Chapter Text
Liaison. Official role, actual salary. You sit under a hot summer sun watching Bumblebee dribble a ball as you doodle, high both on the sight of Optimus playing too for once and the feeling that you are robbing the government blind. Paid to live in the Earth’s best job: accompanying big, robot cars and living a surprisingly quiet life. Optimus swipes the ball from Bee, spinning the tiny sphere on a finger and chuckling at his height-disadvantaged opponent. You sketch a hoop to the page of squares and helms. Ironhide tuts at the noise, tinkering beside you with a gun that he has surely finished servicing by now.
It’s a job you hadn’t applied to. Something you surfed into in a series of God’s funniest ‘fuck you’s.
You were a nobody, working a bakery in town making pretzels and the sort. Blinking sleep away on early shifts as you try to gather if the window actually just smashed in or if you’re passively hallucinating in delirious boredom again. If you’ve actually just spoken to an accented, huge and purple robot, and if it’s actually pointing what looks like a gun at you.
You had screamed bloody murder at Rumble. Followed him in a blubbering silence when he told you to ‘can it’ as if you were being too loud at the cinema and not actually kidnapped. Then screamed till your voice rawed when he brought you to Soundwave. A human hostage, the best way to play to the Autobot’s weakness. Simply finding yourself in the wrong place, at the wrong time, you are struck with lightning.
That time you hadn’t really gotten a chance to meet your saviours, they had moved off with the ebb and flow of battle and you hadn’t the balls to stick around. Frazzled, shocked and washed up back next to your slightly caved-in car, you wouldn’t stay to thank the ocean for spitting you back out.
The second time was a coincidence, at another job, another location. The third strike was just a lesson.
You had come to find Rumble and Frenzy an eccentric pair. Accustomed to violence, but not savagely so. Weirdly friendly as they handled you like a rucksack and weirder yet, fond of chewing gum. “Oh, heya.” Rumble had deadpanned at you, crumbles of the wall settling down on his shoulders. Before he could shoot electricity up your spine yanking you from mid point, you had finally just conceded to being some odd form of conduction rod. Not without a near-crazy sigh. You almost waved goodbye to them when Optimus took you from their ‘care’, a personal low-point.
You must have looked wild, frantically yelling that they couldn’t keep ruining the part times you were working because you were quickly running out of options. That you had rent to pay and if another one of them slung you over their shoulder again you would throw up on them. Banging at a shocked Optimus, his arms had raised like he was fending off a chihuahua despite you only getting to hit at his thigh with slowly widening his eyes in the fact that he had seen you before.
As a collective, the Autobots just agreed to take you into their protection -a surprisingly easy feat, ‘She knows more about Earth than we do!’ - since three times jostled by Decepticons was surely a Guiness World Record and Primus seemed intent on fucking you with that award specifically.
Half a year later and you find yourself not doing much. You make yourself useful where you can: Cleaning, socialising, buying supplies and bringing in scrap for Wheeljack to tinker on. Ratchet taught you the basics of a simple sealant; You quickly got real good at buffing out dents and scratches, polishing, and-
Dealing with the flirts tied to rubbing at war-busy bots stranded away from meeting new people very often.
The bots cheer loudly when Optimus dunks, quickly being hounded by the others who come to shake him around. Ironhide grumbles, standing to move further up the hillside and hide in the shade of the Ark. You clap at the victorious fist Cliffjumper throws in the air. Team Prime wins again. Deep huffs shake Optimus’ frame in gloriously gorgeous hiccups, recovering slowly from unpracticed laughter, and he shakes his hand humbly at the idea of playing again.
His time away from command is as short lived as ever. The bots shrug and switch out, starting their next game.
You watch Prime plod up the bank of the hill you sit on. Your face crests his chest for a moment and you look at the reflection of your own stupefied expression as if one can catch their own hand in the cookie jar. Then he nods to you. You can’t help it, you grin a wide-mouthed, toothy happiness at him and the two blue gems he has for eyes shift into a reciprocating fondness.
You are slowly, gently, kindly being washed away from shore by the world's most professionally handsome current.
Sure, some of the other bots caught your attention too but- It's hard to NOT like Prime, to NOT find him attractive. Lord, do you try, but it comes in no matter how you fight it.
