Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

~*~

Eight months had passed since you first got the call to tow a broken down ‘Camaro’ off a rarely driven backroad, to the junkyard-slash-mechanic’s-shop you’re employed by. Eight months since you’d given the gorgeous machine a look-over only to discover that the vehicle was anything but just a car.   And it definitely wasn’t any kind of Camaro. Cameros didn’t have the kind of secrets you found, sleeping hidden in its undercarriage.

You hadn’t said a word to anyone, just quietly fixed up what you could to the best of your abilities. When the strange vehicle vanished the next day, you played dumb-- surely some hotrod idiot must have stolen it.

A report was filed by your boss; no one came forward about it, and the car was never found.

At least, not by the police.

The first time you spot the red not-car with its distinctive, custom paint job following you in town, you brush it off as coincidence; the silver abstract art on the vehicle was probably some factory default decal after all, not custom like you’d assumed, or maybe the true owner of the mystery hardware had reclaimed their ride. 

It still sent a cold jolt of recognition down your spine as you did a fast double-take, and nearly dropped the paper bag of groceries you were carrying. It cruised down the street in broad daylight, and you swore the vehicle was slowing down as it neared you-- but no, the driver was just obeying a stop sign at the intersection ahead.

In the absurd way that intense moments that heighten all your senses to a razor-fine edge of precise awareness, you catch a glimpse of your own reflection in the dark tint of nearly opaque windows.

Your face looks like you just saw a ghost, or maybe witnessed a murder, or saw an alien UFO in classic disc glory drop out of a portal mid-air to steal Nevada’s cows.

You look…

More than a little shook up. And then the eternal moment is over and it cruises on by. You’re left feeling certain that this is, in fact, the exact same car.

You force logic at your brain to inform it otherwise. It has to be otherwise.

You were glad no one on this particular little block of street was paying you any mind, with little foot traffic as far away from the main stores as you were. There were some strangers further down by the corner and a gaggle of elderly, dolled up ladies in their finest toddling themselves off into a boutique, but that was it.

No one but the pidgeons and whoever was in the red sports car to be aware of your utter lapse of composure for several moments too long. You quickly heft the bag in your arms higher, feeling sweat on your forehead even though you’re not really tired. You are warm, though, so maybe you can blame that on the climate. It’d been a bit of a chore hauling your groceries by hand towards the parking lot you’d secured your moped safely at, but it was one you were accustomed to. Adapted to. It was the safest lot to park your bike at, short of your own work place, an since your bike was your lifeline to freedom and independence, you took some of the routes partially on foot if you had to.

Quite abruptly, light flashes directly into your eyes as the sunlight catches on the car’s side view mirror. You wince and clamp them shut on reflex, waiting for the sharp pain to your sensitive retinas to die down before you dare crack a lid open to peek out, testing the boundaries.

Sore, but bearable. The brightness is diminished by the tall, blocky buildings around you, and the car with its high polish and shine is gone.

You let out a sigh of relief, straighten your shoulders, then carry on.

You tell yourself, very firmly, that this was totally normal and you are freaking out over a very reasonably explained circumstance, so there’s no need for your heart to jackhammer out of its confines or for your ribs to constrict like they want to comfort it with a hug of death or for your lungs to be taking such shallow, short breaths.

It’s totally normal. You’re chill. So chill.

…Too chill. Fine tremors shake through your body, disguised with the jostle of your own steps and your hands clutching tighter to the lumpy paper bag. Your ears are sore; going into the heart of the city is hard enough on your hyper-sensitive hearing, but having the sharp zing of anxiety to go with it has you mentally screaming at your own biological systems to calm the fuck down.

Breathing in through your nose, holding it for a moment, then letting it out through your pursed lips in a deliberate manner, focusing on the sensation of how the air rushes over the roof of your mouth and vents out, helps center your frazzled nerves. Look at the way the sunlight cascades across the sidewalk; the ground, the thing you walk on, everyone walks on, so gorgeous with its play of light and shadow and infinite flecks of minute color amidst the overwhelming bigger picture of gray or beige.

Don’t focus on the way your whole body feels like a live wire that if someone were to touch you, you’d emit a jolt of static electricity enough to singe their finger, and maybe fry your own brains. You do focus on the pressure, the shift in your body as you feel every system react in hyper-fine focus, well aware of the cascade of familiar chaos as it crashes through you.

Like a weary nanny you’d come behind picking up the mess, and it came in the form of deliberately tensing and flexing every fucking muscle in your body to exert conscious control. You put your everything into focusing on how to step, how to move, on being aware of your breathing and posture-- Whatever possible minute detail you can fling your focus on and redirect your energy into, you do.

