Chapter Text
Bluestreak remembered when he’d first joined the autobots.
He’d been just barely past the age of being a mentee, with no skills or talents to his name, and completely socially isolated except for the only two other Praxians on the Ark. And those mechs had clearly taken an interest in him out of an unsettling mix of kinship and pity.
He had a great relationship with Prowl and Smokescreen now, don’t get him wrong.
Prowl had practically become a mentor to him, and Smokescreen had been instrumental in pushing back the horrific cloud of despair Praxus had cast over him. But Prowl was cold and socially inept on his best days; not the kind of mech who was well suited to introducing a youngling into a new team. And Smokescreen had only been just his therapist in the beginning, tossed at him in a frantic scramble for psychiatric attention because, despite his un-finished psych degree, Smokescreen was the closest the autobots had to a qualified professional for the ‘state’ Bluestreak had been in after the total destruction of his home.
Neither of them, not Prowl, nor Smokescreen, had been in Praxus when it all went down.
No one but Bluestreak had survived from within the actual city, and didn’t that make him—
Bluestreak cut off that line of thought.
Nothing good lay past it, not unless he wanted to start spiraling in the rec room.
Instead, the sniper turned his attention to what had initially inspired his reminiscing; the shiny new recruit sitting alone in the back, grimace growing on his face by the minute.
He’d noticed that mech three times before, always alone and always looking so very unhappy. The mech always scarfed his energon down quickly and left in a hurry.
Bluestreak sighed. He knew that feeling, and he didn’t like seeing it in others. He wasn’t the best mech to take someone new under his wing, not with his tendency to ramble as soon as he opened his mouth and his young age besides, but maybe he could initiate a little friendly interaction? Surely that would help the mech some.
So, Bluestreak grabbed his regular ration of energon, and pulled out a small bag of jellied energon candies he’d been saving for a special occasion, and headed over.
Bluestreak slid into the seat with a nervous smile, vocalizer working overtime. “Hello there, I haven’t seen you around before! What division are you in? Did you just join up? I’m with—” Bluestreak stopped in his tracks at the smoldering expression on the mech’s faceplate.
The mech’s dente barred. He snarled at Bluestreak; a low, deadly growl the sniper had never before heard from another autobot, “Scoot. Back.”
Bluestreak froze. His dente, they were pointed, fanged, sharper than any civilian frame, like, like a warframe’s—
The mech growled again, engine rumbling and plating flaring like it would on a battlefield. Heat blasted from his vents and Bluestreak could feel the warmth on his frame.
It was then that Bluestreak realized how close they were. In his haste to talk to the new mech, he’d gotten far closer to the mech's face plate (and overall frame) then was socially acceptable.
Bluestreak shot back.
His E.M. field pulsed out 'embarrassment' in a frantic attempt at apology.
But the shiny gold mech just stayed frozen in his snarl. His plating remaining flared and completely unresponsive without any hint of emotion with his E.M. field.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean anything by—I don’t have the best sense of personal space sometimes, I just saw you sitting here and there was no one else here so I thought you might appreciate some company! I know I get lonely when there’s no one at my table during refueling, and everytime I’ve seen you here you’ve been sitting at a table alone so…”
Bluestreak lost a bit of focus on the mech as he prattled, the talking helped diffuse some of the stress of the situation for him, even if he knew that in actuality it was probably counter productive, but when he ceased talking, the golden’s mech’s plating had fallen down in to a relaxed position, and the snarl on his face melted back into his original grimace.
“Okay, whatever. You just…you don’t get that close again. Stay over there.” The mech tone didn’t have as much of his initial vitriol, but he still sounded stiff, harsh, and like he would rather be somewhere else.
“I won’t! I’m so, so sorry! Can we start over? Do you want an energon candy? They have magnesium in them, they’re some of my favorite!" Bluestreak’s servo shook just a tiny bit as he handed over the candy. He felt for all the world like a desperate fresh paint, begging for approval from everyone around. He prayed the other mech couldn’t discern the shaking in his servo.
But the new soldier didn’t look judgmental or disturbed by Bluestreak’s neediness like so many had before. Instead he looked…confused, almost? Like he didn’t totally understand what was happening.
He plucked the candy from Bluestreak servo with a jerk and a sharp, ‘Thanks,” but didn't inspect nor consume his candy. He simply slid it right into his subspace and chugged some of his energon cube, with 0 explanation for why he snubbed Bluestreak’s gift.
