-distance acid.

“If you’d stop costing me unnecessary resources, I’d have no reason to complain about you,” you snap. “Thanks for hauling my shit, now leave please before you break anything else I’ll get stuck paying for.”

“Quit whining about it,” he snaps. “If it’s such a fucking problem, just fix it.”

“I can’t fix a bent trailer hitch, do I look like a blacksmith to you? Do you see a forge here I can bang on some metal with? Do you see any equipment or tool boxes unloaded, that I could use to--”

“Oh for the love of… Both of you, shut up,” Knockout begs. “I’ll fix the trailer. Breakdown, get my bodywork kit from the lab. I’ll--”

“No fucking way, that’s a waste of Energon. I’m not wasting a trip to-and-from base just to get some fucking tools to fix a piece of Earth junk.”

“Oh my god I am going to kill you all,” you groan, throwing your hands over your face, only to jump once-a-fragging -gain at the absolute cascade of tonal-note distress that sudden assaults your ears. It bleeds into the air around you, an unfortunately familiar expression of musical displeasure by the mech who makes the sound.

Then you make a series of epically epic poor choices, in rapid succession, before you even have time to process what you’re doing.

First, you look up. That’s mistake number one, because you learn that Soundwave is standing directly above you, his feet quite literally to either side of your body. You’re given the most unasked-for and unprecedented view of his dagger-guarded crotch and the camel-toe like armor cover that the front petal turns into, along with all the other little fiddly bits of his thighs and knees and sweet mother of god.

He’s looking down at you, and you meet his gaze, which is mistake number two. You can just see the black gleam of his shiny, reflective visor as he tilts his head to see down the front of his chest.

Mistake number three is letting your gaze glance back to the apex between his legs, feeling your face turn warm, and why is it even turning warm there’s literally nothing wrong here except that you’re standing under who-knows-how-many-tons of metal titan with a first-hand POV shot at his crotch.

You yank your eyes forward like the good responsible adult you keep pretending to be, only to let out a short scream of surprise to discover your vision blocked by a slash of gunmetal gray and poison-purple.

Lazerbeak twitters contritely at you, wiggling her sharp little flippy arms.

“Uh--!” Oh god please tell me she’s not gonna comment on that. Please don’t comment on that, Beaky, PLEASE don’t--

“Just get my kit,” Knockout snaps. To your vast relief, Beaky stays silent, but she doesn’t stop staring intently at you like you should be able to read her very soul off her flat, emotionless face.

Breakdown throws his massive hands up in the air, scowling openly at you all.

“Fine! Waste precious, finite resources on the fleshie! It’s not like Energon’s scarce or critically necessary to our survival or anything. We can just waste it on space bridges for every whim and whimsy that--”

“If it’s that expensive to make portals, why are any of you coming to my house at all?” you ask with a tired groan, putting a hand over your face in favor of having your heart squeezed looking at Lazerbeak’s cute faceless face.

“Great question, I don’t fragging know,” Breakdown’s quick to retort, his engine rumbling so noisily that you almost can’t understand his actual words.

You quickly drop the hand from your face at the sudden sensation of shadow falling all around you that comes paired with an annoyed sounding twitter from Beaky, only to squeak with surprise as your world is, once again, a new shade of gray.

Silver metal sweeps in close as Knockout collects you into his hands from between Soundwave’s feet, having crouched down behind the other Decepticon to snatch you up.

You tumble painlessly into his palms with a quiet oof, barely jostled, but still tipped off balance none-the-less as he carefully draws his hands back towards his chest.

Soundwave, who remains perfectly silent, only remains standing put right where he is. Though his gaze finally leaves you, and instead turns to stare intently at Breakdown, who abruptly flinches and shifts his weight back, again.

Your heart is ready to beat right out of your chest as you let yourself slump into Knockout’s hands, breaths coming in short puffs.

“...Fine, I’ll get the stupid toolkit. Not like I have anything better to do,” Breakdown mutters, as a familiar sparkly vortex splices into the air behind him with a hissing spit of green sparks. He pinches the pencil with far more care than you’d have expected, and deftly plucks it out of his tire like someone would a splinter.

Then he flicks it your way, hardly close enough of a trajectory you’re actually worried about it hitting you, but there’s no need-- before Knockout can even turn his chest away, a shield of gray appears in front of you, blocking your view of Breakdown.

Soundwave’s arm moved so fast, you feel an artificial gust of wind wash over you a full second after your eyes have even registered his movement. He’s several feet ahead of you, and you hear the tiny tink of the pencil bouncing harmlessly off his plating as it clatters to the floor.

“Fragging waste of my time,” Breakdown can be heard muttering as you hear him walk away, heavy steps still possibly the loudest machinery you’ve ever heard and making you wonder how he doesnt’ crack the floor with every movement.

“Um… Thanks,” you say after the portal closes a moment later, the pole barn now jarringly quiet and still after all that excitement.

Knockout snorts and probably rolls his eyes. The mech in front of you both only turns a bit at the hips without moving his feet at all, looking back at you with a silent gaze over his shoulder. Part of his upper arm, the flat panel that extends well past the height of his head, blocks your view as he peeks from behind it.

Then, Soundwave looks forward again as he drops his arm back to his side, and begins walking away from you both, towards the other end of the hangar.

The farther he gets, the more you realize just how tall he is, his thorned helmet just barely hovering below the ceiling, and he has to duck to pass under the periodically spaced rafters. You also realize that this might be the first time you’ve ever seen Soundwave at full height for a significant length of time. Long enough that you actually have time to fully take him in, from the graceful step of long legs to the little peeps of orchid biolights that adorn his frame in unlikely places.

Like the inner rims of his hips you’d just gotten an unintentionally personal vantage point view of, or the backs of his thighs, traveling up towards his tight metal ass--

Oh my god, you think numbly, trying not to goggle as a realization hits you over the head in the most unwelcomed and most untimely of fashions, watching his graceful, long-limbed stride.

He’s hot.

As your eyes travel down his frame, realizing for the first time that Soundwave… is actually very pretty, for a thirty-foot tall killer alien not-robot, you also realize something else. Something else, that’s beginning to make sweat break out on your skin, cause your heart to skip forward a beat as your breath catches… and not in a good way.

He’s really, really tall. Super tall. Like. Taller-than-your-old-house tall.

So is Knockout.

Don’t do it, you tell yourself, keeping your eyes firmly trained on a spot they probably shouldn’t be staring at, but if staring at Soundwave’s alien ass is going to keep you from phobic hysteria, you’ll keep staring at that tight little triangle of metal and the purple lines of lights guiding your eyes to it like a target. ‘Aim here,’ they seem to say, terminating in a downright suggestive pattern that all points towards his pretty waistline and what sits below it.

Don’t do it, you beg yourself, as you struggle to keep your head lifted, to keep your eyes from moving down. When they move of their own accord anyways, you tell yourself that you’re just admiring the long, sleek legs wrapped in deadly metal plating that can transform into a car or airplane. You tell yourself that you’re just fixating on glossy, perfectly painted panels and well polished, well oiled clean metal.

You tell yourself that you’re actually checking Soundwave out for real, not using him as a spontaneous and desperate distraction to keep yourself from looking down, down at the floor, which is--

Oh, no . Oh no.

You did it. You shouldn’t have, but you did it. Fuck.

You looked down.

~*~

Knockout has about two kliks to register the fact that the state of the grumpy, irritable, sleep-deprived and probably fuel-deprived human in his hands has changed, before quite suddenly he has her plastered to the front of his chest as she shakes.

“OhGodputmedownplease,” she begs with vulnerable panic freely expressed in her voice, causing Knockout’s optics to widen fractionally, before he sighs, remembering.

Of course.

“I’m not going to drop you,” he assures her, even as he carefully bends a knee and kneels down, then awkwardly shifts his legs, and lets himself plunk down on the bare concrete ground. It’ll add to the scratches already marking up his shiny aft, but he doesn’t care. The only ‘bots around to see it don’t really care either, and it’s all going to get repainted soon, anyways.

“Are we down?” is the pitifully whined response he gets, as Knockout studies with a frown the shivering form of his precious human, her face pressed into his plating and her fingers gripping onto the edges so hard, her knuckles have turned paler than the rest of her skin.

“We’re down,” he answers shortly.

She nods against his chest, but does not relinquish her tight hold. He’s not exactly upset about that, per say, but Knockout would far rather she look up at his face and talk with him.

~”Beaky wondering: why are you scared of heights? Have you been dropped before?”~ comes a voice that Knockout first always mistakes for Soundwave,  before he realizes the too-quiet volume is coming from the cursed speakers under Butterfly’s ears.

“Never liked them,” she answers rapidly.

“Well, we’re down now,” Knockout says shortly. “So perhaps we can--”

“Set me down , so I can go take care of my kitties,” she interrupts, finally pushing herself away from him, very much like she’d rather do anything than move away.

Knockout feels his Spark constrict, this time in a pleasant way, right before he hears a familiar engine’s loud, unhappy rumble. Moments later, its followed by the sound of heavy pede-steps as breakdown walks back out of the portal which closes behind him.

So perhaps we can talk, Knockout finishes in his head moodily, sparing his other Spark-ache a mere glance before looking back to Butterfly, as he gently lays the back of his hand down on the floor and unfurls his fingers, allowing her to step off.

“Thank you,” she mumbles.

Knockout only sighs, and wonders when things might go back to normal.

Chapter Text

Life really likes kicking you below the belt.

This is something you should know by now, and yet it still manages to catch you woefully by surprise when, after finally, finally plopping down on your ass after nearly five hours straight of moving boxes, a fresh disaster occurs.

Before disaster, though, comes a sudden change in the atmosphere around you. Literally.

It’s not even one that you’re aware of, until quite suddenly you go from progressively melting into the sofa-less sofa cushions you’d kept back from the dump, to sitting up straight as the weirdest fucking feeling tickles your sense of perception.

Every hair on your body stands up on end as your eyes go wide, because you feel downright like someone’s touching you except there’s no one near you, not even Beaky. She’s your first guess, except the little flappy-bot is busy testing out the rafters to find which ones are the most comfortable to perch upon. She doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to the fact there’s a hidden presence wrapping itself around you like a warm hug, like too many arms suddenly circling around you except there’s no actual arms or any movement against your clothes or hair. It’s weird.

And your big metal bat isn’t the source.

It’s also probably not Knockout, because he’s solely focused on fixing the trailer hitch he decided needed to be completely removed from the fucking trailer, just so he could brace it in a massive-ass clamp he pulled out of a box that massive fucking thing should not have fit inside. After helping you unload the back of said trailer, he’d busied himself getting to work on fixing what his clueless dumb hunk of a friend broke.

And he’s still busy doing that, not paying you any mind as you stare at him.

So if it’s not Lazerbeak, and it’s not Knockout, then it’s--

~”Request: report state of current charge and frame integrity?”~ comes a familiar, vocoded voice beneath your jaw, and you sigh as you push the headphones up over your ears. Your eyes glance his way as you listen to him speak; the comfortable muffs immediately silence the soundscape of the world around you, and you feel your body relax in instinctive response to the sudden absence of excessive sensory stimulation; you always failed to realize just how noisy the world is, until you finally find that rare space holding only peace and quiet.

Well. Peace, quiet, and a fussy metal alien who’s not even remotely chicken-like, except in how much of a mother hen he’s proven himself to be. If you could ignore the whole might-kill-you-someday thing, that is, but it’s getting reflexive to simply tell yourself not to think about that just now. You can ponder it later, later , you tell your rational thoughts of self-preservation.

You clear your throat, looking across the room at where Soundwave is standing, where he’s remained standing ever since he first walked off. Your confusing knight in shining armor stares at you from across the bare expanse of gray concrete, and despite the fact he’s well over thirty feet away from you, your body swears it can feel the feather-light touch of fingers trailing just over your skin.

If those fingers were entirely intangible, invisible, and didn’t actually feel very much like fingers at all, as the touchless sensation swirls itself around your body, barely stirring recognition. Lacking absolutely anything to directly compare this sensation to, your confused brain struggles to attach anything even remotely similar.

It’s like… if he took a hug, turned it into a liquid-gas, then dumped it over you to let it float around you in the air, all warm pressing closeness and that indefinable feeling of someone else near. Except there’s no one near you.

Except maybe the alien protoscale wrapped around your neck, disguised as a pair of expensive looking black headphones.

He’s done this to you before, but you can’t remember if it’s ever been this intense, and you find yourself feeling very small and exposed all of a sudden, like he can see right through all your layers and walls and into the fragile, vulnerable center of yourself.

Like he can touch it, and it’s all you can do not to shoot up from the ground where you sit and bolt for the door.

What does he want?

The sensation stops barely a second after you’ve thought about fleeing for escape, leaving you with the strangest sensation; almost disorientated, like you just chugged a shot of concentrated energy-drink after downing a full cup of expresso. You’re wired and on edge, yet relaxed and no longer feeling any driving need to get up and do something like run for your life because someone just touched you without actually touching you.

~”Butterfly,”~ comes his emotionless prompting through the speakers, his one-off statement of your name throwing you for a second before you realize he probably meant that in a questioning tone of voice. You jerk back into motion like a frozen statue given life, quickly brushing hair back from your face as your nostrils flare.

“I-I’m fine,” you answer quickly. “I’m feeling a normal amount of tired for the work i’ve done today, and don’t you fucking dare try to henpeck me about bedtime. You’re not my dad, and you’re not my caretaker,” you warn him before he can even think of moving on to questions of so how do we fix the human? You are not a fucking pet.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the answer your questionably moral knight wanted. He turns to face you fully, and then he begins to walk towards you as he shrinks oh god what.

You stare, stupefied, as you watch Soundwave’s body seem to fold in upon itself as parts flip around and flutter up over his frame, granting you a mostly unprecedented peek at an absolute abundance of orchid, bio-lit circuitry. You were right; the pretty lines of illuminated pinstripe on his legs do continue under the panels of armor that wrap and fold back down around his thighs, his calves, the servos in his ankles and knees and other joints spinning as they no doubt recalibrate.

He casually does all this as he’s walking towards you, without so much as a single falter in his perfectly smooth, level stride or a waver in his step. One moment he’s a full sized, rafter-destroying hazard and the next he’s a tornado of spinning, flipping parts.

And then he’s himself again, only smaller, you-sized, the size that means he can get anywhere you can and there’s absolutely no escape from this approaching predator as he stalks towards you with the patience of a Grim Reaper.

“Remind me how much Energon you just wasted for no good reason, performing mass displacement?” Knockout, his voice muffled through the headphones over your ears, speaks up without looking away from his careful examination of the trailer frame you’re pretty sure should have been fixed like two hours ago. At this rate, you’re going to be returning the trailer in better condition than it left the lot. You sure hope no one asks about it. Sweet merciful maker you hope that no one asks you any god-damned questions.

Soundwave ignores Knockout’s question, instead stalking his way across the floor to you without any hurry in his stride, except the intensity seems to grow more poignant the closer he gets.

At first you think that’s just your own reaction to seeing him approach you like this, but as Soundwave comes within (his) arm’s reach, you quickly realize that it probably has more to do with his aura. Electromagnetic field. Whatever. That funny-feeling pressure in the air that surrounds him, one that grows with potency and electrical charge as he draws near, and then that not-so-massive-anymore titan is crouching down in front of you.

You’re aware of the fact that Knockout has finally stopped fussing over his project to look over at you both, absolutely still as he stares at Soundwave.

Clearing your throat is awkwardly loud in the silence.

For a moment, no one says anything. Then, Soundwave leans forward a touch, and you go stiff when you see his head tilt the slightest touch as he seems to carefully examine you, very much like he’s looking for something.

When he speaks, his digitized voice comes through the headphones still over your ears, rather than voiced aloud. It gives you the strangest sensation of distance between you, despite staring directly into his face.

~“Statement: Soundwave, wishes to confirm matter of delicacy,”~ he asserts, ignoring your prior line of conversation entirely.

“What?” you ask blankly, wondering what in the flying fuck he could want to ask you about, now. A matter of delicacy? Delicacy? You’re pretty sure he’s not about to ask you where the tastiest gourmet gasoline and diesel fuel is, which means he probably wants to ask a personal question.

He seems to hesitate, perfectly still except for the softest sound of his mechanical body he’s apparently not trying to dampen and hide, just now. You can hear the faint whisper of moving parts and that soft, tonal not-sound that sits on the very edges of your hearing when you’re both still enough it’s not covered up by the shift of your own weight.

~“Soundwave: has observed biological signs indicative of onset of involuntary script initiation,”~ he begins, as if that explains fucking anything to your human ass. ~“Discretion: Soundwave, largely inexperienced with human nuance. Concern: recent particulate data collected, indicative of open mesh-wound present. Relevant understanding,”~ he continues, as your eyes go round and the blood rushes to your face the longer this awkward nerd talks. Oh, sweet merciful Gods above please tell you he isn’t asking about what you think he’s-- ~ “Human reproductive cycle in uterus bearing frames; produces external fuel-flush through valve system as part of recurring, natural biological process,”~ the apparently somewhat well educated alien in front of you pontificates, and you swear you can hear ringing in your ears despite the knowledge no such thing is happening in his flawless speakers’ audio. ~”Further observation,”~ he continues, because of course he does, ~”No signs of acute distress beyond ordinary behaviors exhibited. Request: confirm scent of blood is result of involuntary organic reproductive heat script initializing?” he asks, tilting his head again slightly, and you realize that he must be looking you over.

Because, despite your stupid body cramping up all week, despite your stupid emotions swinging wildly left-and-right-and-all-around between every possible feeling from elation to weepy dramatic tears to raging murderous anger to depressive funk so deep even Gizmo couldn’t pull you out of it at first, your period hadn’t actually started yet.

Which had been great, because you didn’t have to worry about changing your own damn underwear out or worrying about getting blood on their seats -- oh god please no, no no no -- or any of the things that came with the inconvenience of your uterus deciding to hit you with reproductive spite once a month-ish.

When the fuck did this dude Boogle period cycles? And what the hell did he read?

Your face couldn’t get any warmer if he’d literally set it on fire.

“Soundwave.” Your voice comes out very firm, and maybe an octave or two higher than you’d meant. “Soundwave,” you try again, correcting your pitch as you struggle to maintain a straight-faced composure. “Humans don’t… Go into heat, we’re not like cats,” you explain slowly. “I’m fine,” you whisper. “If you’re smelling blood then yeah, my period probably just started, it’s been due all week,” you state bluntly, and wonder if it’s still an option to run to the nearest police station. ‘Help! I’m being cared for by scary space aliens who care about my uterus pains!’ probably wouldn’t go over very well for a plea for help, however, and then your metal idiots would just collect you from the insane-asylum you’d be strapped up and gift wrapped for them inside.

Soundwave doesn’t budge.

You also had no idea he knew what a period was, or that he could smell your fucking blood from across the room from you oh god that’s so weird. You increase, once again, your already substantial expectations for their inhuman senses, and spare a glance at a still seemingly clueless Knockout. He probably hasn’t smelled your fertile state yet and holy shit why is that so hot to think about?

And absolutely not what you should let your brain fixate on just now, as you yank your gaze back from polished black armor to glossy black glass.

Past comparisons of your alien friends to organic lifeforms like cats and dogs, easily come right back to the forefront of your focus as you try to understand what the fuck is going on behind that dark visor.

After a moment, Soundwave’s head tilts down again a touch, and then oh-so-slowly, he begins to lift a hand towards you.

You freeze on reflex, breath held.

He freezes, too, before you see Knockout’s eyes roll behind him as the medic stands up from the trailer frame he’s been fussing over.

“What are you doing? Don’t crowd her,” he orders as he starts walking over. “She likes her space.”

You turn a dumbstruck look on Knockout, wondering where the hell that came from. Mr.Grabby-hands suddenly cares about your personal space?

“He’s fine,” you answer blankly, then wonder if maybe you should have agreed with him instead.

Regardless, your answer seems to have been taken as permission, and the mech still crouched in front of you like a pile of sharp shrapnel promptly reaches for you again.

Your breath catches as long, bone-thin fingers gracefully fan out from his boxy palm, and your eyes widen as you feel them slip between the band of the headphones on your head, and your hair. He lifts slightly, and before you can reach up to push them off your ears, quite suddenly the headphones are peeling themselves away as the muffs lift free.

“Oh, uh, what?” you ask, startled, as Soundwave examines the straightened headphones. They suddenly look so much more the alien technology you know them to be, no longer bent into a familiar shape.

Then they fucking dissolve into what your eyes can only discern as three-dimensional pixels, little boxy cubes of flashing bits of metal in every shade of silver and gray that you can imagine, dissolving in his hand like the mercury version of cottage cheese.

“Uh…”

“Oh for Primus’ sake,” Knockout mutters as he stops a step away from you both, staring down with crossed arms. “Why are you reformatting it?” he wonders plainly.

You, clueless as to what’s going on, can only watch as Soundwave seems to do… whatever the fuck it is he’s doing, holding a handful of alien pixel-dust-goop. True to form, he once again does not choose to answer Knockout, and you watch with bewildered awe as science-magic takes place right in front of your face.

Whatever he’s doing, it’s really cool. Like, sci-fi movie CGI in the highest definition except there’s no television screen in front of your face. This is real, and for a moment, you’re lost in the wonder of it, mesmerized by the moving patterns of living metal. 

A moment later, the familiar headphones from before seem to materialize from the silvery-gray pixel-jelly, fluidly reassembling and curling back into position like they’d never changed state.

After a moment, Soundwave shifts his hand forward, probably holding them back out to you.

Still just as confused as ever, you hesitantly reach out to accept them, picking the device up off his metal hand with a soft click of the metal clacking against his solid digits.

“Um…”

He doesn’t say a fucking thing. No tonal beeps, no weird aura-touchy-vibes that tattle on his state of being, except that he’s very intently watching you for whatever reaction it is he’s looking for.

Even Knockout seems confused as he looks down at you both, then rolls his eyes.

“You have no idea how tempting it is to kick you right now,” he states flatly, which gets an immediate reaction from Soundwave, who rises up to his full height as he turns--

--and fucking mass displaces himself in less time than it takes you to yelp and jerk back with surprise, quite suddenly faced with a massive-ass leg in front of your face as the wickedly sharp points of Soundwave’s armor flip and slot into place. His ankles are girded by up-turned points you’re absolutely certain have probably cut the metal equivalent of nuts off another mech at some point in his long, violence-filled life.

You then watch with a dropped jaw as Knockout literally scrambles backwards, nearly tripping over his own two feet as he hastily ducks below the nearest rafter beam as Soundwave takes a single, threatening step forward. He uses his body posture to make himself look even larger, the flat panels of his arms tilting to show off the length and breadth of his limbs as his visor stares at the backpedaling medic.

Holy shit.

“I was kidding! Kidding!” Knockout splutters, holding both hands up as Soundwave slowly eases his weight back from his slight lean forward. Now standing perfectly straight and upright again, that black glass remains locked onto Knockout’s face for several long, hair-raising moments.

Then, that hidden gaze turns towards your eyes, and you remember to shut your mouth with a little click.

Note to self: Soundwave does not react well to threats, even joking ones, you think faintly. Knockout’s engine is making a rather transparent noise you’ve come to associate with his distress, and you clear your throat.

“Oooookay. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at speaking your language, but I have no clue what the fuck just happened. Beaky, can you translate?” you beg.

Which seems to catch Soundwave off guard, because his head jerks up and back a bit, before he rapidly twists around with a graceful pivot of both feet, without actually moving from position at all. He just turns his legs to shift at the hips, looking behind himself and up to where his Symbiote is happily perched on a rafter beam three down from you all.

~”Beaky answers: Knockout made a dumb choice and Soundwave reminded him why that’s a bad idea,”~ is her immediate reply, voice spilling out from the headphone speakers you still have no idea what the fuck he did with. There’s nothing visibly different about the headphones, and you don’t hear any changes in Beaky’s audio output.

“He can’t take a joke,” Knockout snaps acerbically, as he wanders back to the trailer project he’d abandoned. “No wonder you’re the last one anyone invites to game night,” he mutters. “I wouldn’t take you even if it’d cost me half my salary in a losing bet.”

~”We make our own game night,”~ comes a vocoded reply you honestly struggle to identify the owner of, glancing between Beaky and Soundwave as both ‘bots in question look at you. ~”Beaky answers,”~ comes her belated clarification.

You stare at the metal titans who have become the center of your universe, and blink.

Then, you blink again, give yourself a mental shake, and continue to stare at them like a greatly displaced tourist unsure what part of the state you’ve ended up in, but boy is it sure something.

“You… Have game night?” you repeat, not quite willing to believe that, somehow. Your brain conjures up an image of a bunch of sharp paneled, pointy ‘bots gathered around a massive table playing the world’s biggest board game.

~”Beaky answers: every Quartex,”~ followed by a cheerful chirp and a warbling, digitized trill as Beaky flutters her wing panels, then pushes herself off the rafter with a tip of her body. She dives off like a paper airplane, neatly catching wind and gliding through the air as she zips over to you. ~”Do you wanna join?”~ she invites.

You probably don’t, but you are curious.

“What kind of games do--?”

“Nothing that a human would be able to participate in,” Knockout says with a roll of his eyes. “Besides, you’d be unwelcomed. I’d spend the whole evening just making sure no one stepped on you or dropped their drink on your head,” he dismisses.

You stare over at Knockout with a funny knotted feeling in your chest, before movement catches your eye, and your gaze is dragged back to Soundwave in time to watch him dip his head with a funny motion as he turns his back on Knockout.

You swear, for just a moment, that you feel a faint little buzz against your senses, and for the first time, you realize what difference Soundwave made in his protoform scale.

You can feel that increasingly familiar, tattle-tale presence of his EM-field, that funny electric tickle against your senses; except this time, it’s coming distinctly from in front of you, not around you this time.

The headphones he gave you aren’t mirroring his field’s broadcast, and you look down at them in your hands with surprise.

Did he… Hide his field from me? you wonder, stunned. And forever confused. Fuck you wished he’d just give you a straight answer. Where had the chatty, conversational mech from before gone?

Probably the same place past-me is hiding, is the unwanted answer your own mind supplies, well aware of the timing that started your awareness of a difference in Soundwave’s behavior. He’s been just as attentive as you’ve grown accustomed to, fussy about security and needing to know where you and Lazerbeak are at all times, but he’s stopped asking you questions.

Well. Ones that don’t pertain to anything beyond seeming necessity, work, and safety, which you figure for the head of security must simply count as more work.

He doesn’t ask you to explain human things to him anymore, or point out interesting objects he wants to know more about. He was downright eerie to work alongside at your house, because he hadn’t said a single word to you unless it was absolutely necessary, and when he did, he’d fallen back into his habit of talking to you through clipped recordings of your own voice. When he didn’t seem to have a relevant enough audio clip to use, he utilized body language or, as a final resort, talking to you through his speech software.

It was a direct contrast to Beaky, who carried on as if absolutely nothing had ever changed. She’s still your precious, slightly obnoxious, adorable not-so-little angel of death.

Said not-so-little death angel, who pivots in the air to make a binary squeal at Knockout you think might be her species’ equivalent to an impolite hiss. She wiggles her little pointy flippy-arms at him for good effect, then turns and zooms through the air to glide into place beside you, hovering to your left.

At full size, her wingspan is easily as long as a good sized van, and her triangular main body is a little longer than you are, tall. Though her faceplate which flips down from her belly to face forward while in flight, is an approachable size. Huggable, even, if it weren’t for the sharp edges of her armor that make cuddling a creative challenge.

Cuddling you haven’t been really up for doing, ever since your last cuddle-puddle in your old house, a situation your heart just isn’t ready to repeat yet, if ever.

Not for lack of her trying. At least once a day, she tried to coax you into sitting down with her, and no doubt Soundwave, but you never let it get that far again.

All of a sudden you want to cry, and fuck your period, fuck your ovaries, fuck your fucking stupid wound-up unstable emotions because you are crying god-fucking -dammit. And poor Soundwave is right in front of you, so is Lazerbeak, and before you even finish your first sniffle Knockout’s head has whipped around to look at you, every piece of plating on his body ruffling up the faintest bit before going still.

“I’m fine!” you blurt preemptively, jumping up to your feet as your emotions swamp your whole sensorial experience, making your body feel too-hot-too-cold at the same time. They’re suddenly all much too close to you, and you stalk away as Lazerbeak makes a sad little trilling noise, drifting after you. You can tell, because you can see her faint shadow cast by the overhead lights. “I’m fine, I don’t need anyone taking care of me, I don’t need you guys fussing over my bodily functions, and if I have a problem with anything I’ll let you know,” you snap. “So leave me alone.”

~”If I could trust you not to lie, I’d believe that,”~ comes the immediate response, digitized melody spilling out from the headphones.

“I’m not lying,” you snap at her as your grip tightens around the flat band, only to watch Lazerbeak’s visor dim slightly, her little flippy-arms folded up tight against her chassis at rest. Somehow, you get the distinct impression that you just upset her--

~”Restatement: I don’t trust you,”~ repeats that same vocoded voice over the sound of Lazerbeak’s tiny, sad little trill, causing your spine to jerk straight as you pivot on the spot, and stare with wide eyes at Soundwave, who stands looming above you both. You’ve never felt more small than just now, as that black glass stares down at you with not-so-silent judgement, though the motivation behind which you’re clueless to understand.

“What--?”

“Are any of you three ever going to fragging explain what’s going on?” Knockout interrupts with catty attitude. “Because truly, this is absurd to watch. I genuinely can’t tell if you’re trying to torture her or actually think that you can make friends with her,” he says bluntly, staring at Soundwave with a flat expression you don’t like, much like you’ve not liked a lot of things lately.

Feeling a familiar and increasingly powerful need to scream into a pillow, you take a deep breath through your nose instead. You hold it for a few seconds, until you just begin to feel that little aching burn of I need air, and then you let it out in a slow, controlled rush of breath through your mouth.

The only thing saving this situation from degrading your already very fragile mental state, is the fact all three of your kitties are still happily patrolling the garage, and safely well away from any of your three metal idiots and your bad temper.

“I’m not sure I can-- I’m not sure I can call any of you my friend anymore,” you admit with a waver in your voice, your words not coming out nearly as strong as the honest confession had been in your head. “I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t call someone perfectly willing to kill me, a friend.”

And immediately set off another episode of alien mental-health disaster, because Soundwave’s entire body starts bleeding unhappy tonal notes before the sound goes silent, and this time, you didn’t hear any echo of it through the device in your hands.

He definitely changed the way the headphones function, and it shouldn’t be messing with your heart as much as it is just now.

All you said was the honest-to-goodness truth, but--

~”Beaky proposes: okay, if I can’t call you my friend, can I call you family? Family totally is willing to kill each other over stupid stuff, and they don’t even have to be friends,”~ says your angel of death as you turn to look at her, wildly unsure if she was being serious or sarcastic with a slice of cynical realism.

“Uh…”

~”No.”~

~”I didn’t ask you.”~

~”The answer is no. She is not family, she is our prisoner,”~ comes the flat, tonal reply as the two converse in a language that you can understand, and it’s the weirdest fucking thing ever because it sounds exactly like Soundwave is patiently arguing with himself. Also, wow, does it hurt hearing him say that as bluntly as you have.

If you felt bad before, now you feel miserable.

Lazerbeak makes an angry trilling noise that teeters off into a shrill, unhappy whine that’s steadily growing so loud, you have to throw your hands over your ears just to ease the ache.

“Ow.”

Knockout, meanwhile, throws his hands up into the air like he’s been done with the lot of you for longer than Earth’s sun has burned.

“Of course she’s not your fragging family!” he snaps, clearly having been able to over-hear her quiet voice from the headset without its padded muffs being sealed over your ears. “Sweet rusted chrome , are you trying to--? You can’t make a Symbiote out of a human,” Knockout growls, sounding truly angry as he takes a step forward, absolutely no trace of humor or goading sarcasm in his voice right now. He sounds pissed, temper lending his suave voice a flat, cutting edge that chases away his typical drawl.“Just because she’s nearly the same height and is as pleasant, doesn’t mean that a human is going to replace--”

You’re saved from being, once again, the emotionally distressed person under an unwelcomed amount of attention when someone else steals the spotlight.

~*~

Knockout probably shouldn’t have said any of that, for several reasons.

The first being; while it had never actually gone said between them, it had been largely understood that one simply did not talk about the missing members of Soundwave’s family. It was old news, one of the earliest losses they’d taken in the start of Cybertron’s civil war, and while Knockout was aware that the other members of High Command chose to pretend that the gaggle of Symbiotes and their unfortunate caretaker had somehow miraculously survived, Knockout wasn’t so deluded.

If they hadn’t turned up after the first vorn, then they weren’t going to. If they hadn’t found them by now, they weren’t going to.

And frag it all, if Knockout didn’t finally have an answer to the most confusing behavior he’s seen out of the communication’s officer since the time he’d been sick with a virus that’d nearly killed him. Everything suddenly makes so much sense.

How could he have missed it? It was so obvious, now that he was looking back on the patterns.

The fussing, the attentive attitude and checking in on her, how he was so concerned about what Knockout did or didn’t do with his human. He’d thought at first the communication’s officer was simply vying for further leverage against him, but now, Knockout realizes it’s so much worse than that for his human.

His human, who someone else clearly sees as their human, and Knockout narrows his eyes from across the room as he glares at the idiot’s helmet.

Mostly, though, he probably shouldn’t have said any of that, because it results in immediate pain and regret; Knockout has exactly one klik to register the fact that one of Soundwave’s cables just deployed, before the fragging thing slams into his chest. It latches on at the same time with an uncomfortably strong force, the finger-like grippers squeezing so hard he’s worried for a moment that Soundwave will puncture his plating again .

Instead, however, Knockout’s only yanked forward and off balance until his knees crash to the ground in a shower of sparks, over the sound of his human’s startled yelling.

“WOAH! HEY , NO FIGHTING IN THE POLE BARN!” she cries, throwing her hands up in an erratic sweep of no-thank-you as she spins around. “Holy shit, Soundwave, I thought you were the mature mech,” she blurts faintly.

The spitting tonal notes that cascade off the freaky fragger’s body seem answer enough for how mature the petty officer is, as Soundwave lets go of Knockout’s chassis, retracting his cable.

Relieved to have avoided electrocution and entirely unwilling to show it, Knockout just scowls as he pushes himself up, and makes a show of dusting off his chest.

“Ugh. Hardly, he’s--”

“Don’t you fucking dare, Knockout. You don’t get to talk trash about someone’s family then act like you didn’t do anything wrong,” Butterfly snaps as her hands clench into fists. “Hitting you wasn’t okay, but being nasty with words wasn’t okay, either,” Butterfly seethes. “And before you keep hurling insults at him about how he’s so unloveable and so selfish, conceited, and a lying prick, then maybe you should realize that his face is a fucking mirror and you’re talking about yourself, too.”

That hurts.

