Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was late morning, midway through a new cycle on Cybertron’s softly humming surface, and Damus of Tarn was even more distracted than usual.  His internals were harmonizing—the day had gone so well for once!  Skids had looked at him with something other than boredom in his optics!  Granted, that something was confusion or possibly irritation—Damus had asked a question in class again—but still !  They were making progress.  And lecture…lecture had been…

Well, lecture had been fascinating .

Damus paused, bliss interrupted; a nearby EM field full of discomfort pricked at his mind and left him feeling odd, like some important screw had disappeared from his spinal struts and left him unable to stand quite right.  Withdrawing his own bright field somewhat, he searched for the source of the sensation.  Discovery didn’t take long.  In moments, Damus found himself in a cramped storage closet, on his knees, faceplate to faceplate with a small blue figure curled into a little ball.

“Hi Soundwave.”  Damus kept his prior enthusiasm suppressed (just in case—he’d had more than a few scuffles in the past as a result of being too cheery around the grumpier outliers) but adjusting his empathic sensors to extend comfort towards his classmate’s field.  “Senator Shockwave missed you in Cyber-Culture today.”

Speaking of Shockwave…

Recalling the advice that the senator had given him a few weeks ago, Damus tried his level best to smile with his body , spreading out his shoulders and leaning in, letting his sole optic flare just enough to signal interest without seeming too intense.  He must’ve gotten something wrong, though, because Soundwave didn’t react at all.

Curse my stupid new frame.

Soundwave angled slightly then, tilting his visor towards the other bot.  Was he listening?  Were Damus’s efforts coming to something after all?  Hopeful again, he pressed on.

“We were talking about holidays today.  Did you know All Sparks’ Day is coming up?  We haven’t had one in years—apparently Sentinel hates it.  But it’s all about being with the people you appreciate: your family, your Endurae, everyone you love!  Anyway, you would’ve liked class a lot .  Why’d you miss?”

Soundwave, who had put his head back onto his knees at this point, made a little noise.  Damus waited for verbal response.  Verbal response did not come.  

“Was Skywarp being mean?  He’s just salty because Shockwave holds lessons with you more than him.  You really shouldn’t let him get to you.”  Good advice was good advice, whether or not Damus followed his own principles.

“Mm.  Skywarp’s behavior…it is no different than ever.  I—“ Soundwave paused. “No, no.  That’s not right.  I-I-I’m—No… no !  Why?”  He clamped servos on either side of his helm and growled softly, the spinal-struts-aren’t-working feeling so pervasive in his field temporarily muffled by white-hot wings of fury.  “It’s loud .”

Damus reached out a servo and Soundwave took it, tracing a digit back and forth along the edge of the claw, murmuring to himself in an agitated voice.  Despite massive efforts on Damus’s part to project calm through his field, the touch seemed to soothe Soundwave much more effectively—his cooling fans slowed their frantic whine.  That yellow visor brightened, the murmurs slowed to nothing, and he looked up from the ground.

“Would it help if I told you about what we learned in class today instead?”  Soundwave’s nod was enough, and Damus felt his squashed excitement start to burble up inside his chest.

“It was great .  Like I said, Shockwave did a lecture about Cybertronian holidays, and we learned all about All Sparks’ Day…”

The lecture had really been fascinating.  Damus still didn’t completely understand why Sentinel would want to ban the holiday—what could be wrong with telling people that you cared about them?  And to have a day off work, a day to spend with the bots who meant the most to you?  There are bots who’d kill for that chance.   Even Cybertron’s upper classes were bound to their jobs, not to mention those whose alt-forms doomed them to a life of—

“I’m lucky.”

Damus blinked.  He’d been in the middle of a sentence about pre-functionist courtship customs when Soundwave had spoken, sounding steadier than he had at any other point during their conversation.

“I’m lucky .  My family is here.  My Ravage …” His vocalizer sounded choked, his field oscillating with something , and Damus felt sudden pain—an ache in his chest, a tingling heat where his optics should’ve been, a heaviness in his shoulder joints.  It was loneliness , that’s what it was, the feeling of being isolated and lost and frightened— just like I’d felt that night, oh Primus, not now, please don’t think about that or you’ll start crying again —and it was a wave of sheer physical sensation, not mediated at all by the processing programs that should’ve translated it into staticky, crackling emotion, and it hit Damus like a blunt object, leaving him venting frantically, mentally scrambling for purchase as his frame slumped to the floor.

So this is why nobody gets near him.   He hadn’t meant to think it, and he squashed the thought immediately, cramming it into the battered cardboard box in the back of his mind and forcing something else into its place.  That was a lot.   Yes.  That was a lot, and if it had been a lot for him he could only imagine how Soundwave was feeling right now.

How Soundwave was feeling right now appeared to be slightly stunned.  He sat, venting in controlled, slow breaths and staring off into nowhere.  “I-I’m sorry,” he whispered.  “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”  Damus felt a servo on his.  It trembled a little, but the touch was nice, and it gave him the strength to gather the scattered pieces of his mind and look up at his classmate.  Soundwave didn’t look at him, but he did squeeze Damus’s claw a little in acknowledgement.

“Your Ravage.”

“My Ravage.  She and Laserbeak and Buzzsaw… they care for me.  I am lucky .  I am not alone anymore.”

Maybe Damus didn’t want to know how Soundwave was feeling.  He tried not to begrudge the little mech anything—the whispers that swirled around the common area about who he was, what his powers were, where he’d been before he was here all made Damus’s own past seem almost cheery—but that overwhelming loneliness was still thick in his processor, and it whispered that he didn’t have anyone, nobody at all.   Damus squashed those thoughts too.  The box was getting crowded, but that was a problem for another time.  If this was outlier-related, they had to write up an incident report for Shockwave, letting him know what had happened and reassuring the Council that nobody was injured or badly emotionally scarred.  Primus above, the paperwork was going to be a nightmare…

“I will complete the paperwork.”

“What?”

“I will complete the paperwork .  Your lecture was enjoyable.  As a trade: I will spare you the task.”  Soundwave didn’t appear to be kidding, and Damus wasn’t about to argue if it meant he didn’t have to sit for hours writing this up, trying to phrase things just right to avoid any consequences on Shockwave’s part.  He tried to grin, the instinct to emote with his mouth not quite gone yet, then when his faceplates remained fixed, settled for a scrunch of his optic.  Nobody had done anything like that for him in a while , and the fact that Soundwave liked his rambling enough to pay him back for it?  That meant they could be friends, right?

