Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Most people think Sunstreaker loves beautiful things, and they think that makes him shallow. On the first point they’re right; Sunstreaker has a deep, abiding love for anything beautiful. This does not make him shallow.

Beauty is more than a well-made frame or a sterling paint job. Of course, he isn’t going to pass up the opportunity to admire a handsome mech any more than the next ‘bot, but physical beauty is far from the only thing to stir his spark.

It’s beautiful when Sideswipe laughs after a prank, and the way he exaggeratedly sulks in the brig after the inevitable dressing down from Prowl. It’s beautiful when Jazz dances, all pointed pedes and curving limbs. It’s beautiful when Blaster plays music and the smile on his face as he loses himself, his optics dull and far-away as he composes mid-conversation. Red Alert’s ridiculous security systems are beautiful, because there’s beauty in something that’s so perfectly suited to its task. Even the stupid dirtball planet they’re stuck on can be beautiful sometimes; when the wind blows just right through plating to produce a perfect coolness on internal circuits and the sun dips down below the horizon and sets the sky on fire.

Everything about Bluestreak is beautiful, but it’s especially apparent when he talks.

Most people want something when they talk to Sunstreaker. Prowl wants something guarded, or for the twins to please not distribute any more engex, he knows it’s them even if he has no proof. Prime wants someone to stand on the front lines. Tracks wants to borrow some polish. Even Sideswipe wants a co-conspirator or someone to back him up when his latest victim comes looking for him. It’s not that he finds it annoying; he’s always open to a little coaxing and he doesn’t resent the requests but...

But Bluestreak just wants to talk about anything. About everything. He doesn’t want to flatter to try and get into a pretty mech’s berth, he doesn’t want any backup muscle, he doesn’t want anything protected or guarded or intimidated or watched. He doesn’t want to buy any high grade. Bluestreak just wants someone to listen to him.

Most mechs have a limit to how long they can oblige. They like him, they really do. Bluestreak is sweet, innocent, friendly and easy to get along with. It’s just that he motors on at a million words a minute and there’s only so long the average ‘bot can stand to listen. Sometimes they try to join in and sometimes that works fine, but sometimes Bluestreak just needs to keep talking, an uninterrupted flow of words so that his mind doesn’t stray to darker places. Most mechs don’t quite understand that.

Ratchet and First Aid understand. Before the Ark left Cybertron, they were briefed on the special requirements of all the crew. They know how badly Bluestreak needs to talk and they try to listen. But Ratchet, well… he’s probably older than Cybertron itself and crankier than an overwound spring and you can see his tolerance eroding under the endless flood of words. First Aid is friendly and tries so hard, but after about a joor in the rec room he starts to shift and shuffle. Prowl understands, and seems to have the patience of a rock as he sits and listens, but the Third in Command rarely has any real downtime to sit and listen to a subordinate talk.

Sunstreaker has never been a talker. As far as he can, he likes to communicate through grunts and facial expressions and tiny changes in stance and the way his arms are folded. Anything over that he grudgingly allows in gruff, clipped sentences. He has always cultivated a careful distance from anyone but his brother; it’s not that he particularly dislikes others, it’s just that he doesn’t really have an interest in making close friends. They’ve never been assigned to one troop long enough for it to matter.

Sideswipe is an expert in Sunstreaker grunts and grimaces and seems to have no problem holding a full conversation with his brother. Everyone else doesn’t really bother. They sit with the twins because Sideswipe is somehow friends with the entire Ark within orns of leaving their home planet and everyone wants to join in the banter that always flows around the red warrior. The fact that Sideswipe brews the best unlicensed engex probably helps things along. Social as always, Sideswipe makes a special effort to integrate Bluestreak into their group from orn one.

-o0o-

To begin with Bluestreak is more than a little intimidated by Sunstreaker. They’re about the same height, but Sunstreaker has finger-thick plating that can put a stop to most ballistics and stands like a predator waiting to pounce. He should be heavy and slow but somehow hasn’t sacrificed more than a fraction of his agility to his retrofitted heavy plate. Something about the way he stands means he towers over most other mechs. Sideswipe has the same air about him; the twins fill any room they walk into just with their presence. It’s impossible to not notice them.

The first time Sideswipe calls him over to sit with the twins, nervousness sends Bluestreak’s vocaliser into overdrive. What is usually a fast stream of words becomes a torrent, half formed thoughts pouring forth before his processor really even catches what they are.

“Oh hi Sunstreaker I’m Bluestreak I don’t think we’ve been introduced properly yet I mean obviously we know each other from the personnel files we had to read when we joined the crew but you know we haven’t actually spoken face-to-face yet wow I mean I’ve heard so much about you they say you and your brother are the top frontlines in the whole army and they tried to poach you for the Wreckers but you refused to leave the Prime’s team and wow I mean the Wreckers are such a prestigious group to work for although I mean they have a pretty high turnover hahaha I guess you wouldn’t want to work with them... I- uh- oh I’m so sorry I didn’t mean you’re scared or anything I’m sorry that’s not what I meant-”

He cuts off, stammering apologies to try and ward off any offense as he tenses up. The big yellow warrior finally meets his optics, faceplates set in a scowl, and shifts the position of his folded arms.

Bluestreak resets his vocaliser a few times, frantically glancing to Sideswipe for help or some kind of cue. This is not the first time his motor mouth has got him into bother. Sideswipe gives him a grin that seems to split his face and barks a laugh, clapping his brother on the pauldron with a clang.

“Exactly!” he laughs and his enthusiasm makes Bluestreak hesitate again. Sunstreaker’s optics move to look at the assaulted plate and he slowly returns his gaze to his red twin. “The Wreckers’re a bunch of glory-hunters, just take on stupid suicide missions to try and get their names in the histories. More warriors on the frontlines like me ‘n’ Sunny and-”

Another scowl from his twin cuts into the conversation. “My name is Sunstreaker.”

Bluestreak stares; this is the first time he’s ever actually heard Sunstreaker say actual words.

“Got nothing to do with your name,” Sideswipe leans in close to his twin, wide grin teasing, “it’s because of your sunny disposition.”

He laughs at the dirty glower this earns him and turns back to Bluestreak.

“Anyway, we’re already famous,” the red mech stretches back in his seat – not bragging, just a statement of fact. “Don’t need to join a bunch of wannabes – we’re basically the Primal Vanguard, right?”

Bluestreak flicks his doorwings once in consideration, smiling uncertainly, but Sunstreaker’s scowl has returned to its normal disinterest and Sideswipe’s grin seems genuine. He relaxes.

-o0o-

A few decaorns pass, tension on board the Ark mounting with the knowledge that Megatron himself is pursuing them. With both ships at the height of their capabilities, all that can be done is sit at their - top speed, mercifully out of range of the Decepticon ship’s weapons – and hope the enemy run out of fuel first.

Bluestreak begins to look forward to the orns when his off-shift time coincides with that of the twins. He’s given up sitting in a group without them, forcing nervous silence lest he garner irritated looks and interruptions. Mostly he sits alone in their absence, occasionally joined by Jazz or Prowl or First Aid or Ratchet or Bumblebee, but with everyone working shifts there are plenty of orns he is by himself.

This is one of those orns. He fidgets with his untouched energon cube, seated at a table secreted in the corner of the rec room, and stares out of the viewing screen at the stars. His own thoughts roil in his processor, frantically trying to fend of the darker things on the periphery of his consciousness. He had a nightmare again last recharge and it sits fresh in his memory banks.

He starts as a large servo pulls out one of the chairs and someone sits with a heavy thump. He should have detected them approaching but he’s too lost in his own helm. Relief floods as his optics focus on the bright yellow plating and familiar frown. He looks around but no matching red form is anywhere to be seen. At another table several of the twins’ usual crowd is gathered and he wonders why Sunstreaker didn’t sit with them.

“Hi Sunstreaker!” he chirrups, pleased to see the mech but confused by the absence of his twin. “How are you? How was your shift? Did you just get off? I’ve only been here about half a joor – I was on duty helping Ratchet sort things in the medbay but we got it finished pretty quick and he let me leave early. Where’s Sideswipe isn’t he usually with you? Not that it’s not nice to see just you but I mean I thought you both normally had the same shifts.”

Sunstreaker waits for him to finish, taking a long pull from his own energon cube. He grunts noncommittally when asked about his day, and then, “Punishment detail.”

Bluestreak’s optics widen and his door wings flare in surprise. “Punishment detail? What happened I mean why would he be on punishment detail I know Prowl is strict about being on time to shifts and everything but he’s not that bad – was Sideswipe late to a shift? How long is his detail I hope everything is okay and it doesn’t go on his permanent record-”

He stops suddenly as he realises Sunstreaker is smiling. Smiling. It’s little more than a tiny quirk to his dermas but the unfamiliar expression hits like a missile to the spark chamber.

“More surprising it’s taken this long.”

Before Bluestreak can ask what he means, Brawn’s voice sounds across the room, light and joking, “Need rescuing, Sunstreaker?”

The yellow mech’s almost-smile slips into a snarl and his helm whips round to fix Brawn with a glare. Yellow servos grip the table hard enough to dent the metal and he doesn’t stop glaring death until Brawn shuffles and mutters something that sounds a little bit like “sorry” and tries to shrink down into the group he sits with.

Bluestreak vents hard, trying to collect himself. Too much talking. He shrinks under the bright blue optics Sunstreaker turns back to him, avoiding looking into the handsome face. With a massive effort the servos release the innocent table and Sunstreaker assumes his standard lounging position, albeit a little forcefully.

“Aft.” The sullen grunt barely even registers to the audials.

Bluestreak fidgets with his cube again, forcing quiet. No one wants to listen to someone chatter on and on. Be quiet, be quiet, be –

A yellow finger taps in front of him. “What were you helping Ratchet with?”

Amazement stalls all negative thought; this is the single wordiest conversation Bluestreak has ever heard Sunstreaker take part in. And has he ever actually heard Sunstreaker ask a conversational question before?

“I, uh, I was helping to uh sort through – well Ratchet has all these wires for circuit repair but he hasn’t had a chance to sort everything into the medbay yet so he had me categorising all the wires by diameter and composition and I didn’t even know there were that many different wires inside a mech!” The words spill out unbidden in an automatic response to the question.

Sunstreaker’s tension after Brawn’s remark seems to have eased a little and Bluestreak feels himself relax too. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe have never shown any irritation at his excessive talking, he could almost consider them friends-

A judder shakes the ship. Sunstreaker’s brief lightness vanishes as their cubes slide from the table and smash on the floor and suddenly a frontline warrior is standing, weapons drawn and optics immediately mapping the room for threats. Bluestreak is up too, conscious reactions a far-off thing and pulling his rifle from subspace. The whole room is drawing weapons and what was a relaxed group is transformed into a hive of uneasy soldiers.

Prowl’s voice echoes from the ship’s announcement system.

“We have hit an asteroid field – all hands brace, we’re going to blast our way through.”

Sharing unhappy looks between each other, everyone moves to the walls, crunching through broken glass and spilled energon. Bluestreak is next to Sunstreaker and a yellow arm presses across his chestplate to steady him as the ship shakes with another impact. Breems pass like millennia and then Prowl’s voice once again sounds in their audials and this time it has less of the cool calmness normally associated with their Third.

“All hands to battle stations – we are being boarded by Decepticons. All hands to battle stations. The Ark has been breached.”

Chaos reigns. Everyone obeys without question, without hesitation. The rec room empties as Autobots pour out to defend their ship.

Bluestreak can hardly target an enemy in the confines of the Ark without risking hitting an ally. He stays close to Sunstreaker – despite snapped protests that he should get back and out of the main fighting – and together they try to make their way towards Sideswipe’s location.

Tiny melees break out, desperate scrabbles by the Decepticons to claw closer to the Ark’s bridge and equally desperate scrabbles by the Autobots to hold them back. Together they work out a system; when they hear footsteps Bluestreak drops down and aims his rifle, while Sunstreaker waits for the enemy to turn a corner. Sometimes Bluestreak can drop the hostiles without any contact being made, more often they both have to fight servo-to-servo. A sniper is not much good in the twisting hallways of a space craft.

Half a joor seems like an eternity as they try to make their way through the Ark’s halls. Brief, barked commands from their commanders snap occasionally over their comm lines but in the here and now guerrilla fighting reigns supreme. The ship is listing wildly and few times the unpredictable footing saves their lives, almost costs them just as often.

Sunstreaker is a terrifying pitspawn as he tears through hostile Decepticons. He kills with bare servos as much as with weapons and the bright pink gore of processed energon splatters his yellow frame in a garish colour clash of violence, faceplates set in a brutal snarl. Several times their foes see who is coming towards them and just plain run away – and Bluestreak’s plasma bullets catch them in the back. No time for mercy when the alternative is living Decepticons running unchecked through their ship.

They sustain plenty of their own injuries; one of Bluestreak’s door wings hangs painfully from its single remaining hinge, dented servo marks patterning the metal. Sunstreaker sports charred and scratched plating, the glass cover of one optic shattered from a punch and several of the smaller plates in his face are so dented they don’t move properly. They force themselves on.

Until an unexpected order clips across their comms.

“All hands, brace for impact,” Prowl’s voice is overtly calm, but desperation plays an unfamiliar tune beneath his words.

The ship goes into freefall.

Bluestreak smashes into a wall that has suddenly become the floor, damaged doorwing crumpling under the weight of his body. He shouts at the pain and tries to move but the ship is shaking and spinning like an earthquake. Another jolt sends him sliding towards what was once a turn in the corridor but is now a yawning pit. Scrabbling, he tries to grab something – anything to stop him falling.

A yellow servo finds his, larger and thicker fingers curling around his wrist. Sunstreaker grips and hauls and Bluestreak is heaved away from the brink. The grip on his wrist becomes an arm around his waist and Sunsteaker presses both of them down, denta gritted in a silent snarl as his other servo grips tight into the ship’s metal.

The ship impacts. Stasis is instant.

Four million years drift by.