You shut the world out to zoom in on the tiniest fragments around you, ignoring the loudest sounds that grate against your eardrums and the confusing mixture of something chemical mixed with hotdogs.

You turn the corner and you think you’re walking towards the parking lot but it probably looks to others like you are marching there in a deadly serious prowl. You’re moving much too fast to maintain any illusion of being calm , but your face doesn’t give away the internal panic.

Fortunately, no one’s outside the few stores here doing the short trip from building to parked vehicles at this time, so you march your way to the parking lot. It’s wedged between a book store and an old apartment building, and it has little cameras winking at every angle because just on the other side of the block opposite from the street you’re on now, is a post office and a bank. And no one complains about you taking up a modicum of space at the middlemost edge of the busy lot, as far out of anyone’s way as possible, your bike chained and tarped next to the lightpost.

You’d gone from total content and mild alertness with a comfortable awareness of your environment, to being hyper on-edge and your body feeling like you just looked a panther directly in the eyes.

Danger, your instincts whispered, convincingly enough that your body believed it, and promptly decided to set off all the alarms, and inform you that you were about to die if you didn’t do something and do something now while on a perfectly ordinary sidewalk in broad daylight and there were witnesses around and no one else seemed weirded out or upset or--

You take another deep breath. In, in, the smell of burnt fuel and warm tires and hot asphalt and the metals and woods and paints of the modern town around you. Old and new buildings jumble together, some more well constructed than others but all in more or less good repair. The dry, dusty air of the summer season sets it apart from other biomes you’ve visited.

Jasper, Nevada was known for having a healthy presence of car enthusiasts. You’d even heard there was something of an illegal street racing scene going on, though you’d never encountered one of them yourself.

Not that that was surprising; you’d been very careful to stay out of trouble. You had a simple, humble life, with responsibilities and a job to keep you busy and to keep a roof over your and your eclectic household’s head.

The amount of relief that floods over your shoulders is overwhelming when you cross the threshold from city wilderness of the sidewalk, to safety nearly home sanctuary of security cameras of the parking lot. Even better when moments later you lay eyes on the familiar lumpy, oblong form of your covered moped right where you’d left it, tarped and cozy.

You’ve un-tarped it to reveal the high-gloss painted frame of your orangey-red, shimmery Speedbird, folded that away and stuffed it into the tool chest secure inside a milk crate on the back, and thrown your leg over it to get ready to spark the engine up when you feel a creeping awareness of watched. You look around, see no one but some people getting out of a recently parked vehicle who aren’t paying you any attention what-so-ever, and then you whip your head around to the left without knowing why.

You catch a glimpse of candy red paint and black glass before it vanishes out of sight, and find yourself looking over your shoulder the rest of your way home.

The next time you spot a newly familiar shade of candy red tailing you discreetly, you pay more attention. Sure, you were always turning your head to admire pretty machinery and natural scenery alike, and sure, Jasper wasn’t the biggest of cities in the world-- but this felt different. It didn’t feel like a coincidence. There was something about this car-not-car that bugged you; sure, it looked just like the mysterious not-Camaro that you’d fixed up, but for the first time you consciously realize it also kinda feels weird. Like noticing a detail that’s been flagging your senses quietly, there’s just something… different about it. More than just what you’d seen, tucked up in its underbelly.

You’re very sensitive to light, sound, and electricity, so basically existing, to the point that staying under power lines for too long made you feel ill. But the buzz from this machinery felt different, and you tried your hardest to see through the dark-tinted windows discreetly as the vehicle casually passed you on the main street of town as you walked down the sidewalk. It vanished around the corner further ahead of you. Since your phone was already in your hands from reading a news article, you were able to snap a photo without looking suspicious about it.

That you actually managed to nab a nice one almost surprised you more than seeing the distinctive car again at all.

You can’t help but feel like the driver wanted you to notice them.

It made you wonder how often you didn’t.

You thought whoever owned the flashy-painted not-car wouldn’t know you were the one to crawl underneath with tape and flashlight; the machine had been offline while you were busy fixing the leaking lines in its undercarriage from some epic tear in the scorched, shiny metal. You’re honestly kind of scared to think too deeply about how it could have happened in the first place.

You weren’t an idiot--there was no way a normal vehicle, even a super high end sports car looking one, had the kind of hardware you found hidden under the plating of the fancy ‘Camaro.’ You didn’t need to see the smooth, noseless, sleeping face tucked up amidst the metal parts to know that. The tangles and ropes of delicate, straw-thick black cables with bioluminescent red lights flecked amidst them told you more than enough. Despite their red glow, the fluid that leaked from lacerated or totally severed lines was a luminescent bright cyan.