A friend, Damus thought, would be really nice right about now.

Chapter Text

Shockwave looked up from his desk—currently littered with essays on Cybertronian mythology—at the soft knock on his door, and Soundwave noticed.  He stood, stretching his joints until they popped softly back into their proper places, and walked towards the front of his office, and Soundwave noticed.  He opened the door, lip plates curving upwards at the sight of the bot in front of him.

And.  Soundwave.  Noticed.

Shockwave, Laserbeak had snarked once, wasn’t actually that much taller than Soundwave when the two mechs stood back to back.  It was only Soundwave’s posture that made him seem so very tiny in comparison, not that he isn’t adorable, honestly I’d have to say I’d prefer babysitting this one over the Senator, but I can’t tell him that, the kid needs to learn to take insults and maybe actually stick up for himself—ow!  

Ravage had countered Laserbeak’s assertion with a gentle cuff to the bird’s head, Buzzsaw had countered it with a roll of his optics, and Soundwave had countered it with the thought that, no, that wasn’t true at all.  Shockwave had grace.  Poise.  That ineffable something that Soundwave, try as he might, couldn’t seem to summon.

“Social skills,” Laserbeak had replied through barely muffled laughter, and Soundwave had realized that he’d spoken out loud.

Still, it wasn’t like Laserbeak had been wrong.

After a nap and some Energon, Soundwave had felt well enough to talk to people other than his cassettes again.  This was not information Shockwave needed to know, but it was information that Shockwave received, and Soundwave, frustrated as he was at his vocalizer’s inability to shut up about unimportant details, ended up staring off into space and saying nothing at all for a couple of minutes as he tried to calm the background noise in his head.  Shockwave simply sat, helm tilted slightly.  This was helpful.

A few minutes passed, and Shockwave spoke.  “Are you here about your paper?  Peer review’s not till next week, but I thought you had an interesting line of reasoning with that point about cassette-carrying in early depictions of Primus—” He paused.  “Er.  Are you here about your paper?”

A shake of Soundwave’s helm.  “Negative.  Query: what topic was covered in lecture this morning?”

The question had what Ravage would’ve called a “predictable result.”  Shockwave began to speak very quickly, something about “endura” and “sparkbonding” and “linguistics,” which itself had the equally predictable result of Soundwave not catching more than a couple of words and feeling near-ready to lie down on the floor and cover his audio receptors.  Concern flooded his mouth.

Primus be damned, I did it again, and “Soundwave?  Are you alright?” with him too, he hears enough that I’d doubt he wants to listen to you ramble “You look a bit frightened…” particularly about love, you sentimental—

Soundwave got a bit of a break as Shockwave ex-vented, clearing his mind of thought more effectively than anyone Soundwave had met before.  How was he doing that?  His thoughts returned after a moment, but softer, less forceful, less crowded in Soundwave’s aching audio receptors.  It didn’t necessarily help —something else was always there to take its place—but it was nice.  He’d been learning to tune out the world, but trying to do the same to the internal voices of the bots around him always ended with him lost, falling off of the collective train of thought far before it ever reached the station, and he’d given up on being able to converse without the background noise.  So to have the volume turned down a little was, if imperfect, at least better than nothing.

Sometime in the past minute his servos had gone back to being firmly clamped over his audio receptors.  That didn’t help much either.  It did absolutely nothing for the constant deluge of outlier-mediated sound .  Still, it was soothing.  The pressure, the slight muffling of nearby sounds, not to mention the fact that it seemed to very reliably indicate to those around him that everything was too damn loud .  But Shockwave was looking at him and that same concern was flooding his every sense and it was time to take his hands off his audio receptors now, wasn’t it.

Ravage, Soundwave thought with no small amount of satisfaction, would be happy about this deduction, and would consider the interaction a solid “okay, that wasn’t so bad”.

Air whooshed over his internal fans as he vented to ground himself (another technique from Ravage!  Soundwave wasn’t quite sure where he’d gotten them all, but the catbot seemed to be an unending well of coping mechanisms).  He took one, two, three more beats before looking up into Shockwave’s face.

“I am well.  Continue.”

Shockwave blinked, optic ridges raising—confusion.  “Are—are you sure?  You can take another minute if you need, you seemed—”

“I am well .”  How was Soundwave going to be able to live in the world if he couldn’t hide his outlier?  School was different from anything he’d known before.  The bots here were nice, as nice as anyone outside his family had ever been; they stopped to help, asked are you alright, do you need help, do you want me to get Ravage for you?   The world outside wasn’t like that.

He’d have to leave here eventually, and when he did he had to be strong enough to hide what he was from the Functionists.

The doubt echoing from Shockwave’s mind didn’t settle, didn’t shift and flow into certainty, and Soundwave forced himself to meet the senator’s optics in a stare that lasted what felt like hours.  Shockwave broke the contact first and glanced at the wall.  He sighed internally, acquiescing.

“All right.  Would you like me to give you some readings?  You can look them over in your own time.”  I’m not about to subject him to another lecture, not after that.  Though maybe… “And would you be interested in coming to the seminar I’m holding tomorrow?  It’ll be mostly students from the larger academy, but I can save you a seat by the door so you can leave if you need to, and you can listen in.  I think you’d like it.”

Soundwave had a flash of intuition, echoes of memory from earlier in the day reverberating into the present.  He considered, chose his words, slotted the pieces of the sentence into place and wrangled it into the best shape he could.

“I…thank you.  Query: may I take a guest?  Damus spoke to me earlier.  He seemed intrigued by your lecture.  Conclusion: he would like to attend.”

Though Soundwave wasn’t looking anywhere near Shockwave—his gaze had drifted as he spoke, landing everywhere and nowhere as his processor ran full speed trying to converse—he could hear the warmth of the senator’s smile.

“Why, of course you may.  I think that would be lovely.”