Chapter Text

The dead nothingness of stasis tears away in one stinging, burning flood of overwhelming sensation.

Battle routines boot first, restoring systems to the last logged state. Data screams through Sunstreaker’s processor: detected energy signatures, noise, tactile information and damage reports.

It takes him two nanokliks to come fully online. Unauthorised barely-legal modifications are rarely pleasant, but Sunstreaker has always figured it’s better to be alive and uncomfortable than dead. So far he's been right.

He instantly knows three things: he is lying down, in a compromised position; his body is pressed over an unconscious frame, marked as an ally in his logs; someone is leaning over him.

Systems dictate only two immediate needs – protect the unconscious ally and kill the unknown threat.

Sunstreaker surges up, optics blazing online, and catches the wrist of the mech reaching for him. His other hand locks against the aggressor’s shoulder mounting, ready to pull the limb from its bearings.  A shouted curse gives him pause as his interpersonal systems receive a barrage of medic identifiers and stand-down commands.

As he begins to process the red cross of a medic half hidden beneath his splayed fingers, his battle readiness trickles away to nothing. Finally his optics focus on the face of the Autobot Chief Medical Officer.

Slag.

“Get the frag off me, you walking spare-part store!” Ratchet snaps, yanking his wrist from a suddenly slack grip. He gives the yellow frontliner a sharp shove in the chest. “And don’t think I won’t haul you down to my office for a full check on those unsanctioned boot mods if you touch me again.”

With a grimace Sunstreaker eases back, tuning out the tongue-lashing as he sends an enquiring ping, packaged with location data, to his twin. Still twitchy, he stays tensed and alert, battle protocols still streaming through his helm as he scans their immediate area for any real threats. He assumes, though, the situation is in hand if Ratchet is alone and prowling the ship looking for casualties rather than attending wounded in the medibay.

The sharp pain of a wrench ramming into the side of his knee, tempers his relief at an affirmative ping back from Sideswipe. Looking down at the medic’s crouched white form with more than a small amount of irritation, Sunstreaker defiantly meets the CMO's deadpan gaze. Ratchet sighs and says in a forcibly calm voice, "I need you to stop crouching over Bluestreak like a turbofox on a kill so that I can see him properly."

Sunstreaker jerks back, suddenly all too aware that the prone grey form at his feet isn't groaning and getting up, isn't even booting. He stares in shock, assessing the damage on the Praxian frame: one door hanging by a single hinge and the oddly bright colour of dried energon standing out starkly against dark plate, but nothing bad enough to offline a mech.

Surely?

Ratchet must read his face like a book, because he pushes more gently at the previously abused knee and turns his attention to Bluestreak’s prone frame. "He'll be fine. I just have to dampen his neural net or he'll wake up screaming." A rather more insistent shove has the yellow warrior taking several steps back to clear room. "Some mechs have the good sense not to get some backalley hack to install illegal boot enhancers! Your processor is probably crawling with malware - and who is it that has to comb through lines of code when your port covers start popping open every ten seconds?" 

Sunstreaker turns his audio input down, tuning out the now quiet murmur of Ratchet's ranting; there are several rumours among the Autobot ranks that their CMO actually works better while cursing out a handy soldier or two.

The sound of footsteps pounding towards them draws his optics away from the sight of Ratchet prying open a port in the middle of Bluestreak's back at the sound. Taking up a guard position in front of Ratchet and Bluestreak, Sunstreaker stares in the direction of the sound, but his brother's spark signature registers even before he catches a glimpse of red plate.

A niggling question pushes itself to the forefront of his attention and he half turns, looking back across his shoulder pauldron at the working medic and dialling his audials back up.

"We crashed?"

Ratchet doesn't look up from his work as his fingers dart around the remaining hinge of Bluestreak's door.It looks like he's just taking the whole door off.

"The Ark crash landed..." Ratchet speaks slowly as he wriggled the buckled door free from its mounting, his attention on the task at hand, "and the whole ship was stasis locked for... a while."

-o0o-

“A while” turns out to be forty-eight thousand vorns: four million of this planet’s solar-cycles, according to Perceptor. Sunstreaker hadn't asked, but he'd been enthusiastically informed anyway. 

A pit-damned organic planet, and they’re stuck on it. No contact with Cybertron or the rest of the Autobot army - if either even exist after almost fifty thousand vorns. The organics aren’t even regular sized organics; these ones are small and squishy and everywhere. As if the organics weren’t bad enough, Megatron and his troop of Decepticons are stranded on the same planet and determined to finish what they'd started. The low energon rations mandated by the Prime’s refusal to let them mine the planet is the final twist in the wound.

And Prowl insists on running training exercises at least once a decaorn.

This is one of his apparent favourites, christened "King of the Castle" by Jazz after some inane organic youngling game. The fact it's one of Prowl's favourites means it's excruciatingly unpleasant for everyone else involved.

King of the Castle hinges on the idea that a good sniper is vitally important in remedying their guerrilla stalemate. Prowl believes Bluestreak is an asset they cannot afford to lose, and everyone on base should know how to support him in the field. 

Gameplay is simple; Bluestreak is posted up somewhere nice and high and given as many rifle taser rounds as can be stuffed into subspace. The rounds release tiny barbed claws that hook onto armour and crackle circuit-frying pain at the site of injury, making them a good non-lethal simulation of plasma fire. One lucky Autobot gets to accompany the sniper and is tasked with calling out targeting information and watching Bluestreak’s back.

Everyone else has to try and get close enough to capture them 

Today Sunstreaker is Bluestreak’s spotter, which makes the game even more unpleasant than usual because anyone who does manage to weave their way through the punishingly accurate sniper fire and climb up to their position then has to go hand-to-hand with the yellow warrior. The pan to the proverbial fire, though, was that any time Prowl felt the assault team weren’t playing enthusiastically enough he had a nasty habit of handing out team-wide punishment detail.

There are more than a few murmurs about just handing themselves over to the Decepticons and begging Megatron for a merciful death, and they’re only mostly joking.

Everyone is familiar with the imaginary three-hundred-and-sixty degree circle used in the exercise. It’s standard combat practice used by frontliners and commanders alike; the humans even have a version of it that uses a timepiece. Any Cybertronian can apply the concept with pinpoint accuracy; what’s hard is applying it with pinpoint accuracy for someone else.

During King of the Castle Bluestreak is under orders to fire wherever his spotter tells him to, immediately and without question, meaning a miscalculation on the spotter's part can result in a wildly inaccurate shot. It's irritatingly pedantic on Prowl's part, but if there are two words to describe the Autobot Third then those words are definitely "irritatingly pedantic", although they are probably not the first ones that spring to the mind of the average soldier.

Scowling in concentration, Sunstreaker watches the desert plains for signs of movement. They've been sitting in the sun long enough that the heat is starting to register on his sensors, and hot air shimmers as it rises over Bluestreak's plate. Sand blows on the soft breeze and he can feel the tiny particles beginning to work their way into his joints. He scowls again.

Sunstreaker sits with his back propped against a stone jutting from their little hill; across from him, Bluestreak lies in perfect stillness. His optics are bright as he watches over the monotonous sand and he clasps his rifle tightly in his hands.

It's eerie how quiet and still Bluestreak is in the field: a stark contrast to the vibrant and talkative mech Sunstreaker has grown used to, grown to like. His dark plate seems to sink into their surroundings despite the bright sun, and the lack of chatter on the weather or rocks or tufts of grass around them is disconcerting.

The first time Sunstreaker saw the sniper in action was on a falling ship with Decepticons swarming them on every side; the change had struck him but he had been too preoccupied to fully appreciate it.

But he appreciates it now. Sunstreaker recognises perfection when he sees it. Slowly his surprise at the strut-deep stillness falls away beneath the weight of admiration.

Bluestreak is just as deadly as Sunstreaker, but in all the ways Sunstreaker is not; silent, distant, calm and collected and in control. Every movement the sniper makes is calculated and precise, nothing like the berserker rage the yellow frontliner falls into on the battlefield. Sunstreaker becomes a screaming, destructive demon in combat, but Bluestreak becomes a silent, vengeful god.

Sunstreaker had torn the Decepticon limb from limb who had dared to lay hands on something so beautiful.

Bluestreak shifts and presses his optic to the scope of his rifle, jarring Sunstreaker from his reverie.

"Bumblebee on my three-five," Bluestreak warns. Their only communication the whole exercise has been these clipped snippets of information.

Well Sunstreaker has never been overly fond of banter while on missions.

"Do you have a clear shot?"

A nanoklik passes and then, "No."

He squints in the direction indicated as Bluestreak lines up. Sunstreaker can just pick out a bright yellow shape against the dull yellow of the plains. He raises a pair of binoculars to his optics and sees, yes, the little yellow minibot attempting to sneak up on their position.

Attempting is a too-accurate description. For some reason one of the best scouts on their team is completely failing at concealment.

Frowning, Sunstreaker lowers the binoculars. He stares out at the sand and grass. Jazz has command of the attacking forces today and that means instead of Bluestreak easily picking off hostiles and winning the day, the opposing team will probably have a rare victory and someone is about to magically appear behind him and hold a knife to his throat.

But Sunstreaker has command of Bluestreak.

That thought sticks in his processor for the rest of the exercise, his optics straying to the dark doors hiked high as Bluestreak sends round after round into their approaching enemies with an accuracy that’s painful to witness.

They lose when Jazz and Mirage appear behind them and level guns at both their heads.

-o0o-

As well as scheduled team-training exercise the whole base is given a strict rota of personal training time as well. Prowl rules over their military operation with an iron fist and any slacking when it comes to battle readiness is liable to earn a sharp reprimand about the importance of being fit to hold the lines with their fellow Autobots and, if the commander is feeling particularly waspish, a spot on punishment detail.

The training hangar is second only to the rec room as a favourite social spot, ordered combat training or not. Off-duty Autobots routinely wander into the hangar, finding a seat on one of the benches supplied along the walls to chat, watch the on-shift mechs spar or - if they’re feeling particularly productive that day - do a little extra training of their own.

Idling along the edge of the area reserved for sparring, Bluestreak should be seeking out Bumblebee, his scheduled sparring partner, but instead the flash of bright paint interrupts his cheery wave to the small scount and he finds himself stopping to watch Sunstreaker and Ironhide squaring off.

No stranger to battle, he is used to watching frontliners clash through the scope of his rifle and hardly inexperienced in hand-to-hand combat himself. Regardless, watching one of the most experienced troop commanders in the Autobot army face off against one of their most notorious fighter is a whole different level of awe-striking.

Ironhide was well known as a respected military officer before the war even started, veteran of countless battles before Megatron even began riling up rebellion. On the other hand Sunstreaker and his twin have no military background, but were superstars in their own right among gladiatorial circles; hard won champions of the underground bloodsport that was mech-on-mech combat. Military programmed and trained mechs may have an edge when it comes to tactics and working as a unit, but the Twins have raw, brutal survival instinct in their corner.

Glancing quickly around, Bluestreak notes that he’s not the only one neglecting his training. Far off on the other side of the hangar, Smokescreen looks suspiciously like a mech accepting bets from the Bots clustered around.

Something in Sunstreaker changes when he fights. The aloof mask he so often wears falls away to reveal something feral and visceral beneath, striking in its honesty. Even in a friendly practice bout against an ally his beautiful faceplates are set in an ugly snarl as red and yellow circle, slow and wary, each taking their measure of the other.

Bluestreak can’t take his optics off the yellow frame slinking close to the ground, centre of gravity low. Sunstreaker is a hulking figure, his bright plate faulting any attempt at camouflage and screaming a challenge for anyone to face him. On the battlefield someone so obvious would be an instant target and sniper’s targeting software falls for the enticement, automatically tracking every shift of plate as the warrior moves. Warbuild modifications on top of gladiator’s plating means there are few gaps and even fewer points of exposed vitals, but Bluestreak’s optics can’t help but try to seek them out.

As Sunstreaker steps forward there’s a momentary flex of plate that opens a tiny seam on the outside of one knee. The twist of his black helm as he tracks a movement from Ironhide exposes the cabling of his neck. When he braces down the grapple, one leg pushed back, he opens himself to a shot at the seams of his groin.

His movements though are so fluid and quick that the tiny vulnerabilities are gone as soon as they register to Bluestreak’s target lock.

Completely absorbed by the red and yellow tangle, optics targeting vulnerable spots at a mile a minute, Bluestreak fails to notice the breakout of a sudden bustle of movement as everyone immediately tries to look like mechs extremely busy in their appointed tasks and absolutely not like people who had been standing around gawping until just a few nanokliks ago, regardless of the fact that half of them aren’t even on shift right now. Somewhere a voice registers, loudly and pointedly discussing the pros and cons of plasma rounds versus pellet shots 

Still so deeply absorbed in the sparring match before him, Bluestreak’s spark almost stops and his engine actually stalls when a hand claps down hard on his shoulder. With a startled yelp he jerks and turns so fast one of his doors smacks his assailant across the face.

Cool blue optics meet his and Prowl inclines his head in greeting, apparently unfazed by the dark scrapes of paint that trace across his cheek. Something in Bluestreak’s chest plummets into his feet and tries to escape into the floor.

He squirms under that icy gaze, optics flicking guiltily to where Bumblebee stands at the opposite side of the arena, the little yellow scout staring over at the two Praxians with a look of abject horror on his faceplates. Despite being the same height, Bluestreak feels tiny under the Third in Command’s scrutiny.

Prowl does not miss the sniper’s flicker of attention. His helm turns slowly, pinning Bumblebee with a stare like a javelin. A single crook of one finger brings the scout hurrying to their side.

“Is there a problem with your sparring schedule?” Prowl asks lightly, as if asking about the weather or their opinions of the interior décor.

Feeling like two recruits at their first dressing-down, Bumblebee and Bluestreak exchange one petrified look and in their faces are a thousand excuses. Simultaneously they frantically shake their heads and Prowl’s optics slide from them to the sparring match still being fought, both combatants happily unaware of the world outside of their bout. His gaze lingers for a moment and then snaps back to his subordinates, fast enough to make them both start.

