Archive of Our Own ^beta

Noah has come to a conclusion.

It’s written in the details after Peru. After coming home, after rebuilding Mirage bit by bit, after not knowing if he’d even still be in there once it was done. And he was; but at the same time, somehow, he wasn’t.

Something was different, after. Something in the way Mirage looked at him, the way he kept to himself after waking up, the way he just never seemed as open or comfortable as he had been. They’d been close in Peru, closer than Noah would bet either of them have ever been with anyone before, close in a way that should have hung over them like a plastic decoration in a doorway during the holidays. Close in a way that just needed to be listened to, given voice, and seen where it would go from there. In a way that spelled something more, inevitably, eventually.

It was something he was sure both of them could feel. Maybe that they still can, but it gets buried deeper each and every time that Mirage pulls away from him. It’s in the way Mirage no longer reaches out for him, the way he seems to casually step away from touch, the way he just goes still when he has no choice but to let Noah touch him for repairs.

He never says anything, his voice never straying from the normal, carefree tone he always uses, never saying what’s really happening in the distance drawing between them. When Noah’s back is to him, leaned over his workbench, when the silence of the garage hangs heavy over them and Noah swears he feels like Mirage is about to finally say something, he never does.

There’s a conclusion Noah could come to from all of that, one that sits heavy at the back of his mind, mixed into his fears and the memories that haunt him at night. The conclusion that, after Peru, after being closer than anyone else, that maybe Mirage isn’t so on board with where that was going as Noah is. Maybe even that Mirage regrets the closeness built between them in the first place.

But that’s not the conclusion he comes to. That’s the one that sits in the dark part of his mind, the one that whispers his deepest anxieties on loop, the part of his mind he’s long since learned not to listen to. No, he has come to a very different conclusion indeed.

Mirage is afraid of him.

Or maybe that isn’t the best way to phrase it. Mirage doesn’t fear Noah, doesn’t back away like he thinks Noah is going to hurt Mirage. His fear tells a very different story, written clear as day in body language that should be alien but is instead so painfully familiar, so human. The way he stares at his own hands when Noah holds them, and the way they don’t close around his own. The way Mirage watches Noah trip, lunging halfway across the floor reaching to catch him; only to freeze and let him fall, rather than touch him.

The way he looks, for just a split, telling moment, when Noah slips with a tool and nicks his finger and curses in pain, like he’s terrified. Like he thinks, just during that moment, that the pain was his fault. Or, maybe, that it could be.

Something happened between Peru and when Mirage was rebuilt. Noah doesn’t know what that something was, or if it was one distinct moment or a final straw on a mountain of smaller moments, but he knows it has changed everything between them.

Noah has come to a conclusion, and he’s going to fix it.

Mirage wishes he could fix this.

He’s gotten used to his problems not being any more delicate than needing to be shot at to go away, or maybe blown up if it’s really un-delicate. Or maybe a scenario where he just has to pretend he knows what he’s doing, act suave when he feels anything but, until he himself believes it and anyone else believed it from the beginning.

And if not those, then he wishes this was something unfathomably bigger than him. Something beyond him, that he can let go of because there’s nothing he can do about it anyway. Things that he doesn’t like, things he would enjoy being able to do something about, but which are easy to stop being so bothered about when he simply can’t.

But this one… this is smaller than him. And that’s the real problem, isn’t it?

Because he’s used to his problems being bigger than him. He’s used to being the small one on the team, and to face problems that spell doom for this or that, planets here and there. Or, if he’s honest, most of his problems involve a certain disapproving stare from someone taller than him, and those he can deal with. He’s used to that.

This, somehow, is more important. Which is ridiculous and would earn him another disapproving stare just for thinking it, but it is. He can’t explain why, but—

—that’s a lie. Even as he thinks it, he knows he can explain it. Sure, the fate of worlds is plenty important in the grand scheme of things, to everyone involved, to anyone who doesn’t want to see a planet destroyed or set to ruin like their own; but to him, this is more important for more reasons than anyone would bother to listen to.

And every single one of those reasons is about Noah. Noah, whose motivation wasn’t for the world, but for there to still be a world for his little brother to live in. Noah, who runs himself ragged in the name of a cause, whose presence Mirage sensed for nearly every moment of being half alive, never leaving him for long. Noah, whose freckled face lit by stars is seared into Mirage’s memory and will stay there until the day his spark goes out.

From the first moment they’d met, he knew this one was different. He’d messed with Noah at first just for fun, like anyone else; but Noah’s hands on his wheel were gentle, not because of awe for the pricetag Mirage appeared to be, but for what he knows was just an inherent trait of his to begin with. A respect for everything around him, passing lightly through a world without leaving anything out of place in his wake, and yet being able to be so much more than just that.

Someone able and willing to hold his ground, to throw snark back at Optimus of all people, where anyone else would’ve cowered and ran away in terror at the first chance, blind with panic.

From the very beginning, Mirage wanted him closer. He had every chance to let Noah leave without ever finding out the truth, but he wanted to be selfish, and he wanted to see more of this strange little human that felt so different from all the rest. He wanted to keep reaching out, to keep pushing the line, to keep finding out how much further it could go.

Now, he wants Noah far away from him, away from shifting parts and unyielding metal and an alien too big to know how to be gentle enough with him.

“—rage. Mirage!” With a jolt, Mirage shakes out of his thoughts to the sound of Noah’s voice. He zeroes in on the source, his human sitting at his workbench like usual, but his chair spun to face him and a look on his face that spells trouble for Mirage. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for, like, five minutes.”

“Oh, uh, sorry.”

He doesn’t have a good excuse to cover it with. There’s still things Noah doesn’t know about Cybertronian biology yet, though, despite rebuilding him practically from the tread up, and he has full intention of using that to his advantage.

He only feels a little bad about it.

“I was… rebooting.”

Noah stares at him in a way that is far too reminiscent of Optimus, and yeah, he definitely needs to keep them from ever hanging out again or else he has a feeling that’ll only get worse. He holds that look on him for a long, uncomfortable moment, one that Mirage resists fidgeting under. It’s only broken when Noah sighs, his shoulders sagging, and Mirage is a fool to hope that means he’s giving up.

“We need to talk.” The hope turns to a jolt of fear that makes him sit up straighter, and then slouch just as quickly in an attempt to look casual.

It’s an easy enough thing to brush off, right? Act natural, show some charm, throw him off. Play dumb.

“Talk? Us? Why would we ever need to talk? Psh, I don’t talk.”

Mirage resists the urge to bang his helm on the wall. Or, maybe transform so he doesn’t have to face Noah’s unsettling Optimus-stare. Or transform and just leave, actually, that one’s a very good idea, he should actually do that one, he should come up with an excuse and remove himself from this interaction immediately.

“Mirage.”

He’s known Noah long enough now, or long enough while paying a bit too much attention to his every action, to hear the strange mix of exhaustion and fondness in his tone. Fond, no doubt, of the way Mirage just made a fool of himself; and exhausted from knowing, just as well as Mirage knows, that they both know something isn’t right between them.

And he probably knows it’s Mirage’s fault, too. He hasn’t exactly been subtle.

“Look, I don’t know exactly what it is, or why, but something is wrong. And it’s— I can’t take it, man.” Noah looks as messed up as Mirage feels. He’s got one hand gripping the seat under him, knuckles white—are they supposed to be that color?—and the other in his hair, tangled in curls and pulling at them. He looks up, and Mirage feels the ground drop from under him at the watery, desperate look in his eyes.

It’s one he’s seen before.

He doesn’t want to think about that.

“Just— I don’t know if it was something I did, or—” His voice has that cracked, wet quality to it that human voices do, the one that always hits him right in the spark. This time is no different, making him reach forward without thought, a desperate urge to fix it making his limbs move before he completely aborts that action.

The way Noah looks at him, then, frozen mid-movement, is almost like he’s had something proven for him by exactly what Mirage just did.

“You can tell me.” He watches Noah slide off of his chair, take a few slow paces toward him like he’s afraid Mirage is going to bolt, which— he’s torn perfectly in two between wanting to reach out and make that look on Noah’s face go away, and of just simply fleeing the garage entirely, and seeing as he has no idea which one will actually win, he just opts to stay frozen. “We’re partners, remember?”

Noah’s not really a feelings guy. Or, at least, he tells people he’s not. He tells people he’s not good with the words and the emotions, while Mirage knows full well how he quietly talks Kris up on the bad nights, how he holds strong until no one is looking at him anymore, and then it all comes out.

