Work Text:
A medic's hands were steady.
Among the certainties of a miner's life, that one had been one of the most appreciated: no matter how much yelling the supervisors were doing, no matter the pity or the scorn in cogged bots' optics, no matter how painful the injury, once a medic had their hands on you they would heal you. That was both a fact and a reassurance that Orion Pax had clung on to more than once, for himself and for other miners.
So why did Optimus only want to get away from Ratchet's hands?
"I'm almost done," Ratchet said.
The medic apparently had some sort of second sense that let him know when his patient was getting close to bolting out.
"Okay."
Optimus forced himself to relax his actuators. It was fine. Ratchet was a good medic. His hand would be fixed soon. It wasn't even the hand that Dee had-
Optimus forced himself to stop thinking about it. Dee had caught him, but Dee had also shot through his chest first. And then Dee had let him fall.
Ratchet briefly glanced up from his repairs on Optimus's hand.
"How did this happen anyway?" he asked. Probably to distract Optimus from whatever he thought was going through his mind.
...Ratchet's trick was working, Optimus had to admit. The memory of the day was now at the front of his processor, and that was a distraction.
"One of the machines was about to explode in Wheeljack's face, so I grabbed it and it exploded in my hand."
"...Seriously?" To Ratchet's credit, his eyebrows shot up but his hands kept steadily working on the fine mechanisms of Optimus's own hand.
"Yes, well, what else was I supposed to do?" Optimus shrugged, taking care not to move too much and get in the way of Ratchet's work. "I wasn't going to let him get hurt."
"You could have just pushed him away? Clearly it wasn't even a big explosion."
Right. Yes. He could have done that.
Ratchet rolled his optics, and finally, finally!, released Optimus's hand.
"Of course the first real Prime we get since the first ones is a self-sacrificial idiot..."
"Hey!"
"Try flexing your hand, does it feel alright?"
It felt more than alright, it felt even better than before the little explosion incident.
"Good," Ratchet just said, then he went right back to business. "You seemed a little tense just then, Prime. Is the shoulder still bothering you?"
"No, no, the shoulder's fine, don't worry," Optimus said, and even rolled it to show how well it was working.
He couldn't really tell Ratchet that the source of his discomfort hadn't been a shot-through-then-divinely-remade joint, but Ratchet's own touch, could he?
Elita sometimes greeted him with a fist bump now. Not often, and only when they were alone, but it was something she did. It was new. Optimus was pretty sure that she did it mostly because it reminded them both of Dee.
It was just a little thing, a little something just between the two of them, nothing of any significance. Nothing like Dee slinging his arm over Optimus's shoulders, or Bee accidentally bumping into him, or one or the other (former) miner enthusiastically grabbing his hand to show him something cool. It was understandable that those impulsive gestures could make someone uncomfortable sometimes, but something as small as greeting a friend? It was absurd.
But sometimes even the fist bump was too much.
"Sorry," Elita grimaced when he didn't answer her gesture.
"It's fine," Optimus hurried to answer, then an explanation showed up in his mind. "Ratchet told me to avoid shocks on the hands for a few days."
"Did he now?" Elita didn't seem convinced. Maybe Wheeljack had already told her which of Optimus's hands had been almost blown up earlier.
"What's our program today?" Optimus asked to change the subject.
Elita grinned, his little fist bump hang-up not holding much importance compared to the rest of the day. "New High Guard recruitment. We need to decide if you'll fight the candidates yourself."
Optimus always wanted to keep an optic on everything, but Elita and Jazz had taken it upon themselves to get him to delegate more. But surely High Guard recruitment was something a Prime needed to do? How else was he supposed to trust these bots? He'd be in daily contact with them anyway, so he might as well get used to it now...
Elita didn't say a word while he was thinking, but her face strongly suggested that he took care of his other Primely duties and let her beat up the unsuspecting candidates in his place.
At the end of the meeting, Prowl started gathering the datapads that they had both spread on the table in the last couple of hours. Optimus would have helped, but he was still poring over the draft for a speech he would probably need to make at some point. It paid to be prepared, Prowl had said, and Elita had more than agreed.