All kinds of crazy ideas had crowded your head, that now come back to the forefront of your thoughts; some hidden genius’ secret project from some wicked garage lab, or most likely some kind of military prototype. Whatever the robot… car… thing was, something about the peaceful looking face hiding tucked up in the undercarriage tugged at your heartstrings. There’d been a harmonic sound you could just barely hear on the edges of your perception, like its engine wasn’t quite fully powered off.

You’d always had a soft-spot for fixer-uppers. That’s what you told yourself, when you went and snuck out a roll of heavy duty waterproof tape and several smaller rolls of electrical and plumbers tape from your toolbox in the tow truck. If the thing turned out to be a giant death robot, at least maybe it’d think twice about squishing you or running you over since you’d stopped its leak. You’d even cleaned up the faintly luminescent blue goop it’d dribbled before anyone could notice and ask what the hell it was.

Which was good, since you didn’t know, and you didn’t have any good excuses to explain it away; it was too thick to be windshield wiper fluid, and too… ethereal, to be coolant. It’d made your fingers tingle and feel warm where it touched you, and you’d washed your hands off quickly.

You sure hoped it wasn’t toxic, but you didn’t think about that until it was too late. Oops? Days passed by, and fortunately, you neither got ill nor suddenly gained cool mutant ninja powers.

And now you can’t get it out of your head, because you keep seeing the car around town, always when you least expect it. There’s no pattern-- it appears on weekdays and weekends at early, afternoon, and late hours. Just a glimpse, then gone. Enough for you to notice, react, then muster the composure to hide your gut-punched reaction.

One day, you saw it nearly eight times. Then you didn’t see it for a week. Then you saw it two days in a row, both times just once. The irregularity is truly ruthless to your poor nerves and inability to predict or understand the pattern. There’s just enough of a pattern, for your mind to be unwilling to hyperfixate on the unsolvable mystery and be convinced that ‘something’s up.’

Since you can’t get it out of your head and you can’t stop seeing it everywhere you go, you research the vehicle instead. You have questions, maybe finding some answers will make your busy brain shut up.

Your research does exactly what you had expected and decided to pretend had even a slim chance of not happening; it yields more questions than it answers.

Some kind of Aston Martin; that’s the closest you can narrow the vehicle’s model down to, and even then, there were differences that made you suspect some heavy custom bodywork… which would make sense, considering what those sleek panels were hiding. It was definitely custom something, because you couldn’t find any other vehicles with the same paint job or even quite the exact same body build. You couldn’t even find the one you’d snapped a picture of. It just… didn’t exist on the internet.

Like it was a truly one-of-a-kind, and yet somehow, no one had captured it on any gearhead forum threads or youtube videos of car shows or photos on social media or, or, or…

Which you supposed made sense, but it was still disappointing to meet a dead end so quickly.

Your amateur detective skills exhausted, that was the most you could find out about the pretty sport’s car on your own.

You don’t see it again for months, after nearly nine weeks of spotting it all over town, though never near the neighborhood where you live. Perhaps because you go out of your way to take your drives home and to work with extra care, wary of being followed between the two.

It becomes something of a quiet obsession, trying to spot unusual vehicles on the road as you look for the fancy AM. Imagining which ones might be hiding something beneath their hoods kept you entertained, and maybe a bit unnerved. It definitely keeps you on your toes.

Your nerves only worsen when you stop seeing the red sportscar. Two weeks go by with you jerking your head at every glimpse of crimson close enough to the classy Candy Red to draw your focus. Three weeks drag by, with you looking over your shoulders for a bright, colorful shadow that never appears.

The seasons come and go, and at some point, you finally manage to stop thinking about it.

Naturally, that’s the morning you find the car sitting in your driveway, all casual-like.

You had rolled out of bed for a blissful day off without a clue, and taken care of your cats and the healing raven you’d rescued from some local bullies. Your morning quickly dissolved into chaos, as it became clear your critters were less interested in breakfast and more interested in collectively demanding your urgent attention.

You aren’t sure what both cats and bird are trying to convey to your notice until you finally look out the front window, craning your head to see what had Gizmo meowing incessantly.

 When you see the shiny red panels and familiar artwork, you just about drop the bowl of cereal you’d made for yourself.

“Uh…”

You stare. The car sits parked and pretty. No one gets out of the vehicle.

You glance to the side. No one’s at your doorstep.