“It is always good to take note of melee fighters’ techniques,” the black and white Praxian concedes gracefully, and Bluestreak and Bumblebee sag like marionettes whose strings have gone slack.

Hope blooms in Bluestreak’s spark and he gabbles, seizing onto the graciously offered lifeline, “Yessir you see we saw-“

He is cut off again as Prowl gives him a pointed look and returns his attention to the wrestling match. Ironhide manages to pin Sunstreaker by the throat, one giant black hand wrapped around neck cabling in a suffocating grip, but with an impossibly fluid twist the yellow warrior kicks up, catching his commander in the side and sending him crashing to the floor. The sandy ground vibrates with the impact.

“We cannot simply rely on theory, however….” Prowl murmurs, half to himself as he begins to stroll towards the grappling duo.

Bluestreak’s fragile and fluttering hope shatters as he follows the path of the black and white commander, but that finger curls again and draws both Bumblebee and he forward like leashed pets in his wake.

As he walks Prowl calls softly to the red and yellow mechs, his quiet tones somehow cutting through the chatter of bystanders and the clang of metal on metal. Two pairs of battle-bright optics turn to him and for a moment the tactician looks like a minibot facing down a pair of rabid cyberwolves.

The moment passes, Bluestreak’s fuel pump hammering at almost top speed, and sanity seems to dawn in the warriors’ optics. Sunstreaker grudgingly stops trying to break the struts in his commanding officer’s arm and Ironhide gives up trying to peel off his subordinate’s plating.

Prowl doesn’t seem to notice, or care, about the burning intensity of the optics focussed on him. He gestures offhandedly to the sniper and scout at his back and addresses Ironhide pleasantly, as if asking about recreational plans for the evening,. “Bluestreak and Bumblebee are particularly interested in studying melee fighting today.”

Ironhide folds his arms and meets the Prowl’s cool gaze. There is a sense of unspoken agreement between the two officers that has cold dread curling though Bluestreak’s frame. Two pairs of commanding optics turn to their disobedient subordinates.

“I do always say,” Ironhide drawls in his lazy dialect, casting a critical look over the two mechs trying to cringe down behind Prowl’s doors, “that we are in dire need’a more trainin’ between frontline fighters and the rest a’ the team.”

Training between frontliners and everyone else had been vehemently voted against by “everyone else” after it had been discovered that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe didn’t have much of an inclination to differentiate between a friendly spar and actual warfare. The two are no longer even allowed to wrestle each other without supervision and inhibitor claws after Ratchet had reported the sheer amount of resources it was costing him each time they came in for repairs.

Prowl’s hand swings back, catching an unsuspecting Bumblebee by the shoulder and drawing the scout stumbling forward. The little mech’s wheel’s scrape furrows in the sand as his breaks automatically lock in response to the movement but Prowl is much stronger than he looks and Bumblebee almost half his size.

“A lesson in the practical applications of their closely monitored observations is an excellent idea,” Prowl nods as he transfers the prisoner to Ironhide’s much larger hands, no trace of humour in his tone. “I am sure Bumblebee will benefit hugely from a one-on-one training session with an experienced fighter.”

Ironhide’s grin to Prowl borders on too enthusiastic and with a hand clamped on a tiny yellow shoulder, he leads a frantically gabbling Bumblebee away. The jovial drawl explaining the aspects of various arm locks fades and Bluestreak yelps as a firm hand catches his arm and pulls him forward.

He looks away from his friend and into the brilliant blue optics and unreadable expression of Sunstreaker. Though the yellow warrior i only a few feet taller than himself, Bluestreak feels trapped between two giants, the white hand on his arm like an inhibitor claw and Prowl’s presence looming at his back.

“I leave Bluestreak to your tender care,” Prowl says flatly and Sunstreaker’s optics flicker briefly to the commander. His mouth tightens a fraction and he gives a sharp, small nod.

The gentle crunch of receding footsteps sounds softly at Bluestreak’s back and he is left looking into the displeased faceplates of Sunstreaker. Somewhere on the other side of the arena Bumblebee hits the floor with a plate-rattling clang, but Bluestreak is too busy stuffing panic down to the bottom of his fuel tanks to look.

He and Sunstreaker are friends, but that generally means very little in the field; the time Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had gone for a friendly practice session and ended up in Ratchet’s care for limb reattachments was an example that was pushing its way to the forefront of his mind

The big yellow warrior is still watching him with considering optics, but when Bluestreak huffs a hot ex-vent Sunstreaker takes a few steps back, clearing several lengths between them. With a fluidity that belies his heavy plate, he drops into a ready stance and once again sniper’s optics can’t help but pick out the places where armour moves apart slightly to allow for the shift in movement. Once again the vulnerabilities are tiny: Sunstreaker is obviously well aware of the week points in his frame and compensates with his body positioning and arms.

The handsome helm tilts, light flashing off a large fin, and a flicker of confusion passes over perfectly sculpted faceplates.

“Are you ready?” Sunstreaker asks with a raised optic ridge.

Realising he is staring Bluestreak hurriedly drops into his own ready position, feet spread and arms up. His targeting software pounds away in his helm, feeding angles and distances and calculations readings into his processor fast enough to make his vision spin.

It’s hard not to be intimidated. Every inch of Sunstreaker’s demeanour screams predator. His expression, once again blank but optics tracking each tiny movement of Bluestreak’s frame, does nothing to soothe the sniper’s nerves.

Before he can speculate further, though, Sunstreaker is moving. Two long, fast strides bring him into Bluestreak’s range and a perfectly polished leg swings out and around to ram into the back of his knee.

Those sky blue optics brighten in surprise when Bluestreak jumps straight up and over the singing leg but Sunstreaker isn’t thrown for long. A yellow hand catches his shoulder as he lands and throws him off balance, and as he stumbles that leg swings and succeeds in slamming into him this time and sending him crashing to the floor.

Rather than bearing down on him, Sunstreaker steps back and resumes his stance again.

Fully prepared to take a pummelling, Bluestreak pushes up to his feet again and rotates his shoulders, eyeing his partner with uncertainty. Sunstreaker waits patiently for hm to finish shuffling and fluttering his doors before casting a critical eye over Bluestreak’s stance.

Bumblebee hits the sand again.

“Are you ready?” is repeated in that quiet tone and Bluestreak nods.

Rather than close the distance and attack again though, Sunstreaker shakes his helm and points to the sniper’s back foot. A sharp jerk of the finger has Bluestreak making a minor adjustment to the offending foot and before he has time to look up Sunstreaker is moving again.

A yellow flicker on his peripheral vision is Bluestreak’s only warning and his helm snaps up. Frantically he dodges, dropping one shoulder and taking scrambling steps back to avoid a snatching hand, the arm extending past him seemingly in slow motion. His targeting software pings and he follows the command, thrusting his fingers into a tiny gap between plates in the inner elbow. He jerks his fingers in a cruel twist.

Sunstreaker grunts at the tweaked cables and bears his denta but yanks his arm away, Bluestreak’s fingers scraping chips from perfect plate in the process. His hand closes around Bluestreak’s still-extended wrist and with a wrench the sniper is pulled forward, their chestplates clanging together. They’re almost optic level with one another, Bluestreak’s arm twisted in a strut-wrenchingly painful position that has him gritting his own denta in an imitation of Sunstreaker’s own grimace.

With an almost apologetic turn of his lips, Sunstreaker yanks, pushing forward at the same time, and with a yelp of pain Bluestreak crashes to the floor again.

Lights and sounds drift in and out of focus, nothing quite making sense. Restarting his optics to clear the static, Bluestreak stares up at the bright lights set into the hangar’s ceiling with a ringing buzz in his audials and pain twinging down his arm and straight into his fingers. He allows himself a small groan 

Vibrant yellow appears in his hazy field of vision, and a hand extends downward to offer assistance.

Chapter Text

“I saw you sparring with Bluestreak earlier.”

Sunstreaker glances over at the flame-red form of his brother, splayed across his berth in a picture of idleness: back propped against the wall and a giant slag-eating grin plastered across his face, fingers twirling a blaster he’s been pretending to clean for half a joor. Sunstreaker’s language banks keep shoving the words “Cheshire Cat” into his awareness and he aggressively quashes the thought. What the frag do felines have to do with anything, anyway?

“Speak Cybertronian,” he snaps back in their native tongue. “It’s bad enough having to speak Earthian around the humans, never mind in private too.”

“English, Sunny,” Sideswipe jibes back, still speaking the ugly Earth language. “It’s called English.”

Too irritated by the lack of logic to the humans’ naming techniques, Sunstreaker almost forgets to retort to the nickname.

“ Sunstreaker ,” he growls, pausing his delicate maintenance work of using solvent and a fine cloth to clear the grit and dirt from the joints of his fingers. “And they don’t call themselves Engs, do they? Why name this planet’s language English?”

Sideswipe laughs, slapping his servo against his thigh and rocking back and forth on the berth in a motion filled with theatrics, despite it only being the two of them in the habsuite. “There’s no Earth language,” he chokes out around the laughter, “this planet has over seven thousand-”

Sunstreaker uninstalls his downloaded language pack and his twin’s words become weird gibberish in his audials. Ignoring Sideswipe’s hoots of amusement, he leans back to his task; Earth has so many more tiny particles floating around than Cybertron, and they’re forever worming their way under his plate and into his joints. Sideswipe, however, will not be ignored. There are orns when the Unmaker himself seems to whisper encouragement into the red mech’s mischievous mind. Sunstreaker knows that when Sideswipe is sitting quietly in their habsuite it usually means that something loud is about to happen outside, and he resolutely tells himself that he just has to tolerate his brother’s barbs until Prowl comes to drag the red mech away.

“You’ve been sparring with Blue every orn this cycle,” Sideswipe says in deliberate, clipped Cybertronian, setting the blaster down and training his bright gaze on Sunstreaker. His servos grip the edge of the berth and he leans forward, anticipation thrumming through his form.

Sunstreaker purposely doesn’t meet his twin’s intense gaze, pointedly continuing his task and watching Sideswipe’s coiled form from the periphery of his vision.

“I spar every orn,” he grunts in a brusque reply.

“In your downtime.”

“I always spar in my downtime.”

“I saw you correcting his stances.”

“None of these civilians know how to fight.”

“I saw you helping him up after you knocked him down.”

Sunstreaker finally spares his twin a withering look, rolling scornful optics. Sideswipe’s knowing smile is one of someone who thinks they’ve speared their target. 

“Isn’t that what comrades are meant to do ?” the yellow mech snorts.

Sideswipe laughs again, pleased to have finally drawn the rise he’s been looking for. 

“Comrades? Yes,” Sideswipe nods, leaning further forward. “You? Never. You’ve never even offered me a hand when we spar!”

“That’s because you’re an aft.”

Resigning himself to having no peace for the foreseeable joor or so, Sunstreaker reluctantly sets down his cleaning supplies and focuses on his twin. Sideswipe is like a pit hound once he gets hold of an idea, and liable to keep biting and shaking until something interesting falls out. Sideswipe gives a taunting smirk that makes Sunstreaker’s servos tighten with the urge for violence and the red frontliner leans back against the wall again, fixing his yellow twin with a hot stare and a crooked smile.

Sunstreaker meets the stare with a glare of his own, silence spreading between the two mechs like a lake. The breems stretch out, but Sunstreaker has never been bothered by a lack of noise. Slowly Sideswipe’s smile becomes a grin, and though his faceplaces don’t seem to move, the expression begins to turn into something unsettling.

“Cut that out,” Sunstreaker snaps, the words slicing across the room’s quiet. He tosses a cleaning cloth at Sideswipe’s stupid grinning face. “You know that doesn’t work on me.”

Sideswipe hoots a laugh again, snatching the cloth out of the air. Instead of throwing it back, he quickly pockets it into subspace - he always did know how to really push his twin’s buttons - and points a black finger at Sunstreaker.

“You haven’t helped anyone back up since the day you were sparked, Sunny,” he taunts, dropping his thumb to his pointing finger and making a stupid “pshew” noise.

Despite himself, Sunstreaker can’t help but take the bait. Sideswipe is a master of being the most annoying mech known to creation when he wants to be, and he knows just what to say to worm his way under the yellow warrior’s plate.

“ Sunstreaker ,” he snaps, “and why do you care who I spar with?”

“Can’t a mech have an interest in his brother’s life?” Sideswipe hums, stretching his arms over his helm in an overly nonchalant gesture.

“Why do you care who I spar with?” Sunstreaker repeats, temper rising despite the knowledge that he’s playing straight into Sideswipe’s game.

“We’re not in Kaon any more, Toto,” Sideswipe giggles, actually giggles, resting his chin on one servo and huffing a deep vent. “And don’t you think the little Praxian is kinda cute?”

The comment about Bluestreak catches Sunstreaker off guard, and he scrambles to regain his conversational footing. The weird Earthian name Sideswipe just garbled seems like a prime target.

“What the frag is a Toto?”

Sideswipe’s grin widens again, and Sunstreaker realises he’s made a fatal mistake.

“So you do think Blue is cute,” the red mech taunts.

“No.” Sunstreaker grunts, folding his arms and leaning back, looking away from his twin and ex-venting hard to try and pull his temper back under control.

A flicker of genuine surprise crosses Sideswipe’s face. “You don’t?” he asks, tilting his head.

“No.”

Sunstreaker’s engine grumbles with irritation at the descriptor. He doesn’t think Bluestreak is cute - such a weak and diminutive word shouldn’t be applied to a mech like Bluestreak. The Praxian’s slender frame isn’t cute, it’s agile and lithe. The flicker of his optics as he tracks a hundred targeting prompts a klik isn’t cute, it’s a mark of a seasoned warrior who never turns off. His jumbled, tumbling river of words aren’t cute, they’re the exported feelings and observations of a gentle, kind, and thoughtful spark.

Bluestreak isn’t cute ; he’s beautiful .