Then Prowl's hand brushed lightly against his arm, and Optimus jerked the limb back before he even realized what was happening.
"...My apologies," Prowl said. He had quickly taken a step back and was gripping the datapads tightly, the one that had been next to Optimus's arm apparently completely forgotten.
"No, it's me," Optimus winced. "I overreacted, sorry."
He grabbed the datapad and handed it over towards Prowl.
"It happens," Prowl agreed, and he took great care not to touch Optimus's fingers when he took the datapad. "I, too, prefer not to be touched by other bots unless necessary."
Really? Optimus had never been particularly close to Prowl, but wouldn't he have seen such a thing?
"...I never noticed."
"I know," Prowl said with the same level voice as usual, and he reached for another datapad, this one further from Optimus.
Optimus stopped himself from wincing. Was it a faux pas if Prowl didn't care?
"I'm sorry. I wasn't very observant back then," Optimus said.
Prowl looked up to him when he reached for the last datapad.
"It's alright. We were all different bots than we are now. I'll simply take care to respect your preferences from now on."
"Don't worry about it," Optimus brushed the offer aside. "It's nothing I can't deal with."
Prowl clearly wanted to say more, because he had that look that meant he was trying to figure out which words to use. See? Optimus could notice things. He could even let someone take the time to gather their thoughts.
"You don't have to pretend to be someone different than who you are," Prowl said abruptly.
Optimus, who had begun to let his thoughts wander around in the vicinity of the speech again, did not jump in surprise. He merely straightened up his neck cables.
"What…?"
"That's what you said to me," Prowl continued, "when that cogged bot thought I was mocking him because of how monotone my voice was."
Back in the mine? That did sound like something that Orion Pax would have said on the spur of the moment.
"That's… a different situation?" Optimus tried.
"Is it really?" Prowl insisted. "Your advice is still good when it applies to yourself. You don't have to force yourself to allow others to touch you if you don't want them to."
Optimus took a fraction of a nanoklik to parse that sentence. Then he found that he agreed, mostly. He was the Prime, the only Prime. He couldn't allow his personal preferences to get in the way of other bots liking him or finding him relatable.
"I don't always not want them to," he tried to argue, more weakly than he would have liked.
Prowl didn't look convinced. "But do you let them know when you don't want them to?"
"I- Since when do you know how to talk about that stuff??"
"Since Jazz has decided to help me understand what other bots say without saying," Prowl shrugged.
Optimus hadn't noticed that either. How much of his friends' lives was he missing now, with these new responsibilities?
"Well, I'm fine!" Optimus said. "It's fine. I can deal with it. I don't have to- ask everyone to change their habits."
Prowl still didn't look convinced.
Bee had come back from the scouting mission he had assigned himself. Bee was excited about all he had seen on the surface, and he had brought back many pictures of the scenery and of various mechanimals.
"And that-!" Bee said enthusiastically, "is the sunrise. Look at it, Optimus, look at the colors!"
"I'm looking, I'm looking," Optimus said, trying to understand something from the too-dark picture. Elita tilted her head to the side to see better, Prowl tilted his head to the other side, and both of them kept their I-don't-see-it face.
"Do you maybe have another picture of it?" Jazz asked diplomatically.
"Sure, the next one is- right here!"
Oh. That one was much better. The colors were fully visible, and the rays of the sun were playing with the dust, bright and shimmering. It was beautiful.
"You have to go back to the surface someday, Optimus." Bee said, and he grabbed Optimus's arm to make his point. Optimus tried his best not to flinch too visibly. "You loved it the first time, and there's so much more to see!"
Bee's hands were on his arm. Bee's hands were warm, and solid, powerful, and on his arm.
But it was Bee, and Bee was Optimus's friend. He couldn't shrug him off, or ask him to let go.
Optimus tried to look back to the pictures, but his gaze fell on Prowl. The bot looked- no, not disappointed. Just sad.