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Perceptor would consider himself pretty, well, perceptive. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have noticed how oddly Brainstorm was acting. Odder than normal, at least.
Currently, the crew had stopped at an organic planet to stock up on fuel, and Rodimus had given them the go ahead to explore for a few hours. They’d landed in a massive city, on a planet that seemed to have gone more or less unnoticed by the war. It was a fascinating place, and he’d have been a lot more curious about it if his lab partner wasn’t taking up most of his thoughts at the moment.
Brainstorm took over his mind frustratingly often. The mech just had something about him, like he was a puzzle that would reveal the secrets of the universe if solved.
But back to the present.
The mech was pretty well known for being spontaneous and chaotic, seeming to well and truly believe that nothing was out of the realm of possibility, and that everyone should know about it. However, it seemed like Brainstorm had been stepping back from that role. Where he was once always willing to—demanding to, would probably be more fitting—take up Perceptor’s time and space, recently the mech had been a lot more…skittish. He was quick to leave the room whenever Perceptor entered, and rarely even entered the lab when he was there.
He missed his lab partner’s presence, as much as he hadn’t expected himself to.
He confronted Drift about it, as they were leaving the ship. Drift had been standing next to his conjunx, and Perceptor had felt a bit guilty about pulling him away. Still, the scientist trusted him perhaps more than any other mech on the ship.
“Drift, have you noticed Brainstorm acting oddly lately?”
He’d expected Drift to at most agree with him, or at least say he didn’t pay much attention to Brainstorm.
What he didn’t expect was for Drift to pause, finals flicking back before he could stop them. Perceptor had been his friend long enough to know what that meant.
“You know something.”
Drift froze, glancing to where Brainstorm was talking animatedly to Cyclonus, all wild gestures. Much more friendly than he’d been with Perceptor for the last couple weeks. Drift looked back, finals pressed almost to his helm.
“I don’t know anything.”
“Drift, you are the worst liar in this universe, you know something.”
The swordsmech sighed, fidgeting with his servos. “I can’t tell you. He asked me not to.”
Well, that raised more questions than answers. “What do you mean ‘he asked you to?’ What in the stars would either of you have to keep from me?” Drift just seemed to cower a bit, but any guilt was overridden by his pure confusion.
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I can’t ask—” Perceptor sighed. “I should ask him. I don’t know why I haven’t yet.”
“Alright, but…just give him a chance, yeah?”
“I’ve given him two weeks worth of—fine. I’ll give him tonight. And if he doesn’t fess up to whatever you two are planning, I’ll make him.”
Drift smiled, soft despite the glimmer of mischief in his optics.
“Oh trust me, it was all his idea.”
…
About half an hour later, Perceptor found himself walking down the city streets, Brainstorm and a few other crew members at his side.
Tailgate was chattering away, only pausing for Rewind to point out an interesting structure or other unique to this planet. Both of their conjunxes followed behind, Cyclonus keeping an eye out for anything that could be perceived as a threat and Chromedome checking their location on a datapad. That just left Brainstorm and him.
Something about the arrangement bugged him, but it wasn’t exactly annoyance. He wasn’t sure what to feel, actually.
Instead, he busied himself with watching his lab partner. He shined in the planet’s sun, glimmering off of his plating like light off of seawater. Brainstorm was chattering away, one servo gripped in Perceptor’s and the other pointing out cool landmarks.
“Hey, look!” Brainstorm announced, gesturing to a street sign decorated with arrows. It had a variety of languages on it, but written clearly on it in Cybertronian was “Westside Market,” pointing in a different direction than wherever they had been going. “Why don’t we go? I still need something.”
Before Perceptor could ask what in the stars Brainstorm needed, Tailgate interrupted. “Oh! We totally should!” He grabbed onto Cyclonus’ servo, already dragging the mech away. The other bots followed, Perceptor pondering to himself. A litany of questions battled in his processor, chief among them being if this was connected to whatever his lab partner was planning. It was clearly something important, or Drift wouldn’t have bothered lying about it.
The six of them walked into the market, surrounded by rows of stalls and salesfolk. It was rather crowded as well, all sorts of alien beings perusing the shops.
Perceptor was just about to point out a stall selling cloth—he knew his lab partner did find organic materials fascinating—when he paused. He just barely caught a glimpse of Brainstorm’s optics lighting up, the protoform around them crinkling in what he had long figured out was a grin. “I’ll be right back folks, one moment!” And he was off, disappearing into the crowd. Perceptor glanced at the others. None of them seemed particularly concerned, but none of them knew Brainstorm as well as he did.