Because he's so mature, so funny yet serious, so strong and- well, you're just a human. A spec in a sea of forces of nature. A blip in his respective timeline and just barely the height of his torso. The idea that he might see you closer to how you see a dog than as a woman keeps you up at night.
To no fault of his own, that is, because he -the amazing, perfect, cookie-cutter good guy that he is- has never stepped over your autonomy -your agency. He shushes bots when they talk over you. Actively keeps an eye on their antics lest they accidentally crush you under pede. Presents their battle plan to you at the round table, calling upon you like a royal advisor that’s found their way to scam two bosses with an empty CV.
When he listens to you stammer out your point of view like a fucking moron and then validates it with appreciation, -Thank you! A human approach!- you CANNOT help needing to sloppily make out with the man. NEEDING to hold at the handles either side of his head and suffocate yourself with him. If…well if he has lips under that thing. You have yet to see the mask retract, but you’ve been told it can. You're unsure as of yet.
Optimus, space-pope, leader, unofficial father, older, older man. You know you shouldn’t. Know you couldn’t.
Yet blue and red line your wardrobe more and more. And you could have kept the rare one-to-one conversation going a little longer earlier today. And maybe one of these nights you’ll walk into the command deck and find yourself alone with him, ready to tell him that he’s the sexiest robot you’ve ever seen.
Your bedroom is a cave of drowning pining, clinically-concerning yearning, and thoughts that would land you immediate expulsion if anyone here could read minds.
A giant pede arcs over your head, slow and ever-weary about startling you with his size. It curves a neat circle and crashes as it meets the ground. Commanding yet- only half of what it could be. You slip your headphones on to escape the resurfacing swell of being royally doomed that comes with a smiling, caring Prime.
You hit play on the deck, setting your sketchbook down to the side now your main muse has left the match. A quippy drumbeat fills your senses. A pick flits over guitar strings with unspent energy.
Optimus moves back towards the command deck entrance. No doubt going back to hunching over that damned keyboard again. Spending cycles typing and not refueling in a way that infuriates you.
A cymbal crashes in your ears, struck with the rage of an unspoken heart.
Infuriates because you consider yourself the secondary caretaker of this group by now. Getting protected as you oversee the protection of them in return. An odd pact made with the least divine gangle of guardian angels you have ever seen. Ones that sing loudly and shout at each other and cause mischief like no other. You have to tidy their stupid empty cubes after late night games and patch up their recklessness.
And at the cheeky head of it all is your biggest problem. The largest angel you have ever laid your eyes on and he’s a hellishly stunning shade of red.
~You're the right kind of sinner~
The devil that damns your mind.
~To release my inner fantasy~
You gawk. Shameless in the full one eighty you're doing.
Your invincible winner nods briefly to Ironhide. Laying a giant hand on the grouchy bot’s shoulder in a respectful greeting…
If you were a lesser woman, you'd stare at the shiny reflectiveness of his aft as it shakes away. His shoulder smokestacks eking wisps of hot haze in his wake.
If you were a stronger woman, you'd know you were kidding yourself.
“Don’t hold it so close in. You’ll scrap yer shot.” Ironhide instructs, gruffing at you from behind a large firearm. The BB gun in your hands feels like a pathetic mockery when Hound blows the empty cubes at the end of the hall sky high. They shatter like crystalline into fine fragments and you squeal a high noise. The two bastards laugh at you as they leave the non-literal stage to you. You step up to attempt to flip them off, centering yourself in the warm lights of attention.
The first shot tinks the top corner of one cube. The crowd steadies behind you, Optimus’ typing pausing temporarily as the audience holds their proverbial breath. You hold the gun out farther. You steady your heart. The tide recedes. Optimus’ prescence heats your back from head to toe. The tide comes back in. The tide is telling you to absolutely annihilate that glass cube.
You squeeze. The pellet lands home and the stack of cubes tip backwards, imploding on contact in a boom of applause.
You finally get a look at your instructor's optics, large blaster shunted to the side.
“Scrap, there ya’ go.”
Yes, yes, I know. You’re giggling, face heated.
“You’re a natural!” Hound says, as you wonder how in the hell you pulled that off.
