🌸

You know it's his grace infecting you, but your heart still flutters, your face grows warmer, and your body slicker.

"That isn't healthy. This isn't good."

"What would you know of good? I am an angel of the lord. I know good. I am good."

Not even they believe their own words. The truth of them doesn't matter. What matters is that you believe it, that you believe in them.

That you give in.

"You are flawed like me."

They respect your spirit while simultaneously despising it.

"No."

He lifts himself up from his knees and towers above you. Gone is the service, and back is the lead.

"I am infallible. Loving you is no mistake. Killing for you is no mistake. The only mistake you are making is doubting me."

You reach up to touch his face; he leans into it. His eyes don't soften, but his energy isn't threatening.

"Faith must be tested," he whispers in your mind, "but first you must have the faith."

Your eyes avert theirs for a moment, your head turning downward, but in the next, their wing is guiding your head back to look not just at but into them.

"Have faith, my love. I will always guard you, be the only angel on your shoulder.

You can't tell if you give in to them because of their power or because it truly is your will. All you know is that you crave what he is promising and readily gives.

There are far more pressing, productive uses of his time that you’re so carelessly wasting, and yet here he is; the only surviving Chief Medical Officer to the Autobots, idling on the curb, reduced to a mere taxi service for your convenience.

If he lets his chassis droop any further, he’ll hit the asphalt underneath him.

Optimus had made these little ‘excursions’ sound positively pleasant when he’d discuss them with Ratchet. He said it would do the medic some ‘good’ to take his place for a change, to put some wear in his tyres and get out of the base for a while… All a pretence.

Of course, it’s mere coincidence that you just so happen to need a ride from your place of work this evening, and wouldn’t it be a fine idea for Ratchet to take some interest in their charges’ lives every now and again?

Oh? Bulkhead, Arcee and Bumblebee are all busy on their own scouting missions? Not unheard of, but terribly convenient all the same.

Optimus himself has a meeting with Agent Fowler that’s likely to extend well into the evening, leaving him no time to pick you up as he typically would?

Pah!

He doesn’t rightly know which is more insulting; that Optimus thinks he’d fall for such a badly concealed ruse, or that he can read Ratchet well enough to know he’d need an excuse to save-face anyway.

He had to come and get you. Nobody else was available.

It’s only when the seven-minute mark ticks dutifully over to eight that Ratchet is forced to consider the possibility that he might, by some, microscopic sliver of a chance, have missed your departure.

He scoffs the notion away as soon as it occurs.

Setting aside the fact that he’s perfectly observant - despite what Miko might say - you are not the type of human who’s… easily overlooked.

In all the weeks he’s known you, Ratchet has never once seen you display anything less than the highest degree of exuberance.

Then again, perhaps your behaviour is all the more significant to him because you seem inclined to adhere yourself to his side at any given opportunity. And in truth, for all his ingenuity and extraordinary acumen, Ratchet has yet to fathom why in Primus’s name you seem to light up like a fragging solar flare every time you lay eyes on him.

So no, he decides, glaring heatedly at the glass doors of the building opposite, he can’t have missed your exit.

Which is why it comes as such a shock when he almost does.

Nine minutes after Optimus assured him that you’d be finishing for the day, one last human trickles sluggishly out through the swinging doors, head bent low on a slumping neck, face downcast to the pavement underfoot.

Ratchet’s optics are only drawn to the figure due to the similarities between you, and that’s when it hits him. The human isn’t just similar to you.

That is you.

And yet, you couldn’t look any less like yourself, or at least, less like the human he’s so accustomed to seeing around the base.

Out here in the cold light of day, with your shoulders bowed like the load heaped upon them is getting heavier with each, weary step, Ratchet sees an entirely different human.

His plates start itching at the thought that he’s a witness to something he was never supposed to see, like you’ve dropped your mask and he wasn’t polite enough to look away while you slipped it back on.

It wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone observing that the CMO’s first suspicion is… ‘Are you hurt?’

Sleepily, a line of ancient code rears its head to grumble at some imperceptible threat.

You don’t seem to have spotted him here on the curb, watching you raptly from the other side of the road.

The foremost jarring change that he immediately zeroes in on is the curve of your mouth. On any typical day, it’s always open, letting a torrent of admiration spew forth and sweep him up in its tide like you’ve opened the proverbial floodgates.

And you're always smiling – predominantly at him.  

But here, in the few steps you take from the shadow of the building, Ratchet can’t even catch a glimpse of that familiar, ridiculously cheerful grin that lights up your malleable features.

It occurs to him quite abruptly that this is the first time he hasn’t seen you smile.

It’s all so astounding in fact, that he barely even registers the sudden growl his engine kicks out as he slips seamlessly into his role as the team’s medic, performing a cursory scan of you from his post across the street.

You must have heard him though or felt his optics on you at the very least, because in the next second, your head shoots up and you instantly catch sight him, stopping in your tracks.

For several, terse seconds, you do nothing but stare, your face as blank as an empty data-pad. After a few beats of his spark, he realises why; This is the first time you’ve seen him in his vehicle mode… That, and you were likely expecting Optimus, not the crotchety old ambulance parked in his stead.

Ratchet is on the cusp of telling you he’s sorry to disappoint, when it happens.

You take one last look at him, squinting to make out the Autobot insignia on his grill… and then you simply come alive.

The change is immediate. He pinpoints the second your heartbeat bucks into a higher gear as you straighten your back, raising your head in delighted surprise, and your lips stretch out to their absolute limits, pushing at the apples of your cheeks as you send the old Autobot a blinding grin.

“Ratchet! Hi!” you cheer before bounding heedlessly into the street.

The spark in his chamber gives an almighty lurch as he scrambles to throw out a check for any oncoming vehicles.

By some miracle, the street seems relatively deserted for the time being, thank Primus…

He’d never hear the end of it if anything happened to you on his watch.

The agitated hiss of plating begins to settle down once you reach him, quieted by the return to normalcy.

Nothing’s wrong, you’re as chipper as always, and he would sooner tear out his own glossa than admit he’d come anywhere close to concerned.

His engine grumbles as you skid to a stop at his bumper, your fragile limbs quivering with unrestrained excitement.

“Oh my God! What a lovely surprise,” you laugh, sincerity packed into every word whilst your eyes dart over his vehicle mode, drinking in the side of him you’ve never seen before, until he finds himself shifting under your scrutiny. “What are you doing here? You never leave the base!”

For very good reason, he grouses to himself.

Aloud, he simply huffs, swinging open the passenger door for you and heaving out an aggrieved sigh. “Nobody else was available to pick you up. So, the burden fell to yours truly.” And then, with the exuberance of a dead fly… “Surprise.”

He shouldn’t ask…

He really shouldn’t – oh, Primus forsake him.

“If I may,” he grinds out through gritted dentae, rolling on his tyres to bring his open door closer to your side as he shoots a glare at the building behind you, “You didn’t seem… entirely yourself, when you left your work premises…”

You don’t reply for a moment, so he swallows his pride and gruffly adds, “Anything I should know about?”

He isn’t expecting the sudden warmth of a tiny body to drape itself so ardently against his bonnet, nor to feel the press of your cheek squashing into him with a ferocity that might have hurt if he were human. In response, the medic goes rigid on his struts, exhaust sputtering incredulously.

“Just had a bad day,” you assure him with a squeeze, “But not to worry. You’re the perfect cure.”

Ugh. He just knows that was deliberate, likely intended to plant yourself under his plating like a stubborn little parasite who refuses to be detached, no matter how hard he tries to root you out and hold you at arm’s length.

“Seriously. After the day I’ve had, you are the best person who could have turned up to save it,” you gush into the metal beneath you, “Literally, my hero.”

Now, there’s an aspect to your character that he has yet to wrap his processor around.

No matter what he says, however scathing or dismissive he tries to be, somehow, you’re never put off by it, never deterred by his outward aversion to your company and certainly never shy in the face of his cantankerous disposition.

It’s… quite infuriating.

“Look on the bright side,” Arcee had teased him once as she sauntered past his med-bay whilst you sang his praises to a highly amused Optimus from the gantry, “At least you’re someone’s favourite.”

He’d scoffed at her then like he’d scoff at her now.

He was perfectly happy being the humans’ least favourite Autobot. The unfriendly one. The cynical grouch. Gruff and unpalatable and not worth getting to know.

They don’t get attached, and he can pretend he isn’t scared half to death that every trip through the Ground Bridge will be their last.

It was fine. It was working.

But then, you came along, as dogged in your pursuit of his company as he was in avoiding yours.

Unstoppable force, meet Immoveable object.

Ratchet is suddenly wrenched from his stupor when an old truck rattles past along the sun-warmed road, reminding him that not only is he suffering the indignity of a hug, but he’s also suffering it in public.

“Wh-! Will you get inside this instant!” he hisses venomously, only losing the tightness in his vocaliser after you peel yourself off his bonnet and skip to the open door, swinging yourself into his sterile interior with a jaunty little ‘hup!’

The medic has to throw several firewalls around the circuits in his optics to prevent them from rolling up towards the darkening sky overhead. How can one tiny body possibly hold so much bounce?

He stubbornly ignores the warmth still seeping into one particular spot on his metal frame.

Your hands are eager on the seatbelt, too preoccupied with inspecting the rest of his interior to pay much attention to what you’re doing, and you end up missing the socket several times until Ratchet gives a brisk tut and manoeuvres the catch in himself.

Primus… He can feel you buzzing against his frame, every ounce of your alien biology thrumming like a youngling’s unfettered EM field.

… This is sure to be a long and arduous ride…

“So~” you sing-song, clasping your hands between your knees to keep them still as he pulls away from the curb, drifting smoothly onto the road out of Jasper, “How’s my favourite Autobot?”

Ha. Favourite…

It doesn’t matter how many times he hears you say it, the words will always sound incongruous to everything he knows about himself, like an arachnophobe saying spiders are their favourite animal. So, he does what he always does when presented with your incessant onslaught of fondness.

He tries to ignore it.  

“Optimus?” he hedges coolly, “In a meeting with Agent Fowler… He apologises for missing your usual rendezvous.”

A boisterous laugh erupts from your chest, loud and high, thrilled at the banter. It’s something else he realises he’s slowly become accustomed to, no longer inclined to wince at the discordance of it.

“Much as I love the big guy,” you tell him, planting a hand over your chest in a crude rendition of solemnity, “He doesn’t take top spot. That’s a V-I-P position reserved for you alone, I’m afraid.”

Ratchet is immensely glad you can’t see his expression at the moment, so you miss the look of consternation crushing his brow plates together and twisting his dermas into a bewildered scowl.

Why in Primus’s good name would he be your-?

Before the CMO can ponder on it any longer though, you’re shifting forwards in your seat and shooting a sunny grin at his rearview, heedless of the suburbs blurring lazily past outside his window.  

“While I’ve got you… Will you tell me more about Cybertron?” you blurt, though the way your fingers clasp tightly to the edge of the leather under your thighs tells him that you’re ready to beg if he declines, “You never finished that story about how Optimus used to sneak into the Hall of Records.”

“You-…” Trailing off, Ratchet angles his mirror down to capture you centrally within the glass, his vocaliser turning uncharacteristically soft with surprise before he can smother it. “… You remember that?”

He’d begun that tale weeks ago, long enough for a young human to have absorbed and promptly expunged any information they’d been given. He hadn’t finished it because Miko had grown so disinterested, she flopped back onto the sofa cushions and pretended – in her usual flair – that she was ‘literally dying of boredom!’

Ratchet refused to say another word to any humans all day.

“What’re you kidding me?” you laugh, trying and failing to suppress a grin by biting down on your lower lip before it slips free with your next words, “I remember everything you tell me!”

That’s…

Oh.

Admittedly, at the time, he hadn’t been paying enough attention to tell if you were paying any attention.

More fool him, he supposes.

“Well, I… Mm… Ahem.” Clearing some static out of his voice box, he cautiously ventures, “What exactly would you like to know?”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As it turns out, ‘everything,’ was not a mere over-exaggeration of your curiosity, intended more for embellishment than to be taken literally.

When you said ‘everything,’ you meant everything. Hardly a quantity he could ever hope to cover in the half-hour’s drive from Jasper to the silo.

Still… he relented, finding that the words come easier when he’s been prompted to talk about his home.

By the time he rolls slowly into the base, your eyes are sparkling with wonder for a world you’ll likely never see, and Ratchet is…

… He’s at a loss.

You weren’t just listening to him indulge in his own grief by blethering on about Cybertron, about the ‘good old days’ before the war. You threw yourself into the conversation right alongside him, hungry for any scrap of information he’d give you.

Loathe as he is to admit it, it… made a refreshing change, having a human speak to him without their eyes glazing over or their jaws splitting apart in an obnoxious yawn.

Chugging to a stop near the gantry stairs, Ratchet opens his door with a heavy clunk, half expecting you to come flying out to tell Jack, Miko and Rafael all about your unexpected lift from the world’s surliest conversationalist.