That hurts a lot, more than Knockout ever thought such an accusation hurled by a being barely taller than his ankle could be, and all he can do is stare at her in dumbfounded betrayal because what? He’s the disagreeable one, here? He’s the trigger-happy aft who has no concept of boundaries or personal space, let alone the value of privacy?

How could she possibly think he has any comparison to that mutated pile of scrap metal? They are not the same.

“If you actually knew anything about us, you couldn’t possibly say that,” Knockout states after an agonizing hesitation, the silence hanging in the air for several seconds too long following her volatile accusation. Even as he speaks, he’s painfully aware of the fact that the fault for her lack of knowledge, rests squarely on his own shoulders. “I--”

Knockout freezes, because as the air currents drift lazily about this poorly circulated room, he catches whiff of something that makes every panel on his body pull in tight to his frame. His bio-lights blaze as instinct takes over, and before he can even think to realize what he’s doing, Knockout acts on the information his systems just relayed to him.

He can smell blood, and that means the fragger who just touched her, hurt her.

~*~

You have absolutely no warning. One moment things are tense, and the next there’s a fucking death-match going down in your brand new shiny polebarn, as Soundwave and Knockout clash like they have every intention of ripping the other ‘bot apart.

It only lasts about three seconds.

It’s three seconds that drag out like an eternity, because while you’ve seen every evidence of just how dangerous these individuals can be, you’ve never actually seen them fight . You’ve seen Soundwave move so fast it’s like he teleported from one spot to another, but the streaking blur and after-image of his biolights in your vision prove otherwise. You’ve seen them effortlessly lift things that would make your muscles strain if you could even make them budge, and you can see with your own two eyes just how seemingly well built they are.

If there’s absolutely any correlation between the anatomy you’re most familiar with and their own alien biology, then you think the ‘bots you’ve been hanging out with are all top specimens of physical metal-frame fitness. They’re ripped, and they’re strong, and they’re throwing each other around like they weigh nothing.

You’ve never been more scared in your entire fragging life, than that terrible, terrifying split second of seeming horrified realization, as you watch Knockout attack Soundwave with a fucking saw for his hand. That gleaming disc of serrated-toothed metal catches the light, well polished, so pristinely shiny and clean and all your mind can see are images of splattered Energon and blue goop all over the place and--

--and then quite suddenly, your favorite hotrod is flipped on his back in a motion faster than your human eyes can even track. You’re not exactly sure what happened, except that Soundwave clearly did something, and he did it in a twisting dance of metal limbs so fast you’re not even sure how he grabbed Knockout to do that. One second Soundwave’s about to get his face carved in by a surprise attack, and the next…

He’s simply standing over that shiny hot rod, cables fully extended, arms hanging at seemingly relaxed poise by his side, standing tall and straight as Soundwave plants a single pede to Knockout’s back, then presses down with a hard, firm shove.

And you, who watched all this with your brain firing off so many neurons and thoughts you might have actually factually glitched out for a second there, suddenly catch up to the raging crash of adrenaline as it hits your systems. It comes paired with a primitive sense of unfiltered terror, a primal fear that grips your heart with the bones of your ribs as your entire chest feels like it squeezes and contracts, and breathing suddenly becomes so much harder.

“Don’t kill him!” you blurt, running forward, only to halt a few steps later because, right, you’re a fucking bug to these giants and if the massive new craters and cracks in your no-longer-new-and-shiny concrete floor have anything to say about it, it’d be absolutely nothing for them to accidentally squash you, just now. “A-And no-- No fighting in my pole barn! It’s not safe for the kitties, or Lazerbeak, or me,” you add, really, really hoping your track record of bossing these metal titans around might come through for you just now, as you watch Knockout’s hands scrabble and claw at the ground, trying to free himself from the weight pinning him down.

For such a spindly looking mech, Soundwave is far heavier than he looks, apparently.

“Please?” you beg, daring to take another shaking step forward, aware of a soft twittering behind you as Lazerbeak joins you at your side.

Slowly, Soundwave’s helmet turns towards you.

You’re pinned to the spot like you’ve been handcuffed in place, your feet glued to the floor. You can’t fucking breathe, and all you can think right now is to wonder what his face must look like behind that dark, ominous mask. Is he angry? Afraid? Satisfied?

You have no idea what he’s thinking, just now, and there’s no tattle-tale clues for you to try and figure anything out by from the headphones gripped in your clammy hands.

He’s gone radio silent with you.

Soundwave turns back to the mech he has pinned under his foot, then gives a harsh shove, scraping Knockout’s front across the floor with an awful sounding grinding crunch that comes with a brief spurt of sparks. The ex-gladiator steps back from his opponent, leaving Knockout to pick himself up off the ground.

To your absolute horror, you can see thin rivulets of glowing blue dribble down one of his legs, and a crack in his midsection. Whatever they’d just done to each other in their brief brawl, it looks serious.

“Oh, god, you’re bleeding, I’ll go get the tape--”

“Stop trying to take care of us,” Knockout snaps at you so savagely, all you can do is freeze in place with a squeak. “Are you even listening to yourself? You’re bleeding out again and you won’t even fragging say something about it and let me help you!” he spits, sending a venomous glare between you and Soundwave, but it doesn’t escape your focus that he’s shifted his weight like he might jump between you both.

Something clicks in your brain, and if you’d been holding anything, you’d have dropped it.

A metallic, plastic-y clatter on the ground reminds you that you actually had been holding something, but all you can do is just stare at these two loveable idiots with a dropepd jaw.

Oh my god.

There’s no way.

Oh my fucking god.

There’s no fragging way.

They really are my metal idiots, you think with a sort of dawning, horrified fascination, and maybe the most twisted form of toxic affection as something more fluffy and pleasant settles in your heart.

“Oh. My. God,” you state blankly. Neither mech seems very amused or consoled by your stunned state, but that’s okay because you’re too far gone to care much, either. “You two are… My gods,” you breathe, still trying to wrap your head around the realization that these two just had a near death match over you.

“While I admit I find that designation flattering, it’s hardly accurate if you’re going to use it for both of us,” Knockout replies, true to character.

Soundwave doesn’t, but he doesn’t look remotely calm, you think, if the bright cast of his biolights and battle-ready poise is anything to go by.

“Knockout. I’m on my fucking period,” you state blankly. “Soundwave was just asking if I was alright. You literally freaked out over the same thing he did. You’re both idiots, I hate that I love you, and I’m going to go cook myself some lunch, now.” The words leaving your mouth are distant, detached from the sound of your own voice, like you’re hearing them through earplugs. You feel yourself speak more than you hear your own words.

They both stare at you. For a split second, the absolute only thing in the pole barn you can hear besides its usual idle soundscape, is the sound of Lazerbeak’s quiet harmonics as she hums louder for a moment.

Then, Knockout’s mouth slowly drops open into a little, stunned ‘O’, before he looks over at Soundwave at the same time the communication’s officer looks at him.

You, well beyond the capacity for face-palming having any benefit what-so-ever to handle your need to express some serious what the fuck is going on, just stare at them.

“You’re in heat?” Knockout states blankly, freezing you mid-turn as your shoulders hunch, and you immediately spin around to face them again.

“Oh my God no, I’m not in heat, I’m not a fucking cat,” you snap. “I can perfectly well keep it in my pants unless I want to go fuck someone, which I don’t, and can we PLEASE stop TALKING about my FUCKING UTERUS?”

The confused-eager look on Knockout’s face says that you might have just turned him on and off at exactly the same time, and god fucking dammit why. Why.

Why even anything, anymore?

Lacking a pillow to scream into, though you could probably use the couch cushion for that purpose, you put hands over your face and groan into them instead.

Something warm and solid bumps your left arm, prompting you to drop the hands from your face as you turn to look at Beaky, only to see her holding the headphones you dropped. Her flexible appendages carefully coil around the flat headband.

You hesitate only for a moment, before carefully accepting them from her.

“...Sorry for dropping them, I’ll be more careful,” you tell her quietly, knowing full well the owner of said device can clearly hear you, too.

“Okay, you need to start talking,” Knockout states abruptly, turning to look at Soundwave. “I want to know what the frag is going on and i want to know what the frag you--”

“Before you two do that,” you interrupt, voice raised and cracking mid-sentence, “I’d like to ask you to promise me, you won’t fucking fight while I’m in the house making lunch. Or do I need to kennel all my cats again? Can I even trust you out here with them anymore?”

Exactly as you hoped it would, that gets an immediate and dramatic response from both mechs. Soundwave’s head jerks up a bit, before his head tilts like he’s glancing around himself, possibly looking for your kitties. Knockout looks like you just told him you used sewage water to mix his paint, reeling back as his face blanches.

“I thought he-- I thought he hurt you,” Knockout stammers. “I’d never hurt the-- I wouldn’t-- I won’t hurt them,” he promises, stumbling over his own words.

And doing a good job of smearing healing salve over that raw, festering wound they made on your heart. It’s not enough, not nearly, but it’s a start, and it feels better than this continual downward spiral you’d otherwise ‘enjoy’ instead.

Satisfied with his response, unaware that your own body is still shaking like a leaf in the wind, you turn your gaze to Soundwave, who freezes.

He doesn’t say a fucking word.

You wait, and he still doesn’t say anything. Quite abruptly, Lazerbeak makes a concerned trilling noise, then ruffles your hair and clothes with the breeze of her passing as she shoots towards her dad. She flips and rotates in mid air, neatly slamming herself right into his chest as her wings fold down to grip his frame, the back panels tipping and rotating up before they hook onto his shoulders, latching on securely.

Quite abruptly, Soundwave curls forward, dropping down into vehicle mode. A portal opens mid-air a second later, and before any of you can say a single thing, he shoots into it with a loud buzz of his engine that sounds more like a jet’s engine than a real car.

It zips shut immediately afterwards, leaving the strangest cut-off echo of his engine’s rev and the hissing spit of magic-science sparkles.

You blink. You stare at empty air, and then you share a somewhat dumbfounded look with Knockout, painfully aware of an important difference in what just happened.

Knockout promised not to hurt your kitties.

Soundwave didn’t.

Chapter Text

The first thing he does when Soundwave transforms, is fold back his front finials as he feels his engine kick on with an angry, furious rumble, every bio-lit line on his body blazing bright until purple gives way to pale lilac.

He can feel himself shaking as the force of emotional whiplash crashes through him, can feel himself tipping on the brink of control as he struggles to understand what to do with all this feeling.

It’s too much.

It hurts; it hurts to care. And he cares, oh, he cares so deeply, and it tears a raw scream out of his intake that shatters the screen in front of his face as his biolights blaze blindingly bright white.

It folds away into fractured pixels moments later as Soundwave lets out another raw, hoarse shriek, feeling the sound rip up his vox’s speaker as the vibrations travel throughout his entire frame, the soundwaves bouncing back in on each other as the pressure around him grows. It’s distorting, distracting, knocking him off balance until a steadying presence grounds him--

-=”..ispers in shadows, and lights upon the walls; here in dark and dreary deep, we take our sleep, we care to keep, here hidden in these halls…”=- Lazerbeak sings, her little trilling voice reaching him not by his muted audials, but by the echoing lullaby of her voice in his mind, in the glittery, sunshine-bright wrap of her soul around his as he feels the most gentle buffett of energies cradle against his own violently charged Spark.

He’s shaking.

He’s falling to his knees.

He’s letting out another raw, ripped-speaker scream that breaks the first seal on his vox, and he barely holds himself back from shattering the magnificent sprawl of seemingly barren terrain stretched before them. To his back sits the sun behind a towering sprawl of layered rock, a distant jewel of the brightest topaz; a taunting color so achingly familiar as it bakes the ground of this wretchedly blessed and cursed planet.

Everything on this wretched planet reminds him of what he’s lost.

He screams out his emotions just shy of true expression, because Soundwave knows that he can raise the volume of his voice to match what he feels inside. He can, and he has, and he can’t afford to again. It costs too much, every time; every, fragging, time.

Right now, what it’d cost is the lives of dozens upon dozens of lizards and rodents and too many invertebrates and microbiological lifeforms for him to bother properly assessing with a deep-scan of the terrain. It’s enough to ground himself in the sound of his Symbiote’s voice, in the nostalgic memories of happier times.

Perhaps that’s why he likes the human so much, Soundwave reflects numbly, staring with a pained squint at the off-blue tint of this strange, alien sky. It’s not something he wants to think too deeply on; it’s not something he expected to even find in himself, but here’s the reflection of it now, played out in the ache of his own head as his systems begin to categorize and relay to him the damage done to his own components.

It’s all familiar routine. It’s hardly the first time he’s cracked his own face-shield.

Closing his optics against the too-bright surroundings, breathing shallowly in the dusty, particulate-choked air of this strange smelling planet, Soundwave shifts his focus away from his body and how it aches. He remembers a time when Cybertron’s sky was pretty, like this one; well, not quite this. It was… Different.

But just as vivid. Just as filled with color, and clouds.

Then the night settled in, and it didn’t leave.

This isn’t working.

-=”Of course not. You’re not singing,”=- Lazerbeak stresses.

Soundwave would shutter his optics if they weren’t already shut. It feels like his gaze is still wide open and seeing, with how vividly the imagery plays out in his processor’s imagination.

He can’t sing. Not right now. He’s too afraid he’ll scream instead. So he shakes his head, surprised to find his own frame trembling.

He’s losing control, again. Everything’s too much, and what Butterfly had asked of him--

She knows he can’t promise her that. She knows that, and yet she’d asked-- And if Knockout wasn’t lying through his denta, then today had become a bigger mess than Soundwave had ever wanted to deal with.

Especially with the human involved.

-=”Soundwa--”=-

-=”We should go back to base,”=- he suggests abruptly, staring at the palm of his hand, wondering how he’s going to submit the report for what just happened. While he’s inclined to think his liege will find the matter settled, Soundwave can’t be sure of that.

What he is certain of, is that he needs space to think, and the only way he can keep the promise he can’t actually promise , is by removing himself from the vicinity. He can’t hurt them if he’s not there.

And Soundwave likes to think they’d have time to run, if he was given orders.

…if he even warned them. Which he was specifically asked not to do.

His Processor crashes in on itself again, because he’s choked by promises, burdened down by obligations he could always choose to shrug off, at any moment, and yet their hold on him runs soul deep. He can’t help who he is.

He can’t help that he cares.

Soundwave spins around on a heel, with every intention of opening his mouth to scream at the cliff face behind him; because while the devastation will be catastrophic for this immediate vicinity and the natural structure, it’d still be less area of damage than the wide open, sparsely vegetated terrain behind him.

He doesn’t scream, though. He doesn’t say a thing, because there’s a portal opened behind him that he didn’t know was there, Lazerbeak didn’t tell him about, and every servo in his body spins through an anxious reset.

He can’t see me like this--!

It’s the first thought on his mind. It’s the first thing Soundwave reacts to, as he takes a step back, throwing an arm up in front of his face and pretending like he’s grabbing his upper shoulder to inspect himself for injury, hiding his ruined face-shield behind it. Folded back away from his exposed black faceplate, the damaged metal itches and burns with the distortion caused by his own fragging functions.

Lazerbeak’s still singing, still trilling quietly, her voice still a silent lullabye in his head, coiling around the edges of his conscious thought, obscuring his access or focus on other avenues of data streams as she selectively shuts down system functions.

I don’t deserve her, is the next thought on his mind. I don’t deserve any of them.

Not the Symbiote on his chest, who so bravely guards his Spark, when rightly he should be guarding hers; not the friend he can’t even call or properly treat as a friend because of the politics of their respective stations; and not the sweetspark of his past, the light who held his family together when it might have broken entirely.

That was perhaps the only thing he could agree with Starscream on; the silver-tongued Seeker was correct.

Soundwave didn’t deserve them, and he most certainly didn’t deserve the patinated, scarred silver faceplate holding deep concern that appears from within green, swirling light. He most certainly doesn’t deserve the strong, guiding hands that steady his wobbling stance Soundwave wasn’t aware was wavering. When had he dropped his arm?

He doesn’t deserve the visual lightshow of witnessing every bio-lit line on his liege and oldest friend’s body, bleed from hazy, lurid purples that Dark Energon had colored his circuitry with, and into more natural reds.

He definitely doesn’t deserve the strong arms that wrap around him, pulling him into the sheltering embrace of one of the only pair of arms he’s ever found solace and comfort in. He feels safe, and he shouldn’t, because he knows he’s not. Neither of them are, standing on this alien planet.

It doesn’t stop him from feeling that way, doesn’t stop the instinctive reaction he feels in his body as the painful whirr of too-fast gears slow their furious pace; doesn’t stop the way he feels himself heave out a shudder, wet ex-vent that his intake can’t possible handle alone, so his body diverts the rest of his gulping force of too-much-air into his vents. Hot air fans from around his body as Soundwave’s frame shudders, and despite the factual data that shows his core temperature is rising, he feels cold. He feels frigid as the ice he’s told his Spark is forged from, can’t feel the ground beneath his feet or anything but the muffled touch of the warm, solid plate that contacts his own and the steady pulse of Lazerbeak’s presence.

Her tiny Spark pulses brightly against his own, mere macromets of physical distance the only gap between their souls.

With her docked and hard-linked with his systems directly, there isn’t any distance, except what they choose to put between them; and right now, Lazerbeak has chosen to smother him in sweet affection to contrast the dark storm that dims his own Spark’s brilliance.

Beautiful and sweet and so purely intentioned, wanting only to soothe and comfort him, he can feel the love and affection his Symbiote freely pours into his soul, wraps around his frame as she casts her ‘field as far as she can throw it, which is far enough.

If Soundwave could put a single straight thought together beyond his self-deprecating dialogue of misery, he’d recognize that the oppressive swamp that dulls his senses and blocks the world from his focus, is less the storm within him.

And more the storm that surrounds them, as Megatron tightens his hold, adjsuting his grip as he casts his gaze around, mindful not to clip his jaw on the thin spines of Soundwave’s helmet.

But he can’t. He can’t focus on that, won’t even realize it until later, until well after he’s had time to think back on and examine and analyze every detail of how he felt in this overwhelming moment.

Right now, all Soundwave’s processor chooses to fixate on is the looming guilt and damning misery of the knowledge he doesn’t deserve any of it, and he never has. He wasn’t made for such softness, such care.

But he likes to pretend he was. He likes to pretend at least some of what others have said about him is true, because it hasn’t been all bad. And if he can’t change his predictably and provenly scripted fate, he can at least spite Primus by taking everything out of the experience that he can.

He doesn’t deserve to, but he wants to, needs to, and so Soundwave wraps his arms and cables around Megatron’s waist, hides his shattered faceplate as it folds back into place against the curve of his chassis, and sobs.

~*~

“Play it again,” Megatron commands, watching with an intent expression as Lazerbeak runs her own data-packet through the computer terminal. The command bridge is dark except for the most essential consoles running on automated scripts, and vacant of every other officer but the one who stands behind him.

The one who tonight, he chose to view as friend and family, and not subordinate. He’s not sure what particular aspect of Soundwave’s time on Earth has dredged up old wounds, but he knows this particular brand of suffering, and it’s not the first time they’ve been through it.

It has been a while, however, and he feels more than a little rusty with his efforts. Part of him itches to reach back, to offer a hand and invite Soundwave closer, and the rest of him would rather know if he’s approaching because he actually wants to.

An invitation is all too easily seen as a command, particularly when Megatron has made use of them as exactly such before. A problem he normally does not encounter such a clash of paradox with, when dealing with others.

But Soundwave isn’t like any other ‘bot, and the human on screen isn’t like any other human, either.

But he can think of a ‘bot it reminds him of, with a painful, deep ache of something stirring so old and deep inside his chassis, it makes him ache to think of the possibilities.

They both miss her.

“Play the third clip again,” Megatron commands next, and watches the screen intently as Lazerbeak silently obliges. She’s been playing snippets of gathered intel of a particular sort, the kind of reconnaissance Megatron hasn’t had to endure a debriefing on since the last time the eldest Minicon set her processor on an unorthodox request.

Being that that time had gone actually quite pleasant until its unfortunate end, he’s not inclined to dismiss it out of hand.

Being that this time it’s a human involved, he’s inclined to throw the organic into the nearest sun, of which one happens to be conveniently close-by in this solar system.

Considering that the mech behind him has gone through a notable pattern shift from being depressive and broodingly silent, to being downright perky and lively… to being the anxiety-wracked mess he is now, the absolute last thing he plans to do is touch a hair on her head without more information to act on.

Except.

She’s in the way.

Organics are always in the way, but this one is especially in his way, just now. Permitting Knockouts’ care of the human had been strategic and rather enjoyable to watch him flounder; it posed little security risk that wasn’t already present from his flouncing around in the races, and being with this organic had seen fit to have their medical officer more available than he’d been for nearly a vorn.

Permitting his head of security and sole trusted confidante short of the Symbiote that came as a package deal with her Carrier, was a problem.

That was a problem, because the last thing that Megatron needed was for his friend to care about the organic filth that infested the mineral-rich planet below. It’d only cause issues when the time to terraform it came, and he didn’t want to endure any Spark-prodding conversations that might change his mind.

Which wouldn’t be an issue, so long as Soundwave had no reason to care about Earth beyond its strategy as a future anchor of trade and commerce, alongside the military benefits this particular location granted. A stable jump-point between Cybertron and other planetary bodies, Earth was a very appealing place to establish a capital.

Which brought him back to his current issue, as Megatron watched the video of the diminutive organic in question, ripping into his soldiers very much like a Carrier scolded a new-spark.

Breakdown’s sharp yelp of surprised pain is just as amusing the third time watching it as the first, and no less revealing.

She’s defensive. She’s no longer loyal to us, is the clear, logical assessment, and yet…

She did nothing more than follow through on exactly what she promised. The human was honest, appallingly so. Absurdly so. The lies she told were few, and while he’d suspected in early reports that to me more a case of a lack of anything to lie about, he’s since learned otherwise.

There’s a lot he doesn’t know about this organic, and he hates it.

He hates it, because he wants to know more. Lazerbeak has presented her case well, following the static-choked silence of Soundwave’s reversion to mute server tower. If Megatron weren’t so used to his oldest friend’s habit of locking up as if paralyzed by forced stasis, he’d be more concerned.

Since he is, he’s less concerned and more determined, aware that there’s a way to soothe the frayed, leaking tendrils of buzzing discontent and despondency from behind him.

No one’s said it, they’ve done they’re best to avoid all mention of it, but Megatron isn’t a fool, and Soundwave’s not a liar; that he’s tip-toed around with such care is evidence enough that the mech is aware of his own mistake.

He cares for this fleshling, and it couldn’t be more of an issue. While he won’t ask for the permission Megatron knows his friend must crave, Soundwave has made no attempt to stop his Symbiote from doing it; it tells him everything he needs to know about what’s going on. They’ve both grown attached to the miserable thing.

Watching the montage of clips play out on the screen before him, most mere kliks in length with few exceptions, Megatron resists the urge to curl his fingers into restless fists.

-=-

From a high vantage point, the video feed zooms in past the gutter of a building to focus on a familiar organic, as the diminutive femme gets out of the tow-truck rig he’s familiar with from her work. She stops on the cracked asphalt to look down, then stoops to pick something up off the ground.

It’s a leaf. The cast-off detritus of an even more bizarre organic lifeform than the one examining it’s shed foliage.

It’s garbage.

She admires the wisp of bright yellow like fine art, turning it in the sunshine for a moment, before letting it go. The human watches it flutter to the ground, before continuing on her way. The clip ends mid-step.

-=-

The video feed is grainy, this time. Zoomed in from a vast distance, the camera feed has the faintest wobble that likewise tattles on the extensive range Lazerbeak had caught this footage from. If Megatron didn’t know better, he’d have thought she’d caught it by happenstance.

The location alone tells him she went out of her way to follow the human that day, another bright and blazing, scorched-ground afternoon on the dusty planet. She’s next to her tow-truck again, and this time, the human’s parked on the side of a back-road, cautiously strolling down the very edge of the dirt path.

It takes Megatron only a moment to recognize what threat it is the human’s pretending obliviousness to, as Lazerbeak’s camera feed shifts to the right.

There’s a large beige canine with a tucked tail and wary stance. Legs planted to the ground, it looks torn between the decision to charge or flee; a universal language Megatron is more familiar with than he’d like. The beast she faces is certainly large enough to overpower her small frame, judging by the musculature and what he knows of that species’ biting force.

Hardly enough to bother a Cybertronian unless they managed to crimp a wire, but certainly strong enough to rip the flesh from the bone of the unarmored organic who approaches.

There’s a collar hanging around the quadraped’s neck, black leather without adornment but for a heavy looking black box that dangles below a shaggy ruff of dirty fur. Mud and filth splattered on the hind quarters and upper torso and face, like the mutt had scrambled up a drainage ditch or squirmed beneath a low obstacle.

Considering the arid environment, he’s not sure how the creature got the way it is, but it’s clearly the human’s intended target in this scenario; as she strolls closer with slow, fluid movements, not quite making eye contact with the creature as her gaze flicks down the road and surroundings, he catches a glimpse of a long, bright red cord dangling from her left hand, held behind her hip.

Like a long, flattened length of flexible cable, it swings slightly with its squeezed-loop gather. It’s not the tool he’d have expected her to use for such a situation, whatever this is.

The human’s mouth moves, though no audio is provided, and if it were it would only be the nearest sounds wherever it is Lazerbeak is stationed.

The dog’s ears pin back, and the human abruptly stops, then eases her weight back onto one foot, the faintest crouch in her legs with her torso angled diagonally from the dog. She tilts her head a touch, looking at him indirectly, mouth still moving.

One ear twitches, then flicks forward, and the tail pinned tight to the canine’s rump relaxes a fraction. Every muscle is still held taut, before the human seems to make another noise, then shows the dog the red length of ribbon with a cautious, slow movement.

Triangular, scooped audials go erect with a snap as the dog stiffens, then ducks its head down. The tail lifts.

THe human relaxes her posture, tilting her torso slightly more away from the dog, towards the forest and the truck she left behind, and beckons with a hand. From the sudden hollow of her cheek, Megatron wonders if she just whistled.

The mutt finally breaks from its defensive stance, reanimating like a completely different being as it trots up after the bipedal organic who bid it come, allowing her to reach out. It sniffs her hand, then licks it, which she doesn’t seem concerned by. She only tilts her wrist to smoothly guide her hand behind the back of the dog’s skull, fingers scritching, before her other hand fluidly follows and slips the end of the red ribbon through the dog’s collar. Capped with a silver D-ring, the human deftly threads the other end of what’s revealed to be a leash through the metal ring, then pulls the loop taut.

Having apparently captured and claimed the lesser lifeform, she leads it back to her truck, opened up the side door and bidding the creature hop up inside, mud and all.

Megatron doesn’t realize he’s anticipating what comes next, glued to the footage with the kind of fascination reserved for a Sparkling’s first art project, until the clip ends before the dog has made it inside the cab, cutting off with two paws on the high step to get inside.

-=-

He’s saved from even debating whether it’s worth asking what happened to the canine he’s heard nothing of, so he can assume Knockout’s human pet didn’t bring another pet home. The very next clip is, judging by the context, only some time later in the same day. The human is dressed in the same clothes as before, and the tongue-hanging, perky-eared mutt that trots beside her looks just as filthy.

The tow truck is no-where in sight, but Megatron suspects it must be nearby as the woman walks the dog on a loose lead, the red ribbon jiggling a bit with their steps. The dog walks directly beside her, entirely obedient as the bipedal organic takes a turn with a soft, clucked sound with pursed lips.

The dog follows her with a wagging tail held high, all the way up a cracked sidewalk to the front door of another organic’s house.

The human knocks on the white-washed door, and in short order there’s another female organic in the video feed. Lazerbeak of the past zooms in on the stranger’s face for a moment, before panning back out to capture all three organics in her frame of vision as they talk. She must be just across the street from them, this time.

“Oh my God-- Benji! Oh my God, oh my God thank you so much, we were worried sick!” the stranger gushes, immediately crouching down as the begie canine beside the more familiar human, tosses its head and surges forward. “Where was he? Oh, boy, look at you! All covered in mud! Gods we were so worried, we lost him on our trip into town two days ago.”

“He was on the backroads near the old landfill, looks like he had a rough time but I didn’t find any injuries. I haven’t fed him anything, but he’s had some water.”

“Benji?” another voice speaks up, before the video clip seems to glitch, but no; its just Lazerbeak skipping ahead a few breem, to the point where the organic she’s following finally takes her leave.

Having passed off the quadruped to its apparent handlers, the femme now winds the red leash back up in one hand, offering a warm smile.

“No, really; I don’t need anything. I’m just glad to see him home safe and happy. Take care!”

“Are you sure? We could cover your gas for the drive over,” the woman presses. A man has joined her, standing just behind with his hand on the dog’s, rubbing between its ears.

“Nah, thanks though. See ya,” the human dismisses with a wave of the hand, then jogs off.

-=-

“I think my intentions should be pretty obvious. I’m making sure it’s not easy to forget who this human belongs to,” Knockout asserts with a scathing flatness to his voice as he circles via Holo-form around the human in her strangely furnished habsuite. Megatron is given a glimpse of a hallway he knows leads to the garage, a familiar disaster in the ruined kitchen, and the back of the organic’s head. Just behind them both, Soundwave’s mass-displaced frame stands as still as a statue.

The human in question stands stiffly enough to mirror him, two points of perfectly precise stillness in contrast to Knockout’s deliberate, steady prowl.

“Um. ‘This human’ belongs to no one,” the femme asserts uneasily, a sudden click and burst of static in the audio obscuring the very end of her speech as the video feed flickers with streaks, a familiar and unfortunate glitch. Fortunately, it doesn’t last long enough to obscure her words. “I’m not--”

“As far as Lord Megatron’s concerned, you’re a pet,” Knockout interrupts with frank correction, his tone hardly bland, but something about the lack of emotional expression despite the harsh edge stands out as profound. “And the mech behind me, is only here to make sure you’re as harmless as I’ve told them you are. He’s here to keep tabs on me.”

The human he addresses with such honesty has gone stiff as a frozen strut, shoulders hitched up and every muscle held taut.

“I-I—”

“Let me guess, he’s been asking you questions about me, trying to get you to divulge information about my behaviors and actions, what I do, when I do things?” Knockout continues, uncaring of his audience who’s heard this petulant spiel before.

If the medic were more forthcoming about his whereabouts without having to first be pressed to report, they would never have needed to worry.

He had a way of misbehaving that had seen to some creative use of managerial tactics to keep the officer in line, without compromising his position. A frustration this human had done surprisingly well to assist, with tangible results.

Hard data. Visible, verified improvements, by not only his third in command, but by his chief of science. Shockwave was nothing short of thrilled, insofar as the dour mech ever expressed such perkiness. It came in the slight ease of relaxed audial fins, and less vocalized complaints and grumblings. Satisfaction with his work created a mech almost pleasant to keep company with, if Megatron could stand to hear him pontificate longer than exactly what information he needed at any given moment. He did better with a few drinks in him, first.

Other credible witnesses aside, Megatron had seen evidence of improvements with his own optics. He wanted to disagree with them. He wanted to dismiss their assertions out of hand, and with pre-established information possessed by he himself, Megatron could not.

It was bald truth, bared before him.

In the video, behind Knockout, Soundwave remains standing with patience poise, except…

Something’s bothering Megatron about all this, but he can’t focus on those thoughts just yet. He’s fixated on the video, analyzing every detail, taking in the little twitches of the organic being addressed and reminded of her adjusted status in life; its downright drastic in such close comparison to Knockout’s steady composure. Only the force of his words belays the medic’s emotional intensity, and perhaps the familiar tell of too-bright cast to Knockout’s avatar’s eyes. They’re not quite perfectly human looking, in this video clip.

“Digging into my personal life off base,” Knockout continues, outright seething. “Trying to find weaknesses and personal blackmail material perfect to exploit?” Something that wouldn’t even be needed, were Knockout actually trustworthy.

The human takes a hasty step back as the Decepticon officer takes one forward, shrinking back from the threat that approaches.

The medic freezes with a hand is half-lifted like he was about to reach for his human pet, and instead lets it fall back to his side, gaze still trained on the organic’s face. Soundwave’s head tilts ever-so-slightly with a shift of observation. Judging by the hitch of her chest, the femme’s breaths are coming in shallow, short puffs, tattling on primal, well deserved fear. She’s afraid of them, as well she should be.

That’s also something he hasn’t seen evidence of in their joint reports, and Megatron wonders just how much has gone overlooked as his optics narrow fractionally, studying the footage. He hasn’t seen this surveillance footage before.

“They aren’t your friends,” Knockout asserts after the tense pause, his voice crisp and authoritative in the stillness as his humanized visage stares with an unhappy, thin lipped grimace. “If Lord Megatron ordered it, they’d kill you,” he reminds bluntly, prompting Megatron to wonder if his chief medical officer is meaning that to imply he’d personally disobey such an order-- and then Knockout slants his gaze to the right, off-screen. “Or them.”

That catches Megatron’s attention.

So does the sudden yank of an EM-field vanishing from tangling with his own, as every vent on Soundwave’s body suddenly seizes up after ex-venting a nervous, barely shuttered pomf of air.

That definitely catches Megatron’s attention, as he shifts his weight at the hip to lean back on his left pede, and with a subtle tilt of his shoulders, cants his head slightly aside to catch his oldest friend’s gaze with one optic.

Soundwave stares directly back at him, still and composed as ever, if it weren’t for the fact that Megatron knows this mech, and he knows perfectly well that the soft-Sparked fool is probably staring at him with a look of horror behind that cracked glass.

Megatron wishes he’d have left it folded back, with thin, expressive amethyst optics bared to open air. On the Nemesis, in this heavily filtered and controlled environment, he’d be perfectly safe to.

Physically, at least.

And that’s why he wishes he’d left it bare. It’s a shield between them Megatron misses the absence of, and can’t possibly bring himself to ask the removal of. He knows why he wears it, all the reasons why.

Or nearly all of them.

Ask, if you want to know. You’re owed the knowledge, if it pleases you to know it, comes the traipsing of whispered advice through his thoughts, coming to him less as literal words and more as an impression of meaning.

It’s nothing less than the truth, of course.

So why do you hesitate to ask? comes the unwanted self-reflection, and a nudge to consider the merits of finding out. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, after all, and Megatron is finding himself with an abundance of not knowing in regards to who by rights, is a mech he knows better than the back of his own hand.

Or so he’d thought.

Naturally, Soundwave says nothing. He doesn’t need to.

Megatron turns back to the screen, where Lazerbeak has rewound the film by a few kliks to a point just before where Megatron entertained his own distraction.

The human takes another half-step back from Knockout, tension cables in her fragile frame drawing taught beneath unarmored protomass. Then, Lazerbeak’s video feed streaks with a pixelated haze of distortion as the human clenches her tiny fists, drawing her posture rigid and straight as her stance widens the barest bit.

Megatron’s not sure what he’s expecting, but what happens next isn’t it.

