Chapter Text
You deleted and rewrote the message a few times before finally deciding to hit “send” on the bland text on your datapad.
You: Hey, Minimus :) How are you?
Yesterday, he had cancelled your plans to hang out again, and you knew he was still not back to work yet. Usually, he would work through any sickness or injury to the point that one of the co-captains would have to order him to take some time off.
You’d already sent “Ultra Magnus” your well wishes, notes of appreciation, and assurances that you could handle the responsibilities. Yet every day, they piled up more and more, and you became less and less certain of your ability to manage them. That’s on top of the fact that everyone in the organic wing was in a foul mood. Normally, the med team synthesized the medications needed by the organics rescued along the way, but First Aid had been preoccupied trying to patch the Ratchet-sized hole in the medical staff. He’d been making the most necessary supplies, but most over-the-counter drugs and many psychiatric meds were a low priority. The sour vibes were contagious, affecting even those who didn’t need anything. You’d been making a point of checking in with all your guests and helping however you could.
As you tended to other tasks, you couldn’t help but check your messages again and again. When you first saw that he was typing, you kept the window open to eagerly await his response. Minutes went by without a message, so you clicked away and tried (and failed) to stop thinking about it. When you finally got the text, it was not the essay you were expecting.
Minimus: Fine. I should be back to normal in a couple days.
You: ‘Back to normal?’ Do you mean something’s wrong right now?”
Minimus: Not wrong per se. Quite routine. Its nothing to worrya bout.
You: … *It’s *worry about.
You: Are you sure you’re okay? It’s not like you to make typos like that and not correct them.
Minimus: I’m okay, just in a difficult headspace at the moment.
You: I get it. I’ve been a rut too, recently.
Minimus: WHAT
Minimus: REally?
Minimus: *Really. I had no idea humans experienced this as well.
You: Of course we do! Did you think we never get down?
Minimus: Well, that I knew, but I heard that you didn’t have such…
Minimus: Inconvenient and drastic reactions.
You: That’s silly. Who told you that?
Pause.
Minimus: I did a bit of research.
Minimus: Academically.
You: I don’t know what you were looking at then, because based on my experiences, our species are quite similar in that regard.
Minimus: Your experiences?
Minimus: Don’t answer that.
Minimus: How did you know I was in a rut too? Am i that obvious?
Minimus: And how are you so composed? You’re still going to work like this??
You: It’s not ideal, but I’m pretty used to it, I guess.
Minimus: Without medications and everything?
You: Yuuup. First Aid hasn’t gotten you your medicine yet either, I take it?
Minimus: Sadly not. If you were hoping to tap into my supply, I’m afraid I’ve depleted it.
You: Nah, screw that! I think spending some time together would be a good replacement for the time being, don’t you think?
Minimus: what
You: I could go over to your habsuite, or you could come over to mine. But if you’re not in the mood for company, don’t worry about it!
Minimus: Oh I am VERY muhc in the mood for company. But that doesnt seem wise
You: If you want more company, I could invite some other friends over and we could make a night of it!
Minimus: No.
Minimus: Thank you.
Minimus: *much *doesn’t
You: Why do you say it wouldn’t be wise to hang out?
Minimus: First of all, if you saw me in this state I would lose all your respect
You: Not true in the slightest!
You: I already don’t respect you
You: JK JK JK JK JK you know you’re the best
Minimus: Secondly, we are very much, and I cannot emphasize this enough, COLLEAGUES
You: I don’t see why that’s a problem
Minimus: Really? Are all humans so casual with such matters>
Minimus: *?
You: Are all Cybertronians really so tight-lipped about them?
You: I thought having Rung onboard would have helped with that.
Minimus: It wasnt that way in the Primal Vanguard, but that was different
Minimus: *Wasn’t. You’ll have to tell me later what it is psychiatrists do on eatrh.
Minimus: *Earth.