Such is his lot.

All he can hope is that you don’t tell them about the laugh that leapt off his glossa without warning when you said he reminds you of perseverance personified, or the way his engine nearly stalled on the highway after something else you said whilst your fingers tapped a happy rhythm against his seat.

“I wish I could have seen Cybertron. It sounds incredible!”

He’d only murmured his response. “… It was…”

“Of course it was,” you agreed, aiming a hearty smile up at his rearview, “You were there.”

… Why do you have to be so damnably genuine?

It makes maintaining his cold indifference a lot more complicated.

Bewildered, he watches you, still bursting with life as you slide out through his open door and move yourself to the foot of the stairs, granting him the space to transform to his full, stocky height.

“Wow,” you breathe, gazing up at him awestruck when he rolls his sturdy shoulder panels and blinks down at you, that all-too natural scowl thudding resolutely back into place.

“What?” he snips, bristling out of habit rather than offence at being stared at.

Offering him an innocent shrug, you simply beam up at him, neck craned all the way back to meet his cerulean optics. “Nothing,” you tell him amicably, “Just wanted to say thanks for the lift. You’re the best.”

He only grunts in response at the wrongness of your statement, using a servo to loosely shoo you away. But you don’t leave as he expects you to, not yet.

“Hey, um, can I just…” you start, casting a quick, backwards glance over your shoulder up the stairway. Somewhere high above, you can hear Jack and Miko bickering over the TV remote, interrupted by Raf’s softer voice as the boy attempts to mediate.

Absently picking at the nail on your thumb, you let out a hard breath, trying to expel some of the lingering energy that still burns through your body as you return your attention to Ratchet and stammer, “I-I just-! It means a lot that you came to pick me up.”

“Optimus’s orders,” he reiterates as bluntly as he can, turning on a heel to stalk across the silo towards his screens, seeking an immediate escape from your suffocating friendliness and trying to ignore the ‘trit-trot’ of tiny shoes padding along in his wake.

He’s careful then, treading with lighter pede-falls as he reaches his station.

The softest touch to his ankle guard has him going stiff with alarm before his systems ease coolant through his racing circuitry.

Schooling his expression into something fierce, he whips his helm down to glare at you, though it falters pitifully when he sees you standing by his pede, your diminutive figure almost lost on the vast expanse of the silo’s floor. One of your arms is held aloft, and you have your palm pressed flat to the metal just above his tyre.

And your face - unfathomably open, and bright like a carbon star - grins up at him so starkly he forgets that it was less than one Earth hour ago when he saw you without a smile.

His sensors pick up the astonishingly tenacious beat of your pulse against his frame, fragile but persistent. Just like you. It’s the proof of your fondness for him. You can’t hide it any more than he can ignore it. The human pulse is an intrinsic part of your biology – the part that he checks over and over again to make sure it’s still beating away below your epidermis – the part that always, always gathers momentum and runs at a gallop when you’re near him.

Scientifically, it’s a response to the release of dopamine, and while he’s no expert on humans, he’s absorbed enough to know that the chemical is usually associated with feeling happy.

So, therein lies his irrefutable evidence.

Ratchet, the most curmudgeonly mech to ever set foot on planet Earth, makes you happy. And there isn’t a Pit-forsaken thing he can do to refute the fact because the proof is staring him in the face every day.

Checkmate.

… If this is the Universe’s idea of a joke, there’d better be a damn good punchline.

“Seriously,” you beam, ignorant of his inner-turmoil, “Thank you, Ratchet.”

And a sharp crack lances down the wall of his unassailable resolve.

Don’t do that… Don’t make his spark rumble appreciatively from something so trite as a simple ‘thank you.’

Those words still ring hollow, a repeating drone of his voice as you watch the familiar city pass by the windowpane. It is Gotham, but not. Unfamiliar stores fill the streets, similar roads but not quite, small inconsistencies that are enough to remind you that this isn't your home.

That the person in the driver's seat beside you is a complete stranger.

"Who am I to you?" You question, casting your glance back to that stiff, perfect posture of his as he makes a turn towards his apartment.

That hug from earlier, if you could even call it that, still lingers like a shadow, casting goosebumps over your skin whenever the memory overstayed its welcome.

You spot the whitening of his knuckles, the pads of his fingers squeezing into the steering wheel before the colour returns, as if his composure never faltered.

"You were my assigned partner." He answers briskly.

Were. There's finally one consistency, at the very least. To your relief, the version of you here didn't seem to get along with him either.

Your small amusement is quickly diminished at the rise of another concern of yours. If there was another version of you running around this city, you can't even begin to fathom the potential fractures of reality if an encounter truly happened.

You're already playing a huge risk in letting this Damian assist you. Still, you had no one else.

Your comms had contacted him, not that it was to any surprise of your own once the initial panic died down. It wasn't likely that you still had a connection to your own world, much less an existing channel with your Damian. It was pure luck that you still had use for the device at all. Or at least, you hoped you could consider it luck.

Your gaze lingers over his features. The likeness between him and your Damian was uncanny. The same nose bridge, freckles, and even that faint scar running down his jawline. It was all so familiar that you had to snap yourself out of it when you found your body conditioning itself into safety, as if forgetting he's a stranger.

"Well, I hope you'll let bygones be bygones." You answer wryly. "There wasn't anyone else I could contact. If you can help me find a way back home, I'll be out of your dimension in no time."

The silence grows terse. A shift has occurred, even if you're unsure on the why. You had only stated the obvious. Perhaps his moods were in line with what you were familiar with after all, and that is no soothing relief if it meant having to face that same temperament that landed you here.

"I'm already offering my help." Damian answers after a moment, as if he's finally settled for a response he was satisfied with.

"I hope so." You mutter, eyelids falling shut in your exhaustion. The sight of the city was making you nauseous. "It's kind of your fault I ended up here. The other you, anyways."

He hums, finger tapping once against the steering wheel. "Typical."

This Damian has an apartment akin to a serial killer's. The barest necessities, minimal decorations—it's as if every surface has gone untouched. If you hadn't seen it with your own eyes when he unlocked the door with his thumbprint, you would've assumed no one had ever stepped foot within these walls.

"Ever heard of decoration?" It lands wrong, and you internally wince. It's difficult, to not fall back into that same push-and-pull when you see Damian's figure in your peripheral vision. To not be mistaken with familiar company.

He watches you for longer than he should. He keeps doing that, the staring. "There's no reason for me to do so." He answers eventually.

Your brows furrow. Something about his responses from the moment you met him unnerved you, as if he's leaving his words purposely vague. Clues buried within that mask of his, where an unanswered story that didn't belong to your reality lingers in his.

"Where am I currently in your dimension?" You decide to settle at the sofa, stretching out your limbs. "If she's still in Gotham, I need to be careful not to be seen."

Ever since you arrived, your body has been aching horribly. It hadn't been this obvious when you had arrived, but now, it's stinging down to your nerves. Maybe the adrenaline had finally worn off, and you're left to deal with a body unequipped to the frantic mess your mind is trying to sort out.

"It won't be a problem." He answers, lips pursing into a thin line. "She's gone."

Your head tilts questioningly to meet his gaze, but he avoids yours. Pulling open his kitchen drawer, there's a taut tension in his body as if he's been expecting your question and dreading it all the same.

Gone could mean anything. Out of the city borders or—

Your eyes flicker down to his disappearing hand, and find his reappearing fingers gripped around pain ointment. Your stretch pauses halfway, the strange alertness of being noticed without your permission sending a chill down your spine.

Forcing your hands down back to your sides, you eye him warily as he makes his way round the couch, stopping before you. His hand extends, lifting his offering silently.

It's unfamiliar, and even if you try your hardest to reason to yourself, that this isn't the Damian you know, it doesn't make it any easier to allow him to assist you. You half expect mocking, a glimpse of his smirk when your gaze flickers to the ointment held out in front of you.

A low breath escapes his lips, and you expect him to give in. To understand that you don't require more of him other than his specific assistance to send you home—only for him to lower himself.

Damian Wayne—even if he isn't the one you're used to—is kneeling down to meet your gaze. Your breath stops, your chest seized tight as you stare at him, unable to hide your surprise.

He doesn't falter, his fingers mindlessly dipping into the ointment before placing the jar by your side. His free hand goes to grip your wrist, tugging gently to expose the bruises trailing along your arm from your fall.

"If it is me you have come to for assistance." He mutters with a click of his tongue. "Then, I expect you not to be stubborn."

You swallow, your jaw ticking as you find your tongue heavy with a lack of an adequate response. His unwavering concern, this intensity can't be tied solely to you. There has to be a reason for why he is looking at you this way.

"What did you mean?" You ask quietly. "By gone?"

His fingers, still coated with the ointment, brush gently over your thudding pulse. His gaze finally lifts, but you can't read him. There's a pull to his gaze, and the answer reveals itself by the time you recognise what is held within his eyes isn't irritation or indifference. It was grief.

"She's dead."

It's a strange feeling to know you're stepping into a world where a version of you used to exist. A sick form of good luck, a technical elimination of complications.

Except that it's only made everything more complicated. You had no idea on how to deal with the Damian in front of you now that the truth's been revealed.

When he first admitted that he wasn't the Damian you knew, you had quickly assumed that whatever dynamic he shared with you from this dimension was a parallel to the one you shared with your Damian. Forced tolerance, a begrudging partnership. No, you had needed to assume it so. Anything different would have shattered this fragile alliance you had with the stranger sitting across you, because despite everything you felt about your Damian—you relied on him as a partner.

Now, you weren't sure if you could trust the Damian in front of you. You had assumed that if he answered your questions, you would have cleared the air—but it has only raised more.

You can feel his attention while you're thinking. You swear with the intensity of his gaze casted onto you which you pretend not to notice, it's as if your existence only materialised when his eyes are on you. There's a strange urgency in his unblinking stare, as if to remind himself that you're still in front of him.

It's too much. It was the same back when he first saw you as well. Damian hasn't mentioned his strange reaction since, and his lack of an explanation for why he had embraced you clues you on nothing still, on what you meant to him.

"I'm not her." You mutter after a moment. You don't know why, but you feel you have to say it.

There's some form of attachment he must've had with you, and you couldn't let yourself be tangled into the mess of what's been left behind. This isn't your world, and the last thing you needed was a blur of that line.

"I know." He answers quickly. Without pause, as if he's been repeating it to himself before you had even verbalised it.

Your hesitance must be palpable because he lets out a sigh not long after, heavy from his chest.

"I didn't offer you my help because I think you're—" He swallows, pain etched into the lines of his grimace. "I understand that you are alone in this world. That some mistake of mine from your end caused this. I am taking responsibility for it—to bring you back. There is nothing more to it."

You watch him as he did to you, noting a delicate fragility to him you've never seen before. You had been so wrapped up in your situation, that you failed to notice the frantic quality of his gaze or the exhaustion plaguing his features. As if being around you—drained him from the impossibility of seeing you alive and breathing.

"Okay." You answer eventually. "I believe you."

His shoulders, tense and taut, finally loosen slightly at your response.

"Do you—" Your voice is plagued with exhaustion, and you struggle to find the words, the composure to hide your desperation. "—have any idea on how I'll be able to get back?"

Relief flickers briefly in his gaze, replaced with a familiar efficiency that slots over the dark pool his eyes held mere seconds ago. This, you were used to. Whenever he was asked to perform a duty, that was when you both cooperated the easiest.

"If it were me, I'd predict that there will be a two-way mechanism." He suggests automatically. So, he had been considering his own theories this entire time.

Leaning in, his elbows pressing against his thighs, he continues. "An entry will not be possible without a tunnel. To find the connection and restart it as you had before in your dimension, it should trigger an opening."

"I also considered the possibility of a tunnel." You frown, your fingers drawing a thin, edged line across the sofa's fabric. "The only problem is that when I arrived, before contacting you—I looked around the premise. I really tried."

"There was no opening." You admit, dread digging slowly into your bones.

"Perhaps it will only be activated if it was triggered in the same process as before." He suggests.

"...Doesn't that rely on Damian—" You falter, meeting his gaze. "—my Damian restarting the trigger on his side?"

He nods, even as his lips purse slightly at the mention of the other him. "Your only chance depends on him coming to the same realisation we have."

You draw a short breath. "Shit."

Damian doesn't hesitate when you ask by the third hour of silence—to accompany you back to the construction site when the passing hours has done enough in driving you insane.

You hate waiting. Your Damian knows that. This Damian seems to know too.

He follows you like a silent shadow, tracing your steps and overlooking the same rubble caused by your fall as you try to find an anomaly. Anything that proves to your stubborn anxiety—that you are actually doing something to feel less trapped.

"There is nothing here." He states.

"You don't know that." You wish your voice sounded stronger. "I wasn't in my right mind when I landed. I might identify something I missed."