“Go ahead,” the human spits out as Lazerbeak’s camera view shifts and slides left, catching the side of the femme’s tear-streaked expression that’s backed with a hard, focused fury. “Tell me how powerless I am, that everything can be taken away from me effortlessly,” the human continues, very much unlike the gentle and sweet nature he’d read about in far less descriptive reports of her character. Her savage tone is clearly enunciated, spoken audio flawless without a bit of static or speaker strain in her organic vox. “Tell me that your fucked up employer is just as fucked in the head as every other adult I’ve ever met who thinks our lives are worthless,” the human continues, as uncaring of her audience as Knockout had been, but without the history or usefulness to preserve her own flesh.

She’s also considerably harder to fix, when broken.

Megatron feels the way his Spark stops for a moment, as every servo in his body resets in a restless, impulsive reaction to the insult.

She has no idea, he thinks darkly, how ‘fucked’ in the helm I am . He’s certain one glimpse into his processor would send the innocent fleshling screaming and recoiling in terror. He almost wants to show her, just to see her reaction, the horror and understanding that would crawl across her face as she understands just what power she so casually threatens.

She should fear him.

Contrary to the way Soundwave’s frame is beginning to bleed tonal notes of distress he can’t quite seem to stop from playing, despite the clicks and buzzing sound of frequent forced resets; Lazerbeak seems intently eager, her aura dazzling with a brilliant, buzzing bright warmth. She’s almost, dare Megatron think it, excited despite the apparent disaster occuring on camera.

Wherever this situation it’s going, she’s clearly holding out for the ending, and despite himself, Megatron wants to know.

So he doesn’t tell her to end the film there, despite the command resting on the tip of his glossa, jaw flexed in preparation to speak words that never come. In the face of his silence, the video continues playing.

“You think Megatron scares me?” the little femme demands, stepping forward, lifting her hand to poke at Knockout’s chest.

The little femme he’d just held cupped in his servos barely a chord ago, had nearly crushed on pure accident. After nearly doing so on purpose.

You should fear me, he thinks with narrowing optics, resisting the urge to slant his gaze left to study his friend’s Symbiote. Behind him, Soundwave’s engine kicks on with an uneasy, transparent rush of his main turbine.

It’s not a sound Megatron likes to hear.

It’s certainly not one he wants to hear right now, with the fleshling involved.

And whoever this mysterious ‘They’ is.

To Megatron’s unexpected surprise, the harmless intimidation tactic actually works . 

His CMO, capable of flattening the entire town this puny organic calls home, actually steps back from the organic, then keeps stepping back. The tiny femme stalks forward another two paces, pulling her lips back in an animalistic snarl that flashes her fangs at them.

Her soft faceplate catches the light of the poorly lit room, gleaming with the gloss of shed tears.

“You think I don’t know Soundwave’s fishing for information like you do?” the human demands, jabbing her finger in Knockout’s chest again. “You think I’m not vividly aware of the fact my life as a normal Earth resident is over, dead, gone the moment I crawled under your pretty frame with tape and a flashlight?” she continues, pressing her point with a furious expression that matches the angry jab of her finger. “You think that I haven’t cried my eyes out in terror because I know how dangerous this all is?” The femme’s voice gets shriller the longer she speaks, but doesn’t increase overmuch in volume.

“I don’t know what kind of social dynamics you guys are used to, but in my world I don’t choose to put up with the bullshit of emotionally manipulative tactics like dragging out all this shit out at the worst possible moment,” she claims with a shockingly refreshing bald manner of speech. That is, in fact, exactly the sort of behavior Megatron can expect from his chief of medical staff. “Next time you want to act like you care about my safety more than he does, consider who introduced me to Soundwave,” the human snaps.

And unintentionally reveals far more than Megatron thinks either of his officers wished known, but the Minicon in the air beside him seems to be restraining herself from commentary and narration, her tiny Spark spinning so fast even he can hear the harmonic whirr. Her aura still sparkles bright and potent against his own ‘field, playfully tugging at its edges with the softest brush of distraction.

She’s trying not to distract him. It’s mostly working, except that Megatron already knows he’s going to be asking her to replay clips of this scene over again, anyways.

Behind him, he hears Soundwave take a single step forward, before halting in place.

On screen, the human’s eyes snap towards Soundwave of the past, and the camera view suddenly jerks down with an unexpected drop in altitude during recording. The Minicon rights herself a klik later, static crackling across her screen display before stabilizing. There’s no evidence of what caused the disruption in her propulsion software, and for the first time, Megatron questions the abundance of glitches appearing in her surveillance on the human.

Said human stares into Soundwave’s black visor like she wants to take a step towards him, a strange expression on her face that has Megatron’s focus riveted to the screen. Instead of following through, the human drops both hands to her sides and clenches them into fists, staring at him.

She looks… Hurt. Betrayed, dare he think it, with the way her glass-like optics seem to show a depth of emotion that was hidden prior, something hurt and raw too-close to the surface.

Like she’d had reason to expect that the situation of her position was anything other than the simple facts Knockout had so bluntly outlined. She acted as if she really cared about the metal titans keeping company with her, and that their actions had genuinely affected her on an emotional level.

That, at least, is expected; far more familiar to the personality profile outlined and described in reports.

“Tell me that he’s telling the truth,” the organic asks, far less expectedly. “Any one of you three would kill us, if your boss decided it was necessary for whatever alien war you’re playing chess in,” she demands in a voice that threatens to break entirely.

Lazerbeak twitters sadly, and for a split second, Megatron thinks that it’s the Minicon beside him in the present, before he realizes it’s her own past audio, relayed alongside her recording feed.

-=”You don’t have to confirm that,”=- comes her little voice, her niche dialect nothing more than musical binary chaos to one who wasn’t fluent.

Having had a hand in inventing the language her vox had become stuck outputting in, Megatron understands without translation given.

She’d sent her Carrier a silent comm, and abruptly, Megatron wonders what other messages and conversation during this scene he may be missing out on, what other crucial details and puzzle pieces that come together to create this absurd scene.

Soundwave’s not looking at his Symbiote in this rather recently taken footage. If he replied to her comm-chatter, the Lazerbeak of the present doesn’t choose to relay his answer. Instead, the video plays on uninterrupted.

Uninterrupted, but not undistracted; Soundwave’s ‘field has begun to leak his present distress in trailing, reaching tendrils, a helpless response that bids for assurance. With Megatron’s own ‘field swamping the command center, there’s no escape from his steady, grounding presence, freely offered.

It’s a grounding presence that his friend uses to stabilize himself, seemingly despite himself, no doubt trying to soothe what must be painfully fast Spark oscillations to go with a cascade of other biological effects.

Megatron just can’t believe it’s a filthy, putrid, greasy little human that’s inspired such a reaction in his oldest friend.

In the third in command of the entire Decepticon forces.

Megatron’s optics narrow as his engine slows, his own body quieting idle sounds just to better hear the ones both from behind him in this very room, and from the computer terminal currently playing out Lazerbeak’s footage.

In which, Soundwave doesn’t break from stillness until he onlines his vox and speech software to speak, shifting half a step away from the little organic; his posture goes rigid and straight with familiar anxiety that makes Megatron’s Spark hitch.

“Affirmative. All Decepticons: swore oaths of fealty to Lord Megatron. Liege’s commands: not to be disobeyed.”

The immediate response is pleasing, as it should be. Gratifying, even, inspiring a pleasant rush of feeling that gently washes over his Spark chamber, shoring up an alliance and bond of trust that runs deeper than any Sparkbond ever could. Reaffirming what’s already his, simply reminding him of its presence.

Their relationship was forged in the pits of Kaon, through severed fuel lines and dark halls, through secrets and dangers and risking everything just for the chance at a better life. Their loyalty to each other was put to the test countless times, each moment of near disaster only serving to tie their bonds together stronger.

The last relic of a family forged in pain and anguish and joy and love, the only thing Megatron has left to steer his Spark by, to remember himself by. It’s so easy to forget, to lose sight of his own vision, when so many others’ needs crowd his own processor, demand his attention.

He has no time for himself, anymore.

You have work to do, comes a familiar voice, one that sounds like his own, comes to him under the guise of his own thoughts, his own cognition and sense of analysis; a voice that only recently began to guide him, keep him focused, keep him on task, keep him from losing his mind to the very war he’d started to save it.

So Soundwave’s predictable response of unwavering loyalty is pleasing. Like finding a favored momento from the past, still present today, unchanged despite all passage of time. Familiar. Safe.

And yet.

And yet.. .

The human laughs in response, a shattered, perhaps hysteric sound with that broken octave. Her misery combined with false amusement is hardly the loyal, amicable reaction Megatron’s been told to expect.

Beside him, in the present, Lazerbeak’s frame emits the softest high-pitched frequency of barely restrained delight, straining to keep herself from interrupting the audio. Megatron would very much like to know what commentary the Minicon has been holding back.

He’d also like to know the thoughts of the mech behind him, the one who takes another possibly involuntary step forward, Soundwave’s engine making an unsettling cla-cla-clak noise very much like a rattling corpse.

Megatron barely notices.

“Wonderful. Glorious. Make yourselves at home,” the femme announces with hysteric sarcasm in an increasingly shrill voice, as she throws an arm out to gesture to her messy habsuite. Anticipation drives a sweetened edge to the emotionally charged scene, making this moment nearly the equivalent experience of sipping on a fine Energon wine as Megatron watches the human’s temper flash and flare with brilliant passion in her raised voice. “Destroy more of my house, force me to keep secrets under pain of death, but if you so much as fucking touch one of my cats ever again,” the human begins, a downright growl and aggression in her voice that Megatron has never heard in this organic.

Every one of his senses is split equally between absorbing every ‘met of detail on the screen before him, and every twitch of the mech behind him as Lazerbeak’s eagerness grows more intent.

 “I assure you,” the human continues boldly, “I will find a way to make you both regret it from beyond the grave,” a bold threat Megatron knows the human couldn’t possibly make good on, yet something in the power and assertive confidence of her voice just now, inspires him to believe she could . “Ever heard of ghosts? Because I believe in ghosts, and I will haunt your motherfucking sorry asses if you get between me and my babies,” she finishes with a snarl, power drawn into her stance as if she wouldn’t be dead in less than a klik if either mech before her chose to end her life there and then for such audacity.

Every servo in his body resets with a restless, charged-up spin like he’s preparing for a fight, or perhaps just to display a show of power in front of his troops. He feels charged up with anticipation, the need to act, to respond, and yet cool, rational thinking tempers his body’s instinctive riled reaction.

He needs to think carefully about this, not act impulsively.

There’s too much at stake.

Moreover, however... Megatron would like to know when the human had given birth to Symbiotes. One human, he could tolerate. Perhaps he should have been more concerned that the organic Knockout fancied was forge-bearing femme of her species, and of fertile age. He didn’t fancy more of the greasy fleshlings to deal with, and they hardly needed a generational bloodline to bother preserving when their entire planet was slated for extinction in less than a solar cycle, if Shockwave’s estimates or project completion held true.

So much can happen in a year. You’re so close to your goals; so close to attaining true power, to saving Cybertron, saving our future, his subconscious thoughts supply, weaving amidst his own focused thinking. Don’t lose sight of what’s most important.

Some part of Megatron registers the fact this thought was meant as commentary on the issues this organic had provided him with, but it failed to take into account the rest of his thinking; particularly, the part where his Spark feels like it’s spinning too-fast, his fuel-pump is increasing in pace like he’d taken a shot of fuel spiked with a drop of Red Energon, accelerating his systems to a fine state of what feels like could be a loss of control.

If he chose to let it. If he chose to let go of the storm held within his body, charging up his frame, sending electrical currents crackling between his joints as arousal rockets through him at the same time he tilts his head to catch Soundwave’s gaze.

As he does so, Lazerbeak pauses the video.

Soundwave doesn’t meet his gaze, however, instead staring at the screen past Megatron, possibly unaware of his own ‘field tattling on far more than the mech ever said aloud with words.

Tattling on far more than Megatron ever would have expected of the quiet officer.

“She has Symbiotes,” he remarks casually.

Soundwave stiffens, his head jerking to the left to look straight at him as his front finals flex.

-=”Oh, please. You know he’s too choked up to get a word out. Yes, she has three lovely little kitties with the softest purr AND she writes poetry AND she’s an artist who makes pretty things AND she--”=-

“I get the picture,” Megatron interrupts, the bubbly, too-fast pace of Lazerbeak’s excited twittering cutting off the instant he raises his hand to literally wave her off. “Why didn’t you tell me about the felines? You let me think them ordinary pests, ” he asserts.

-=”Duh, why would you care? They don’t speak in words, they don’t write or use technology, they weren’t a security risk.”=-

“I asked your Carrier,” Megatron states flatly. He’s well aware that Soundwave struggles to vocalize speech when his vox’s speaker is choked off by the tangled code of his anxiety and wound up emotions. He’s well aware that Soundwave had what he’s certain would be very good, logical reasonings for keeping this information held back.

Except, Megatron thinks darkly, he clearly had other , more personal reasons as well.

Reasons he didn’t yet know.

The silence stretches out between them, and Megatron can all too easily imagine the black faceplate faintly illuminated by purple optics stretched as wide as they could stand to go, mouth dropped open, vox crackling with spurts of static his speech software doesn’t relay outside his helmet. Usually.

“Ex…planation:--” Soundwave finally begins, haltingly, his voice cutting out with a click that suggests a vox reset, “--Soundwave, was in process of preparing extraneous data packet. Megatron: established prior protocol of limiting reconnaissance reports to only crucial--”

The hurt that flashes through Megatron’s chassis like stepping out of a ground bridge into Earth’s wretched, frigid antartic, bites deep and lingers. He just wanted an honest, up-front answer, not this rambling excuse.

A diversion. They both know Soundwave would have come up with any number of logical rationale to explain his behavior, when all Megatron wanted to know was what the catalyst for inspiring the discrepancy even was.

“Anything regarding the personal wellbeing and relationships of my closest allies, my oldest friends, and my third in command of the army we have built together, is crucial to me,” Megatron dictates as he turns away from the frozen screen entirely, facing Soundwave full-on. “You’ve been skulking around the skip for well over a vorn since your last pet died. Does nothing please you, except to have another fragile thing under-pede to fuss over?

“I haven’t seen you this alert and engaging outside of work concerns in longer than I care to commit to spoken words, and in this Quartex alone you’ve nearly offlined yourself, drawn me away from my own duties, and caused distraction in our ranks,” he seethes. “First by neglecting your own duties of routine self maintenance,” Megatron repeats, a conversation they have already exhausted the words by which he can state just how displeased and concerned and afraid he is for his friend, yet one he’s more than willing to revisit as many times as necessary. “Play the video,” he snaps, when no further words are forthcoming from the silent mech frozen in place before him.

-=”Okay,”=- Lazerbeak chirps, doing as told. Megatron stares at his friend a moment longer, before turning his gaze back to the screen in time to see it reanimate.

Quite suddenly, the femme in the recording turns to look at the filmer, revealing in full the watery, puffy-faced expression on her soft faceplate.

Her voice and posture might speak of strength and conviction, but her wrecked visage shows exactly how weak she is.

She knows she’s powerless, yet she reaches for it regardless. She knows she has no power to protect what’s clearly held so dear to her, and it all shows plain as day on her uncanny, alien faceplate. Yet she tries to stand as shield and defense to them anyways.

Megatron doesn’t like this, quite suddenly. Why is she showing me this? Aside from the obvious, which was that Lazerbeak clearly felt this human had a Spark worth favoring, and wanted him to see it. It’s a somewhat rhetorical question.

“I’m trusting you to keep an eye on these two idiots while I’m out of the house,” the human asserts, voice wavering. Megatron is inclined to agree with her assessment of the mechs behind her, and finds unexpected, somewhat strange kinship forged out of the amusement of thinking alike; she’s going right past Soundwave to address his Symbiote, instead. “I need to go spend some time with people who like me for me , not people who like me because I’m just convenient,” the human states with a wobbling clarity that nearly obscures her watery words, then turns on a heel and strides away with a halting, stiff movement.

Behind him, the Soundwave of the present makes a soft noise, like he onlined his vox to speak, only to change his mind yet have his audio software relay an empty sigh of mic feedback, anyways.

The human makes an unusual sound as she walks away from them all, striding for the stairwell in the back end of the room; like a piercing note of imperfect binary, a sharp sound of emits from presumably the human’s vox at an unexpected volume and pitch.

Before Megatron gets far enough to wonder why the human did that, quite suddenly three blurs streak into the video feed as her cats come bolting across the room towards her, falling into step at her feet as their Carrier continues towards the stairwell.

Both the mechs in the command bridge with him, make a funny sound in their engines.

Understanding rockets through his Spark chamber at the same time he takes a breath of exalted understanding, because now Megatron knows . They’re precious to her; they’re what’s bought the organic’s loyalty, the answer to the mystery of her absurdly friendly, welcoming disposition. It’s the missing piece from too-carefully curated reports.

She’s taking them away, because those are her Symbiotes. The human doesn’t have a mate, she doesn’t have human children; she’s adopted…

Black fur catches the light as a feline with white-tipped paws slinks behind his caretaker, then cuts diagonally behind her path and brushes his side against her leg in an achingly familiar behavior that sends Megatronus reeling for a split klik. He looks nothing like the first feline Megatron has already become personally acquainted with; Jasmine’s excessive fur turns her into a somewhat regal looking marshmallow.

Oh.

This predominantly black feline, walks with a sleek body that gleams with glossy, silken fur that shines nearly so very much like polished metal as it catches the light. Well brushed, his fur lays flatter to his long form with a low-swept tail that curls around his Carrier’s legs like a magnet pulled it close.

Megatron can’t hear anything else in the room for a solid three kliks as he stares at the video screen.

Once the human begins climbing the steps, ushering all three felines ahead of her with an impatient wave of her hand, the video feed rotates without adjusting the zoom as Lazerbeak of the past no doubt spins in place. As she turns, her company comes back into view.

Knockout’s staring with a dropped open intake, looking a combination of dumbstruck and offended, very much like the first time Megatron had chose to deny his requested leave of absence to attend a popular race on Velocitron.

Soundwave is frozen completely in place, as still and rigid as the mech himself in present time.

-=”Can we keep her, please?”=- Lazerbeak asks openly, her bald request followed by a plaintive, expressive chirping trill. -=”She’s been nothing but nice and kind and good and I miss having that around, and she’s good for us. She’d be good for everyone,”=- the Minicon continues. -=”Did you know she writes POETRY?”=- Lazerbeak adds, taking advantage of the extended silence as Megatron stares at the screen frozen on the final frame of the stopped video, before his gaze slants to the right, and he stares at Soundwave.

-=”She could totally repaint that pretty scroll-work you liked so much,”=- Lazerbeak continues, truly reaching for absolutely any frivolous wire she can to plug into this absymally engineered attempt to sway him. There’s an astounding lack of art, cunning, and subtlety for what he’s used to in the  usual machinations turned against him when another Decepticon decides they want a boon whether he actually agrees with it or not.

It’s refreshing, frankly.

“Well?” Megatron prompts, staring at Soundwave. “Or do I have to command you to speak for yourself? I’ve never taken that privillege away. You’ve never abused it,” Megatron asserts flatly, meeting his friend’s gaze with a level expression.

Lazerbeak twitters wordlessly at him, a soft, barely-voiced protest. Megatron ignores her.

Her Carrier might have his glossa tangled with code, but Megatron can wait. He cleared his afternoon schedule for this, and he’ll sure as frag make use of the interruption for what it was intended for.

He ends up waiting for nearly eight breem in charged silence broken only by the idle harmonics of the mechs and machinery in this room, before Soundwave’s helmet finally tilts a touch, and he seems to glance towards the screen. A moment later, his vox clicks on.

“A-Admission: Soundwave, unintentionally coded bipedal organic under designation; ‘Friend,’” Soundwave confesses at last, finally looking away from Megatron as his gaze drops to the floor, and his hands lift to thread thin fingers nervously together.

Megatron can hear something buzzing in his audials. It’s not a good feeling.

“F-further admission: Soundwave, was going to say, before interruption… Wishes to request legal guardianship of Decepticon asset, be transferred to--”

“No,” megatron states flatly, before he’s even finished speaking. Absolutely not.

She’s in the way. It’s two voices that think this thought in tandem, enforce it, cement it.

Soundwave freezes, fingers still nervously folded together. To Megatron’s shock, his most trusted officer, the one who never questions his orders save only in the most dire of circumstances of Megatron himself lacking crucial context that would, indeed, have changed his mind of thinking had he only known--

“Be transferred to Lazerbeak,” he finishes, entirely unexpectedly.

Megatron blinks.

“What?”

-=”What? I mean, uh, YEAH! Yes, please! I want a pet human! Pretty please can I--”=-

“You are not adopting a filthy organic from this wretched planet. I allowed you to keep the Basmarnian Snake because the only particulate shed we had to worry about was it’s useful scales,” Megatron dismisses. “And it was hardly a taxing burden on resources with such simple needs. You cannot have the human.”

An annoyed, buzzing tonal sound bleeds off Soundwave’s frame as his shoulders hunch as much as they’re able to.

“Query: why can Knockout?” the officer asks, as petulant and petty a response as Megatron has ever heard. Quite suddenly, and not at all for the first time, he feels like he’s ruling over nothing more than a confused gaggle of brutally oppressed Sparklings.

And he no longer has a mech who knows what to do with Sparklings.

Well. None besides the one standing in front of him, and Soundwave is currently one of the problem mechs in question. It’d be refreshing for the novelty alone of such a drastic difference, if Megatron weren’t so irritated to begin with.

“Knockout does not own the human,” Megatron states flatly. “He never has, and he never will.” That seems to give both of them pause, as Lazerbeak gives a questioning trill, then slides into the air to better see his face. Before they can ask, he clarifies, “I own the wretched fleshlings of Earth, and I’ll do with them as I see fit,” he snaps.

And is rewarded by a sassy trill from Lazerbeak as she dismisses his assertion with her equivilent of a scoffing laugh, her binary beeps cutting in and out with an erratic reset as her vox clicks.

-=”You don’t even like humans! Let me have her, pleeease? I wanna find out if she can reset my crystal callibrations like my Carrier can. Her aura feels so nice, didn’t you feel it?”=- Lazerbeak wheedles.

Soundwave, who up until this moment has been looking like he might curl up into vehicle mode just to hide from scrutiny, suddenly animates as his head lifts, and his shoulders relax from their tight hitch.

“Statement: Lazerbeak’s theory, has strong basis for--”

“Fine,” Megatron interrupts flatly, unamused. He’s unamused by just how interested and curious he is. He’s unamused by how frustrated and furious he is. He’s unamused by just about everything ever involving this wretched organic he never should have allowed to live in the first place. “Make arrangements with Shockwave. As the most experienced member in dealing with abnormal organic lifeforms, he’s the most logically suited to take over management of the fleshling. Inform Shockwave he is to be granted legal custody over this organic, and that he is to, as his busy schedule allows, investigate the human’s Electromagnetic anomaly.”

He’s greeted by unhappy silence, and a sudden absence of either ‘field of the mechs beside him as they draw their energies deep into their frames, as if that could possibly hide them from him, just now.

Without a word, Soundwave inclines his head with a slow, mechanical tilt, then bows with a crossed arm over his chassis. A klik later he straightens, and Lazerbeak silently sweeps over to slot against his chest, as Soundwave turns on his pedes to stride away.

“And Soundwave?” Megatron calls, without actually raising his voice more than the barrest bit to grant emphasis to his tone. “Don’t get attached to the human. I don’t care what you do with it’s Symbiotes; keep them, if you wish,” he adds.

A human, he can’t possibly be convinced to agree to. Not on the Nemesis. Not here, in their sanctuary of power and security.

The felines?

Remembering the savage hiss of sharp fangs, bristled fur, and a diminutive organic a human could kill bare-handed…

Perhaps they’re not so bad.

They certainly smell better.

Chapter Text

“You’re back!”

It’s the first thing Arcee hears, an exuberant shout in an achingly familiar, welcomed voice.

She’s at once elated and dismayed; on the one hand, she’s glad to see her human friend as she rolls to a stop on gray concrete and fluidly transforms in the same motion. Behind her comes Bumblebee and Smokescreen, both sporty alt modes cruising through the tunnel entrance to this underground base. Their engines echo off the sporadically illuminated wall, the boxy lamps of Earthen origin rather than the more familiar ones of her homeworld.

This might not be where she’d first been forged, but Earth has become as much a home to her as the planet she hails from. It’s a warm, bright feeling that fills her Spark as she lifts an arm to wave at the lanky limbed teenager who climbs down the ladder from the upper catwalk deck.

On the other hand…

“What happened? No one’s hurt? None of you look hurt,” comes a much louder, much older sounding voice as Ratchet’s gravelly vox output spills forth. Arcee barely has time to finish saying hello to Jack as the black-haired teen jogs up to her pedes.

As the shortest Cybertronian member of Team ‘Prime even at her tallest, he’s almost exactly the height of her armored knee.

“Hey, Jack,” she greets, hearing the warmth creep into her voice before she darts her purple-pink gaze to the white and red medic that approaches. “We’re fine, Ratchet. A little thirsty for some coolant, but fine,” she answers evenly. “Where’s Optimus?”

“On his way with Agent Fowler. Ultra Magnus and Bulkhead are investigating the abandoned mine the Decepticons last pillaged. None of you are hurt?” he asks again, cerulean optics a too-bright luminous glow in the steady rings of his vivid gaze. That old silver faceplate is a welcomed sight, too, if it weren’t for both the news she’s carrying and the knowledge there’s no way the medic will let them skip a particulate purge.

He’s already in a fussy mode and they hadn’t seen any combat today.

“None of us are hurt, we’re fine,” Arcee stresses.

“Yeah Doc-’bot, didn’t even chip our paint or get mud on our rims,” Smokescreen adds as the flamboyant archive guard strolls forward, all sleek silver frame and painted white panels with blue and colored accents. Arcee eases a step to the left to better but herself between his large pedes and Jack’s small, fragile frame.

Smokescreen’s been getting much better about watching where he steps, but she still doesn’t quite trust him not to accidentally flatten a human in a moment of forgetfulness or distraction.

Before Ratchet can get a word out, Bumblebee steps over, sending a watchful glance of acknowledgement to Jack and Arcee herself, as he turns his radio on.

Music blasts them at full volume, loud enough Jack winces, Arcee smirks, and Ratchet rolls his eyes as he never-the-less pays attention to the scout’s message.

“...spooky scary skeletons, send shivers down your spine!...”

Arcee snorts. Yeah, Soundwave was spooky all right.

“Ratchet said you saw big-tall-and-pointy,” Jack says.

“Yes, and have been waiting for any further information,” Ratchet immediately presses, making Arcee close her mouth as she patiently waits for him to settle his nerves. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting under radio silence, wondering if any of you were--”

“We’re fine, Ratchet. No combat, he didn’t even know we were there,” Arcee interrupts, pairing well with Bumblebee’s trilling cascade of digitized beeps in disjointed binary. If she were to put the mish-mash together in literal translation, he’d be spouting literal nonsense. And maybe something about fuel modulators, if that off-tone blip was literal. “Radio silence saved our plate.”

She knew exactly how hard waiting had been for him, and knows that Ratchet got the same amount of recharge the rest of them had-- which is to say, none.

“Yeah… Freaky guy drove right past me, gosh I thought I was gonna-- Have to... Kick some Decepticon aft,” Smokescreen finishes with forced gusto, doing a double-take as he remembers his human audience. “Didn’t wanna scratch my nice paint up.”

He hasn’t quite made the close friends and trusted confidantes out of the humans like some of them have, the newest member to their team and also the newest Cybertronian to wake from stasis. Awakened on an alien planet he’d never been to and in the middle of a millena-long war that to his displaced point in time, had only just started.

Arcee wondered sometimes, if he’d rather they’d left him asleep.

“So… What were the cons doing in the South side of Jasper?” Jack asks, rightly curious to know what hostile forces were doing in the very town he lived in.

That his entire family lived in. An uncomfortable chill works its way through Arcee’s engine as coolant flushes through her frame.

“I wish I knew,” Arcee answers freely. “I’ll give a full debriefing when the big guy--”

A loud notification beep from the main command terminal and it’s many monitors, has all of them turning to look at the massive screens. Ratchet immediately turns on a pede to lumber towards the controls, his gaze lifted to look at the massive map and supplementary info screens he’s arranged to his liking.

It’s impressive, honestly, which is great because it’s about the only thing of any real quality to this ramshackle, cobbled-together base they made out of a hole in the ground. The only other work of Cybertronian-grade craft is the large, circular frame of metal big enough for the tallest ‘bot Arcee knows to walk through.

Which he’s about to do very soon, judging by the communication request Ratchet receives, and confirms.

“Ground bridge activating now,” Ratchet says with a distinct lack of military precision, something Arcee’s long since come to care far less about.

Unless it’s an actual emergency, she really doesn’t fragging care how many seconds it takes him to power the machine up at any given call-back to base. Not unless her life or someone else’s is depending on those precious, dwindling kliks of time.

“Hey… You alright? Your optics are kinda dim,” comes a softly spoken, male voice from her left and down. Arcee’s attention is drawn away from watching Ratchet move to pull the lever back on the ground-bridge, after punching in the coordinates and calibrating its power output.

If Jack had asked her that even so much as a month ago, Arcee would have brushed his concern off. A better learned mech with a little bit softer shell of armor around her Spark, she finds herself hesitating instead, looking down at him.

Smokescreen and ‘Bee are already walking over to the Ground Bridge to await their leader’s arrival. No one else is paying them any mind, for the moment.

“...I’m pretty wound up, honestly. I had to make a hard call tonight, but I think I made the right choice,” she says carefully, unwilling to burden him with the full force of her dark ruminations.

Concern turns those dark eyebrows into a pinched line as he frowns at her, then holds up a hand as he reaches for hers.

Cool, soft fingertips touch her own, molding against the hard surface of her metal digits as Arcee feels the servos in her articulated hands relax on reflex.

She sighs, smiling a little as she turns her hand into his, looking more fully down at the human who’s addressed her.

At her friend.

“No one else got hurt?” he checks.

“No,” she confirms, then hesitates. “Well…”

Jack’s face doesn’t change, but something in his eyes grows more intense as he clocks her unease. All of them look towards the ground bridge as the sound of steady, heavy pede-steps reach their audials.

“Finally! I wanna hear everything that happened. She’s made us wait, too, Ratchet,” Smokescreen announces.

‘Bee throws his hands up in the air with a sassy head-toss, and Arcee understands enough of his broken binary and distorted vocals to catch his short complaint.

“Hey, be glad all you saw of him was the glimpse you got. I had to spend all night next to them.”

The reminder causes a somber atmosphere to take over the hype the younger members of the team had tried to ramp up. Fortunately, it’s with good timing-- before anyone can slip into true melancholy or attempt to drag things back around to a form of celebrate-to-hide-the-nerves act, a familiar silhouette appears from within the deep, swirling vortex of the Ground Bridge. Tall, boxy, Arcee would recognize that familiar frame anywhere.

“Ratchet said you had news of Decepticon presence,” is the clear-voiced greeting with a masculine depth to it, getting straight to business as Optimus calmly walks onto base. Ratchet waits until his pedes have cleared the yellow-black taped line on the ground, before pushing the lever back to cut power to the Energon-hungry machinery. All around them the room pulses with the sound of the deep, gurgling force of massive fuel lines and the rumble of large engines winding down.

“Yeah, you’re not gonna believe what I have to say, so I took plenty of video footage. No audio, though,” Arcee warns. “I had to keep most my systems offline, I was parked right in the Dead Zone.”

“Dead Zone?” Jack asks, looking up at her as Arcee cringes.

She’d rather not explain that one to--

“Means she was in range of his audial receptors’ sensitivity,” Smokescreen says with a rare solemnity to his voice, fully serious just now as the mech crosses his arms, not quite meeting anyone’s gaze and settling in favor of staring at the floor as he talks. “Soundwave’s not just an experienced opponent in melee combat, or a brilliant tactician--”

He pauses briefly at Bumblebee’s roll of the optics with a dismissive, derogatory blee-blip-eep .

Probably tried to call the ‘Con a sleazy code hack.

When no further commentary is forthcoming, Smokescreen squints at ‘Bee for a moment, then continues as if uninterrupted.

“--but a natural-forged war frame that was meant for reconnaissance work. All his base root functions are focused around collecting data from the environment around him; particulate information, deep-scans of the terrain, radiowaves and other frequencies, he’s more like eight Cybertronians with niche specialities at the highest level of training and frame upgrades, all shoved into one ‘bot,” he continues, clearly trying his best to make the information as entry-level as possible for their avidly listening human. “So… No one really knows what, exactly, his abilities are beyond a few things we’ve been able to confirm, but even then, we don’t really know the whole extent of them. But it’s pretty well known that Soundwave’s range of hearing is easily like, twice or more the sensitivity of the average Cybertronian and we have really good hearing.”

“So… The Dead Zone means the space you can’t make noise in. Dead silence?” Jack surmises, almost accurately.

It’s close enough.

“Yeah,” Arcee agrees.

“Yeah,” Smokescreen likewise agrees… then continues, “And also where you end up dead, if he does hear you, because no one takes on Soundwave solo and lives to tell the tale. Some pretty bad-ass mechs have managed to sneak recon in on the guy, though,” he adds with a wink sent Arcee’s way.

“Yeah, well…”

Everyone’s looking at her, now. She’s the one with the most information to share, obviously, so that’s only natural. But quite suddenly, it’s too much; she’s spent all night isolated and cut off from her family in a squishy patch of greenery next to her worst living glitch-dreams; all while living a glitch-dream she’d fervently wished had stayed in the confines of her processor.

Everyone else looks tense, too; unhappy faceplates, silenced or unpleasant tonal buzzes and notes in their quiet frames, Jack’s too-serious, pinched expression…

And the way ‘Prime just waits patiently, intently, leaving no time lately for talk outside of work. He hides it better than the rest of them, but Arcee knows things weigh heavily upon his conscious, burden that noble Spark with aching grief and dogged determination.

He stops being social with them, when he’s worried about what the Decepticons are doing. And lately, they’ve all been really worried. And hungry. That hasn’t helped matters, either.

So she decides to start things off a little out of order, because quite suddenly, Arcee doesn’t want to start from the beginning, when everything was so unknown and frightening and suspenseful. She doesn’t want to start at that point of tension, which will only be redoubled on and enhanced by the present tension now.

So she starts with the most interesting thing she learned last night, which will quite naturally lead into all the much more important things they need to know.

“So, apparently, Soundwave finally got married,” she jokes half-seriously. That’s clearly not what anyone was expecting her to say, as stunned, blank faceplates stare at her in confusion. “Yep, didn’t believe it myself, but I gotta say, watching him use a Holo’ Av’ to carry the--”

Ratchet immediately splutters, spittle actually flying out of his mouth from the force of his reaction.