Your gaze flicks to the doorknob indoors-- nothing looks tampered with, and the deadbolt is still locked.

You look down at a plaintive meow.

Gizmo stares at you with intelligent yellow eyes you don’t often have such a hard time reading, set into his black and white furry face, but right now, you can’t tell what he wants. Was his high-pitched meow to tell you that he wanted you to scare the spooky car away? Was he simply now telling you how much of an idiot you were not to notice this blatant trespass on your territory until now? Was he just asking for belly pats for being such a good boy?

The latter seems a likely option when he mreows at you with sass, then promptly tips off his perch on the back of the sofa to slide down and plop in a wiggly twist as he stares up at you.

Way too cute, but the sight of his antics doesn’t calm your nerves like they usually do, even as you offer him an absent-minded pat. You’re too busy staring at the mysterious sports car worth more than your entire house. The sports car that has a robot face and weird tech hidden inside it. The sports car owned by someone that’d been, you can’t actually prove yet are certain of none-the-less, stalking you in town.

Now they know where you live.

It takes you nearly half an hour to work up the courage to go outside, and you only do mostly because you’re growing anxious that a nosy neighbor will get curious if someone had seen the car drive in. Your cats meow at you, but the raven who slept safely secured in the office in a double-cage setup you’d created exactly for the purpose of housing avians during recovery before release… the raven gronk's loudly at you, just once.

It felt ominous. Like a warning.

You still step out of your house. The cool front moving in has dropped the temperature noticeably, and you can smell the rain from the storms last night. The knife holstered in your boot and the steel hair-pick that holds your bun up gives you small comfort at not being utterly defenseless. Not that you think you could do much against a robot made of metal and machinery, but still.

“Uh… Hello, there?” you greet with an awkward wave, peering at the dark windshield. You take a deep breath and walk a little closer, and frown when no windows roll down and no doors open. You glance around. Fortunately, your house is set back further from the road with lots of trees, so it helps hide you from the casual passerby. Your neighbor Bob no doubt saw the car come in, though-- he’s always stalking the roadway to see who drives in and out of this lazy neighborhood street.

No response.

You hesitate, then lean forward and squint at the black tinted glass; it’s so dark, you wonder how someone inside can even see out. You wave your hand. No one answers.

“Are… You okay?” you ask, voice raised a bit. “Alright, you’re kind of freaking me out, so I’m going to open the door,” you announce.

It takes you several anxiety-filled seconds to work yourself up to actually make the attempt. What if whoever is inside is passed out? Maybe they got here late and fell asleep in your driveway, and you’re about to wake them up. Maybe they drove here out of some weird desperation for help, and they’re sitting inside, injured.

You won’t know until you open the door.

The handle isn’t locked, which surprises and pleases you, until you open the door carefully and…

…stare at an empty interior. It’s absurd looking-- nothing like any car you’ve ever seen inside. The upholstery is so perfect you’d think it’d never been driven if you hadn’t seen it on the roads with your own eyes. The radio is complex looking, with a large screen nearly the size of a laptop dominating the center dash.

Thin lines of glowing red accent nearly every edge and surface in an artful, relaxing arrangement of soft mood light. The cabin space is dark and sensual, in the way that a comfortable-but-also-badass-looking bedroom feels, and strangely alien; you don’t recognize some of the gauges, and realize with a start that there seems to be three different gauges for fuel alone. What kinds, you have no clue.

“Huh,” you say with a confused frown. “Where’s your driver?” you wonder aloud as you gently close the door then look around. You pace around the vehicle, but you can’t find any signs of tracks-- no one stepped off your cracked driveway onto the lawn it seems, and the only footprints through the sandy dust that’s blown over your sidewalk yet are yours.

Feeling very odd, you call in sick to work and stay home. Your cats are thrilled; the sleepy raven seems to enjoy it, too.

You tell yourself you’re only going to check on the funny vehicle once every hour, maaaybe twice, because if whoever drove here had the wherewithal to walk away, they certainly have the ability to walk up to your door and knock.

The idea of someone creeping around your house and property snooping is nerve-wracking, and not for the first time, you wonder why you don’t call the police. Maybe because the car was parked so blatantly-- it’s not like they were trying to be very stealthy.

You end up walking outside your house to go look at the car and around your yard roughly every ten minutes. Sometimes five. Or less.

You can’t help it; you can’t stop thinking about the strange piece of hardware parked in front of your home , and if you didn’t have so many chores to occupy yourself with, you’d have given in to the impulse to drag a chair outside.

The skies deter that idea, too; they’ve been growing darker and darker all day as the weather takes a dip for the chilly.

