Chapter Text
Optimus loved his crew. Really, he did. The four of them were a gift from the Allspark and he was truly blessed to have the pleasure of not only knowing but living alongside such amazing bots.
Coexisting with that reality, however, was the reality of the fact that they could give him a Megatron-sized processor ache from time to time. The most frequent offender was, without a doubt, Bumblebee. Much as he loved the kid, he’d be a worse liar than a Decepticon if he tried to say that the scout didn’t drive him absolutely, as Sari would put it, “bat-shit”.
There were many lengths of time in which Bumblebee was perfectly fine. He’d hop up from recharge full of energy, eager to tackle whatever that solar cycle brought about, chattering happily as he practically hung off the servos of whichever bot would allow him to do so, (usually just Optimus or Bulkhead), bright blue optics wide and enthusiastic.
But then there were the bad cycles. Optimus had yet to figure out what, exactly, triggered the sudden change in behaviour, but there were cycles when Bumblebee would come out of recharge seeming to have his processor set firmly on the goal of being as big a brat as possible. He tried to be patient with him- by the Allspark did he try- but on those days it seemed that Bumblebee simply wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d fried the CPU of every single bot he came across.
This was one of those cycles.
Right from the beginning, Optimus had known this was going to be exhausting. He’d been jolted out of recharge far earlier than he would’ve liked by the sound of ‘music’ blasting through the compound, and groaned loudly. To be entirely honest, Bumblebee had been testing his patience for a couple of solar cycles up until that point, ever since Sari got him that cursed rhythm game. He was fine with Bumblebee having hobbies- he encouraged it- but the little scout had apparently become so enamoured with one particular song that he’d decided to completely ignore all the others, and hearing the exact same song blasted on endless repeat for breems on end was enough to try the patience of even the most level-helmed bot.
From down the hall, he’d heard Ratchet shouting at Bumblebee to “turn that fraggin’ game off before I put yer helm through the screen!”, and it was at the unmistakable sound of Bumblebee turning up the volume in response that Optimus knew it was going to be one of those cycles.
Sure enough, even after Ratchet confiscated the game, Bumblebee continued to wreak havoc. A solar cycle without an immediate threat posed was a rare one- especially since Megatron’s return only a scant few megacycles ago- and most of the Autobots, understandably, wanted to to simply relax and wind down for a few breems before the next Decepticon-related disaster decided to take place. Even Bulkhead- who, as Bumblebee’s friend, was usually a lot more tolerant of his antics- had apparently gotten fed up with the scout’s continuous nagging, the tank’s bellowed request for “some slagging peace and quiet” frightening enough to actually calm things down for a klick or two. But only for a klick or two.
Deprived of his usual outlets, Bumblebee moved on to annoying the rest of the crew, with pretty similar results. Ratchet had screamed at him to can it, and Prowl had- without a word and in a display of strength that Optimus had admittedly not expected from the ninjabot- just bodily thrown Bumblebee from his chambers and slammed the door. Normally, Optimus would have chastised his team mates for taking such extreme measures against their fellow bot, but given that Bumblebee had finally moved on to him, he was actually fairly understanding.
He loved the bot, but by the Allspark was he being obnoxious. Optimus wasn’t sure whether or not it was physically possible for some bot to short circuit another’s auditors merely by talking, but if it was, that appeared to be Bumblebee’s goal. The yellow scout had taken to literally dangling off of Optimus’s right servo, severely impeding the larger bot’s movement as he continuously whined about the rest of the crew being ‘jerks’, and about a million other things that Optimus didn’t bother to process. He made it through about five klicks before his patience hit dangerously low levels.
“Bumblebee!” He finally interrupted. “Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I’m trying to relax. Can’t you go play with Sari?” The look on Bumblebee’s faceplates was something between a scowl and a pout.
“No,” the scout replied, bitterly. “She said she was busy.”
“Well, I’m also busy.”
“Doing what? You just said you were trying to relax!”
“Yes. I’m busy trying to relax.”
“That doesn’t make any sense! How can you be busy doing nothing?!”
“Taking the time to properly unwind is very important, Bumblebee,” Optimus responded shortly, manually forcing himself to vent deep and even.
“Well, how the heck am I supposed to unwind if there’s nothing around here to do?!” Bumblebee whined. Optimus resisted the urge to roll his optics.
“That’s the point of unwinding, Bee. You’re not supposed to be doing anything.”
“But I’m boooooooored!”
Seeing clearly that he wasn’t going to get anywhere trying to reason with him, Optimus chose to try simply ignoring his team’s youngest member, in the hopes that he’d get the message and find something else to do. Really, he didn’t know why he thought that’d work. If there was one thing Bumblebee hated, it was being ignored. Not two micro-klicks later, Bumblebee began tapping incessantly on Optimus’s servo, repeating the leader’s name over and over and over until Optimus finally lost the last shreds of patience he’d been so desperately clinging on to.
He hadn’t meant to snap. It was unbecoming of a leader to blow up on his team mates, especially with one as young as Bumblebee, but at that point, he couldn’t help it. He was stressed, tired, and just wanted one fragging breem to himself, for once. He’d feel bad about it later, but at the time he’d had no such concerns.
With a single, sharp motion, he dislodged Bumblebee from his servo, causing the scout to land firmly on his bumper.