Minimus: Listen, there are some things I need to tell you beforehand
Minimus: That I shuold have told you long ago
You: You can tell me as much or as little as you want, Mims.
Minimus: Please don’t call memims tonihgt
He usually bristled a little at the nickname, but this time you knew you shouldn’t give him any more reason to be uncomfortable.
You: Alright.
You: IDK who Memims is, but I won’t call them “Tonihgt.”
Minimus: And youre certain I should come over?
Minimus: *should *me Mims *tonight *you’re
You: Please do! I’d love to see you tonight, it’s been too long and I’ve missed you!
You: Not that you need to spend your time entertaining me.
Minimus: My dear, that is EXACTLY what I plan to do.
You: Haha, if that will make you feel better, then sure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You: I wish I reached out earlier then, LOL.
Butterflies fluttered through your stomach, as they always did in those rare moments when he called you dear. As you set about cleaning your habsuite, a foolish, hopeful part of you pondered whether this might be an impromptu date. At the very least, it sounded like he might finally confess to his secret identity.
You got out the Scrabble board you printed and the tiles you had made in anticipation of your next hang-out with Minimus. Last time, he had showed you how to play a Cybertronian card game, so you wanted to repay the favor by introducing him to an Earth game you were sure he would kick ass at.
Only a few minutes later, you opened your door when you heard the quiet knock. There stood Minimus, standing at attention in the doorframe, potted plant in hand, with a smile that would have been warm if it weren’t for the way it looked a little like a gun was being held to his head.
“Minimus! Come on in,” you said as you ushered him inside and he handed over the alien plant. “Thank you for this, you didn’t need to bring me anything!”
“I know it’s mutual, but nevertheless I wanted to express my gratitude since you were the one to reach out and arrange this.”
“That is so sweet of you, Minimus! How did you find this on such short notice?”
“I know flowers are more traditional in this situation, but I picked this up during our last shoreleave for your forgeday present and thought it was close enough on short notice. We’ll stop again soon enough, I can replace it in time.”
“You… you got me a birthday present?”
“Of course! You got one for m… Magnus, so I knew it was important to you.”
“Minimus, that is so sweet of you. Thank you.” You hid your flustered expression as you went to put the gift somewhere special, realizing that its small buds were in your favorite color. When you turned back to him, he seemed quite proud of himself.
“Would you care for some music?” he asked.
“Sure! Is there anything in particular you wanted to listen to?”
“According to my research, you might enjoy this album?” He produced some small speakers and opened his datapad to hit play on a track he already had pulled up before arriving. Your butterflies intensified as you realized this time he wasn’t introducing you to his own music, but had picked out something new for you. The track sounded old as hell, with the crackles of a vinyl record being the second most prominent sound after the simple loop of piano organ notes punctuated by a deep bell. It was perplexing, and it became a little hypnotizing as more the backing acoustic guitar followed the piano and an almost ghostly backup singer’s ‘ooo’ floated through, interrupted by record scratches. Then, a woman’s breathy voice: “I was driving, in my car, late at night…” Looking back at him, his optics were locked on you, his head slightly tilted, his optical ridge slightly cocked, eagerly awaiting your reaction.
“This sounds really interesting!” You probably wouldn’t have chosen it yourself for this occasion, but it certainly was interesting. He visibly relaxed and smiled proudly.
“So, would you rather watch something or play a game first?” you asked. “I have some options.”
“I, well, I hadn’t considered that, but whatever you prefer!” he nearly squeaked, suddenly thrown off-kilter by the suggestion. “Although I, ah, I might be somewhat curious about the, um, game you had in mind. But please, I want you to take the lead.” His optics were trained intensely on the floor and his hands were behind his back. He was even more tense than usual; if he could breathe, he would be holding his breath right now. You smiled to yourself. There was always something silly about his earnest but uncertain approach to spending time with you. It was as if he were walking around with a blindfold on and relying on you to tell him if he was going in the right direction. Still, he seemed much more anxious than normal. It was then that another vocalist with a ridiculous voice came in on the track singing, Lickin’ your greasy spoon, Jukebox playin’ my tune, Makin’ out in your room, Blowin’ up your balloon, and you involuntarily snorted a laugh, because seriously, what the hell was this song? This seemed to put him on even higher alert.