“Wh-wha- what?” he blurts incredulously, wiping his intake off on the back of a hand a moment later, wiping the lubricant off his lips. “He--? Soundwave? Used a Holo’ Av’? A substantial one?” His speaker actually strains and cracks under the punched force of his incredulity..

Did I stutter, big guy? Arcee thinks, and grins like the cat who’s caught the mouse, though she knows it doesn’t quite reach her optics. Not with true, carefree humor. You heard me.

“Yeah. So did Megatron. Looks like High Command’s--”

“Soundwave’s… married?” Optimus Prime interrupts with such a plainly innocent voice of total confusion, and maybe even some kind of bizarre, involuntary hope. Like he might actually be happy for the ‘Con.

Arcee gives him a somewhat adoring look, because blast it all, no matter what he’s done or the accomplishments he’s achieved as a well loved and well respected leader, he’s always going to be that awkward archivist to her.

And it’s moments like this that reinforce that endearment.

“Only to save face,” she almost hates to break the news to him, and he stares just as blankly at her. “He claimed he’s married to the human,” she reveals, and adds the woman’s name for good measure. Just so they know which human she’s talking about.

Optimus’ eyes go wide above the faceplate he has yet to retract. So do Ratchet’s as his intake drops open, and Bumblebee’s, and Smokescreen’s.

Arcee looks down, and finds Jack staring at her with a matching expression, and it’s nearly enough to make her laugh.

She was glad at first to see the other two children of Team Prime were safe at home, well away from discussing matters of Cons--

--prowling the streets and neighborhoods where they live.

Her Spark chamber feels like it’s going to crack under the crushing force of that tight squeeze as her engine shifts gears quietly.

It was a miracle the slimey fraggers were on the South side of town, not further into the inner city where the school was, or on the North-East side where Jack’s and Raph’s homes were. Miko lived in the inner city, so was out of all of them, the most likely to incidentally cross paths with a ‘Con on the streets.

An unfiltered chill hits her engine that’s been delayed for too many groons, and the rush is an absolute Spark-stoppingly frigid prickling that seeps into her warm frame like ice.

“Are… You sure it’s just to save face?” Jack asks, sounding uncertain as he studies Arcee like he can read the turmoil in her mind despite her blank faceplate. She’s still not sure if she’s always been this transparent and everyone’s only given her the courtesy of pretending not to notice when she’s hiding her moods, or if he’s just a special exception in noticing some… whatever sign it is she gives off, that seems to spark such careful scrutiny. “I mean, why would Soundwave need a human?” Jack wonders.

Arcee shrugs, and chooses to answer so everyone can hear.

“I’m absolutely positive it’s just a cover story, Jack, and Scrap if I know. What I can tell you, is the exact order in which everything happened,” she offers, then shares a look with Optimus. “And we need Agent Fowler to prepare for possible witness protection services being needed. One of the neighbors doesn’t seem to know about us, but he knows something’s off at his neighbor’s busy household,” Arcee stresses. She hesitates to state outright which lives are at most immediate risk, preferring to stave off the emotional whiplash in favor of giving a clinical report, first. Some of them already know; Jack is the one she wishes wasn’t here to hear all this.

His mom must be working late at the hospital again, she thinks with a dimming Spark. June had become far more comfortable with them following her own misadventure with being captive by ‘Cons, but she still struggled, Arcee thought.

Mostly, she worried for her son’s sake, and Arcee didn’t blame the femme one bit; his mother had every right to care for her Sparkling, no matter how tall and lanky-limbed he got.

In any case, they can save their reactions of true dread and determination for after the debriefing. She doesn’t want to provoke those reactions now.

“Where is Fowler?” Smokescreen asks, glancing around. That’s a good question.

Optimus is silent for several moments like his systems are undergoing a hard reboot.

“...He’s on his way, he-- Chose to take a helicopter,” he explains haltingly, still looking at Arcee with an expression of what she’s sure must be stupefied surprise.

Still afraid of the Ground Bridge, Arcee thinks sourly. His aircraft’s cloaking technology was good, but if the Cons managed to happen to catch visual contact on his vehicle, and the pilot sitting in it…

She dreaded every time that frustrating, helpful, annoying, and somewhat maybe a bit of a friend, stepped foot on base; Arcee had heard a lot of slander about humans from the ‘Cons over the years, but there was at least one thing she could agree with, and she hated it. It was nothing more than the pure, raw truth of things.

Starscream was right about one thing, despite his lying glossa. He used the truth as it suited him, and sometimes it suited him as-is, without any further modification to adjust it to his liking.

“Humans; always the weak link,” that raspy, deep baritone had sneered. Someday she’ll manage to purge the oily sound of it from her processor, but for now, it fuels the angry spark of her temper into steady flames, which counteract the unpleasant chill of her chassis that makes her want to shake and sit down and make crawl under something nice and sturdy. Bomb-proof.

She’s home. Safe. But she’s not really home. Not really safe, either, her processor supplies unhelpfully.

Studying ‘Prime’s face serves as a great distraction to yank her out of her quickly spiraling thoughts before Arcee can even fully register the slip on her grasp of control. Two more groon, she thinks with a wired kind of fatigue. One hour to debrief them, one to go over details, and I hit the berth for recharge while they rewatch everything and guess all night, she thinks desperately.

Realistically it’ll probably take a lot longer than that, but having some kind of concrete number to focus on for this exact moment is enough; that’s all she needs to ground herself, tell herself she can make it just that little bit more because there’s only a little bit more to go.

She can stave off the shake in her servos and prevent an uneasy sway in her step from loose hips with the way she feels so floaty, detached from her own frame.

She gets yanked right back into the physical present and out of her own mind as she watches Optimus’ silver faceplate abruptly slot down and seemingly vanish into the sides of his helm.

It reveals a dropped open intake and a plainly disbelieving expression.

“He… Did he carry the human , in ‘Avatar form?” he checks, sounding just as questioning and stunned as he looks.

Arcee knows he’s not asking if she’s telling the truth or not; he merely wants to confirm if he really heard and understood what she said correctly.

Now that the doom-and-gloom atmosphere dread of dread has been thoroughly diluted by far more lively curiosity and expressive disbelief, Arcee feels ready to start from the beginning.

“Well, first he dropped her off at her house--” which doesn’t get much of a reaction as context alone could lead them to expect that, until then she continues, “--where Breakdown and Knockout were waiting in the garage,” Arcee reveals, watching optics blink at her in nearly chronological sequence, as first Optimus, then Bumblebee followed swiftly by Smokescreen; finally, Ratchet blinks downright owlishly at her, mouth still dropped open. Probably like Jack’s face must look, and she wishes he hadn’t chosen to stand so close to her leg . She can’t see him and the others at the same time. Easily, anyways, and she’s not going to make herself look silly tilting a mirror around just to see him in the corner of her field of vision. “Let me play the footage,” Arcee offers instead, lifting her left arm up as she strides for the command terminal.

As she does, she just barely catches the faintest snatch of Optimus’ low, confused voice as he probably thinks out loud.

“...but married?” Optimus murmurs questioningly, blinking twice, before trailing after to join the others in doing the same.

Chapter Text

“Good riddance,” is the first thing out of Knockout’s mouth as the portal zips shut, and you’re left standing with your jaw on the floor, heart in your throat, said throat and subsequently your squishy, too-sensitive ‘fuel pump,’ both strangled by emotion. Robbed of speech, all you can do for several too-painful moments is just… stare. Your face is frozen in a shellshocked expression at the empty space where Soundwave had just been.

It’s strangely quiet without them, even though the two beepy ‘bots really didn’t make that much noise. Their absence is still so notable to you now, having grown accustomed to their more-or-less constant company in the last week, that it feels too quiet.

You jerk out of your frozen state when you hear a shift in rhythm of familiar, heavy-duty hydraulics and the pneumatic hisst of whatever complicated mechanisms make up Knockout’s body.

The sudden change of pattern in his frame’s idle sounds comes paired with the expected clink of his absurdly light sounding pede-steps, despite the knowledge he could easily flatten a car just by stepping on it. You wonder how much conscious effort he has to put into stepping so smoothly he doesn’t even chip the floor.

Particularly seeing as the two of them just left craters in said badly abused floor. The massive cracks and scrapes from their brutal impacts with the cement are deep enough there’s soil churned up at the deepest gouge.

You feel very… Fragile. Breakable, even, in a way you are not used to feeling as you turn your gaze from empty air, to the ruined floor, and finally, to the mech still here with you.

Naturally, as you look over at Knockout, you’re right back to being frozen in place as your black-and-silver alien crush approaches with an unhurried stride, the rings of his red eyes focused on your face. Knockout doesn’t seem bothered by the gray dust and fresh scrapes that decorate his plating on absolutely every inch of his body, not even reaching up to try and dust himself off. It’s a difficulty to keep your eyes focused on his face, and not on the thin little rivulets of blue blood that’s dribbling down his right thigh, and in a few speckled spots on his chassis, like he crimped a fuel line beneath his plating. It’s smeared some, where his armor overlaps and rubs against each other.

“I know you said you were going to go fetch fuel for yourself…” he begins as he leaves the wreckage behind, then succeeds in giving you metaphorical whiplash as the metal plates of his armor ruffle and lift, then begin the dizzying dance of transformation as he walks towards you--

--doing the same thing Soundwave just did.

He’s mass displacing. He’s shrinking down to be on your level, and quite suddenly your already too-fast heart rate launches into warp drive as your face heats up, and your entire body feels a flush of too-warm too-hot sensation.

It takes him much longer to complete the process than Soundwave’s rapid, second’s long transformation sequence, and you have no idea if that’s a Knockout thing or if he’s purposefully slowing it down. Just so you can take all the time in the world to admire the dizzying dance of complex moving parts as they flip and rotate over anatomy just similar enough to what you’re familiar with in your species, that it’s doing dangerous things to your insides as you glimpse the inside of his thighs as the light catches against silver with a brilliant, gleaming flash, drawing your gaze up over the armor that reshuffles itself low over his abdomen, granting a peek at tightened cables that layer and overlap and braid together in a way that brings to mind Greek statues from your Art History classes.

You’re sure your goofy professor would have had some colorful things to say about Knockout’s godly physique, his eyes never once leaving your face despite the flip of his armor on his chest twisting and rotating as parts lift and settle, in much smaller alignment. He seems to shrink down in stages, rather than all in one fluid motion like Soundwave did, and the mind-boggling display is still over much too soon for your eyes to properly comprehend what they just saw.

In far less time than a being of his size should be able to so casually bend the rules of physics that you’re beginning to question more and more the accuracy of every day, he’s you sized.

Well. Nearly.

Knockout stands an easy two head’s or more taller than you, it’s a little difficult to judge just now, but you figure he’s probably short enough to pass through most doorways without having to duck… though his broad shoulders and the flared, petal-like pauldrons on them are probably too wide to clear the frame without turning sideways.

He’s still himself; so perfectly him, not a single detail different except for his scale, proportionately the exact same mech you usually have to look up much higher to meet the eyes of.

Which you do, because you yank your gaze up from that narrow, teasing midsection that arrows between the shimmery black plating that covers the equivalent of his pelvis, and his upper chest. You were never one to understand why people went all ga-ga over the classic Superhero Speedo aesthetic, but with Knockout’s masculine physique showing off an undeniably similar cut framed by the flash of silver thighs and a devastatingly sculpted midsection, you get it.

Holy shit do you get it, now.

“Uh…” is all your fried nerves manage to get out in the few moments between his first burst of speech, to suddenly having a silver hand reaching towards your face as Knockout looks down at you.

You can feel the stretch of your wide eyes as you stare at him, heart hammering harder as he starts to reach for you. Your breath catches in your throat, and you flinch on reflex from the needlepoint digits that catch the light and glint in the corner of your right eye.

And just like that, your primitive little flight-or-fight instincts take over like a switch flipped, and remind you of all the reasons his touch could be very, very dangerous.

What is he--?

Those lethally sharp fingers twitch back towards his palm in a slight, relaxed curl as he hesitates a few inches from touching you.

“...but wouldn’t it be much nicer to have company, for a meal?” Knockout offers, watching your face with unwavering focus that has your overwhelmed little mind whirling. “I’ve been waiting for days to sit down with you longer than a nanoklik.” His voice has a compelling drop in volume that makes something below your belly twist as your heart flutters, but it contrasts near painfully against the rest of your body’s knee-jerk reactions.

Which is a confused, somewhat shellshocked fear that keeps you rooted in place, staring at him as you try to get your thoughts to flow faster than cold molasses. You’re not over what just happened, or the guilt of having apparently guilted Soundwave into running the fuck away from you and your kitties. It takes you a solid five, maybe eight seconds to string a single thought together on this sudden, new, wildly different railway of thought as the train hops tracks.

Knockout… wants to eat with me?

That sure sounds like what he just said.

He… Wants to eat? With me?

In the face of your mute stillness, Knockout eases forward, then seems to deliberate for a moment before you feel the pinprick touch of the very tips of his sharp fingers, painlessly graze the softness of your cheek, the side of your head.

Like having daggers lovingly traced over your skull, barely stirring your hair, and gods above why is that so hot? And why is he doing this to you right now of all times?!

You could scream. You want this, this flirty advance, you do, but you also don’t. You’ve got a lot of baggage being hauled around and most of it is newly packed, and demanding to be un packed. Something you’re not ready to do, just now.

This time, you only suck in a sharp hiss of air through your nose as you go still. All except for the racing flutter of your heart as your face warms.

Fingers thread through your hair, then drag through it like a comb as his serious expression slowly softens, without quite losing it’s harsh edge that gives way to a slow smirk as he looks down at you.

“Cat got your tongue?” your confounding company teases. 

Yeah, and his name is Knockout, you think faintly. You wonder where he learned the phrase, since you don’t think you’ve used it on them. Movies, probably. You’re killing me here, big guy.

“Y-yes, I mean, I mean n-no, Wait, no! I mean-- I just-- uh…” you finally give up and stop trying to force words over your tangled tongue, and reach up hesitantly. At a lack of protest, you cautiously dare to touch the arm he’s held up. The pads of your fingers contact smooth, polished metal with the faintest slip of texture that tells you the surface is probably waxed. His paint might be trashed, but he’s been no less dutiful about taking care of what’s left and the metal beneath regardless.

You have no idea if they use literal wax or if it’s some bioproduct of their own anatomy, but it feels like touching well cared for metal. It feels just like touching the warm hood of a car just parked after a modest drive. There’s the faintest grit that interrupts the silken slip, as concrete dust catches up against your skin.

His plating looks like the stars that dazzle you at night, the scratches in his once-lovely paint job now bringing to mind the erratic patterns of shooting stars. You’re terrified of him, more than you ever have been before, and yet…

And yet--!

He could crush you in an instant. Skewer you on his fingers on accident. And you get to touch him… And live to do it again. Touching him has always been something of a guilty thrill to you, well before you realized the nature of your own attraction to him. If Earth’s the garden of Eden, Knockout’s your lovely apple of temptation, one that’s let you paint his pretty red black like the space between stars he’d come from.

It shouldn’t be turning you on.

The danger here is real. Maybe Knockout isn’t a direct threat to you, not by choice, but he could still hurt you. A single movement of innattentive thought, a reflexive twitch or reaction of surprise; he could really hurt you, he could kill you.

But the gentle, feather-light touch of quicksilver against your head, as soft and delicate as if he were handling a fragile relic, has your heart racing as something much softer, much more pleasant melts your systems with corrosive emotion. It’s too much.

It’s too much, and an electric thrill shoots down your spine and stirs something so deep in your belly you wonder how you keep yourself from making a noise in response to the flash of involuntary arousal as he tilts his head, just the tiniest bit, analyzing you like he’s deciding how he wants to unwrap his favorite candy bar.

And you’re the piece of candy.

Somehow, anxiety probably, you manage not to whimper at the thoughts crowding your overtaxed headspace. Holy stars above, how does this shiny, selfish, gorgeous fucker do this to you?

Maybe this is why you’re still single. Maybe, your thoughts unhelpfully supply, I’m just too smart to settle for my own bad tastes.

Or… You had been. And since any other options have been left at the curbside where you dumped the rest of your life’s ordinary and carefully curated trappings of things like your hard earned social life and all the friends that came with it, at least some amount of your morals and self respect, possibly more than you’ll ever be willing to admit even to yourself, and…

And maybe, you tell that instinctive reaction in your body that makes your skin shiver and crawl as goosebumps prickle and your heart races so fast that it’s almost painful in conjunction with your shallow, quick breaths-- Maybe it’s too late to stop being stupid.

You already bit off more than you could chew, and it turned around and bit you right back.

And the one thing you’ve been trying to avoid this entire week, because it immediately sends your heart into confused somersaults and makes your head feel light and floaty like what’s happening right now, is the knowledge that yeah, you’re afraid of Knockout.

Because you know exactly how much he could hurt you, and you don’t think it’s going to come in the form of bloody injury or radioactive poisoning. Probably. Hopefully.

Your shaking, you think, as he cups the side of your head, his fingers settling without quite ever going completely still. His thumb brushes oh-so-slightly back-and-forth against the curve of the top of your head, an undeniably pleasant sensation. Ticklish, but without the urge to wrest yourself away; you want to lean closer .

Frozen in place, all you can do instead is shiver where you stand and stare at him as your thoughts whirl too fast to keep up with.

“Hmm… The choice is yours,” Knockout says abruptly, then smoothly slips his hand free from your hair, letting your own slide off his arm as he shifts half a step back. “I don’t wish to impose.”

Somehow, the way he says that makes something in your chest twist with an aching guilt.

It’s not my fault you work for a murderous sentient bucket-with-eyebrows, you think, and wish it canceled out that unwanted feeling like you think it should have.

But it doesn’t.

“Nothing to say to me?” Knockout invites, this time with a familiar acidic, pissy tone coloring his expressive, rich voice. You immediately miss his casual, suave drawl, the one that was starting a problem in your pants that hadn’t been there two minutes ago. “We’re finally alone for the first time all chord for longer than a-- I-- W-wait! Hey!”

Knockout splutters off into startled incredulity as you just… turn and start walking for the door, feeling so…

You don’t even know what you feel anymore, because you feel so much you practically feel numb to sensation. But you do need to eat, and so that’s what you tell your body to focus on as autopilot kicks into gear. You’re halfway across the floor, feeling in a daze, before you’re stopped by a hand carefully closed around your arm.

At the exact same time, he says your name.

Not your nickname. Not ‘Butterfly.’

He says your name.

You startle to a stop, momentarily alarmed before you realize that Knockout’s barely restraining you-- it’d be easy to pull your arm out, assuming he didn’t tighten his grip any further.

“Wait, please; please,” he begs quickly, once again catching you off-guard by the sheer amount of open expression in his voice, only this time he sounds…

…desperate.

Not overly used to hearing your suave, over-confident mech buddy sound anything less than completely sure of himself, you bite your tongue on a reflexive retort, and instead stop to look at him.

You want to say something, when you meet his gaze. For the first time, this close to him, you realize that his eyes aren’t really quite black-and-red. What you thought was black screen-like sclera, proves to be a thin lens over the illuminated optics that glow behind them, casting a rose red tinted blush to his entire gaze. With an outline of what looks like his species equivilent of black eyeliner, you can’t possibly tear yourself away from that vivid gaze, the ones you’ve come to think of as the exact shade of color to represent seductive romance or, you’re sure, he could probably turn that red into violent demonic inferno.

Fortunately, you’re you, and Knockout likes you.

And according to Soundwave and ‘Beaky, he really likes you, the reminder of which is tangling up all the things you wanted to say to him, and maybe still want to say, but aren’t sure what anymore you can actually brave committing to spoken words between you.

You try anyways to open your mouth to speak, and nothing comes out.

Silence stretches between you instead as words pile up on the tip of your tongue, crowd behind your lips, fill your lungs to aching with every line unvoiced.

You can’t get a single word out, anymore than Soundwave could answer you when you pressured him to make a promise you needed to hear. Still need to hear, actually, and good gods just thinking about it is going to send you right back into hysteric tears and you left those behind a week ago and in the privacy of your shower, with the water and music both cranked so loud no one could possibly overhear your choked sobs.

After who knows how long, Knockout finally seems to steel himself, still holding your gaze without looking away; that alone serves to keep you silent and rooted to the spot, waiting for him to make his case, whatever that may be.

“I… I’m sorry,” he starts, then seems to hesitate as if gauging your reaction. When you don’t immediately give more response than to blink at him and remain in place, he continues, “I know this-- Isn’t ideal.” No shit, Sherlock. “I never meant for… I never meant for any of this, and it’s almost entirely my fault,” he said, seeming to relax slightly despite the uneasy force of his words, like he’s pushing them out through a closed throat and gritted teeth but is determined to spit the razorblades out of his mouth regardless. “I understand you’ve… Had a lot to deal with, and the timing has hardly been ideal, but I haven’t-- Nothing’s changed,” he finishes awkwardly, adjusting his grip on your arm without quite letting go.

You blink, slowly.

“Everything’s changed, Knockout,” you say eventually, when he doesn’t start up again. He recoils, looking openly taken aback, but to your surprise he doesn’t rush to interrupt you, instead waiting to see what more you have to say. If you have more to say.

For a moment, you’d really like to know that, too.

And then like a popped cork, the moment you open your mouth with an uncertain starting waver to your vocal chords as you push air through them without clear intent… Everything you’ve shoved off, piled up on the abandoned desk of your trashed mind’s metaphorical office of self reflection, stuffed between conscious lines of thought you focused on with dogged determination instead, it all comes tumbling out.

You slap your hands on Knockout’s chest without force but great speed, halting your own momentum at the absolute last possible moment so your palms and fingers only contact him with a sharp, biting sting that hurts you only because of the new scratches and sharp prickly bits from his freshly gouged armor.

“Everything has changed!” you repeat, voice shrill. “I went from having alien friends visiting my home as a cool hang-out spot for social funsies and using my house as a mental health retreat, to having to give up my entire fucking life just to make sure you don’t destroy anything except my own shit! And oh, by the way, your boss might just decide he’s bored of tolerating my mere existence and order me to be executed, as you so helpfully reminded me,” you seethe.

Contrary to your expectations, he doesn’t overly react to your emotive outburst; Knockout only remains standing in place, maybe leaning back the tiniest bit as he studies you, and it’s only serving to make you angrier.

You shove against his chest with all your force, knowing it won’t do much-- and it doesn’t. He doesn’t even waver the tiniest bit on his pedes, absolutely immobile in front of you. An immovable force of nature.

A pain in your ass.

“I asked one thing of you, and you went ahead and did it anyways. You put my kitties and I in danger. All I have is them, Knockout,” you say brokenly. “All I have are my animals. I don’t like my own species, Knockout,” comes a much too-honest confession that spills out of your equally too-honest mouth. “We’re literally the most dangerous invasive species on the entire fucking planet and most of us would rather step over an injured dog laid out starving on the sidewalk than stop to help them!” you cry, and push at his chest again, but this time it’s an empty gesture; there’s no force behind it, all that energy channeled into the hoarse punch of your voice as your elbows bend like limp noodles. You don’t wobble where you stand, however, because there’s a steady presence that keeps you grounded, hands to either side of your shoulders gently cupping them, keeping you from shaking your skeleton out of your own skin.

“I have aliens for housemates, aliens who are in a war and I can’t even-- I can’t even tell anyone, Knockout! Do you know what it’s like not to be able to call my best friend up and tell her not to come to my state? I got to see her once a year, once a year, if that. And now I’ll never see her again. I’ll never get to do code projects with my techie nerd friends or finish the art collab with my comic group.

“Everything has changed for me, maybe not for you,” you snap. “So don’t try to push me back to where I was in the past, because I can’t go back. There is no going back. There’s only a dumb promise and the stupidest amount of faith that I can actually trust you despite every fiber of my body telling me that’s a bad idea, all except my stupid heart , because for fuck’s sake some stupid, moronic part of me thinks that maybe the reason I’ve been so isolated and weird and cut off from fucking everyone else I’ve ever tried to connect with in life who was taken away from me, left me behind, or changed so much I didn’t like them anymore, is because you idiots need me.

“I was putting my life back together, I’d finally found peace and calm and some semblance of community again, I was making friends, I was doing things in my life I had wanted to for a really, really long time, and then I met you.

“Yeah,” you continue with a hiccuped laugh, like he asked a question or made a face of disbelief that challenged your assertion to offend you, except he didn’t. You’re just spewing word vomit right now, barely even aware of what’s leaving your mouth except for how right it feels, how good it feels to get that pressure that’s been building up in your chest unvoiced for months , perhaps years if you’re being fully, brutally honest with yourself-- which you are, just now. “Yeah,” you repeat in a hiss, then give a broken, self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t need a degree in psychology to clock that you and yours are some seriously fucked up mechs who’ve seen some shit, and maybe some stupid part of me thought you coming to my house was all you needed.

“Just a happy, safe place where no one had any expectations of you except that you be polite guests in my home, and for the most part, you were,” you sob. “But then you had to go and-- How could you say that!” you cry, smacking your fists against his chestplate again, this time hard enough it hurts, and makes an audible thunk against his armor. A moment later, cool air rushes over your shoulders as warm shackles carefully close around your wrists, and Knockout gently lifts your hands off his chest. “You make it sound like he’s the bad guy here, but you’re ALL the bad guys here!” you whisper instead of scream like you’d thought that build-up of pressure in your chest meant was going to happen, because even thinking that thought was enough to make your stomach flip and bile rise up your throat, but saying it?

Committing that observation to spoken word, cementing it with conscious intent and recognition? Acknowledging it?

You want to curl up in a little ball and cry.

“You’re a-all the bad guys,” you accuse in a sob, voice hiccuping.

Then he has to go and break your heart.

“Yes,” Knockout says, very plainly. His calm tone jars you, the only thing that prevents your tempter from giving motivation to the impulse to interrupt him with incredulous betrayal, because how could he admit it so easily? “I suppose to your species… We are your worst nightmares,” Knockout continues, letting go of one of your wrists to bring his hand back up to cup the back of your head, barely touching you as his head tilts. “We’re the most dangerous, invasive species on Cybertron. It’s interesting how many similarities our races share, isn’t it?” he continues, his calm, serious voice lacking all suave drawl and instead giving you something of a glimpse of the academic you’ve always been told he is.

You rarely see it, except in moments like this, when he really takes the time to use that impressive brain of his instead of his pretty faceplate and preference for fun and games.

“I…”

“You’re also right, that I’m… Terribly selfish,” he continues, voice dropping in volume as those red optics seem to smoulder, their luminosity brightening. “I have so very few nice things in life to take pleasure in, I’ve learned to keep what I can, where I can,” he continues, and you swear he’s moved closer to you even though he hasn’t moved. “If you want to be angry at anyone for ruining our peace and quiet,” he murmurs, threading fingers through your hair, “Then tell your precious ‘Beepy ‘bots’ to go take a hike, because I’m not the one who told Megatron you even exist,” he reveals.

Someday, you’ll figure out how to handle the conflicting emotions of feeling two totally, wildly different things at the same time. Unfortunately, that’s a technique you’ve been trying to teach yourself from the absolute earliest beginnings of your self-aware life, and have thus far failed to contrive a solution to.

So you suck in a sharp breath as your mouth drops open and your throat constricts, and you can’t get a fucking word out. Nothing. Not even the tiniest squeak of air leaves your strangled throat, and all you can do is stare at Knockout’s face as he leans down towards you, only to halt barely a polite distance away.

Good gods, you can’t decide if you want him to keep moving closer, or if you want to run away, and the indecision is very nearly close to literally hurting you with the awful ache of being exactly split between such extremes.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Knockout asks directly, then without waiting for an answer, supplies it for you. “I’ve always been on your side. I never wanted Lord Megatron to know I made an honest to goodness friend, someone who likes me for me… And not just because I’m convenient and useful to them,” he stresses, absolutely reaching right into your heart like he’d jabbed those sharp fingers of his through your ribs to squeeze directly. “And then Soundwave had to go and tattle, like the mindless, loyal drone that he is. He has one loyalty, and that’s to his family. A family that comprises exactly two members, which is Lazerbeak and Megatron himself. Do you understand?” Knockout repeats, leaning towards you again as his eyes narrow, and you feel very, very small. “There’s no changing Soundwave’s mind. He answers to one master, and one master alone, and no matter how charming and kind and pleasant you are to him, that will never change,” he seethes.

And in so doing, breaking your heart as you stare at him, stricken, because you want to ask him a question.

You want to, but with the Spymaster’s audio recording equipment wrapped around your neck, you can’t .

Unfortunately, Knockout doesn’t seem to need you to voice it, because he answers the question anyways.

“I will never hurt you, or your precious, fluffy Symbiotes,” Knockout promises, making your heart break and patch back together with ooey-gooey goop, only for it all to slough apart as he continues, “And I’ll never have to.” As he speaks, his gaze drops fractionally, and all at once, you realize something terrible.

Knockout knows Soundwave can, if he so chooses, hear every word being said.

He didn’t forget, like you thought he had. Like you realize you’d somehow, in the most back-ass-wards fashion hoped he had.

“Because when I refuse, someone else won’t,” Knockout hisses, skewering your heart for good measure as his lips curl with a distasteful sneer. “I’d sooner have my Spark ripped out than be the cause of harm to you,” he mutters, like it’s a truly terrible thing he just confessed, some great, awful flaw. Unredeemable, something to be held in contempt.

Like his softness for you is something that’s going to get him killed, and he’s begrudgingly, yet never-the-less accepted that risk.

You feel the tears start streaming down your face before you’ve even registered how painful that line is. You thought you’d been hurt before, but this?

This is a new level entirely.

You move to step back from Knockout, but the exact moment you engage your muscles to shift your weight, he pulls you close, wrapping his arms around you as you go stiff as a board.

“And he doesn’t want to, either,” Knockout mutters like this is an even worse confession. “And frankly, at this point, I doubt Lord Megatron will have you scrapped unless you did something truly foolish and treasonous--”

“I’ve never sworn fealty to him, so it wouldn’t be treason,” you spit out so fast it surprises you, with the conviction and force behind those words practically a spell that armors your psyche with the rebuff of the mere thought. “And I will never swear my allegiance to someone who treats my friends so poorly. But… I’m loyal to my friends,” you finish quietly, as close to a promise of not-fucking-shit-up as he’ll probably ever be able to wrest from you without it being a blatant lie said only under duress of speak-it-or-die.

“Frien d,” Knockout amends. You could slap him. Or maybe kiss him. You’re honestly not sure what you want to do, anymore.

Your heart skips a beat.

“Friend s,” you hiss back, tightening your hold-- when had you wrapped your arms around him? -- and hiding your face against his plating, ignoring the sharp prickle that scrapes against your cheek. “Stop trying to make yourself sound good by making Soundwave look worse . You’re both completely different people and I like you for different reasons,” you mutter. “And I am so, so sick of this bickering. I’m so tired, Knockout. I just… I just want to paint, and take care of my kitties, and my plants, and just… I don’t fucking know, but all this drama is-- I hate it,” you mumble. “Stop making more of it. Please. I’m past my limit,” you outright whine, uncaring of how your voice sounds just now.

He’s still for several moments, aside from the rev of his engine as it kicks on with a low rumble beneath your cheek, and against it all, the sound is soothing. One of his large hands settles over your back as you sigh, leaning into him.

He might scare the shit out of you, but he also shelters you from the storm. Perhaps not the safest place to take shelter, his arms never-the-less still provide a safe haven of comfort.

You just wish it was a little more… Certain.

Finally, Knockout sighs, and you feel something firm and warm briefly touch the top of your head with the faintest press, something that while hard, still has the faintest give to it that makes your lungs freeze still mid-breath.

Did he--? Did he just--?

When he speaks, you feel the puff of breath stir your hair, warm heat fawning over the top of your head.

He just. Kissed you. On the top of your head.

You just about literally spontaneously combust on the spot, as it feels like the ground opens up beneath your feet.

He kissed you on the head. Like… Like something sweet, and precious, something adored and dotted upon.

“There’s just so much you don’t know,” he mumbles. “I thought… I could keep you from everything, but I suppose that was a fool’s wish,” Knockout says with a wry tone that feels out of place, at least for your headspace.

“I’m not a pet you can hide under your bed in a box and hope no one notices,” you mumble.

“No, you’re not,” he says with a sigh. “You would look cute with one of those buckled necklaces, though. Or would you rather imagine me wearing the leash?” he solicites, effectively turning every molecule in your body around with a dizzying 180° and then shaking them up for good measure, before reassembling you microscopic fleck-by-fleck.

Half of you is turned on, half of you is still catching up to the sudden change in topic, again, and exactly all of you is gripped by the mortification that Soundwave and Lazerbeak may or may not be hearing everything said right now.

“Too much?” Knockout wonders without any loss of confidence in his riveting voice, his hold on you not so much as even twitching, and yet you feel like the nature of it’s changed. Where his body presses against yours, suddenly feels less the chaste hold of someone trying their damndest to comfort you, and more the molten sin of a being who probably has a lot of experience to back that salacious confidence. You goggle up at him with wide eyes, trying to force words out, and failing epically. At this point, you should start shopping for a new OS software for your brain, because YourBrain.EXE is clearly not cut out to handle life with Cybertronian housemates. “What, am I not allowed to stun you speechless? I’ve been waiting all chord to have a chance to repay the favor. Can’t I?” Knockout wonders.

He still doesn’t try to touch you any further, which is probably a good thing, because you’re so overwhelmed you literally might pass out again.

“F-Favor?” you finally manage to get out, your voice a faint, breathy thing.

A slow smirk crawls across his face as your Fire Nation fantasy made real and much too overpowered, tilts his head, looking at you.

Then he leans forward, and the space in your lungs suddenly becomes devoid of air as your body promptly forgets how to fucking perform base functions of existing.

“Why, did you forget? I certainly didn’t,” Knockout continues, this time tilting the hand that cups the back of your head, guiding you to look up at him even more than you already are as your chin tips up, and your lips part wordlessly. “Breakdown didn’t, either, if his attitude all chord has been anything to go off of.”

Before you can helplessly demand explanation, he finally stops teasing you.

“Pity, your first interspecies kiss and you don’t even remember. Maybe that’s for the best, though, as I hardly had any time to savor the moment, and I doubt you did, either. Shall we have a re-do?” he invites.

Your eyes are wide as can be, your heart might hammer out of your chest, and the space between your legs is suddenly disconcertingly slimy-wet.

Maybe I’m not done being stupid, you think faintly, because ignoring literally everything else going on in favor of the distraction offered on a silver platter with clawed, elegant hands and ruby red eyes, is looking real good right now.

“I-I… I’d really--”

~”Dumbass, you can’t seduce the human,”~ comes a sudden interruption of a monotonous, quick-paced voice that’s swiftly followed by the clarifying, ~”Announces a pissed off Beaky.”~

And succeeds in sending your heart right back into your throat as your entire chest squeezes tight, and you wonder in horrid guilt-anxiety just how much she and her Dad heard of literally anything said since they left, and also how Soundwave must be doing because it’s probably not anything good.

