Work Text:
Patiently, Shockwave stood amicably beside Bumblebee as he warily eyed the small gifted bag. It seemed as though the former cadet, now service utility bot, had hardly changed at all since that day he slipped from Shockwave's grasp. Foolishly offering up his future—a path laid out for him, designed and manufactured by Shockwave as a courtesy for his assistance in solidifying his presence in the Autobot ranks—for that dense farmhand.
"Go on," he chuckled, a husky wretched sound as he stared down at Bumblebee. "Try it."
Bumblebee's scuffed poleyn knocked together as he hunched over on himself. The bench had enough space for Shockwave to seat himself as well, but it would have been a tight fit considering the toolbox supplied by the Maintenance offices sitting innocently beside Bumblebee.
Despite Bumblebee patting the spot beside him tentatively, he elected to stand. After all, neither of them were permitted to stay out of their dorms after curfew this long. As he told it, 'Longarm' had snuck out of the training grounds so that he could visit his poor, dear friend. The worry he felt urged him to check on Bee, to see how he was settling in or… if he needed a favor or two to get out the reprogramming required for the repair sector. Bumblebee could tell Longarm, could trust Longarm with his woes.
All lies, of course. Merely, Shockwave needed to keep tabs on the pesky minibot. Perhaps even explore a curiosity or two, knowing that the isolated dropout would accept any form of camaraderie offered.
As for how he tracked him down, well, it was a rather easy thing to acquire Bumblebee's new schedule. After Sentinel bumped him down the ranks and gave him a swift kick in the aft into the repair track, Bumblebee was required to start his training all over again. His schooling and the modules he received for scouting would be removed to make place for utility upkeep.
If he could get away with it, Shockwave would reach out and grasp Bumblebee's helm—digits tightening at the thought of all that knowledge going down the drain. Autobots were ever so wasteful. He'd squeeze until plates and circuitry exploded between the gaps of his servo.
Frowning, Bumblebee fiddled with the satchel. "You're kinda weird, you know that?"
"How so?"
"Sneaking out of the berthing, giving me a gift when we didn't really know each other all that well, it's a little strange. Isn't it?" Bumblebee asked, genuine in his questioning. He truly didn't know whether it was or not, that aspect of social intelligence not a necessity in an Autobot led society. They recycled protoforms, their molds and their metals, all in the service of a council who read off the report on the latest recruitment batches with nary a care in the cosmos.
"Of course not," Shockwave reached out and placed his servo firmly between Bumblebee's horns. Unlike his prior line of thought, this act of affection was far more appropriate. Oh, how his time spent with Bumblebee defined itself by indulgence. "That is what friends do and we're buddies aren't we?"
A small flush heated the metal of Bumblebee's facial sculpt. "Yeah! We are! Um, thanks Longarm."
Smiling, pulling up the corners of his rigid mouth plate, Shockwave directed his focus back onto the gift. Removing his servo—brushing against the metal and the decorative lines of his crest in pantomime caress—he gestured, "You don't even know what you're thanking me for. What if you hate it?"
Affronted, he balked, "I'd never hate it! If it came from someone as great as you, I'm sure it's cooler than anything else these lamebots in the remedial courses could come up with." As though to prove his point, he pulled at the wire closing off the little satchel. Once it opened, his greedy digits pulled back the mesh to peer down into its contents.
"Oh," Bumblebee muttered, pulling out a shard of crystallized energon. Shockwave could tell that behind those dim optics he hadn't a clue as to what he was looking at. "… I'm trying to come up with something nice, but can't."
"You don't recognize them?" Playing into the ruse, Longarm tilted his helm in confusion.
"No. Should I?"
"They're energon sweets," reaching forward, he plucked one out of the bag. He brought it up to his mouth plate and plopped it in. The shapely crystal sat in the empty crevice, giving the illusion of consumption. The design of his disguise meant that he could continue to speak without revealing the deception, as he went, "I bought them at the commissary as an apology for how things went down at bootcamp."
He'd dispose of the crystal later, once Bumblebee was out of sight. Properly out of sight, not sneaking around the corner to eavesdrop onto conversations not of his concern.
"Energon sweets…" Furrowing his brow ridge, Bumblebee brought the crystal closer to his helm. Lifting it to his olfactory sensor, he offlined his optics to prioritize the analysis on the scent. It came back in the clear, as it should. Eons past, Shockwave had refined the formula explicitly to fool inferior scanning technology.
"I've never had one." Bumblebee admitted sheepishly. He still refrained from indulging, even as Shockwave swallowed their interaction whole. "What do they taste like?"
"Why don't you find out?"
Scoffing, Bumblebee rolled his optics in irritation. Shockwave accepted his petulance, endeared himself to it, cradled Bumblebee's obnoxious persona coding, and endeavored to strangulate his spark until it willingly snuffed itself to escape him.
But Shockwave would not allow him an escape. No, not at all.
Bumblebee brought the contaminated energon to his lips, letting it sit against his lower lip pad for a moment before summoning the right amount of bravery and shoving it in. His denta cracked the thin layer of glass, the soft jelly middle splashing against his glossa. Optics widening as the lens' spiraled wide out, Bumblebee exclaimed, "Whoa! That's really good!"
Enthusiastically, he ate another, and another, and another. Delighted, Shockwave watched in silent anticipation—a thrill rocketing down his taught, contorted endoskeleton—as Bumblebee ate more than his fair share of the treats, the purple tinted crystals disappearing into his intake.
He stopped, because he reasonably couldn't eat all of them in one go, and Bumblebee grinned. Bright, energized, blissfully unaware of what hell he introduced into his systems. "Now that's a gift! If I had known that energon sweets were so good I would have spent all of my funds on requesting some ages ago!"
"Well, these are specially ordered from my home province," Shockwave explained, letting a trickle of truth echo in his words. "I doubt that you'll find any quite like them at the repair institute." Upon seeing Bumblebee deflate, he promised, "But if you ask, I could find it within myself to save up and get you more. After all, there's a lot that I owe you for."
"Aww, come on Longarm! You don't owe me anything!" Bumblebee tightened the wires of the satchel and closed off the rest of the crystals from sight. Placing the bag carefully into his toolbox, he swung off of the bench and stood beside him. The deep grooves under his optics lessened somewhat, his facial sculpt returning confiscated youth to him. "If anything, I owe you for believing in me."
What a silly, oblivious young bot. In another life, Shockwave might have felt pity for him.
In this one, however, he merely reached out and settled his servo in the crook of his neck cabling. The thrum of contaminated energon pulsed through his lines, spreading across his frame, and damning his spark.
By whatever means necessary, Shockwave would ensure that Bumblebee never see the Well of the Allspark in this lifetime or the next.
"Consider us even, Bumblebee."