You move to place the BB gun back on the table, shuffling from the stage with arm flying up to salute your commanding officer just out of pure instinct. You are awarded an ensemble of laughter once again, but the crowd’s larger - warmer. Optimus has stepped a half turn away from his console for the first time today, and pinned you right into place. That same smile, eyelids intruding onto bright blues in crinkled fondness.
Because there’s a line in OP’s friendliness that you can’t tell if he gives to all extraterrestrial beings or just to you. A face like the sun's beauty, and a tone so endearing you can't help but burn under it.
“Ironhide seems to be teaching you well. But you’re always beating our expectations.”
That’s normal. It’s a normal thing to say. Why does it not feel like it is?
He does this each and every time you have a particularly homely moment with any of his beloved bots; Stops by to see what you’re watching with Bee, coos at your creativity when you spend time with Wheeljack, comments on your time with Ironhide. This is either a reciprocation, or it’s all a captain's care and you are the dog.
If he treated you differently, maybe you could know. But he treats you perfectly. Maybe kinder than the other people around, but he’s known almost all of them from before your planet. You stare up at the sun and hope to all that is good that this superposition doesn’t collar you.
Trying to think of a way to give back to your adoring leader- and all his horrible soldiers- is something you ruminate on between nights dreaming of following a blue pelvic plate round to the front. The answer doesn’t come, it’s hard to pull away from the ultramarine corners of a crotch plate, but you keep it on the backburner.
One boring Tuesday the lifeboat pulls in. Mirage, your sweet, pampered saviour, spins off into complaints as you sip a morning coffee. Creaking joints and shit beds. This is a war ship, not a hotel. You are enlightened to the fact that fabrics are a luxurious thing, found only in socialite habsuites of a glimmering city you will never see but can’t stop hearing about. Iacon was their home, now they sit dead in the dry of your blue planet’s desert. And though they have to learn to survive on the boring crusted dirt of this mesa - without lights, with little high-grade, without easily accessible frame upgrades and whatever highs they could buy back home- you click that you can give them at least one piece. Because on Cybertron fabrics are an indulgence, on Earth they are-
-Well, it’s still expensive. You spend an arm, a leg, and a good three trips to different stores to pick out blankets for them. An appreciation for a relatively boring life can be made when you now need to dip into the savings you never spent. You get an allowance from the government, sure, but you need it for your current expenditures. Like food, and movies for Bee.
You buy two blankets for each smaller bot. Three for the mediums. Prime, the giant nuisance, gets four. Dad did always say you’d thank yourself eventually for putting the money away instead of living with it.
You sneak them into your repurposed storage closet of a habsuite like they're crack. Then kiss the dust from your sewing machine when it still works like new.
Haunting the halls with coffee-laden breath, you emerge from your crypt twice the following week: Once to see the bots off as they set out for a battle, the second to welcome them back and help Docbot.
It takes hours of monotonous work to stitch blankets to each other, just to get them large enough to be usable, but you’re a one-tracked road. A machine. A machine making blankets for less-machiney machines - That you have decided you couldn’t care any more about. That you have become determined to ease the look of longing that passes over each and every set of eyes when their old home is mentioned.
“Damn, sweetspark, for me?”
A hand cups your arm, warm palm spanning delt to elbow. You cough into your fist,
“For everyone, hotshot.”
Jazz pushes the white striped blanket to his helm, utterly lathering himself in 100% polyester and groaning like it's the first meal he’s had in a millennia. Any semblance of composure you were keeping to roll eyes at compliments melts away with the sound. Bumblebee isn’t any more dignified, but he takes the time to ask,
“Like… we share these or…” You can physically feel his unwillingness to part with the yellow and black fur in his servos.
“No, I mean I made one for everyone. You guys keep those ones.”
If they grinned any larger they’d eat the damn things. You’re about to tease them for it when your most anticipated visit of the night jumps the moment through Jazz’s comm link.
“All Autobots report to command deck-” There’s a telling sigh of earnest exasperation in OP’s voice, “-We’ve got Decepticon activity on Teletraan One.”
Optimus does always sound three nanoclicks from blowing his head off each time he has to draw everyone away from sweet spare time. Like he’s sorry he can’t just pass off the evil faction of aliens threatening your planet to let everyone be.
The three of you share a concerned look, and turn for the meeting.