Chapter Text

Damus had never been in the Academy’s lecture hall before.  It had taken him and Soundwave several minutes longer than it should’ve to find it—the hallways twisted in unexpected directions at this end of the building, and the maps were no use at all, and Soundwave had tried to stay calm but Damus could feel the upset building in him, hard to pin down or define as any conceivable emotion other than bad , but a more intense bad than Damus had felt in anyone else’s field, and the pair had eventually given up and asked the first grown bot they could see for help.  They’d claimed they were Academy students, and lost.  These were both technically true statements, and Damus had only gotten about two-thirds of a strange look before the bot decided the hassle wasn’t worth it and pointed them in the right direction.  Soundwave had beamed, thanking the stranger in a perfect imitation of Damus’s voice.  One of these days, he was going to have to explain how he did that; he’d used the trick a couple of times now, and Damus was really starting to wonder.

All this had done nothing to dampen his enthusiasm.  Damus wiggled a bit in his chair, trying to shake out some of his excess energy before the presentation started.  The corner the pair occupied was nearly empty, a setup which he suspected had been pre-arranged by Shockwave, and it left him with a strange mix of disappointment and relief.  Of course it was good to have space.  Nobody bumped into him, nobody sat too close or gave him that pitying, superior look that always came with the faintest hint of derision in their fields.  Nobody looked at him like he was something lesser, like his claws and sole optic proved it beyond a doubt.  And that was pleasant.

But at the same time, he felt different.  Set apart, marked, not necessarily for good or for bad, but nevertheless isolated from everyone who should’ve been his peers.  And it wasn’t like he didn’t feel that every minute of every day, but wouldn’t it be nice to be down there?  Laughing, talking, jocular as he waited for a presentation he was attending just to get some extra credit in class, rather than sitting up here in a section filled only with another outlier and praying that maybe this lesson would finally teach him how to find love.

Soundwave hummed softly beside him, servos folding the program he was holding into increasingly tiny shapes, and Damus remembered.  Down there would be loud, and tense with the awkwardness of getting bots he barely knew to like him, and Soundwave most certainly wouldn’t be sitting with him.  And Soundwave had invited him, hadn’t he?  He’d come up to Damus all flustered and energetic, had tried and failed to contain the sheer vibrating energy that might’ve been excitement and might’ve been nerves (it was impossible to tell), had jumped up and down when Damus accepted like the orange bot had just agreed to Conjunx him.  That had to count for something .  People, in Damus’s experience, didn’t usually walk up to him and invite him to seminars.  

“Damus: is not alone.”

“What?”  Soundwave hadn’t spoken much, and none of it in his own voice, since before they got lost.  That wasn’t particularly unusual behavior for him, and Damus was getting used to the pattern the two fell into of extended silence followed by cryptic non sequiturs, but this was unexpected even for him.

“Damus: is not alone .”  Soundwave paused, servos in front of him as he tried to find words.  “Many other students in our school… they feel as you do.  They—”  The lights dimmed, interrupting him, and a spotlight shone onto the auditorium stage.  Applause sounded from the rows as Shockwave stepped out.  He took his place behind the podium, shuffled papers around, cleared his throat.  Damus wondered idly whether the people closer to the stage could sense Shockwave’s field and tell his feelings, whether they could determine if he was frightened or confident or something else entirely.  Then he felt a not insubstantial pressure on his shoulder.

It was Soundwave, which was a relief.  If it hadn’t been, Damus wasn’t entirely sure what he would’ve done.  Shockwave hadn’t started his speech yet—he was still doing the requisite thank-you and the-generous-funding-of-so-and-so-makes-this-possible —so Damus twisted his neck to see his friend’s helm gently resting on the side of his shoulder.  If he’d still had faceplates that emoted, Damus was pretty sure his optic ridges would be scrunched in confusion, but he hadn’t figured out a way of expressing that confusion before Soundwave asked in a whisper, “Query: is this alright?”

Damus remembered how Soundwave would sometimes lean against Ravage when presentations or practice speeches in class ran long.  He gave a little nod.  “Yeah, that’s fine.  I’ve been told my shoulders make excellent pillows.”

Soundwave snorted, a bit louder than he probably meant to (thank Primus they were away from the crowd), and the alternating layers of tension and warmth in his EM field were punctuated with bright mirth.  “I have heard every interaction in this school.  Memory files: do not contain any such incident.  Damus: lying .”

He received a gentle swat at his head for that.  “Shush, or I’m revoking your shoulder privileges.”  Damus projected humor into his field to signal that this was a joke.  There wasn’t any of the subtle confirmation from Soundwave’s field that was standard for teasing, but the blue bot was shaking slightly with laughter.  Maybe Damus had missed it.  He invited you , he reminded himself.  He wants you here.   And the pricking unease was forgotten, or at least filed away for later, as Shockwave finally finished with the introductions and the two bots settled in to listen.

“The way I see it, we’re taught to yearn.  Think about it.  All the novels next to the checkout stand in the corner supermarket, all the drama-vids that come up on your datapad, even all the stories you’re told about Cybertron in your history class—what they have in common is they’re all about wanting things.  That sense of longing, of chasing, and if they’re happy stories, the feeling of finally catching whatever it is you yearn for.

“And, of course, nowadays all those narratives are about work.  Characters seek purpose and meaning and function, and they discover at the end that what they really needed was to realize their status: that of a cog in Cybertron’s great occupational machine.  Pretty standard stuff, and it makes for quite the inspiring message.  What I’ll bet you didn’t know, though, was that this is actually a fairly recent development.  Most of you in the audience today are pretty young, so I’ll forgive your oversight, but the old-timers in here might remember the time before Sentinel, back when all those books and videos and tales weren’t about work.  They were about our relationships .”

Damus was listening.  Obviously he was listening—he loved to hear about relationships and history and the way Cybertronian culture changed over time.  That was his favorite topic in class!  But a nagging part of his processor that he wished would shut off kept hitting his attention over the head with a metal pipe, handcuffing it, and dragging it over to the spot on his shoulder where Soundwave’s metal touched his.

“Do newsparks even get taught about Endurae nowadays?  I remember when I came online, I got a lesson about the basics.  I was told, oh, sometimes bots will meet someone they really want to make a commitment to, and if they’re old enough when that happens they can open their sparks to each other and that’s called an Endura bond.  Then whoever it was—it was either my mentor Jhiaxus or my health instructor, I can’t remember—talked a little about the different kinds of bond and the rituals associated with each one, and I remember at the time thinking it was all a bit boring.  But nowadays I teach a class where we read old literature, and I’ve had students completely baffled by characters referring to each other as Amicas.”