Once or twice, that’s happened in Mirage’s interior, before Noah’s rational brain could catch up and remember he wasn’t alone. And both times, Mirage tried to let him be, because he didn’t choose to have that break in front of him, to let him in.

This? This is different. This is Noah letting it out, showing the emotions he pretends not to be big on, not hiding any part of his face or the tears slowly escaping down it as he takes another, tentative, step toward Mirage. Like he’s afraid he’ll be shut out; like he’s been being shut out, this entire time.

Mirage did this to him.

“I… It’s not you, Noah. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Mirage, finally, forces the words out and forces his limbs to do something normal, like not hanging in the air in a cut off attempt to reach out for Noah. “It’s all me. But it’s temporary, okay? I’m just…”

He really doesn’t have an excuse. He doesn’t have an explanation, either, not when an explanation would only make Noah see exactly what he’s so afraid of, and then this will never go away. Not once that fear is instilled, not when Noah is the one that should really be afraid of it.

Which he supposes is just a reason he should tell him, let Noah be fully aware of things he should be worried about, but… well, Mirage shoves that line of thinking right back where it came from, for selfish reasons.

Noah stares at him. He stares for a long time, long enough that he doesn’t know at all where his human’s mind is going or what to expect once it comes back to the topic at hand, long enough that he almost doesn’t notice the moment Noah reaches out for him.

The moment he does notice, his first instinct is to jerk away, one that he immediately nips at the source and goes dead still instead. Sudden movements, at his size, with Noah this close— absolutely not. As much as he’d rather book it straight out of here and hope it never comes up again, that chance has passed.

Soft human skin brushes delicately against his arm plating, then plants more firmly there. Noah’s eyes stay pinned on his face, not looking at the point of contact between them, though Mirage can’t look away from it. He has this unsettling, creeping fear that if he glances away, even for a moment, well… better to just not try it and find out, right?

When Noah finally looks away, it’s to that point of contact. His hand moves, skin trailing over metal in a faint sensation Mirage fights back a shiver for, fingers drifting down to ghost over Mirage’s own. One hand becomes two, until Noah is holding Mirage’s servo in them just as gently as he’d held his wheel the night they met, and he looks back up.

And oh, his face when he does. There’s something in Noah’s eyes, something that makes Mirage suddenly understand that movie that said something about windows to the soul. Except he feels like it’s going in reverse; he feels like the floor is going to pitch out from under him at any moment, that he’s going to fall into a depth of color so very human, and that Noah will be able to see right through him the moment he does. That he’ll see inside of him, right through to his spark and everything within it, that he’ll simply know everything Mirage hasn’t been telling him without a word ever being spoken.

“You’re afraid of hurting me. Aren’t you?”

Mirage takes in a rush of air, well and fully unprepared for Noah to actually do exactly that. Vaguely, he’s aware that he’s trembling in Noah’s grip, a faint tremor vibrating through him that he tries fruitlessly to cease because uncontrolled movement is the last thing he needs to be doing around Noah.

He doesn’t want to get into this, any of this. He wanted this problem to just— go away, on its own. To be something he didn’t have to deal with, or something he could forcibly tamp down until it didn’t bother him anymore. He wishes it was something he could just let go of, accept that it’s out of his grasp, and let things simply be as they are.

But he didn’t manage that. And now Noah knows all about it.

Not much point in keeping it from him now, then, is there? Not when the only thing that will do is continue to push his human away, when he’s done such a great job of that already with a failed attempt to get over himself.

If only to put it off for a few seconds more, Mirage lets out a heavy sigh, giving in. “It was in Peru.” He offers as a start, optics downcast to the concrete floor as he puts his thoughts together. Noah’s hands are still on him, holding him, finger pads with textures too small to detect tracing soothing shapes into his metal.

And Noah, gentle and encouraging as he is with Kris, hums wordlessly that he’s listening.

“It was when we— I— you were there, you know what happened. No one’s ever done what I did before, you know, every time we’re around people there’s all this space, it’s… never been just, full contact like that before, y’know?” He hates putting this into words already, knowing the fears he’s going to transfer from himself to Noah, until they’re both just afraid of the same thing. “You were so… soft.”

Noah’s hands go still.

“I could feel… a lot. Like when you moved, and put the strength of your body into your actions, and— I could overwrite them, if I tried, and it was easy. Even in that state, I was still so much stronger than you, that you giving it your all was something I might barely notice.” The sensations come back to him as he describes them, wracking discomfort through his frame in the form of a shudder. The feeling of being so much more powerful, of knowing that he could manipulate Noah’s form no matter if or how much he resisted, unsettles something within him more than words can describe. And yet… still not nearly as badly as what followed that realization. “And I wanted to protect you. I didn’t want you getting knocked around inside of what was supposed to be protecting you, so I tried to… mold closer to you, I guess. But you would just give, and give, and no matter how much I pressed in there was never something solid to stop at, to know when—”

Some kind of sound escapes him at the memory, at the thought, something that comes straight from the feeling it instills in him to think about. Noah’s soft, pliant hands remind him too much of it where they’re still holding onto him, and he tries to pull back, a movement too sharp and jittery for comfort but one he can’t make any smoother. Noah, however, holds fast, and when his grip doesn’t break, Mirage gives it up and lets him keep holding on.

Better than pulling. Better than wrenching out of his grasp. Better than— things he isn't going to imagine.

“I could feel how— how delicate you are. How one wrong move and you could… how easy it would be to hurt you. How I could do it without even realizing I would.”

He feels sick. He feels unsteady, despite already being sat on the ground, and he’s glad he is, because he’s pretty sure the world might sway if he wasn’t, and wouldn’t that be a disaster just waiting to happen? Noah’s hands stay on him through it all, and he resists the faint want to hold him back, to close metal fingers around those small hands, to risk— Mirage shudders, and faintly, he’s aware of the sound he’s making as his plating trembles against itself.

“So let me get this straight,” Noah starts, and his voice sounds rough, like it has to drag its way out of his throat, like his body has caught up before his mind and has picked up on the fact there’s something to be afraid of here. “You’ve been avoiding me because— because you’re afraid of hurting me?”

“I’m not just afraid, Noah.” Finally, Mirage looks back at him, meets his gaze in an attempt to run home just how much this is more than a simple little fear. How this isn’t just some baseless anxiety, something conjured up by his mind over something that was never something to actually fear in the first place. “You’re not made of metal. I— I don’t know the limits of what you’re made of. I don’t know how much is safe contact, and when it turns into— when you— when I—”

Noah stares at him, wide eyed, hands frozen still on his servo. Faintly, Mirage can see movement in his throat, swallowing down nerves maybe, or finally realizing the gravity of the situation. Mirage probably doesn’t need to force him to the same conclusion anymore, but he’s already said this much, and it seems his fears want to be truly heard for what they really are.

“I could break you, Noah, I could…”

He can’t say the rest. He won’t. He thinks, maybe, Noah understands the word he was going to use next.

The one that means no more soft expressions under starlight, no more brave snark thrown at a grumpy Prime, no more terribly perceptive Noah.

This is the part where Noah is supposed to get it. The part where he’s supposed to understand the depth of what Mirage has just told him, where he realizes the danger he’s in if Mirage so much as simply moves wrong at the wrong moment, the moment where he lets go and never comes near him again. He waits; waits for it all to click into place in that biological processor of his, waits for the moment he pulls his hands back to himself, waits for his face to morph into entirely justified fear.

He’s not prepared for Noah’s expression to go soft.

“You wouldn’t think it, from your perspective, looking at us, but…” Noah looks down at that point of contact, eyes following the movement of his own fingers as he goes back to tracing shapes on Mirage. “Humans have to fear the same thing, sometimes. People call it ‘not knowing their own strength’, when you get too strong too fast, or don’t realize how fragile something is."

Dutifully, Mirage tries to imagine what he’s saying, since that’s easier than trying to figure out why Noah hasn’t backed away yet. He thinks of the soft skin touching him, delicate and gentle and pliant against his hard edges, and he can’t just can’t see it.

“Yeah, thought so. But it’s true. Sometimes people get new pets they’ve never had before, and end up so afraid of hurting it because it’s just so small. Or…” Noah looks back up, still gazing at Mirage so softly, so warm, and so very not afraid. “Or they bring home a baby, and their older kid goes through the exact same thing. Because it’s something important, something precious, and it’s so fragile, and suddenly you’re so afraid of what you could do if you aren’t careful enough.”