Bee pads in with blanket folded over arm. Jazz follows high on his struts and his draped on him like a cape. Ratchet, Wheeljack and Optimus stand at the base of Teletraan, hawked by a good majority of the Autobots on ship. You trail in, climbing your way up onto a table at the back to have a good view.
Teletraan’s display remains frozen mid-usage. A terrain map fills a good eighty percent of the screen, bright purple dot blinking over a darker spot in the mush of beiges and browns. Scrawling Cybertronian text gives constant updates, time stamps, energy traces. It’s dizzyingly busy. And it’s Decepticon activity, just as OP had called you all for.
Your eyes slide to the side. Hidden behind it all, underneath a tab underneath another, a window of one grainy, pixelated image. Half a slice of a circle. A foreign planet thrumming with the last pulses of a life you have been slowly learning about this past half-year.
Prime looks tired. Shoulders set high, head low. You may not have left your room much this past week, but each time you had you were sure he hadn’t moved. You lick your teeth in a hurting frustration and watch the subject of your ire give a confused look to the quickly picking up room.
“Wha- Wait YOU got one too?!” Cliffjumper is quick to pounce on Jazz’s flaunting.
A quick burn of outrage makes it’s way around the room, much to Jazz’s handsome, scrap-eating smirk. He does a twirl with makeshift dress flaring in his wake. Then a servo juts out your way (“Guess which little lady made it!”) and you are very suddenly flung from the back of the room to the middle of it. You can’t make out many specific words but you get the gist of ‘What the hell’ well enough to throw your hands up placatingly to increasingly jealous bots.
WJ and Docbot’s blankets are folded to the side of Teletraan’s input system. There’s a satisfaction in seeing them being unable to part with their gifts. But it’s damning evidence.
“Everyone’s got one!” You laugh, watching Jazz weave around the grabs for his treasure. “I’ll give them to you all tonight. Promise!” Optimus watches you, clearly interrupted by your antics but never willing to reimpose on your treaded ground. He quiets others. Never you. You flick your gaze away quickly. “Call it a prize- for when you all come home not damaged today.”
Mirage pulls a sour face at Bee, who scratches at his helm. Ratchet slings a fist to his hip. You do Optimus the favour:
“Now listen to your boss.”
The grumble around the room settles. You feel the power of alien gods observing you from the forefront of the room. Then the sage clears his throat, and begins explaining without further comment.
The Decepticons are attempting to hijack an old fracking system to produce energon. Optimus intends to swat them out head on. Honestly, what’s new?
Despite the old news, a seriousness settles onto each bots face. Lips in thin lines, arms crossed. You spend so much time watching your protectors joke and play games it’s easy to forget that this is still a war faction. A surviving war faction in a conflict that has been brutal, long and diminishing.
Optimus squares himself up in attention. Stands tall and speaks clearly as he designates teams and orders routes. It’s a long way away from the slouch you glimpsed when you entered. You watch the mask on his faceplate shift up and down with each other syllable and know that it is only one of his larger collection. That the commander is one he looks to be donning at all times, and though it is domineering and staggering in how it can make you swoon- it uses his energy more than he allows it to rest.
You catch Optimus after the briefing as he locks down Teletraan.
He watches the terrain map with a stoicness, and you wait. He doesn’t see you, probably because of the height. Then you let out an ‘Optimus?’ and you realise you’ve caught him staring into the middle distance.
You tap him. Knuckle rapping on the solidness of metal like a dull bell. He doesn't jolt, but you watch his finials pick up to the stars. Then he finally looks at you.
“Oh.”
You think that the skewing ears must be embarrassment, because the moment is long and still except that.
“Hey. Yeah, uh, just wanted to ask when you think you guys will be back?” You ask. Optimus barely misses a beat with the official tone.
“Nothing more than two groons- two hours.” He corrects himself for your accommodation, then his baritone quiets down. Shoulders melting with you as he sets composure aside. “Tonight,” He confirms- to himself or you?- “You’ll be able to give your gifts to everyone else tonight.”
You scan his expression with a dry one yourself.
“I made you one too, you know?” You cross your hands under each pit, he looks disarmed. You tut at his constant draw to martyrdom. “Don’t rush to get back on my account. ‘Reward’ means ‘come back safe’ not quickly. I just wanted to know if I'm staying up or not.”