You can’t even say you want to just go to bed and be done with the day. You know you wouldn’t be able to sleep, anyways, and that’s somehow worse than being so overwhelmed you could just… Shut your brain off, and stop thinking for a bit. Ten minutes. You could be satisfied and stay sane with ten minutes of perfect peace and tranquility to recharge and balance yourself, before walking forth into chaos once more.

“Why not?” Knockout asks with a roll of his optics, because of course he’s going to challenge that, and sounds entirely unphased otherwise by the sudden interruption. He certainly doesn’t seem surprised.

~”Beaky answers: because she’s married, duh,”~ your favorite flappy bird jokes, because you both know that’s only the case in exactingly specific settings and all of them involve pretending in front of other humans.

The reminder however, serves to make Knockout’s expression go from mildly annoyed to murderously dark as his hold on you tightens fractionally, and you can’t quite decide how that makes you feel.

Scared and horny, maybe, because the plate that presses against the softness of your lower belly, just above your pelvic bone, is hot. Hotter than the rest of his body, and knowing exactly which place the heat is coming from has your brain immediately flooding with so many questions.

Questions you can hardly ask now, because as aroused as you are to have Knockout’s possessive hold clutching you to his body like he’s afraid someone’s trying to take you away, wanting you to know he wants you, likes you, wants to touch you, as nice as all that is…

You’ve never had an exhibistionist kink, and this situation sure as hell isn’t inspiring one to suddenly manifest as you go rigid and stiff even as your legs squeeze together because mother of GOD. You’ve never felt more blue-balled in your life and you don’t even have balls.

For the first time in possibly ever, even if only for the briefest, tiniest moment, you actually, factually, hate Lazerbeak.

~*~

Splitting her focus doesn’t come as easily and natural to Lazerbeak as for her carrier, at least not in an application like this, but she’s had plenty of practice. With a third her focus on the private comm channel their squishy is on the other end of, and the rest on dealing with the buzzing vibrations and high-pitched whine of the overheating frame beneath her wings, Lazerbeak can barely think straight.

But she definitely doesn’t need to hear anymore of Knockout’s toxic hate-spewing directly fed into her mind through the shared frequency he’s hitched a ride on by proximity to their human. And she definitely doesn’t need Soundwave to catch even so much as a blip of it, as she methodically shuts down his system functions.

He’s so distraught, he didn’t even notice I bypassed his new encryption, she thinks with a miserable trill she can’t let travel beyond the mere concept that she might have made the sound, had she allowed herself to touch her emotions so directly.

But she can’t.

Not now, not when they both need her; not when her Carrier’s Spark is whirling so fast in his chassis, that it knocks his engine out of alignment, gives it an unsettling, off-beat cli-k cla-cli-k she hates to hear, because she knows what it means, and it means he broke his own bypass valve again. The power surge slams through his systems barely a klik after, powering up root defense systems as vibrations rocket through his frame, and Lazerbeak feels heat flare as every vent on her Carrier’s body discharges a rapid flood of hot air.

She barely has time to mute her audials before the rising pitch of a cascade of disjointed, sharp notes rise to receptor-shredding decibles, the fractured noise of the sonic scream sounding badly muffled and choked, distorted. He didn’t let it totally go, didn’t discharge the full force of his voice she knows he could.

It’s probably a good thing he didn’t. Not just yet, anyways.

Damage reports a moment later alert Lazerbeak to notice minor damage to a critical region, and she doesn’t give them much thought beyond confirming it’s nothing unexpected. There’s no additional wreckage dealt to connected systems, and his scream wasn’t so loud or prolonged in the confined space it could crack his helmet’s actual frame.

But he broke his screen again, and the absolute helm-ache it’s going to give him while it heals, and thus her through her sympathetic bond, is going to feel worse than sucking on oxidized copper twists.

On the plus side, that means he doesn’t notice the absolute magnitude of commands Lazerbeak hastily runs through Soundwave’s main terminal, neatly cutting off his access to all his extraneous communication functions and anything that literally injects hard data and raw information into his busy, overburdened processor.

For the moment, it’s enough for him just to try and process what he’s feeling, and Lazerbeak knows he’s not just losing control over the human. This has been a long time in coming, and she hates that this is how his wall finally crumbles down.

She hates it, because she knows it can’t last, and he’ll put it right back up the instant he’s able to put more than a single thought together, because this isn’t voluntary vulnerability.

Since he’s been temporarily locked from access to most of his own system functions as Lazerbeak takes over, there’s no way for Soundwave to notice the next series of commands she runs as she starts the program diagnostics to begin scanning to supply information for the following defrag protocols, ones that run in selective regions of his databanks. She can’t shut his processor down like a normal ‘bot, not without risking damage to his short term memory cache, which really isn’t all that short.

She has to take advantage of the vulnerability while it’s here, because he won’t open back up once he’s put himself back together.

Singing through her vox leaves her free to answer the angry splutters she’s only half paid attention to. As long as she doesn’t hear any smooching or sounds of fear from their human, Lazerbeak’s not really concerned what the two are talking about, just now. Knockout’s predictable, and their human is honest. She can find out later.

If she has to, she can go over the collected audio and listen to everything she missed, later.

It takes barely a nanoklik to send the encrypted ping alert, and only a klik before there’s a portal hissing and spitting in the air behind them. She can’t hear that, though; Lazerbeak only knows their liege and friend has had a ‘Bridge opened because she intercepts the Energon surge ping before it ever reaches Soundwave’s awareness.

Soundwave, who’s emitting a processor-numbing cacophony of noises that would be shredding her audials if she hadn’t already turned them off. Conversely, the unheard-yet-felt vibrations that travel through her frame are pleasant; like a clear-frequency pitch shaking all through her body and clearing out her Electromagnetic field of any dissonance. Linked with his own systems, her own frame’s harmonized with his.

She’d actually be able to enjoy it, if she didn’t know the source of the sensation just now was borne of his own instinctive attempt to self-soothe, one that’s going to shortly have a massive dust storm whipping into the air around them and clogging his intake filters up and worse.

Lazerbeak can’t decide which she wants more; to have him finally let the pent up emotions out, or to have him wrest control just enough to stop himself from possibly damaging his fuel pump and intake again with the dusty particulates. Which, with his broken visor, is not just a possible risk but a likely outcome.

She feels the swell of energy in his systems buck and surge, flooding through her own systems again before the sensation fizzles out, a heady rush teetering on the edge of near smothering intensity before stopping just short of full consumption. Come on, Megs, get here already, she thinks desperately, well aware of the portal still open, probably before he even made it to the ‘Bridge access on the other side.

She can feel the way her Carrier’s distraught mood transfers through not only his physical body, but by the cascade of soundwaves bleeding off his frame that wrap around and through her.

His scream of anguished frustration is a sound she’d hoped he’d never feel a need to make again, and she knows it was a vain wish.

It didn’t stop her from hoping.

She can’t possibly hug him any tighter with her wings than she already is, as Lazerbeak feels her Carrier’s trembling frame shake under the force of his own impact as she feels the shift of gravity and a familiar clink-crunch of metal grinding stone to dust, as the armor protecting his knee joints contact the ground.

This isn’t working, comes the force of his despair and pain, woven into words. He’s not letting go, so of fragging course it’s not working. 

-=”Of course not. You’re not singing,”=- Lazerbeak stresses, interrupting her own song.

He doesn’t respond to her, gone perfectly still but for the harsh rush of his engine and the heaving shake of his chassis.

-=”Soundwa--”=-

-=”We should go back to base,”=- he interrupts, his voice reaching her solely through their mental link, coming to her as a pleasant cascade of notes imbued with meaning. Her Carrier’s frame still trembles, yet with more overall stillness to his entire body. He’s stopped swaying, she thinks, for the moment.

Yes, she agrees, willing him to focus on her, on the warm wrap of her ‘field blended seamlessly with his, and for a few moments, Lazerbeak thinks it’s working. Soundwave goes still, Spark oscillations beginning to slow at last, and for a nanoklik, Lazerbeak thinks that they’ve avoided true crisis. Maybe Megatron doesn’t have to--

Oh, no, she thinks with a feeling that inspires her Spark to dim, and in direct response she spitefully burns brighter, needing to counteract this vast, looming, oppressive darkness that suddenly slams up against her mind with something happy. Something nice, and bright, and shimmery, and as much as it hurts, as awful as it feels to have that oily, sharp-clawed phantom sensation of despondent agony injected directly into her own Processor and wrapping all around her perceptions to color her view with such self-loathing distress as if it were her own…

Lazerbeak opens herself up to him, and freely pours out the love and affection her tiny Spark harbors, shining more brilliantly than any star.

-=”Soundwave, Soundwave; what’s wrong?”=- she finally asks, trying to reach him through the despair as several of his systems glitch out entirely, causing a strange distortion of a double-whammy effect in her own tiny frame. She knows his body is the one currently short-circuiting on several systems in his body, most minor and concerningly something shuts off in his left leg for several kliks.

So it’s probably a good thing her Carrier was already on the dusty ground collapsed to his knees, even as he, judging by the harsh, dry crunches and grinding scrape that Lazerbeak hears, spins around with a harsh turn that probably sends his left knee digging into the rocky substrate. She can feel the sudden yank of gravity as his torso shifts and turns, her wings held snug to his frame and literally wrapped around his wobbly center of gravity.

-=”Soundwave, it’s okay, no one’s going to hurt the squishy,”=- she tries, truly desperate to try and calm him, but Lazerbeak doesn’t think he even hears her anymore. She can’t get past that churning wall of tangled, painful code that lashes out with every ounce of misery from the past several vorns, and she can only imagine which set of ancient, or even more recent, memories her Carrier is losing himself to, now. -=”Soundwave, you don’t have to--”=-

And then she ends with a relieved trill, because she intercepts an alert ping, one that’s tagged with the highest possible priority designation. Not the one Megatron uses for every instance his presence is to be announced, which is indeed a high priority, but the one just above that.

The one that says, ‘You’re safe . I’m here.’

Lazerbeak lets out a greeting trill from her own vox she can’t hear with her audials still muted, and feels her tired engine start to ease back from its rapid, too-fast spin as relief floods her frame.

Moments later there’s a warm chassis pressing up against her own back as her Carrier’s arms brush against her wingtips, and then she feels forearms brush against the edges of her broad, sweeping panels. The achy pain in her frame from the recent energy surges feels like a numbing buzz, and that’s okay, because she doesn’t care how bad she hurts right now.

It’s not nearly as bad as her Carrier must feel, and she almost regrets ever having introduced him to the human to begin with.

Well aware of just how much of the situation right now is nearly exclusively her fault, having been the one to first tattle on Knockout’s interest in the squishy, Lazerbeak can’t stop the bite of guilt that chases her own mind, now that she’s freed from standing as the only wall between Soundwave and his.

She’s going to fix this, and it’s going to work.

After all, Megatron appreciated determination that bordered on a suicidal recklessness granted the kind of success one could only attribute to fate’s selective hand. If she could just manage to snare his interest under the right superstition, convince him the human was a sign of good fortune for them, then maybe… Their human was nothing if not very, very stupidly brave. She wouldn’t even have to lie.

It went well with that soft, leaking Spark their human had, and Lazerbeak quickly decides she’d rather sonic-scream the command center into shattered oblivion again, and deal with Megatron’s subsequent temper for the next two stellar cycles of tedious repair, than let harm come to their squishy. She’d deal with Shockwave and Soundwave’s grumbling attitude at all the complicated repairs, and maybe even give up the bottle of aged Ener’vok she’d been saving for something truly special. She supposed this counted as something special, all right.

Because clearly, hurting their squishy means hurting Beaky’s Carrier, and that just can’t happen.

-=”We need to talk,”=- Lazerbeak says at the same time she onlines her own audials, and is immediately assaulted by the bombardment of sore receptors throbbing at every tiny sound, which is a lot of sounds.

Digitized beeps and blips and that sad, hitching sound with a funny pattern to Soundwave’s ex-vents that mean he must be crying, and her Spark chamber couldn’t possibly squeeze any tighter without cracking entirely.

“We do,” is the steady, low-voiced rumble that answers her, Megatron’s voice not so much changed as it is… mellowed; still the deep, gravely vox output with a familiar hint of accent, one that creeps out just the faintest bit more with his slower pace of speech.

Good. He’s actually paying attention, she thinks, strained. Soundwave either doesn’t choose to join the conversation, or he’s too distraught to even notice they’re talking. Her back scrapes lightly against Megatron’s chest as her Carrier shifts his weight, tightening his grip without actually pressing his chest any closer to the mech holding him and being held.

So far gone in his despair, and still taking care of her.

Lazerbeak would start crying herself if she had the parts for that, but all that happens in her body instead is an unpleasantly lukewarm rush of coolant, because her frame is so hot her coolant isn’t even cold, anymore. It’s less painful than being hit with an icy rush, but the discomfort lasts longer, lingering like a touch of oily sludge glazed over her engine.

It’s a really good thing Megs showed up when he did, because quite abruptly, Lazerbeak’s focus is snared by an alert ping to a proprietary and slipshod algorhythm she’d left running on the comm line still left open. Quite suddenly, the conversation between her favorite squishy and her least favorite Velocitron speed junkie, takes a turn she really doesn’t like, and she hardly has the time to take care of it with the attention it needs.

She’ll have to settle for bluntness. It works well enough for the human, dealing with Knockout.

~”Dumbass, you can’t seduce the human,”~ she interrupts, focus split between the sounds she’s hearing all around her and the words on the edge of her mind’s perception. ~”Announces a pissed off Beaky,”~ she adds belatedly, honestly livid.

~“Why not?”~ Knockout asks with a distinct lack of surprise and a wildly uncaring dismissal in his voice she instantly doesn’t like.

Because she’s too good for you, you sleazy selfish prick! Is what she thinks.

~”Beaky answers: because she’s married, duh,”~ is what she says, meanly aware that that conversation is one Knockout has spent the entire week trying to wheedle more details about, and their human has, curiously, refused to give any explanations beyond telling him it’s a fake cover story and to stop worrying about it.

Lazerbeak likes to think it makes him worried. She really, really does.

She likes a little less their human’s immediate reaction, which comes chained right alongside the sound of Soundwave trying to force words through his static-crackling vox, only to give up and fall silent as Megatron shushes him, adjusting his hold.

It’s all Lazerbeak can do just to keep a thread of sanity and sense of self wrested for herself, caught between so many emotions on every side.

~“That’s not real!”~ comes her favorite human’s voice, a spluttered protest Lazerbeak isn’t going to worry about replying to, because it’s nothing but the truth. Fortunately, the truth is enough as-is to probably kill the smoochie-smoochie mood between them, and Lazerbeak might eventually get over the angry, pinching hurt of betrayal she’s feeling just now.

We leave things like that and the first thing she does is turn around flirt with Knockout, she thinks miserably, aware that her human had sounded distinctly distressed on the other end of the line. Not panicked, but certainly uncertain enough about whatever was going on that Beaky feels no guilt having interrupted them.

Just now, she doesn’t really care what her human thinks about it because her mission objective was accomplished; she stopped those two idiots from doing something even more idiotic.

She really, really wishes Knockout had picked literally any other time to pounce on the opportunity to tell the fleshie how he really feels about her, because Lazerbeak is caught between too many emotional disasters.

Her squishy friend could probably use a quiet stress-free afternoon and a real break after all the non-stop work she’s been doing with moving, and Lazerbeak can’t even properly tell if their human is doing it to avoid them or because she’s just that motivated to get stuff done. She’s been patiently waiting to see which one proves to be the case.

It might even be a bit of both.

Whatever the case, it’s meant Lazerbeak hasn’t had hardly any quality time with her favorite squishy, who doubles as basically the only other person in the galaxy that she can hang out with, who doesn’t treat her like a mindless machine or actively detest her. Giving her space hasn’t been a problem, up until exactly right now, because of course; now is when Knockout chooses to play dirty.

So she played dirty right back, because knowing she’s actively listening and paying attention ought to be enough to spike-block any seduction attempts while she’s busy handling the other emotional disaster.

Over the sound of his delightful angry spluttering, Lazerbeak mutes the comm line and leaves the algorithm running, one that’ll catch any particular changes in topic she’d rather them not touch on, just now.

Fortunately, the other situation she’s dealing with is well under hand.

“Come back to base. This area isn’t safe,” Megatron dictates, raising his voice just the faintest bit to project more power into it, the easily commanded authority in his words serving to finally, finally snare her Carrier’s mind and attention. She feels his frame go stiff, and the sudden jump in his Spark’s oscillations as they go off-rhythm for a klik.

-=”Don’t make him carry you,”=- Lazerbeak warns when Soundwave doesn’t immediately move, and she can hear the straining servos in his body that tattle on the effort he must be exerting just to keep himself from tightening his hold, instead. -=”Soundwa--”=-

~”Soundwave, listen to Beaky. You’re scaring both of us, now,” an unexpected voice speaks up with a distinctly raised pitch in volume that successfully breaks the temporary mute Lazerbeak put on the channel, and subsequently, forcing her to realize she hadn’t correctly changed her communications’ output. She has no idea how much the human’s heard, quite suddenly, of her entire conversation with Soundwave. ~”You need to stay safe, both of you,”~ continues the sudden interruption of the prettiest and most timely voice Lazerbeak could have ever hoped for.

And she doesn’t even have to worry about it over much , because the only one who hears it is her, until she clips and forwards the intercepted communication on to Soundwave, raising the silent priority tag attached to the file so it will bypass his usual data-blocks that prevent extraneous data from interrupting his stream of conscious thought.

It works.

She feels the way his Spark hitches again, and like removing just the right stone from a pile of rubble, the rest of his body follows suite; jarred from stillness, Soundwave finds the focus to release his locked joints with a pneumatic hiss that bleeds off his body like a wash of misting rain. Moments later, Lazerbeak finally feels the shift of gravity and a gentle sway as her Carrier steps back, then begins moving forward.

~”We’re going back to base. He’ll be okay,”~ Lazerbeak assures her, because she has to believe that. He’s not okay right now, not remotely, but he will be.

Claws brush painlessly against her wingtip, a pleasant tickle, as Megatron lets his hands slide off Soundwave’s body as he probably turns and steps out of the way. Unable to actually see them with her face hidden against Soundwave’s chassis, and unwilling to access his own live feed in case such directly merged access causes the chaos of his processor to overcome her own fragile grasp of control, Lazerbeak is stuck relying on her other senses.

That’s okay, though, because she hears the nearing spitting hiss of the Ground Bridge as it gets closer, or rather, they get closer to it.

Her floaty feelings of relief that lift her above an ocean of icky, clinging stress and tension and all kinds of awful not-nice things, drop out from under her like a solar wind cut short. She’s sent tumbling right down towards that ocean of despair, at the words that leave their friend and Liege’s vox.

“Lazerbeak. Yes or no; does this… Situation, have anything to do with the human?” he asks with the delicate kind of air that suggests he’s contemplating how best to flay the skin from said human’s bones before launching her remains into the nearest sun.

A lukewarm not-chill floods her engine with uncomfy sluggishness again.

That’s a direct order to report, and quite suddenly, Lazerbeak has never been more glad to have compiled an exhaustive data packet of admittedly not very well prepared files, but she clipped the most crucial moments she wanted to keep safe. No one expects her to have the same kind of talents for audio editing that her Carrier does, at least not as quickly as he can do it.

Equally unwilling to try accessing his systems in case it triggers something else in his charged state of overstimulation, Lazerbeak resolves to make do with what she has, and that’ll just have to be good enough.

-=”No and yes,”=- she answers, knowing full well that is exactly the answer Megatron did not want to hear, and swiftly continues, -=”Actually, it’s our fault.”=-

That seems to get both mech’s attention, even as she hears the sounds of the portal zip shut behind them and the welcomed sound of pedesteps on solid, sturdy metal floor as a much more familiar soundscape surrounds them. She can hear the deep thrum of the warship’s massive engines, and all the little echoing sounds that travel through the massive spaceship.

What? Comes the felt brush of Soundwave’s confusion, brushing against her mind, and she couldn’t be more delighted because finally. He’s broken through the wall shrouding his own thoughts, drowning his Spark in self-inflicted misery by reliving past events.

Or maybe even ones they’ve never experienced.

“What?” Megatron mirrors Soundwave’s disbelief in audible expression, voice sharp.

Thinking back on the memory of the very first time she ever saw their precious, infuriating squishy, clueless to what the future held in store at the time, Lazerbeak twitters sadly at Megatron.

-=”Yeah. It’s our fault he’s unhappy,”=- she restates, just to make sure her original message really sinks in. It is their fault, and they’re the only ones who have the power to change it. -=”Can we take over the command bridge? I have some files to--”=-

“Clear the bridge,” Megatron states with possibly relieving immediacy, without any kind of gesture that signifies he just accessed a communication’s frequency to send his verbal message.

It’s relieving, because he’s at least curious enough he’s going to give her an opportunity to present her case. She no longer has to wonder if she’ll even get the chance to sway him in favor of their unorthodox friend.

It’s also terrifying , because now, quite sooner than she was ready to and without the preparations she’d intended on, Lazerbeak has to present her case. Their human’s life is, quite suddenly, in her hopefully capable enough little arms. It’s also in the code she carries, because Lazerbeak likes collecting things she likes, and she likes their squishy.

She just needs Megs to like her, too.

Primus, please help us, she begs in her mind, willing it to be heard, as if that has ever mattered once in her life. She so very rarely gets the answers she wants, but who knows. Maybe the sheer novelty of praying for a human will get his attention, for once. And themselves, of course, but he clearly hasn’t cared about their lives.

Only enough to make sure they keep living long enough to keep losing everything they manage to find worth keeping. Lazerbeak is so tired of letting go to what she wants to keep, what she’s proven she’s willing to take care of. It’s so unfair.

“When you’re ready,” Megatron solicits, no doubt being paired with a sweep of his arm towards the exit of the Ground Bridge room. Lazerbeak rather wishes her Carrier would take Megs up on the offer to linger and compose himself, but exactly as she expects, instead he only pauses for a klik.

Going extra still, his Spark even slowing down considerably for several kliks too long, before all his systems ramp back up again.

He’s barely in control of himself, and she knows better than to comment and break his focus. So Lazerbeak stays silent, despite all the words piling up on the cusp of activating her vox, and instead begins going over her own files, plotting which and what order to play them in.

~*~

Fanart meme by Iyunia:

Link to the original Tumblr post:

https://www. /iyunia/768245818164723712/a-fan-work-of-a-fan-work?source=share

Chapter Text

Having concluded her presentation, really quite the longest debriefing that Arcee can remember having given in a while, Arcee had gone straight into recharge after a sympathetic Optimus took pity on her increasingly out-of-sync blinks. They’d stayed up late enough that Jack had called his mom to warn her he was spending the night on base, and morning wasn’t far off.

The time it’d taken was ironic, considering how sparse her actual collected hard data and evidence was. She had footage, sure, but they had to rely on her ability to discern the reality of what she’d witnessed in only sparse snippets, without creating something that wasn’t there. The only audio worth anything at all, was her conversation with the friendly old man Bob, and the snippets of loud, angry shouting that had clearly carried from the ‘Con-infested household.

Really, in a lot of ways, Arcee hadn’t seen all that much. It’s just that what little she did see was so confoundingly alarming, a whole lot of questions is what she’s been left with. Questions, and the speculation she can’t help but project, having given them the raw list of data she did have irrefutable, verifiable evidence for.

Evidence they all wanted to revisit the moment she’d woken from recharge, and right back into the main command center -- really, the only room big enough to hold all of them comfortably at the same time in this bare-bones hideout -- they’d filed.

Everyone could see on film that it was in fact Soundwave who was carrying the human, absolutely no way to mistake it even despite the patchy, tree-filled field of view. Bob trailed after him by several steps, and moreover, Arcee had actually caught a decent visual of the woman’s initial collapse.

It was strange, watching everything from a two-dimensional screen and devoid of all the extra stimuli that came with it; she was the only one with knowledge of the extraneous, uneccessary data from her whole experience--  memories of her dread and fear, and those little sensations like that drip of something wet hitting her back tire she hadn’t wanted to dwell too much on. She’d been still and silent for so long, the birds had flown back to the forest she’d settled in for her stake-out.

What Arcee doesn’t have, are answers as to why he’d take such a monumental risk. She hadn’t really clocked it at the time, but going over everything in the relative safety and security of home base with nearly all her friends around her, here, protected, she could spot some glaring oddities going over it all again.

Like wondering how Soundwave hadn’t noticed her; or any of them, actually, which prompted the helplessly instinctive response to wonder if he hadn’t noticed…

…because he’d been distracted.

If that was the case, what had distracted him? The human? Arcee knew he was perfectly capable of trussing up his captives and forcing them to silence if they could not be simply commanded to it. She’d always heard the wise ones kept their mouths shut unless asked to speak, because he took just as long to kill you, either way.

But he could make it hurt worse, if he wanted.

Which, Arcee knew second-hand from very scant few first-hand accounts, was always. So it left her with more questions than answers, wondering what had made the ‘Con miss clocking not just one, but three Autobots. Arcee might have been parked all night in the Dead Zone, but she hasn’t missed Smokescreen’s unease or the silent ping-request to accept a miniscule data packet he’d sent her earlier on their initial drive back to base, given without absolutely any explanation or message whatsoever.

Naturally, she’d immediately opened the file.

And promptly got a set of three coordinates visualized on an over-simplified graphic of a map marked only by a single, curvy road with a squiggle. She only recognized it was depicting a very specific stretch of road in Jasper, Nevada despite the map being otherwise entirely blank, because they had just been at that exact location.

Then she’d noticed his color-coding of the coordinates; the two closest together were purple and blue, respectively, and the third one, the farthest down the road and by itself, was grayed out.

One of them was familiar numbers to her, the same spot she’d assigned Smokescreen to stay, where she’d expected him to have been all along, safely tucked back from the road. He might not have seen Soundwave in time to warn her, but that was fine because Arcee had a lot more stretch of visible road compared to his bendy intersection.

The other coordinate, according to the graphic, was a point not far removed from the main thoroughfare that connected the sleepy blocks to the nearby highway and other backroads. The third and final coordinate gave her suspicions, but once the coordinate dot and its associated numbers began moving as a stilted animation in low framerate depicted the purple dot traveling further up the road and into the squiggly zone, then coming back, Arcee understood.

She didn’t choose to tell anyone about that little detail. She also didn’t choose to say a word to Smokescreen about it or even ask, because she doesn’t want to know, and she’s pretty sure she heard him muttering prayers to Primus.

She’s right there with him, because she’s really pretty certain that some incidental hand of fate served to make sure Soundwave didn’t notice the Autobot who got close enough, with a clear enough field of vision, that he could show them the memory clip of Soundwave’s grill and tinted mirrors in the reflection of a bus stop shelter, or the direct view of red taillights.

Or the near full-frame shot when the ‘Con had turned onto his hiding spot’s street. Arcee’s a lot less inclined to worry over if their rookie will ever be a bail risk; she’s not sure she could have stopped herself from turning every weapon system online and probably winding up scrapped.

If the archival ‘bot didn’t have the fancy mods for being able to convert his own memories into directly shareable files that could actually be comprehended, they’d have had no visual proof of his claim. He didn’t have the same espionage-specific mods Arcee had kitted herself out with over the years, the kind of parts that could operate in the Dead Zone without being picked up on. Most ‘bots had some kind of recording function, but the activation of their cameras often caused a spike in their Spark’s oscillations or a direct, subtle cl-clik from the electrical currents surging through the connections on start-up.

Regardless, Arcee thinks Primus was looking out for all of them, last night.

Bumblebee, she thinks, probably realized that their rookie wasn’t quite posted where he was supposed to be, but that’s all right because ‘Bee hasn’t said anything about it, either.

Just the fact they’re both thankful that he was able to warn Arcee; which he shouldn’t have tried to do, but I’m glad he did, Arcee thinks dimly. As much as it pains her to admit it, out of all of them, she was probably the most likely to be overheard by Soundwave. Her frame plain and simple had less insulation than ‘Bee or Smokescreen’s heavy armor and stealth-kitted functions.

Unlike the former Iacon archival guard, stealth was something she’d had to teach herself to adapt to. It didn’t come naturally. Neither did the extensive modifications she’d had done to her frame to force the matter. She was far better at observing things from a distance, than up close and personal.

Unfortunately, she’s not sure being any closer or even having had a completely open field of vision without Earth’s vegetation in the way, would have made it any easier for anyone to accept the contents of her absurd report.

Everyone had questions. So many questions. Optimus, and Ratchet, and ‘Bee and Bulkhead and Smokescreen and Ultra Magnus (who had insisted on comm’ing Jack every five minutes to ask what he’d missed during the initial debriefing) and, now that the humans were all awake again, so did Miko and Jack and Raph and--

All of whom turn their heads, minus ‘Magnus and his current field partner who have yet to actually arrive on base, much to his and Bulkhead’s joint displeasure, at the expected alert-ding that announces aircraft touchdown on the landing pad above.

With the base burrowed right into one mesa as it is, it doesn’t take long for their newest arrival to take the lift down.

--and Fowler, Arcee thinks with great displeasure. Out of everyone, the human government agent was her least favorite individual to entertain questions and judgement from. Time spent in the field together had done little to improve her opinion of him; the agent was brave, and loyal, and a capable soldier in the air or on ground as circumstances allowed, and none of it served to fix one glaring issue.

He didn’t like them, he never had, and Arcee wonders just how much he’ll blame Team ‘Prime for this whole situation when all they’ve done is discover the ‘Cons were even up to something at all to begin with.

A door hisses open on the upper level of their small base, and the single occupant inside wastes no time in striding out the absolute instant the gap is wide enough for egress. The black fabric of his suit catches the light with a dull sheen, tattling on the quality of fabric, and doing little to flatter his form in the most absurd of ways. Humans usually look good in their formal finery, but something about the way he wears it ruins the typical effect.

The dark uniform matches his mood.

Arcee immediately clocks his surly attitude and displeasure, which comes in the form of stiff shoulders, a deep scowl, and throwing his arm in dramatic gesture as he bursts into the room with a full-voiced complaint.

“Now what the hell is this that I’m hearing, about another regular American citizen tied up and tangled in your intergalactic war nonsense?” comes the loud, abrasive voice of the angry male. His temper would almost be cute, if Arcee wasn’t aware of just what kind of power Fowler had in connections with his government, combined with the fact he’d interfered with their plans of operation before. His temper comes paired with an unfortunate level of threat, because he could actually choose to act on it.

She’s not looking forward to another joint mission with the surly human agent. “I swear,” said agent continues, his dark skin wrinkling with the force of his expressive displeasure he wants to be sure they can’t miss, “If I have to write one more letter to the chief of my department explaining why we’ve leaked classified intel to yet another person without anything to do with any of all this…Someone’s not gonna be happy and it’s gonna be me, and then it’s going to be all of you,” he threatens, coming to a stop at the edge of the railing with hands on his hips, his unbuttoned suit jacket serving to exaggerate what Miko consistently referred to as a ‘Dad-bod’ class frame.

Agent Fowler, here to save the day, Arcee thinks with sarcasm so thick it’s at risk of slowing down her data relay time. With the final tally for Team Prime’s assembled members, now they can get down to actually deciding what to commit to as a plan of action from here out.

Her arms are folded loosely over her chassis where she leans against the catwalk railing, standing beside Raph at his little computer station. It’s adorable, really; like a miniaturized version of Ratchet’s much, much larger three-screen setup only a few pede-steps away, she can’t help but notice the similarities between gruff medic and preoccupied tech student.

They never look more alike than when they’re both working, as each of them is now; Ratchet, rapidly tapping away at his control panel to make the large monitors search through databases; and Raph, doing the exact same thing but through his own methods of research.

Agent Fowler pays neither the red-and-white medic looming to his right, nor the busy highschool student, any mind as he glares up at Optimus Prime himself.

“That is what we are discussing now,” said ‘Prime answers their Earthly liaison patiently, ever unflappable mech that he is. “This is a new development we have jus--”

“Yeah, I caught that,” the agent interrupts, driving an immediate spike of reinforced dislike in Arcee as she bites back her own protest. If ‘Prime wants to let the human that they could squash with a single pede-step not let him finish his sentences, it’s not really her place to interfere. But she’d really, really like to sometimes. Like now. “So fill me in on the important information,” the agent orders as if that wasn’t what ‘Prime had been in the middle of doing. “We have Decepticon activity in a sleepy South-Jasper neighborhood. What’s in that region of the city they’re so keen on?”

A question that had already been asked, by everyone else present.

None of them had a good answer for it. The only answer, in fact, they could really come to agree on was the only thing she’d seen the ‘Cons take any obvious interest in; the human woman who lived there. They could have chosen anywhere to hide their ‘Bridge-- why pick a densely populated area rife with witnesses?

Optimus, Arcee notes, seems to take a hot klik to cycle his vents, probably after a fuel-flush to his engine judging by the subtle shift in its steady rumble. Just a brief, off-paced pattern that introduces a new melody to his bio-rhythms.

Naturally, the human doesn’t even notice the big guy’s annoyance, focused solely on ‘Prime’s polite faceplate. Maybe we’re not feeling so unflappable today, Arcee observes with dismay.

Optimus waits a moment as if to see if Fowler will burst back into angry monologue, before starting his explanation over again.

“We are as of yet, uncertain what motivations lay behind the Decepticon’s presence. What we do know, is that they have taken interest and engaged in controlling tactics with a human--”

“That’s the girl you sent info on earlier?” Fowler checks, this time addressing Arcee with a distracted, preoccupied look as she offers a silent nod, not trusting herself to speak. Her words might come out polite, but she’s never been good at managing her vox’s far too honest tone of voice from betraying her true feelings.

Fowler’s expression doesn’t change, still pinched with disgruntled annoyance and an unhappy, hard set to his mouth’s deep frown as he continues, “I didn’t have an ounce of luck finding anything of interest, either. It looks like she left her last state after a falling out with her roomates, even after the court overruled the restraining order in approval of her appeal.”

“I doubt the Decepticons care about her personal life,” Smokescreen comments unhappily, this topic like many others one they’ve already discussed to death. Arcee can’t help but miss his jovial tone. Once Miko had shown up this morning full of inappropriate exuberance and delight over finding out they’d seen the ‘pointy cryptid,’ she’d watched their rookie’s mood plummet. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the organic; I think she’s just convenient to them. Think about it; they’re looking for our base, now they have a human they can hide their ground bridge access at, get an insider’s knowledge about the city.

“She’s already helped them ditch us once,” he adds, glancing over to Arcee with a knowing look.

“So you have no idea how the ‘Cons made contact with her to begin with?” Fowler checks, like he thinks they’re hiding information from them. “Do I need to inform my superiors we’ve got to start worrying about big-mean-and-ugly abducting our citizens? They’re targeting human civilians, now?”