The thought of Noah, soft, gentle Noah, who so delicately touches a steering wheel of a random car he has no connection to as if it needs to be handled with care, being afraid of hurting Kris, who he’s just so good with, is very nearly absurd. But… he’s got that look on his face. The one that says he gets it. That one that says he’s been there, and he understands exactly what it’s like.

“I know. You’d never think it now, but Kris, well. He’s always been sick, y’know? It didn’t go right, and he came out too early. And I was old enough to know how to handle a baby, I thought I knew what to expect, but…” Noah tilts his head, looking up at Mirage, his eyes soft and distant. “I wasn’t ready for him to be that small. I thought— well, I was too scared to touch him.”

He can’t imagine Noah ever not being gentle enough with Kris. But he can see it in Noah’s eyes, the same fear he feels at the contact of soft skin on hard metal, reflected back at him from its place accepted and overcome within his human.

“How—” His voice comes out like a bad radio signal, and he coughs, attempting to kick the damn thing into working right. There’s no need to try and vocalize it again, though, when Noah already knows what he was going to ask.

A soft laugh escapes him, a small, short sound that seems to bounce around the garage for the moment it has the silence to itself. Then his human’s eyes seem to go ever softer, his gaze dropping from Mirage’s face to where his hands curl around metal. “You just have to learn, that’s how. Experience, practice. That’s how you know.” He explains, at the same time that he uses one hand to close Mirage’s lax grip around his other.

It takes everything in him to resist the urge to tense up. Noah’s hands and fingers are so much smaller than the rest of him, impossibly delicate parts that could be crushed so easily, ones that now rest within his limp hold as if that’s a safe place for them to be. Noah knows what he’s capable of, why oh why would he put those there?

“Do you trust me?”

He glances at Noah’s face, intending to only look away from flesh peeking between dark metal for the barest of moments, fearing he’ll manage to do something if he isn’t watching. But his optics catch there, on his human’s face; open and earnest, with easy trust written all over it when he’s asking for Mirage’s own.

And isn’t that a question for Noah to sling at him now, of all times? There’s a feeling of tension pulled all throughout himself, hard enough that he feels like he’s going to snap something or sprout a leak of his own if this keeps up, just from the stress of keeping himself still. He could argue that Noah should know full well already that he does, that he’s already laid his own life in those delicate hands and been carried properly back from death for it.

There’s no reason he wouldn’t trust Noah. But… does he have to ask that now? Does it have to be about this, when he knows Noah isn’t nearly taking this as seriously as he should in regards to his own safety?

“Mirage.”

“Yes, okay, I do.”

The moment he spits it out, leans into that trust and hopes Noah knows what he’s doing, Noah’s hands shift. He trails fingers up and over metal digits, and then presses them together onto his left hand, pressing them down on his palm and the back of his hand. Then he looks up.

“Okay. Now just… try this, okay?” Mirage would like to be willfully ignorant of what Noah is telling him to do, but the way he squeezes his own hand between metal makes it quite clear what he’s intending. “Just hold on, just a little bit.”

He’d really rather not, actually.

“Mirage.”

With a heavy, rattling sigh that reminds him he’s forgotten to breathe for— who knows how long by now, Mirage does as he’s told, even though it makes him want to cringe with each millimeter he lets his fingers close by. He feels soft flesh squish ever so faintly between them, and stops immediately.

“Good. Now squeeze harder, okay?”

“Noah—” He starts to argue. Wants to argue, but he doesn’t really have the words to put together, all of them chased away by the sensation of plush organic material and the fear coursing through him. Noah doesn’t say anything, only continues to watch him, eyes on his face and making no move to remove himself from servos capable of crushing concrete.

He might be rattling again, but really, he’s too busy staring as he dares let a few more millimeters disappear, suspended on a peak of anxiety waiting, expecting something to snap or break at any moment. It’s so unsettling, the way he dares to press harder bit by agonizing bit, and Noah’s flesh just keeps letting him. When Noah doesn’t say anything, he finally loses his nerve, and freezes when he can’t take it anymore.

At the feeling of Mirage no longer tightening his grip, Noah smiles up at him, and runs his free fingers over where they’re joined together. “That’s good, see?” He asks, running his thumb along his own skin where human flesh is squished up and around the hard edge of Mirage’s finger on his palm, like he’s trying to prove that it’s fine.

And… maybe it is fine. A little, anyway, at least like this, when Noah hasn’t gotten hurt yet, when he’s looking up at Mirage with a praising look that makes something in him feel like it’s going to short circuit.

“Now…” Noah starts, and Mirage doesn’t like where he suspects he’s going with that. “Squeeze more.”

He doesn’t like it at all. He already feels like there’s too much squish to Noah’s hand, that there can’t be much more, that Noah is being reckless and this is too far, that he doesn’t realize. But he’s staring up at him again, waiting, expectant, and Mirage hesitantly does as he’s told even while feeling like it’s a mistake.

Noah doesn’t break. He doesn’t immediately start leaking red, his face doesn’t even pinch like Mirage has seen him do when he gets hurt. And somehow that makes it so much worse when Noah looks up at him, looking just as good as he had a moment ago, completely fine, only for him to say, “Right there. That’s how hard it takes to start hurting.” like it’s no big deal at all.

Instantly, Mirage lets up, slackens his grip and tries to pull away, a nonverbal sound escaping him in lieu of being able to form any words to protest or share how actually hurting Noah makes him feel. Especially when he can’t see it; when Noah’s hand looks the same as it had before he’d enclosed it in his grip, and now he has to grapple with the realization that there’s even less warning before hurting his human than he’d realized.

If he’d thought he felt sick before, he was wrong. He has half a mind to simply force himself to power down right here, right now, just to escape the feeling wracking through him.

“No, no. I know. Just— keep trusting me, okay?” Noah is saying. He’s holding on, still; not letting Mirage pull away from his hands, ignoring weak protests as he pulls them back into the same position, closes metal over the same areas of his skin as before. “Trust me. Do it again.”

“Noah, I am not going to—” Mirage doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to be having this— whatever this is, because it’s not a conversation and he doesn’t know what it is, really, but he also doesn’t know what Noah hopes to accomplish by letting Mirage hurt him.

“Shh.” Noah makes a soft noise, and looks up at him with soft eyes, and he presses metal harder against his skin emphatically, giving Mirage a delicate little nod to go ahead. The kind that says it’s fine, the kind that’s telling him to do it, confidently certain that it is fine. And Mirage doesn’t believe it for a second, wants to refuse and pull away, but there’s a look on Noah’s face almost like he so desperately wants Mirage to know something that he just can’t back away.

Hesitantly, slowly, Mirage does as asked. It’s slower than the first few times, the seconds ticking by far faster than the millimeters do, some small part of him hoping that if he’s slow enough, Noah will tell him to stop before he hurts him. And though it’s slow, Noah doesn’t say anything, doesn’t complain at him for anything, only keeps that warm, soft look leveled at him, giving occasional nods to keep going every time he hesitates more.

Until finally, he’s sure he’s very nearly reached the same amount of pressure as the first time, and his fear is coiled up tight enough within him that he’s fully expecting he’s going to break before Noah does, now.

“Okay. That’s okay. See, that’s… uncomfortable, but it’s not damaging. Humans get, like, warnings before we get actual damage, in the form of some pain. So there’s a difference between hurting a little as a warning, and being hurt.” Noah’s face is still smooth, free of the look he gets when he is in pain, lending credence to his explanation. He doesn’t tell or make any move that he wants Mirage to let go yet, though he does flex his hand, and Mirage is startled by the sensation of movement underneath his skin when he does. “This is right there in that warning stage. So this is exactly how hard you can hold on without actually damaging anything.”

And maybe it’s the unexpected movement under Noah’s skin that breaks him out of it, or maybe it’s just that Noah’s words and intentions finally crack through the surface, but regardless of the reason, it’s then that what Noah is really doing clicks fully in Mirage’s processor.

He’s teaching him what it takes to hurt him. He’s teaching him how to choose not to.

Mirage doesn’t need air, but he’s left breathless all the same, staring down at his wonderfully perceptive human with an overwhelming form of the awe he’s felt in bursts ever since he met him.

Maybe the war has been going on for too long, maybe it’s shifted his perspective just a little sideways. He knows why Noah has chosen this; knows that this is a very clever solution for the problem Mirage has been trying so hard to ignore, and he knows that really, there’s nothing Noah is teaching him that he doesn’t already know. Humans are delicate, humans are easy to hurt. But even knowing that, there’s still something about Noah willingly, openly, teaching Mirage exactly what his limits are, exactly what it takes to injure him, that feels like some incredibly deep form of trust.