But Sideswipe’s momentary surprise gives way to a sly look as he picks up on his yellow twin’s moment of reverie. He nods with a carefully measured expression of contemplation, recognising a chink in Sunstreaker’s armour and twisting a knife into it.

“It’s good you don’t think he’s cute,” Sideswipe agrees slowly, nodding his head. “Because I think he’s pretty cute, so maybe I’ll ask him on a da-”

“ Sideswipe .” Sunstreaker growls warningly.

But Sideswipe has found a sore spot to worry at.

“What, Sunny?” he leans back again, lacing his fingers behind his head. “If you don’t want him then he’s up for grabs, right? I hear Praxians are a wild time in the berth, you know? Drive them feral with those doorwi-”

“ Sunstreaker ,” the yellow mech grits out. “And stop being vulgar.”

Sideswipe’s optics are fixed on the ceiling. He waves one servo up, tracing in the air as though caressing something.

“Aw come on Sunny,” he laughs, “I know you’ve heard what they say - I mean, Prowl’s gotta do something to keep Jazz so interested and he’s way more uptight than little Blue-”

The cold fury that usually curls, barely controlled, somewhere in the pit of Sunstreaker’s fuel tanks explodes up, and the warrior’s processor turns white-hot with rage. Before Sideswipe can finish the jibe, Sunstreaker is launching himself off his berth, arm twisting beneath his form to send him flying across the few paces between the two mechs. His servo closes over Sideswipe’s helm and with a barbaric heave he sends the red mech tumbling face-first into the floor.

Sideswipe is unfazed, rolling with the impact and turning to reach up, jam his fingers into a thigh plate, and pull his brother down with a thud. He’s laughing, delighted to have struck a wire. His arms lock around Sunstreaker’s helm, black fins scraping welts in red paint, and playfully tries to hold his twin in a headlock.

“Aww, I’m just joking, Sunny,” he sniggers, “you can have him if you want him.”

Sunstreaker isn’t laughing, though, and instead of playing along with the fight he twists his arms up, catching Sideswipe around the pauldrons and heaving the red mech over his head and throwing him into the door. He’s sick of this stupid planet, of being stuck among organics, of being crammed into a ship with mechs who are too friendly and always too close, of energon rations and following commands and whispered comments and punishment detail. He’s bored of always being on alert for the next Decepticon attack, of patrolling, of listening to debriefs. He misses Kaon, and the fighting pits, and the crowd screaming his name. He misses Cybertron, where there was space and privacy and you could court a mech without -

With a yell of rage he launches himself at his brother, servo balled into a fist to deliver a punch.

Sideswipe isn’t laughing any more. His expression is grim, but hungry. He’ll take entertainment wherever it comes; a joke or a prank or a bloody fight. The two mechs meet in a snarling ball, plates buckling and peeling under one another’s servos. A chunk of Sunstreaker’s helm fin breaks away in Sideswipe’s denta, while Sunstreaker’s knee beats into the red mech’s side until the plate screeches and dents in. At some point the habsuite doors open and they roll out into the corridor, a screaming pile of fury. It isn’t a fight to try and subdue or win, it isn’t even a fight between two gladiators under the brilliant lights of a Kaon pit. It’s two mechs trying to hurt each other as badly as they possibly can.

Somewhere beyond the haze of tearing metal, dripping energon, and the roar of the fury in his audials, Sunstreaker is dimly aware of a voice, then more voices. He doesn’t care. Under his servos Sideswipe twists and hauls and Sunstreaker is rolling back, then he’s using the momentum to rise to his pedes. A few metres away his twin is rising too, and Sunstreaker steps forward again with a roar. There’s a flicker of movement, and someone steps between the two gladiators; Sunstreaker doesn’t even know who it is. No one gets between him and his target. He snatches the smaller mech with one servo, throwing him into a wall and out of his way. Sideswipe’s optics widen with momentary shock, but he grins as Sunstreaker barrels towards him, and red and yellow meet again in a storm of tortured metal.

Dimly Sunstreaker is aware of other mechs around them, of comms pinging frantically across open and closed channels. He ignores them. He ignores the increasingly alarmed pings of “ally, ally” that try to creep into his consciousness. His world is energon leaking down his face and the screech of metal straining against metal and looking for the next spot he can jam in a fist or an elbow and do some damage .

Until a ping burns across his interpersonal systems, searing hot against his cold fury. For a fraction of a moment both twins freeze, locked under the authority of a stand-down command neither of them can ignore. 

The split second of silence is interrupted. Sunstreaker feels a huge servo wrap around his chest, lifting him like a ragdoll and slamming him into an orange wall. He’s vaguely aware of Sideswipe, similarly pinned, to his right. The cold rage burns out in his spark, and he sullenly meets the furious optics of Optimus Prime.

-o0o-

Packing ammo has been an almost cathartic task for Sunstreaker since the war began, making it one of Prowl’s less effective choices of punishment. 

The rounds click neatly into the channel of the packer, then rattle into place as he loads them into the magazine. The fully loaded magazine is set neatly on top of a pile of likewise finished magazines, and a fresh one is selected to begin the process again. It’s mindless, satisfying, and he doesn’t have to talk to anyone. And no one needs to talk to him.

Sometimes he wonders how fragged up he is to enjoy preparing ammunition that’s going to be fired into another mech’s body.

It’s a job that should be done on a factory line, but in the war the factories were the first to be obliterated beyond all use, and here on earth they didn’t even have the materials to try and build a new one. The soldiers have become well used to the grunt work.

Click. Click. Click. Rattle.

The precise way the rounds fit into the packer, the rhythm of the clicks as they’re placed and then the satisfying noise as they each slide into place… he could almost lose himself in it. If only the fragging energon cuffs didn’t make it ten times more challenging.

Sideswipe was over in Wheeljack’s lab, he knew, probably doing some similarly inane task. He’d heard Jazz quietly telling Prime that the twins should be kept away from one another for a few joors.

Behind him, on the other side of the medbay, the murmured conversation between Ratchet and First Aid drones in his audials. Guilt curls uncomfortably around Sunstreaker’s spark as Ratched fusses over his apprentice. The CMO’s usually gruff bedside manner had vanished when he’d heard about how First Aid got hurt; he’d attempted a mild criticism that the Protectobot should know better than to get between two warriors in a fight, but then he’d thrown a dirty look over to Sunstreaker and begun gently tending to First Aid’s crumpled plating.

Sunstreaker hadn’t meant to hurt First Aid - he hadn’t even known it was the newly sparked Autobot that had tried to break up their fight, hadn’t registered Hound holding back a raging Hot Spot from joining the fray when he saw his gestalt brother clang hard into the wall.

From across the medbay a plaintive protest reaches his audials: “But Ratchet, they were hurting each other!”

Sunstreaker hunches down and dials his audial feed as low as he can, so he can’t hear the CMO’s sharp reply reminding the young Autobot to make use of his medic identifiers next time - actually, to just let them kill each other next time.

Ratchet hasn’t tended to either of the twins’ injuries, other than to give them each a cursory look and proclaim that there was nothing life threatening. A bead of energon keeps forming over Sunstreaker’s optic, dripping down the blue glass and running into his mouth. He doesn’t wipe it away. The pain of a few damaged plates and torn wires is something he’s grown used to over the vorns, and the only thing that really bothers him is the persistent damage warnings that flash up on his HUD.

He turns his sensory reporting system off.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Rattle.

He’s never seen Prime so angry.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Rattle.

Which really is something, given that he sees Prime raging against Megatron’s latest scheme at least once a cycle.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Rattle.

But Sideswipe can be so fragging annoying.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Rattle.

And it wasn’t like they were actually going to kill each other.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Rattle.

He isn’t surprised when someone else enters the medbay, because he had Wheeljack install experimental long range spark signature software before they even left Cybertron. He is surprised when he sharply turns to see why Bluestreak is is here, and takes in the still-wet white paint dripping from the sniper’s pauldrons, over his chestplates and running in a small stream down his legs. His optics slowly track across the medbay floor to the closing doors, following the white pedeprints and paint drips that trail across the floor.

Ratchet is shouting something. Sunstreaker dials his audial feed back up.

“- gone insane?” the CMO splutters, a wrench held menacingly in his servo and pointing at Bluestreak. “Has someone tainted the energon supply? As if I don’t have enough to deal with! Get your aft in the shower before you even think about touching anything - and don’t think you’re getting out of this medbay until every speck of paint is cleaned up -”

“But Ratchet,” Bluestreak protests, holding up paint-covered servos in a gesture that’s half submission and half defence against the possibility of flying wrenches. “I swear I didn’t even know what Sideswipe had planned for the paint, he asked me a few joors ago when we were in the rec room - we were having our daily energon ration and I’d just come off lookout detail overnight and it was really cloudy out - and he asked me to be by the shuttle bay doors at shift change and just say hi to Prowl and that -”

The wrench vibrates with transferred fury. Ratchet’s repeated command of “Shower!” is a screech to rival the most noxious tones of Starscream.

With a resigned ex-vent, Bluestreak trails over to the small emergency shower in the corner of the medbay. He shuffles awkwardly to fit his doorwings in, then disappears for a few kliks under a torrent of water. Sunstreaker catches Ratchet’s smouldering gaze, and quietly returns to his mag packing. He’s had enough of being yelled at for the next few deca-orns at least.

After about five more freshly packed magazines, a slightly damp Bluestreak plops down next to Sunstreaker’s temporary workstation. Beads of water trail along the edges of the Praxian’s plate, and white streaks stick stubbornly to his grey paint. Wordlessly Sunstreaker pulls a rag from subspace and tosses it to the mech, who catches it with relief and dries off his servos, then attempts to rub some of the drying white paint.

“Thanks, Sunstreaker!” Bluestreak smiles - a genuine, pleased smile - as he reaches to take an empty magazine and a servo full of rounds. “It’s going to take me ages to get all this paint out, and I hope it’s not going to take a new paint job to hide any of the colours. I honestly had no idea what Sideswipe had planned, he just asked me to do him a favour and then said if I could make sure Prowl saw the section of wall the minibots had been repairing and-”

Sunstreaker nods along, letting Bluestreak’s chatter wash over him as he clicks more ammo rounds into more magazines. When Bluestreak remembers to pause to let the other half of the conversation contribute, he can’t stop his optics from straying again over the ugly white streaks of wallpaint marking the sniper’s understated grey chestplates. It’s a force of will not to let his gaze follow the drips down to where they spread and splatter over the bright red of Bluestreak’s thighs.

“I have some solvent solution you can use - for the paint,” Sunstreaker stumbles midway through the sentence, and is immediately glad that his usual gruff attitude to conversation helps hide the mistake. He forcibly tears his gaze away from the ugly white marks and back to the ammo - not that he couldn’t pack ammo while he was recharging.

Bluestreak straightens in a motion of surprise, his doorwings perking high - frag it, Sunstreaker owes Sideswipe another punch in the mouth for mentioning doorwings - and then the sniper is beaming a bright smile.

“Thanks Sunstreaker!” he chirrups, earning a “ You’re meant to be being punished ” hiss from Ratchet on the other side of the room. Sunstreaker can feel the medical officer’s ire on his back like the warmth of the sun, but even Ratchet isn’t enough of a hardaft to tell Bluestreak he isn’t allowed to talk. 

-o0o-

“A’right Sunstreaker,” despite himself, Sunstreaker can’t help but flinch when a hand claps down on his pauldron. He turns sharply with the beginning of a snarl that dies away when his optics meet the blank visor of the Autobots’ third in command. Sunstreaker’s optics flick to the medbay doors, then back to the small black and white mech; he wonders, not for the first time, why Jazz’s spark signature doesn’t register on his sensors. And how the mech can move so silently.

But as soon as the question crosses his processor, there’s Jazz’s spark signature, as bright and lively as if it had always been there.

Well maybe he’d been too caught up in listening to Bluestreak talk…

But that doesn’t explain all the other times…

He needs to have a word with Wheeljack.

“Time ta turn in for the night,” Jazz indicates his helm towards the doors, stepping back to give Sunstreaker room to stand.

The yellow warrior drops the ammo he’s holding, rising immediately as the rounds tinkle to the floor. This small piece of insolence seems to have no effect on Jazz, who just casts a languid smile to Bluestreak in greeting. Sunstreaker glowers at the smaller mech, mostly out of a standard dislike of authority figures than any animosity towards Jazz.

“These seem a bit unnecessary,” Jazz muses, raising a hand and deactivating the energon cuffs. He tosses the dead cuffs in the air, catching them before stowing them in subspace. “If ya make me need’ta put them on again, I’m gon’ta be annoyed.”

The commander’s tone is light, but Sunstreaker, looking straight into the flat glow of Jazz’s visor, doesn’t miss the flicker of something hard passing across his unreadable face. Sunstreaker quirks his mouth down, nodding a silent agreement.

Jazz leads him out, offering a cheery wave to Ratchet. Sunstreaker pretends not to see the CMO’s rude gesture in reply.

“So what were you two fightin’ about?” Jazz asks, helm turning to give a flash of his blue visor as he addresses the hulking warrior following in his wake.

Sunstreaker stays silent for a moment. He thinks about telling Jazz it’s none of his business. He thinks about just staying quiet.

He says, “Sideswipe was being vulgar.”

Jazz doesn’t respond for several kliks, and staring at the impassive back of the other mech, Sunstreaker wonders if the commander might not have heard him.

They step silently into the Ark’s lift.

“About what?” Jazz finally asks, leaning leisurely back against the lift’s wall and folding his arms.

Sunstreaker stares blankly at the black and white mech. Jazz is the picture of a casual curiosity,  as though they were in the rec room sharing a drink and not a superior escorting a soldier down to the brig. Despite Jazz’s friendly demeanour, Sunstreaker feels as though he’s being scrutinised in depth by the impassive visor.

“Praxians,” his vocoder says before his processor can intercede, and he instantly regrets it. He thinks again about how Jazz’s spark signature can drop off his sensors, and about how the third in command smiles when Prowl enters a room.