His jaw ticks once, but he doesn't stop you. He doesn't argue—and that unnerves you. The Damian you know doesn't hesitate when picking a fight, and frankly—you miss that. You needed something to distract you—and he was merely standing there like he was watching a phantom.

"I thought you said you would help." Your voice breaks.

Fuck. Swallowing back your revealed fright, you finally slump down onto the dust-covered concrete, pressing your palm against your eyes.

You hear a shuffle, the fabric of his coat landing heavy next to you. You uncover your eyes, catching him as he crouches beside you. His gaze meets yours head-on—and you nearly drown in the weight of it.

"There's no relief in digging through a dead-end." He mutters, peering over your features. "It'll only worsen the thoughts."

You grow quiet. You didn't need a verbal confirmation, not when just his gaze alone tells, that he wasn't only talking about your situation. Your chest heaves, the scent of concrete filling your nostrils.

The silence stretches, an uncomfortable sensation of helplessness filling the air.

"...Do you like pizza?" He asks after a moment.

Blinking once, you must've misheard it. You can't help the snort that escapes you, the sound broken and unsteady. "What?"

"I dislike it." He mutters. "The ones in Gotham. It's too much grease, and lacking of any true nutrients."

That... sounds very Damian of him.

You raise a brow, and his lips purse together. Letting out a regretful sigh, he gestures with a tilt of his head. "There's an adequate franchise down the street."

Lifting himself off the ground, he holds out his hand towards you. "Since this dreadful day has been awfully unproductive, I suppose a meal like that is befitting."

Your gaze flickers between his hand and that unfamiliar, warmth in his eyes. Of how you had been in a similar position mere hours ago when he had offered you pain ointment. Of how he has been consistently extending his hand towards you, accompanying your side—ever since you entered this dimension.

This time, you take his hand.

Strangely enough, the fluorescent lights of 'Gotham City Pizzeria' and the smell of floor disinfectant—combined with the peculiar sight of Damian lifting a soggy pizza slice with a grimace did lift your spirits. If this was your dimension, you would have bothered with taking a picture to capture the sight of him clashing with an environment so strongly, but you couldn't afford to let this rare moment of normalcy be dimmed by that reminder.

"Should I be concerned that the Damian Wayne in this dimension consumes Gotham pizzas?" You murmur, wiping a streak of tomato at the corner of your mouth.

His lips quirk up slightly. "Even I have my faults."

Clearing his throat, he murmurs. "Your turn."

You raise a brow, confused.

He leans back, dusting his hands against the napkin. "I haven't learned anything about you since you arrived."

Oh. You had assumed that he didn't want to. Outside of the boundaries of your circumstance, he hasn't really pushed much further other than details he needed to have, to piece a solution together.

"What do you want to know?" You shrug.

His lips tilt upwards again, more intently this time. "Do you like pizza?"

Your smile lifts instinctively. "I do, detective. How'd you guess?"

His smile strains a little, and you realise why.

"Ah." You murmur.

"No." He stops you before you can retreat. "Don't stop on my account. I want to know what you like."

You swallow, fingers running over the crust flakes coating your thumb. You suppose you could answer, there wasn't any harm done. "I do like pizza. It's the only thing that's comforting enough after a long night of patrol. I think when I enter a familiar place at an hour like this, when there's no one else around, it's like the world closes in to exist in just this spot, y'know? I get to forget about my worries for a little while."

He nods, listening to you speak as if he intended on memorising every word. Like he may miss the chance to do so ever again.

"So, why'd you pick this place?" You return the question.

"...As I told you before, I'm not fond of it."

"So, why are you here?" You push.

A slow exhale escapes his mouth. "I suppose, it was like you said. Comforting—in a sense, to be surrounded by something familiar."

You can see him struggling, on what to say and what to keep buried. This provided company of his—it's like you're digging into a wound he's openly showing you.

"What else do you like?" He reiterates.

Your smile reappears, almost easing. "Need a full catalogue?"

"Yes." He answers almost immediately. It takes the breath out of you, the humour still stuck on your tongue with the way he looks at you, all-consuming. "I would."

"I suppose... I could tell you things I never told anyone." You whisper almost conspiratorially. "Something tells me you'll keep quite a good secret."

His lips lift, curving a small dimple by his cheek. "I swear."

"I guess..." Leaning your cheek against your palm, you take your time in truly looking at him. "I always did like your eyes."

He blinks, not expecting your answer. "My eyes?"

"Yeah." Your grin comes easier to you now, seeing him uncharacteristically flustered. "Made me unreasonably jealous at times. Green eyes like that, and you spend half the time glowering."

He scoffs lowly, but it holds no bite. "I wasn't aware there was a way to utilise them."

"No, you do it right when you're not thinking too hard." You murmur, lost in thought. "When you don't pretend to be strong, your eyes go soft. Just around the edges."

The moment those words leave you, you realise you're pushing too far, saying something so intimate, it should have never been verbalised.

He watches you, and to your dismay, he does it right then and there. The sharpened edges around his gaze softens, and so does Damian.

"You're direct." He mutters, almost fondly.

You swallow, averting your gaze. "So I've been told."

"I like that."

You shift your focus back to him immediately, a soft thudding in your chest. He has never averted his gaze. Rarely, you realise, does he pull his attention away from you. It's like he's treasuring it, the small impossibility of this conversation, of your presence in this pizzeria illuminated by the neon lights.

"Do you feel like you're dreaming?" You ask. "It feels like I know you even though I shouldn't."

His lips quirk. "It is a fair exchange for reality, if I get to meet you."

Your heart is thudding louder now, and you don't find it instinctive anymore to avert his gaze, no matter how much the depth feels like drowning.

"A once in a lifetime phenomenon." You declare. "Let's not waste it."

Gotham's cityscape takes a less intimidating turn in the weeks following your exploration with Damian, as the hidden beauty within begins to reveal itself. The confusing streets become interesting puzzles, a guessing game on what road could be an alternative to the ones you frequent in your dimension. When night falls? That's when this Gotham truly sings, coming alive.

Without the late nights being reserved for the sole purpose of patrol, Damian guides you within the ins-and-outs of alleyways, leading you through slot machines, bars that still had the hum of human company despite the late hour. Eventually, you both land on a rooftop that lets you oversee the entire city.

It's terrifyingly easy to enjoy his company when you're not busy pretending otherwise. There's a symphony to your shared steps, the trailing of his shadow that plays out like a familiar, comforting rhythm.

"It's different." You mutter almost excitedly. The faint buzz of exhaustion from the late hour leaves you increasingly lax, your hand tugging at his sleeve towards the Wayne Tower in the distance. "Ours is all red hues and sharp angles. I like yours more."

He hums, sounding amused. His gaze is still trained on you, not focused on your pointed finger towards the building at all. Letting out a huff, your hand, numbed by the freezing wind, lifts to cup his cheek.

He blinks, a rare vulnerable expression crossing his features at your touch.

"Stop looking at me." You gesture, trying to tune his head towards the cityscape. "You're missing out."

"No, I'm not." He answers honestly.

You blink, hand faltering over his cheek, but he raises his own to cover yours.

"Sorry." He murmurs, lashes lowering with his gaze as he closes his eyes momentarily. "Allow me to be a little selfish, just this once."

Your fingers shake in response, but you don't remove your hand.

"That's not very fair of you." You mutter.

"I suppose I have never practiced that trait well." Opening his eyes, you're faced with that tenderness, the one that leaves you breathless. "Does it make me hateful?"

"No." You answer honestly. "You've always been bad at that."

"At being fair?" He asks.

"Making me hate you." You admit quietly.

His gaze softens imperceptibly. "I suppose we're both not very good liars."

The touch of his cheek burns your skin. This is dangerous, your mind faintly warns you. You promised yourself to never hesitate in your decision, not even after meeting him. You were always meant to go home.

He spots your hesitance, and his warmth falters. His lips set back into that familiar, distant line as he lets your hand go.

"I apologise if I over-stepped." He says before you even have time to clear the air.

"No, that isn't it." You wince, drawing your hand back to scratch at your cheek. "I was just thinking. Maybe—it isn't so bad if I could stay a little longer. There's no guarantee on when the portal will open again, so it's not a ruled out possibility."

Your suggestion is a toss into the wind. A complete silent, interpretation that maybe that's what he'd like as well.

You don't even have time to process the slight hope in his gaze, the consideration of your words before something—no everything seizes. Your body collapses to the ground, the pain of your atoms glitching, seizing to exist, and reforming again, is nearly indescribable.

A near howl escapes your bitten lips as you crumple towards the floor, only for Damian to catch you in his arms, down on his knees in front of you. Your fingers grip tight around his wrists, steading yourself as your vision blurs in and out. By the time you've strained your neck to look back up at him, you see the pain contorting his expression, wiping it loose of all composure.

"I—I'm okay." You breathe out, even as you can feel how cold and clammy your skin has become.

He doesn't answer. He merely stares, a rush of emotions flooding too fast through his mind for you to read, before it falters. His grip is your only anchor, but he's trembling too.

"This isn't a good sign." He states, dread falling over his features. "You must return, soon."

"So, you're saying—" You recall his words faintly. "The longer I stay in this dimension, my body will begin to disintegrate?"

Those technical words, theories that sound ridiculous on paper, thread thinly in a reality where your body was now a self-destructive timer. He gives you a short nod, his dark circles illuminated by the hologram of his research. Despite it being your life on the line, he looks wrecked.

What had started out as a happy night, ended with the reminder that you're not only endangering yourself but him. He's faced losing you once, and your existence in this dimension that should have never happened—he might go through it all over again if you don't find the portal in time.

"Damian." You call out, spotting the weak composure he's trying to display. "Look at me."

He refuses to listen, or maybe, he's completely blocked everything out with his gaze trained on the coordinates and running calculations. Standing up from the couch, you move slowly towards him to not startle him. Your hand briefly touches his arm, and he flinches.

"Damian, we've been over this." You speak as calmly as you can. "There's no opening unless it's opened from my side."

"Then, why hasn't he done it?" He snaps.

You blink, taken aback by his reaction.

"I can't—" He swallows, jaw clenched as he stares at you with a raw agony. One he's been hiding from you since you arrived, that you had caught a brief glimpse of when he first embraced you in his panic. "I won't fail you again. I refuse to."

"Damian." Your brows furrow, hands intertwining with his to force him to feel your touch. "I need you to breathe."

His chest heaves, and you recognise a panic attack before he's even verbalised it. Pulling him towards the sofa, you force him to sit, hands still connected with his.

"It isn't fair." Damian shakes his head. "Nothing ever is. Either way, it feels as if I'm losing you all over again."

Your breath trembles in his admission, and you can do nothing but sit here and listen.

"It was my fault." He confesses, grief-stricken. "A mission gone wrong—and my arrogance. I had overestimated the ambush, and we were cornered."

His body goes still as he drowns in his memory. "You hadn't hesitated stepping in the way. I could do nothing but watch."

"I am unworthy for many things." His voice lowers, with such an encompassing belief in his words. "But not being able to save you? That is a punishment I will never recover from."

"To lose you again." He mutters, broken. "I won't know what to do."

"Damian." You whisper. "I'm scared too."

He looks up at you then, and tears are welled in the corners of his lashes.

"But I'm glad." You emphasise, squeezing his hand. "That it's you, that you're the one here with me."

He blinks, barely able to process your words. "Why?"

"Because you have been by my side, from the moment I arrived." You answer genuinely. "Even if it hurts you, and I know it does. You stuck around, and you got to know me. You didn't have to do that, not when it costs you everything to do so."

He swallows, his expression shattered as he listens.

"I would have never known this side of you, if you hadn't found me." You push forward. "And no matter how terrifying it is to be in a whole other dimension without knowing if I'll make it home, it doesn't change that I'm glad I met you."

He breathes out, as if your words were a sucker-punch to his gut. His eyes trace over your features, a hidden longing unravelling the longer he carried out his intent focus, wanting to capture everything.

"Can I be selfish one more time?" His voice is a quiet plea, and you don't resist to how weak it renders you.

You nod gently.

Leaning in, his fingers tremble as he reaches up to brush away a stray strand from your cheek. His warmth lingers over your skin, eventually brushing over your cheekbone as his gaze pours into you. He looks at you the same way he had countless times before, and you had never been able to put it to words. Till now.

When his lips touch yours, it feels like a goodbye. A wish made impossible, fulfilled for only a mere moment. It's softer than you ever expected, gentle in a way you had never been treated from anyone else before.

When you open your eyes, you watch his expression carefully draw back into his composure. He's doing it for you, picking up the pieces that's broken so you won't have to face it.

"Let's get you home." He promises, and you believe it.

As the days pass by, with your body experiencing more frequent glitches, Damian's kindness runs a deeper wound above your heart. Whenever you insist that you're fine so he can focus on his work—he merely accompanies you by your side like some personal torture he inflicts on himself. Whenever your body seizes into another episode, split between the fractures of reality—he's there, waiting for you to reach for him so you can feel real again.