When you see the rare event of hail on the news’ broadcast, you find yourself back outside again.

“This is ridiculous,” you say, hands on your hips, frowning at the fancy vehicle. It’s not your car. You have no idea whose car it is. You have no idea why it has a robot face hidden in its undercarriage or why it’s shown up at your house or why its owner has been using it to follow you, a nobody, around.

And yet…

…it’s also so pretty, and ridiculously well cared for, clearly a loved and cherished vehicle… robot… thing. You bite your lip. It’d be a shame to see the paint dinged. Thinking back on the time you’d come off a late work shift miserable and fully expecting your bike to be ruined because your tarp was torn and you hadn’t had time to buy a new one and and and…

…and you’d been glad for the rain that hid your tears when you discovered some kind samaritan had put their own tarp on your bike, and even left a kind note. You’d never learned who did it, much to your disappointment. You’d have liked to thank them.

You’re still using the same tarp they’d left you with.

You stare at beautiful, perfectly polished Candy Red paint. Even without the art the vehicle is stunning, from the sleek curves and long sweeping lines mixed with deliberately angular straight lines. A pleasing blend of aerodynamics and raw machine appeal.

Ugh. You close your eyes and sigh. This car is almost as pretty as your moped. Almost, you specify to your own thoughts.

“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” you mutter under your breath, mind made up.

You grumble as you drag a massive, thick wool blanket over the shiny hood, then over the top of the vehicle, pulling it all the way to the bumper. Next comes a plastic tarp, which you weigh down with copious amounts of bricks on the ground, being exceedingly careful not to scratch the paint.

“There,” you say when you’re finished, lips pursed grumpily. “Your owner better have a damn good reason for saddling me with you, you’re lucky I give a shit about nice paint,” you mutter. The first fat raindrop hits your shoulder as you look up, and you sigh. “Welp, that’s my cue to go back insi--”

Torrential downpour. You’re instantly soaked through with a yelp, the heavy skies having opened up overhead.

You forgo a much desired shower in favor of staying dressed in case the sports car’s owner shows up knocking. You even kept extra hot water ready in your kettle, in case you needed to offer a guest a cup of warm tea or cocoa for the inclement weather.

No one shows up to knock at your door.

When you walk outside to a clear skied morning, the seeming sports car is still there, and still tarped. Your fake sick day happened to be taken on a Friday, so you have the long weekend to deal with this mystery.

Your hands shake a little as you lift the bricks off the drippy tarp and restack them by your house, using your wheelbarrow to haul them the short distance. When you drag the tarp off, you’re relieved to see the wool blanket seems to have stayed in place. There’s not a scratch to be seen when you drag that off next and neatly fold it up, side-eying the pretty  vehicle.

At least the car’s owner can’t accuse you for any damage while it sat here parked in your driveway.

You’re about to head back inside, when you notice the puddle of blue liquid beneath the driver’s side door. You pause.

A single droplet of blue goop drips to join the rest. A grimace steals over your face as you pull your flip-phone out and activate its flashlight function. Then you sigh, and drop to your belly on the damp asphalt. You wiggle forward into position, then roll onto your back and crane your head.

The first leak, you’d been able to patch because it was fairly obvious where it’d been coming from, and you had direct, easy access to the damaged area. This one…

Your phone’s light reflects off an impressive amount of damage-- there’s carbon scoring on once extra-shiny metal. This vehicle had the prettiest, cleanest undercarriage you’ve never seen on a ground vehicle, so it’s jarring to see it in such a state of total disarray.

The amount of glistening dampness you see reflecting makes a chill run down your spine, for some reason. The air smells sweet with some kind of strange, tangy scent mixed with motor oil and something metallic, but not like any metal you’ve ever scented or tasted before… except the last time you worked on this car… robot, thing.

Hesitantly, you reach under the car and begin to feel around with great care, looking for the sign of the leak. The damp goop tingles against your skin where it smudges. Motion catches your eye, and you turn your head only to see another droplet of blue liquid drip from somewhere else on the undercarriage.

You tilt your camera’s light down at the ground, then blanch. Brilliant cyan covers the ground between the back wheels, some of it darker than other spots, and goopy looking like its partially dried.

“Fuuuck…”

Did whoever own this thing, drop it off here in the hopes you’d do something about it? That didn’t make any sense.

It’s not your vehicle, you tell yourself. This isn’t your problem.

What you should do is go call the police and tell them you found the stolen vehicle. They can tow it off, do their research stuff and have a gasp about robot craziness, and maybe get it fixed up. Or the owner could pay to get it out of the impound, then get it fixed up.