Okay, well, that didn’t mean much. He wasn’t really concerned anyway, still as confused as he had been.
“Soooooo…” Rewind interrupted, looking far too pleased with himself considering he didn’t have an expression. “How’s it goin’ with Brainstorm?”
Chromedome snapped out “Rewind!” which was probably more damning than anything the minibot could’ve said. Something had to be going on, something that was worth Rewind and Chromedome knowing about. But even if this was more confirmation, he was still at square one of not knowing what was happening.
“Well, I’m not sure. He’s been acting strangely lately. I don’t suppose any of you would know what that’s about?”
Tailgate glanced at his conjunx, then back at Perceptor. “We don’t know anything that’s going on!”
Tailgate was a great liar, but Rewind wasn’t helping. “Come on, Domey! He’s hopeless!” He practically sang. “We’ve gotta help a poor bot out!”
“Help me out with what?”
“Nothing.” Chromedome snapped, before continuing a bit more calmly. “If you really don’t know, then we shouldn’t be the ones to tell you. Brainstorm will tell you when he’s ready.”
“Fine.” Perceptor sighed. He had told Drift he’d give Brainstorm tonight, and he was a mech of his word. “Do you at least know what he was grabbing?”
“Nope!” Tailgate said cheerfully. “But you should totally get him something while we’re here!”
Okay, maybe that wasn’t the worst idea in the world. He had been eyeing that fabric earlier, after all.
At his request, the group made their way over to the stall, where a fluffy organic was selling various fabric pieces and blankets. Perceptor had never seen the appeal of anything other than metal, but Brainstorm had adamantly stood by the fact that they were superior to anything Cybertronian made.
It was going well so far. He’d walked up to the shop, the owner had greeted him more friendly than most other organics would, and she’d shown off her finest options.
But then he found himself torn.
He’d like to think he knew his lab partner pretty well. They’d worked together, fought together, nearly died together. He’d helped save Brainstorm from his trial, Brainstorm had saved his life multiple times in turn.
And now he had no idea what blanket to get him.
It was ridiculous, frankly. Had it been any other mech, he wouldn’t have given it much of a second thought. But with Brainstorm, it was as if the whole of Cybertron rested on this choice.
“Rewind, do you think Brainstorm will like this one?” He asked, holding up a red blanket with a swirling pattern. Brainstorm had mentioned it was his favorite color.
Rewind had left his conjunx temporarily to explore the stall with Perceptor, camera recording as he examined the fabrics.
“Isn’t he your lab partner, like, every day of the week? And also your boyfriend?” Rewind said it so casually, as if it were a fact of the universe. As if it was a simple truth that everyone but Perceptor seemed to know.
“What.”
“Oh, did you not think we knew? Sorry, it’s really obvious. Like, painfully so. It was like that with me and Domey for a while, you know, where we hadn’t revealed it yet but every mech around could tell.”
“…How so?”
Rewind paused his search, looking up to make visor contact with Perceptor. And, much to his mild horror, he began to count out points on his digits. “Well, for one, you’re closer to him than anyone else. By a lot. You don’t even let Drift touch you, but I’ve seen Brainstorm pick you up. You wouldn’t think he’d have that kind of strength.”
Perceptor could recall that memory, or at least the one Rewind was likely referring to. Their additions to the ship’s engines had been a critical success in saving fuel and reducing stress on the motors. Upon determining that they had, in fact, worked, Brainstorm had grabbed him and spun him around in a grand hug. He’d been a bit embarrassed, considering it was in front of several important crew members, but he’d been just as happy as Brainstorm at the success.
Of course, that was just the only time that it had happened in public, but he was trying to stay on track.
“Two, you care about him. You wouldn’t be out here tearing yourself apart over organic material if you didn’t. Last I heard, you didn’t like them.” Okay, that was a fair point. He really found organics pretty in their own unique way, but had never been able to stand the textural differences, not to mention how quickly they died.
“Three,” Rewind pointed an accusatory finger at Perceptor as he spoke, “you look at him as if he’s the sun! It’s reverence! You barely spare a glance for anyone else, on the walk here, you were just watching him. I’ve never seen a pair of mecha more in love.” Rewind crossed his arms, obvious in his victory.