Bluestreak’s E.M. flared out hurt and embarrassment before he could stop it. He pulled it back in a click, tight against his plating and letting out only a small amount of regret in apology for the initial flare. Maybe the mech just didn’t like magnesium candy and had taken it to be polite. He certainly shouldn’t have to eat candy a random stranger pushed on him in the rec room.
The mech gave no sign of noticing either of his E.M. pulses. All he did was take another long chug of his energon cube, before fixing Bluestreak with a sharp glare.
“What did you say you were in again? Infantry?”
‘Yes, I’m a sniper, or training to be at least. But I’ve fulfilled a sniper role on multiple missions! Prowl just wants me to complete a few more successful missions with extra oversight before I’m assigned it as my official role. What about you, do you know where you’ll be yet?”
“Frontliner.”
Bluestreak waited a click to see it the mech would say anything more, Smokescreen had cautioned him against his tendency to monopolize conversations, and he was trying to be more considerate of others, he really was, but as the silence dragged on and the other mech said nothing to feel it, Bluestreak felt words vibrating out of his vocalizer before he could stop them.
“Wow! That’s gotta be pretty intense. All that fighting, and so close to ‘cons. I considered trying to fight in the frontlines, you know, but I wasn’t sure I could handle the explosions and the blaster fire and the ‘cons you know?”
The mech grunted, which could have been a “Yes, I understand what you’re talking about Bluestreak.” Bluestreak was going to pretend it was for the time being. He wasn’t sure he could maintain his cheerful demeanor, however fake and shaky, otherwise.
Bluestreak continued to prattle on until the refueling cycled for his shift ended. The whole time he got nothing more than grunts or one word answers from the mech next to him.
The mech clearly didn’t like him much, and as much as that realization made Bluestreak’s spark ache, he simply could not make himself Stop. Talking.
It was as if he was floating out of his body, watching a racecar crash and burn in torturously slow motion, as he prattled on and on about everything under the sun.
Finally, the bell rang to signal a shift change, and the mech got up to toss his cub in a trash shute. Bluestreak followed him under the guise of needing to throw his own cub away, still talking at him, and praying that somehow, something about his tirade would cause a last minute shift in the other mech’s disposition and somehow salvage this horrible interaction between them.
But nothing about the other’s mech’s grimace, lack of E.M. field, or overall unresponsive demeanor, and Bluestreak felt a wave of relief wash over him as the other mech turned down a hall in the opposite direction of where Bluestreak needed to be. Even the fact that the mech strode away while he was still talking didn’t keep him from feeling a bit of relief that their interaction was over.
But the relief faded as he stared after the golden mech’s retreat, realizing that he was only still thinking of him as “shiny golden mech” because the whole time he was prattling on, he’d never stopped to ask the mech his designation.
Primus. What a horrible ‘friendly introduction’ to the autobots Bluestreak must have been for the golden mech. The poor new recruit had gotten his audials talked off his whole refueling cycle by an awkward, blundering mech who didn’t even stop to ask for his designation.
Bluestreak’s spark clenched painfully.
But there was something even worse on the horizon, something that disturbed him more than this current mishap. Because as much as he knew it was a bad idea, he knew he’d be trying to make friends with the mech again, trying to make up for his blunder somehow, the next time he saw him.
Bluestreak was already dreading the next time he saw him.
Sunstreaker stomped into the frontline barracks, doing a quick look around the room to make sure Sideswipe was alone inside.
Sideswipe should have been, he’d told Sunstreaker earlier that it would just be him in there for the next joor and a half.
His brother had stolen a copy of the shift schedules of every mech they bunked with. He'd done it mainly for Sunstreaker, who valued his alone time. But despite his more social tendencies, Sideswipe still liked to indulge once in a while in the same isolation strategies as his golden twin.
“I did it.” Sunstreaker said. “You can stop hounding me every solar cycle.”
“Did what?” Sideswipe asked.
“Socialized, with a mech that wasn’t you. Successfully. In the rec room.”
Sideswipe snorted. The sound was mocking, but he sent a bundle of pride through their spark bond, rather than letting it show through his E.M. field like most mech’s would. Sideswipe knew that Sunstreaker couldn’t sense the pride in his E.M. field very well.
Sunstreaker felt a wave of hope, the strongest wave he’d felt since joining up in his ability to integrate with the rest of the new army.