Or…

~*~

The first thing Knockout thinks when he finally comes out of deep, forced recharge is that he really ought to tell Breakdown how much he likes him getting familiar. In fact, having his aft hauled up in the air even in alt mode is rather--

The feeling of safety and mild arousal shatters when Knockout realizes with abrupt, mingled chagrin and panic that he isn’t in the med lab or his habsuite, and he also isn’t on the quiet, wooded driveway he’d parked himself on to hide from the searching helicopters and Autobots. It’d been the perfect hiding spot-- the thick canopy of trees overhead hid him from view, and there were no lifeforms registered in the house beyond diminutive organics he understood to be some kind of pet to humans.

Panic is staved off only by virtue of a lack of immediate danger, and though he’s situated oddly, he hasn’t been restrained in any way.

He’s in some small, cramped room with white walls cluttered by posters and cabinets and a concrete floor, a place lined with shelves full of boxes and tables cluttered with a mess of a wide array of tools. His mirrors tilt, and he spots the closed garage door behind him.

His engine almost kicks on out of nervousness, but there’s no one here with him. It takes him another moment to realize that his odd position is because he’s been parked on a pair of wood raisers beneath his back tires.

Had-- Had someone driven him while he was out cold?

Impossible. He’d been in a hard shut-down, they’d have had to hotwire his alt mode’s engine to kick on, and that surely would have woken him, even in forced recharge stasis. Had he been towed? Whatever had happened, he’d been so deep asleep he didn’t remember a thing.

Checking his coordinates, really the first thing he should have done, he discovers he’s only been moved a short distance from where he’d been parked when his systems crashed.

At that moment of realization, he hears footsteps to his left before a small door opens, and a human femme appears and scares the ever-loving Spark out of his processor by her sudden appearance. The little femme looks tired and frazzled, clothes rumpled, but none of those things or even the fact an alien just entered the room with him, are what make Knockout’s fuel lines go frigid.

It’s the fact that his passive scanners are informing him that there are no humans in his immediate vicinity, now that he’s actually paying attention to them. It’s the fact that it’s her, and it’s the fact that she has a smear of dried Energon on her face, just below an eye, and more splattered on her arms, her clothes. The human yawns widely, looking like she just walked out of a surgeon's ward after being splattered by a main fuel line leak.

That’s about when Knockout remembers why he entered forced shut down to begin with, and when he becomes self-aware of his own state of groggy confusion-- thinking is hard . He feels sluggish, but he also feels at least somewhat less afraid as the human closes the door behind herself, then drags fingers through her tousled hair. She yawns widely again, surprising him with the clear view of her dainty mouth and even daintier denta, then she stares at him.

At least she’s not associated with M.E.C.H., he thinks with a repressed shudder.

She’s helped him once before, but how in Primus she found him again this time when he’d parked in a random driveway felt almost like fate. Someone was looking out for him, even if his help came from one of the squishy flesh jobs.

Primus above, he’d take it. Being out of view hidden away in her garage, as cramped as it was, may well have been what kept him from discovery by the Autobots and their human allies while he was offline and defenseless.

The human currently with him sighs like she’s been saddled with some massive burden.

“Your owner owes me big time,” she asserts abruptly, lips pursed. “Between the hail and patching you up, a real mechanic would probably quote some stupidly ridiculous labor price,” she mutters, clearly talking more to herself as she bends to pick up a bucket. It’s full of cloth rags, which she hauls over to his bumper.

She doesn’t notice his mirrors silently tilting to keep her in his sight.

Knockout resists the strong urge to answer her, then has to resist the strong urge to shiver when quite abruptly, there are hands moving in his undercarriage, reaching between parts with a soft, fluffy something . A cloth? A sponge? He hears the slosh of water, then feels the sudsy wash of soap dripping over his frame. Strange sensation of tightness and raw patches of pain his medical protocols have already shut down the most sensitive of nerve circuits for riddle his frame. An experimental shift of parts well out of her sight produces the odd pull of something wrapped around a critical strut and a servo.

Her hands still at the sound of him testing another joint, cautiously shifting part of his right arm where she cannot see, and he feels more tugs and dull aches, wound tight by some kind of patch. It’s, unfortunately, a familiar feeling.

Frag.

System diagnostics are already coming back to him-- his battle with Bumblebee and Smokescreen had left him in worse shape than he’d thought, and it’s something of a deep irritation to know that the human may well have actually saved his life outright. He’d lost a considerable amount of Energon, more than he’s comfortable with, and he can still feel the ache of recent injuries. He was certain he’d have lost a great deal more without her intervention.