Jazz is silent again for a long while, but Sunstreaker has never minded the quiet. He waits, unmoving and keeping a careful mask of disinterest on his faceplates. Finally Jazz says, “Huh”.

Sunstreaker shrugs, turning his optics away from the little mech and looking with a studied detachment at a scuff on the lift’s doors.

When Jazz speaks again, it’s with a thoughtful, nostalgic tone that Sunstreaker isn’t familiar with.

“Proper courtin’ always was expected, in Praxus,” Jazz muses, and Sunstreaker can’t keep the surprise off his face. “Scandalous for two mechs ta… get involved, without the social propers.”

Sunstreaker frowns, optics raking Jazz’s faceplates for any sign of taunting or humour, but the commander is as unreadable as always.

“A’course,” Jazz says, mouth twisting down as the lift’s doors open. “There’s ain’t no Praxus anymore.”

Sideswipe is already in a cell, lounging back on the berth as though his red paint isn’t streaked with yellow and the glass of one optic isn’t shattered out of his faceplate. He greets his twin with a cheery “Sunny!” and an energetic wave.

Sunstreaker ignores the red menace, lying down on his own berth and staring up at the dark ceiling.

When they’re alone again, Sideswipe muses, the mocking tones of earlier gone and an interested note entering his voice; “So - Bluestreak?”

Sunstreaker initiates his recharge cycle. “Shut up, Sides.”

Chapter Text

There are five-hundred-and-seventy-six ceiling tiles in the rec room, and crossing the room from the door to the table at the far side takes thirty-eight paces. It’s the twins’ favourite table: Sunstreaker because he can sit with his back to the wall, and Sideswipe because he can see everything going on in the room, and watch the door for who’s coming and going. The table has eight screws holding the top to the base - counting those with questing fingers had been more difficult, and that had taken up a good few minutes.

Bluestreak is mind-numbingly bored.

In the absence of enough resources, time, commanding officers, or surplus of fighters to be able to justify a court martial, Prowl has the twins pulling morning and night patrols, double guard duty, and - crowbarred into what few hours might be called “free time” between those rotas - the classically favoured punishment detail. Bluestreak has barely caught a servo-full of minutes with either of them in the last week; each time a snatched few words over an energon cube before the inevitable rush to make the next duty rota, Sideswipe with decreasingly cheery promises of, “Sorry Blue, catch ya later!” and Sunstreaker with scowled grunts of distaste for the second in command that don’t seem to weary. 

The reminder that rest and downtime are a luxury easily snatched away by an incensed commanding officer has the whole base cautiously walking on eggshells, mechs turning up extra early to shifts and the usually rowdy buzz of the common areas muted.

Bluestreak hadn’t realised just how much of a habit it had become to seek out one or both of the warriors in his off-duty hours, and their absence feels like the lurch of taking a step only to find nothing below his pede. He even misses the sparring practice Sunstreaker favours, as much as any bout ends up with him flat on the floor. At least it’s something to do , rather than sit alone idling away the time until his next duty shift.

Today, in the weird liminal time between afternoon shift changes and newly off-duty mechs coming for their daily rations, he sits at the beloved corner table and entertains his sniper software by seeing how fast he can count the dust motes floating hazily in the harsh electric lights, hoping with a wavering optimism that this might be the precious time when Sideswipe or Sunstreaker has an extra couple of minutes to snag an energon cube between duties.

Across the rec room, the Protectobots cluster in a companionable huddle, a whispered conversation snatching between them in the half-spoken-half-wordless flow of chatter that Bluestreak is beginning to recognise as a sign of the strange gestalt bond that ties them together.

Disappointment buzzes in his spark when the rec room doors slide open and the flash of red he sees resolves into the diminutive frame of Cliffjumper, but Bluestreak’s interest perks up to see the red minibot followed by Smokescreen and Tracks. Mid-conversation, Cliffjumper and Tracks jostle at Smokescreen, lightheartedly making attempts to snatch the datapad the Praxian holds up just out of reach.

“Blue!” Smokescreen calls in greeting, raising his free hand in a wave. 

The small group bustles over to join Bluestreak in the corner, and the sniper’s interest perks further at the buzz of excitement that hums through their EM fields. He’s only halfway through a cheery hello, pleased to have some company, when Cliffjumper, slotting neatly into the chair next to his, gives him a companionable nudge and indicates Smokescreen’s datapad with a tilted helm.

“Smokescreen says he’s got something good,” the minibot grins in a conspiratorial stage whisper.

“Come on Smokes, spill!” Tracks adds, folding his arms and leaning back into his own chair. “Some of us have other things to do today.”

“Oh yeah, like waxing your finish?” Smokescreen shoots back, his good-natured smile softening the jibe.

Tracks huffs, pointing a disdainful finger at a scuff across Scokescreen’s bright red chestplate, “At least some of us take pride in our appearances.”

Bluestreak lets the friendly bickering wash over him, casting curious optics to the datapad clutched in Smokescreen’s servos. It looks like a standard ‘pad, screen dark in standby mode.

“Are you taking odds again for the combat training matchups?” Bluestreak asks, once a momentary pause in the mechs’ bantering presents itself. “Only Prowl has been in such a mood this week and I’ve seen him watching the sparring matches like a hawk, and I don’t think you could take bets without him seeing and you know he thinks betting is undisciplined behaviour and don’t you remember that time when he caught you with the -”

“Woah, cool your jets, Blue!” Smokescreen bumps a friendly fist into Bluestreak’s pauldron, interrupting his recounting of the time Prowl caught the blue and red mech in the act of taking energon ration bets. “Betting pool’ll be back up once the Iron-Sparked Menace goes back to his lair, but for now I’ve got something better.”

With a flourish, Smokescreen sets the datapad down on the table, the screen coming to life at his command. Bluestreak, Tracks, and Cliffjumper all crane over to look at the small screen, taking in the familiar bright orange of the Ark’s corridors and -

“Is this a security feed?” Cliffjumper whispers, glancing around the rec room to make sure none of the other mechs slowly trickling in are close enough to overhear. “How the frag did you get access to a security feed?”

Smokescreen gives the minibot a smug smile, waving a servo vaguely, “Oh, I have my ways.”

Bluestreak though, is focussed on the tiny, frozen figures that blur across the paused video, red and yellow streaking in muted pixels. He shifts with a slight unease, glancing at Smokescreen.

“Is that -”

Smokescreen mistakes his query for interest, grinning widely and unpausing the video. “Sunstreaker and Sideswipe’s little tiff? Yeah. Pit fighter vids used to go for a week’s wages but for you mechs? Free.”

Four sets of optics focus on the small video feed as the miniature figures tumble across the screen, a whirl of primary colours that clash, separate for just a moment, then clash again, twisting together as each warrior tries to gain the upper hand. At the edges of the feed the shapes of other Autobots cluster, and then there’s the red and white figure of First Aid as the medic rushes in.

A collective wince rises around the table when Sunstreaker knocks the Protectobot out of the combat zone so hard the smaller mech bounces off a wall.

“How can spark-brothers fight like that?” Cliffjumper shakes his head, but doesn’t take his eyes off the video, “Tearing lumps out of each other?”

Bluestreak frowns at the comment, optics tracking each figure on the datapad and memory banks offering up past experiences of the twins in battle.

“They aren’t really hurting each other, though,” the words are out of his vocoder before his processor catches up. Three sets of optics move from the datapad to look at him with varying degrees of disbelief. “No, look,” he protests, pointing to the once again entwined figures on the video, “See? Sideswipe has his fingers right into the transformation seam on Sunstreaker’s pauldron, but he’s just hitting him with his other servo.” 

He flushes as the others’ expressions move through several stages of questioning his sanity. Huffing a steadying vent, he explains, “I’ve seen Sideswipe use that same move when he was fighting Thundercracker, but in real battle he used both servos to tear at the seam and try and pull his arm off, look: he’s just let go now and Sunstreaker’s trying to pin him instead of getting his arm up under his armour to grab any vitals.”

Four sets of thoughtful optics squint at the tussling shapes, until the imposing figure of Optimus Prime finally strides into view and the video ends.

Cliffjumper leans back in his chair, doubtfully looking at Bluestreak with a questioning, “Are you really sure, Blue? Looked like they were damn near trying to kill each other to me,” even as Tracks turns to Smokescreen and hisses, “ How did you get this off Red Alert?”

Smokescreen slaps a servo down on the datapad, and Bluestreak realises the tactician has carefully placed his body so that his wide frame and doors block the table’s surface from the view of the room’s security camera.

“Red Alert doesn’t need to hear anything about this,” Smokescreen says firmly.

Tracks shrugs, apparently not as interested in the base’s security as he is in the topic of Sideswipe and Sunstreaker’s fight. Bluestreak finds himself once again the focus of three pairs of optics as he stammers an answer to Cliffjumper.

“I mean - well, it just didn’t look the same as a real battle,” he explains weakly, waving a servo in the direction of the datapad. “And, well, I mean they’re fighting of course but I think they were probably just arguing about something and it got physical - you know what frontliners are like - and they didn’t even hurt each other that badly and -”

“But if they’re going to fight each other like that, what’re they going to do to an ally that isn’t their spark brother!” Cliffjumper protests.

“Wouldn’t catch me in a disagreement with either of the twins,” Tracks shakes his head, folding arms tightly across his chestplate. “My finish is too delicate to be going to blows with those brutes.”

“But they’re not -” Bluestreak starts to protest, even as Smokescreen cuts him off.

“I’ll give you eight to one odds on the twins getting into another fight within the month,” the tactician offers with a mischievous gleam in his optics.

“I’ll take that,” Cliffjumper leans forward, “troops like that, with no self control?”

“They don’t have no self control -” Bluestreak protests again, but the conversation at the table is already dissolving into the good-natured taunts and banter that seem to follow Smokescreen wherever he goes. Bluestreak stutters, flushing at the implication that Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are less than ideal Autobot warriors, but before he can mount a proper defence they’re all interrupted by the sound of a chair clanging into the floor.

Across the rec room Hot Spot has jolted out of his chair, tipping it up in his rush to stand. The Protectobot leader’s amber optics burn with fury, and he takes a couple of strides across the floor, the other Protectobots hurriedly grouping to follow him. Bluestreak’s spark sinks as he sees the mech raise an accusatory finger to point at his group.

Their overexcited discussion had gotten quite loud…

“Those psychopaths are no better than a pair of ‘Cons!” Hot Spot rages, waving off Groove’s attempt to place a pacifying hand on his arm. Behind their leader, the gestalt clusters, and Bluestreak’s spark sinks even more as he sees Blades stepping up next to Hot Spot, both mechs looking ready to go to blows themselves.

The accusation hits like a wave, sending a hush over the whole rec room. Both groups find themselves the focus of a crowd of shocked optics.

“Woah, Hot Spot,” Smokescreen’s servos are extended in a pacifying gesture, and he stays calmly seated in his chair, not rising to Hot Spot’s escalation. “That’s a hell of an accusation to throw out.”

Hot Spot’s passion, though, won’t be pacified. He takes another step forward, servos curling to fists, and his gestalt bristles with the transferred fury of their leader. 

“What kind of Autobot lays servos on a medic?” he snaps. At the back of the bristling group of Protectobots, a faint protest arises from First Aid, but Hot Spot ignores him. “I don’t care what slagging argument they have, but hurting my - hurting our medic -” he stops short, too incensed to continue.

A ripple of unease spreads across the gathered Autobots, mechs shifting in their seats and exchanging glances. Bluestreak’s mouth drops open, but before he can vocalise a counterargument Smokescreen rises smoothly from his seat, servos still raised placatingly and turning fully towards the Protectobot gathering.

“Come on, Hot Spot,” he soothes, “your argument’s not with any mech here, let’s just sit down -”

The calming tone only serves to rile Hot Spot further, the unified shift among the Protectobots conveying their leader’s rising anger.

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Smokescreen,” he growls, “not after those fraggers sent my medic in for repairs.” He punctuates his fury with a slicing white servo. “You lot might think it’s funny, but I’m not waiting to get shot in the back.”

“I’m sure Sunstreaker didn’t mean to hurt First Aid,” Bluestreak anxiously fills the shocked silence. “Hot Spot, you know how frontliners get when they rile each other up and yeah Sunstreaker and Sideswipe shouldn’t have been fighting in the Ark but First Aid was okay and they just -”

“Shut up , Bluestreak,” Hot Spot roars, earning a shocked gasp from the onlookers. Bluestreak’s mouth snaps closed, shame curling through his fuel lines in a hot flood. “Those two are a defection waiting to happen , and maybe you should stop palling around with them if you don’t want your loyalty called into ques -”

Fury bursts through Bluestreak’s shame, the strength of it snapping him out of his chair fast enough to knock the table to the side. The datapad slides, but Bluestreak’s lightning reflexes are already moving his servo to snatch, and even as Cliffjumper realises - nanoseconds too late - and tries to make a grab for Bluestreak’s arm, he’s already winding back.

Battle protocols fizzing in his processor, rage sending his fuel pump into a frenzied pounding, and sniper software feeding off the rush of energon, the rec room seems to Bluestreak to be moving in slow motion. Worried optics spread around the two groups, Hot Spot tensing forward to move into an offensive stance, Blades at his side readying to fight for his leader, First Aid’s white arm reaching forward vainly as he pushes through his gestalt to try and calm the bristling Hot Spot. The table tumbles away, freeing up space for him to move properly, even as Smokescreen turns horrified optics back towards his fellow Praxian and Cliffjumper moves too slow, too slow.

The datapad leaves Bluestreak’s servo in a twirling, turning throw and arcs with pinpoint accuracy across the rec room. It smashes into Hot Spot’s faceplate, cracking into pieces and sending the Protectobot stumbling back a step. A collective gasp goes up.

“ Bluestreak! ”

As one single-minded beast, the gathered Autobots whip to face the rec room doors in horror. The fury pumping through Bluestreak’s fuel lines drains away in one awful moment of clarity, replaced by the realisation of what a terrible mistake he’s just made.