It wasn’t the buzzy, tingly chills that he got whenever Skids looked at him.  That was something else entirely, and Damus made a mental note to ask his new friend if he ever felt the same way about anyone.  But Damus’s frame ached to lean into the little mech, to pull him closer and put an arm around him.

“If you ask me, that’s concerning.  Of course, of course, I’m all for Sentinel’s leadership.  He’s done some great things for Cybertron, and his patronage is the reason this academy exists.  But I don’t know that I agree with his decision to focus solely on function and completely omit all other aspects of life.”

Primus, how long had it been since he’d had real contact?  Something that wasn’t a brush against him that pulled away as soon as the bot realized who they’d bumped into, or a handshake after a game, which Shockwave insisted on and that his classmates tried to get over with as quickly as physically possible?  Damus knew without calculating that nobody had held him since That Night, and even that didn’t really count.  Being restrained wasn’t a hug, even if he’d pretended it was one to try and stop his shaking.

“Because that’s what he’s done, really, particularly when it comes to the media.  Nine of the top ten holovids this year were workplace stories, and only two of them had major subplots featuring bonds between individuals rather than the sort of generic team bonding that usually gets brought up in these shows.”

But it had been like this before then too.  He didn’t like to think about that—he’d thought at first that his classmates were just worried about cutting themselves on his (admittedly overly sharp) claws, or bruising his newly sensitive frame.  But the cardboard box where he put all his fears knew the truth, and the truth was that once he told anyone about his outlier, they stopped wanting to be anywhere near him.

“That’s a detriment to us as a society, in my opinion.  Function is important, but it’s not everything.  The fact that all of Cybertron has had variations on Endura bonds, for the entirety of recorded history, suggests that there’s something about personal connection that’s necessary for our health, either as individuals or as a community.  Even cogs in a great machine are going to interact with some fellow cogs more than others.  Pretending social bonds aren’t important, in the long run, is going to do us more harm than good.”

Which was so unfair!   His outlier only applied to nonsentient machinery; he couldn’t deactivate a person if he tried.  It wasn’t his fault nobody in this school seemed to have any listening comprehension skills.

“Except for a couple of you, I’m not your teacher.  Yet despite that, I’m going to take the liberty of giving you a homework assignment.  It’s this: sit for a while, and think on the bots in your life who matter a lot to you.  Now, don’t go around Conjunxing anyone please—the Prime’s made it clear what he thinks of that, and I don’t want any of you getting in trouble.  But take a few minutes to consider the relationships that you find important.  Think of yourself, just for a bit, not as a cog in a machine, but a node in a web made of all the bots on Cybertron.  Because in that web are the people who love you.  The people whose lives you’ve touched, and who’ve touched your life.

“Any of you who are in my class, I won’t be formally grading you, but I doubly recommend you do this exercise.  Those of you who aren’t, I can only suggest you do.  But I think you’ll find the effort worth it.

“Thank you all so much for your time, and have a good rest of your day.  Enjoy the conference!  If you liked this speech, come find me at the snack bar—I love talking to people about my work.  The rest of you, hopefully I’ll see you around!”

Applause rang through the hall, more enthusiastic than when Shockwave had first walked out.  Soundwave flinched at the sudden noise, and Damus put his claw over the side of Soundwave’s helm that wasn’t squeezed against his plating.

“This okay?”

Soundwave nodded, and the two stayed like that, waiting a few minutes after everyone else had filed out to let their sparkbeats slow to normal and their audio receptors stop ringing.  Soundwave linked his arm through Damus’s, and together they stepped out into the bright of the hallway.

Chapter Text

The warmth was comforting.  It had been hard to find real, proper warmth through most of Ravage’s life—either the light of Cybertron’s star shone too brightly and baked his black-painted frame, or the chills of wind and weather set in, forcing his internal engine to run double speed and burn twice the fuel or risk shutdown.  And Soundwave had brought oh-so-much light to Ravage’s life, but he’d certainly made finding enough Energon for the family more difficult.  It was a trade Ravage would’ve made a thousand times over, and he tried not to make the little bot feel guilty about it, but it was the truth.

So Ravage was willing to ignore the unease in his spark, the feeling that something wasn’t quite right and everything was going to crash down around his family.  Because here it was warm, and safe, and fuel was reliable.  And Soundwave had someone who could teach him how to really thrive, not just survive the way Ravage could.  And that didn’t hurt at all, not one bit.  It wasn’t like he’d lost him.

It was warm here.  That was what mattered.

Ravage was dozing, asleep in a patch of weak afternoon sunlight, and Soundwave stepped carefully so as not to wake his friend.  His outlier was unobtrusive.  A glance at him and you’d never guess that every sound in the cosmos filtered through his audio receptors—even in the middle of a meltdown, it was hard to tell him from any other bot with sensory processing issues, and Primus knows there were a lot of those on Cybertron.  So he and his cassettes had been assigned one of the exterior rooms, where any passing bot that glanced in would see a quiet domestic sensory meltdown rather than someone, say, teleporting or generating a force field.  And that meant they had nice high windows that let in the light.

Soundwave slumped against the ground, lying with his back to Ravage’s in the warmth.  They’d draped blankets over most of the furniture upon moving in, muffling some of the echoes and making the room soft and quiet.  Even the endless chatter of the birds’ minds seemed somehow gentler here.  Ravage stirred, arcing his back in a stretch, the edges of his plating poking into Soundwave’s.  His mind pulled itself up from the depths of silent recharge, and Soundwave heard his nose twitch as he registered the bot curled next to him.

“Mmmm…g’morning, little one,” Ravage murmured.  Soundwave leaned his helm back against Ravage’s, closing his optics.  “How was your assembly?  Is Shockwave as insufferably nerdy in front of a crowd as he is in class?”

Quantifying nerdiness was not a task Soundwave’s processor felt up to at the moment, so he ignored Ravage’s questions and posed his own.

“Query: what is an Endura?”

That got a reaction.  Ravage sat bolt upright, knocking Soundwave off his side and onto the floor.  His helm whipped around to face the little bot, frame freezing into a protective posture that took only an eighth-note beat to decode.  Soundwave tasted the cassette’s fear, sickly sweet like bad Energon and just as distressing.