“That is… too kind of you, Y/N.” Finials set back lazily, unguardedly. You could cry. Instead:
“Just go get ‘em, big bot.”
You wouldn't say you're worried. Each Autobot is a long-time veteran that has you shielding your eyes in the training gym. And, from your limited experience and slung-sideways viewpoints, the Decepticons are a disjointed arm of morons. But they still have guns. And the Autobots do occasionally (heavy on the graciousness) come back damaged.
As soon as the dust knocked up from them ‘ROLL’ ing ‘OUT!’ settles you’re back inside to get prepared. Sealant canisters are full, nozzles working. Ratchet and WheelJack have everything they need. You're stacking things out of the way just in case and getting all your rags clean and ready.
“Primus, you're worse than me.” Ratchet comments, lifting a box you have been screeching across the ground little by little and setting it against the wall with everything else. You laugh, waving him off. What? How? The room is calm except for your foot bouncing as you sit at the terminal watching red dots approach purple ones.
They return in the crux of a long night. Victorious as always but not without damages. You spray awful-smelling chemicals onto cleaned cracks and protoform cuts to control until the doctors can get round to them but Hound is in a state and you focus yourself on making something that holds.
You point the uninjured bots to the tools on the side as you fill in a wide slice of Prowl’s arm. You push Clifjumper towards the wall as you fix up his thigh when you realise you’re getting in Ratchet’s way, disregarding the purr he makes when you wipe a warm cloth up said thigh. You remove a wheel from Jazz’s calf that is quickly deflating and pout at the downtrodden look he makes to be missing such an important piece of his style.
And then-
“It's nothing substantial.”
“My aft.”
A bot behind you giggles. It's not without repercussions that you settled in so well. Optimus gives you a trying look.
“Please, it's okay. Focus on everyone else-”
You sigh, meeting hand to forehead. Your biggest angel and worst devil, here to mentally toil with you again.
“I have and now I'm saying it's your turn. Prime. Optimus.” He always looks berated when you start with his title, “It's bleeding. Get down here, or get me up there.” You point to the gash on the broad expanse of his shoulder- Near his head and dewing with bright Energon.
He's mature. He concedes, lowering himself onto his knees. You stand up on his thigh, acutely feeling the hand that comes up to prevent you from falling back.
You reach as far as you can and only make it a portion of the way there.
Once you're off he lowers further onto all fours, but the movement seems to pull at his arm and you watch him wince. You tut. My heartbreaker, don’t mess with me right now.
“Fucks sake, just lift me there. With your good hand.” You scold, tucking the freshly rinsed rags under your belt and lifting your arms like the world's most annoyed ‘uppie!’.
You watch his face cycle through emotions like you've thrown him overboard. Like you've kicked his ass and then told him to swim. After soaking in it, his good hand swipes towards you slowly like a goliath moving through water. His blue palms are rounded and smooth, they don't catch your clothes, they sit perfectly against you, covering rib to hip. The world is shifted and you're too gently disoriented to stop him from grimacing further as his other hand joins to lift you from the other side. He interlocks his fingers behind you and braces both thumbs under your chest, gentle as he possibly can as he raises you up towards his neck.
He could swipe you from Starscream’s grasp, quick and a little too rough. Could put a palm down to help you reach Teletraan 1. Could pluck you from Rumble and run with you all those months ago. What changed now?
Already looking more hesitant than in pain, you decide it's probably best to not voice this thought. Nor the others that follow him laying two full palms over your entire torso.
Finally, the leaking cut is in grasp. You work quickly to dig a cloth out and clean it.
His finial lines your cheek, shifting back once and forward quickly after. Optimus is warm, so steadily warm. You can hear the pulse of spark and engine through you. The rag quickly blotches a vibrant pink under your palms.
“There ya’ go.” You say quietly. It rumbles out of you in a hum you don't consider the message of until finial clicks upright and hands cinch you for a moment.
Could that- WAS that-
You watch the smoke from a held breath curl out of stacks at your side. Feel the chugged vibration of an engine that's overthinking.
Holy. Primus. This is the biggest tell you've ever gotten from the man that the sign on the beach was green. You have been waiting for this, you have been WAITING to jump on this. And try you with gross negligence if you would waste a sign like that.