In the open doorway, Prowl’s figure forms a dark silhouette, broken by two incandescent blue optics.

“My office,” the commander snaps. “ Now. ”

-o0o-

Prowl’s office is sparse, undecorated, and without the usual build up of clutter that accompanies a space being used frequently. Unlike the friendly office of Optimus Prime, walls hung with newspaper headlines and images of the Ark’s troops, or Jazz’s chaotic clutter of interesting earth items, instruments, and scattered datapads, Prowl’s domain is austere, furnished only with a large desk and two chairs. Sitting behind the empty expanse of his desk, the Autobot second in command pins Bluestreak with an unreadable stare.

Bluestreak tries to sit upright, to a respectful and proper attention, but as the seconds drag out and Prowl’s gaze isn’t diverted or softened, he begins to wither and feel the urge to squirm like a naughty newspark.

Finally, mercifully, Prowl speaks. “Why did you throw a datapad at Hot Spot’s face?”

The query is delivered flatly, devoid of accusation or the astonished weariness that the childish action probably deserves.

Bluestreak resets his vocaliser, agonisingly torn between the truth demanded by the cold blue staredown and the wretched code of honour imposed on all soldiers everywhere, best summarised as don’t grass to the brass .

“He… said something…” he replies pathetically, the smallness of his voice embarrassing to his own audials.

Prowl doesn’t so much as blink, as still as a statue save for a single finger that taps twice - only twice - on the desk. After a silence that feels like another age, he prompts, “And that was?”

Bluestreak glances away, flushing with embarrassment at the unwavering attention. Sideswipe or Smokescreen would have a believable excuse ready, one that rolled off the tongue with ease. Sunstreaker or Brawn would simply refuse to say anything and accept the additional punishment that silence would merit.

Bluestreak croaks out, “I… don’t remember.”

Prowl neatly steeples his fingers together, setting both servos onto the desk and, to Bluestreak’s surprise, giving a pointed ex-vent.

“You don’t remember what Hot Spot said that angered you enough to throw a datapad at his face?”

Willing himself to bring his nerves under control, Bluestreak grits his denta and meets the commander’s icy optics. He tries to smooth his own faceplates to match Prowl’s controlled mask.

“Nosir.”

“Or, I suppose, why you and Hot Spot might have been exchanging heated words in the first place?”

“Nosir.”

“I see,” Prowl nods. He produces a datapad - as featureless and common as the one Smokescreen had shown them the video on, what felt like hours ago - and taps a few brief notes onto the screen. Then he focuses again on the younger Praxian, quirking an optic ridge, voice as light as if asking Bluestreak’s thoughts on the weather. “And this datapad… the one that Smokescreen was hiding from the security cameras,” ice plunges through Bluestreak’s spark chamber, “what was on that?”

With a force of will that deserves to be a point of pride, Bluestreak doesn’t so much as tremble. He resets his vocaliser again, then delivers the reply in his best attempt at returning the commander’s own cool tones. “Human television.”

Something flickers, for the merest fraction of a nanosecond, in Prowl’s optics. 

“Human television isn’t banned on base,” Prowl notes just as lightly as before, the smallest tilt of his helm emphasising the question implied in his observation. “Why would Smokescreen try to hide that from the cameras?”

Bluestreak forces himself not to break optic contact, trying to look through the commander and focus on a spot on the wall somewhere behind the red-crested helm.

“I don’t think he was,” he lies, fuel pump pounding, then hastily adds, “sir.”

The desire to slump in relief when Prowl breaks their staring match, tapping again to enter something into his datapad, is strong enough that it feels like a physical force pulling on Bluestreak’s very struts. He resists.

With a deliberate click , Prowl sets the datapad down on the desk, the emptiness of the surface somehow emphasised by the addition of the single small pad.

“Do you think the discipline of the base is lacking, Bluestreak?” 

The question is a right hook out of nowhere, catching Bluestreak’s racing processor by surprise and sending his thoughts scrambling frantically down a new line of defence.

“Nosir!” he squeaks, servos clenching in his lap.

Prowl rolls his helm slowly from side to side, the movement startling in contrast to his former statuesque stillness. 

“Perhaps the Autobots find themselves bored, with too much free time and not enough duties to occupy idle servos and processors?”

“Nosir!”

“I see.”

Bluestreak holds himself in an attentive half flinch, barely daring to vent for fear it might tilt him into a precipice of disciplinary vengeance. Apparently unaware of his subordinate’s terror, Prowl opens a desk drawer, pulling out a new datapad and casting his optics down to its glyphs.

“If you feel the need for target practice, go report to Ironhide at the training hangar for the rest of the day,” those cool optics flicker momentarily back to Bluestreak’s rictus face. “I’ll tell him to expect you. And see Hoist for maintenance this week, in case your memory banks are corrupted.”

“Yessir!”

Prowl nods, indicating the door with a motion of his servo, already disinterested in the other mech. “Dismissed.”

Jolting out of the chair like the metal is suddenly burning hot, Bluestreak makes for the exit before the commander has a sudden change of spark. As the doors whoosh open in response to his shaking servo on the access panel, Prowl’s voice catches him in the back like cannonfire.

“Oh, and Bluestreak?”

Trembling with suppressed terror, Bluestreak forces himself to turn back on the brink of freedom, optics meeting Prowl’s eternally expressionless countenance.

“Try not to tense your doors back so much when you lie.”

-o0o-

Bluestreak blinks back to awareness. He isn’t sure how long he’s been sitting on a bench in the otherwise-empty training hangar, but it’s long enough that the lights have dropped to a dim half-darkness, conserving energy in an abandoned room. After the stress of the day’s encounters, and the curdling worry that he might run into a still-angry Hot Spot, he’s spent the evening perched in a corner of the training hangar, watching the dwindling numbers of sparring matches and pretending to clean his rifle, until the silence of the abandoned hangar let him drift off to an anxious dissociation.

It’s a noise that’s pulled him out of his waking dream; a whining air vent overhead that, in the eerie silence of the deserted hangar sounds - sounds - sounds like -

Bombs falling.

His conscious mind processing the true source of the sound doesn’t matter, because fear is already dumping into his spark chamber and flooding through his chassis like a freezing tide. He can feel it, a physical cold that crashes from the centre of his being and sends a numb rush tingling down his arms and legs. His body isn’t under his control, fuel pump pounding into frenzied rhythm despite his attempts to vent in slow and hard.

No no no no no no no -

With an iron-clad will he forces his optics to focus on the grille, sniper sights picking out every painstaking detail; a tiny missing screw, the grille hanging slightly loose, thick with dust. He wills his audials to register the source of the sound: Just a vent. Just a vent. But the terror already has hold of him in crushing claws, defying rational thought. He stumbles to his pedes and the lights flicker to full brightness in response to the movement, a sudden wash of stark illumination.

Like the flash of a missile striking -

The light sears his optics and he can’t vent in, he can’t  vent in. He tries to make himself choke in air but it’s like he doesn’t remember how. His engine stutters and stalls. Too much energon is pumping through his chest and his processor is awash with hot fuel and cold fear and dizzying sickness and he can hear them now, the drone of the seekers and the whine of the falling bombs.

For a few moments, nanoseconds that stretch out in an agonising age, Bluestreak hunches in the middle of the hangar. He presses his servos to his face, shutters his optics, shudderingly vents through the terror pounding through his frame like a beating drum.

“They aren’t here,” he whispers to himself through hot tears, “they aren’t here, they aren’t here.”

But even with his optics covered he can see the flickering light of missile strikes. The whine of Decepticon jets is inside his mind and no matter how hard he squeezes his helm they won’t stop.

Bluestreak runs.

Out of the too-open vastness of the hangar, into darkened corridors and as he dashes past motion sensors the lights flicker on, flashes that mingle with the memory of the fires that took Praxus. The terror has him fully under its spell now and he is a crying, fleeing civilian as his home burns to rubble all around. His vision narrows to a vague awareness of the bright orange walls ahead of him, and he tears half-blind through the Ark’s corridors.

There’s a tiny, tiny part of his consciousness that peers out through the fear, sees the orange walls of the arc for what they are. That fragment of self tells the base animal that’s taken over his mind to find the medbay, where it’s safe and quiet and Ratchet or First Aid will -

As he hurtles blindly around a corner he collides with someone coming the other way, the larger, heavier frame staggering back as Bluestreak clangs into a pile on the floor.

An exclamation of surprise is cut short. Bluestreak’s optics vaguely register brilliant yellow plate as the mech reaches down to help haul him to his pedes. Through the haze of pounding energon and the phantom roar of jet engines in his audials, Bluestreak’s fragment of rational self floods with shame even as the gibbering wreck that currently controls his body and mind flushes with relief at seeing the solid, safe frames of the twins.

“Hey, Blue! Where’s the fire -” Sideswipe’s familiar, friendly voice hesitates as his optics track across the trembling Praxian’s frame. “Dude, are you okay?”

Bluestreak can’t make himself let go of Sunstreaker. He clings to the familiar forearms like they’re a liferaft. Like letting go will send him plunging into a deadly chasm of darkness. He’s holding too tight, fingers crushing into Sunstreaker’s plate, but he can’t make himself let go. Sideswipe’s optics flicker down the corridor, back the way Bluestreak came, looking for some threat, but Sunstreaker’s cool blue gaze is fixed firmly on the grey mech’s stricken face.

Bluestreak opens his mouth and finds only static. He resets his vocaliser over and over, trying to muster an explanation. But how can he tell them how scared he is of an event so long gone it’s just a blip in the hundreds of atrocities of the war?

“Prax-s-s-us,” he manages to stammer out through the static, hoping with a desperation that hurts that the twins won’t laugh, or shrug him off, or realise how cracked his processor must be.

The twins exchange a single glance.

“Should we get somewhere safe?” Sunstreaker asks quietly.

Bluestreak gulps in a sob, heaving shuddering vents as he nods hard enough to make himself want to throw up.

He’s barely aware of the short journey they make, of Sunstreaker’s arm wrapped around him as the warrior half-carries him through the Ark’s corridors. His optics only half-register Sideswipe’s shape ahead, leading them to a room, through a door.

It’s dim and quiet, and Sunstreaker is carefully guiding Bluestreak as he sinks to the floor, letting him slowly sit instead of crashing into a limp heap. When Bluestreak still clings frantically to Sunstreaker’s arm, the warrior crouches down in front of him, blue optics steady and calm.

There’s no space in Bluestreak’s awareness for shame now, the fear still racking through his body in freezing waves and the roar of engines in his audials. He reaches his free servo out blindly, looking for an anchor to the real world, and yellow fingers clasp his own.

“The seekers,” he gasps, trying to convey his terror.

Sunstreaker doesn’t ask what he’s talking about, or tell him there’s nothing to be afraid of, or irritably snap that he should pull himself together, and maybe once his wits return Bluestreak will be grateful for that.

The warrior’s helm dips in a nod. “We’re safe in here,” he says softly, servo squeezing Bluestreak’s own. “And Sideswipe is watching the door.”

At the corner of Bluestreak’s awareness he vaguely understands the red form of Sideswipe leaning in the doorway, a bastion of protection against the outside world.

He shutters his optics hard, nods, wills the droning engines in his audials to stop.

He feels Sunstreaker shifting in front of him, slowly, and then the electric tingle of their EM fields meeting as the mech carefully moves closer. Sunstreaker’s field is a steady pulse of calm, and Bluestreak drinks in the sensation, willing it to override the panic that surges, still out of control, through his spark.

Slowly, gently, as though holding something immeasurably fragile, Bluestreak feels Sunstreaker guide his servo to meet the warm metal of the warrior’s chest plate, up towards his pauldron, to where the seam of the Lamborghini hood tapers away to the protoform underneath. Bluestreak blinks his optics on in surprise when Sunstreaker presses his servo flat to the open, delicate cabling below his armour.

“We’re safe in here,” the yellow mech says again.

Beneath his servo Bluestreak can feel the steady, calm pulse of Sunstreaker’s fuel pump, and the edge of his panic blurs against the reassuring buzz of the warrior’s steady EM field. Venting hard, he tries to focus on the feel of living metal beneath his fingers and wills the drone of jet engines to stop.

Time slides by, and Bluestreak doesn’t know how long it is until he can stop shaking and sobbing, until his processor stops replaying the sound of a city burning. Until he can finally let numb fingers release their crushing hold on his liferaft of living plate.

It’s like waking up from a nightmare; the real world trickles in, information making its way sluggishly into his awareness. A two-berth habsuite, scattered cleaning products and bullet shells, an empty energon cube and a bottle of contraband high grade. He’s slumped on his knees in the middle of the floor, Sunstreaker’s motionless form crouched like a guardian angel before him. In the doorway, Sideswipe stands an easy guard, now turning concerned blue optics back towards the room.

Bluestreak shudders an ex-vent, feeling dull and slow. Somewhere in the back of his mind, embarrassment is trying to pick its way to the fore but he’s too exhausted for the emotion to find any purchase. 

He wishes he could quell the darkness that lives in the pit of his spark, drowning him at the slightest provocation.

He wishes for Praxus.

“You alright, Blue?” Sideswipe’s voice is unusually lacking its usual humour, the warrior taking a small step into the room, craning past the bulk of his twin to look at the huddled lump that Bluestreak has become.

No .

But instead of telling the truth, Bluestreak decides to lie again today. He pushes the darkness, and the memories, and the thoughts of Praxus deep to the bottom of his being. His optics sweep over the steady form of Sunstreaker, still unmoving but now watching him with an unreadable expression, and finds some resolve that lets him stiffly nod in reply.

Sideswipe is next to him now, leaning past his brother to offer a servo, which Bluestreak gratefully takes and heaves himself up. A familiar, friendly  smile plays across Sideswipe’s mouth.

“Why don’t you stay here tonight, Blue?” he offers, gesturing grandly as though the room were a sumptuous hotel. Before Bluestreak can protest, the red warrior raps Sunstreaker’s helm with a knuckle, earning an irritated growl. “You can have Sunny’s berth.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t - I’d better -” Bluestreak finds the denials falling from his lips, despite the surge in his spark that he’d much rather stay in the safe, warm company of his friends.