Frustrated and confused as the rest of them are, but with none of the team-player sympathy that makes his emotional expression… Welcomed.

“We will know more once we have had a chance to perform dedicated surveillance. We must exercise exceeding caution in this situation, with Soundwave’s involvement.”

“Soundwave. That’s the big tall pokey guy with the annoying bat drone, right?”

That’s certainly one way to describe Megatron’s loyal shadow.

“Yes, and he happens to be their head of security,” Ratchet stresses, speaking up for the first time in over a groon, without looking away from the green-based screens displaying his research endeavours. Strings of data in Cybertronian text scroll across the center monitor, with additional notes and his search engine functions occupying the other two. “Raph and I have been compiling data we think might be relevant to this--”

“Well why didn’t you bring that up sooner? Out with the intel!” Fowler demands.

“Hey, uh… Maybe you should give him a chance to actually, ya know, talk?” Miko pipes up with an impatient roll of her eyes, far more willing to speak out of turn. For once, Arcee isn’t upset at the little femme’s plucky attitude. “Like, sure, wow, you’re all tense and worried because oh nooo there’s another human involved in all this. Well, I say it’s the greatest opportunity since Team ‘Prime came together. We can totally set a trap for the ‘Cons! They’re coming back to the same spot regularly,” she boasts, grinning, no doubt trying to lay it on thick to get through Fowler’s foul mood.

The agent in question closes his eyes, dark hands closing into tight fists around the catwalk’s railing as he breathes in deep through his nose, then lets it out just as forcefully. After a moment, Fowler opens his eyes, looking begrudgingly… calmer. Ish.

“Alright. Fair enough. I’ve got my superiors up my-- Tailpipe,” he corrects quickly, still unwilling to swear around the children of his species… in his language, something Arcee finds deeply ironic and counter-intuitive. “Demanding answers, we’re still dealing with the aftermath of their last public appearance, and I’m on a short leash. After this I’m headed right back to base, and let me tell you, they weren’t much happy about me leaving to come here directly to begin with,” he adds.

“We appreciate your efforts and dedication,” ‘Prime says neatly, doing good to soothe a riled temper as Fowler just sags his shoulders, and shakes his head. “Now, Ratchet-- What have you and Raph found?” he asks. Fowler, Arcee notes, seems to take great effort to keep his jaw clenched shut as he works it a bit, shifting his weight and trying to settle with arms folded on the railing.

For the first time all morning, their gruff medic looks away from his computers to meet Optimus’ gaze directly as Ratchet answers him.

“Nothing good, unfortunately. Or conclusive; however, do you recall the unusual series of street racer deaths in unfortunate vehicular accidents?” he stresses, immediately driving Arcee into a straighter posture, pushing off from the railing as she turns to face him fully.

Ratchet’s got that tone of voice that says none of them are going to like what he has to say next, and he’s usually right.

“Car accidents?” Fowler asks, perhaps the only one out of the loop on that bit of local news. They hadn’t been able to determine Decepticon involvement at the time, and it hadn’t exactly been of importance to discuss with the agent. But the human children that called Jasper, Nevada their home and the mechs who dwelled here as well, had all taken an avid interest in it.

“A few months ago,” Raph speaks up, still looking at his screen as those pale little fingers tippa-tappa on the keyboard with unfailing rhythm, “All in the same two weeks, seven people died in really… Really bad car accidents, during illegal street races. The thing is, as dangerous as street racing is, the actual cases of deaths at least in our town, have been pretty minimal. But…”

“This was unusual,” Ratchet finishes as Raph seems to lose his nerve, clamming up with discomfort before he seems to shake unpleasant thoughts off, and adjusts his thick-rimmed glasses. Their dull red paint matches well with his orangey base colors for his outfit. “We couldn’t find any connection to anything relevant to our security needs, however, until--”

“--We found this,” Raph finishes, keying in something on his laptop, before picking up a thin, black cable laying beside him on the slim sofa he’s seated on. Ratchet steps aside from the screens he’s been working in front of, just in time for the center one to flicker as Raph plugs the cable in.

“Wait, isn’t that Knockout?” Fowler asks, intimately familiar with that Decepticon.

Arcee frowns, staring at the image displayed on the screen; just a simple, somewhat grainy snapshot, of a flashy red Aston Martin alt mode parked in the middle of a crowd, other vehicles nearby but cropped from the frame.

It’s centered in on a man in a yellow suit, talking at the driver’s side door.

Which has it’s window rolled down, Arcee realizes, feeling a strange squeeze in her Spark chamber as a nagging suspicion starts growing before she’s even consciously realized her own direction of thought.

“It is. It also contains other individuals of interest,” Ratchet confirms, taking over the computer to blow the image up larger than Raph probably knew how to do; the kid’s prowess with technology was nothing short of staggering and impressive, but it had its practical limits.

Limits that were fast dwindling, the more Raph learned under Ratchet’s careful tutelage, and his own dedicated self-studying.

“Alright… I don’t get it. It’s a picture of the girl sitting in a Decepticon. We know they’re involved with her, but what’s this got to do with anything?” Fowler asks.

He’ll tell us if you’d just shut up for three breem, Arcee thinks sourly.

“Because the other cars they raced against that day, one of those drivers are now dead,” Ratchet states with grave intensity.

“Okay,” Fowler states with a kind of blank, carefully distanced sort of tone coloring his typically quite expressive voice. “So you’re telling me we have a Decepticon serial killer with a vendetta against racers who smoked him on Earth’s asphalt?”

“Actually, they won the race,” Raph corrects, earning Miko’s immediate, avid interest as the pig-tailed teen walks over to his end of the catwalk, dropping down on the sofa next to him. The movement jostles the shorter human, skewing his glasses which Raph quickly adjusts as he continues, “But the picture I found actually came off a private network hosted forum some people use for getting around public notice. It was taken down before I could even erase it myself,” he adds with a thoughtful frown. “Which leads me to think that the Decepticons are probably monitoring Earth’s internet for Cybertronian activity, just like we are,” he opines, a reasonable enough theory and one Arcee has zero inclination to refute.

“What concerns me, is why Knockout might have offlined the other racers. He’s been cruising through Earth’s street races for years, long before they got involved with this human,” he says, gesturing to the slim glimpse of a newly familiar face just barely visible in the grainy photo. “And I’ve never heard of him taking such issue with other drivers. This, along with the knowledge that this femme-- this woman,” Ratchet hastily corrects, much to Arcee’s amusement, “Has been attending at least some of the races with him, leads me to suspect that perhaps Knockout was… Tying up loose ends,” he says with grave intensity.

Fowler stares at them.

“Tying up loose ends,” he repeats flatly. “As in… You think he killed those drivers, because they saw something he didn’t want them to see?”

“We’re uncertain, it’s just a theory, or more accurately an educated guess at this point.”

“Knockout has been typically quite predictable in behavior; this introduces a new pattern,” ‘Prime opines with thoughtful somberness. “However, while I do not wish to dismiss this avenue of inquiry… I can’t help but suspect that Knockout is not the key player in this scheme.” He stops then, for the express purpose of turning to make optic-contact with Arcee, waiting until she catches his gaze and lifts her own to meet it before he continues, “If it were not for the trustworthy and reliable source of intel gathered, I would not have believed my own audials at the contents of last night’s report,” he admits openly, that somber mood never lifting. “Soundwave… Is acting terribly strange, for him.”

“You’re still hung up over the whole marriage thing, really?” Smokescreen asks as ‘Bee makes a curious, perhaps supportive beep-blip series of digitized notes and a sound not unlike a bicycle horn. A really old, really shrill horn.

Optimus casts Smokescreen a patient, level look, entirely confident in his own fixation despite some members’ hesitance.

“Soundwave has conducted near countless espionage and related operations in the field. His methods of dealing with indigenous lifeforms involve as little contact as possible, and when unavoidable, he’s not known for leaving witnesses.

“If he’s constructed an entire cover-story for explaining his presence in the life of this organic, then there must be a significant reason for it.”

“They’re not actually married,” Miko points out. “So what’s the big deal? Also, weird. Who would ever want to date a ‘Con?” she asks with an exaggeratedly disgusted look on her face, recoiling as if from a nasty smell.

There’s an awkward moment of silence following Miko’s true-to-form insensitive commentary, before conversation resumes as if uninterrupted.

“I think that for now, our wisest choice of action is to initiate surveillance on the new household they are relocating to, and to ensure that the neighborhood she’s leaving is left alone following her absence.”

“I can have the orders in tomorrow morning for recon to go in and place cameras,” Fowler volunteers immediately, only to predictably bristle when ‘Prime predictably turns down the offer.

“Your generosity is appreciated, but unfortunately ill suited; Earth based technology will be far too easily discovered by Soundwave or Lazerbeak both. We will have to conduct our surveillance from a safe distance, well outside the Dead Zone.”

At ‘Bee’s inquiring bloop-beep, ‘Prime nods.

“Yes, Bumblebee. We’ll have to see what happens next.”

“How much immediate risk do you think there is to the woman they’ve taken hostage?” Fowler wonders. “From the initial report it sounded like you didn’t think they were keen to kill her just yet .”

“It is difficult to know, for certain; however,” Optimus says, looking down at the surly agent, “I do not think harm will come to the human, so long as the Decepticons are not provoked into defensive action. That may well be the very point of their involvement with her; to be able to utilize her as a shield against us, knowing we won’t risk harm to the hostage.”

“He caught her,” Smokescreen pipes up, abruptly.

Every head in the room turns to look at him, and their flashy rookie seems to fluster under the sudden attention, but quickly shrugs his nerves off as he rolls his shoulders and gestures with a hand at the screen.

“I mean, c’mon,” he asserts, nodding at the picture. “I don’t get it. I saw a lot of weird things that night, and Arcee saw even weirder things, but that takes the cake. The Soundwave I know would have just let her fall than lower himself to touch an organic.”

“Then you do not know him very well,” Optimus comments quietly, in a distant tone of voice, like his processor is taking him down on a trip through old, old code. “Soundwave is, at his core, a practical mech. He does not often deviate outside his responsibilities and obligations; this loyalty and dedication in his work ethic are what make him a formidable opponent and an invaluable asset to the Decepticon forces. However,” he continues, looking over at the picture, still with that far-away look on his face. “He has been known… To exercise great kindness, when circumstances allow.”

“Kindness?” Arcee blurts, the incredulous word ripped out of her vox before she even realized she’d onlined it to speak. It pairs well with Bumblebee’s equally scandalized outburst. “You’re kidding me. This is Soundwave we’re talking about, here. There’s not a kind bolt in his frame.”

“I take it back,” Smokescreen says abruptly, once again drawing focus of the room as he stares at the screen, a hand on his chin, thoughtful. “Maybe the ‘Cons do care about her personal life. Are… You sure that cover story is just a cover story? I mean, Soundwave kinda strikes me as the kind of mech who wouldn’t care much about differences in… Uh, appearances, right?” he wonders hesitantly.

Arcee stares at him. Ratchet scoffs and rolls his eyes, but it seems forced.

Optimus gives a thoughtful hum, opening his mouth to speak--

--only to close it with a quiet click at the sound of two individuals bursting into frame-wracking guffaws, as both Miko and Agent Fowler lose themselves to laughing themselves hoarse. Jack doesn’t look much better, except rather than humor he seems to be feeling awkward, looking anywhere but at any mech in the room, arms folded over his chest in the same pose and spot he’s been in since they started the morning’s talks.

“I-- You can’t-- Oh, please, I think that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all year,” Fowler wheezes. “You’re joking, right? That’s going in my book of ‘the most absurd things I’ve ever heard,’” he continues, clueless to Smokescreen’s fast dwindling mood as the archival mech grows surly at the less-than-professional response to his theory.

Arcee might feel similarly on the inside, but she at least has the tact not to laugh in his face.

“What’s so weird about it?” Arcee asks on impulse, tired of watching Fowler upset her family, no matter how petty of her it might be at any given point in time. She’s had enough for today. “It’d hardly be the first case of a Cybertronian and human relationship,” she reveals, taking fierce delight in the sudden gobsmacked look on the agent’s face as he goggles at her.

“What?” he asks, blankly.

“WHAT?” Miko shouts, far more expressively, as she jumps up from the sofa, once again jostling Raph. “How does that even work?” she gasps, staring at them with a dropped jaw.

Arcee almost regrets bringing the topic up for Smokescreen’s sake. Almost.

She glances over at a soft, muffled noise, and spots Jack clearing his throat as he keeps his gaze staring firmly at the ground.

“I… Don’t think I want to know,” Fowler states, still sounding rather shell-shocked, and perhaps like he might be about to lose his breakfast over the railing. “I can’t even begin to imagine-- Oh, hell no, no thank you. You’re not even a compatible size!”

And earns a somewhat humoring look from ‘Prime as the mech stares down at Fowler with the kind of innocent interest she’s come to adore in him.

It also usually means something really funny is about to happen, and Optimus doesn’t let her down.

“I do not understand your confusion,” he says, quite amiably. Perhaps even enjoying, just a tiny bit, the agent’s discomfiture. “A wholesome union between individuals does not have to involve… Physical interfacing,” he explains delicately, ever-aware of the younger ears present. Jack might be nearly of adult age for his species, but Miko and Raph are considerably younger than their eldest companion. “However,” he continues after Fowler has adopted a somewhat relieved, ‘oh, that makes sense now’ expression, and immediately drives the agent back to stiff-shouldered revulsion, “Cybertronians capable of performing the exceedingly rare phenomenon of full mass displacement, are capable of adjusting their scale at large.”

“What?” Fowler blurts, looking torn between fascination and utter mortification.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Arcee translates dryly, enjoying the way the human agent looks at them all with a kind of horrified realization, like he’s learned something both profound and deeply unsettling. Arcee supposes that perhaps, he has.

“I… Are you trying to tell me Soundwave’s hooked up with one of our species?” Fowler demands, bringing their vastly segwayed conversation back full circle.

The very thought is nearly enough to kick Arcee’s engine on. As it is, she ends up spitting static out her hastily muted vox, just in time for her fuel pump to spasm and force her to gulp for air with guffawing laughs.

Soundwave! Interfacing with a human? She could, perhaps, buy that the mech might have taken an interest in one for reasons other than pure stratagem, but actual affection? She struggled to even imagine him touching one, let alone--

Arcee stops laughing, quite abruptly, arms folded around her slim midsection as a recent memory slams into the forefront of her focus, swiftly followed by another one.

And then another.

Individually, apart, they’re not much.

Together?

Looked at all from teh same angle, turned over and around then set next to each other?

They drew an alignment of similarities Arcee wasn’t keen to contemplate, because that would complicate things… in the most bizarre of ways.

Surely, Soundwave didn’t love the human. Not in a romantic sense. But Arcee had long known that if anything could be trusted about Soundwave besides his unfailing loyalty to the Decepticons, it was that his actions spoke louder than words, and he was exceedingly deliberate.

So when she did see something, even the tiniest twitch, it was significant.

Catching the human, holding her against his raw Spark-essence in Holo’ Av’ form, was one thing; he’d had a witness. It’s possible he caught her just to keep up the act of a caring ‘husband.’

Except he hadn’t known anyone was looking when he’d taken such care to drive over the curb smoothly, or when he’d popped it with a bounce on the way out.

And he certainly wouldn’t have been revving his engine on approach, if he’d known there was an Autobot sitting parked and pretty in the nearby vicinity. Close enough to hear him, close enough to see him, Arcee had been wondering what in the All-Spark could have distracted Soundwave so thoroughly, he’d actually been caught off guard.

And he didn’t even know it.

And, Arcee thinks with a kind of fascinated, dawning horror, fairly certain her faceplate must look something very much like Fowler’s had so very recently, there’s that one other little teensy bitty detail she’d not quite found a place for. A puzzle piece without a place, until she’d put the other pieces together to create its nested void, a perfect fit.

It settles into place with an uncannily seamless ease, like tipping iron pebbles out of her hand onto Kaon’s underground lakes and rivers.

Soundwave dropped the human off, and left.

Then the human got mad at the other ‘Cons. And then Soundwave came back.

And he didn’t leave.

“-rcee? Arcee?” Jack’s voice breaks into her thoughts as she jerks from near stasis, blinking rapidly as her optics cycle. She can’t see more than swirling colors and blurs of indistinct shapes, until abruptly her vision focuses with the reset. “You, uh, you okay?”

“Arcee?” Optimus presses gently, seeming to resist the urge to step in closer, knowing her far too well. The only person she doesn’t mind stepping into her personal space bubble without invitation is the human who walked across the catwalk to stand by her shoulder, looking up at her face with reserved concern; like he’s trying to decide if he even should be, or not, but figures he probably should be.

He’s probably right.

“Optimus,” Arcee speaks up, blinking again to steady her own thoughts as she looks at him, brilliant cyan optics patiently holding her gaze. “I… I know what I said before, and I know how absurd it sounds, but-- What if… It’s not a cover story?” she asks hesitantly.

“What?” Fowler splutters.

“You think someone would seriously fall in love with big tall and scary?” Miko asks with a scrunched face. “He might look cool, but his personality is a straight up zero! Ugh, not even any cool villain lines.”

Optimus holds Arcee’s gaze, listening to but not choosing to comment on the nearby tirade unfolding. When the teen has exhausted her emotive outburst, ‘Prime finally speaks.

“You have reason to suspect there may be truth beneath the deception?” he asks, patiently.

Arcee takes a deep breath, feeling her fuel pump spasm from the sheer anxiety. She can’t prove it, of course… not yet, but in time, she’s certain the truth will come out, whether she’s right or not.

“Someone was watching, in most instances I observed his behavior with her. We can explain away most everything under the theory he was merely acting to keep up illusions…”

“But?” Ratchet cuts in the absolute instant she draws breath to soothe her achy engine, the passage of air and mild particulate contaminants forcing her vox momentarily offline as the seal shuts, exactly as her systems are supposed to do to protect the delicate components.

Leave it to the medic to pounce on a biological function as an opportunity.

Arcee adores him far to much to be properly angry, but she still fixes him with a flat look.

“But he didn’t know he had an audience, when I watched him drive her home. He took an awful lot of care to consider her comfort, driving so smooth. He sure didn’t drive off the same way.”

Optimus is watching her face with that quiet, patient manner that tells her she’s giving him redundant information, but he’s not going to stop her from giving her version of it.

Big Blue already thought of all this, she realizes, not really surprised. He’d been hung up on Soundwave’s involvement in all this from the moment the word married had left her vox.

She just can’t believe what had started as a joke -- honestly, any Decepticon, let alone Soundwave, courting a human? Absurd! -- suddenly seemed a whole lot closer to the possible reality .

“Are you trying to tell me that this woman might not be a hostage? ” Fowler demands, drawing Arcee up short, because…

…he has a point.

She could, with a great deal of effort and maybe a few damaged circuits, wrap her processor around the idea that perhaps Soundwave had affections for an organic. Whether they were romantic, platonic, or otherwise, he clearly had some level of care for her, some level perhaps beyond merely an act.

But she can’t, Arcee realizes, imagine in any way, shape, or form, how anyone else could return those affections when their would-be recipient was a monster fresh out of every Cybertronians’ glitch dreams.

“We remain with more questions, than answers, until more information can be secured,” Optimus answers diplomatically. “We will keep you informed of the situation’s progression, agent Fowler.”

“Right. You do that, and in the meantime, make getting that woman extracted your top priority. Whether she’s a hostage or some kind of… Whatever’s going on over there,” he says with obvious discomfiture, “She’ll have valuable intel for us, and either way she’s better out of the Decepticon’s pointy claws.”

“We will exercise extreme caution,” ‘Prime promises, as if there were any doubt.

“Good God almighty,” Fowler blurts abruptly, putting a hand to his face. “This is not what I expected to be dealing with on my supposed day off. Alright, alright, I’ll get out of your hair,” he dismisses, waving a hand as he turns for the elevator shaft. “And don’t let any other humans get involved in this mess!” he calls, as if they would have any power what-so-ever to stop the ‘Cons if they decided to start abducting random humans off the streets.

They’d manage to stop some of them, surely.

But not all.

Fortunately, Megatron wasn’t much interested in them. Usually.

As the elevator door slides shut with a quiet pneumatic hisssht, Miko immediately makes a loud noise to grab everyone’s attention, then demands,

“So who wants to place bets on if Soundwave got freaky with a human?” she calls. “I’ll bet half-- no, two thirds of my allowance for the next month!”

“Really, Miko?” Jack asks with tired exasperation, without much heat to his voice.

She shrugs, unrepentant.

“What? Can’t you agree that this is all juicy? I mean, c’mon! If she’s his lover then imagine what he’ll do when we rescue her from the Con’s hands! I bet she doesn’t even know what kind of an evil bad guy they all are. Look at that picture of her and K.O!” she abbreviates, pointing at the screen. “She’s totally comfortable with that dude! I think they’re playing house so that she’ll have a reason to like them.”

As the humans proceed to bicker, Miko to press her point on all the possibilities, and Jack to try and instill some sense of tact into her, Arcee shares a look with Optimus.

If she isn’t an unwilling hostage, Arcee thinks with deep unease, then what, indeed, will Soundwave do when they capture who he very well might view as his human?

Arcee knows what she’d do if it was Jack on the wrong side of enemy lines, taken from her by force.

She really, really hopes she’s wrong.

And, as Arcee looks down at her pedes with a dimming Spark, she really hopes she’s right.

If Soundwave was in love with a human, or even if he cared about her just enough, then he’d made himself vulnerable in a way Arcee had never expected the Cons would do.

Familiar words come back to haunt her, as they probably will for stellar cycles to come.

“Humans,” Starscreams insidious, unpleasantly sultry voice purred, “Always the weak link.”

Once they had Soundwave’s human…

…all they’d have to do was bait a trap, and wait.

And pray.

Because Arcee’s never heard Soundwave’s voice, his real voice, and she doesn’t think anyone has since the earliest days of the war. She’s never known why he stopped using his sonic abilities, but it was largely theorized he’d suffered some form of internal damage that had rendered the ability too dangerous for his frame to endure.

Ratchet dismissed that theory every time, yet always refused to explain why.

But Optimus’s vox had been looser, confiding quietly the night she’d asked, that he didn’t think Soundwave had ever lost the ability. He simply chose not to use it.

“Why?” she’d asked him at the time, bewildered. She’d seen the scant remaining clips of video footage from his fights in the gladiatorial pits of Kaon. She couldn’t fathom how someone would give up that much effortless, sheer destructive power . Let alone a Decepticon.

Optimus hadn’t answered right away, but when he did, it was with the same far-away look in his optics as he has now, thoughtful and somber and hopeful, all at the same time, in that gentled way only he seemed to know how to so effortlessly manage so constantly.

His voice, however, always betrayed him. If you knew him well enough, if you could catch that faint little hitch in his vox’s output, that brief spurt of static just barely chasing the edges of his words.

He’d finally replied to her, and Arcee had immediately felt sorry for ever asking at the sad expression that had overtaken her friend’s face.

“Because the last time he used his voice as a weapon, it won a great victory for the Decepticon cause; at great personal cost, one I’m not sure he’s ever recovered from,” and that was all the more he was willing to say on it.

Or at least Arcee assumed so, because she certainly hadn’t dared to ask, not with that look on his face, and she’d quickly moved on to other topics.

Now, however, the memory comes rushing back in as he holds her gaze in the present, and Arcee grimaces.

They had to treat Soundwave as if all his offensive capabilities were functional. They had no proof they weren’t , they possessed proof that they had been, and as long as they didn’t see his bio-lights go pale lilac and straight into alabaster, they probably wouldn’t have their internal organs ruptured from concussive soundwaves vibrating their frames at exactly the correct frequency to disrupt the alignment of sensitive biorhythms.

Would he scream at them, Arcee wondered, if they drove him to lose control? By taking something personally precious to him?

She supposed they were going to find out.

Chapter Text

”Soundwave, listen to Beaky. You’re scaring both of us, now,” Knockout’s human speaks up with a distinctly raised pitch in volume that indicates her level of distress, and matches the unpleasant… itch to his human’s ‘field. It doesn’t pair well at all with the sour, anxiety-rank turn of her scent, either. His fingers flex, still threaded through her hair as too-bright optics narrow. ”You need to stay safe, both of you,”

Knockout can’t believe she even cares, after watching the prissy brute smear him into the concrete like a wash rag . Knockout’s not ready and will never be ready, to forgive him for the crack in his main chassis’ suspension, or the freshly crumpled mess of his front plating.

Moreover, however, he’s confused how the human knew to answer the little drone. Her audio output wasn’t anything more than garbled gibberish and familiar shrill, trilling tones that cut in and out like her vox was straining at the edge of its octave capabilities. He highly, highly doubts she’s picked up anything remotely from the garbled bleeps and blips, but perhaps something in the tone of the drone’s voice tipped her off to distress.

Whatever the case, he finds it unnerves him, and he’s not entirely sure why.

But it does, and that probably means it’s very bad.

~”We’re going back to base. He’ll be okay,”~ Lazerbeak assures in the human’s own language, this time, before a distinct click ends the audio feed on her end. Knockout’s not certain he’d like to know what’s happening on the other side of the comm-line, quite suddenly. He’ll ‘be’ okay implies that the communication’s officer is, in fact, currently not okay.

Knockout wishes he didn’t care at all, but that fragging pinch in his Spark chamber suggests otherwise. How bothersome.

“Okay,” Butterfly answers quietly, before taking a deep, snuffling breath that threatens to turn into a more prolonged case of the sniffles, but fresh tears have yet to fall from her glass-like optics. Optics which are abruptly turned back on him, as she yanks herself out of her own disconnected trance she’d fallen into once she began paying attention to the headphones she still wore like a necklace. “You and I need to talk,” his precious human asserts with a firm voice like she expects him to rebel.

She knows me a little too well, Knockout thinks wryly, already feeling the unhappy whine in his engine as his gears cycle through an irritable pace shift.

“We do,” he agrees, then can’t help but add, “and if you’d finally be so kind as to make yourself available, I’d very much like to do that.” He’s certainly waited long enough; does she intend to make him wait the whole of her short, fleeting lifespan?

Her nostrils flare as her pupils shrink, much to his fascination and amusement, and her temper lends her soured scent a distinctively sharp edge that’s far more pleasant than her rank, near-rancid fear and misery.

It pairs just as poorly with her miserably buzzing ‘field, unfortunately. A misery he can’t fix if she won’t let him sway her mood, but no; she’s determined to be irritable, much like someone else he knows. Are his tastes really so specific?

Apparently.

“I’d like to do that, too, just preferably at an appropriate time and immediately after one of my alien friends has a fucking breakdown and yeets himself between the fabric of space and time and drives his little beepy-’bot baby into panicked twitters, is not what I’d call--”

“Panicked twitters?” Knockout interrupts blankly, staring down at her face. So… She had discerned something in those senseless beeps and blips?

“Okay. My dude,” his human states as she reaches up between their bodies to put her hands on either side of his faceplate, much to his shock and delight, “Can we like, I don’t know… Agree that what just happened today was literally so fucked up? I stabbed your fucking friend with a pencil, and then you tried to fucking haunted-house jump-scare Soundwave with impulsive murder and a saw bigger than his head. And you want to just… Just-- Jump right into kissy-kissy?” she asks with a sort of appalled, bewildered exasperation that has Knockout avoiding uncomfortable introspection.

Perhaps, when she put it like that…

“...I’ve learned to simply move on, things like this happen all the time. It’s… How do I put it. Normal for us?” he tries, wondering how to possibly explain to this fragile soft-Spark how violent and brutal the Decepticon army is.

Survival of the fittest was quite literal . The Autobots happily finished off anyone who failed to ever make the cut, if there was even anything left to shoot.

Apparently his explanation did not land home as he’d hoped, because his human stares at him with a dropped jaw and an openly horrified expression.

“You mean it’s-- normal for you guys to-- To try and kill each other?” she finally manages to squeak out, her voice cutting in and out with the strangest, airy faintness like there’s simply no juice to power her organic version of a speaker.

You have no idea, he thinks broodingly.

Knockout snorts.

“Please. If I don’t watch my back, someone would happily rip my fuel lines out just to secure a promotion for themselves. Fortunately, I’ve made my position secure enough there’s few who would be stupid enough to ever try, and those that might have little reason to. They’re content enough with their slice of power,” he hums, thinking sourly of a certain one-eyed oaf who has far more than his fair slice.

Unlimited and prioritized lab access to all Decepticon equipment was one thing. Being given access to Knockout’s own personal assets was more than a bit grating, and if he ever has to surrender one more thing of his to the big brute, he might actually lose it.

“Knockout, I… I don’t even know how to respond to how fucked up all that is. You… Wow, okay,” one of his precious things states, as wide glassy eyes stare at his face like she’s trying to memorize it. He’d like the attention better if it wasn’t paired with her obvious displeasure at this unfortunate revelation. “But, uh. Can I just say like. Suddenly trying to kill someone just because you think they hurt me somehow, is…. That’s. Like. Really not okay. Like, super not okay, and if you ever try that again, I might actually start hating you more than I love you,” she says with a very… blank kind of detachment to her voice, that enunciated, clearly spoken and accent-less voice his human talks in when she’s emotionally distanced herself from the conversation, just to be able to spit words out.

He hates to hear her sound like that. He hates to see that awful look in her eyes, and how she looks at him like he’s the monster he knows he is.

He likes that she’s still standing in his arms, without any bid to move away, relaxed in his hold and tensed only by nature of her expressive reactions.

He also decides that it was a very wise decision not to mention how he took care of their little security problem of months ago. His inclination had been the less said on that, perhaps, the better; now he knows it was most certainly the correct choice to take. He doesn’t need her gratitude, as much as he craves it.

It’s enough to see her no longer jumping at every sudden, sharp sound, or peeking around corners as she inched through her work-days like a flighty glitch-mouse, afraid of every stranger’s step. It’d taken weeks before she’d stopped freezing at the sound of other cars’ engines at a particular pitch.

She doesn’t need to know how her safety and peaceful evenings were secured, or why it’s been weeks since Soundwave ever brought up the petty street racers.

“You’re as fragile to us as a tiny little mouse is to you,” Knockout asserts firmly. “If I think another mech has hurt you, I’m going to--”

“Shut up and follow orders, because trying to do something stupid like that is probably going to get you killed, or someone else you like, because I’m guessing your employer doesn’t react well to disobeying him, right?”

Knockout stares at her like she’s grown a third head. Her scent smells just as rank and awful, obscuring the far more pleasant base nuance of her personal identity, yet her voice is clear and strong with conviction, like this isn’t the first time she’s put someone to task over this very topic.

Knockout knows this, because he’s also gotten to know his human a little too well, and he knows she chokes up when emotions rile her little fuel pump into a frantic flutter. He knows she can’t spit words out she hasn’t rehearsed and practiced and psyched herself up for.

Much like another precious idiot I know, Knockout thinks with bittersweet affection, because he adores them both, and he’s frustrated to be frustrated with them both for such similar reasons.

And unfortunately, one of them is much easier to offline than the other.

“I. Don’t exactly comprehend what you just said,” he admits flatly. “It almost sounds like you’re trying to convince me to hurt you. I won’t. I said it. Happy?” he quips, narrowing his optics.

He knows they’re listening. He doesn’t care.

He knows Soundwave can’t say a single word about this to their mutual ‘employer,’ because the officer also likes the human. And if his spying brat’s attitude is anything to go off of, the little drone has also taken to her.

Part of him hates that. He really doest.

The rest of him loves it. She’s truly something special; precious. So much so, that others are starting to see it, and that’s a problem. One Knockout’s not so certain how to fix just yet, but he knows he needs to start… Somewhere.

Her safety would be a good place to begin.

If only she would focus on it.

“Yeah. I wish I could believe that, but I refuse to, because that would kinda mean treason or something and I’m pretty sure that means horrible awful consequences. So you haven’t done anything, and will never do anything, to earn those horrible awful consequences that totally haven’t ever kept me up at night already. ”

Knockout gapes at her.

“You--? Oh, please,” he breathes, ex-venting so hard it pushes from his intake and right out all the vents of his entire frame as well, fanning warm, dry air around Butterfly. The gust briefly stirs her tousled, unbound hair and clothes as she sighs deeply. “I am, quite literally, much too important for them to ever think of hurting. The worst old Lord Megatron would ever do is have my finish scratched and my allowances cut.”

Or having a particular blue ‘bot denied certain privileges. Or sent on exceedingly dangerous missions not even the Vehicons were ever sent to bother with.

“Cool. He’d probably just step on me, or order one of my friends to step on me, and I will be very, very, very pissed at you if you do something that pisses Megatron off, makes him order Soundwave or little ‘Beaky to kill me, and I will haunt you as a mother-fucking ghost for the rest of time immortal.”

Knockout, who believes in ghosts, stares at this little slip of a human with a frozen engine as every gear in his body grinds to a halt. He has rarely heard such an outlandish threat delivered in so serious a flat tone of voice, as Butterfly stares up at his faceplate with a not-quite-blank, hard-set expression. It’s not the first time she’s used it, either, and that somehow makes it even more unnerving.

It’s that little edge of tension on the corners of her carefully composed face that has his engine kicking back on with an unhappy rumble.

Worst of all, she’s right.

“Soundwave won’t,” he assures her on… reflex, mostly, because he’d like her to believe that, even if it’s not true.

“He won’t,” she agrees easily, still in that blank, too-certain voice like she knows something he doesn’t, only for her to prove exactly that as she continues, “Beaky will. And I’ll still hate you in the afterlife for it, so stop being such a moody prick. If you’ve got a problem with me or Soundwave, maybe try being a responsible millenia-plus-year-old metal titan who claims to be from a superior species, and, i don’t know… use your words?” she asks dryly.

Despite her scathing tone, she’s still standing in his arms, even relaxing a bit back into his hands as she stares up flatly at his face.

This femme…

It takes Knockout several kliks too long before he’s able to online his vox to answer her.

“I… Hardly,” he tries, quite certain that of the two, the little drone was the most besotted with the human. “Lazerbeak--”

“And I have an arrangement,” his human cuts in with an acidic, biting tone, and quite suddenly her glassy optics are getting wet and shimmery again. “Because unlike some people, I guess, I actually give a shit about this thing called honor and obligation, and Soundwave has been doing his damndest to tow the line between his prior oaths and commitments, and the fact he suddenly has a random Earth-squishy he actually kinda cares about. Gods, I don’t know why you hate him so much or think he’s so heartless,” Butterfly continues, this time pushing back from him as her hands come up to fist in her hair, her gaze growing distant. “But and Beaky are probably the nicest aliens I’ve ever met.”

Knockout’s jaw drops as his intake gapes open at her, because… Because what?

Soundwave? Described as… Nice?