As best he can tell, nothing she’s done is permanent-- she hadn’t tried to, thank primus, weld anything. Whatever plyable, adhesive bandaging she’s used, it works well to stabilize his wounds to by him enough time to be professionally tended to.

Wounds he’s pleasantly much less worried about immediate issues with beyond what he already has on his engine block.

After a few moments, the human resumes her work. Her tiny, soft hands dutifully rub him down with the wet towel, completely clueless as she works her way along exposed parts. More sudsy water sloshes as she mutters to herself.

Knockout restrains a shiver as she runs what he’s finally identified as some kind of cleaning rag, not a sponge, along his hip strut she probably assumes is part of a normal vehicle frame.

“How the fuck do they keep you so shiny?” she grouses, before her hands reach between two pipes and she runs the fluffy, wet cloth that smells of chemical cleaner across particularly sensitive parts.

Knockout’s engine turns over with an embarrassing rumble he swiftly silences, but at least he manages to hold still as mortification squashes his confused arousal. Primus above, he rethinks his avoidant stance on human car washes. He wouldn’t mind so much having her hands help him with a thorough, deep detailing, if he could get her to be a little less rough. Or maybe a little more rough…

Naturally, she lets out a startled half-scream that shatters his illicit daydreaming. Something clunks and liquid sloshes, then splashes against his front tires as a gray bucket rolls across the ground. The femme backpedals out from underneath him in a graceless panic. With a tilt of his mirror, he just barely catches the look of her frightened, wide-eyed face with her knees bent up and hands splayed behind herself.

“Holy shit,” she says in a breathless voice, eyes comically wide. “Holy shit.”

It’s so tempting to answer her. It’s so tempting.

“Are you-- Are you awake?” she asks uncertainly.

That gives Knockout pause. Did she… know? He supposed she might have seen his face hidden beneath the front skid plate if it’d fallen off. He’s reluctant to online his main optics and find out. She continues to stammer, to his amusement.

“F-fuck. Uh, don’t kill me? Please? Your owner will be-- Uh, I’m sure he’ll be back. Or she? I haven’t met them yet,” she stammers, voice rising in octave with her obvious anxiety as her pace of speaking grows faster. “They wandered off? I guess? You’re just- uh-- in my garage. I swear, I didn’t move you far, just out of sight so the neighbors don’t come be nosy and I could patch your leaks. Bob already stopped by, he was nosy,” she says with a wrinkled nose. “He saw you parked in my driveway yesterday.”

Yesterday; so he’s been here for quite some time. A check to the internal clock display on his viewing HUD confirms it, and blast it all, why wasn’t that the first thing he checked? He needs to get back to base, before his processor goes truly cold.

He regards the fear-frozen human in his mirror silently.

Hmm… She knows enough to be considered a threat to security, but she’s also been useful . There’s something deeply wrong and uncomfortable at the idea of returning her aide with punishment, and Knockout considers the ramifications of revealing himself officially; if he did oust himself outright, he’d be responsible for handling the consequences. The typical consequence of a human discovering their true identity was to remove the problem.

Permanently.

He’s… Not sure what the other alternative is. Until this moment, he’s never had to consider it.

The dainty femme takes a deep breath.

“Right. Just a robot. Just a nice robot car,” she says to herself. “I can do this. I can totally do this,” she continues, then hesitantly approaches his driver’s door. She stoops to pick up the spilled bucket, cautiously reaching under his frame. “You don’t happen to talk, do you?” she wonders, sounding almost hopeful, then gently taps the toe of her shoe against his tire.

Knockout finds he doesn’t particularly want to kill her. After all, she’s fixed him up twice now, and perhaps…

…the Autobots certainly benefit from human assistance. So why not him?

Still, he hesitates.

Then the woman takes a deep breath, and walks back and ducks bravely back underneath him. Ticklish hands return right back to the work his involuntary reaction had interrupted. She’s more careful this time, scrubbing with less force and being far more cautious in touching him. It helps, a little.

He doesn’t try to stop her; the cooling cleanse of liquid over grimey metal is much too relaxing just now, and…

And maybe he’s not really sure what else to do. He certainly hadn’t expected to go from being about to be scrapped, to waking up and wondering if he was still asleep, because he’d woken up right into some kind of weird, xenophilic wet dream.

A dream that only gets better when she begins talking again.

She apparently decided that she needs to narrate what she’s doing, like a doctor to their patient, much to his deep amusement. She warns him before she touches him with the cloth, and starts helpfully listing off what she’s done, where she’s tapped fuel leaks and how much Energon -- not that she knows the term, but he recognizes what she means by ‘blue glowy stuff’ -- she’d washed down the pipes by the time all was said and done.