You spray sealant over the cut, quick and light with your movements to prevent unnecessary build-up, holding his head still with your other hand. It settles, then you take your second rag and wipe at him for the excess. It's damp and cool against the heat of him. You swear if you see steam come from under it you'll never let that sight go.
Optimus closes his eyes, sighing in a noise that could fuel every fantasy. That stupid face with his stupid closed eyes and happy look. Right into your ear too. You're going to blow a gasket. You're going to take the coldest shower in the universe just to try to not explode right then and there.
Luckily the abort on your internal self-destruct is quickly pushed, because one of your other pests wolfwhistles from down below you. You look past OP’s fingers and your ass to scowl at a very amused Cliffjumper. Which soften the moment you turn back to an embarrassingly shocked Optimus, caught with mask down. You flip Cliff off, who sticks a glossa out at you and returns to his group of gossipers.
“You not going to write them up, Capt'n? They're bullying me.” You throw a thumb towards the ground, grinning like a cat that caught a whale.
“I doubt it would do much.” Optimus muses, letting you finish what you're doing. A final layer of sealant gets applied and cleaned before you tap at him to say you're done. He holds you away from his chest, far enough to look face to face. Close enough to speak privately. “And I believe they're bullying me, not you.” His voice is almost teasing -reciprocating.
You cock a brow, so oddly comfortable while being a good 20 feet off the ground.
“What about all the quips? I get bullied on the daily with ‘polishing’ jokes.”
You sing out ‘polishing’ with a lascivious tone and a pair of air quotes holding every wish that he’d make the same kind to you.
“…”
The joke runs a little dry. You can’t quite catch the barrel of his tidal wave and find that you’ve lost the time to bail. Because Optimus doesn’t reply, not for a long time. Have you made him uncomfortable? His presence recedes out and out and out. Thinking something to himself. Debating something to himself.
You scuttle around like a hermit that's had their habitat taken away, biting your lip and looking away.
“‘ts just not exactly the…uh… reassurance I'm looking for that I'm doing a good job is all…”
The sun blares down, melting away the shell you keep on your back as you panic on open sand. But its warmth is all encompassing, literally, and it warms as much as it burns. The engine powering through the hands on you flares to life once again
Optimus looks at his shoulder, having to scrunch his head sideways to glimpse your work.
“No.” He says firmly. “You are doing more than a good job,” he casts a look around the room of recovering comrades, “It's invaluable. You're-”
-
Invaluable?
-
If Optimus is the sun, the sand and the tide in this picture. He has scorched himself as much as he has you, because you see the stripped away sea has left him a little too bare even for him. That thought doesn't finish, but you hear it.
Optimus gives you or himself a moment, returning to pinning your face to his.
Then the tide comes in once again, twenty feet high and destroying you securely wet.
“Anyways- The prods of my friends are nothing serious. That is friendly,” he nods towards the ground, -your heart threatens to burst under the pressure of his tone, deep and intense- “When it is…intentioned-” you're going to drown in this moment, wallow in it in the dead of night against your bed, “Then it is my concern.”
You could conquer worlds. You could brave anything. You could probably cook an egg on your own face.
You would salute mindlessly like you had with Ironhide if you could manage the thought process to lift your arms. Donning the soldiers' garb and royal advisors over each other in a fashion crime that you hope gets you punished.
“‘Your concern’, hm?” You tease, well practiced at it by now, “Then I'll be sure to keep you updated, sir.”
You are squeezed again. Watched a moment longer than is acceptable considering you are most definitely surrounded by everyone else. Washed in both cold blue and hot attention.
And finally, placed lightly on the ground.
“Ironhide, old friend,” Optimus says, gaze sweeping overhead, “You will not be able to reach that.” Optimus' palm remains at your back, shifted up in a swipe that electrifies shivers through you to be respectfully above your ass instead of on it. “Y/N, would you mind assisting?”
You’d bark like a dog if it wouldn’t spiral you into another mental metaphor of semi-truck scale. The tone, the gentleness, the look, the hands, the respect-
You think the next words, not say them. Because even though something is most definitely happening here- drowning you here- you have the sense to know it’s better left unsaid. At least for now.
Aye, aye, sir.