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"We should be fine in here."
Shockwave follows her without a word, allows her to lead him by the hand through the narrow entry. There's enough room for both of them, barely. The building it once was had been leveled vorns ago, but pieces of debris left in its wake lean against each other to create a passable shelter from the downpour. A hiss escapes his vocalizer as his back and shoulders scrape against slabs of iron and concrete, grazing armor that's already been pelted by acid rain.
"Easy," says Moonracer, helping him adjust to sitting in the meager space. "I really thought we'd be back at base before the storm reached us. I'm sorry."
She reaches out to cup his face—or what passes for it—and he freezes.
"Don't be," he exhales, acutely aware of her touch on the side of his rain-soaked helm. "The weather patterns get more erratic every stellar cycle. Conditions grow more extreme, at a faster pace."
"Still, you didn't have to shield me the whole way."
"If you weren't going to do the sensible thing and speed back to the tower without me, there was no point in letting us both melt on my account."
She chews her bottom lip in an expression he's come to recognize as rueful concern, and the sight of it pulls his spark in a hundred directions at once. Whatever she believes, it isn't her fault they'd been stranded out here unprepared.
"I'll be fine," he says, because it's true, and because she needs to hear it before she finally stops worrying.
He dares to lift his unsteady servo, to lay it over her smaller one resting on his cheek. He's a moment too late, and his digits simply brush against the back of her hand as she pulls away to observe the storm outside.
"How long do you think it'll last?" she asks.
"Who can say? I didn't check the radar before we left. It could be half an hour. Perhaps even three."
Moonracer huffs, resigned to their fate of waiting out the torrent. "What a mess," she sighs. "Could be worse, though."
He doesn't take his optic off her. Her disheveled form slumps against the wall, drenched and tired and covered in mud, and the tug at his spark doesn't loosen.
There's a long stretch of silence, of her staring out at the downpour and him staring at her. The famed Autobot sharpshooter, he reflects, is as sweet as she is deadly. So charming. So kind. So unexpectedly remarkable.
So sad, when she thinks no one can see it.
It dawns on him that this is the first time in megacycles of tireless work that they've been together in private. And so close together at that…
Again he lifts his servo out towards her, only to pause and drop it back across his lap in a clenched fist. There's little he hates more than the distinct feeling of uselessness, yet it creeps up every time he aims to ease her burdens. If he can't do more than reassure her he's not physically dying , that's a failing on his part. And he hates that he's failing her. He always fails her like this.
In lieu of something worthwhile, he settles for breaking the silence.
"Thank you."
She blinks, head turning to face him. "What for?"
"You've helped me realize what I'm still capable of."
She cracks a grin, small and a bit confused but there all the same. "Which is what, exactly? Getting into trouble you could've avoided if you weren't hanging out with the biggest screw-up in the universe?"
"Don't." She's only jesting, he knows that, but he isn't. "Of all the things you are, a screw-up has never been one of them."
His tone is enough to give her pause. She changes course and tilts her head, studying him. Normally he likes when she gets like this, enjoys watching her turn her sniper's focus on some new mark, but as the subject of her scrutiny it's almost unbearable. Her face itself is round, freckled, gentle— so gentle, always, even with him, how does she manage it—but her optics burn blue as dying suns.
"Why do you still hang out with me?"
Shockwave's audials twitch before he can catch himself, but Moonracer continues without any sign of noticing.
"I'm not a scientist, or a scholar. Not an engineer either, I just happen to know more about blasters than the average soldier. What could I possibly help you realize?"
Such innocuous questions. Sincere. Puzzled.
She doesn't know.
She doesn't know .
He forces himself to hold her gaze, bracing himself for his confession, for the release. She really has no idea, never will unless he admits it, and yet—
Shockwave exhales wordlessly. He can't say it.
The truth is a knot growing tighter in his chest but he can't bring himself to let it go. The ache of it wracks every part of his being, but the fear cuts deeper still. Never in his life has he been afraid of being wrong, but he is now. Now there's a chance he could lose everything that matters, lose her if she understands—as surely as he does—that she deserves better than the cruel, confused, broken mess that clings to her as if his life depends on it.
He's not prepared for that. Not yet.
So he says nothing. He shutters his optic tight and leans harder against the metal panes of their shelter. He tears his focus away from her, towards the unceasing drum of the rain.