“What did he do, Soundwave?  Did he say anything?  Was this something from his processor or did he actually ask you something?” swear to Primus if he gets near Soundwave again I’ll put his optic out, see if I won’t, just see

“Who?”  Had Soundwave missed something?  This was an unusual response for his friend, and he added it to the quickly growing list of things that confused him about these so-called Endura bonds .  Anything that made Ravage this agitated was not to be trusted, he’d learned that a long time ago.

“That little orange bot that you went with.  The Empurata-ed one.  Damus, that’s his name?  What did he do? ” tell me he didn’t propose, please, any of you gods that are out there if any of you cover relationships then TELL ME he didn’t, Soundwave doesn’t need another target on his back—

This conversation was not going ideally.  Soundwave decided to try again.  Maybe with more context this time.  “Endura bonds.  Shockwave mentioned them in the talk.  Soundwave: confused.  So, query: what are they?”

Ravage’s frame visibly relaxed, and Soundwave heard him mentally thanking the gods.  He put his servo next to one of those black paws, close enough to request contact without actually initiating a touch, and Ravage settled into his side, giving a little huff of relief.

“Can you pick up anything about them from my mind?  Or any of the other minds out there?”  This earned him a scowl from Soundwave.  Sometimes Ravage’s admonitions to practice his outlier got exhausting.  He meant well, Soundwave suspected, and he had to admit it was nice to be able to pick up necessary background for a classmate’s statement without having to ask.  It certainly meant he stayed on the Group Conversation Collective Train of Thought more often.  But Ravage of all bots knew that when Soundwave came to him with a question it was because crowdsourcing the answer didn’t or wouldn’t work.

“Soundwave: tired .  Information requested in verbal format for a reason .”  He hoped Ravage wasn’t disappointed.  It wasn’t entirely Soundwave’s fault he didn’t have the same level of processing stamina that Ravage did.  The catbot had cycles upon cycles more practice dealing with his own outlier, and Soundwave had only recently mastered going to all his classes without then becoming so exhausted that he snapped at anyone who tried to talk to him.  He deserved a break once in a while.

Buzzsaw, who was very obviously listening in from across the room, brought his internal monologue to the forefront of his processor, thinking as loudly as he could: ENDURA BONDS ARE A RELATIONSHIP FORMED WHEN—

Soundwave made the mistake of allowing his optics to unfocus even more than they usually did as he tuned into his cassette’s thoughts, which triggered another huffing noise from Ravage.  “Buzzsaw, I know what you’re doing.  Calm down, I’ll tell him.  Or if you’re so invested in making sure he’s informed, you can come join us.”  A pause as Buzzsaw considered the offer, and then his wings whooshed through the air, detouring to grab a pillow before soaring towards Laserbeak (currently settled in one of the blanketed chairs) and pecking them gently.

“Hey.  ‘Beak.  Laserbeak.  Wake up, Soundwave doesn’t know what Endurae are and we get to tell him.”

“Go the frag away.  I’m sleeping .”

“Not anymore you aren’t.  Get up.  You can nap after we make sure the bitty knows how to not get himself sparked.”

“...he can’t even do that, Buzzsaw.  That is literally a lost function in our species.  And I’m pretty sure Soundwave’s not an ancient demigod, or he would’ve told us.”  But Laserbeak rose, stretching their wing joints with soft pops and shaking out their neck, then grabbing another pillow and bringing it over to where Ravage and Soundwave sat.  “Can’t believe you don’t know what those are, though.  I assumed Shockwave had talked about them at length, we all know how he is.”  Ravage batted Laserbeak’s helm gently, stop being mean, we want Soundwave to grow up with manners , but didn’t disagree.

“Anyways,” Ravage continued, “Endura bonds are like… when you love someone a lot, but not in a family kind of way like we do.  If it’s romantic, you call it a Conjunx bond, and if it’s friendship it’s called an Amica bond.” how the hell did nobody teach him about this?  Surely if he had any caregiver at all they would’ve at least told him the basics, and it’s not like he can’t remember other facts about culture, so it can’t be his amnesia causing it

Soundwave looked away from Buzzsaw’s talon, which he’d been inspecting while Ravage talked, and pressed the back of one of his servos to his lip plating for comfort.  He didn’t like to think about the fact that he couldn’t remember much of anything before meeting the cassettes.  Shockwave said it was normal, that most Cybertronians didn’t have strong memories of a good long while after their creation, and that the chaos Soundwave’s processor had been in when he and his family first met suggested that the overwhelm of his outlier “wasn’t conducive to memory file formation”.  But it still made him uneasy to think that his own processor had kept information from him.

Ravage must’ve noticed his discomfort, because recognition blinked on in his mind and he nudged Soundwave’s shoulder.  “Sorry, kitten.  I promise, it’s not your fault you don’t know this stuff.  You deserve better teachers than us and that senator and whoever did that half-assed job of raising you.”

“Ravage: forgiven,” Soundwave said, coaxing his unwieldy vocalizer into tonal modulation to ensure Ravage knew he’d done nothing in need of forgiveness.  At the same time, guilt twisted in the pit of his spark—he didn’t like forcing his friends to monitor their thoughts, even as a part of him was grateful they did.  “Request: continue description?”

“That’s all I really know about it, honestly.  Laserbeak?  Buzzsaw?  Either of you got anything?”

Laserbeak, as usual, did have something to add.  “It’s not just about loving someone a lot.  You can care about someone, the way some bots do with celebrities, and not be their Endura.  The bonds are meant to signify devotion, willingness to put in the work it takes to fit another person into your life.  Plus there’s rituals, though those differ depending on what part of Cybertron you’re in.  I think here in Iacon the big part of both rituals is sparkbonding, but to be honest you’ll have to ask Shockwave if you want to know more, because that’s all I’ve got.”  They paused, considering.  “Or that little orange friend of yours, I guess.  I ran into him once when I got lost trying to find your classroom and he seemed really enthused, kinda like how you get about music.  He probably has lots of information.”

“Hm,” said Soundwave, because a good “hm” was the foundation of half of small talk, and while Ravage had sat him down once and told him never to feel like he had to force social niceties around him and Laserbeak and Buzzsaw, Soundwave had decided it was good to practice on occasion.  “Further query: do I have to form an Endura bond?”  