He listens with a seared focus now whenever you tell him stories, of yourself—of your world, like he's running out of time. You both are.

It's the seventh day, when the daily scans of the construction site run by Damian finally begin to detect increasing abnormal activity from where you landed.

"The debris movement seems to reverse every time I run the scan." He mutters. "As if there's a disruption in the space."

You swallow dryly, eyeing the replay he's showing you. "Do you think it could mean.."

"Yes, I'm certain." Damian nods firmly. "The portal is being triggered on the other side. The only concern now is when we should be at the site."

This... is it. Despite everything you've prepared and anticipated for, the obvious fact that you should be relieved you have a chance of making it home—the realisation comes with a bitter-sweet note.

Damian doesn't comment further past the facts. He merely focuses on the hologram screen, inputting commands to verify an estimate window to make rounds at the construction site. Despite calling himself selfish, you had never seen him so composed, silent on his true thoughts of this discovery.

"In two days." He answers, staring unblinkingly at the figure. "We won't miss it."

That settles it. In two days... you're going home.

"I hate waiting."

"I am aware." Damian murmurs.

"Stop agreeing with me." You sigh.

"Alright."

Your head snaps, an unamused expression taking over your features.

His gaze flickers from his device to meet yours briefly, and his lips quirk up slightly. "Sorry." His voice doesn't sound apologetic at all. "You've made it too easy."

You can't help but scoff, chin leaning against his shoulder. "This is worse than the glitches."

"Have I mentioned that you're a horrible liar?" He mocks.

"Numerous times." You hum, eyeing the scan with a narrowed glance. "What if your calculations are wrong?"

"I ran over them one thousand and fifty-three times." He frowns. "The chance for error are near zero."

"Wow, from the looks of it—you seem rather eager to get rid of me." You tease.

"Was I that obvious?" He shrugs.

"Who's the bad liar now?" You tease.

He opens his mouth, ready to produce some quick retort—but something catches his eye.

Shifting your gaze to follow his, you catch movement from where the ground had been stagnant. The rubble—is beginning to move in an anti-clockwise direction.

"Now." Damian stands abruptly, a hand wrapping around your waist to lift you to your feet.

The shift in the atmosphere as a distant rumbling occurrs beneath your feet, it's much more aggressive than you expected. Damian tugs you back, just in time before a fracture cracks in the ground.

"The portal." You recognise, eyeing the glow beneath the fissure, something dreadfully familiar.

Your breath is almost winded, coming up short as you stare at the formation in trembling anticipation. Your gaze whips to Damian, your heart slamming against your ribcage—only for your words to fail you when you meet his expression.

Broken, that's all you saw. The same way he had seemed when you first met him.

"Damian." You call out, hesitant, but he shakes his head.

"I never got to tell you." He starts.

Your brows furrow. He had been nothing but honest since you got here. There isn’t a wound that he hasn’t uncovered in front of you, no vulnerability he hasn’t revealed. You know him, because he had let you.

"I want you to know that I am glad." He confesses, his voice picking up in pace. He sounds terrified that he won't be able to finish what he's started. "That I got to know you. There wasn't a moment where I regretted it, not even for a second."

"I must tell you." His voice cracks. "That I'd choose you, in a hundred lifetimes, no matter what reality, I'd always choose you."

The words are lost on your tongue. I'd choose you too. He has to know, even when the tears well up in your eyes.

He holds you tight, as if he's trying to sear this very embrace into his memory. "At least, I'll know now that somewhere out there, the person I am in your world was able to bring you back. That a version of me didn't lose you."

"I know it's selfish." He whispers. "But I wish I could keep you."

Contrary to his words, he lets go of you the moment he says it, his arms parting from your frame to remain firmly at his side. He's restraining himself, you realise. Damian, the very image of self-control, is barely keeping himself together. He’s letting you go, and in doing so, he’s saving you.

"Thank you." He murmurs in goodbye, casting you a solemn smile. "For sparing me the mercy of meeting you again."

"I hope he understands just how fortunate he is." A bittersweet smile graces his lips. "That he'll cherish you, and protect you always."

You think you ask him to wait. For more time. You remember briefly on how your hand extended towards him, before the portal had pulled you in. It was silent after that, and the loss of something indescribable hits you by the time the world comes back—roaring to life.

Tumbling onto the ground, you choke out a breath, saliva coating your lips as your fingers press numbly into the ground.

You're home. A quick glimpse of your surroundings is enough to confirm the familiar machinery, the abandoned lab. Yet, flashes of Damian's unmoving gaze before his frame completely disappeared, staring at you like he wanted to commit you to memory.

How could he have called it mercy, when he was so shattered?

Your tears slipped, and you feel a strange gap in your chest.

A rushed call of your name echoes before you can even name the emotion that consumes you. The syllables barely forms in your mind, as your head whips up in a daze. Your tear-stained expression is broken, completely unhidden—when you see Damian. Your Damian.

"Damian." Your voice croaks out. The name sounds strange on your tongue.

He freezes, unsure on how to process this version of you. Whatever he expected when he got you back, he must've never anticipated this. The version that has just lost him, and a part of you always will.

Pushing yourself to your feet, you stumble in your steps before collapsing into him. You're convinced he'll push you away, as he always does.

What you didn't expect was the steady warmth of his arms wrapping around you. Tense, but protective—as if he were trying to fend off the inner turmoil that's consuming you.

"It's alright." He mutters, voice stiff but his grip doesn't falter. "You're safe. I am here."

That breaks a silent sob out of you, and you bury your face into his chest. He doesn't push you for answers, nor does he distance himself. He remains planted exactly where he is, grounding you with his presence while you mourned for something that should have never been yours, and what you should have never lost.

He is embracing you so tight, it gave you a violent sense of déjà vu. The lines are blurring, and you can't find it in yourself to be angry when you know you should be.

"I am sorry." He mutters, voice breaking in composure. "I did this—I am sorry. I failed you."

"No, you didn't." You answer, your voice hoarse. "You brought me back."

It was the truth, broken into a hundred pieces.

In time, you will tell him. Of how he protected you even in another dimension. Of how that version of him will forever know that in another reality, he had saved you. That there was a Damian who didn't experience losing you.

Of how you'll never forget him. Even when he's out of bounds, but forever engraved into your existence, a memory that should have never existed.

But for now, you'll let yourself rest, knowing that you're home.

likes, reblogs, and comments are highly appreciated! <333

dc masterlist -> damian + other dc works

• Glancing over at the group of humans huddling together on a table, he watches them all tense when Bluestreak walks by, one flipping a canvas bag between them. Covering something. And you look around, meeting his optics and wincing as you hurriedly whisper to the others. Trying to hide whatever you’ve got as he heads that way. But not before he sees the little packages. How the frag do you all keep getting contraband? “Hand over that poison,” he snarls but you and the others are already snatching up the snacks and running. “Get back here!”

• Swearing as you run the length of the table, Cybertronians are turning to stare as you scramble to rip open packaging. Scarfing a kitkat because the good doctor is going to take it away and toss it as soon as he catches you. And you can hear someone else hacking up a lung trying to inhale that hot Coke. Trying to explain to the medic that chocolate and caffeine aren’t poisonous had failed miserably and The Ban had gone into effect. Yelling as he smacks a hand on the table in front of you, you’re nearly falling trying to change direction.

• Grabbing for you as you dart and yell what he’s fairly certain are expletives, he’s not furious at you so much as whoever keeps giving all of you things he’s told the other Autobots are bad for you. Feeding you addictive, poisonous compounds just because you and the other humans can do that thing with your eyes. “Drop it! Drop it right now,” he demands as you tear open a package with your teeth to devour whatever’s inside and probably some paper, too.

"You're alright. Let me watch your six, hm?" He offers. Without waiting for an answer, he inserts himself directly in front of you, effectively blocking you from any line of fire. He's barricaded you into the alcove with his body, his hulking frame shielding yours entirely from view. Up close you notice he smells like sweat and something spicy. Like fancy smoked wood.

"You here with friends?" He asks, voice low and remarkably intimate.

"Yeah. For a birthday party. You?"

"Mm. Brought my boys." There's an indulgent smile to his voice as he tips his head slightly in your direction, eyes never fully leaving the rails. "Thought I'd give 'em a chance to blow off some steam."

"This is the perfect place to do it. Where are they, then?"

"Other Team. Got tired of hearing 'em debate who'd take me out quickest so I told them I'd put 'em to the test. They really think they can best me. Un-bloody-likely." He scoffs. "Been doin' this longer than they've been around. Longer than you've been out of diapers, I reckon."

"So you're not even going to go easy on them?"

"Not a chance, love. They need a challenge once and a while. To be reminded of what I've got. They have plenty of strength, my lot, but they don't stand a chance."

Price's words ring true enough. He moves with lethal precision through the set, each shot he takes landing exact on his target. He's silent too, taking out players before they even have a chance to lift their gun. You don't exactly get a chance to raise yours either. When he notices you starting to get huffy after he's keeps stealing all your "kills," he takes a step back and let's you handle a few of them. No need for you to know that he was busy glaring holes into the other team over your shoulder, intimidating the enemy into surrender before you painted their armour yellow.

You were a little perplexed when the klaxon sounds to mark the end of the round and you still hadn't seen any kids. You'd been expecting a couple of nine year olds- not the three fully grown men who stood in front of you after the game, sweating and panting like a pack of dogs.

"Told ye we would'ne go easy on ye." The Scottish one winks.

"We lost, Soap." The one in the mask claps him on the shoulder while the third man shakes his head in good natured defeat.

"We'll get you next time, Cap." He says. "Count on it."

Bemused, you turn to John, who's grinning ear to ear. He's right chuffed to have won, chest puffed out a little and all. "These are the lads I was telling you about. Knew they wouldn't stand a chance."

I saw one (1) single helmet cam of some special ops guy doing paintball with a bunch of army guys and- yeah. The ideas were happening.

• Why are you so nervous suddenly? Head tilting as you glance at him and away, his servos flex with the urge to touch your arm and strengthen the connection. To delve into your field to figure out what’s changed. And that thought has him rocking back a step. “Ready to begin?” He asks, unsettled with himself. For wanting to touch you to get a better read on you when he normally tries so hard to block others out. You smile thinly, stretching. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ you reply with a soft huff of laughter. Knows you’re disparaging of your own abilities, that you wear that self criticism like armor and he’s not sure why. But he also knows that despite your grumbling and protests, you’re doing better at this.

• Hate jogging, but somehow with him, it’s more tolerable. It’s definitely not because someone else is also suffering in solidarity with you, though. You’re pretty sure he could jog for miles and not get tired. Probably thinks your huffing and wheezing as you plod after him is hilarious. At least he has the decency to keep it up himself if he does, though. Jogging slowly after him, you’re aware that he’d slowed down considerably after that first day, like he’d learned your pace and adjusted to it when he didn’t have to. Just like he didn’t need to talk to, and possibly threaten, the principal on your behalf.

• Moving with exaggerated slowness to let you try and keep up, he thinks about the upcoming break. And it’s strange, but he almost feels uncomfortable about it. Almost anxious. So used to having something to do. Being needed. But what’s he supposed to do while school is out for break? Can make lesson plans, but that won’t take him long. What will you do during the break, he wonders. Will you be lonely? Bored? He’s going to miss his kids while they’re out, but he’s going to miss you more. When had that happened? When had he started needing other people around? Looking forward to seeing you?

• Almost wish you’d spiked the coffee with something as your calves start to burn. And you nearly run into him when he stops short, turning. Big hands reach to steady you before you can smack your face against the mass displaced mech’s chest. And he’s just staring down at you, gripping your upper arms. “What is it?” You ask, confused as the loud sound of your breathing fills the air. You’re not about to have a stroke or something are you? Maybe he’s got some kind of weird, alien preternatural sense that’s keying in on something. But he just seems to shake himself out of whatever that was, laying a big hand on top of your head. Before turning away and starting to jog again. What was that? Maybe he thought you might need a break?

• Following overhead in his altmode, he knows that you’re still wary about him. That you probably wouldn’t like him shadowing you, but you’re too vulnerable to not be protected. Lazily banking as he tracks you, he notices when the van that was parked outside the gate pulls onto the road and follows you. Though, you don’t. Know the protestors at the gate sometimes harass the caretakers and he drops lower. Monitoring that van and he sees the moment you notice you’re being followed and start to slow down.

• Pulling off on the side of the road to try and allow the van to go around since they’re following too close for comfort, a shiver of awareness trips through you when the van stops beside you. Making you realize you’d seen a very similar van at the gate. Protestors? Skin crawling that they’d followed you, you’re slamming down on the pedals when the side door is thrown open. Hear someone say ‘go’ and armed men in masks and swat gear are rushing you.

• Dropping sharply the klik the van stopped, he sees one grab your backpack to yank you off your bike as you yell. And he’s transforming, peds hitting the ground hard as you fall. The strangers are turning, raising weapons and his tendrils lash out. Smacking into the nearest human to swat him bodily into a tree. Lunging for you as he lashes out, the strangers are yelling commands, shooting at him as he crouches over where you’re cowering on the ground. That they dare leaving him furious. You’re his.

