#day04

Even though he had asked if you wanted to date him over a month ago, he still felt lost. In his head he had never thought further than your rejection, so when you had agreed to go out with him, he had been helpless. So far, he had only taken you on one proper date, star gazing on top of the roof of the headquarters, but you never had complained. Both your schedules were busy, so most of the ‘dating’ you did, consisted of doing the paperwork together which you before had done in separate rooms.

Levi stopped.

Was this a date, he wondered. Going to the market together?

Now that he thought about it, it did look like you had dressed up a little. So had he though, after learning he was to accompany you. Instead of the usual uniform, he wore some comfortable and elegant clothes, that made him almost feel overdressed for the market. But the spark in your eyes as you had seen him and adjusted his previously perfectly straight tie made up for it.

Now his eyes were following you, as you walked from a stand with vegetables to one with fruit. The golden sunlight of the autumn day lit the scene in warm light, and as Levi watched the long skirt play around your legs, he couldn’t help but think that he wouldn’t mind autumn as much as he did if every day were as beautiful as today. Although, if he was honest, the day’s beauty was only measured in how many moments it gave him to admire you. He still felt uncomfortable and strange with the aching in his chest, that had him gravitate towards you constantly. It didn’t fit anything he knew about his own body and heart, and he still struggled with showing his affection. In the month of dating, the times he had held you could be counted on one hand.

You were still studying the fruits on display, when Levi’s eyes got caught on something else. Quickly checking if you were still occupied, he grabbed the handle of the basket tightly in his hand and pushed away from the fountain, walking straight towards a stand that sold small bouquets of flowers. He had already spied the one he liked best, so he simply pointed at the flowers and had the owner wrap their stems up in paper, before he paid the man, making it back to his spot at the fountain just in time before you called him.

“Levi, come here!” You waved him over, a smile on your lips that made his heart stutter. Holding the basket with the flowers at an angle that hid the contents from your sight, he walked over. “Which ones do you want to try?”

His eyes followed your hand, as you pointed at a variety of different grapes. Each kind had a small sign stuck against the respective baskets they were kept in, stating the name and the degree of sweetness or sourness.

“I was thinking I want to try these ones,” you kept thinking out loud, Levi’s eyes wandering from the grapes to your thoughtful expression. Why should he care about some grapes when you were right in front of him? “But you haven’t bought anything for yourself yet, so why don’t you choose the kind you like best?”

Levi knew next to nothing about grapes. Yes, he liked them, the sweeter and juicier the better, but other than that? You could dry them and use them as ingredients for cooking or baking and certain kinds were turned into wine, but that was where his knowledge stopped.

Not wanting to disappoint you by seeming not to care, he averted his gaze from you again and read the signs describing the grapes instead. The ones you had pointed out were supposed to taste both sweet and sour, but his eyes got hung up on some dark purple, almost black seeming fruits that got described to have a fruity-sweet flavour.

“We’ll take half a pound of these,” he told the shop owner while pointing to the ones you had expressed your interest in, and then to the ones that sounded good to him “and half a pound of these.”

While the man weighted the grapes and wrapped them in paper, you turned to Levi.

“You’ve a secret sweet tooth, hm,” you asked with a smile on your lips as you wrapped your arms around his waist and pulled yourself closer to him. The gesture made his heart beat hard, and instinctively he placed his free hand on your hip. “How are you enjoying the market so far?”

Levi just hummed in response before realising you were expecting a proper answer. “It’s a market.”

“What do you mean, it’s a market,” you teased with a laugh. “You seemed so excited to go earlier!”

Levi averted his eyes and luckily was saved by the shop owner, who presented the packed fruit to Levi, who quickly paid.

But you seemed not to have forgotten the conversation yet, because as you strode on to the next stand, you intertwined your fingers with his. “I thought you’d enjoy going to the market at least a little bit.”

Levi sighed. That was one of his problems, he was bad at communicating, it always took him a lot of effort to phrase his thoughts, and when it came to you, those were usually thoughts he wasn’t used to thinking.

“I wasn’t looking forward to the market itself,” he admitted, feeling your confused expression on the side of his face. He knew you’d tell him he didn’t have to come if he wasn’t interested, so he quickly continued explaining. “I was looking forward to spending time with you, getting to watch you do something you enjoy.”

For a moment you were quiet at his side, and when he glanced at you from the corner of his eyes, he found you were smiling. “That’s cute, Levi!”

“Shut up,” he grumbled, not meaning it.

“I won’t,” you declared, but kept walking quietly next to him, gently swinging your intertwined hands between your bodies. “Oh look, over there!” Levi’s eyes once again followed where you were pointing to. “They sell hot fruit juice with spices! I’ve wanted to try that for ages. Want to get a cup? We can get to different flavours and share!”

Levi knew his lips were tucking into a smile at your enthusiasm, and he nodded. You didn’t waste a moment to lead him over to the stand and read out the menu to him as if he couldn’t read himself. He let you, content with focusing on your smiling and excited face rather than the boring description of drinks on a blackboard. This afternoon, upon returning to the headquarters, he’d give you the flowers he had gotten you, he decided.