Noah has been asking for his trust this entire time, and he feels like it’s about time he gave it to him.

He’s still pressing down on Noah’s soft hand, holding fast even as his thoughts run rampant, and Noah still hasn’t complained about it. Instead, he’s still just watching Mirage, patiently looking up at whatever Mirage’s face has been doing, and it’s clear he wasn’t exaggerating when he said the grip Mirage has on him right now is only discomfort when he’s let it stay this long. Carefully, Mirage lets up, frees Noah’s poor constricted palm from its prison and turns it over to rest lightly in his own, more willing contact than he’s dared to make since all of this began.

The smile it earns him is something he, selfishly, decides he wants to see much, much more of.

“I don’t have anywhere to be.” Noah informs him, something that seems as intentional as it does disconnected from everything else going on at the moment.

It takes him tilting his head, eyes still soft and expression nothing but inviting, for Mirage to catch on. “You, uh… sure?” He asks, and in response, Noah only reaches for his other servo and places it on the warm expanse of his arm.

How many times since he woke up has he wanted something exactly like this? To be able to freely reach out and touch, without being afraid of the damage he could do without realizing, or to even be openly invited to simply explore. Because that’s what this is; there’s nothing else it could be, or be taken as, not when Noah’s arm and hand are pliant in his grasp not because he’s too weak to resist, but because he’s choosing to let Mirage investigate him as much as he’d like, as much as it takes to settle his fears.

It’s like being handed… well, he’s not exactly sure what to compare it to. Someone with more smarts on the team would probably compare it to something like being given free access to a library of the universe’s deepest, most important forgotten knowledge. Something so vast and immeasurable, with everything contained within being of interest to him, that he has no idea where to start.

So he starts with the first thing that has really caught his curiosity, despite the clear invitation Noah sent in placing his servo further up on his arm. He starts by letting his grasp trail back down, back to Noah’s hand, where he ever so carefully presses in on the skin and notes the straight, vertical lines he can feel inside. Something solid, hard, hidden beneath the softness.

“Bones,” Noah tells him. Then, with a slightly mischievous look on his face, he flexes his fingers again and makes Mirage jolt ever so slightly as something moves alongside those bones, sliding underneath his grip. “Tendons.”

“Whoa.” It’s a little weird. Actually, it’s really weird, if Mirage tries to imagine the same thing in the form of a bot, of being able to feel movement underneath hard plating just from touching the outside. But it’s also something so unique and alien, so obviously human, that he finds himself wanting nothing more than to know more.

Noah doesn’t argue, or look remotely worried when Mirage’s touch ghosts over his fingers, or when he gently curls them, finding and feeling each joint as it bends. He’s reminded of Noah earlier, sitting in his chair, knuckles white as he gripped it, though it isn’t repeated when he simply holds Noah’s hand into a fist. Some sort of look must show on his face, because Noah takes over, then, tightening his own grip and repeating the phenomenon Mirage had seen.

The skin over his knuckles is taut when Mirage touches it, stretched firm over the bones inside, showing the barest hint of what they might actually look like. When Noah lets up, lets his fingers go lax and flat again, he’s nearly enamored with the way that previously taut skin goes loose and hides the shapes that were so distinct only a moment ago. That’s not even mentioning the color change, the way his skin went paler as if stretched thin over the bones underneath.

“Skin’s weird.” Noah interjects, almost as if he can hear exactly what Mirage is thinking. If he keeps that up, he might have to start wondering if Noah really can see straight through him, see into his spark with some other human sense he doesn’t know about just as much as all the other fine, tiny details he’s learning the more he explores. “Changes color a lot. For lots of reasons.”

He reaches down, pressing the thumb of his free hand against the one Mirage is still holding, hard enough that his softness pillows up around it. For just a moment, he has half a mind to question what Noah is up to, until that thumb moves away and for the barest of a second, its imprint is left in a paler tone on his hand. It fades just as quickly, but it’s there long enough for Mirage to see it, lurching forward the barest of an inch to look closer as if he’ll be able to see it again.

It earns him another one of those soft laughs, a warm smile. He feels like he’s going to start buzzing at the sound of it, from the sensation it spreads somewhere in his spark chamber. “That one’s something about, I dunno, compressing it and making the blood go somewhere else for a second. Didn’t pay much attention in biology class.” Noah explains, at least to the best of his ability, and gives no protest when Mirage ever so carefully attempts to recreate the action.

There’s a fear at the back of his mind, that worry that he’ll manage to hurt Noah if he tries, but it’s much quieter now. Noah showed it to him; demonstrated it himself, and had no adverse reactions to it, no matter how much ‘removing blood from a section of the body’ sounds like a bad idea to him.

Maybe he’s just looking at it on too large of a scale. Humans wouldn’t have gotten very far if they could die from blood not making it to an inch long patch of skin for a few seconds, anyway.

It takes a couple of tries. He’s reverted to being too gentle again, and it takes Noah pressing Mirage into his skin at the right pressure to finally recreate it. It returns to normal just as quickly as it had the first time, but for that split half second that the mark appears on the back of Noah’s hand, Mirage feels some kind of way at the shape of his own fingers blazoned into his human’s skin.

He can’t help but look up, snap to Noah’s face, words gathered and ready to fall in the form of something like I did it, or maybe I look pretty good on you, or even something along the lines of hey Noah, wanna explore me next? As if he’d want to give up what he’s got in front of him right now to even entertain that idea.

All of those thoughts fizzle out before he can decide if he wants to say any of them, though, when he catches Noah’s eye. He’s offered a faint chuckle, a tilt of the head, and the skin on his cheeks going faintly red as he says, “You look pretty good on me.” with a nod toward his hand.

Forget logic. Noah can definitely see what he’s thinking, somehow. That or they’re sharing all of the same thoughts at the moment, something Mirage is sorely tempted to blame on the prolonged contact, come up with some conspiracy about humans transferring data through their soft, warm skin. Maybe if he did, Optimus couldn’t argue if he wanted to spend the next few, maybe dozen months continuing this, for research purposes, of course.

Noah pulls his hands free, and for one split second, Mirage has the sinking fear that he’s done with this now, that the moment has passed and he won’t get the chance to follow that invitation to explore more. But Noah doesn’t go anywhere; he takes a step to the side, pulls himself up onto Mirage’s leg, and seats himself comfortably there. His hands are offered freely all over again, fingers delicately curled and palms up, in front of an expression that says so many things Mirage isn’t sure he has the ability to fluently read.

“You don’t want to stop there, do you?” Noah asks, softly, in such a way that it pulls Mirage’s first thought out of him as an exhale without any input from him on whether he wanted to say something so telling.

“Never.”

The smile it earns him is worth it, anyway.

They settle right back where they’d been. Yesterday, this morning, an hour ago— Mirage was afraid to let Noah within five feet of him. Now, he feels like Noah’s hands belong in his grasp, held there as naturally as if they’d been doing this all along, as if the distance he’d made had never existed to begin with.

Finally, he accepts the invitation from earlier, and slides his grip up from Noah’s hand, noting the sensation of his skin as he goes. It’s such a smooth, soft texture; and yet more organic than his metal in such a way that there’s a strange mix of both a gentle slide, and a slight catch, as if his skin could microscopically hold onto something as smooth as glass if it so wanted to.

That… explains why their drinking cups are made of glass, come to think of it. Must be easy to hold onto something like that when your whole body is encased in fine, biological rubber.

He stills at Noah’s forearm. His touch is feather light, a caress over the surface of his human, but what comes next is bolstered from everything Noah has been trying to teach him so far. Gently, but decidedly, Mirage squeezes, staying within the ranges he’s already committed to permanent memory.

There’s more squish here than in his hand. Thicker muscles, rising higher and burying his fragile bones deeper than the ones in his hand. He knows they’re in there somewhere, though, just based on the way Noah’s arm bends at the joints, the way his forearm stays straight as he lets Mirage push it toward his shoulder. When it goes no further, he lets up, and from behind it he can just see the barest quirk of a smile at the action.

“I can see you thinking, Mirage. What’s up?”

Noah sounds as casual and content as ever, a friendly curiosity hanging over him. Mirage blurts out the thought beginning to form in his processor before he’s really thought it through.

“I think you guys are built backwards.”

Noah stares at him. Mirage stares back, blankly, wondering if it’s too late to power down after all. But then Noah is laughing, his face lighting up, the backs of his thighs shaking against Mirage’s leg. His arm sways slightly from the tremors where Mirage still holds it, and his other hand falls, grasping the edge of the plating under him for stability.