Perceptor, meanwhile, was having perhaps the worst crisis of his life.
Oh Primus.
“I think I’m in love with Brainstorm.”
Rewind paused, uncrossing his arms and staring at Perceptor. “Were you…not before?”
“No, I wasn’t before! We weren’t even dating!”
“Oh, huh. Guess he accidentally left that out. Do you mind if I send this footage to Swerve?”
“Percy!”
Perceptor whipped his helm around, shoving his chosen item in his subspace as he was met with the sight of Brainstorm running up to them. The mech was waving wildly, and he just barely heard Rewind snicker, “Four: you don’t mind that he calls you ‘Percy.’”
“Rewind, you’re with Chromedome, right?” Brainstorm asked, his optics glowing brightly with barely concealed excitement.
“Yeah, it’s all gone as planned.” There was far too much amusement in the minibot’s voice.
Perceptor didn’t even have the wherewithal to question what the plan was at this point.
Instead, he followed Brainstorm as the mech pulled him along, clearly very delighted about something as they left Rewind behind. Half of his thoughts were run over with the realization that Brainstorm seemed to love holding his servo, if only to drag him towards wherever they were going next.
That was a stereotypically romantic gesture, but it happened so often he had completely overlooked it.
Primus above, how could he have been so dense?
“Brainstorm, where are we going?”
The mech didn’t bother to look back at him, but his happiness carried through his voice.
“You’ll see! We’re almost there!”
Perceptor decided to stop asking questions for the day.
Of course, anything he could have said disappeared into mist when he saw where Brainstorm had taken him, just outside the city.
It was a field of organic flowers. The planet’s sun was beginning to set over the foliage, bathing the normally blue-green blossoms in shades of warmth and red.
“...Oh.” Perceptor said, at a loss for anything else.
“So…uh…you’ve probably been wondering what’s been going on! Especially since Drift told me you asked him…but don’t worry! It’s nothing bad! I actually thought this field was really pretty, but—”
Perceptor interrupted Brainstorm’s slightly-panicked rambling by setting a gentle servo on his shoulder plate. He froze, optics wide, but Perceptor waited for him to finish.
“…But I know you don’t really like organics the same way I do, so…I’ve been working on these.” Brainstorm reached into his subspace and pulled out a bouquet, made entirely of metal flowers.
They were all painted in various shades of teal and blue, orange and red, and each one appeared to have been painstakingly cut and bent to be the perfect imperfect shape.
They were beautiful.
Perceptor took his servo off of Brainstorm to gently hold the flowers, examining them carefully. The amount of effort and time that had gone into them was painstakingly obvious, and it warmed his spark in a painfully unique way.
“You said you liked how pretty they were but didn’t like the texture, so I figured I’d make some that you were more used to! Besides, these ones’ll never die. And I’m sorry I had to leave in the middle of our date, I had to grab a tie for them, and—”
“Date?”
Brainstorm froze.
“Uh. Yes. That was meant to be a first date. Y’know, with all of the other conjunxes…I probably should’ve told you it was a date, huh.”
Perceptor turned the bouquet around in his servos before looking up at his lab partner.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well I—I really like you, and I was worried you’d be upset by that! Which you might still be, I mean, I—”
Perceptor kissed Brainstorm, right on the mouthplate.
Brainstorm’s vents audibly hitched as Perceptor pulled away. “Next time, just tell me you want to go on a date, okay?”
Brainstorm nodded, optics shining.
“And…I got you something as well.” Perceptor pulled the organic fiber blanket out of his own subspace. “You do like organics, so…”
Suddenly, he was wrapped up in a hug from his partner, and met with a loving, “Percy, you shouldn’t have!”
…Bonus…
“Percy!”
Perceptor whipped around from where he’d been carefully arranging the metal flowers in a vase in their lab.
“Brainstorm?”
Brainstorm ran up, an ominously excited look on his covered faceplate. “I needed to send you a file that I just got.”
He glanced at the new ping on the edge of his HUD. “Couldn’t you have sent this to me from across the ship?”
“Just open it!”
Perceptor did, and was immediately met with the sight of himself, next to a very familiar fabrics shop as Rewind spoke.
“—It’s reverence! You barely spare a glance for anyone else, on the walk here, you were just watching him. I’ve never seen a pair of mecha more in love.”
“…I think I’m in love with Brainstorm.”
He ended the clip early, and was met with his absolutely delighted partner.
“One second, I have a minibot to kill.”