He knows who this voice belongs to, of course. In fact, he knows it quite well. It’s been floating dreamily through his mind like a pleasant nepenthe for some time now. He just… hadn’t expected that you’d still be awake at this repugnant hour, let alone in the one room he thought he could sneak through without being spotted by anyone on the way to his royal chambers.

And yet here you are.

His wild-eyed gaze finds you easily, poised in the seat of an enormous armchair by the freshly-lit hearth with an open book resting daintily in your lap.

The moment he spots you, Bowser takes a clumsy step sideways, knocking his tail into a stack of books and sending them toppling to the floor in a flutter of dust and dog-eared pages. Righting himself, he barely remembers to whip a meaty hand up and slap it across the top of his head, tilting the palm so that his left horn is obscured from view.

“P-Princess!?” he blurts out, immediately wincing as his booming voice reverberates off the high, stone ceilings and echoes out through the library, loud enough to wake a Dry Bones.

Perhaps it says much that you only shut your eyes for a second as if pained by the volume before opening them again and blinking up at the King with an air of mild intrigue.

The embers crackling inside the hearth cast their orange warmth out into the nook, illuminating much of the nearby shelves that have been stacked to the rafters with some of Kamek’s spell books, Junior’s comics and an absolute avalanche of Bowser’s cherished romance novels.

Flickering flames chase shadows across your impassive features as you stare up at him, a lone eyebrow cocked like a weapon about to fire. “Bowser,” you greet him coolly in return, throwing a glance up at his conspicuous hand.

His stomach promptly drops, yet even still, even still, the King’s almighty heart soars on a swell of elation at the simple and unassuming fact that you’ve spoken to him....

He just wishes you hadn’t chosen this exact moment to break your vow of silence that you've been valiantly upholding for the better part of a week.

You’re not supposed to be here! Well, you are supposed to be here, in his Fortress – In fact, he’s taken a great many measures to ensure you have to stay here – but he certainly didn’t expect to find you in his library in the dead of night when you should be sound asleep in the chambers he gifted you. You definitely shouldn’t be awake and, worse still, looking at him.

Mind in a swirl, Bowser wonders if you’d already spotted what he’s hiding beneath his palm.

If he’d have just managed to avoid you until morning, he’d have found something inconspicuous to hide it… One of his top hats, perhaps. Or maybe he’d have combed his mane over in such a way as to hide the unsightly laceration that lances from a place beneath his hairline to the base of his horn, where it turns from an angry, red gouge to a dark, jagged crack, marring the inner curve of his once pristine and gleaming headgear.

He’d even polished them arduously earlier today, conscious to keep up his immaculate appearance whilst such a refined and comely lady stays in his Fortress.

Of course, he hadn’t at all expected that a rogue Treevil would be the one to catch him by surprise. A Treevil. That shuffling, twig-tossing lump of wood had the gall to launch an attack on Bowser when he was bending to wrench a fistful of flowers out of the soil, intent on presenting them to you as a gift in the morning.

The ‘twig’ it used as a club wasn’t so much a tiny piece of wood as it was a very unreasonably-sized log. It caught him squarely on the front of his skull, its hard, brittle edge landing a solid ‘thwack’ to his horn before he could even gather his wits to see what had hit him.

Of course, the Treevil now stands as little more than a smoking pile of charcoal in the centre of Dimble Wood, but it had left a blow in its own right, landed one straight down on the King’s pride as well as his body.

He’d hoped he could stay wholly undetected whilst he made his way back to his royal quarters, certain that a genius strategist like him could come up with some plan to conceal the embarrassing injury from all of his subjects, his guards, and yourself and Junior, first and foremost.

Well. So much for that plan.

“What- Uhh,” he flounders, desperate to direct your attention elsewhere, for a change, “What’re you still doin’ up?” It’s a legitimate concern. You should be in your bed where he left you, where it’s safe, and he knows where to find you. You must be exhausted to be up at this hour.

Unbeknownst to him, your mind is far more awake than he gives it credit for.

“I couldn’t sleep.” The half-lie falls so expertly off your tongue, the smitten King doesn’t have a chance of catching it.

You couldn’t sleep because you were busy making yet another escape attempt, using your time wisely by mapping out the fortress in the twilight hours when the koopa guards are at their drowsiest.

All for naught. Tonight, at least.

Ever since Bowser had ‘so graciously allowed’ you more freedom to roam around his domicile, there have been double the number of guards posted around every corner and in every doorway. This library in the West wing seems to be the only place they haven’t bothered to watch so heavily, perhaps because there are no windows or doors here that might lead to a potential exit.

After it became clear you wouldn’t be finding an escape route tonight, you sought a reprieve instead, bundling yourself away amongst the crowded bookshelves and dusty tomes to find some peace from the sleepy but vigilant guards.

Sod’s law then, that Bowser should turn up.

The King, for his part, has no idea what’s going through your mind nor that he’s done anything particularly wrong. Most of his attention has now shifted to the warm, creeping trickle of liquid he can feel break away from his scalp and ooze gently down past his eye, then on towards the curve of his cheek.

The soft thump of a book being closed wrenches him back into the moment.

Owlishly, he blinks down at you from the other side of the nook, private in his hopes that the firelight hasn’t yet reached him well enough to expose his secret.

You can’t see him like this; Marred. Flawed. He dreads to imagine what you’ll think if you spot his broken horn. You’ll probably think him weak. Unfit to take care of you.

So, when you rise gracefully to your slippered feet and lay the book down on the arm of your chair, he very nearly bolts for the other side of the library. But then the silken nightgown you’d conceded to wear after much, much protest on your part is pooling towards the ground and swishing around your ankles, each fold catching in the fire’s glow like the ripples of a curtain in the morning sun, and suddenly Bowser can’t think of escaping so much as he has to concentrate on not staring.

A padded footstep in his direction has him taking one long stride of his own in retreat, maintaining the distance you’d just tried to erase. Perhaps you recognise how… unusual it is for the King to be widening the gap because in the next second, you come to a temporary standstill, blinking up at the Koopa in surprise.

“Bowser,” you say, quiet but stern, gradually stitching your brows together into a hard line and taking another step in his direction, “You’re bleeding.”

He supposes it was too much to hope for...

The horror of being seen wars valiantly with his delight in seeing you, at having even an iota of your attention, even if it’s scornful or sad or… whatever this is.

So often, a melancholy will take you, and you’ll shut yourself away in your chambers, refusing to say a single word to him. Kamek was the one who had to tell him that you’d come around, if given enough time. You’d just been whisked away to an entirely new life without warning, after all. Far from home, far from the shores of your distant kingdom. Of course there’d be an adjustment period…

Slapping a toothy grin onto his snout, Bowser continues inching backwards whilst you glide towards him, picking up speed with every step, your eyes glued to the hand covering his blemish from sight.

“Bleedin’?” he echoes, shrugging one massive shoulder nonchalantly, “What’re you talkin’ about, I’m… I’m, uhhh…”

It isn’t often the King of all Koopas feels his courage falter. But right then, Bowser’s spiked shell hits the solid library doors, stopping him rather effectively in his tracks. Which leaves you with more than enough time to close in and come to a halt right in front of him, your head tilted all the way back to squint up at the underside of his chin.

Gulping down at steadying breath, Bowser finds himself entranced as one of your hands creeps up towards his raised arm. At once, the behemoth freezes, watching, waiting with his heart wedged in his throat to see what you’ll do next.

And in turn, you seem to hesitate as well, fingers poised just a few inches shy of making contact with his scales. There’s a contemplative frown deepening the lines on your face, as though you’re putting some serious thought into what you’re about to do.

By now, Bowser would wholly expect you to retract your arm and turn from him, skulking back out of the doors.

But instead, to his astonishment – and a Hell of a lot of your own – you knit your expression together resolutely and breach the gap between his arm and your fingertips.

The barest of pressures comes to rest upon the jutting bone of the King’s crooked elbow, hardly there at all.

So why does his body light up like a flare beneath your touch?

Synapses snap and pulse, nerve endings in his arm shoot signals up towards his brain and scurry back down to the elbow your fingers have alighted upon.

A touch… made willingly? And without any air of disgust or fear or ill-intent.

All the moisture dries up in Bowser’s mouth, leaving his tongue sitting thick and heavy as lead against the back of his fangs. His eyes are locked with rigid focus on your fingers, half hidden from view beyond the swell of his bicep.

He can’t even swallow, though he does feel the familiar bob of his gorge that calls for him to gulp.

‘What is she doing?’ is the first question that springs to his mind.

If it weren’t for the steady throb of pain in his skull, Bowser might be inclined to believe that he’s dreaming.

You’re initiating contact…

You’re initiating contact.

You’ve… never initiated contact before, no matter how many times Bowser has tried to encourage as much by nudging your hand with his or pushing his snout eagerly into your space, hoping for something tactile, a moment – just a glimpse – of something that he could mistake for returned affection. Just…

…Anything.

But this…?

This is definitely something.

Rendered speechless, Bowser doesn’t tear his eyes from the point of contact between your skin and his, half afraid that if he looks elsewhere, the moment will be gone, turning to nothing more than another sad, empty delusion he thinks of late at night.

Perhaps you’d disappear.

Perhaps you’re not even here at all, and this is simply a hallucination brought about by the knock that Treevil landed on his head.

“Bowser…”

But then, your voice is drifting up into his ears, soft and quiet and there. And the gentlest of pressures exerts itself on his elbow, pushing it down without force.

“Let me see…”

The King’s fingers instantly slacken their grasp on his mane, and despite his size, despite his indomitable strength and power and authority, he allows you to guide his arm down by the elbow, drawing his hand off the top of his head and exposing the dark, sticky trail of scarlet blood running over the plump of his cheek.

At last, his gaze moves to yours, and he watches, enraptured, whilst you give your tongue a chiding click, and your expression sheds whatever remaining steel it might have held were he not currently bleeding…

He waits...

For disgust, for the recoil, for the dip of your chin and squint of your eyes that signifies repulsion from his ugly new defect.... He waits for almost ten whole seconds - he knows because he counts each one in his head, just waiting to see how long it'll take before the inevitable blow.

“Hmm,” you murmur instead, no hint of a smirk haunting the edges of your mouth. Nothing more and nothing less is said.

Just... 'Hmm.'

Before he can respond, before he can even process your hum, you’ve withdrawn from the elbow of the arm that now flops uselessly at his side and stretch both hands up towards his head.

He’s taller than you. So much taller. Towering like a monolith over a tiny pebble.

And yet, with the breath caught inside his massive lungs, Bowser is helpless except to dip his enormous snout down to you as if riding on some old, unconscious instinct that tells him he should be the one deferring.

As it is, he’s barely stringing a coherent thought together, far too astonished and restless to see what you might do.

Is it still coming? Should he still be bracing himself? He could very easily shrug you off and prevent you from seeing any more than you already have but....

Gentle fingertips find him again, though the sensation of them is dulled this time; they’ve gingerly crested the very tips of his curved horns, wrapping around them and giving a small but effective tug.

When you use the same cautious leverage to tilt his head even further down, bringing his nose parallel with your stomach, Bowser’s tail promptly slumps flat to the carpet with a soft, heavy ‘thwump!’

‘Oh…’ flickers across his brain, and then, when nothing more eloquent comes to mind… ‘Stars.’

Mouth hanging slightly ajar, he lets his eyes travel up the length of your neck to settle on your face.

He hardly dares breathe lest even one tiny inhale proves to be a movement that frightens you away from doing… whatever it is you’re doing to him right now.

Your eyes don’t meet the King’s, though you’re aware that he’s staring. You suppose you can give him that.

“Huh,” you utter through pursed lips, following the trail of blood with your thumb up from his cheek towards his fiery hairline, stopping just short of touching the edge of a fresh, seeping laceration.

Bowser's scales grow noticeably hotter beneath your fingertips, so, quirking one side of your mouth into a wan smile, you finally drop your attention to his wide, bewildered eyes.

“Let me guess. I should see the other guy, right?” you tease, shrugging a shoulder.

Bowser merely stares at you for several seconds too many, until at last, he manages a slow, dopey blink and murmurs, “Huh?"

You’ve had too much experience with concealing your emotions to allow your lips any elasticity. Your smile does not soften at the stunned expression on Bowser’s scaly face.

That said, you can’t deny that he’d almost be endearing… if he wasn’t the very reason you’re trapped in this wretched fortress against your will.

But personal feelings aside, you can’t very well let him stumble around the castle all bloodied and bruised. He might have a concussion! Or God forbid he wakes Junior up, and the poor boy has to witness his own father with a crack in his horn and a cut on his scalp.

Fathers are supposed to be invincible.

Junior is still too young to learn that they’re not.