“Bumblebee, would you please, for once in your life, be quiet?!” Optimus blurted out. “I’m sorry you’re bored, and I’m sorry your friends are busy, but that doesn’t give the right to annoy every bot you come into contact with. If you’re that bored, why don’t you go ahead and do a few laps around the city to see if the Cons are up to anything? Or go do a few ‘donuts’ in the Captain’s front yard again- I don’t care! Just stop bothering me!” Optimus wasn’t normally one to raise his voice, but he was practically shouting, definitely loud enough that the other bots in the compound could hear.
There was a moment of silence in which the two of them simply stared at each other, Optimus venting heavily and glaring down into the startled looking optics of his youngest member, before a look of deep hurt, covered quickly by anger came across Bumblebee’s expression. The little yellow bot hauled himself up to his pedes and stomped out of the room without a second glance.
As soon as the distant sound of tyres screeching away hit his audials, Optimus sighed deeply, placing a hand on his helm. Frag. Bumblebee was probably going take a while to recover from that one. For a bot who seemed to take such great pleasure in pushing everyone’s buttons, he sure could be sensitive when those buttons actually did something.
Nevertheless, the desired effect had been achieved. The compound was silent, and Optimus planned on enjoying that peace and quiet while it lasted.
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Bumblebee was having a terrible solar cycle. If he were to rank his cycles from worst to best, today would probably be just barely under “getting griefed by Starscream and launched off a building” and above “getting caught for pranking Sentinel”. It sucked.
Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but whatever. It was his life, and he could decide how to rank the slaggiest parts of it.
He would probably be the first to admit that he was a very social bot, more so than most. He honestly couldn’t help it. He had a lot of energy, and he found that he burned it off best when in the company of others, happily rattling off whatever came into his processor at whatever audience was willing to tolerate him. Very tactile, too, always seeking some form of contact from whoever he could when he got the chance. He didn’t know why, exactly, he was like that, but he just was. He craved attention like it was energon, and that had been the cause of more than enough problems throughout his lifetime.
He knew he was being obnoxious today. He knew it, and yet was unable to prevent himself from doing it anyways. Much as he wanted to be liked, he was more comfortable with being annoying and attended to than liked and ignored. Bad attention was still better than no attention. And besides, his teammates usually got over their annoyance with him after not too long.
Today, however, it seemed everyone had just collectively had enough. Ratchet taking his game away had left him with a whole lot of pent up energy and no way to disperse it on his own, so he’d taken to pestering his team mates. He’d started with Bulkhead, as the green giant was usually willing to put up with him, but had abandoned that plan of action pretty quick after being yelled at. He wouldn’t deny that that one stung, but he’d tried not to let it show. He knew he deserved it.
He hadn’t been expecting much from Ratchet or Prowl, but he’d still ended up disappointed. Typically, Ratchet would gladly take the time to chew him out, which was something at the very least, but today he’d barely gotten ten words out of the old grump before being ignored. With Prowl, he got even less.
He knew Optimus was tired, but he also knew Optimus was typically very patient. He’d felt bad about abusing that patience but the ache in his spark was such that the need to abate it outweighed any moral quandaries he may have been facing. But it seemed he’d finally pushed it too far, because even Optimus snapped at him.
And that lead here, to Bumblebee tearing his way down the streets of Detroit, heading towards the outskirts of the city at a speed he knew the Captain would complain about. He hated this. Hated himself, really. Why was he like this? There must be some malfunction in his central processor. There was absolutely no reason for it to hurt but it did. By the Allspark, it did.
His spark hurt when he was alone, when he was ignored or rejected- which, given his personality, was often. It was a dreadful ache that spread from his core out through the rest of his body and left him feeling both heavy and keyed up. It was a physical force that slammed against his chassis from the inside, making him want to scream until his vocalizer fried if that would only somehow get it out. But it didn’t. He’d tried. He’d tried everything. He’d blasted things with his stingers until the energy loss made him collapse. He’d driven as fast as he could until he physically couldn’t move anymore. He’d clawed at his chassis, melting his hands as they drew too close to the spark that burned within. He’d bashed his own helm against the walls as if trying to crack it open and release the ache that way. None of it worked. The only thing that ever made it go away was the presence of other bots. It was as if they absorbed it, somehow- as if the touch of their metal to his own seeped the ache out, as if the simple act of his words landing upon auditors other than his own took the feeling with them.
There was something wrong with him, and there was nothing he could do to fix it. Instead, he just made it worse, because he was a slagging idiot.
He made it miles away before he even knew it, eventually stopping in the middle of a wide, empty clearing in the woods which looked as though it had either been stripped of its features, or had yet to gain any. He stomped around for a while- kicking up the grass beneath his pedes, blasting a few rocks, screaming- whatever it took to ‘blow off steam’, as Sari had put it. It didn’t do much. He was completely alone. He’d never understand how Prowl actually liked this. With nothing else to focus on, the buzzing only grew louder, and he couldn’t stand it.
Wait a click.
That buzzing… wasn’t just in his processor. Tuning his audials more closely, he was pretty sure he could actually hear a steady, mechanical buzzing that definitely didn’t belong in the forest coming from somewhere.
And it was getting louder.
Where was it coming from?
A scan of the surrounding woods revealed nothing out of the ordinary, but the buzzing was almost deafening now, more like a… scream.
The realisation hit his addled processor a moment too late, and he barely even got the chance to look up before he was slammed to the ground, a sturdy pede planted firmly against his back, preventing him from fleeing.