He started to mentally sort through the bots he knew, trying to decide who he’d be willing to share his life with.  The only ones he really liked being around were Damus and Shockwave, so they could be his Amicas if he was allowed to have two.  As for a Conjunx Endura, maybe Thundercracker.  Damus had extremely loud thoughts regarding his and Skids’s future together, so he was out as an option.  Skywarp was liable to snap at anyone who he considered annoying, and Windcharger and Trailbreaker were both very friendly and probably deserved life partners who could handle social events.  So Thundercracker was definitely the bot he was most compatible with in terms of personality.  Soundwave distinctly hoped he would not be forced to choose a Conjunx.  The whole business seemed unpleasant for everyone except the lovestruck.  And, judging by the anxiety and swooning that comprised a scary amount of Damus’s mind, it was probably significantly uncomfortable for the lovestruck as well.

He was yanked out of his musing by a wall of deadly seriousness emanating from the minds of the three cassettes, who were all staring at him with thoughts that resembled nothing so much as the phrase what the actual fuck.   Ravage spoke first.

“Soundwave.  Listen to me, okay?”  Unfair.  Soundwave was listening, always, which was the whole reason he was even at this damn school in the first place.  Sadly, Ravage did not pause long enough for him to raise this objection.  “For one, Sentinel’s currently working on banning bonds, so in a very literal sense no.  You are in fact actively discouraged, at least by the government, from forming them.”  He pawed softly at his face, squishing his audial frames down and forward.  Discomfort, maybe?  He certainly sounded upset—his vocalizer stuttered like there was something stuck in it.

“Hey.”  Buzzsaw pecked softly at Ravage’s face.  “It’s alright, you can cry if you need to.  I’m excellent at talking, let me give him the acceptance spiel.”  Ravage batted him away gently, brushing his own optics.

“Nah, I’ve got it.  It’s just, y’know…”

“Yeah.  Y’know.”  There was a soft bonk noise as Buzzsaw put the top of his helm to Ravage’s side, and Soundwave was definitely missing some context there but he filed it as unimportant for now.

“Anyhow.  Kid.  This is important.”  Ravage was back to looking him in the face, so Soundwave tilted his helm for I’m listening .  “You don’t have to have any relationship you don’t want ever , okay?  You don’t ever feel romantically about someone and don’t Conjunx-bond?  That’s chill.  You have fifteen Amicas and three Conjunxes?  Also fine as long as you all stay safe from the government.  You don’t make any Endura bonds, live in an apartment with us, and have Skywarp as a roommate?  I will question why you chose Skywarp specifically but I will also help you move him in.  Ok?  We’ve got your back, no matter what.  Tell me you understand.”

“Understood.”  But it still wasn’t normal for Ravage to be this intense.  He only did that when something was wrong.  “Query: what is causing your distress?”

“Oh, kid, ” Buzzsaw said with a sigh.

“We didn’t want to put this on you now.”

“We wouldn’t have had to if you two could keep your beaks shut long enough for me to tell him it’s nothing he should worry about.”  Ravage’s voice was laced with frustration that Soundwave sensed was misdirected.  He would’ve just read their minds about it anyways and found out in a couple of solar cycles.

“Query,” Soundwave interrupted.  “What happened ?”

“It’s the Prime, Soundwave.  The birds and I were down the hall and we overheard someone talking about his new policy—it’s more of the same, all that function-before-anything-else scrap he spews anytime someone lets him near a microphone.  But Sentinel…he’s all worked up about cassette carriers, says it’s ‘dangerous to allow them to form attachments to beastformers’ or something, which is fragging ridiculous, it’s literally in your programming to do cassette symbiosis.  Even by functionism’s logic you should be encouraged to find and create cassettes.  It’s what your alt-mode’s built for , for Primus’s sake.  But no, he wants his perfect cogs in his perfect machine and that means no bonds or personal relationships or anything at all.  So, bam, new policy, and sure it’s just a statement from the Senate discouraging bots like us from daring to have a damn family , but we all know Sentinel, and we all know he’s gonna try and make something of it.”

So much for nothing for Soundwave to worry about.  This seemed like something he should worry a lot about, actually.

“Follow-up: will he try to take me away from you?”

“Not now, I don’t think so.  He doesn’t really know you exist, there are more prominent bots with your frametype in the media right now and I think he’ll focus on them first if he does make a move.  Not to mention Shockwave did promise to protect all the students here from any shit he pulls, though I don’t know how much I trust him.  But if all else fails we’ll do what we always do.  Run, hide, survive.  He’ll have to kill us to get us to leave you, and we’ll fight that every step of the way.  It’ll be alright, I promise.  It just…might have to be alright in a place that’s not here, if it comes to that.”  None of that seemed right .  There was an instinct in the back of Soundwave’s processor, one that he ignored most of the time, and it was saying that none of this was how it should be, all this fighting to survive and shoving anyone and anything in the path between themselves and danger just to gain a few extra moments of quiet.  But, at the same time…

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“I don’t want to leave you either, Soundwave.”  Ravage’s voice wobbled again, and as the birds murmured their assent he moved closer until he and Soundwave were side by side.  Soundwave scratched behind his ears.  Laserbeak and Buzzsaw moved to perch on Soundwave’s shoulders.  “You and Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, you’re the best things that happened to me.  I–I love you all.”

I love you too , Soundwave thought.  No words came out—his vocalizer didn’t want to cooperate, and he thought he might cry if he tried to speak, so he leaned in closer and put his arms around his friends.  They sat like that for a long moment, silent as the afternoon faded out and the remaining sun from their room’s high windows slowly dissipated into night.

Chapter Text

Soundwave had seemed down for a few days now.  He wasn’t exactly the most emotive bot to begin with, aside from the occasional bursts of feeling in his field so strong they almost knocked Damus off his pedes, but he did have a baseline level of happy curiosity underneath the constant overstimulation, and it was currently very hard to detect.  Damus had been concerned at first that he’d done something wrong.  Usually when people’s EM fields got distant and tangly and don’t-come-in-ish, it was because he’d done something wrong.  But he’d thought about that possibility in Soundwave’s presence one too many times, it seemed, because Soundwave had looked at him with surprise and said that wasn’t the case at all, that he was upset about “political things regarding that spawn of pit-mice and rust Sentinel Prime,” and that being with Damus actually made it better.