Sunstreaker pushes against Sideswipe’s thigh, rising to stand with his usual glower for his twin.

“ Sunstreaker ,” he corrects Sideswipe, jostling the red mech none too gently as he stands. Despite their larger, heavier frames, Bluestreak feels like there’s nowhere safer in the cosmos for him to be. Before he can make a half-hearted protest, again, Sunstreaker’s optics are turning from his twin, focusing more softly on the smaller grey mech. “Get some recharge, Bluestreak, I’ll watch the door.”

The half-hearted fight leaves Bluestreak’s spark, pride overridden by his exhaustion and need to feel some safe companionship. He allows Sideswipe to take his elbow, gently guide him to a berth, and give him an equally gentle push to settle down. Hazily, Bluestreak notes Sunstreaker’s name glyph carved into the wall, and a small side table overflowing with meticulously folded cleaning cloths and carefully arranged bottles.

The last thing he sees as he initiates his recharge cycle is a dim silhouette against the room’s soft darkness, sitting at an easy rest with optics glowing brilliant points of blue, as Sunstreaker keeps watch through the night.

Chapter Text

The shattering crack of rifle fire is swallowed into the empty vastness of the desert. Bluestreak doesn’t seem to notice the kickback that drives the butt hard into his shoulder, already sliding the bolt action to drop the spent shell and lining up the next shot. Sunstreaker can barely make out the target, set over two kilometres away, even when he squints down a pair of binoculars, but he doesn’t need to see to know Bluestreak will have hit the mark.

The relentless sun beats against their armour and heat rises in blurry coils that shimmer in the air. Sunstreaker knows he should give in to the flickering temperature warnings his systems send and let his armour loosen, try to use some of the air movement to cool down, but he’s loath to let the awful Earth particles have any more access to his protoform.

Earth’s sand, Sunstreaker reckons, is probably the worst substance the planet has to offer. It’s like it was fashioned by the hand of the Unmaker himself; miniscule particles of hell that wiggle deep into joints and under cables and crunch there for the next month. The feeling of the wind dancing the particles over and under his plate is a constant assault on his senses.

Bluestreak, though, doesn’t seem to be bothered by the dirt, or the flurries of grit that slosh in waves over his armour. Laid flat on his front, practically nestled into the sun bleached scrub, the mech Sunstreaker has come to think of as Sniper Bluestreak is at the fore. Optic pressed to his rifle’s scope, the Praxian’s usual vibrant liveliness is tightly controlled even just for the firing range. 

After over a month of back-to-back patrols, guard duties, and whatever mundane tasks one of the officers could think up, Sunstreaker is content to lounge back and do nothing , watching with idle interest as Bluestreak excels at his craft, even if it means sitting in the hot sun and disgusting sand. He’s always held a captivated interest in seeing someone perfectly carry out a task, and the sniper’s smooth motions and laser focus sing like a symphony of skill. 

He trails admiring optics over Bluestreak’s prone form, noting the prepared tension that coils like a snake ready to pounce. The difference in his own frontliner build to those who tended to be out of the melee fighting always strikes him as stark: thinner plate, half the thickness of his own, exposed joints, areas where the protoform is practically unguarded. It’s hard not to automatically weigh up the weak spots and the places where a carefully aimed strike could send a mech crashing to the floor.

One weakness stands out much more than the rest.

“Why do you raise your doors up when you’re shooting?” he asks.

Bluestreak twists to look back at Sunstreaker, a flash of one blue optic peering over his pauldron. 

“My doors?” he asks, voice mirroring Sunstreaker’s own curiosity.

Sunstreaker shrugs, motioning to the Praxian’s distinctive doors, angled up almost perpendicular to his back. “You raise your doors up and out from your body when you’re shooting. I’ve seen Prowl and Smokescreen on the range and in battle, and neither of them do it. Doesn’t it make it easier for someone to spot your position?”

Bluestreak’s optics flicker, and for a moment Sunstreaker is worried he might have inadvertently said something offensive, or that maybe the grey mech took the question as criticism, but then he pushes himself up from his position, rolling to sit, and that beautiful smile beams across his face like clouds parting for the sun.

And just like that, Sniper Bluestreak melts away and the friendly, open animated Bluestreak returns.

“Oh, you noticed? You know, no one’s ever asked me that before. I didn’t think anyone really paid attention to that kind of thing,” Bluestreak adjusts his rifle in his lap, deliberately flattening his doors back to their usual resting position. “It’s nothing much. After I was accepted into the marksman training program, I wanted to have the best shooting in the ranks, and I heard that Wheeljack was experimenting with neural net tech, so I went to see him and we discussed it and he drew up a bunch of different ideas - you know, software for more accurate targeting and sharper optical vision and that kind of thing - and we played around with a bunch of different ideas and eventually I persuaded him to run additional sensory circuits up my doors.”

He flexes one grey door back from his body, then up and down in demonstration.

Sunstreaker doesn’t follow. He watches the door as it moves, apparently with the same range of mobility as the other Praxians on base.

“Extra sensory circuits… for what?” he asks.

Bluestreak nods, gesturing up with one servo. “You know, like fliers have through their wings? It means I can sense air currents and pressure, so I can adjust for wind speed or other atmospheric conditions when I’m shooting. It took point five-eight millimetres off my shot groupings and point six percent more on-target shots. But I have to spread them up and wide to feel the air properly.”

Sunstreaker sits in stunned silence for a moment, processing this incredible piece of information. He casts thoughtful optics over the still-raised door, Bluestreak’s cheery expression, the hard lines of his plate blurring in the dancing heat of the sun.

“You had a flyer neural net added to your frame for half a millimetre better accuracy?”

Bluestreak smiles, and his frame hums pleasure and pride. “ Precision ,” he corrects, “but yeah.”

Sunstreaker spends an interesting servoful of seconds revising his estimations of the sniper. He’s already long since grown to like the mech’s breathtaking honesty, the liveliness apparent in his frame when he talks, the way his optics glow with genuine delight when someone truly pays attention to the spill of words from his vocaliser. Before they even met he’d known that Bluestreak was the best marksman in the army, and it was quickly apparent once they were both assigned to the Ark that the mech was dedicated to his craft in a way that surpassed most other Autobots - it was impossible for him to have risen to such a recognised position otherwise - but the commitment needed to go through such extensive modifications just to gain the slightest edge.

He asks the question slowly, already seeing the vague outline of the answer in his mind, “Why?”

An unusually cold expression ghosts across Bluestreak’s features, and his servos unconsciously tighten around his rifle. He half turns his helm back towards the distant targets, but his optics are focused on something only he can see.

The soldier’s voice is flat when he finally answers, “Because I have to be good enough to shoot a seeker out of the sky.”

Sunstreaker’s optics fix on the long body of the rifle. Even while he’s sitting up and paying no attention to the weapon, Bluestreak’s grip is professional. His pale grey fingers rip mindlessly against a tiny scrape in the rifle’s paint, and Sunstreaker knows that by tomorrow the gun will be maintained and polished back to pristine condition.

Bluestreak’s optics have a far off look, and a tiny frown mars his features. Something in Sunstreaker’s spark twists at the expression, and he curses himself for letting the topic move to a subject that could steal the sniper’s smile.

The Praxian has dashed into the twins’ habsuite two more times since the night they found him staggering down the corridor. Each terrified huff of the mech’s venting system and the strutless weakness of his panicked body plays in Sunstreaker’s memory banks like a bad dream. Each time he wishes he could do anything to make things better, and each time all he’s been able to offer is the safety of the warriors’ room and quiet reassurance until the episode passes.

Sideswipe would have some clever and charming thing to say, something that would lighten the mood and bring the smile back to Bluestreak’s face. All Sunstreaker can do is sit in awkward silence, casting around for something else to say. For a brief moment he considers sending a quick comm to his twin, but thinking of the teasing later when they’re alone quickly puts paid to that idea.

He glances over to the far off distance where the targets are set up. Usually Bluestreak likes to inspect the targets to assess his own skills, though Sunstreaker has never been able to see anything less than startling accuracy.

Making up his mind, he pushes himself to his pedes, and holds a servo out to Bluestreak.

“Race you to the targets?” he offers, the attempt at some levity sounding weak to his own audials.

But Bluestreak looks up at him with bright optics, and when he reaches out to take Sunstreaker’s servo the smile is blooming back across his face.

-o0o-

“Maybe a quick timeout?” Bluestreak pants out the question before he can lose his nerve again, stumbling slightly as Sunstreaker hauls him upright. An odd expression flits across the warrior’s face before his features school to their usual disinterested aloofness, and Bluestreak can’t stop the words from flooding through his vocaliser, “I hope that’s okay, it’s not that I’m not enjoying sparring but it’s just that I think you’re a lot better at it than me and I could do with quickly grabbing some coolant and haha ha, standing upright for more than a minute.”

He manages to stifle the flow, cringing as a nervous half-smile-half-grimace sets itself across his lips, and realises with a start he’s still holding on to Sunstreaker’s arm. He lets go sharply, optics flicking to check whether his grip has left any marks on the perfectly polished plate. 

Sunstreaker’s optics flash again with that hint of a strange expression, but then it’s gone and he’s rolling back his shoulders as though stretching off after a difficult task, a move Bluestreak thinks might be meant to soothe because he definitely hasn’t presented much of a challenge in any of their many sparring matches. 

“Sure,” comes the cool reply. Brilliantly blue optics track across Bluestreak’s face, then the scuffs and dust on his plate. “We can stop for the day, if you want.”

It’s an easy out, and Bluestreak knows that he could just accept the excuse and put an end to being sent flying to the floor for the day. Sunstreaker would probably even unquestioningly lay off their daily sparring again, going back to training against the other frontliners without any malice.

Except –

Except that would be like failing. Bluestreak would always live with the grating knowledge that his friend had invited him into an area of his life, and he had quit because it was hard.

But it is hard.He’s certain that Sunstreaker isn’t trying to hurt him, that there’s no malice or resentment in the daily routine of easily flipping him into the training hangar floor, but the purpose evades him.

What connection could there be between the gentle and calm mech who had held him close during his most recent night terror, and the one eagerly catching him in an arm bar?

Sunstreaker’s posture is expectant, waiting for Bluestreak to politely accept the offer and leave. The sniper sees the future laid ahead, where he awkwardly latches on to the dismissal, goes sit on the sidelines until Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are done with their sparring for the day, and waits for them to head to the rec room where he can accompany them again.

Where some tiny, invisible thing between him and the yellow warrior vanishes.

“Just a couple minutes’ break,” he pushes the words out before the silence speaks on his behalf. “You could, uh, have a quick match with Ironhide? I’ll be back when you’re done.”

Sunstreaker pins him with an unreadable stare for a moment, then nods and turns away towards where Sideswipe, Ironhide, and Brawn are gathered in a rowdy group.

Bluestreak quickly retreats to snatch a cube of coolant, flopping down onto a bench away from the rest of the Autobots with a heavy ex-vent. On the far side of the hangar, Sideswipe throws an arm around his twin in greeting, earning a disgruntled scowl as Sunstreaker shrugs off the contact.

“Findin’ it rough, Blue?”

The voice, unexpectedly close, sends Bluestreak automatically jerking up from his seat, sloshing coolant over his pedes and whirling around, already reaching for a weapon.

Lounging across the next bench, stretched out like a cat in the sun, Jazz gives him a lazy smile and a hand wave that might be somewhat related to a salute. Bluestreak untenses, feeling sheepish at the soft hiss of his armour unlocking. He glances around, as though Jazz’s sudden appearance might explain itself, but the hangar corner is quiet and the black and white mech looks like he’s been idling in his position for a while.

“You found my hiding spot,” the commander drawls, making no attempt to straighten himself. “I’ve been watching all the training.”

Jazz doesn’t look like he’s been watching anything, a blank datapad tucked under his hip and – yes, Bluestreak is sure that’s a cube of engex edged under the bench.

“Sorry, Jazz,” he looks across the hangar for another quiet spot. “I didn’t um, see you? Somehow? Sorry to bother you.”

“No worries,” Jazz says, and before Bluestreak can pick another bench to make for, “why don’t you sit down? I saw Sunstreaker’s been handin’ your aft to you for a bit.”

The comment wedges itself into a tender spot, and before Bluestreak’s processor has much input his spark is dumping him back onto the bench, turning to the third in command plaintively.

“Do you think he’s mad at me?” he frets, fiddling with the now empty coolant cube. “Just, we’ve been training together a lot and everything seems okay but then he wants to spar and he just knocks me down, but if he was mad he wouldn’t be normal the rest of the time, right?”

Jazz’s visor is a cool abyss of blank blue, his mouth quirked in a lopsided grin that shows a tiny hint of a pointed denta, and he offers a shrug, the movement somehow smooth and lazy.

“Do you think he's mad at you?”

Bluestreak turns the glass around and around in his hands, the worry that’s been curled in the back of his processor for the last few days unfurling and worming its way into his fuel tank. Heat floods through his chest and his engine feels like it might stall, nervous, anxious energy jolting through his body. He can’t help but cant forwards towards Jazz, doors clenching back from his body in anxiety.

“I don’t know!” he whispers, the worry surging up from his fuel tanks to his vocaliser. “Everything seemed fine earlier when we were on the firing range and we raced to the target and everything was normal but whenever we spar he knocks me down so fast and then he helps me up but he has this look like he’s waiting for me to do something but I don’t know what .”

Jazz nods his head pensively, pursing his lips in a thoughtful expression. Bluestreak expects him to wave off the situation as down to Sunstreaker’s personality, or tell him to go and find out for himself, but Jazz’s answer is unexpected enough to bring all the stresses chasing round Bluestreak’s processor to a crashing stop.

“Do you think you could knock him down?” 