He tries not to think about those fingers curling underneath the edge, and not because of fear, for once.

He would protest, try to argue his point, argue that he does have a point, thank you, if Noah didn’t make such a picture like this. Laughing makes his face go faintly red, and he swears he can feel the slightest uptick in temperature everywhere he has contact with his human, and isn’t that interesting in its own right. At the same time, he just looks so carefree, something lightweight and happy washing over him, and Mirage doesn’t know what the feeling that comes over him is, exactly, but he knows it has something to do with wanting.

What does he want? He’s not sure yet. But he has a feeling he’ll find out, soon enough.

“Okay, shoot.” Noah is still making a sound he would vehemently deny being called giggling, but Mirage knows better. “Why do you think we’re backwards?”

“Well— I mean—” Opening with stuttering, great case there, Mirage. “Look at me. I’m all, hard parts on the outside, soft parts on the inside, stuff’s better protected that way.”

He bangs against his own plating for emphasis, though Noah seems a little distracted even as he does. “You have soft parts on the inside?” He asks, voice quiet and awed like that’s some kind of a wild revelation he’d never considered.

Then again, Mirage had never considered human bones, so he supposes it’s fair.

“Yeah, you don’t really think we’d be all hard metal and stuff, did you? Gotta at least have,” He waves a servo, vaguely. “Connecty bits, at least.”

“But— but I rebuilt you.”

“Only the hard bits.” Mirage, again, taps himself for emphasis. “Only the hard bits got blasted off, remember? Which, case in point. Hard bits on the outside, soft bits on the inside, then you don’t die when you lose the outside bits.”

Noah looks like he’s thinking about it, and Mirage has a sneaking suspicion he’s comparing it to the thought of a human without their outside bits, which Mirage decidedly does not try to imagine himself. Then he nods. “Yeah, that tracks. Huh.”

“And that’s exactly why I think you’re built backwards.” Mirage returns his attention to Noah’s arm, to the soft flesh he’s still gently holding, still pressing up around metal. “Not that— not that I’m complaining about that.”

The air around them had gone, seamlessly, back to their usual banter, smoothly enough that Mirage had barely even realized the mood had shifted between them. But it goes back to what it was before, now, something unspoken and almost mystifying hanging over them.

“Really? You were before.” Noah points out, though it’s soft and quiet. Mirage doesn’t need explanation to know he’s talking about the fear, the worry, of Noah being too soft to be safe.

“Yeah, but that was before—” Before Noah offered this. Before Mirage found out how much more there is to him, and his delicate form, and his skin that changes colors for the strangest and yet most pleasing reasons, and tiny little internal moving pieces that make up so much more than just something squishy and fragile, and the fact he can touch him after all.

He doesn’t really have an explanation beyond those, and he’s definitely not going to share those thoughts, not when they don’t sound like anything less than the confession they probably are. His silence leads Noah to stare at him, equally as silent, eyes moving back and forth over Mirage’s face in that way they do when humans are thinking. There’s a moment he seems to come to a thought, eyes widening ever so minutely, face doing that thing with the color again, and then he looks away firmly and decidedly to where Mirage is holding his arm.

“You should probably—” Mirage expects, sadly, that he’s had a change of heart and Noah is going to say let go now, for whatever reason he just realized. But again, that’s not what he does. “—play around with range of motion. We’re more than just, uh, how much pressure it takes to squish us.”

It’s another invitation. Another reminder that yes, they’re still continuing this, that yes, Mirage is allowed to keep discovering more. He wonders what thought Noah had; what was so interesting it took him so long to process it, what made him change topics so quickly after. But he’s more interested in the way Noah, again, takes his other servo and places it on his arm alongside the first.

He’d have expected it to be more worrying. Joints are weak points in any creature, especially his own kind, relying on sturdy plating like they do that can’t exist in joints. But it’s easier than the squish of his soft parts, his joints have set motions they can move in, directions and rotations that only go one way or so far before they simply stop. It’s the kind of firm boundary Mirage had been unable to find when he’d been pressing in on only softness that just kept giving, the kind that he can well and fully understand the limits of without much more than encountering it once or twice.

It’s when he’s looking at that joint in the middle, the sharp looking bone that pokes out of it when bent, and the way Noah’s skin smoothly glides over it every time he bends it, that Mirage blurts out a new question. “Does it ever get caught? Your skin, I mean. In the joints.”

He feels like it would be an inevitability, the strange way humans are built, backwards as they are. It happens enough to bots as it is, when plating gets smashed and dented in, pinching delicate mesh between it in a sensation he’d rather be rebuilt ten times over than ever deal with again.

Noah, however, looks at him like that’s the first ridiculous thing that has happened or been said today. “...No.” He says slowly, though a look crosses his face like he’s imagining it, and he looks like he comes to a conclusion that it would feel the same as pinched mesh, and Mirage is glad humans apparently can’t encounter it.

“Oh. That’s good.”

“...Happens to nerves, though.”

“What are nerves?”

“Nerves are,” Noah does something with his eyes, like he’s looking around, but more like he’s searching his own thoughts than looking at the garage. “Uh, pain receptors? Long, uh, things, like— circuitry? They go everywhere. And they can get caught between bones.”

Mirage cannot suppress a shudder at the imagined sensation that brings to him, and decides he’d prefer the pinched mesh to anything remotely comparable to what that would feel like. “Humans don’t have it easy, huh?” He asks, touch lingering at the top of Noah’s shoulder.

Noah hasn’t explicitly encouraged him to progress any further, but… He’s still sitting on Mirage’s leg, lax and compliant, making no move of refusal nor any expressions of anything rejective. He shrugs, his shoulder moving, and for a moment Mirage thinks that’s his sign, that it’s to shake off his touch from continuing. “Eh, we’re… used to it? Not like we have any other choices but to just, be how we are.”

He makes no further movements, only watching Mirage, staring up at his face with eyes just as soft as they’ve been this whole time, just as comfortable. Hesitantly, Mirage seeks further, slides smooth metal over the sharp angles of Noah’s shoulder, catching on and following the line of a prominent bone that leads to his front. He’s waiting to be stopped at any moment; but Noah’s eyes flutter closed, his head tilting back.

There are no words Mirage knows, in any language, to describe what that looks like better than simply inviting.

He wants to do… he doesn’t know what. Something, something to accept that invitation, to see what other reactions he can get if he just finds the right touch. Part of him wants to heed it specifically, follow the divots and raised edges Noah has revealed for him, the sharp line of his jaw something that Mirage, suddenly, greatly wants to discover. He wants to follow it up and around, hold Noah’s head, find out what his hair feels like; he’s never touched it before, not really, but he’s heard Bee wax poetic about his human enough that he knows it’s safe to.

But at the same time, he has the strongest feeling that that’s some kind of last stop, and he isn’t quite ready to let go of this frozen, stolen moment in time just yet, not until he can walk away from this with a properly filled out awareness of his human. Which is a really wordy, equally poetic way to say he’s selfish and he wants to take everything he can possibly be given, as long as Noah is involved.

So he doesn’t follow the offered path, despite how it calls to him. Instead, he lingers, drifting down just below that bone he doesn’t know the name of, fingers splaying wide so that he can plant them flat on Noah’s chest.

It’s firmer than he expects.

Noah must’ve opened his eyes again, and the surprise must show on his face, because he hears that familiar, low laugh. Except this time he can also feel it, rumbling somewhere beneath his touch, and it’s really not his fault that he suddenly really needs both servos on Noah's chest to feel it in its entirety.

It’s not so unlike when Mirage taps on himself, feels the vaguely hollow echo that follows the vibration in the spaces of air between parts. But there’s something different about it, the sound and the vibrations lower, the sensation more of a faint rumble than anything that could be felt through metal would ever be. Bots’ voices don’t come from their chests, don’t gain volume and depth there, but Noah and his oxygen-based communication does. The closest thing he has to compare it to is a low, idling engine, something he never would have expected to compare to anything that could come out of his human.

“Hey, let me, uh…”

Noah’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts, though he wants to delve right back in when more sounds means more sensation to feel, he also needs to pay attention. Just in case Noah decides that’s enough; just in case Mirage finally finds something that makes him cut this off, because he’d much rather this end sooner than he would like than to make it last longer than Noah wants.