“Are you alright, Minimus? You seem nervous,” you asked warmly.
“Please forgive me, it’s been a while since I’ve had this kind of… rendezvous, and I wasn’t expecting you to— to—”
“—Minimus, I am so glad you came over. You are not imposing. I missed you.” It had been a minute since you needed to give him such direct affirmations. It reminded you of the beginning of your friendship, when he seemed to be walking on eggshells all the time.
His biolights glowed a little more intensely for a moment. “If you insist…”
“I do! I do insist!” you laughed. You wrapped him in a big hug— maybe that’s what he needed.
Yup, it seems like that’s just what he needed! His arms wound around you and you felt a small rumbling from within his chassis as his servos clutched at your shirt; you in turn rubbed comforting circles on his back. After a few peaceful moments, he suddenly bent down to pick you up and sat down on your couch, setting you on his lap to face him. You pulled away, shocked, and caught a glimpse of his goofy smile before it quickly fell away upon seeing your reaction. “Sorry, sorry! The game. The game.” He immediately took you off his lap and put you next to him on the couch, lifting you with ease.
“No need to apologize, Mims! I mean, uh, Minimus.” You had to look away, blushing furiously, as you filed this memory away to replay again and again after he left. “We can, um, we could cuddle later, though, if you want to." He shyly nodded— a good sign? “Anyways, I’ve always thought you’d enjoy Scrabble.”
Having already prepped it beforehand, you quickly set the board up on a small table between two seats. “I think you’re gonna destroy me at this, even if you’ve never played it before.”
“D—destroy you? Good heavens, no, I was anticipating something more relaxed. But you’re— you’re in charge, so if you want me to— to be more, ah, aggressive, I suppose I could.”
“Don’t worry, we don’t have to be competitive about it,” you assured him before jumping into the rules. Several times he would lean over the table on the edge of his seat and ask ‘and then?’, always seeming disappointed in your responses. He asked several questions and seemed unsatisfied with your answers: ‘what happens after you play a word?,’ ‘can the words be anything? ANYTHING?,’ ‘when do we move on to the next event?’ Every simple answer you gave seemed to make him even more confused. You knew Cybertronians played plenty of games, but for some reason he seemed to be struggling to see a point to this one as he bounced his leg so fast it might fall off. After you explained it a couple times without fully getting through to him, he assured you that he could pick it up as the game went along.
You went first and played POUT, then stifled a giggle when you looked up to see that the word matched his expression to a T. If he already disliked it that much, maybe you would have to end the game even sooner than you thought.
He scratched his chin, optics flicking quickly between you and the board and his tiles until after a lot of thought he put down an H and G to make HUG, then looked at you expectantly with his hands slightly out to either side. Thinking he was asking how many points that move earned him, you explained how you calculated his score. He looked a little disappointed— he must have thought that word would have scored higher.
“Alright, alright,” you murmured as you checked your options and came up with LEAN, with the E played under HUG to make it into HUGE. “Now, since I was able to add to— um—” You had come in a little closer to gesture to the tiles, but he came in really close, his head (propped up on his hands) only a few inches from yours— and his attention did not seem to be on the board. “Since I added onto HUG there, I get points for both HUGE and LEAN,” you explained as you counted it up, trying to ignore his strangely dreamy, half-lidded gaze. “Alright, your turn,” you told him when he kept looking at you instead of his tiles.
