#queenflara

Treat!

gift for @queenflara

Hi Emily! Sorry your gift is a little late (I’ve been working a lot rip). Wrecker crew holiday shenanigans, as per request c:

—

The sky glowed an eerie yellow color, bathing the already depressingly brown landscape outside Jasper, Nevada, in an ugly light. The sky was heavily shrouded by thick clouds, and it was impossible to tell what time of day it was. For all Bulkhead knew, he had been driving down the old paved road through the desert for years. Everything felt liminal in this atmosphere.

It reminded him a bit of the way things were on Cybertron just before an acid storm. He quelled the uneasiness that thought brought up quickly; the only thing that precipitated on Earth was water. It was annoying if you stood in it too long, but otherwise it was harmless.

“No, I don’t need a ride home.” Miko was yammering away into her little pink cellphone. She had been going back and forth with her host parents for the entire ride from Jasper. “You’ve seen the big green truck my uh, friends have! We’re totally fine.”

It was late December, and it had been snowing lightly for a week or two now. Snow plows worked tirelessly in the town of Jasper proper; out here on the back roads they only scraped the road at dawn and dusk. Not that it mattered; Bulkhead was much heavier than an average car, after all, so the ice on the pavement wasn’t much of an issue for him. Nevertheless, he had taken extra care to make sure Miko buckled up- he could survive rolling off the road, but she might not if she got tossed about in his cab.

“Ten?” She was saying now, clearly offended by the number. Bulkhead rolled on silently. “That’s so early! We’re not even in school right now! What about like, 12?”

“Ten.” Bulkhead whispered through his speakers.

Miko heaved a sigh as dramatic as any he had ever seen, but after a few moments she relented. “Fine.” She said glumly. “I’ll be home by ten-thirty. Yeah. Okay. Bye!” Her phone flipped shut with a tinny clack and a jingle from her phone charm.

Bulkhead had never met her host parents, obviously, but he respected their patience.

“So!” Miko folded her arms behind her head, and surveyed the landscape rolling by outside Bulkhead’s window. “We got a whole day to do whatever we want, big guy!”

“I recorded the last Slash Monkey concert they aired on TV?” He offered.

“Nice.”

It wasn’t much longer before they reached the base, Miko chattering away at him the whole time. It finally started to snow again as they rolled up on the secret entrance; privately, Bulkhead hoped it wouldn’t pile up too much before he had to take Miko home that night. He could make it in whatever weather this planet could throw at him, sure, but that didn’t mean he wanted to have to slog through several inches of frozen water. And the road salt. Ugh.

Arcee greeted them as they pulled in. None of the other bots were anywhere to be seen- most likely on patrol or escaping the coldness of winter inside their private quarters.

“Ar-cee!” Miko sang as she hopped out of Bulkhead’s cab. “How’s it hanging?”

“Hey, Miko.” Arcee greeted, looking a little distracted. “Happy, uh- I forget what it’s called.”

“Christmas.” Miko supplied, removing a cardboard box from Bulkhead’s back seat. She stumbled a bit under its weight before she rebalanced it in her arms. “And Christmas is tomorrow, but my host family wants me to stay home and do holiday stuff with them all day. Snore.”

Bulkhead transformed and watched his human charge stumble across the base’s floor with passive interest. She dropped it next to the couch and immediately started rummaging through it.

“I guess Jack and Raf won’t be back free for another couple of days, then?” Arcee asked.

“Nope. Jack’s grandparents are still in town, and Raf is in like, Arizona or something.” Miko waved her hand in dismissal, before pulling out the bucket of fried chicken she had demanded Bulkhead take her to a drivethru for.

Arcee, who seemed more bewildered with each thing the human pulled out of the box, shook her head. “I’ll let you to have at it, I’m going on patrol.”

Miko immediately stopped unpacking to turn her sad puppy-dog eyes on the motorcycle. “What? You’re not leaving, are you? We have holiday fun times planned!”

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Arcee reassured her quickly. “You’ll be here all day, right? I’ll hang out in a bit.”

Grumpily, Miko turned back to her box. “Fine. But don’t go running off!”

“I won’t.” Arcee said. She turned towards the tunnel, but gave Bulkhead a knowing look before she transformed. “Try not to have too much fun without me.” She muttered.