And Noah doesn’t explain, doesn’t encourage or discourage, but he does sit up. And when had he ended up lounged back against Mirage’s leg, anyway? But he gently pushes Mirage’s servos away from him, and the only reason Mirage can’t be upset about it is because in the next moment, Noah is pulling the fabric off of his upper body.

He’d like to say he tried not to stare, and it would be the biggest lie he’s ever told. The white material of his shirt folds where he grabs it, and then it rolls as he pulls it up, revealing the expanse of his chest inch by inch as it goes. It’s unceremoniously flung somewhere, doesn’t matter where, and Noah leans right back down onto Mirage’s leg, laying the warm skin of his back flush to the plating there.

Then he reaches out. Grabs for Mirage’s servos, where he’d left them hanging in the air, and pulls to put them right back where they’d been before. Mirage is very glad he doesn’t need to breathe; because he’s not.

But Noah does. And he can see it now, see the way his chest expands as he breathes. Truth be told, Mirage has never paid that much attention to how humans breathe before, just that they need to. He knows they intake air from their faces, and it goes somewhere in the chest to— wherever it goes, and it’s some vital component to them living. But he’d never fully paid any thought to exactly what that looks like, he’d only ever paid attention to movement in the chest to know they're alive, not how it moves.

He’s not sure why he didn’t expect it to expand outward. Maybe up, or sideways, or something. That’s not how it is; it expands evenly, in every direction, as if Noah gets larger and then smaller again ever so slightly every time he breathes. He wonders if the whole middle part here is just soft. But then, how can it be so firm underneath his touch when it can move so fully?

Noah grabs him again. Pulls a metal finger up, plants it on his chest just below that bone Mirage had traced earlier, and presses down on it. He takes the hint, follows Noah’s lead, pushes down; and is immediately met with solid, hard resistance. There’s a pause, a look on Noah’s face like he’s searching for something. Trying to remember those classes he didn’t pay attention to, maybe. “Sternum, that’s it.” He explains, and then pushes Mirage away from that spot enough to—using his own knuckles, in the same way Mirage has a tendency to do to himself—knock on the bone there, making a faint dull sound.

“You’re telling me you can also knock on yourself?” Is the question that comes out of Mirage, bewildered. “Why is it so… solid?”

More, he wants to ask about how, exactly, Noah can breathe and expand and move so much if he’s apparently hard enough to knock on underneath the softness, but since that’s not the question that came out first, he supposes it can wait.

“Well, it’s sorta like you. Hard bits to protect soft bits.” He explains again, once again grabbing for Mirage and planting his servo flat on his chest, holding it firmly pressed there under both hands.

He stares at Mirage, like he’s waiting for something.

“You’re tellin’ me that you’ve got soft bits, behind hard bits, behind soft bits again?” Mirage asks, starting to feel like whatever ancient being designed these creatures was either inebriated off its entire existence or just really liked jokes, but that entire thought is cut off as he feels it. Faint, but growing louder the longer Mirage stares at Noah’s face with startled interest, he can feel the steady, repetitive vibration coming from somewhere behind his sternum.

Distant from humans though he may have been until now, even Mirage recognizes a heartbeat. Partially because of movies and how fundamentally obsessed with them humans are, which he can’t fault them for when a human without one is a dead human, and partially because he’s heard this one before. It was hard not to when he was enclosed around Noah’s entire being, when Noah was in the middle of probably the most stressful situation of his life and fighting things many times his size.

It was so loud then, fast and echoing in the bare amount of space between them, to the point that he’s almost afraid it’s wrong now. It’s so quiet; hidden away, buried beneath protective material, as if being too loud would draw danger right to its location.

He’s reminded, again, what Noah is freely offering to him. Without fear, without distrust, Noah has openly shown him the exact location of the closest thing humans have to a spark. He could read into that, see it as something Noah has no idea it could come across as, but he won’t. Instead, there’s another way to look at it; the fact that a human wouldn’t know how to kill a Cybertronian at first glance, and a Cybertronian wouldn’t exactly know the same about a human. Neither would know the one thing that, if damaged on the battlefield, is an instant game over, the thing that is knowledge best kept to oneself for that exact reason.

Knowledge that Noah gives to Mirage without a second thought. Like it’s simply something he wants to share, just for the sake of sharing it. Or maybe, looking at his face now, at the tinge of red on his cheeks that Mirage swears he’s starting to see a pattern in when it appears on him, just maybe he’s sharing it for the sake of seeing Mirage’s reaction.

He doesn’t know exactly what to do with that. Or what to say, even, when the only thing he can think is to simply keep holding, to keep listening through touch for as long as Noah lets him. But there is one thing that he finds he would really like to do, and seeing as Noah has yet to complain about anything, well.

Mirage leans forward. Removes his servos from their place on Noah’s chest, mindlessly putting them somewhere, anywhere else, and letting his face gently rest where they’d been. He swears Noah’s heartbeat is louder like this; maybe it’s because he’s feeling it through the more sensitive mesh on his face, or maybe it has something to do with the way Noah takes in a great, shuddering breath when he does it, the way the steady rhythm seems like it gets knocked off stride for a moment.

It’s entirely indulgent, and Mirage doesn’t regret a moment of it. If this were too far, if Noah told him to back off, he’d be apologetic. But seeing as Noah seems to have nothing against this and apparently no intention of telling him to knock it off, Mirage wouldn’t be sorry even if Optimus decided to lecture him for it for the next eon straight.

Staying just like this, and continuing to listen, currently outweighs his urge to keep exploring the many interesting little details and secrets hidden within humans. He’s close enough now though that he can look closely at Noah’s bare skin, and as he watches, its texture changes right in front of him.

“Whoa.” He leans back, and then close enough again to look at it properly. It’s tiny, and he has to focus hard to see it, but Noah’s smooth skin has turned into this uniform texture of thousands of little bumps across the expanse of it. He’s reminded of his thought about how well humans can grip smooth surfaces. “What’s that?”

Noah looks almost startled, or surprised, or maybe he was just that distracted. He blinks once, twice, and then leans up enough to follow Mirage’s gaze and see what’s got his attention so raptly. “Oh. Those are called goosebumps.” Comes the answer, as Mirage reaches out to touch it.

It’s too small for him to feel, though.

“Why? What’s it for?”

“They happen for a couple reasons.” Noah says vaguely, looking away to the garage’s ceiling. He seems flustered. “It can happen from being too cold, or getting scared, or… uh, from nice things. Like… uh, like overwhelming stuff. Like good tingles.”

Mirage doesn’t know what a ‘good tingle’ is, and frankly, he’s not sure Noah does either even as he says it. But the message comes across clear enough. “I’m guessing you’re not scared.” Mirage can’t help but tease, and he gets a weak, breathless laugh for it.

“Of you? Never.” His tone makes it Mirage’s turn to feel breathless; or, to make his fans kick on, anyway.

He doesn’t have an intelligent response to that, not when he feels like it’s his turn to be flustered. Instead, Mirage forces his attention elsewhere, looking for something else to focus on. What he finds is where he sent his servos earlier, now held comfortably against either side of Noah’s torso, the constant movement of his breathing causing the skin beneath them to shift steadily.

With it, he feels something solid again, and presses in gently to find what it is. He’s met with the strangest sensation of something that almost feels like a corrugated material, his fingers catching on high point after dip after high point. For the first time, there’s a jolt from Noah, his body jerking under his touch, and Mirage lets go just as fast.

“No, no. It's okay.” Noah reassures almost immediately, breathless again. He reaches out, yet again replacing Mirage gently to where he’d been. “It’s just ticklish there.”

Hesitantly, Mirage slots back into those ridges and valleys, careful not to move much beyond that. Noah doesn’t jolt again, and the slight tension bleeds out of him after a moment with an exhale, something that Mirage can distinctly feel as the hard material beneath his skin seems to shrink away.

“How does it do that?” He asks, fascinated, chasing the contact by pressing in just barely. After, he can feel it press back, expanding again as Noah breathes in.

“Hm? Oh, uh… yeah, ribs can like, move.” Noah sits up, and the bones Mirage is feeling disappear under a layer of softer material as his torso bends. He adjusts, sitting properly upright, straightening his back until the bones reappear, and then he’s grabbing for Mirage again.

Letting himself be adjusted as well, Mirage watches Noah pull his servos further along his sides, seemingly unbothered by the ticklish nature of the area so long as he’s the one to arrange the touch. By the time he’s done, Mirage is grasping lightly all along part of his front, around the sides, and to the back.