When he leaned back, a new song started on the album with a long, spoken sample. Neither of you spoke a word as it ran its course: an educational voice remarked, “I feel that you shouldn't get involved in an intimate relationship until you are emotionally mature enough to handle it, totally able to cope with your feelings and your sexuality without guilt, inhibition or phoniness but with love, tenderness and honesty.” What the hell kind of album did he choose? you wondered, trying to suppress the laughter this time given how proud he had been that you liked it.
You studied him as he shrank into himself, looking absolutely guilt-ridden as he snuck the occasional split-second glance at you. “You know,” he started, voice quiet. “I… Ultra Magnus… What do you think of Ultra Magnus?”
“He’s my second favorite bot on the ship, after you,” you assured him with a smile. Hopefully that would encourage him to tell you on his own terms, but you didn't want to push it.
He smiled bashfully— an uncommon but cute expression on him— and played ASK off of LEAN, looking at you with happy, expectant optics.
You looked back at your pieces and were pleasantly surprised that a whole 5-letter word jumped out at you. Minimus’s expression momentarily drooped into disappointment as he saw you start to make your play so quickly. You turned POUT into SPOUT and wrote out PLEASE.
His mood quickly picked back up as he looked between the board, then you, then the board, then you. Your smile grew in response to his, even though you had no idea what was making him so excited. “Really?” he asked hopefully.
“Uh, yeah?” you responded, not sure what exactly he meant by asking.
For a moment, you thought he was doing what others on the ship had called “going full Prowl” as he pushed the small game table out of the way, unintentionally knocking it over,, scattering the game pieces across the room. In the space between you where the table had been, he fell to his knees with full force and draped his arms over your thighs to rest his chin between your legs. “Please you how?” he asked, looking up at you with eyes relieved and eager and starving with a wide smile to match; if he had a tail, it would be wagging uncontrollably right now. “Or do I get to choose?”
You looked down at him, speechless, mentally frozen, unable to think because you were stuck on the unprecedented proximity, the heavy weight of his arms resting on you, the uncharacteristic boldness and expression, and just how close his face was to your crotch.
“Oh— do we need to finish the game before going through with anything?” he asked, deflated, when he registered your confusion and shock.
“... What?”
Terrified, he flung himself backward away from you. “What do you mean, ‘what?’”
“What was that about? You’re acting kind of strange, Minimus, is everything alright?”
He pressed his legs together as he sat, pinning his hands under his knees. If he was able to, he would have been sweating bullets— it was quite adorable. “Um... In a few words, could you please explain our text conversation?”
“Uhhh, since we were both feeling depressed, I invited you over to hang out.”
“...'Depressed?’”
“‘In a rut,’ I might have said?”
“Oh. Those are… synonyms in your language?”
“Yeah. What did you think I was saying?”
“Nothing, nothing, it just seems there was some miscommunication.” He sprang to his feet and spoke quickly as he swept up the game pieces and set the table back up. “Your company was lovely as always, I wish I was able to fully appreciate it tonight. We should get together some other time and try again to play whatever this game is.” He started to walk swiftly for the door, but you jumped in front of him.
“Tell me what you thought I meant!” you challenged him.
“That seems unnecessary now.” He tried to duck past you, but you stepped backwards and put your back to the door.
“You’re not getting out of here until you tell me!”
“Please let me go. It would be quite inappropriate to explain.”
“Tell me!” you laughed, playfully pushing him away from the door and pursuing him when he stumbled back. You heard his fans kick on higher.
“I thought you were seeking a mutually beneficial arrangement is all.”
“What do you mean? Like spending time together? A mutual pick-me-up?”
“A little more specific than that. But look, this really isn’t the sort of thing we should be discussing.”
“Okay, if what you thought was happening was so terrible, why did you come? I deserve to know what you’re here for!” At this point, he had backed up against a wall. When he tried to dip out, you pinned your arms on either side of him. God, you were close right now. He looked like a helpless cornered animal, despite being much stronger and heavier than you, and he avoided touching you at all as if you had needles coming out of your hands. Maybe you were being mean, but it was just too fun to make him squirm like this.