“I don’t –” Bluestreak starts to say that he’s no match for a warrior, but there’s a faint hum to Jazz’s EM field that doesn’t invite excuses. He pauses, staring into that soft smile and unreadable blue visor, and his targeting software can’t help but track the tiny motions of Jazz’s finger as he idly traces it along the edge of the bench.

He doesn’t think he could bring any of the warriors down to the ground, if he’s completely honest with himself, but no one in the Autobot ranks has made it this far in the war without being at least minimally proven in any field of combat. His combat training in the marksman program was all about getting out of range of a warrior’s servos, and finding enough space to bring the rifle into play; keep back, stay alive. Ideally don’t be stupid enough to have a warrior within melee range of your position.

A tiny voice in his spark, curling in shame, wonders if part of the draw of the rifle was to be far away from the real fighting.

Jazz breaks his reverie, indicating back over his black and white shoulder to where the frontliners stand, loud and bold. From this far away Bluestreak can’t quite make out their conversation, but Sunstreaker’s frown is stark and the other mechs are laughing.

“They’re giving ole Sunstreaker a tough time for picking on a mech who ain’t a fighter,” Jazz supplies, and Bluestreak wonders how Jazz can even tell that the frontliners are still standing together without turning to look, “no offence meant, you know, it’s just how they see the world. They think he should stick to his own.”

Bluestreak gives a small grimace in response.

“Of course, the frontliners usually don’t bother training with mechs they don’t think are worth fighting,” Jazz continues, stretching one arm up and out from his body as far as he can and rotating his wrist in a long stretch. “Like right now, Brawn is meant to be paired off with Smokescreen – dunno what Smokey’s managed to do to get on the wrong side of Prowl this time – but he’s gonna ignore the rota and step up with Sideswipe instead, much more fun.”

Bluestreak’s optics flicker between Jazz and the frontliners; the black and white mech is still sitting with his back to the hangar, visor fixed on his companion.

“How do you –” Bluestreak starts, but Jazz puts a finger to his lips and cants his helm back towards the group. The figures of Brawn and Sideswipe detach, striding out to the training area. Bluestreak looks sharply at Jazz, but all he gets in return is a knowing smile that simply says I told you so .

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says miserably, watching the two mechs square up. “Are you saying Sunstreaker’s just wasting time with me?”

Jazz snorts, the sound driving a needle into Bluestreak’s spark. The hurt must show on his face, because the smaller mech quickly offers him a gentle fistbump to the knee. The tingle of their EM fields meeting from such close contact sends a wash of light affection playing over Bluestreak’s plate.

“I’m saying he wouldn’t be sparing with you every day if he thought you weren’t worth training with,” Jazz clarifies soothingly.

Bluestreak’s optics follow the careful dance of Sideswipe and Brawn, weighing up one another’s movements as they feel out their plan for attack. In an instant Brawn flips forward, putting himself low on the ground to sweep towards Sideswipe’s legs. It’s a move Bluestreak knows would have had him flat on his back in an instant, but somehow Sideswipe easily responds with a flip of his own, arching himself over the minibot and twisting on one hand to deliver a punishing kick.

“I don’t really know if I am – worth training with, I mean,” he sighs, optics fixing back on Jazz and his body sagging with the weight of inadequacy. 

“Yeah?” Jazz leans back, helm supported on one fist. “You don’t know how you’d take one of them down?”

“I don’t want to hurt any of them,” Bluestreak mumbles, scuffing his pede against the floor and aware of how churlish he sounds.

“Humour me,” Jazz shrugs, “how about an enemy warrior?”

Bluestreak mutters the reply sullenly, the answer obvious to his mind, “From five kilometres away.”

To his surprise Jazz laughs, and the amusement sings through the third in command’s field, catching Bluestreak with its lightness.

“Alright, you got your strengths and it’s not easy meeting them on their home turf,” the mech concedes with a nod, “but I know you’ve been out in battle with a warrior up on your position, how’d you get outta that?”

With a huff Bluestreak watches the two warriors scuffle, unfocussed on either and idly tracking their movements, letting his targeting software ping at the edges of their armour where hints of protoform, joints, and cables reveal themselves in the tiniest flashes.

“How would you take down a frontliner?” he asks dully, more sullen question than one seeking advice; he’s seen Jazz training, and knows the smaller mech can flip rings around a larger opponent.

“I’m faster,” Jazz replies without any hesitation, a dangerous grin curling across his mouth and his visor tilting in a way that sends shadows swooping across his face, “flip behind them and then slice out the hydraulics in the back of the legs, hit them with an EMP to disorient and shoot them in the back of the helm before they know what’s happening.”

Bluestreak stares at the third in command for a moment, but good humour is playing through Jazz’s EM field and his smile is as friendly as ever, a weird contrast to the brutality of his words. He shrugs self-consciously, but submits to the game “I’d target the weak points in the joints, open distance between us, get myself space to – oh!”

“There you go,” Jazz’s grin is rewarding, encouraging, “they want to get their servos on you to do some damage, you gotta keep yourself from playing how they want, and playing into your strengths.”

It’s almost exactly the same information that had been drilled into him so hard through his training, and it’s only Jazz’s light reminder that finally clicks the two pieces together. He focuses his attention back on the sparring duo, pressing themselves close to one another to try and overpower, and he forces himself to think of how he would deal with an enemy warrior on his position in the field.

“But isn’t sparring meant to be practising melee fighting?” he asks slowly, unsure of how the puzzle pieces fit into his problem.

Jazz shrugs again, pointing – still without looking, and Bluestreak can’t quite let go of his curiosity over that – away from Brawn and Sideswipe, to where Blurr and Hound occupy a space over towards the edge of the hangar. They spar playfully, Blurr even laughing as the speedster zips around Hound, and the scout turns sharply with an outstretched servo. After a few moments of watching, Bluestreak realises they’re playing tag.

“It’s practising whatever fighting style is going to keep you alive,” Jazz supplies, as Bluestreak tracks the game. “Probably handy for Sunstreaker to train on trying to catch out a gunner – might be handy for you to work out how you’re gonna fight off a warrior who slips past your sights.”

A curl of excitement unfurls in Bluestreak’s spark, the realisation chasing away his gloom. He’s been trying to meet Sunstreaker in strength, copying – and failing – the tactics of the frontliners. But working to his own strengths…

But the excitement is quickly snuffed out, the worry invading back like an oppressive cloud.

“But I don’t want to hurt Sunstreaker,” he sighs, slumping back again, “and I…” he hesitates, then whispers the concern he doesn’t want to house, “I don’t want him to hurt me.”

Jazz’s helm tilts thoughtfully. “Do you think Sunstreaker would let you hurt him, even if you wanted to?”

Bluestreak thinks of the sturdy plate, Sunstreaker’s glowing pride after a battle well fought.

“No,” he murmurs, and realises it’s the truth.

Jazz nods, that lazy smile ghosting across his lips again. “And do you think Sunstreaker would hurt you?”

With a pang Bluestreak thinks of a shouted jibe, and Sunstreaker’s fingers denting the rec room table, of the yellow figure propped by him in king of the castle, watching out for threats, of a servo clasping his, steady EM field meshing with his and the feel of a calm pulse under his fingers.

Immediately guilt crawls through his spark at the idea he’d ever entertained the thought. “No – I know he wouldn’t.”

Jazz’s visor is bright, and he stretches himself comfortably over the bench again, rolling onto his back and focussing up on the ceiling.

“Then you’ve already got an advantage over most of the base,” he laughs, hands curling in the air in a strange gesture Bluestreak doesn’t understand. “I tell you what,” Jazz turns his helm to flash a glance at the Praxian, “I’ll bet you 2 duty shifts you can score a win on Sunstreaker – and double or nothing he won’t even be mad.”

Bluestreak buzzes upright, suddenly energised. He starts off towards the yellow figure on the far side of the hangar, then pauses and throws back a “thanks!” to Jazz. The black and white mech grins and waves goodbye, and Bluestreak jogs across the space, calling to Sunstreaker before he’s halfway across. The yellow warrior meets him with a mildly surprised look, optics flicking from Bluestreak to the corner where Jazz lounges.

“I’m, um, ready to go again – if you are,” Bluestreak huffs, trying to ignore the confidence draining out through his pedes now that he’s close to the intimidating bulk of the warrior. A few steps away, Ironhide casts a curious look at the two of them.

Sunstreaker steps forward, making for a free space, but then tilts his head to Bluestreak, that odd, wary look crossing his face again. “Are you sure?”

“Yes!” Bluestreak has to ride the energy before he chickens out, quickly making his way to the free sparring ring.

Sunstreaker’s face flickers with a nanosecond of surprise, but he follows and there’s a keenness to his form as he takes his stance. 

“Are you ready?” Sunstreaker asks, his familiar starting question.

Bluestreak nods, forcing enthusiasm up and worry down. He focuses on Jazz’s advice.

This time, when Sunstreaker closes the distance between them with frightening speed, Bluestreak doesn’t move to block or try to grapple. He lets his targeting pings guide him, quickstepping back from Sunstreaker’s reach and twisting away. There’s something that might be a small flicker of surprise in the yellow warrior’s optics, but he adjusts quickly. Bluestreak falls for a feint, and finds himself caged against the edge of the edge of the ring. 

Sunstreaker gives him that apologetic look, the one that says he knows Bluestreak’s done his best, but things are going the same way they always do, and he shifts fast and inexorable to catch Bluestreak’s arm with his own.

Bluestreak doesn’t make his usual attempt to flinch away, or try to resist the pull on his arm.

Their plating meets with a force that reverberates through his frame, Sunstreaker’s arm looped through his and the warrior’s pauldron locked against Bluestreak’s own. He’s ready for the heave when it comes, but this time he doesn’t try to resist or brace against Sunstreaker. He waits for the dizzying moment when the warrior has Bluestreak’s full weight, and the shift as Sunstreaker moves to throw him.

There his targeting systems ping, and in that nanosecond of weightlessness, when both of them are starting to fall, Bluestreak suddenly throws his weight hard, bringing his free arm up to deliver a viscous elbow into the transformation seam on Sunstreaker’s shoulder. 

The warrior grunts, grip loosening just enough for Bluestreak to snatch his arm free, but he’s already falling with Sunstreaker, rolling down the yellow mech’s back.

Faintly, somewhere at the back of his processor, there’s a wince as he sees long grey scratches in the painstakingly polished plate.

They land with a crash and Bluestreak finds himself in a tangle of limbs, but the failed throw doesn’t slow Sunstreaker down at all, and neither does landing hard on his front. Before Bluestreak can untangle himself, Sunstreaker twists – how he moves so fast and fluid from such an awkward position, Bluestreak can’t tell – and yellow legs lock with his own. Sharply Sunstreaker sits up, jerking his hips to the side, and Bluestreak finds himself flipped onto his front, legs still tangled together with the warrior’s.

Bad, this is bad. The whole point was to keep out of hand-to-hand with Sunstreaker, and now Bluestreak is down on the ground in a wrestling match. With an effort, he forces down the self-doubt, venting hard and awkwardly squinting past the bulk of his own chest to eye the tangle. His body says trapped trapped trapped but the cool logic of his targeting systems overrides it. Snapping his own hips back, he rolls hard, yanking his legs against Sunstreaker’s, just enough to force enough space for him to pull one leg free. He feels more than sees the joint extend, and delivers a sharp kick that pulls another grunt from Sunstreaker.

Find some space, create some distance . It’s a mad scramble across the floor, Sunstreaker fast and as content to grapple on the ground as standing. Bluestreak’s processor is a whirl as he tries to force distance, tries to force Sunstreaker to overextend his reach and open himself to a sharp jab to a vulnerable joint.

It only takes a few moments for Sunstreaker to realise the game, and his mouth firms in a grim smile. The vulnerabilities become rarer, harder to spot and even harder to take advantage of – but the warrior’s refusal to stretch out too far gives Bluestreak the thing he’s been trying to find: space.

Somehow in a blur of wriggling and worming his way backwards – he can definitely hear someone laughing, somewhere off to the side – he manages to hike a pede up onto Sunstreaker’s pauldron and kick hard enough to let him roll himself back, and send Sunstreaker toppling back the other way. Optics fixed on the warrior’s yellow mass, he sees Sunstreaker easily turn the momentum into a swinging movement that returns him to his feet.

But Bluestreak doesn’t try to rise. He lets himself fall back onto the sand, hard enough to hitch his engine, but all the time he needs to draw his rifle and nestle it into the crook of his shoulder is a couple of seconds.

Sunstreaker rises fully to his feet, only to turn and find a rifle aimed at his face.

The warrior freezes, those pale blue optics staring straight into Bluestreak’s as though the gun isn’t between them. Fans whirring from the exertion, Bluestreak has a brief, panicstricken moment of worry that he’s cheated, broken the rules, and that Sunstreaker is going to be furious.

“Cheating!” Sideswipe’s voice calls from somewhere off to the side, and though humour laces the red warrior’s words they stick in Bluestreak’s spark like his own conscience.

Ironhide’s deep tones call out at the same time, “You’re dead, Sunstreaker!” and then the old mech roars a laugh.

Somewhere there’s a smattering applause, and a woop of approval, but Bluestreak only has optics for the yellow mech who looks down at him, optics burning with something he doesn’t recognise, mouth forming that small, secret smile that so rarely graces his handsome face.

Sunstreaker rolls his helm to cast his gaze over to his brother with a withering look. “No rules on the battlefield, Sides.”

Sideswipe’s expression is dangerous, and his optics glimmer with something known only between the twins when he replies, “All’s fair in love and war, eh Sunny?”

Sunstreaker pulls a face, ignoring his brother and turning his attention back to Bluestreak, still braced against the floor with his rifle raised.

The warrior’s expression is amused, and he closes the distance between them, hand raising in its familiar offer of assistance. Bluestreak lets the rifle drop, and takes the hand, the same ending to their sparring match as usual as Sunstreaker hauls him up off the training hangar floor.

But this time when their hands meet, Bluestreak can feel triumph blazing through Sunstreaker’s field like the rising sun.

His transferred joy is tempered by the realisation he owes Jazz four duty shifts.