Bulkhead grimaced at her in response, and a moment later she was roaring off down the tunnel out of the base. Bulkhead exvented softly. As high-energy as Miko could be, he had never (necessarily) led him astray when it came to Earth culture before. After all, rock bands and monster truck rallies had been right up his alley- and if Miko wanted to celebrate an Earth holiday with him, how bad could it be?

“Now, we don’t really do a whole lotta Christmas stuff in Japan,” She was saying, and Bulkhead clomped across the room to peak over her shoulder. “But I got the basics down. Plus, Americans go crazy for this holiday, so it’s easy enough to get what you need.”

She spun on her heel, and held up a string of lights that Bulkhead had seen decorating several buildings in Jasper this last month. “The first part of Christmas is decorating.”

In theory, this didn’t sound so bad, but Bulkhead quickly realized that Miko wasn’t stringing the lights up around the bunker- she was advancing towards him, with the lights outstretched in her arms and a mischievous glint in her eye. He had only taken a single wary step backwards when the sound of the elevator from the roof of the base reached him.

“Wait!” He cried, a little more nervously than he intended. He cleared his vocalizer with a short cough. “I think my present for you is here.”

Miko stopped in her tracks, a look of shock coloring her features for a moment before it stretched into pure joy. “You got me a present? What did you get me? Do Autobots even have money?”

“We don’t.” Bulkhead regrettably informed her. There had been some sweet stuff online that he had wanted but- no. Best not to dwell. “But you’re easy to shop for.”

Miko looked like she might protest at the notion that she was easy to read, but at that moment her present walked through the door, holding a gift of his own.

“Surprise.” Wheeljack threw his arms out to his sides dramatically.

“Wheeljack!” Miko cried, jumping off the couch to run to him. “Oh my gosh! Bulkhead, you got me Wheeljack for Christmas?”

“You’re welcome.” Bulkhead said smugly, pleased with the human’s reaction. He wasn’t really into whatever holiday traditions humans had- and they had a lot of them- but when Raf had explained the gift-giving part of Christmas, he knew he had to call in his Wrecker bud. He figured he couldn’t buy anything that would make Miko happier than that- and it seemed he had been right.

“Good to see you, kid. I got you a- get off my ankle, thanks- I got you a present too.” He lowered the box to her level, and she snatched it greedily in her excitement.

“What is it?”

“Just open it.”

She did as she was bade, taking a moment to figure out how to unlatch the oddly made Cybertronian box. When she finally got it open, Bulkhead furrowed his brow ridges at what he saw inside.

“A sword!”

“Jackie…” Bulkhead warned, but it was obviously too late- he couldn’t bear to take the thing away from her now that she had seen it.

“Merry Christmas.” He told Miko gleefully as she began to swing the sword around her head. “And what? She can handle it.”

“Humans are more fragile than us, Jackie.” Bulkhead said, lowering his voice so Miko couldn’t hear him over the sound of the schwing noise she was making as she sliced experimentally through the air. “She could… cut herself or something.”

“Well, that’ll be an important life lesson, then.”

Bulkhead sighed.

They watched Miko do some exaggerated moves with her new sword- which was, to Bulkhead’s chagrin, fully functional- and Wheeljack promised to show her how to use it properly. This went on for a few minutes before she suddenly froze mid-swing.

“Wait!” She cried. She set her sword down in its box carefully and jogged back over to the box of supplies she had brought with her, and dragged out one of the strings of lights. Bulkhead felt his energon pump sink a little bit. “I’m forgetting the most important part of Christmas! Decorating.”

“What are we decorating?” Wheeljack asked.

His question was met with silence. Miko grinned at him, holding the string of lights out in front of her, and glanced at Bulkhead. Wheeljack glanced between them a few times before something seemed to click for him, a smirk overtaking his face.

24. if we were together on a rooftop, what would we be doing?

Anyway, I'm really sorry your having anon/user hate, that's wild to come back to out of nowhere. Those screenshots are fucking wild. Hopefully it's over by now 💚(🤞🤞🤞)

Thank you!! Yeah I really hope it’s calmed and nothing more will pop up tomorrow, it was so shocking

And haha yeah! I still have posts queuing but I haven’t made an original post in like.. 3 years. I kinda stopped watching/reading Transformers stuff back then but sometimes I reminisce on it and decide to post about it again 😂