He sighed, defeated. “Do you know what my alt-mode is?”
“A turbo-fox.”
“Correct. There are some side effects to having an animal alt-mode. Some problems bleed over, so to speak.”
“Alright, I’m listening.”
“And based on what you said, it sounded to me like humans dealt with those issues as well! It seemed that you wanted to solve them together.”
“What ‘problems’ are you talking about?”
“It sounded like our cycles lined up, and—”
“Cycles? You’re, like, on your period?”
“Not… quite… Could you just… give me a little space, please?”
You backed off a bit, and he took the opportunity to dart past— but he wasn’t quite quick enough, and you grabbed him by the arm. The hug-turned-straddle, the dive to your knees, and of course the sensual music still playing were clues enough, but the undeniable cincher was the pained humiliation in his eyes. “You were trying to fuck!”
“I thought you were asking me to do you a favor!” he said defensively. “You said you were also in a rut and you wanted us to ‘help each other out.’ That was common practice in the Primal Vanguard! It was routine. Clean.” You started laughing, and he cringed. “Let’s just forget this ever happened.”
“Nope!” You drew him closer, and despite how much he weighed he was easy to push and pull around. “I’m curious now.”
He became indignant and took half a step back. “I will not now, nor will I ever explain that to you. Either the biology or the personal history.”
“I’m not trying to get you to explain anything, Mims. I’d like to find out for myself.”
If he could have paled, his face would have gone from a lime green to a mint color as he struggled for words. “You don’t— You don’t mean—”
“Oh come on, you showed up here to hook up but you act scandalized when I want to follow through?” You stepped closer to him than ever, your body almost touching his.
“I was not trying to ‘hook up,’ I was trying to problem solve! I won’t go into detail, but ruts are nasty things. Mine has already taken me out of commission for days!” Hot air came from the small openings where his plating met.
“And it goes away if you get laid?”
He sputtered as he tried to explain. “Well, it shortens it, and it certainly lessens the pain.”
“Pain? You’re in pain?” He nodded, not looking anywhere near you. “You poor thing! I must have been torturing you.” His face confirmed it as your hand wandered up his arm, and despite himself he leaned into your touch, red lights glowing fiercely. “Let me make it up to you.”
“You don’t owe me—”
“I know I don’t owe you. I want to. And in any case, we need you back in the game, tiger!” You reached up to put a hand on his shoulder, thankful for such a professional reason to… ‘problem solve.’ “So what do you say, huh? Can I help you out? Please?”
“I— I— I couldn’t! It would be one thing if such an arrangement were necessary and commonplace for your kind, if it were mutually beneficial, but—”
“—Just because I’m not yet so horny that I call out of work doesn’t mean I wouldn’t consider it ‘mutually beneficial.’”
“But, but our relationship as coworkers! Our friendship! You’re one of the few people on this ship who takes me seriously, I don’t want you to see me in a different light… if I haven’t already changed that irreparably."
“Rest assured, I’ll still see you the same way, Minimus.” You just didn’t mention the fact that this was already the way you’d been seeing him for a while.
“Assuming that’s true, I’m still not sure I—” his optics now ran freely over you, making up for lost time, “Well… what if seeing you in this context, I—”
“Blindfold,” you shrugged.
“Pardon?”
“I’ll blindfold you.”
“Oh! Ha! Ha ha! A very practical solution to a partially metaphorical concern! I mean, what if I—and please forgive my crudeness—but could I ever truly forget if I were to… t-touch you…?”
“Cuffs.”
“Come again?”
“Handcuffs. I’ll tie your servos up.” You began searching around your desk for the duct tape you used for temporary fixes across the organic wing.
“Oh! Oh. Well, that’s not all; what if I say something I would regret? Something I don’t mean, of course, but the, ah, the heat of the moment might—”
RIIIIP went the duct tape as you unspooled it with a smirk.
“...Oh my.”