And so Damus had taken it upon himself to cheer Soundwave up.  This consisted largely of collecting fun facts and interesting gossip to distract him with—he’d asked Shockwave the day before for advice on how to help a friend who was going through a tough time.

“Oh, information sharing for sure!” Shockwave had responded.  “Trivia about topics I like always makes me feel bett—wait, who are you referring to?”

“Soundwave?” Damus thought that was rather obvious.  He really only had one friend.

Shockwave blinked.  “Yeah, that’ll work.  Turns out not everyone likes being told cool facts as a response to emotional distress.  I learned that yesterday.  But Soundwave likes information, so you should be fine.  Wait, is everything alright?  Why’s he upset?  Is this something I can help with?  I can talk to the other bots and try to mediate if there’s some sort of interpersonal thing going on.”

“Nope!  No interpersonal thing, I think he’s just having a bit of a rough patch, thanksfortheadvicebye!” Shockwave had to file papers for so many things—injuries, fights, outlier incidents—that he was probably required to report any dissatisfaction with Sentinel’s regime.  No way was Damus letting Soundwave get in trouble.

So he’d collected all the gossip he could, put it in an imaginary bucket covered with an imaginary tablecloth and hidden under an imaginary broken refrigerator in the back of his mind, and hoped that was enough of a ward to keep Soundwave from knowing about it before Damus had the chance to tell him.  Gossip was the most fun when it was a surprise, after all.  And it seemed to work; when Damus flopped beside Soundwave as dramatically as he could and asked, “Did you hear about the Family Day drama?  Apparently things are happening,” Soundwave blinked and said that no, he had not, and did Damus want to tell him about it?

“Ok, so here’s the scoop.  You know how the Academy at large has a Family Day program coming up?  Where everyone gets to bring in their mentors and siblings and whoever to look at what they’ve been doing in class for the last few semesters?  Well, Skywarp and Thundercracker got in a whole fight with Shockwave because they want their trinemate to come visit.”

“Query: trinemate?” Soundwave asked.  “Define.”

“Oh, I had to look it up too, don’t worry.  It’s kinda obscure.  A trinemate’s not quite a split-spark twin, but not quite an Amica either.  The datapad I read said it’s sort of a symbiosis thing, almost like you and your cassettes but also not, and they’re all created at the same time instead of finding each other the way you guys did.  Anyway, theirs is named Starscream, and apparently he hasn’t got any outlier powers, so he doesn’t go here.  But he already knows that TC and Skywarp are part of the outlier sub-school, so they said what’s the harm in him coming?  Except Shockwave doesn’t want him to.  He says the more bots who know about this school the more likely it is word will get out, and then we’re screwed, so he doesn’t want anyone to visit.  I don’t know, though.  I think it’d be nice to get to meet some new people.  Plus it’s gotta be kind of lonely for Starscream, being all by hims—”

“Starscream?”  Frag.  That was Thundercracker’s voice.  Had he been listening in this whole time?  “How in the Pits do you know who Starscream is, and why are you talking about him?”

“Someone’s angry,” Soundwave muttered.  Damus didn’t need the verbal confirmation—he could feel Thundercracker’s EM field, obfuscated only slightly by the pinching sensation he’d come to associate with a uniquely Soundwave nervousness.  He moved to his best defensive position.  His best defensive position happened to be a rather friendly and open stance, because Shockwave had told the class once that the best defense was a good offense, and the best offense comes when your opponent thinks you’re on their side.

“Hi Thundercracker!  We were just talking about the Family Day stuff.  I think it’s super unfair that Shockwave doesn’t want Starscream coming.  Like, we’re part of the Academy too, we should get to do the same traditions as everyone else.”  This was not strictly a lie.  Damus was just, er, presenting his beliefs in a way that would make Thundercracker feel more comfortable.  Better to do that than to drive him off with badly-timed moral debates, right?  Primus knows Damus started enough of those in class.

His gamble paid off.  Thundercracker’s wings lowered as hostility drained from his field.  Soundwave’s field calmed in response, and Thundercracker sat down beside the pair.  

“That’s what I thought too,” he said.  “It’s just, I know safety and whatever is important, but it’s not like we can’t hide our outliers for a day.  I haven’t seen him in forever, and he’s family!  Don’t you guys wish your families could visit too?”

“No,” said Soundwave.  Damus gave him a look, which he resolutely ignored.

“Right.”  Thundercracker smacked his forehelm gently with one of his servos.  “I forgot, your family lives here.  But you’d miss them if they didn’t, right?”  There was no malice to his voice, just a little bit of envy.

“Affirmative.  Family: should not be separated like this.  You must miss Starscream a great deal.”

“...Yeah.  I do.”

There was an awkward pause as Thundercracker nodded, wiping at his optics, before turning to Damus and asking in a soft voice, “How about you?  You got any family who might come by?”

By now, this was officially the longest conversation Damus and Thundercracker had ever had outside of scheduled academic debates, so Damus had to take a moment to wonder whether he should say anything, or if that would be oversharing.  The moment allotted for thinking passed way too quickly, and his vocalizer started up before his processor could put on the brakes.  

“No, none.  I…I had a mentor for a while when I was younger, pretty standard for the area I grew up in.  But then my powers started manifesting, and he took me to one of the clinics to try and see if they could do anything for me, and somehow the Senate caught wind of it.  Few days later, he was making Energon for me because I couldn’t work the dispenser without breaking it anymore, when these bots—Enforcers, I think—burst in and grabbed me, and, well.”  He gestured at his frame.  “This happened.  After all the surgeries were done they just kinda tossed me into the middle of the city, and eventually Shockwave found me.  I didn’t see my mentor again.  I don’t blame him.  He didn’t have any way of knowing where they took me, and it’s not like he asked for any of this.”  

Damus didn’t add that, despite his kindness, his mentor had been weird in the days after finding out about his outlier.  Not cruel outright, but distant.  He’d done a thousand little tasks and tried to help all he could, and maybe he didn’t even realize he was doing it, but Damus had ached to be hugged and comforted and held tight like it was going to be okay, and his mentor just…hadn’t.