Then, Noah breathes in. Like this, Mirage can feel the way he just seems to get larger, chest expanding evenly in all directions, larger than before as if he’s showing it on purpose. “See? You wouldn’t think they can, but if they didn’t move, we wouldn’t be able to breathe.” Noah explains without his chest deflating again, and Mirage stares at him.

“You can intake air, hold it, and still talk?”

Noah blinks at him, as if he hadn’t even realized that himself. He lets the air out in a rush, replaces it, and then speaks again. “Uh, I guess. Some people have a lot more control over their air and diaphragm than I do.”

“What’s a diaphragm?”

There’s a pause. Then Noah shrugs. “Something… something to do with air. And, like, separating the other organs from pressing on the lungs, or… something.” He answers vaguely, waving a hand flippantly.

Mirage lets Noah go through a few more cycles of breathing in and out, holding on with just enough pressure to follow his ribs with each breath but not to constrict their movement, before he puts voice to the thought bouncing around his processor.

“So, if you can talk without letting out all that air, what else can you do?”

It seems to be a good question, one Noah really thinks about before answering. “Well… Here, hold on tighter.”

“Sorry, no. What?” Mirage is holding onto the part of him that expands when he breathes in air, air he needs to live, even if he doesn’t need it to talk apparently. His complaint earns him a look.

“Trust me? You don’t have to hold on hard, just… be firm and stay there. You’ll understand.”

Well… he can’t argue that Noah was right the first time he said that. Granted, that was just a hand, which he doesn’t use to breathe unless Mirage missed something, but nothing has gone horribly wrong yet. So he, uneasily, does as told, pressing in on Noah’s ribs and trying not to flinch at the sensation of bones compressing under his touch like skin does.

And then Noah breathes in. A big, deep breath, the kind he can hear the rush of, and his ribs don’t move.

“How— where—” Mirage’s voice comes out pitchy, uncomprehending, and Noah swats his servos into releasing his mysterious bones to freely laugh at him. “Here we’ve spent all this time talking about how you move your weird little spark chamber bones in order to breathe, and then you don’t need to move them to breathe?”

For his, in his opinion entirely justified exasperation, all Mirage gets is louder mirth from his human. Noah is shaking, one hand doing absolutely nothing to obscure the grin on his face, and the sound of his entertainment at the expense of Mirage’s sanity fills the room around them.

It’s not the first time he’s thought it, and it probably won’t be the last if they keep going, but Noah really does look nice like this. Especially as the distance between his laughs draw out, their volume fades, until they’re replaced by the sounds of him trying to recover his air and he’s left lying on Mirage’s leg, worn out and sprawled limp there.

Forget the weird thing about humans and their air bones. Mirage is going to lose his sanity over Noah looking like that, while on him. Especially when Noah turns his head and meets his gaze, eyes half lidded and a soft smile on his lips.

“So, uh.” Mirage, with all the strength he’s not using on Noah, shoves those thoughts down somewhere he hopes it’ll take them days to climb back out again. “How did you do that, exactly?”

He’s getting used to the way Noah grabs his servos and pulls them to his body in lieu of a response.

One is returned to his chest, while the other is moved lower, planted further down on the middle of his torso, somewhere Mirage hasn’t made his way to yet. He takes the opportunity now, diligently pressing against skin and wondering what he’ll feel underneath, only to find nothing. At the look on his face, Noah waves a hand.

“It’s all— soft bits, down there.”

“No bones?” Mirage asks, investigating further, trailing his touch back and forth over Noah’s defined muscles and the lack of anything completely solid behind them.

“Nah. That’s the bendiest spot in humans, I guess too many bones would take away our mobility.” He shrugs. “Serves as a catch-all for the rest of the organs, too. Can’t really put ‘em anywhere else.”

Mirage would like to imagine that Cybertronians, at least, are better designed than ‘we ran out of room, so shove it all somewhere in the middle.’

“Do the other organs hold air? Is that how you did it?”

Noah laughs at him again. “No, none of the others are for air. Here,” He returns Mirage’s hold back to where he’d first placed it, and then takes a deep breath. It expands his chest, just as it should, just as Mirage had become familiar with before Noah had proceeded to change the apparent rules of his own biology. Then he breathes out, and on his next breath in, his ribs hold mostly still and the soft flesh below his ribs expands instead.

Mirage lets go. Leans forward. And makes sure Noah, and his stupid, handsome grinning face is looking at him.

“You are, and I hope you know I mean this as affectionately as possible,” He starts, and faintly, hopes Noah doesn’t look too closely into that word choice. “the weirdest species I have ever met.”

“I feel like you should have realized that sooner.” Noah chuckles, lounging back more comfortably as if he’s decided he belongs right there on Mirage. Which, Mirage is not going to argue with. Then his voice dips, the teasing draining out of it, replaced again by that soft tone. “Do you want to…”

It feels like he’s afraid to say it this time, losing his nerve, or maybe losing the will to keep it up. And maybe in the face of that, Mirage can’t help but be a little more honest than he’d really prefer.

“Continue this? Noah, there is nothing I’d rather be doing right now.”

He gets one of those smiles for it, and just this once, the too-much honesty is a little bit worth it.

Maybe a little bit more worth it, considering the way Noah looks at him, or the way he yet again grabs Mirage, or the way he slowly leans his head back as he places metal back onto that bone that runs from his shoulder to his chest.

The one where he’d been so clearly inviting Mirage to explore upward, when he’d derailed downward instead. It’s offered again now, complete with a look in his eyes like it means something more, something Mirage really hopes he isn’t imagining.

Reverently, Mirage follows the exposed skin of Noah's throat. Something tells him to be extra gentle here, and he delicately takes in the sensation of what feels like softer skin pulled just so over raised edges of whatever’s underneath. Just like with his hand, Noah makes some kind of movement, making everything inside shift beneath his skin. And as Mirage notes the strange shapes, unlike anywhere else he’s discovered so far, Noah lets out a shuddering breath.

More than anything, he’s most surprised he can’t feel the passage of the air through it under his touch.

“Mirage.”

He can feel Noah’s voice, though. “Hn?” He questions, absently, drawn in by just how much closer Noah’s voice feels here than it does in his chest. Down there, it’s a light rumble, a faint vibration, but right here it’s almost like a higher frequency. Every syllable vibrates hard against the flesh containing them, a sensation that feels the same under his touch as a high frequency ringing sounds.

“Wanna learn something else?” Noah asks, his voice lower than usual. It takes Mirage a second to understand what he was even asked, too distracted by the physical sensation of his voice.

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to say to agree without sounding strange, either, not when he’s not even sure he remembers how to put together words of his own, and opts for just making what he hopes is a vaguely agreeable noise.

It works, anyway. Noah’s hands find his again, grasping a finger on each servo and pulling both toward his throat, placing them against his skin and pressing them down. “Noah,” The warning protest escapes him of its own accord, and Noah cracks an eye open to look at him.

“Trust me.” He says, simply.

Mirage does.

He lets the hard edges of his metal be pulled firm against the skin of his human’s delicate throat, and in an instant, he knows what Noah was trying to show him. Mirage can feel his heartbeat again. It’s loud here, despite how far away from its actual location it is, freed from its cage of bone and layers of protective flesh. “It’s called a pulse. It’s how they check if unconscious people are still alive.” Noah explains, eyes closed properly again as he simply lays there, letting Mirage feel his pulse.

And isn’t that something. Noah has been showing him his limits; how to hurt him, what parts of him are fragile and what parts are less so, where the things that make him him are located. And now? The implication comes loud and clear.

Noah is showing him how to find out, if he’s ever unsure. If he’s ever worried, afraid; if he ever has an unconscious human on his hands, not knowing if that’s it, just like Noah himself when he rebuilt Mirage without knowing if there was any Mirage left in there.

“How do you always know?” Mirage asks before he can stop himself, awed. Noah jolts slightly, surprised, eyes falling open to look at him.

“Hm?”

“You always,” He looks away, uneasy with saying too much. “You always know what I need.”

“Maybe—” Noah starts, slowly, in that low voice that Mirage now knows the exact vibrational frequency of. Equally as slowly, as the moments passed are told only by the steady beat beneath Mirage’s touch, Noah’s hands find him. In the corner of Mirage’s vision he sees them reach for him, beat by beat, until soft fingers ever so delicately cradle the mesh of his face. They pull, gently, asking rather than forcing Mirage to look at him. “—I’ve just been paying attention?”

He’d been intending to follow a certain kind of path. Wanting, really, to find his way along Noah’s throat to his jaw, to hold the back of his head, to lean close and see just how far he could get; how far he’d be allowed to push a boundary he’s been fully unable to find in recent events. That’s what he’d hoped to do, what he’d wanted to do, why he’d left it for later, just in case.