A selfish part of his head told him that if you kept the flowers which he had given you in your room, there’s be a part of him always close to you. He should give you a necklace or another piece of jewellery, so you could really always keep something close which he had given you. What metal would you like better, gold or silver?

Bumblebee had anxiously been pacing the main area of the Autbot base ever since the rest of the team had left to retrieve Ratchet little more than a breem ago. Even as he walked, his gaze kept wandering over to the monitors, constantly checking that his caregiver’s life signal had remained online during the nanocycle he had dared to look away. Realistically, staring at the medic's profile on the screen did absolutely nothing. The breaking of their sparkbond would alarm Bee of his caregiver's death much faster than his optics ever could.

Still, the scout could not get himself to look away. As long as he was stuck at base, awaiting news of the rescue mission, he was also alone with his fears and doubts and the dreadful fantasies about Ratchet's fate his processor continued to conjure up. Bee had been fighting in this War his whole life, he had been sparked in a hail of Seeker missiles and crawled his way out of the Well while Megatron sought to eradicate every sparkling of his generation unwilling to join the Warlord's cause. Thus, neither Bumblebee nor his imagination had any illusions about the things Decepticons were willing to do even to non-combatants such as medics. Without Optimus here to shield and reassure him, staring at tangible proof of Ratchet's continued existence was his only defence against being devoured whole by the beast invading his processor.

Bumblebee's spark, too, failed to cease its anxious movements. Instead, it continued to swirl erratically, spinning ever faster in a desperate attempt to strengthen its gravitational pull and lure the piece of light binding him to his caregiver closer. It had, of course, no effect. The distance at which sparks orbited each other could not be influenced that easily. 

Nervously, Bee sent a burst of love across his connection to Ratchet. He received no answer.

On the gallery, the children stood huddled together for comfort, whispering amongst themselves as Bumblebee continued to pace. In the beginning of their vigil, the three of them had done their best to try and calm him down. They had stopped once they realised that the bot was barely registering any of their words. Later, Bee would probably feel bad about it. Right now, he did not particularly care. His processor was focused solely on his caregiver's possible demise.

In lieu of anything better to do, Bee walked over to the medbay to check, once again, on the equipment he had laid out there earlier. Cleaning and sorting all the tools necessary for emergency surgery had been among the first things Bumblebee had done after the medic had stormed out of the Autobot base. It had been a somewhat ridiculous action, of course. Out of their team members, only Ratchet even possessed the ability to perform surgery. The rest of them had only ever been trained in basic battlefield first aid. Nonetheless, he youngling had done it anyway. The familiarity of a task he had performed so many times before for the medic driving his actions more than any belief in its actual usefulness.

“Bumblebee.” He jumped to attention immediately when finally, finally, Optimus’ voice came in over the comm line. “Open a ground bridge to our coordinates.”

The portal swirled open before the Prime had even finished his sentence. Anxiously, Bee clenched his fists as he stepped up to the tunnel. It was only mere moments later that Optimus carried Ratchet into the base. As he caught sight of the familiar form in his caregiver's arms, the youngling froze, spark caught in the vice-like grip of terror.

Ratchet was limb and unmoving in the taller bot's grip. His optics were closed, only the dimmest of glows emitting from below their lids. Vicious, slimy green energon was oozing plentifully from cracks in orange-and-white armour where a crater had been dug into the medic's chassis. The repugnant liquid ran down Ratchet's sides in rivulets, dripping onto the floor in small splats that rang impossibly loud in Bumblebee's audials.

Bee could only imagine the kind of excessive force necessary to cave in a bot's plating like that all too well. His own frame must have looked similar in the aftermath of Tyger Pax. A warning lit up on his HUD, blinking aggressively at the side of his visual feed. His vocoder had short-circuited. He cared surprisingly little.

Had the spin of Ratchet's spark not still been intertwined with his own, swirling weakly but steadily inside of his chassis, the youngling would have been convinced that the medic had been offlined. Behind him, Raf emitted a small whimper. Miko gasped. Optimus' EM field, full of worry and void of its usual quiet confidence, enveloped them for a short moment as the Prime hurried past in the direction of the medbay. 

Still, Bumblebee was unable to tear his gaze away from the puddle of viscous green that had formed on the ground in front of the bridge, licking at the Autobot crest they had engraved there. His servos were shaking, his audials buzzing incessantly. It was just so, so, so much energon-more than Bee could fathom anyone losing without returning to the Allspark.

His stupor was only broken when Arcee touched his shoulder. There were smudges of synthetic green on her digits, too. He could not tell how much time had passed, how much the beast in his processor had devoured. Probably barely more than a few microcycle. 

"Go with them, Bee."

Slowly, he cycled his optics, but it took him another nanocycle of staring at the two-wheeler before her words fully registered. Once they did, however, he nodded, flaring his EM field in silent gratitude. Then, he ran after his caregivers into the medbay.

Hopefully, together, Optimus and Bumblebee would figure out how to best help and fix the medic. And if they did not... They would. They had to.