“He… Literally tortures people on the regular. That’s his job,” Knockout states haltingly, watching her draw up short, before her eyes narrow with an edge of suspicion that he doesn’t like, like she thinks he’s lying. Maybe he’s fudged the truth a bit before, but not… Not on this. “You see these marks?” he challenges, leaning back from her as he points to the puncture wounds still sealing over on his chassis; the fresh ones from a recent conversation with the insensitive brute, and the older ones mostly filled in and still smoothing out the final dents as the metal reforms. “Soundwave made those, because he decided he wanted something in my head I wasn’t willing to give. He forced himself into my mind, do you have any idea what that’s like?” he presses, needing her to know just how grave this is. “It’s… The only equivalent I can think to compare it to, is physical rape,” he says shortly. “He raped my mind, and--”

And he falls silent, startled, when two hands abruptly smack his chest as his human lets out a tiny, sobbing wail of keening frustration, then lets her head tip against his chest.

“You’re all the bad guys!” she screeches at him. “Stop trying to pretend you’re not! So he read your mind? Okay, cool! You experiment on living ‘bots! Unwillingly! You literally kidnapped me just because you-- You wanted a friendly face around,” she accuses wetly, forcing an unpleasant rumble into his engine.

The memory of silvered, gnarled scars on her arm and upper back sends an unpleasant trickle of coolant through his hot engine.

He’s not a fan of these brutal, determined truths she so doggedly clings to. As if they’ll bring her any peace or happiness, throwing her emotions at unchangeable facts.

Like the fact he is, in fact, the bad guy.

He’d really like not to be, for fragging once, if it’d change that awful look on her face, put the lovely melody back into her shattered voice.

Knockout lets his gaze slide away from the tangled hair and shaking shoulders he carefully curls his arms around, and sighs deeply.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, because it’s probably what she needs to hear just now, and… He is. But maybe not quite enough to properly regret the choice like he thinks he should. “But for what it’s worth… You did bring something into my life, something that’s been lacking for a very long time,” he murmurs hesitantly, wondering if his decision to forge onward is wise, or if it’d be better to withdraw.

She snuffles wetly against his silver-streaked chassis.

“If you say on-demand movies, I’ll break my knuckles punching you,” she threatens with a barely-there laugh. His Spark chamber feels just that little bit less squeezed by crack-inducing pressure.

“Mm, no, though I won’t deny, I do like those,” he murmurs, hesitating before he leans down to carefully touch the side of his helmet to the top of her head, breathing in her scent as his optics nearly shutter. Nearly. He wants to see her. “But, no… I was talking about something a little more-- Meaningful,” he tries, finding the word catching oddly on the tip of his glossa, and an immediate surge of nervous vibration rattling his engine as his gears shift and recycle back into steady rhythm. Fortunately, the human in his arms is clueless to his body’s transparent--

“Someone’s nervous. Does that mean your… Um, flustered right now?” she asks quietly, hesitating as her shoulders stiffen, before she peeks up at him.

Sweet merciful All-spark.

“Uh…” Because of course he’s not, and if he could just force words out through his vox, she’d know that, too. “I-- No,” he asserts. There. He said it.

She bites her lip, looking unconvinced. And frag it all, his engine won’t shut up.

“...I really do need to go eat something,” she says quietly. “We’ll… We’ll talk-- Soon, I promise, I just… There’s been so much going on, and I really wanted to get through the move, and then the whole new issues between everyone and how sad everyone’s been and--”

“Sad?’ Knockout asks blankly, wondering what’d given her that impression. If anything, he felt maybe she’d been frustrated at him not being upset enough , like she was, with the whole situation. “I can assure you, while I might have been… testy, I wasn’t--”

“I meant… Everyone else but you,” she mumbles her correction, drawing him up short again. “Even Beaky seems down in mood, but Soundwave is really worrying me,” she confesses quietly. “So are Breakdown and Mega--”

“Lord Megatron?” Knockout blurts, optics wide as his bio-lights blaze with the potency of his confusion. “Why are-- Why are you worried about him?” he splutters. “He’s literally the last ‘bot that you should--”

“Because Soundwave and Beaky care about him!” she yells, the full-force of her shrill voice actually causing a reset in newly ringing audials as Knockout quickly dials back his sensitivity threshold, optics wide, gears stalled. “And clearly, all of you are so emotionally constipated and choked by PTSD that you can’t even work together. Shit , Knockout. The way you talked in the beginning I kind of like, I don’t know-- Okay, maybe I never really bought that you were like, the super loyal soldier or anything, but… But both of you are on the same team!” she protests, like she actually cares about the army invading her planet. Which, in her defense, she doesn’t quite know that little detail, a detail that’s probably going to short-circuit his Spark in the ever-approaching future. “The military isn’t just a job , Knockout, it’s a family, and I feel like Soundwave and Megs and Beaky are the only ‘Cons treating it like that.”

“Why does this even upset you?” Knockout asks, mystified. “We’re… You just-- Got done telling me how awful we all are, now you want to… Inspire me to feel some kind of goody-feeling fluffies towards the co-workers who detest me?” he snaps.

“Maybe they’d hate you less if you weren’t such an asshole to everyone all the time!” she grits out.

“Well, I wasn’t going to just stand by and--!”

The familiar sound of spitting sparks accompanied by the simultaneous ping of an Energon surge nearby, has both of them turning their heads to look at the middle of the room, where a green vortex rapidly spins itself into existence.

That was fast, Knockout thinks with unease, wondering just who is going to be coming through the portal, quite suddenly nervous when he’d had effortless confidence before. He’d been confident.

Then his wretchedly soft-Sparked human had to go and tell him she’d made arrangements for her death in such a case as their Lord did, in fact, order her termination. She’d literally looked death in the jaws -- or perhaps the faceplate, seeing as Lazerbeak lacked the more typical intake configuration -- and told it to bite her, just make it quick, please.

Quite suddenly, Knockout doesn’t want to know who’s coming through the ‘bridge. Just as suddenly, Knockout doesn’t want to let that awful scenario occur, and he’s halfway through initiating the code to mass-displace and transform with unwise haste, when he’s already too late.

A purple-black bumper with a familiar low, sweeping front end drives through the portal with the softest purr of a too-quiet engine, then goes utterly silent as the portal… remains open behind him.

Knockout stares at the communication’s officer as he parks.

The human in his arms hesitates, looking over at Soundwave, both her ‘field and her scent so overwhelmed by a complete cacophony of emotions, all he can tell just now is that she’s both intently focused, and deeply invested.

Then Soundwave’s front passenger door pops open on silent hinges, sweeping wide, and Butterfly sighs with deep resignation.

Knockout tightens his hold on her, deeply unnerved.

He can’t be here for her, he thinks shakily. He can’t be here for the--

“Command: get in,” comes that upsettingly emotionless, indifferent statement in vocoded speech as the officer’s voice software relays his orders. There’s no question on who he’s addressing, naturally.

“What’s this about? She needs to refuel and rest, not go off on some new adventure,” Knockout snaps, only to hiss and jolt when the human in his arms abruptly bends her knees and drops herself out of them, standing up and beginning to walk towards the officer here to politely kidnap her.

“Can I grab a snack for the road?” she asks tiredly, the weariness in her voice making Knockout recoil with guilt and unease, because she doesn’t sound good. “Also, I really need to go use the bathroom first, because I am not keen on bleeding all over your pretty seats,” she says with a kind of resigned wariness, causing Knockout to do a fast double-take with alarm, as Soundwave’s frame bleeds a tonal note of disgruntled displeasure.

“Request: exercise haste,” is the clipped response, and his door swings shut.

Without waiting for another word, and before Knockout thinks to reach out to stop her, Butterfly turns on a heel and marches for the door.

She hesitates at the entrance, then glances back over her shoulder, biting her lip. Then she glances down, blinks wet eyes, then glances back up to look directly at Soundwave, tipping her chin up a little.

“Watch my kitties for me, please. Don’t let them walk in the… Craters,” she requests, then slips out.

His Spark rhythm goes off-kilter for a klik. Just a klik.

Knockout, who’s standing right here, stares incredulously at the door. He’d like to think that was said in general to the both of them, but she very clearly directed it at the communication’s officer, who he turns to look at with a narrow gaze.

“Why are you taking her away?” he asks sharply, unease prickling in his fuel lines as coolant flushes over his engine with a discomfiting, chilling sensation. It’d feel nice if he wasn’t so wound up in all the wrong ways. “Because really, she needs rest.”

And I’m not going to get a single word in with her if you and your winged brat keep hogging all her time, he thinks sourly.

Soundwave, naturally, remains silent.

Seeing as he’s been particularly talkative where this individual is concerned, that’s not a comfort. Not one bit.

“Well? So, it’s not for your own personal agenda,” he presses, crossing his arms as he strains to listen for the sound of the house’s side door familiar footsteps to return.

Silence.

“If it’s not important, then I suppose I’ll just continue with my agenda,” he threatens, knowing that insinuation of a delay to whatever the infuriating officer’s plans are, will probably provoke him into response. “As it happens, I was hoping to--”

“Knockout? This is a direct order,” an agonizingly familiar recording of Megatron’s voice plays abruptly. “Shut up.”

Someone’s in no mood for conversation, Knockout thinks with no less nerves than he had, first seeing the officer return so soon.

“Fine, just tell me if you’ll be bringing her back,” he asks, ignoring the command.

It’s not all that surprising that the only answer he gets is more silence.

It’s also not surprising to hear a newly familiar creak and latch of a door sound off far too soon, and the accompanying footsteps in a rapid, hurried pace. Soundwave had requested haste, and Knockout’s human was being upsettingly obliging. As usual.

“Perhaps I should come with,” he suggests. “Surely, you don’t want to transport a rank smelling organic,” he tries, rushing the words out before the pole barn door opens up behind him a crack. A moment later, after no doubt pausing to watch for cats, Butterfly slips back into the outbuilding.

And surprises Knockout again, because she didn’t just slip into the house to get food and attend to her bio-functions needs; she also, somehow, managed to rapidly change outfits in the short amount of time she was gone from sight.

It’s… Nothing spectacular. Fortunately. He’s not sure how he’d feel, seeing his pretty little human tumbled off all dolled up and lovely with another mech. But he doesn’t much care for the lumpy, formless T-shirt she’s thrown on over a pair of badly paint-splattered, stained jeans he knows are a favorite for while she’s actively working on art.

Hence, of course, all the stains. He even spots the smear of black paint and the drops of gray primer from painting his panels. Moreover, she was able to tell him where each colorful, seemingly careless mark had come from.

Murals, gifts, portraits. Every drop of color had a story attached. Which, once he’d gotten over the initial revulsion at what his optics could only view as a Primus-forsaken mess outside of most contexts, had actually been rather… Fascinating, truly. Unique. Interesting.

It’s a look that normally looks good on her, absurdly, except that this time, Butterfly just looks… Rumpled. Rumpled and poorly dressed, more than he’s ever seen her short of actually being covered in filth from some grimey work job that had her crawling on the dirty ground or touching greased machinery parts.

“Alright,” she announces, glancing around the room no doubt to look for her Symbiotes, all of whom have been keeping their distance since the recent clash of interests. “I’m good to go. Am I going to be back in time to feed my kitties dinner, or do I need to tell Knockout how to do it?” she asks, rubbing at her eyes and hefting a miniaturized, bright pink backpack with black trim up on one shoulder.

Soundwave’s driver’s door sweeps open, and Knockout just barely hears the soft reply Butterfly gets, because the officer doesn’t answer her aloud.

He uses the headphones wrapped around her neck.

~“Admission: timeframe for unplanned excursion, unknown. Suggestion: instruct Knockout,”~ he replies, not settling Knockout’s nerves.

He almost snatches her up as she strides past. Almost.

“Unplanned excursion?” he repeats, staring at the officer. What the frag did he mean, ‘unplanned?’

“Do not,” Butterfly snaps at him. “Just. Seriously. Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Knockout blurts, really nearing his limit as he finally gives into the urge to follow, barely remembering to temper his step enough he doesn’t put any new cracks in the brittle concrete below his pedes.

“Don’t keep trying to force conversation right now. He obviously doesn’t want to talk, and I’m not keen on being in the middle of another one of your spats,” she snaps, stopping at a large, green plastic tote with a black lid, next to the rest of her pile of boxes. Opening up the lid, she sets it next to the bin and points at a familiar clear container full of brown pellets, next to stacks of tiny little cans with pop-top lids and numerous other containers of pre-packaged feline fuel. “And I’m in a rush, so let me tell you how to take care of the kitties in case I’m not home before they’re hungry,” she asserts, waving him over with an upsetting fixation on her task.

“She is coming home tonight?” Knockout presses, glancing to Soundwave.

“Stop. Asking. Questions,” Butterfly snarls. “Unless it’s how much do I feed your cats or can Gizmo climb the curtains, I don’t have time for that right now.” Knockout’s hands twitch, about half a nanoklik away from actually snatching her up this time, when she turns and holds up a tiny yellow scoop. “They each get one scoop of pellet food, and a third a can of wet food tonight. I usually give them more, but Jasmine’s got a sensitive tummy with stress, so she can’t have a lot at once or it’ll make her puke. They eat at about eight pm, no later than nine. They’ll probably start trying to nag you for food earlier than that, though.”

As she talks, she pulls out three silver metal saucers, deep dished with slanted edges, the better for long kitty whiskers not to contact the sides of a more confined dish.

Knockout’s engine turns over with an uneasy rumble.

“Alright,” he agrees slowly. “One scoop each, one can of their smelly, goopy flesh fuel split between them,” he summarizes.

She immediately wrinkles her nose and scowls.

“Ugh, do you have to call it that? --Rhetorical question,” she adds quickly, cutting him off, as she closes the tote back up, leaving the silver bowls sitting on top. “Right. Okay. Don’t let them outside, all the same rules as the last house, and don’t let them use the dirt and concrete rubble as a litter box. They have theirs over there,” she states, pointing to the generously sized gray, hooded box that’s been set off to the far end of the pole barn.

“...Alright,” Knockout agrees, then feels his Spark skip when a realization strikes. “Do you have your phone on you?” he asks, pausing her mid-step when she’d have turned to march right for Soundwave.

“What? I mean, no, why?” she wonders.

“If you need me, call me,” he tells her sincerely. “I’ll be there faster than you can say my name.”

Soundwave honks once.

Knockout shoots him a nasty glare, only to feel his Spark seize when he turns his gaze back to Butterfly, and finds her looking at him with a stricken expression. Like he said something wrong, and frag it all, he’s clueless what he could have possibly done wrong this time. She quickly looks away, reaching a hand up to shove hair away from her face as she turns her back on him, shoulders hunched.

And driving his concern into the stratosphere as she hastily starts walking towards the communication’s officer.

“Butterfly?” he blurts, concerned and confused, especially by the sudden shift in her buzzing ‘field as she sucks it close, nearly vanishing from energetical perception.

“I’ll be fine,” she dismisses, far too hastily. “I shouldn’t be carrying Earth tech around on me when I’m out with you guys, anyways. Stuff like that could probably be tracked.”

His engine revs louder with an unhappy rumble as his gears restlessly cycle through several changes of pace.

Stop trying to protect us, Knockout thinks with the most confused kind of bittersweet agony, because it doesn’t escape his notice the fact…

…that all this started, because he liked her doing just that.

Watching her duck down into that sleek, outdated alt mode that was a distinctly more Cybertronian than Earth based silhouette, he can’t help the crushing weight of guilt that makes him feel a thousand pounds heavier. Weighing down his frame, digging sharp, oily claws past the joints of his plating, wedging their way inside his Spark chamber as it crackles with potent charge.

“Bring her back, safe,” Knockout demands of Soundwave, keenly aware of just how helpless he feels, just now.

Because, really-- What was he going to do, even if Soundwave did tell him he was here to… To bring the human somewhere to dispose of her?

Whisk her away into his alt mode, and drive off into the sunset? Impossible. They’d be found and killed in less time than it took for Soundwave to walk the length of the control bridge. 

He’d never be able to protect her on his own. Moreover, he wouldn’t be able to take care of himself, completely cut off from all Decepticon assets.

Like, most crucially, his fuel source.

Energon wasn’t exactly a common commodity.

Soundwave’s engine doesn’t change pitch as he smoothly accelerates from standstill, gracefully pulling a short, tight pivot on the cement before rolling right through the portal he’d come in through. As it zips shut behind them, Knockout’s left with a distinct unease, and a prickling kind of self-awareness he’s not keen to focus overmuch on.

That the thought has even entered his processor at all is far, far too dangerous to ruminate on. There’s too much risk a certain someone might… ‘overhear’ that sort of thing in the ever inevitable conversations Soundwave wasn’t shy about forcing when it suited him.

No, if Knockout were to actually try to do right by his human, and whisk her away to safety…

…he’d have to get his human away from the very mechs at risk of hurting her, and he’d need help to do it.

And the only help he can think of to ask, the only ones who would actually care about the little organic , are the same ‘bots more likely to offline him than ever let him get a single word out.

Frag.

Chapter Text

You assumed getting into Soundwave’s vehicle mode was going to be exceedingly uncomfortable, like stepping into the heart of a storm. There’s an increasingly familiar electric charge to the air as expected, and it is intense, but that’s where your narrowed expectations hit their limit.

Because there’s music playing softly over his speakers, as you drop down onto a mildly heated seat that feels like stepping into Nevada’s sun on a cooler day. It’s… Pleasant. Way too pleasant, and those nice sensory details that tell your body and muscles to relax contrast with a painful twist against everything else that has you sitting with probably way-too-polite posture as you neatly perch on his seat, hands in your lap, stiff as a board.

You’re nervous.

I can’t believe he said that. Any of that, you think dimly, watching the pole barn rotate and scroll around you through the dark tinted windows that abruptly go pitch black.

Wait, what?

You suck in a sharp breath through your nose as your eyes widen, startled by the sudden drop into mood-lit darkness.

The only light now comes from the pale lilac lines of perfectly, evenly lit pinstriped lines all around you; quite abruptly, you find yourself wondering which lines go to where on his body. There’s so many, on nearly every surface but the soft upholstery.

Just as abruptly, you tell your stupid brain to stop distracting you even though distracting you from panic because he just cut off your view of wherever it is you’re going, probably because it’s secret , and--

--and you kinda wonder if maybe you’re.

Not going home tonight.

Or ever.

~*~

-=”Soundwave, her fuel pump just made a funny pattern break. I don’t think humans are supposed--”=-

He doesn’t give Lazerbeak a chance to finish, swiftly urging her to silence. He can’t bear to think about more than the immediate next step ahead of him, just now, and to his blessed relief, she complies without complaint.

His Symbiote can no doubt feel just how on edge he is, and they don’t have much time to get this done if he wants to do it right, and he has to make it to the lab before Starscream does. He needs time, time enough to present his case and have any chance of swaying the situation. Once the preening Seeker arrived for debriefing with Shockwave, Soundwave would be obligated to depart, with no actual business to attend to that would take priority.

So, he had to get there first , and--

Idiot. Just wait until he leaves and then we’ll have all the time in the world. You’re still on leave, remember?

The thought intrudes against his own line of thinking, disrupting his own code like a hand swept through metal flakes floating on oil. The pattern that once was immediately dissolves, reforms, and he hardly has the focus to grasp at flickering pieces of his former train of thought.

She’s right, of course, as usual.

You need to calm down. Your Spark oscillations are also high.

This time, that thought, the softest impression of meaning and inflection of emotive expression that calls to mind the prettiest purple visor and a tiny Spark he’d die to protect, comes paired with a gentle nudge of soothing energy. The music she’s chosen isn’t much helping his mood, but he hopes it’s helping their passenger.

Their passenger, who looks ready to bolt at any moment, even as she seems to do her best to sit obediently, exactly as is expected of her.

He hates it.

He hates it, and he hates this entire situation, and he hates Knockout for being such a fragging rusted cog. He never should have let the medic off the ship. He should have restricted his access to the ground bridge and interfered in his ‘favors’ with the Vehicon engineers that managed the fragging machinery.

The portal of which closes behind him with a spitting hiss as Soundwave brakes hard in the ground bridge room, taking Lazerbeak’s advice. She’s right. He’s too wound up to go driving down the halls-- It’ll be strange enough for anyone to see him like this indoors, and he doesn’t need any ill fated encounters provoking his temper just now.

He might actually lose it, this time. And that is not the standard of conduct he aspires to; he’s never favored Starscream’s version of managerial practices.

Or his influence on Megatron’s.

He can still feel Lazerbeak’s active focus as she pays close attention to his thoughts, but his Symbiote has withdrawn from conversation; she remains a strong, steady presence wrapped around the back edges of his mind, filling the void of space where other thoughts would have been, but now give way to her sparkling presence.

It’s a welcomed gift, a soothing balm. As long as he has her, he’ll be fine.

The human on his passenger seat makes a funny, scrunched expression for a moment as she breathes oddly. A moment later, she snuffles, quite obviously trying to be discreet about it.

Her fuel pump makes that funny stutter-skip again he knows isn’t normal, and probably isn’t good.

Every bio-speaker in Soundwave’s body strains under the force of crackling electricity as he refuses to let the tonal notes of distress betray him. It probably wouldn’t help her mood.

He’s so tired of trying to guess what the source of her near emotional breakdown is. There’s no end of things to pick from, as usual, and he’s not in any great mood himself.

Fortunately, Soundwave’s come to learn that misery loves company, and after a moment to collect himself, he pulls forward at a deceptively sedate pace.

~*~

You think you know where you are.

If you listen past the blood pounding in your ears and think beyond the feeling of how your chest is squeezing too-tight and your palms are feeling strangely clammy, you can hear familiar sounds. Barely.

Mostly, you can hear the sound of heavy footsteps that clank against metal, loud enough to be heard through the muffling effect of Soundwave’s insulated cabin space. It’s all you can do to stare at one point on his dashboard and try to count numbers or say the alphabet in your head, anything mindless and so ingrained in your brain that you could do it in your sleep, just to keep yourself from circling back on thoughts you don’t want to dwell on.

Like why he brought you to the Nemesis .

Or why he doesn’t know if you’ll be home to feed your kitties tonight or not.

Or…

…why you’re suddenly at a standstill, and you actually notice this immediately because Soundwave brakes hard enough again that he bounces on his tires. You, startled beyond belief after having become so accustomed to his uncannily smooth driving skills, immediately send a worried look to his radio, before quickly schooling your features.

Don’t think about it, you tell yourself. Just. Focus on happy things. Like flowers. And paint. And how I’m going to make Breakdown earn a healthy fear of office supplies. I bet I could make him jump with a paperclip and a battery-- Wait, no better yet. He should see what I can do with a stapler, you think desperately, just kind of.

Shutting your vision off.

You don’t even mean to do it. It just. Happens. So deep in your thoughts, falling into yourself, you’re not paying attention to what’s directly in front of your face or around you, until it makes you notice. When you look back on this moment, try to fish for memories, all there’s going to be is a big blank spot. A lot of blank spots, actually, because you’re disassociating so hard you’ve circled around into acting inside your own body, like a puppet pulling the strings.

And you’re made to notice, by way of the space around you suddenly shifting forward in the strangest, smoothest glide and drop, before quite abruptly the seatbelt sweeps over you to pin you in place.

Your heart skips a beat and you swear maybe even stops for a moment too long as the blood rushes to your head and feet at the same time and the wave of dizziness from pent up anxiety is so strong, you nearly black out.

You have exactly one split second to realize something strange is happening and that you are utterly powerless to stop it, when the world around you explodes into shards of pale lavender light and the deepest, warm shadows. You gasp, or maybe you just open your mouth, because you’re so screwed up just now that you’ve forgotten how to breathe as parts and panels of Soundwave’s body flip and rotate around you in the most alien, beautiful dance of geometry.

You’ve watched Knockout transform. You’ve even seen Soundwave do it.

You’ve never had one of them transform while holding you, and quite abruptly the seat you’re on warps and ripples, driving another startled squeak out of your mouth as you feel yourself hoisted up like a carnival ride with the strangest balance of the smoothest momentum, like Soundwave knows exactly how much force to use not to make your brain slosh around in your skull. Whiplash from being zig-zagged and turned and spun around wouldn’t have made this an enjoyable experience, and as it is, you’re probably shellshocked again.

But at least this time it’s one that isn’t immediately driving your panic response into assuming you’re about to be murdered by your favorite beepy ‘bots.

One moment you’re surrounded by twisting lines of purple lights that leave streaks in your vision, by glimpses of gleaming silver you’ve never seen before on his body, and a constant dance of the flat and curved panels of his sleek armor…

…and the next, you’re sitting in his hands, Soundwave crouched with one knee to the floor, both his hands holding you carefully barely five feet off the dark metal floor of this dimly lit space.

The first thing that hits you isn’t the spacious room he’s brought you to, or the tastefully spartan furnishings of what looks to be some kind of work space.

It’s not the cold, frigid air, either, or the way it smells so sweetly alien, yet in a familiar way. In a way that says, this is a Cybertronian space. Intimately so.

The firs thing you notice consciously, is the soundscape.

Even though it’s not playing from Soundwave’s frame anymore, you can still hear music . Soft, up-beat rhythms of bubbly notes with a giddy baseline roll with a deep thwump-thwump-thwump . It’s loud enough that you can almost discern the song clearly, if you weren’t likewise busy listening to the strange noises Soundwave is making, or doing a double-take as you notice that you weren’t just imagining things.

His bio-lights really are a different color. The familiar shade you always struggle to decide is whether to describe as more pink or more purple , and settle on some blend of both, has most decidedly veered into the pale lilac range today.

Considering everything that’s happened today, you kinda feel like that might be significant for him, but hesitate to ask.

“I-It’s uh, i-it’s k-kinda c-cold in here, didn’t kn-know I shoulda b-brought a c-coat,” you joke nervously, and immediately wish you hadn’t tried to talk through your cold-stuttered breath, because your wrecked voice completely gives away your nerves. Shit.

The black visor looming above and behind you jerks down to look at you, before he seems to shrink into himself a bit. He gives a look around the room like he’s lost for a moment, before quite abruptly his warm hands move, fingers fanning out so he’s carefully caging you between them, one above, and one below.

You duck down on instinct, even though he’s not at risk of actually squishing your head, and feel very much like a kitten someone just ran off with as Soundwave slowly stands up, and smoothly extends his arms out.

Oh God what now?

Before you even have a chance to go into panic over the sudden elevation in height, you have solid ground beneath you again as Soundwave moves his hands over what you think is a massive desk built into the wall.

He unfurls his fingers so you can get off, gently tipping his palm a little to encourage the behavior as you quickly oblige, heart hammering. The moment your feet contact the surface he’s brought you to, however, you quickly rethink your thoughts on it being a desk.

It gives a little, beneath your feet. It’s also kinda slippery, like standing on silk fabric spread out over smooth tile. You almost fall right on your ass, and take a moment to steady yourself, wildly caught off guard as it shifts beneath your shoes. Soundwave’s body makes a soft, jarring clicking noise, before you hear what you swear is a soft sigh.

You. You are wildly confused what the fuck is going on, and why he’s brought you to what you’re beginning to have a nagging suspicion might be his room.

“Um… I-Is this-- Y-y-your place?” you finally manage to ask through now chattering teeth as you hug yourself, curiosity having finally outstripped the nerves and anxiety closing your throat. You gesture briefly to the space behind him as you ask, taking in the simple environment, before quickly hugging your arms back to your chest.

There’s a closed door he clearly came through to enter, one big enough he could walk through without having to duck. The ceiling isn’t much higher than the door, but you can see in the corners of the room there’s flat, narrow platforms and bars mounted that are all marked up with scratches.

They’re… Perches. You’re pretty sure those are perches, probably for a certain flying beepy ‘bot, and that long sofa-looking slab on one wall of this super-massive-to-you and very-cozy-to-Soundwave sized room… Is probably actually a sofa. It looks like raw metal cut into the most plain geometric shape for a sofa, and honestly, it doesn’t even look like it really fits in with the rest of the room. It’s unpainted and dented, standing out against the walls which are painted or patinated a deep, metallic purple with black accents and a pitch black floor. The lighting in this room comes only from two lights aimed into the far corners, reflecting off the satin finish of the walls and illuminating the room with a warm, barely-there amber glow. It’s almost like having candles lit in the room, just a soft cast of gentle light.

It’s… Very pretty, and far quieter than you’d have expected, sans the music. Unlike Knockout’s lab you’d been in once so long ago now, you don’t hear a constant hum of alien electronics and machinery. What noise you do hear, is coming from the two mechs in the room with you.

Soundwave turns his head to follow your gaze, like he’s only just realized where he even is, before that visor abruptly snaps to look back at you.

Either you caught him off guard, or something , but you’re getting really tired of not knowing things--

“Admission: yes. Explanation: Soundwave, urgently requires presence of Butterfly for-- we need to talk,” he confesses, bringing his hands up and threading his fingers together as his head dips a bit and holy hecking hell, can this mech stop destroying your heart for like, one day? Okay, maybe that’s asking too much. An hour??

You give up trying to stand on this funny slippery surface, and let your ass plop on the even weirder not-soft-not-hard furniture.

“O-o-ok-kay,” you say resignedly, rather hoping Knockout doesn’t find out he just had his make-up conversation with you delayed, by someone else literally stealing you away to have their’s first. “B-but I-I’m gon-na g-get sick if I s-stay this c-cold for too l-long.” Sweet maker it’s cold in here.

He seems to consider for a moment, before looking around the room, sighing again, then straightening.

And suddenly putting you at eye-level with his thighs as you blink dumbly, given the prettiest view of sleek, glossy metal and…

Wait, is that sand?

There’s pale yellow dusting his knees, and numerous scrapes in his leg armor you definitely don’t remember seeing; Knockout, as far as you had seen, hadn’t left a single scratch on Soundwave in his ill-planned murder attempt.

Wait, does his armor not cover all his leg? You think next, realizing that the pretty pinstripes you’ve admired before, seem to vanish under the plating that wraps over his upper thighs. He looks armored… And he also doesn’t. Not with the way those wide gaps show flashes of his luminous circuitry like targets, and you’re pretty sure his midsection isn’t even armored.

Unless his skin itself is armor, but… Well.They’re aliens.

You can guess all you want, you’re not gonna know unless they tell you.

…and you really don’t feel like asking Soundwave about his anatomy, because that’d probably be weird, and also you’re still freezing cold and he’s still looking down at you like this is a problem he hadn’t remotely considered.

Minus one point to Soundwave for human-pet caretaking, you think contritely.

And then he’s carefully turning and sitting down next to you, a polite distance away, and you watch with newly wide eyes as what you’re now certain is some kind of weird…. Metal-based bed, immediately dips and sinks under his weight.

Unlike your poor couch, it stops at what looks to be a comfortable depression instead of trying to swallow him up whole. He’s watching you as he does it, one hand poised like he was ready to catch you in case he misjudged the dip of the mattress and sent you tumbling.

Then that hand is reaching over, only to pause just short of actually trying to pick you up as you tense on reflex.

“Request: allow Soundwave to provide heat source via relocation,” he asks, then lays his hand down flat.

You stare at him, wondering where the fuck that’s going to be, but your chattering teeth and shivering body have much less hesitation. You’re already crawling back onto his hand with haste before you’ve even properly agreed to in your own head, and that’s okay because as usual, his hand is warm.

Okay. I can handle hand cuddles, you think blearily.

He then promptly deposits you on his lap like a cat, complete with curling one hand around you just a little distance away, sheltering you from the draft in the room. You however, have been slid off his hand and into the same gap of armor you’d just been speculating on and definitely not ogling, and sweet merciful stars above. You’re so beyond confused, you just decide to do what’s worked so well before the last time everything got so crazy, and slump into him. You wiggle to get more comfortable, feeling the strangest give in the warm, solid-yet-not material beneath you. Where his purple biolights run under your legs, they feel particularly warm against your cold body.

It doesn’t take you long to abandon the idea of trying to get comfortable sitting with folded knees and arms over the edge of his armor like a desk to lean on, to instead scooting as close as you can get to his hip without worrying about his overlapping armor pinching you if he moves. There’s more lights here, and you place yourself on the biggest junction of the two coming up his thigh and connecting together, before another vanishes up into his hip.

This is so unfair, you think contritely, ducking out of the cold draft to curl up, entirely uncaring of propriety or your dignity. You’re cold, and he’s clearly not keen to just turn back into a car and run his heater, so you accept the status of being treated like your kitties.

And maybe, it’s not quite so bad.

Maybe you are going home, after all.

You, who have been wiggling, squirming, adjusting your hips, turning your elbows, and generally trying to make yourself comfortable in much the same routine as you do every night you try to curl up to sleep, don’t immediately notice Soundwave’s reaction. You don’t, until he finally makes a strange clicking noise at you followed by two sharp blips, before he seems to remember that you don’t speak alien binary.

That’s. That’s almost endearing.

“R-request: cease squirming.”

You freeze immediately, less because of his actual request (though you’d listened to that, too) and more because he just stuttered.

Is he… Tickilish?

“U-uh… Sorry?” you try. “I’m… Cold,” you mumble contritely. “You coulda… N-nevermind,” you quickly amend, wondering if it’d be at all weird to request it, since he obviously hadn’t offered, and you know he’s a smart mech.

His hand hesitantly drifts closer as he peers down at you, not very effectively shielding you from any drafts though the effort of trying is kind of sweet.

Soundwave doesn’t answer you directly.

He plays a recording in an unpleasantly familiar voice, instead. It rips through you like thunder rolling over the open plains, shattering your thoughts.

“Don’t get attached to the human. I don’t care what you do with it’s Symbiotes; keep them, if you wish.”

“Wh-what?” you manage to breathe, because… because what?

Soundwave’s head ducks a bit, before his other hand comes up to join the other, and quite abruptly, you realize that he’s not hiding you from the cold air. That’s why he put you on his lap, so you could share his body heat.

No, he’s protecting you, or at least trying to soothe himself thinking he can, delicate black fingers like oversized chopsticks gracefully curling around you and clicking quietly against his own metal self.

“A-adm-mission: Soundwave… Fragged up,” he confesses quietly, before quiet abruptly there’s a hand moved over you to block your view of above, and the other hand curls in even tighter, completely circling you like he’s afraid you’re going to try and bolt off his lap.

“Wh-what… What happened?” you manage to get out, over the sound of his engine kicking on with what you think is a nervous rumble, tonal notes quietly bleeding into the air around you. You can feel the way his body vibrates softly with the reaction, the slightly malleable surface you’re curled up on translating it far more dramatically than his solid plate.

He’s not trying to silence himself anymore, you realize with shock. Had he just been-- Waiting? For… Privacy?

To be vulnerable with you?

There’s another sound, this time, not one you’re familiar with, as you hear what sounds like the rainfall of delicate glass shards falling against silver. They make the most lovely musical tinkling sound, before it goes silent.

What was that? You haven’t any idea. It’s a lovely sound, but not one you’ve ever heard him make before, and it comes from high, high above you. Was that Lazerbeak…?

“I’m… Sorry,” comes an unfamiliar voice that has you jerking your head up as your heart skips a beat, because WHAT? That’s-- There’s no way. That can’t be-- “I should have… Been more careful. The only good news I have is that we… Secured your Symbiotes safety,” that soft-spoken, riveting, rich voice without a single ounce of reverb or vocoded tinny autotune tells you, splitting your heart open as you feel your breath catch. He’s.