But this? Noah’s hands on his face, holding him as if he’s something as delicate and precious as Noah himself is, his eyes softly lidded and his lips parting just slightly as he guides Mirage closer, the pulse of his heart speeding up until it’s hammering against metal, well. It’s when Noah lets out a soft exhale, one that says everything Mirage is feeling, and follows it with letting Mirage find out what his lips feel like as well that he decides this is better than his plan, anyway.

There’s enough media, human and Cybertronian both, that all like to go on at length about this. About it being electrifying, about sparks flying at the moment they make contact, about the world shifting on its axis. There’s none of that; there’s only Noah, Noah’s gentle hands exploring the ridges of his face, Noah’s soft exhale of breath when Mirage slips a servo behind his head, the texture of his hair so soft he knows its extent is lost in translation through hard metal.

It’s everything. Everything he wanted, everything he could have sat in a daydream thinking up, everything he was far too afraid to dare hope he could have. Long, dark hours spent alone in the garage overthinking, as recently as this morning, are replaced entirely by the sensation of Noah pulling away just enough to press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, smiling that small, warm smile as he does. It’s followed by a sigh, the heavy kind that feels like it leaves Noah smaller, softer after it’s gone, taking with it a tension Mirage hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying until now.

“You good?” He asks, as soft as the air around them, hesitant to shatter it. At first, Noah only hums, turning to press another small, lazy kiss to Mirage’s lower lip. Mirage doesn’t hesitate to copy him, return it, and then another three like it just because he can.

“Yeah.” Noah says, finally, his voice airy and distant. “Couldn’t tell you how long I’ve been wanting to do that.”

He really hadn’t been considering Noah’s side of all this, had he? Noah, who poured all of that work into rebuilding him, just to be met with distance and a stark lack of touch where before there’d been plenty. He’d hoped Noah wouldn’t notice, but of course, how wouldn’t he? Maybe that’s even what made him realize this is what he wanted, something about distance and fondness. “Since you rebuilt me?” Mirage tries, hazarding a guess.

What he doesn’t expect is for Noah to laugh. It’s a loud, sharp sound, one that does nothing to shatter the energy between them.

“Nah.” The kiss-dazed, dreamy haze lifts from his expression as he looks up, meeting Mirage’s optics with a lopsided grin and eyes that say things Mirage isn’t sure he can translate just yet. “It’s been a lot longer than that.”

“What?”

He’s unable to keep the pitchy lilt out of his voice, giving Noah a look. Noah had never, at least seemingly, seen him as anything but a friend. Especially at first, when he’d been relegated so far down as being a work friend, something he might still be sensitive about if Noah hadn’t just shown him exactly how far they’ve come from that.

Which, case in point. At what point did they go from just a work friend to Noah actually liking him, and how dense is Mirage that he apparently never noticed? Saving the world, getting blown to bits and then rebuilt out of secondhand parts aside, he feels like he should have noticed if something in the way Noah feels about him had changed that much.

“Was it… Peru?” Mirage tries again, unwilling to be any more specific and knowing Noah knows the moment he means anyway. He gets a soft, teasing smile for it that immediately tells him he’s guessed wrong. “Uh… the other part of Peru? Or spending an entire day flying to Peru on the worst aircraft known to this universe?”

At first, Noah says nothing. He just continues smiling softly, something unbearably warm in his eyes, either gathering his thoughts or just letting the silence of Mirage’s incorrect guesses linger between them for effect. Or, maybe, he’s just distracted by the sensation of tracing shapes on Mirage’s chest plating, something that Mirage is also in no small part distracted by.

“Well, y’know, I had a lot on my mind that night we met. Had stuff goin’ on, a lot of stress, you know how it is. Snuck in and managed to not get caught just long enough to find… you.” His voice is so soft, as warm and reverent as Mirage’s own memories of that encounter. “I mean, I didn’t know you were you, then, and I wasn’t all that interested in this fancy ass car for me, I wasn’t thinking about anything like that at the time.”

“You were thinking about Kris.” Mirage supplies, already knowing full well what would have been motivating Noah at the time. Noah lets out a short breath, almost a laugh.

“Yeah, of course. But that was before the fancy ass car took me for a joyride.”

“Was that the moment?”

There’s a beat between them, the precipice of something that Mirage finds himself holding onto, something he unsurprisingly and yet completely unexpectedly feels extremely invested in learning about.

He hadn’t considered how much he needed to know exactly what moment it was, until now, when he’s stopped breathing to hear the answer.

Noah laughs, loud and crisp. “Fuck no. I was terrified.”

There isn’t a chance for him to feel disappointed in that answer, because as soon as he says it, Noah’s hands are back on his face, and there’s such a strong look of love in his expression that Mirage isn’t sure how he ever missed it, regardless of when it happened.

“I guess it was more like puzzle pieces being dropped into place. There were all these moments that just— added up, one by one, and each of them added something more to the whole. I can’t really name any single one of them as being it, because all of them are.”

“Tell me about them?”

“It started in that parking garage, y’know, looking back on it. There was something different about that car, like it was watching me. Like it could have started talking and I wouldn’t have really been all that surprised, not with that feeling.” Noah rolls his eyes, fondly. “And then, yeah, of course it turns into a giant hot robot. Wasn’t really ready to discover that much about myself that night.”

“You think I’m hot?” Mirage is aware he sounds like the squeaky toy someone’s dog carried into his interior once. He does not care.

Noah only laughs at him a little bit, anyway. “Yes, I do, and I did then too, even if I didn’t realize it until later. But then it just… kept going. First the car was different, then the robot was hot, then… then this massive alien from an— intergalactic war of like, major importance to the survival of whole ass planets, who could have threatened us for anything he wanted or looked down on us for being, well, human, he… looked at Kris like he mattered. Talked to him like a person. Took him— took him seriously, took this eleven year old kid’s demands as far as—”

There’s so much emotion, all over Noah’s face, overflowing in the form of tears. It’s not a bad kind, Mirage can tell, but it still makes him feel the need to flounder for a way to fix it, and he ends up copying something from a movie and wiping those tears away with a gentleness he wasn’t aware he even possessed. He’s not sure if it has any effect, because Noah just gives another much wetter laugh and that overwhelming amount of emotions doesn’t change at all.

“—as far as, y’know, sacrificing himself just to keep his promise to that kid. To someone he didn’t know, to someone else’s family, on a planet that wasn’t his, to people that honestly could have not mattered to him at all and none of us would have questioned it.” Noah takes a long, shuddering breath, and his voice comes back stronger for it. So does the smile that comes with it. “But he didn’t do that, huh? And then in those weeks after, I… saw the complete puzzle. And then I knew.”

Mirage doesn’t know what he could possibly say to that. There’s nothing to say to that, when Noah has poured together such a vivid, emotional image, of his side of things Mirage just really didn’t think twice about. Things he never even would have realized had such an impact, things he would never have even considered doing any differently. He doesn’t have anything to add, he doesn’t have a neat little signature to add to the picture Noah has painted, he doesn’t have—Primus forbid—a joke to break the emotional tension hanging over them.

All he has is a human that’s just poured his emotions out, when he claims he isn’t good at them. A human he’s not too afraid to hold, to pull close to himself and press his face into the crook of that shoulder and wrap his arms around to keep him there.

“I—” He tries, anyway. “I don’t have anything like that. You’re up in here, telling me this— this— beautiful story, and I…”

“Mirage.”

Noah breathes warm air over him where they’re pressed together, small fingers dipping between seams and cables for a way to return the contact. His voice is even warmer, firm and assuring and soothing, all in one.

“I don’t need a one to one return of you going all soft on me and waxing poetic about all that just because I did. I know. You know, they say actions speak louder than words, yeah?” He pulls back, just a little, just enough to make Mirage look at him. “And if we look at it that way, you’ve said more than I ever could.”

Mirage never expected to end up describing his emotions at any given moment as feeling like a puddle of something warm and gooey, but, well, he never expected to fall for a creature capable of holding so much love in such a tiny frame, either. “Does that mean I get to keep speaking in actions, and you’ll know what I mean?” He asks, half teasing and half wondering if that includes getting to learn more about Noah and his infinitely strange biology in future.

It earns him that same smile that has so quickly become one of his favorite things, and Noah leaning back in. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He murmurs, warm and soft like everything else about him, and then there’s no more room for words again anytime soon.