But they didn’t need to know that.

“Bullshit,” Thundercracker said.  “Doesn’t matter if he knew you were going to be an outlier or not.  He chose to be your mentor, and that means he’s not allowed to just up and not look for you the minute things get difficult.  That’s not what someone who actually cared would’ve done.  He’s a piece of scrap, pardon my language, and maybe you should do one of those fancy criminal sketches of him so if I see him I can punch his stupid faceplates.”

Soundwave murmured assent.  He’d put his helm onto Damus’s shoulder in a pose the two were starting to find very familiar, and was stroking one of his claws soothingly.  Damus swiped at his optic with the other claw, and changed the subject.

“It’s—it’s fine.  I’m fine.  Can we talk about something else, though?”

“Yeah, sure.” Thundercracker’s face and field were clouded with concern, but he didn’t press the issue.  “Uh…did you hear about the fight in the dining hall today?  That’s actually why I’m over here in the first place—I didn’t want to get punched, and Skywarp had already teleported out, so it wasn’t like I had anyone to back me up if I got involved.”

“I was unaware of the fight.” It was becoming rapidly clear that Soundwave was much more interested in drama than he had previously let on.  

“Oh, it was a whole thing,” Thundercracker said.  “I think Skids and Trailbreaker were talking about those economic papers they’re trying to work on, and either someone wasn’t doing enough work or someone was being overcontrolling, ‘cause next thing I know they’re snarling at each other, and then a table got knocked over and all hell broke loose.  I think one of your birds was there—you should ask them about it.”

Damus had stopped moping at this description, and looked up excitedly into Thundercracker’s face.  “Skids was there?  Is he okay?  Would he perchance be amenable to having someone who wasn’t there come and check in on him?”  

“Uhhhhhhhh…” Thundercracker had evidently not been prepared for these questions.  “Maybe?  Why do you care?  Isn’t he the one who’s mean to you all the time?”

“That’s Skywarp,” Damus replied.  The look Thundercracker shot him made him instantly regret his words, but it was the truth.  Skids wasn’t mean!  He was just a little prickly sometimes.  And he had kind of a dry wit that could be interpreted as mocking.  And he flinched whenever Damus got near him or made too sudden of movements.  But that was normal!  Everyone did that, and besides, nobody was perfect.  Skywarp was the only bot in the academy whose behavior to Damus actually crossed over into bullying territory.

And if Skids got a pass because Damus thought he was Primus’s most physically perfect creation?  Well, nobody had to know that.

The choked laugh that emanated from Soundwave at that thought reminded Damus that one very nosy telepath did in fact have to know that, but hopefully he wouldn’t tell anyone.  It wasn’t like Soundwave found romance that interesting anyways—he was much more partial to stories about the hijinks of the bots in the outer Academy, or about who was developing what talents with their outliers.  With any luck, he wouldn’t say anything about it.

Still musing about Skids, Damus snapped back to the present as Thundercracker’s field flared with guilt.

“I really am sorry about him.  It’s just, he misses Starscream, and he never asked for any of this.  I’m the one who suggested we come to the Academy, you know.  If it wasn’t for me, Skywarp would’ve probably just suppressed his outlier and tried to go about as part of normal society, and he would’ve been miserable but he still thinks sometimes that it would’ve been better than this.  And then he goes and takes it all out on you.”

“It’s fine,” Damus said.  This was quite a gracious statement, in his opinion.  His shoulder still smarted from being shut in a door earlier that day.  But it made the guilt in Thundercracker’s field fade a little bit, which made Damus himself feel less uneasy.  “Here, why don’t you go and check on Skywarp?  And I’ll go check on Skids, and Soundwave can—”

“Soundwave: can wait for Damus to provide post-fight debriefing.”  Clearly someone didn’t want to deal with a bunch of irritable bots.  “Best of luck with your reconciliations.  Operation: isolation.”

He got up, gave a short nod, then left for what Damus assumed was his room.  Thundercracker watched him go before turning back to Damus with a field suffused in awkwardness.

“Errrr, Damus?  Weird question.  Do you have a crush on Skids?”

If he’d still had his old face, he’d be a tomato with blushing.  “No.  Maybe.  I don’t—I don’t think that’s relevant, actually.”

“Oh, okay.  Well, if hypothetically you did, and hypothetically you wanted him to like you, I would actually recommend not going and talking to him right at this moment?  He’s kinda snappy.  ‘Cause, you know.  Got in a fight in the cafeteria.  And I’ve watched so many romance holovids and usually in them people have their biggest, most relationship-ruining arguments when one of them is stressed.  Like Skids is now.”  

He paused.  “Hypothetically.”

Considering this, Damus was forced to admit that trying to talk to Skids would probably do more harm than good.  “You’re probably right.  I’ll give him a day or two, let him cool off, then check in.  Not because I like him or anything.  Just because that’s what good people do.”

Thundercracker nodded, lip plates pressed together and fizzing with mirth.  “Mmhm.  Yeah.  You do that, that sounds like an excellent plan.”

Something about this moment, whether it was the camaraderie or the more-or-less-mutual trust or the fact that Thundercracker now knew several things about Damus that very few others did, made him feel sort of warm and bubbly inside.  A general sense of goodwill towards his fellow Cybertronians filled him, and he fought back the instinct to hug Thundercracker goodbye.  Instead, he spoke.

“I hope Skywarp’s alright.  Maybe the two of us don’t always get along, but he seems like he’s a good person at spark.”  Stretching the truth was okay when you were trying to be kind, right?  “And I really hope Starscream gets to come over for Family Day.  It’d be nice to meet him.”

As he got to his pedes, Thundercracker smiled.  “Thanks.  That really means a lot.”  He reached out a servo to help Damus up, and Damus froze.   It had seemed to be an instinctual gesture, but he wasn’t pulling away.  He was just there, offering a servo.

Damus took it.  Pulled himself to his pedes, and with all his might shoved the instinct to give a shaky smile into his EM field where Thundercracker could read the emotion.

Thundercracker just smiled some more, and as Damus walked back to his own dormitory quarters, he replayed the interaction over and over.  Could it be?  Was it possible?

For Primus’s sake, if making friends was actually as easy as just sharing things about yourself, Damus was going to murder Shockwave for not telling him that sooner.