Talking to you.

Without his… speech software? What? Why?

You are so confused, and part of you wants to demand answers because what the actual fuck Soundwave you’re so confusing, and the rest of you…

…the rest of you doesn’t care, because you think you know what this means for him, at least some kinda way, because you’re pretty dang sure he doesn’t… Do this with people.

Your heart might just beat itself out of your ribcage. It’s making a good effort at it.

“M-My kitties?” you finally manage to push out, staring up at the dark hand that you think might… Be hiding him from view. Did he… Did he remove his visor…? Does he have a face hiding behind that screen? Or did he just change audio outputs…?

And what the hell does he mean, playing a recording of Megatron saying that he could keep your cats?

“Affirmative,” Soundwave answers, just as softly, just as somber. His voice isn’t deep, but it is masculine, and you can way too easily imagine him singing with that melodic quality. There’s a gentle resignation in his clearly enunciated speech that has your heart doing all kinds of interesting yoga moves that would probably scare a doctor. “Lord Megatron admires their courage and… I think, their similarity to someone we-- Once knew,” he continues, further stupefying you, and when are you ever going to get used to that with this mech?

How many more surprises does he have for you, tonight?

At least a few more, probably.

“So he… Likes my cats,” you say slowly, trying to genuinely turn that over in your head. A big, scary, shark-toothed metal space alien with a penchant for planetary destruction in a millenas-old war with equally planetary-destroying aliens, absolutely detests you but likes your cats.

There’s a kind of tingly, floaty feeling crawling over your body. One that brings relief.

Some part of you recognizes how fucked up that is. That this is a conversation you’re having at all, that some random metal asshole can just give someone else permission to take your babies.

Quite suddenly, you’re angry to go with all your misery and confusion and fear and bitterness, and you don’t want Soundwave to know it, so you try to keep your breathing even and think happy thoughts.

Like the fact he just told you that he secured protection for your babies. Maybe not for you, but… that’s…

You can live with that. Or, well, not. But until you’re dead, you can.

If I ever see a therapist, my therapist will need a therapist, you think faintly.

“Affirmative,” Soundwave answers quietly. “I can promise you this, now,” he continues, his fingers flexing just a little closer as your breath stills in your throat. “Whatever happens, they’ll be well cared for,” he promises you.

And sends you right into wailing sobs as the first keening noise of distress rips out of your throat, yanked out of you by complete involuntary reaction. You throw your hands over your face, and proceed to blubber your thanks because this metal titan just gave you the one thing you needed most of all.

The promise of protection for what you protect.

~*~

With her faceplate hidden tucked against Soundwave’s chest, Lazerbeak can’t see anything in the room without accessing his video feed, and she’s not keen on doing so. For numerous reasons.

The first one being; it’d probably hurt both of them with the code sequencing, because even though Soundwave took the time to visit the lab to accelerate the fusion of his screen’s surface fractures to hide the damage, everything still hurts.

And even though she’s not really supposed to, she feels it like it’s her own frame’s awful achy-aches, and she just feels so miserable on his behalf. So she stays quiet, offering comfort in the only way he’ll accept just now, and glad he is. He’s letting her send soothing thoughts and assurances directly into his processor’s tumbling trains of thoughts, interrupting unhelpful code sequences and nudging him towards the ones that do benefit him.

Or their favorite squishy, the one who she’d also like to wrap up in her wings, or maybe coil her cables around. Better yet, both!

But that’ll have to wait, because right now, she’s listening to the soft sounds of their quiet conversation, giving Soundwave space to talk to the human with some illusion of privacy. She knows he knows she can hear everything, of course, even if she didn’t have direct access to his systems.

Her tiny Spark spins as fast as his does.

Their human’s wailing sobs aren’t pleasant to hear, exactly, but there is something cathartic in it, in her open expression. She’s finally letting it all out, in her voice, and in the way her Electromagnetic field freely betrays her mess of emotions to them.

Exactly as Lazerbeak expects, her Carrier doesn’t try to stop the squishy’s meltdown. He lets their little human cry herself hoarse, shaking and quivering and probably wiping her face on her sleeves from the sounds of things. It’s all Lazerbeak can do to restrain herself from interrupting, wanting to offer comfort, and knowing that the best thing she can do just now is stay silent.

Especially since all of this-- well, most of it --is her fault to begin with.

The thought would make her Spark dim, if she wasn’t so determined to stay hopeful. Soundwave clearly had a plan, or at least the beginnings of one, and it had to be a good one.

And if it’s not, we’ll make it into one , she thinks fiercely.

“There’s more I have to say,” Soundwave continues when Butterfly’s hiccuping gasps have quieted, and Lazerbeak feels the way his Spark’s oscillations go off-kilter for a moment. There’s the faintest hitch beneath her chassis that vibrates through his frame, and into hers.

“Okay,” comes the snuffly reply, her voice’s output drastically lowered in quality.

Lazerbeak feels Soundwave hesitate, both to speak and in the way she feels his frame go extra still for a moment, before he resumes normal breathing pattern.

“Lord Megatron denied our request for reassignment,” her Carrier begins with open bitterness, and Lazerbeak would kind of love to know what their squishy thinks of his voice. She also wishes that Butterfly was getting to hear him talk about literally anything else for the significant occasion. “He’s ordered that I transfer--”

“Y-you’re leaving?” comes the broken gasp, choked out like she’d actually be horrified to hear that, and it matches the way the human’s EM-field goes from leaking her distress in aimless, unintentional broadcast, to positively trying to smother them.

Lazerbeak’s tiny engine almost kicks on in response to the rolling waves of barely-there electric tingles, potent in their intensity without physical force.

Holy scrap she’s panicking again.

Lazerbeak couldn’t be happier at the immediate bid to stay with them, if she wasn’t so upset.

“...No?” Soundwave answers after a brief pause, sounding unsure.

“Oh,” is the only verbal response they get. Energetically, Lazerbeak’s relieved by the easing of their human’s overworked ‘field, sharp, buzzing panic giving way to more equalized emotional soup. Still distressed, but no longer on the edge of going hysteric.

You’re not getting rid of us THAT easy, Lazerbeak thinks. Even if you did make goo-goo eyes at Knockout. Broken Processors were fixable. With enough time. And supporting evidence.

Fortunately, she had vorns worth of data to fall back on.

“...Would that upset you?” Soundwave asks, snaring her attention once more as Lazerbeak unconsciously holds her breath, before her fuel pump quickly forces the matter and makes her to suck in air for her engine. It creates a tinny hiss that briefly interrupts her audials, but doesn’t actually obscure the reply she’s very invested in hearing.

Please say yes, please say--

“I don’t know, probably, yeah,” is the wet response, stutter gone but her words still somewhat smushed together and nasally. “I mean. It probably shouldn’t. But it would. It was hard enough watching you leave like that earlier, I… I’m so sorry, I sh-shouldn’t have asked that, and I---”

“Stop,” Soundwave interrupts, the punched static in his voice making his vox crackle, and Lazerbeak just barely catches the soft gasp from their human as she cuts off. “Stop apologizing. You… You haven’t done anything but-- Protect your family,” he says haltingly, a low growl chasing his words as Lazerbeak feels her Spark dim, cables pulled tight with renewed tension as she squeezes him with her wings.

“Isn’t that the same thing you’re doing?” Butterfly asks miserably, catching Lazerbeak off guard.

“...It is,” Soundwave agrees, this time with an odd reserve in his voice that has Lazerbeak holding her breath again, before quicky remembering to not do that scrap. “Some are harder to protect than others,” he continues quietly, a somber gentleness to his voice that’s twisting up her fuel lines and yanking the wires in her Spark’s cradle.

“Beaky?” their human guesses wetly. “She’s so small.” This, said in a tone of understanding agreement.

Lazerbeak wonders if Soundwave will let her play footage of the last tussle she got into with the Autobots. She bet Butterfly would be a lot less scared of Prime’s gaggle of bolt heads if she saw that she could take a mech down all by herself if push came to shove.

No one was getting their squishy.

…Except maybe Shockwave.

Frag frag frag frag fra--

“I can think of one even smaller,” Soundwave all but murmurs, halting Lazerbeak’s spiral into self-punishing guilt. “If they’d… Like to be.”

She can’t help it, this time.

Lazerbeak lets out a hopeful trill, before muting her vox and hoping he’ll forgive her interruption as she squeezes his chest with her wings again.

~*~

“Huh?” is the only thing that leaves your mouth as you stare dumbly at the black hand above your head, smothering you in darkness that’s offset by the gentle rings of lilac light circling his joints.

“We’re not… Typical. You’re not typical.”

That’s his response, said like pointing out that the sky is blue and so is the ocean, two things that go together. You wait, for a moment, for him to go on-- but that’s it. No pontificating over-fancy speech, and honestly you’ve spent so long becoming used to decoding his clunky speech format, it’s giving you a headache to try and keep up with this sudden drop into… into such casualness. It’s like he’s speaking a different language all of a sudden, and you can barely cope.

The only saving grace is that his voice is so dang beautiful to listen to, and even if it wasn’t, you’re willing to deal with the inconvenience of suddenly having Soundwave talking with you like you do with him, and having to translate it back into Soundwave-speak.

When did life get so complicated?

“Did. You just… Say we’re both-- Weird?” you question, blinking.

You feel the body around you shift, the strangest feeling, one that immediately reminds you of just how utterly tiny you are compared to this metal titan who’s so very carefully cradling you on his lap like a kitten.

Maybe you are a kitten to these giants. It’d be fitting, you suppose; after all, you’ve been thinking of them as giant metal space-cats this whole time. And you still think the analogy is fitting.

You also think that maybe, you didn’t go quite so far backwards in your relationship of slowly building trust with Soundwave and Beaky as you thought you’d had. If your ears aren’t randomly malfunctioning just now, it almost sounds like he changed his mind.

“Everyone in my family is strange,” Soundwave murmurs, saying it once more like commenting on the color of the sky. “Lazerbeak… Likes you. You make her laugh. You make me laugh,” he continues, that open expression of clear emotion in his voice still sending your heart into strange acrobatics.

“Th-that doesn’t sound like… not getting attached to the human,” you quote uneasily, giving a nervous laugh, because dammit, Soundwave! Why did he have to try so hard to…

…to do the same thing that you’ve been doing? Pretending everything’s okay and it’s not going to absolutely gut you, rip your chest open and fling your heart into the dirt, because that’s where this is going to end, and you know it. He just confirmed that.

But your kitties will be safe.

You can stop worrying quite so much on that little detail, as much as it brings new worries to mind. Your precious fur babies have been given the all-important and desperately desired pardon from His Royal Space Ass-Majesty himself, and Megatroll has few redeeming qualities, but the fact he’s apparently a cat lover is now one of them.

It’s definitely a case of ‘take what you can get.’

The other cat lover giving you wildly different yet related problems, seems to be struggling to speak. You hear a familiar soft click, the same noise you’ve heard Knockout make when you think his speaker is acting funny.

After a moment, you hear a spurt of static, and then finally, words come out, lightly chased with static.

“He said not to. I already am. I can’t defy reality like he can,” he states with resignation.

And wow, there’s probably a lot to unpack there, but right now you’re going to choose to focus on the part where you’re hearing Soundwave confess point blank that he cares about you and oh GODS. Your death is suddenly looming a lot closer on the horizon if Megatron catches wind that both his CMO and his TIC are fond enough of you to literally…

Literally what?

Talk about how much they’d like to keep you alive and healthy?

You really, really don’t want to cry again. Sweet mercy you don’t want to cry again.

“Soundwave, what are you actually asking me?” you ask, forcing yourself not to mumble, when all you really want to do just now is curl up in a little ball and fall asleep and pretend the day never happened. Except for some parts of it. Like this part.

And maybe that part when Knockout kissed you on the head--

I’m going to go insane, you think contritely.

One of the main causes of your break in sanity, seems to be struggling to find words to answer you again.

“I’m… Not sure,” Soundwave finally sighs, not the answer you expected. “I suppose if you… Want to stay. With us.”

“Stay?” you repeat, blankly.

“We won’t be on Earth forever.”

“Are you asking me if I want to stay on Earth, or… Stay here in this-- Uh. Really cold room?” you ask dubiously, shrinking down into yourself at the implications of these big, scary, life-altering questions he’s asking. He’s good at those.

He makes a funny tonal noise that bleeds off his frame like disjointed squeaks, absurd enough it almost makes you laugh. Almost. Even stranger, you can feel them, because the sound is coming from seemingly everywhere on his body at once.

You’re a little too tired from crying yourself hoarse to laugh.

“I…” He makes an odd hissing noise, like he’s unhappy or frustrated, and your eyes widen quietly because wow. You are not used to this, this sudden peek behind his mask without actually seeing behind the mask. “I don’t know,” Soundwave confesses, definitely sounding frustrated this time. “You’re stuck with us. You don’t… Have to be stuck with me. ”

You’re… tired of trying to overthink it.

You’re also pretty sure that you do know what Soundwave’s getting at, and you don’t think it’s anything bad except for that little eensy detail where his boss hates you.

You’re not sure when your bravery fled, but where you’d found the courage and moxie to spit cutting words at Knockout about how you’d really so much rather he save his metal hide than risk your shorter-lived flesh, you find yourself cowering with Soundwave, instead. Cowering, and leaning into him, because you’d like to think that the mech who’s driven you to work, pestered you about your health, tried to protect you from a co-worker he thought was making unwanted advances, and in general, has done nothing but be absurdly pleasant company, might still be able to protect you. He’s polite, he’s practical, he’s focused, and…

And he’s crying, you think with a kind of counter-intuitively numbed shock that lances through your own misery, yanking you from self-reflection to instead take note of the way the hard-soft metal not-skin beneath you has started to quiver; the erratic vibrations come in sync with the way quiet harmonic sounds bleed off of him, surrounding you with the softest, stricken melody. It’s pairing oddly with the happy, bubbly music has has playing softly in his room.

You didn’t know the big robots could cry, but that splatter of clear fluid that brings a whiff of what smells suspiciously like some kind of solvent, and the shaking of the chassis above you, leads you to suspect as much.

Sweet everlasting cosmic torment, your heart aches.

You’ve never felt more wretched and confused and yearning in your whole damned life. You’re terrified. You’re terrified of what’s in store, of the very real dangers lurking around every possible corner.

But nothings really changed, has it?

Your heart certainly doesn’t seem to think so, as it constricts with painful sympathy, and you find yourself reaching out to touch the slender finger closest to you.

It twitches.

You hesitate, but when he doesn’t pull away, you awkwardly push yourself up off the bio-lit cubby he’d set you in on his leg, and wrap your arms around the massive finger instead. Cold air rushes around you in odd patterns, offset by the heat radiating off his warm frame as you press the side of your face to smooth metal, snuffling.

Well. One thing’s changed, at least.

My kitties are safe.

“My heart hurts, Soundwave,” you manage to speak, somehow finding the power to project your voice louder than a hoarse whisper. “I’m… I don’t even know what to say.”

~”Say yes,”~ comes an immediate reply below your ears, startling you. ~”Beaky suggests. Enthusiastically. And maybe a little desperately.”~

“Lazerbeak… Cease,” Soundwave commands haltingly, sounding tired, and this time, you’re floored to hear the familiar command given with a waver in his static-laden voice.

“You two are impossible,” you complain. “Breakdown’s right. I must be fragged in the head. I can’t… Not care. I just don’t want to be fighting with you guys all the time. Are you-- Are you really okay? Knockout didn’t-- he didn’t hurt either of you?”

Because that also happened today.

I want to go to bed. You ignore that involuntary, whiney thought.

“Not physically,” Soundwave answers with far more vulnerability than you’d have expected… or maybe not.

He’s a lot more secure in his emotions than Knockout is.

“So… W-what happens if I say I want to… Um, stay?” you ask next, a little too eager to leave that particular topic behind, when he doesn’t volunteer any further information. Part of you wants to ask him; ask how he’s doing emotionally, and the rest of you thinks it’s obvious enough he isn’t, that maybe asking might only upset him more.

There’s a pause, and then the finger you’re hugging flexes into you briefly, just the barest press.

“Then I’ll bring a bottle of wine with, when we go to see Shockwave,” he explains as if that explains fucking anything.

“Okay. Why are we going to see Shockwave, and why do you need wine to do it?” you ask, bewildered.

His fingers curl a little tighter around you. This time there’s a soft click that precedes his words, like he had to force power through his speaker.

“Because… Lord Megatron has commanded I transfer legal custody of you, to him. And I have an interest in swaying his interests.”

Oh. That doesn’t… Sound good.

“Transfer. Legal custody,” you repeat blankly. Like. Like a child?

Or a pet , you think with a queasy, sinking feeling in your stomach, unconsciously tightening your arms around the warm living metal you’re hugging.

“Yes.”

“And… This means what, exactly, for me?” you wonder, aware that the octave of your voice has raised in pitch. You feel very small, quite suddenly.

“...it means he owns you,” Soundwave answers quietly. “Insofar as one can claim to own another sentient being,” he adds bitterly, and for the first time since you’ve ever met Soundwave, you hear open anger in his voice.

Actually, check that. He doesn’t sound angry, not really.

He sounds livid.

That acidic, biting tone that rips a sharp sort of jagged edge along the clearly enunciated bite of his words is hot, bubbling-over, molten contempt.

You’re kinda glad to hear he’s angry about this. Someone should be, because strangely, you’re not.

Which isn’t quite right, actually; you are, in fact, very angry about this. Upset. Offended. Humiliated, in a way; a feeling you don’t wish to dwell too closely on, anymore than you do the rest of your feelings.

Your brain has shoved all those off and locked them outside screaming and banging on the doors of your higher brain’s processing center, the one with that pretty crowded desk still overflowing with warning flags you ignored.

Well. Until they stopped just being warnings.

It’s quiet, without them stomping around the place. Peaceful, almost, very much like that “This is Fine” gif with everything on fire around the character sedately sipping coffee at a table.

This is fine, you tell yourself. It’s not, obviously, but that’s okay because….

…because your kitties are safe.

“Oh,” is all that leaves your mouth as it drops open the barrest bit, barely feeling your own lips part to speak. You. Don’t know how to process this. Absolutely nothing in your life has prepared you for being told that some space warlord gave you to someone else. Like they owned you. Like they could just. Make decisions about your life and who you had to answer to, like you’re a powerless child all over again, subject to the whims of adults.

Except… Worse. You can communicate your needs and preferences. You were independent. You’re old enough to take care of yourself, your house, and others. You’re an adult.

The closest relation you can come to think of from your own immediate personal life experiences, to this moment, is every single animal that’s ever been in human custody who you heard of or met. Maybe that’s why you aren’t feeling totally as awful as you should be, because… you’ve always felt awful about this topic.

You torment yourself over it with your own critters. Are you their jailor, or their family? You’d kind of settled on some absurd blend of both, because you actively prevented your cats from escape. If they did, you tracked them down and found them one way or another.

But they’d picked you, first. You hadn’t exactly stepped into the lives of cats who already had a perfectly happy, healthy living situation they were content with; you rescued them. Jasmine was starving and giving everything she had to her kittens. Tia had been bloated with parasites and just as starved.

You’d improved their lives, not ruined them; and your cats were lucky for it, because not every human that ‘rescued’ an animal then followed through on the care.

You stare without really seeing, at the black fingers folded around you as your skin feels cool and clammy, even though you actually feel quite dry. You don’t feel right, but that’s a distant concern. Not pressing. You can deal with it later.

You’re a little preoccupied with the realization that, for once in your life, someone has finally agreed with you. You’ve always felt that there needed to be more equal empathy and treatment between humans and other species. You’ve never liked the became-a-catch-phrase of “dogs are people too!” too many people in media have wailed as explanation. They’re not. They have their own species individualized needs and preferences.

So does the alien species who’s taller than your house, big enough that you can sit on his lap very much like you pull your own kitties onto yours.

You were wrong this whole time. You weren’t running a fake space-cat rescue out of your garage.

You’re the cat, and they’re the idiots who stole you from the shelter.

Chapter Text

~*~

Painted lips; that speak the words

Once stopped within my throat

Lovely eyes; that hide the lies,

Twice checked before they’re spoke

I realize, with this disguise,

Thrice bitten belays twice shy

Pretty shoes; that match the look,

Henceforth the faithful rook

~*~

This could be going worse.

It’s the first thing that Lazerbeak thinks, her Spark spinning so fast her frame’s heated up again and warmed her coolant lines. She should probably tell Soundwave about it; she should, and she’s not going to, because there’s not much they can do about it anyways just now.

“Oh,” is all their human says in response to the big, unpleasant reveal, and though Lazerbeak waits, that’s… All she says.

Okay. Maybe this is worse, she thinks with concern, worried at the lack of explosive outburst. Their human had more fire to her than many mechs Lazerbeak had met, and she’d never been shy about telling them exactly how she felt about things. Especially when she didn’t like it.

Lazerbeak waits, and she waits, counting the kliks off nervously as the human no doubt absorbs what was said.

Eventually, after more than a few breem have passed, she feels her Carrier shift his weight slightly. A moment later, and Soundwave makes a soft soothing noise of comfort, a familiar, gentled coo of binary melody leaving his vox.

A wet snuffle tells Lazerbeak that their company is probably crying, again. She’d join them if she could. Since she can’t, she settles for just feeling utterly miserable with them instead.

“So… When do we go meet. Shockwave?” their human asks haltingly, and Beaky can’t take it anymore. She twitters with concern, wordless expression as her Carrier sighs.

“When he’s alone. I don’t… Know how he will react. My hope is he’ll agree to an exchange of favors.”

“...Favors?” Butterfly repeats uncertainly, as Lazerbeak’s engine seizes with a painful lurch because it’s not actually on, but her Spark chamber acts like it is, sending a flush of energy through her circuitry even though most her systems are offline.

THAT’S your whole plan? Lazerbeak asks him directly through their ‘Link. Ask him nicely not to chuck her in the nearest disposal chute?

Soundwave makes an annoyed, distressed binary beep right back at her, so their human also hears it.

“We’ve been friends a long time. Sometimes we do favors for the other. It’s… Separate from our work. Under the table,” he adds, and Beaky can just imagine that soft faceplate stricken with uncertainty and confusion.

“Okay. So. How do I impress my new alien overlord?”

Lazerbeak hates that she even has a reason to ask, but part of her is pleased. Their human is smart, which is something Shockwave is going to like. Probably. Hopefully.

You better fall in love with her too, she thinks bitterly. If Knockout could go from being a total xenophobe towards Earth’s squishy lifeforms, to wanting to frag one of them, then Lazerbeak has hope that Shockwave might come around.

Hopefully not that far, though, and she’s pretty sure she just dealt herself accidental processor damage with that involuntary thought.

“He doesn’t like flattery, or being interrupted. He’s very… Focused on his projects, he fixates on them. Shockwave is stubborn; disagreeing with his opinions leads to arguments,” her carrier explains patiently, the steady, level pace of his voice at odds with the static chasing his words. “He struggles to discuss abstract topics. He doesn’t react well to not understanding something; he hates being confused.”

“Does he have any favorite topics to talk about, or things he likes hearing about?”

I mean, he likes science? Lazerbeak thinks helplessly. There were plenty of things that Shockwave had a personal interest in-- And none of them were anything a human would ever have encountered to even know to discuss.

“One of his current projects involves genetic cloning of ancient species,” Soundwave reveals, classified information that would probably have seen the human dead in the next klik if it weren’t for the fact she’s about to go to that very laboratory workspace. “He’s become very interested in Earth’s geological history, because it relates to his research.”

Their tiny human makes an even tinier gasp.

“He’s bringing extinct species back to life?” she asks, sounding, Lazerbeak’s startled to hear, awed. Surprised, certainly, but that breathless wonder in Butterfly’s voice has Lazerbeak reconsidering her miserable predictions. Maybe they will get along, she thinks with no small amount of desperate, gear-straining hope.

If there was one thing Shockwave could appreciate in anyone, it was a passion for the pursuit and preservation of knowledge… and their little human was very inquisitive.

“He is,” Soundwave confirms. “He’s already had once successful trial.”

I’m not sure megatron thinks it’s so successful, Lazerbeak thinks reluctantly. She wasn’t sure, exactly, how she felt on it… It was nice, she supposed, to have another mech around who wasn’t quite… the same as everyone else.

But they didn’t exactly talk , and she never had time to see the pretty predacon outside of work, anyways.

Starscream should socialize him more. He’s going to get lonely and sour, comes the involuntary thought. Also something she can’t exactly do much about. Scrap.

“Okay, so should I bring some of my fossil collection with or something? Or are his tastes exceedingly specific? Because I have some really cool specimens from all over Earth,” Butterfly announces with a trembling voice that tries to sound normal, but has far too much fear-driven optimism for an ideal outcome to settle Lazerbeak’s nerves.

She hears Soundwave make a surprised chirp as his engine picks up slightly in pace, just for a moment.

“You… Have fossils?” he inquires, openly interested.

“Yeah, I’ve got all kinds of things. Okay, so he sounds like a scientist. I can handle a scientist. As long as I’m not the experiment. Am, um… Am I-- the experiment?” their human asks nervously.

I sure fragging hope not, Lazerbeak thinks miserably, wishing she’d kept her intake shut. It’d sounded like a good idea at the time, something to sway megatron because she knows he knows how inconvenient it can be on Soundwave to recalibrate her systems so constantly. She wasn’t even sure the human could do something like that, but it’d sure sounded plausible. Plausible enough and useful enough to ensure they’d keep her alive.

Please keep her alive, she begs silently. I’ll ruin every one of your experiments for the next five vorns if you don’t.

“He’s… Been assigned to study your Electromagnetic field,” Soundwave states slowly, possibly distracted by her own thoughts slipping into his processor. Lazerbeak feels the way he shifts again, perhaps adjusting his hold on the human. “I don’t know how he’ll treat you. This wasn’t how I wanted to introduce you both. I’d hope for… A more social setting.”

Tell me about it, Lazerbeak grumbles mentally. Maybe we can still make it social?

“Okay. Is that thing Knockout did with his ‘field going to play into any of this? Like, that weird claiming thingy he did back at my old house? Because that was, um, really weird and I’ve been m-meaning to ask about it for forever but, um…. Y-yeah.”

Lazerbeak’s engine kicks on with a tiny rumble before she forcibly shuts it right back down, chagrined.

Sorry, Soundwave.

His acceptance is immediate, already brushing aside the distraction and moving right along.

“It might. I can still feel his energy signature woven through yours. Shockwave will notice that, sooner or later.” And have a million questions about it, Lazerbeak thinks uneasily.

Sometimes, Shockwave’s curiosity was a good thing.

And sometimes… Sometimes, she just wanted to electrocute him into a nice long nap, and maybe tell him he drank too much and passed out, when he came to. Maybe.

“So it… Did do something?” Butterfly’s little voice asks, sounding hesitant this time.

Lazerbeak might just offline, listening to how upset she sounds, while trying not to sound affected. We’ll make things right, squishy. Don’t be sad, she thinks helplessly.

“In a way. Your ‘field interacts with different aspects of the environment around you; who you spend time with can change it, where you spend your time, what other energies interact with your own. I wish he hadn’t,” Soundwave adds.

“...Why?”

“It was very rude,” her Carrier answers frankly, and Lazerbeak just barely restrains herself from an emphatic vocal agreement. It was exceedingly rude to have done that without permission, let alone the fact that their human didn’t even understand what it meant. “That’s usually something reserved for… Very close friends, someone you’d consider trustworthy, perhaps family. It’s very… Personal.”

There’s a long pause before Lazerbeak hears her familiar voice speak up again.

“So he… Was trying to treat me like, um, like family…?”

Lazerbeak sighs at the same time Soundwave does.

Apparently, she thinks with bitter jealousy. But don’t fall for it, because his idea of ‘family’ exists only on the race track… And he likes being in the lead.

Words that don’t leave her processor, even though she’d like to make the comment. Unlike someone else she knows, Lazerbeak is capable of waiting for a more appropriate time to try and sway their squishy’s opinions. You deserve better, Squishy.

“Perhaps. He cares about you, but it’s a selfish care. You never should have become involved in… Any of this.”

Their human laughs;  a short, wet sound that quickly tapers off.

“Tell me about it,” she blurts, echoing Lazerbeak’s own thoughts. “But I am, and, well… Okay. So back to Shockwave,” she states abruptly, yanking the conversation back around with artless tact. “Can I beg for a shower before I meet him? Uh… And should I put on nicer clothes? Because I really want to make a good impression and not ‘oh wow! A filthy, rank-smelling human! Ew!’”

Her theatrical voice would make Lazerbeak laugh if the situation wasn’t so un-funny.

That’s… Actually not a bad idea.

“Do you… Have anything in purple and black?” Soundwave wonders. Oooh, that’s a good idea. Dress her in Decepticon colors, Shockwave will like that. Even if their human didn’t realize the political statement her attire broadcast, it’d still go a long way towards improving the chances of a successful first impression.

Maybe this will work, she thinks. It’s gotta work.

“Sort of? I don’t have any purple dresses,” their human announces, making Lazerbeak’s heart sink. “--Oh! Wait, okay, I do have a purple chemise, that might work. It’s part of the dress, anyways. I have lots of black things, and i’ve got some amethyst jewelry I could wear.

“I… I also have a necklace from my mom, it’s got a really rare gemstone on it. Like. Um. If I sold it, I probably could have stopped working for a few years. Longer, if I invested the money smart. But he might find that cool to talk about or look at, because it’s kind of a rare Earth stone?”

“If it’s special to you, don’t bring it. He might… Take it,” Soundwave adds.

“Or it’ll let me live exactly long enough to tempt him with the knowledge I have other rare minerals and interesting curiosities I could introduce him to. I mean. Yeah, I’d hate that, but also, would he really try to take a gemstone that’s smaller than my pinky nail?”

You have no idea, Lazerbeak thinks with chagrin.

“If it’s interesting enough, he would,” Soundwave confirms bluntly. “What stone is it?” he wonders next, curiosity getting the better of them both, because Lazerbeak would also like to know, now.

She would also really like to know if their human might miss one or two of those tasty looking crystals. Lazerbeak hadn’t seen many of them while Butterfly was hastily packing away her household, but the frosty white quartz and a deep, rosey pink chalcedony still made her intake salivate with solvent.

“It’s purple Musgravite. Real Musgravite, my mom had the fancy certification paper when Dad got her the jewelry. It usually forms colorless or gray or greenish, but rarely they turn shades of purple. Does Shockwave like gifts?”

Ttheir human is doing her best to come up with her own plans to woo Shockwave, and quite suddenly, Lazerbeak wants to scream.

This isn’t going to work. We’re going to drop her off all dolled up and pretty and he’s going to step on her anyways.

“Sometimes. If they’re meaningful.”

“Cool. Then I’m going to make the most meaningful gift-box for a giant metal titan scientist and hope it means I’m cool enough he won’t squish me. Hey, does he like singing?”

The sudden image of their tiny human dancing and singing just to entertain the titan she doesn’t want squishing her, makes Lazerbeak’s engine kick right back on with fierce refusal gripping her Spark chamber. This time, before she can shut it off, she feels a warm cable drape itself across the expanse of her back and lowermost wings in her docked position. Soundwave gently smooths the side of his prehensile arm over her, swaying it lightly up and down in a slow wiggle to pet her back.

She twitters hopelessly at him.

Please tell me you have a better plan than offering him wine and gemstones, she begs.

Do you? He rejoins.

Lazerbeak has to mute her vox just to thwart the need to scream in frustration.

~*~

There are many things that Knockout appreciates about his human.

One of them is how practical she is; focused on getting her work done and until lately, usually quite fair in how she divides her time between both tasks and company. He’s never felt ignored by his kind, considerate, and very pretty hostess.

He certainly feels that way when, much sooner than he expected, a portal zips open into thin air. He’s been standing in the center of the rubble that from high above, shows a disconcerting similarity to his own silhouette, and making sure her kitties don’t come investigating.

Of which, the only one brave enough to do so is Gizmo, who’s ears lay back as his eyes go round and wide like small topaz gems, inset with onyx coins. The little furry organic stares at the brilliantly illuminated portal with the light reflecting in his eyes, frozen in place.

“Finally, that took you all long enough,” Knockout grouses to hide his nerves the absolute instant a familiar purple bumper comes into view, right alongside the proximity sensor announcing Soundwave’s presence in the local vicinity. Knockout mutes the tiny beep in his own mind with a mere thought, already striding towards the portal. “Where did you go?” he wonders as the passenger door opens, and out pops his pretty little human, not a hair out of place. Sweet relief rushes through his frame like a cleansing wash of oil.

Until he sees her face, and blanches because his human looks like she’s been crying again, her eyes red and puffy though he can’t see any sign of wet shimmer against her skin.

“We’ve got a really important meeting to attend and I need to get dressed properly for it,” his human tells him as she strides right past, her purposeful stride so fast she’s just short of breaking into a jog as Knockout feels his fuel pump stutter.

“What?” he splutters. A meeting? With who?

“I’ll tell you all about it after, but if I try to tell you right now I’m going to freak out, and I can’t afford to freak out,” she answers, driving immediate images of his precious little organic in the cold and sharp decor of the command bridge and the throne it contains. “I need makeup and pretty things and Gizmo, drop it!” she barks suddenly, voice raised in volume with a commanding projection that’s always startling to hear. A being that small and dainty should not be able to cast her voice to fill an entire room with its growly bellow.

Gizmo, who freezes some thirty feet away from his human with a hunched posture, has something slim and yellow in his mouth.

Wait, is that--?

It takes Knockout a moment to recognize the pencil, which the feline had clearly caught up in his jaws to carry away.

Gizmo stares at his owner for a moment, before quite abruptly, the cat turns and bolts away, tail held high.

“Uuuugh, brat!” Butterfly calls after him, frustration lacing her strained voice. “You know I don’t have time to chase you, dammit. Knockout, make sure he doesn’t eat the eraser off the end and if he does, tell me,” she tells him, before promptly slipping right back out the pole barn.

What?

Knockout stares at the closed door with a bewildered feeling, then looks to the silent communication’s officer parked nearby.

“...a meeting with who?” he demands.

~*~

“Shockwave.”

You say the name, staring at your own reflection in the mirror of the upstairs bathroom that still smells like fake air freshener and chemical cleaner. It leaves your lips with a lack of unf, maybe sounding even a little dead as you force air through your vocal chords and mouth without really feeling a connection to the movements of your lips, or the way his name feels, falling off your tongue.

“Shockwave,” you say again, trying to make yourself feel something, hearing that name, saying it. You want to feel something, because you want to lance the preemptive panic you know is steadily building up pressure inside your veins, turning you molecule by molecule into the primitive flight-or-flight being your body’s base genetic coding has defined you as. You’re determined, as ever, to prove it wrong.