Heaving a great sigh that carries with it more weariness from the late hour than frustration with your ‘host,’ you let go of his horns and step back, smothering a laugh when he tilts forwards, righting himself with a hurriedly placed foot and a startled look on his face.

“Come on then,” you say, swivelling about on a heel and beckoning for him to follow you towards the library doors, “There’s a sink in your bathroom, I presume?”

Dumbstruck at the sudden turnaround, Bowser gives his head a shake, stepping dutifully into step behind you. “Uh… sink?” he parrots, reaching up with a claw-tipped finger to trace the path your thumb had left over his cheek, his touch rough yet reverent.

“To clean up that mess,” you explain, waving a hand over your shoulder in his vague direction, the first sniff of exasperation clouding your tone.

But Bowser hardly notices it. In fact, he hardly notices anything at all, save for the beguiling human leading him across the library towards the West entrance.

All he can think about, all he can do consider, is the way your hands had felt against his toughened scales, like a balm to whatever ire had been lingering after his run-in with the Treevil.

Tiny callouses on your fingertips rubbed lightly, not harshly. Careful, not cruel. You hadn't balked at his sullied appearance nor shuddered when you touched him. You hadn't even shown any pleasure at his misfortune, though somewhere deep down past the layers of wilful ignorance and optimism, a small part of Bowser knows you don't particularly like him.

In the library, the firelight flickers, forgotten.

It moves like it’s hurt - slowly, drunkenly, stumbling forwards a pace or two before it manages to bring itself to a clumsy halt, then teeters sideways and starts the whole process over again on its sluggish journey towards your house.

In the next second, the shock leaks from your chest and you’re on the move, scrambling away from the sink and tossing the sponge aside as you go, hearing a wet thwap as it lands somewhere nearby. You make a mad dash for the hallway adjoining your kitchen, slippered feet skidding across the tiles as you charge around the corner and beeline straight for the front door.

Because you recognise that figure, even if only by the size alone.

You don’t know a great many people who are quite as large as him after all. Though what he’d be doing out in a squall like this at quarter to eleven at night is far beyond the scope of your imagination.

Already, you’re planning a lecture. One that’ll have to come after you’ve discovered why your impromptu visitor is moving like a lame dog.

Red flag number one.

Hardly pausing long enough to get a proper grip on the doorhandle, you twist it clumsily aside and shove.

It’s hardly opened wider than a hairline crack before the howling wind sneaks in behind the wood and nearly yanks the door from your grasp, and you have little choice but to go with it, letting the weather snatch it open and tug you out onto the porch step beyond.

All at once, you’re being pelted by ice-cold lashes of rain that sting at your cheeks and whip into your eyes before you can raise an arm, attempting to shield your face as you holler above the howling maelstrom, “Bowser!?”

The eerie mirror-shine of eyes appear in the darkness, catching the light that spills from your hallway and reflecting it back at you.

Then, your visitor takes another step forwards, bringing himself just within reach of the dim glow.

Suspicions confirmed, you release a sharp huff of air, and without considering your slippers or the puddles pooling steadily along your path, you hop right off the porch step and march towards the gargantuan koopa, driven more by worry than anything even close to irritation.

At the approach of your splashing footfalls, a massive, horned head lifts away from where he’d tucked it against his chest, and you don’t miss how that small movement looks to have taken far more effort than it should have.

In the middle of a stride, you flick your gaze rapidly up and down, cataloguing everything from the way his meaty hands clutch at his elbows with a fervour, to how the tail poking out from beneath his shell curls inwards around his leg.

Then the rain is taking over your lashes again, and you have to shake your head to clear them as you reach your friend’s side and let out a shout that blasts droplets of water off your lips. “What the Hell are you doing here!?”

In hindsight, you suppose you could have worded it more gently.

Bowser’s almighty chest wheezes out a thin, rattling breath as he instinctively pushes his nose towards you, eyelids thick and heavy. Yet even still, his muzzle manages to lift into a weary smile just at the sight of you.

“S’rry,” he wobbles out in a voice like churning gravel, blinking unevenly at the ground when you duck beneath one of his arms and hoist it across your shoulders, buckling under a metric ton of muscle, “Di’n’t… know wh’re else t’go….”

Red flag number two.

Far from the scaley power-house you’ve known for half a decade, now he’s trembling like a sapling in a hurricane.

It frightens you.

What happened to him?

Grunting with effort, you hold your tongue until you’ve cajoled him over the threshold and into the warmth of your home, stretching your leg backwards to kick the door shut behind you, at once muffling the noise of the storm that still rages on outside.

Then, and only then, do you finally offer your exasperated response. “Home!” you wheeze, manoeuvring the Koopa under the cramped doorframe into your living room and trying not to wince as chips of wood are scraped off by the spikes protruding from his shell, “You could have gone home. To your castle! To Kamek!? Instead of traipsing your sorry hide all the way here in the middle of the night, in a thunderstorm, no less!”

If you knew how little attention he’s paying to your apparent anger, and how much attention he’s paying to the softness of your body pressing up against his solid, leathery side, you’d probably be even more miffed. And rightly so.

Still, he at least catches the gist of what you’d said. He’d be a fool not to listen to your voice when you speak, even with a fever running rampant beneath his shell. It would be like plugging his ears to a beautiful aria.

“Can’t,” he mumbles through rubbery lips, vaguely aware of the fireplace you’ve stopped at, “S’con-… contay-jus…”

And there’s red flag number three. Well, less of a red flag and more a blaring claxon.

“Contagious?” you parrot, extracting yourself from under Bowser’s arm and moving to stand below his chin, earning a reedy whine of protest from the King, “You’re sick?” And without waiting for permission, you reach up and press the back of your hand first to his leathery cheek, then to his forehead, pursing your lips at the heat radiating off his scales and missing the flutter of his eyelids as he nudges forwards into the touch.

“Stars…” you hiss, “You’re hot.”

When his drooping features struggle to lift into a very self-satisfied grin, you cluck your tongue and amend, “You’re running a fever, Shell-for-brains… And you say it’s infectious?”

Even in his addled state, he must have caught the frown that troubles your brows because he’s suddenly dipping his snout down to you and trying to whuff softly through fluttering nostrils.

“Koopas,” he croaks raggedly, halfway drunk on the bliss of your skin easing the heat out of his blistering face, “Only f’r Koopas… Wouldn’t… do that… t’you…”

As if you give half a damn about that, but his voice seems to wane with the last of his strength, and you barely have time to dart forwards, splaying your hands against the soft underside of his chest and giving him a solid shove until he sways upright again.

He blinks, flaming eyebrows crawling apart in something like surprise when he drops his nose and peers blearily down at the spot where your palms connect with his sternum, as if he’s mystified by the simple, steadying touch.

You, in the meantime, are a little distracted by the rainwater dripping steadily off his scutes, hair, and chin to form a slowly-growing puddle on your hearth.

“For goodness’ sake, you’re soaked right through…” Biting on your lip, you frown up at the very damp koopa shivering in front of you, and begin cobbling together the vaguest structure of a plan.

Right. You have a friend who’s… undeniably ill in your home. With something that only affects koopas, apparently. He’s quaking from the horns on his head to the tip of his tail. He’s far hotter to the touch than is typical for him, this in spite of being outside in the icy rain for an indeterminable amount of time… You don’t know all the ins and outs of koopa biology. But having one for a best friend has given you at least a little insight into the species.

And you don’t need to be an expert to recognise the signs of a fever when you see them.

“Okay, stay put. I’ll be back in a second,” you tell him urgently, giving him another once-over to make sure he’s adequately stable before you draw your hands away and turn to make a dash for the staircase at the opposite end of the room, leaving Bowser to peer after you in a daze.

Wait… His expression crumples as you disappear around the corner.

Where are you going?

Of its own accord, one of the King’s legs carries him forwards, and he stumbles heavily onto it, gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut until the room around him stabilises once more. When he wrests his eyelids apart again, he’s standing at the foot of the staircase, his clawed hand crushing a finial that cracks and splinters under his grasp as he tries using it to haul his entire bodyweight up onto the first step, intent on following you.

Beneath the sluggish muddle of thoughts clomping around inside his skull, there’s a tiny inkling of coherency that’s berating him for showing weakness, for getting sick in the first place, for coming here – to your home – and letting you see him vulnerable and clumsy and as far from dignified as a king could possibly get. But that inkling is small, and lost easily under the tides of instinct and impulse, both of which were what led him here in the first place, seeking comfort in a familiar space with familiar smells and his most treasured friend who he knew would always open the door to let him in.

And now, you’re gone again, taking the majority of that comforting scent with you, and Bowser’s body is desperately attempting to track you down once more.

He slumps in palpable relief when you suddenly reappear at the top of the stairs like a vision descending from the heavens, with your arms engulfing a tower of blankets and towels that are stacked high to your chin.

“Thought I told you to stay put,” you say without a lick of heat behind your words as you navigate the steps, peering around your stack at the Koopa gazing up at you from below.

He simply rumbles a hum in the affirmative, giving you an adoring look that you easily chalk up to the fever running its course and leaving his head in a daze.

As you meet him at the foot of the stairs, you spare the briefest grimace at your ruined finial before squeezing past Bowser’s immense bulk and bumping your shoulder against his elbow, guiding him to turn with you, back towards the inviting hearth.

It’s easy enough to coax him after you, and you almost wish he was this biddable when he’s not running a fever. He seems inclined to follow you, at least, hovering a little too close as you dump your armful of blankets onto the floor and begin spreading them around, bunching some up and smoothing others out until you’ve made a decent enough little bed for him in front of the hearth.

Evidently, he finds it more than suitable, trying to step into it with an approving thrum from deep in his chest.

“Hold on, hold on!” you admonish him lightly, grabbing a towel from the mess and pushing yourself back to your feet, “Let’s dry you off a bit first. Then you can lay down.”

The Koopa’s shoulders sink as he snorts out a petulant huff, but all the same, he wavers obediently in place for you to start towelling him off, starting with what you can reach.

Your hands, comparatively tiny in just one of his own, scoop his palm up as you begin to gently glide the towel up and down the length of his hefty arm.

Something solid thuds on the ground behind him, a sound that you simply ignore… until it happens for a second time. And then a third.

You bring your ministrations to a brief pause, leaning sideways and glancing at the floor near Bowser’s feet, only for your brows to gradually creep back up your forehead when you make an… unexpected discovery.

In slow, sleepy motions, the Koopa’s yellow tail is lifting itself from the ground before slumping back down again, repetitively thumping at the carpet beneath him.

It seems you’ve found the source of the strange noise.

“Wow,” you observe, hesitantly returning to your task and sweeping the already-damp towel up the inside of his forearm, careful to brush lightly over his spiked wrist band, “You really must be out of it.”  

You don’t think it needs to be said that he’s usually very controlled about wagging his tail.

Bowser just hums a distracted note in response and exhales hot air over the top of your head.

Worriedly, your chest bobs with a sigh as you hurry on to his next arm, stretching the towel up towards his shoulder before drawing it back down to his wrist and gathering water from the too-pale scales.

There’s a sudden, soft pressure on the crown of your head, and you flick your eyes up to find Bowser has pushed his snout into your hair, snuffling gently through his nose.

“Feel’s’nice,” he slurs, as if that’s explanation enough.

With a well-meaning roll of your eyes, you flip the towel over to its drier side and step back, stifling a tiny smile at how his head suddenly dips at the unexpected loss of his chin-rest.

“All right, plop yourself down here,” you tell him, gesturing at the pile of blankets that are slowly gathering warmth by the fireside, “And I’ll dry your-“

A heavy ‘whumph!’ shakes the paintings hung on your walls as the King drops like a two-ton boulder onto his front, shoving a colossal lungful of air through his parted lips.

“… - hair,” you finish flatly.

Dull, doleful eyes turn up to peer at you, and one of Bowser’s hands untucks from his chest, creeping towards you and delicately curling around the back of your ankle, giving it a light tug.

It’s a silent, entirely unsubtle request. One you oblige without much hesitation.

“Okay, okay,” you tell the impatient Koopa when he begins to paw at you in earnest, lowering yourself down in front of him on crossed legs and bending forwards to take one of his horns in each hand, “C’mon. Up here.”

Churring out a lazy rumble, Bowser allows you to guide his head into your lap with only a little effort on his part. He settles contentedly, his nose pressed to the soft roll of your belly, and his eyes slipping shut as he exhales a warm breath over the hem of your shirt.

Placing the towel between his horns, you begin to gently rub at his sopping-wet mane.

“So,” you huff by way of conversation, “Can I ask you something?”

Bowser’s voice is low and rich, buzzing through you when he responds with a blissful, “Anythin’…”

For just a moment, the word gives you pause, but you eventually purse your lips and dismiss his excess sappiness as a symptom of his affliction. “Want to tell me why you thought it was a good idea – if you’re already sick – to walk all the way through a storm to get here? You’ll give yourself pneumonia if you aren’t careful…”

As soon as you voice the possibility into existence, you bite down on the inside of your cheek and try to envision the contents of your medical cabinet…

Bowser only grumbles a noise into your stomach whilst you card your fingers through his tousled strands, working water to their tips so they can be soaked up by the towel.

“Honestly,” you admonish after a minute of oppressive silence, unaccustomed to your larger-than-life friend being so still and quiet, “Why you didn’t just hole up in your room ‘til the infection passes… or y'know, go to an actual healer, is beyond me.” Distractedly, you use your free hand to thumb at the furrow between his brows until the line softens. “Not that it isn’t great to see you. And you know you're always welcome here-"

The Koopa’s mouth tilts up into a wan smile at that, at least until you add, “-but this wasn’t one of your better ideas.” Not to mention that seeing him in this state has effectively frightened the life out of you…

But saying as much out loud might be a little too familiar, even among friends, so you keep the admission tucked away behind your tongue, in safer waters.

Heaving out a very unapologetic grunt, Bowser burrows his snout even more firmly into your stomach and mutters, “W’s missin’ you…”

Ah, well... So much for too familiar.

You resist the urge to blurt out a fond laugh, privately flattered that the great King of Koopas would admit to something so sentimental, feverish or not.

“It’s only been a few weeks since karaoke night,” you point out.

“Long enough,” he grumbles, rolling his weight forwards slightly and purring out, “N’you’re safe…”

You blink. It takes you a moment to realise he’s offering another excuse for his being here.

“Safe?” you echo, leaning over to reach down the back of his thick, muscular neck and drying the scales just beneath the lip of his cumbersome shell, “Of course I’m safe. This isn’t exactly a dangerous place to live.”

Due in no small part to Bowser making sure of the fact before he even allowed you to step foot on the island, let alone build yourself a home out here. It took you months to reassure the nearby village of Toads that, no, Bowser would not be burning their homes to ash if they so much as looked at you the wrong way. Took even longer to get the Koopa himself to promise you he wouldn’t.

Did he really drag himself out here in a thunderstorm to check that you’re safe? When a simple letter would have sufficed?

Idiot…  

An idiot who’s loyal to his friends though, you’ll give him that.

But in your lap, Bowser is quick to roll his head gingerly from side to side and lets out a contradicting huff in response.

Apparently, you’ve misunderstood something.

“…Trust ya,” he presses insistently, peeling apart his crust-coated eyelids to gaze up at your downturned face, “Yer safe…. Kamek knows… J’nr knows…. Y’r safe… One of’us…”

One of-….

And suddenly, it clicks.

The hand you’d been smoothing over the top of his skull goes very still.

… Oh.

Swallowing thickly, you meet his eye, and though the fire is dimmed by fever, his typical sincerity is still there, blazing away behind a glassy sheen.

It makes… sense? You suppose.

He’s sick. And although he’d rather die than admit it, he’s vulnerable. He left the fortress to protect his fellow koopas, and came to the only place he could think of where he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d be safe…

He came to you…

You're safe...

It’s a humbling thing to realise.

Absently, you sweep a thumb up and down his temple, pulled from your thoughts when you register the heat pulsing there.

Right… Not out of the woods just yet.

Heaving a sigh, you drop the towel and scoot backwards, sliding Bowser’s chin from your legs, much to his chagrin.

“All right, stay here,” you tell him, rising to your feet and stepping deftly over the paw that tries to recapture your ankle, “I’ll be in kitchen. If I have it my way, you’ll be sweating this fever out tonight. And you’re gonna need to keep your fluids up when you do… And try to stay put this time!”

Bowser tries to say something, but his eyelids fall shut, and when he finds the strength to pry them open again, you’re sliding down in front of him once more, setting a glass of water on the floor behind you and pressing something under his nose that immediately overwhelms his nostrils with the potent scent of boiled ginger.

Tea… he registers dimly, inhaling an enormous swathe of gingery steam into his train-carriage chest. You’ve made him tea…

Not for the first time, he wonders if now would be the right moment to finally ask for your hand in marriage…. Oh, but he left the ring in his bedroom… Damn.

“Hhh. Love you,” he urgently rasps instead, the words getting lost around the rim of the cup as you tip it forwards, letting him take a tiny sip that immediately tingles in his throat, “Love you… s’much…”

“Yeah, I love you too, Big guy,” you tell him innocently, drawing the cup away and laying a cold, damp cloth across his forehead to draw the fever out. He shudders at its presence, but then he settles, blinking with a scrunch of his eyes for a few seconds before drowsily gaping up at you, his pupils blown wide in apparent wonder.

“Y’mean it?” he whispers hoarsely.

Quirking your lips at him, you hedge, “Of course?”

You don’t expect the vast Koopa to so suddenly peel his head from the blankets, shove himself forwards and drop his chin heavily into your lap once more, grunting like it had taken all of his remaining strength to do so. His eyes are squeezed shut, and the blankets behind him rustle as his tail swishes from side to side across the fabric. “Oh, tha’s… good,” he gushes reverently through an exhale, like you’ve just told him the greatest news of his life, a trembling smile pushing at his pallid cheeks, “Been so worried… ‘bout tellin’ ya…”

Bemused - and confused - you angle your head to one side and squint down at him, a small, awkward smile tugging at the corner of your lips. “I’m… sorry?”

“Not’ch’yer fault,” comes his weary reply. He sounds seconds away from falling into a dead sleep. “Di’n’t wanna scare ya…”

“Bowser? I think you’re delirious, you’re not making any-“

“Y’re best thing’s’ever happun’d t’me…”

“… Now I’m sure that’s not true,” you try to dismiss, reapplying the cold cloth and daubing gently at his temples.

“Love you,” he repeats stubbornly, with startling resolve. And as if it wasn’t getting hard enough to refute his conviction… “Loved you s’nce th’day I saw ya…”

… Ah…

“Is… is that right?” you swallow a little breathlessly, staring into the flames dancing and twisting behind his shell as if you’re trapped in a mystified daze.

You feel him give a pathetic nod, then the resonance of his hum pitches through your stomach like a roll of thunder. “Mhm…”

Oh, Bowser…

He starts to say something else, but you hush him softly, pressing the cloth over each of his eyes and wiping the crust away with gentle motions. "You need to sleep," you whisper through a tight throat, "You'll feel more like yourself in the morning..."

You're curious to know if he'll remember what he's just said to you... If he'll think it bears repeating....

In your heart of hearts, you really hope he does.

"I... c'n stay?"

Like he even needs to ask...

Heart wedged uncomfortably in your neck, you lean down, and after settling the flutter of nerves that pulses against your sternum, you finally lay the ghost of a kiss to the very tip of his snout.

At the feather-light touch, his entire body jolts from the force of a sudden rumbling purr that’s kicked out of his chest.

You’re… not so certain that this is all just the fever talking anymore.

He huffs under his breath, also leaving the conversation with Robert. Katon looks around confused, taking a moment to find you again at your desk, muttering orders under your breath. He decides at that moment to come up to you.

He rehearses something in his head. 'Greetings! I, too, enjoy… mission reports.' Absolutely not. 'Hello. I noticed you are a human.' Worse. His mind pings through a dozen doomed variants until he’s right behind you and suddenly there’s no time left to be a person with a plan.

“Hi,” he blurts, far too loud and then softens, “hi” again as if the first one was just warming up.

You turn in your chair, one earphone still half on and your eyes meet his. That single glance does catastrophic things to his internal equilibrium. His solar-powered chest practically flickers.

"Hey," You say lifting your glasses with one finger.

He tries to lean on the cubicle wall. The wall is not prepared for alien density and makes a noise like someone stepped on a violin. Katon jerks upright as if nothing happened, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth in a desperate attempt at casualness.

“I, um,” he starts, and then his mind blanks spectacularly. He can feel the warmth radiating off his cheeks, he technically can't blush, but you caused that

“I noticed you were… working. Which is good. Productive. Admirable.”

He closes his eyes for half a second, recalibrating. “What I mean is… I thought perhaps I should say hello. Properly. Since earlier you… spoke. To me.”

He gestures vaguely, as if that explains everything about the indescribable way your voice lodged itself in his chest cavity.

His palms are sweating again (absolutely ridiculous, since he’s not supposed to do that either) and he hides them behind his back.

“Sorry,” he adds quickly, “I’m new to… conversational… initiating.”

A beat.

“That is a phrase, yes?” He looks at you with panic, like a supernova trying very hard to be a candle.

And you smile. He might explode.

"It is a phrase if you want it to be," you say, the warmth of your voice filling his body.

He freezes.

You keep going, because leaving him suspended in existential suspense feels cruel.

“I’ve seen you around. You’re… hard to miss.” You glance at him up and down, your tone almost teasing. “In the architectural sense.”

His eyes go wide, and he straightens as if someone installed a steel beam along his spine.

“I am… visible,” he manages, then winces because that sounded too close to bragging about occupying space. “I mean—recognizable. I meant recognizable.”

You lean an elbow on your desk. “Relax. I know what you meant.” There’s a tiny, playful glint in your eyes now. “I’m glad you said hello.”

Katon’s whole posture tilts toward you involuntarily. He clears his throat in the most heroic, overly dignified way possible.

“I am also glad,” he says earnestly. Then, after a helpless beat: “Very.”

His shoulders sag with relief, because he did it. He has officially spoken to you without exploding, imploding or accidentally lifting something heavy. And you responded. Nicely.

He stands there, trying to figure out how a normal human exits a conversation without bursting into flames.

"I will leave you to work now, beautiful lady." He bows his head before turning in his heels and walking out.

That caught you a little offhand. He was very imposing, scary for some people even, but he looked so small talking to you. And the pet name? That made you feel like an awkward alien.

You lick your lips, seeing how he exits the room from a window. He tries to find you in the room one more time before leaving. And you get it, all of a sudden. He was flirting with you.

Katon-Ur spends the next three days attempting something that, for him, is as complex as astrophysics: continued flirting. He studies humans the way botanists study rare orchids. Quietly, intensely and with absolutely zero clue what he’s doing.

Robert, regrettably, becomes his primary source of advice.

“Flowers,” Robert says, not looking up from his PC. “Girls like flowers. Bring her flowers.”

Katon nods, heroic determination setting in. Flowers. Simple. A symbol of beauty, affection, terrestrial courtship. He can do flowers.

Except he cannot.

Because by the time he makes it outside, every flower on campus is either wilted, guarded by a bee colony he refuses to disturb, or planted in a way that suggests “do not pick unless you want the groundskeeper to kill you.” Katon stands there, hands on hips, cape fluttering, staring at the greenery like it has betrayed him personally.

But there are leaves. Many leaves. And one is particularly… nice. Symmetrical. A pleasing shade of green. Perhaps humans appreciate variety. Perhaps this leaf is a flower in spirit.

He plucks it with reverence, holds it as though it's an artifact, and heads inside before he can overthink and combust.

You’re typing when he appears beside your desk again, quiet for such a tall presence, holding something behind his back. His posture is stiff with purpose and terror.

“You,” he says, then swallows. “You are working again. You do that often, I notice.”

You spin slowly in your chair, eyebrow raised. “That is sort of how jobs work, yes.”

His face lights like he’s being praised for discovering fire.

“Yes! Precisely. And I have brought—” He thrusts something out toward you, then hesitates mid-motion, grimacing as if bracing for impact. “I have brought you this.”

You look down.

It is a leaf.

A perfectly ordinary, unremarkable, wonderfully green leaf.

There is a beat of silence so delicate it might shatter.

You meet his eyes, and they’re wide with earnest hope and absolutely no sense of how absurd this is. He looks like a puppy who’s brought you a sock and is praying you’ll treasure it forever.

“A leaf?” you say, letting your voice tilt warm instead of confused. “For me?”

He nods vigorously. “Yes. It is botanical.” Another nod. “Robert said flowers. There were obstacles.”

You try very hard not to laugh, not mockingly but affectionately. Impressed by the softness you didn't expect from a man capable of punching through steel.

“Thank you,” you say instead, smiling as you take it from him. “It’s lovely.”

Katon-Ur practically malfunctions. His hands fly up in an awkward half-gesture, his breath catches, his shoulders rise, his entire demeanor flickers between relief and sheer cosmic delight.

“You… like it?” he breathes, as if the universe itself hinges on this answer.

“There’s thought behind it,” you say, brushing your thumb over the leaf’s edge. “That matters more than anything.”

His knees nearly buckle. He steadies himself on the cubicle, gently this time.

“I will bring you more,” he vows heroically, then freezes. “Not leaves. Unless you desire leaves. I can acquire many. Infinite, even.”

You laugh softly, and he looks like he’d kneel at your feet if you asked.

“Maybe,” you say, “you can just keep talking to me.”

He inhales sharply, loudly, as if you’ve given him oxygen he didn’t know he needed.

“I can do that,” he promises, glowing brighter than any sun. “Conversational initiating. Continuation? Ongoing dialogue.”

“Katon,” you say gently, “you’re adorable.”

He goes still. If he had a tail, it would be wagging so hard it’d be hazardous.

He leaves your desk that day with the stuttery gait of someone whose entire sense of gravity has been knocked askew. You watch him go, broad shoulders, cape flicking behind him like he’s walking through a heroic wind only he can feel. And the ridiculous part? He looks good doing it. Too good.

That’s the inconvenient truth you’ve been skirting around: the man is awkward as an unplugged Roomba… and yet somehow hot in the way a star is hot. Big, bright, earnest, capable of melting things if he gets too close.

You spend the rest of your workday touching the edge of that leaf like it might still carry some trace of the way he held it, fingers too careful for someone who could crush cement.

And Katon?

He spends the rest of his day thinking about you.

He tries to train afterward, or something like training (lifting a comically large metal beam) which he usually does with smooth precision. But today he drops it twice. The second time he mutters your name under his breath and startles himself so badly he nearly launches into the ceiling.

By the next morning, he’s decided a new mission directive: Get braver. Get closer. Do not combust.

You’re running an errand in the hallway when he spots you. He tries to approach casually, failing.

“Beautiful—” he begins, then aborts mid-syllable. “Human lady— no. You. Hello. You.”

He stands fully upright, and suddenly the hallway feels smaller in comparison. He’s massive, yes, but it’s the warmth in his eyes that hits you, like catching sunlight on bare skin.

“Katon,” you say, grinning despite your best efforts, “breathe.”

He does. Loudly. Dramatically. As though you gave him permission to inhale for the first time all day.

“I wished to…” He pauses, gestures to himself. “Present myself. To you. Again. Properly.” Then, with reverence: “You look very nice today.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You think so?”

“Yes,” he says, no hesitation at all. “Your hair is… curly.” He nods, pleased with this observation. “Very curly. It is good. It makes shapes.”

You bite back a smile. “Shapes?”

“Pleasing shapes,” he amends, cheeks heating in that not-technically-a-blush way of his.

“Thank you,” you say, leaning slightly closer without meaning to. “You look good too.”

He blinks. Once. Twice. Then he looks down at himself as if checking whether that could possibly be true.

“I do?” His voice drops an octave, surprise wrapped in something softer. “Truly?”

“Uh-huh,” you say, steady but warm, “you’re kind of cute.”

His breath catches.

You watch his hands curl and uncurl at his sides, like he’s physically restraining cosmic-level reactions. His whole chest seems to brighten, not literally glowing, but close.

“No one has ever…” He fumbles. “I mean, they have said things, but not…”

He gathers himself, squares his shoulders, and looks at you with a sincerity so intense it could bend steel.

“You think I am cute?”

He says it like you’ve handed him the moon.

You nod. “Yeah. I do.”

He looks as if he might ascend.

“I will attempt,” he says, voice hushed and full of wonder, “to be worthy of that.”

Before you can respond, he adds, softer but bolder than anything he’s said yet:

“And you are… far more than cute.”

His gaze lingers, warm and earnest and a little hungry in the most innocent way imaginable.

He’s awkward, sure. But he’s also very attractive, very sincere and extremely focused on you.

Yandere!Kinger who continues to act adrift to watch you the first few days. His heart swelling as you keep holding his hand–interwound, locked, together. Butterflies at hearing your voice, sounding cheerful and reassuring. You're mostly taking to yourself to feel the void, occasionally commenting to him of 'be careful!' and 'Watch your step here.' Adoring how doting you are on him, protective in a way that reminds him of how he acted during his marriage. Comparing how right it feels now with you.

Yandere!Kinger learning that after an adventure, you gently led him to your room. Making sure that he keeps his eyes away from Queenie's door. His heart skipping a beat at how thoughtful you are. Once in your room, he quickly realises he's been sleeping in your room. You help ease him onto your bed, vigilantly checking over his chest piece frame to make sure he isn't injured. Isn't abstracting.

Yandere!Kinger holds his breath as you climb onto the bed next to him. Reaching for his hand without a second thought, fiddling with his fingers as you continue to ramble. Voice growing hoarse, and quiet–you're trying your best to hide how scared you sound. Kinger's heart aches at how you worry about him. So kind, caring, his.

Yandere!Kinger who pretends to fall asleep, waiting for you to rest, so he can watch you. He acknowledges how domestic the whole scene feels. How right it feels to lie beside you. Too far gone to be repulsed by himself, to know that he's behaving like some creepy, gross old man. All of his thoughts are of making the room feel like it belongs to both of you. Together. Making plans to go back to the pillow fort.

Yandere!Kinger is ready to return to his 'normal' self. To talk back and hold a conversation with you, to ease your worries. That he's here now. That he's yours. It starts slow, giving suggestions on what to do on adventures, commenting on Caine, and asking how you are feeling.

Yandere!Kinger melts into the hug you tackle him into. You're relieved he's returning to his formal self, and he’s cherishing the affectionate act.

Yandere!Kinger picks up the slack in conversation. Yet you notice him developing a fascination with bugs. He’s able to spit out facts and rush towards them with excitement. Forcing you to listen, to join once his grip becomes vice-like. You thought he was adapting, coming back to himself, but something about this feels off.

Yandere!Kinger noticing you're trying to ease away. Believing that with Kinger improving, you don’t have to baby him, you don’t have to hold his hand. But Kinger surprises you when he reaches for your hand. On the rare occasions you dodge his hand, he’ll pointly ask for it. Tone starts as a soft question, yet the longer you prolong the more frantic and feverlish panic he gets. So, you give him your hand.

Yandere!Kinger who surprises you by leading you to the pillow fort, ready to enter it. Ready to rearrange the pillows to your liking, to make it a space for you. You thought he was ready to face old memories, or to make peace with his grief as he entered. You stand at the entrance, giving him space before quietly backing away. Thinking you get to experience a night to yourself for the first time in however long.

Yandere!Kinger turns around, calling out your name in a quiet, panicked gasp. Spotting you slowly backing away. Asking you to spend the night over. He hasn't spent a single night alone, and can't stand to start now. Please don’t leave me. It doesn't take much to convince you. Still fearful, he could snap at any moment.

Yandere!Kinger holds you throughout the night. Pressing flush against your back, it feels different to the times you slept in your bed. More possessive. More suffocating. You wait till he falls asleep to roll away, as he doesn't have the arms to lock you in. Even when you moved, you no longer feel his chess piece frame against you but his hands remain stuck to you.

Yandere!Kinger follows you to your bedroom whenever you try to doge the pillow fort. You get shivers down your spine when remembering how his hold felt. You're trying to get personal space back, to get breathing room to think, to wonder why he's acting so strange.

Yandere!Kinger is able to walk down the hallways now. He's able to walk past the image of his wife as he stares at you. Talks to you. Clings to you. At the foot of your door and nearing your breaking point, you beg to spend the night alone. Just one night, please, Kinger.

Yandere!Kinger who listens, who lets you enter your room alone. To lock the door with a deafening 'click'. Who you thought you escaped for the night, only to hear him humming outside. You couch low, kneeling to press your face on the floor to peek under the door. Your eyes widen as he sits infront of the door, and prepares to wait for the morning. He can’t bear any more space between you other than the door.

Yandere!Kinger falls to the floor once you open the door. He greets you with an adoring sigh, 'hey, honey!' as you mumble defeatly, 'let's go to bed, Kinger.' Dragging your feet as you give in and spend another night with Kinger. Realising it’s better to go along than risk losing him for a night of privacy.

Yandere!Kinger starts calling you by these sweet nicknames. Honey, love bug, dear. No matter how many times you try to correct him. He can only acknowledge it for a brief 'Oh, right. Sorry about that’, before he forgets and calls you by it again. His voice is sweet, adoring, affectationate. When your eyes meet, and you see how happy he looks, it reminds you of before. Of walking into your cubicle, and asking him how his weekend with-. The correction dies on the tip of your tongue. Brushing it off. Not ready to process your own grief.

Yandere!Kinger who slips into delusion, and cross the final line. Bending to place a kiss to your cheek. It’s full of affection and romantic intent. You can't cling to the excuse that you’re allowing his actions because your friends. That you’re supporting each other, and preventing him from abstraction. You tried to stop it. Tried to correct him, this isn’t love, Kinger. But you can see that it’s too late. That any opportunity to help him is gone. The final nail in the coffin comes when Caine comments on it with an 'Alright, love birds! Today’s adventure will be-!'

Yandere!Kinger clings to the memory of your human form, begins to make plans for going home. Of the chore system he had with his wife, now integrating you. Of him cooking, Queenie washing the dishes, and you drying them. He's positive Queenie would love you just as much as he does. Kinger, who plans every detail of merging you into his life, including the bed arrangement. Would you be between him and Queenie? Would it be Queenie or him in the middle? Or should it be on a rotational system?

Yandere!Kinger who happily introduced you as his spouse to the new member, Ragatha. Being able to help her settle into the circus life as you become quiet. Inviting Ragatha to join the pillow fort, so that she doesn’t have to be alone.

Tired!you who accept your fate, but refuse to let Kinger sink his claws into Ragatha. To stop him from creating a family dynamic by bringing a soothing hand to his face. Redirecting Kinger to focus his obession onto you with a gentle caress. You and Kinger wave goodnight to Ragatha, allowing the new member to escape whatever hold Kinger has attached to you.

Tired!you who should have grown wearily once you felt KInger's hand tighter. Should have become cautious when Kinger kept bringing up old memories with the comment, ‘wish we had gotten closer sooner.'  

Tired!you who should have fought harder to create space and set boundaries, but was too much of a coward. Fearful that by correcting Kinger, he will tip over. Because he is all you have now, the last reminder of home. Of a life before. Of something being yours.

Tired!you who clings just as tightly onto Kinger at night, tuning out his rambles to bask in the comfort.

• Absently fidgeting with you as he works, his servos moves across the keys of his console. Pulling up and dismissing feeds. Searching through nearby security camera feeds that he can access for hints. Clues as to what the Autobots are up to. Doesn’t like how quiet the other side has been. Or the implication that they might be planning something and he’s in the dark. Tendrils hooking against you, pushing and kneading, he’s aware of you making a low noise. Pushing back against his touch.

• Knee sliding on his thigh plating, you squirm slightly trying to get a bit more pressure right between your shoulder blades. Enjoying the impromptu massage as you try to get him to work out a knot. And when you glance up at him, he’s watching you to make you flush, his head tilting slightly. Before he presses down between your shoulder blades and you groan, fingers gripping his plating. It’s like he’s psychic sometimes.

• Plating lifting aggressively when Starscream glances your way at the noise you make, he stares the Seeker down until the other mech looks away. Before resuming mining your field and mind for what feels good. Stroking and kneading your back as you go limp on his thigh, eyes half closed and cheek on his plating. Apparently enjoying this. Maybe you need to be touched more often? Your kind are social by nature. Has he been neglecting your needs?

• Grabbing onto your arms as you hug him to yourself and say a word he doesn’t know, he leans his head against you. “Spin, what if I didn’t catch you?” You admonish and his head tips back to look up at you before he presses his face against your softness and vents. “You have to warn me before you do things like that,” you add, pulling one of his hands away from his grip on you.

• And as soon as you let go of his tiny hand, it’s right back in the same place. Squeezing. Know compared to him, you’re soft, but you really need to lay down some ground rules. Especially when he was already grabby full size. “Remember when I told you about personal space? Do you recall anything about that conversation?” You ask tiredly and he just nuzzles his face against you, clearing his vents and apparently in his happy place.

• “What conversation?” He asks, though he dimly recalls you smacking his servos before he was shrunken for touching certain spots on you. Doesn’t really understand the reasoning, because he’s not trying to touch your interface array. Do humans have those? Must have something. ‘The conversation about inappropriate touching,’ you mumble, sounding tired. “How do humans frag?” He asks, rotors flicking out.

• “Sometimes making lists helps me think,” he admits, embarrassed. And you’re just smiling at him, staring to make him slightly uncomfortable. Can’t tell what you’re thinking. “I’m sorry. You must find this boring,” he adds, setting the pen aside. Forgot about you because he was so worried about his people. About why this has happened to them. Would suspect the Decepticons of being involved, expect they’re affected, too.

• Shaking your head, you’re fighting to not smile. Everything about him this size just screams for you to pick him up. Hug him and play with his finials. Trying to be good and let him have his quiet dignity since other Autobots are about and he’s their leader. He deserves to be respected. Unfortunately, he’s also stinking cute and his optics widen slightly when you lean to pick him up and pull him into your lap.

• Uncertainly saying your name, you wrap your arms around him and squeeze him. Hugging him to you as you press a kiss against his head. Several kisses. Bewildered, he’s not sure what’s going on, but a couple of other bots had mentioned that their humans had gotten aggressively affectionate since they’d all ended up tiny. And you just keep kissing him, your fingers gripping his hand to play with his servos. Like you can’t stop fussing over him. Isn’t used to this. To someone being so happy to see him for a reason other than what he represents. Because you don’t just see the Prime.