There’s a note of hesitance in her voice, a clear reveal of her discomfort, her uncertainty-- she’s aware she might be talking to dead metal, but she’s trying hard to be polite…

In case she isn’t, and Knockout finds himself fascinated by her behavior. She’s aware, but uninformed, probably clueless entirely to the existence of more of his kind.

Maybe he will tell her. If he had to pick a human to drop the extraterrestrial shapeshifting lifeforms exist bomb on, he supposes telling one who seemed already open to the idea was a nice skip around the typical breakdown of crisis of even considering it a possible reality.

The choice is taken away from him. Or maybe he’s just given an excuse to give in.

Knockout can’t stop himself from another frame-rattling engine rev when she reaches back into the same spot as before with that same fragging fluffy cloth, and starts cluelessly rubbing right along the edge of his interface panel.

“Oh-- Stop that,” he yelps breathlessly with a shiver. “That tickles!” Pleasantly.

To his mild delight, she screams shrilly. He feels something hit his exhaust with a dull tunk as the human scrambles out from under him, her eyes wide and heart racing.

“Holy shit, you do talk,” she blurts.

“Oh, I do much more than that,” Knockout purrs, savoring her dramatic reaction and wide eyes. “Now, what were you doing under there, getting so familiar?”

She gapes for a moment, before clearing her throat and seeming to find some courage to pull her spine straight as she musters herself.

“I, uh… I’m cleaning off the gunk so you don’t rust. You’re-- uh. You’re covered in this blue goopy stuff, I’m trying find the leaks. I found one under your front left wheel, and three on the right, but I can’t find the ones that are dripping from--”

“Oh, I heard your detailed account,” he informs her, watching her face cycle through a multitude of emotions as she no doubt questions what he has and hasn’t been awake for. Then, he delivers the finale of his debut’s intro by answering her. “That would be because you can’t reach them. Not like this,” he explains, then with deep satisfaction, Knockout transforms.

~*~

You stare.

What else is there to do? Scream? You already did that, and now you’re shocked enough to be maybe a tiny bit docile as you watch the image of a fancy sports car shatter. Panels pop apart from each other with seams that appear as if by magic, before parts begin to rapidly twist and flip and rotate and bend.

The mess of metal reassembles itself in a rapid dance too fast and too complex for your eyes to even properly follow; a distinctly humanoid silhouette uncurls itself out of the car parts, leaving you to stare at an elegant being with a silver main body and red armor that covers his chest, shoulders, forearms, hips, and massive lower legs like big boots.

He’s exceedingly careful in your small garage not to bump into anything, especially with his spiky helmet. Left kneeling on the ground, he turns over with great care to sit down properly. With some distaste on his pale, flat white face, the robot casually brushes aside your wooden car raisers with a silver hand. His straight, needle-like fingers are distinctly elegant, matching the rest of his sharp geometrical image.

You remember to close your jaw so as not to be rude, at about the same time the pretty red of his glowing eyes slant towards you. Two hollow circles of red illumination set in black sclera that look like glossy screens, which his face... Plate? Seems to move around to form the shape of expressions. Black eyebrows of sharply cut metal give him an expressive range of emotive capability. A sly, maybe even smug, smirk draws itself across the flat line of his mouth as those stunning optics narrow faintly, but you’re having a hard time thinking of him as just a robot now, seeing him like this.

He’s way too…

He’s much too…

You don’t quite have the words for it, but something about him feels distinctly alive, and it’s not just the odd tingle his presence is giving you.

“You should see your face,” he says with obvious amusement. “Well, it’s not every day an Earthling gets the honor of meeting an interstellar space traveler,” he says with an air of self-importance.

Interstellar--? Your brain stops working for a moment as you absorb what he just implied.

“You… Don’t have a driver, do you?” you realize faintly. It’d make so much sense-- why the car vanished so quickly the first time, the overly tinted windows, why no one came knocking on your door while the vehicle was parked here.

He -- it? They? In your defense, his voice sounds distinctly male --gives you an odd look, almost condescending, as he looks over his body. Weirdly, you swear he’s studying his paint job before he bothers looking for the source of the slow blue seep of blue goopy stuff you realize might be his equivalent of blood.

You feel queasy, suddenly. Are you… covered in alien blood? Is that even safe?

You recall the way it makes your skin tingle. It wears off as soon as you rinse it away, but still.

“Please, I’m the driver,” he says with an expressive roll of his eyes. “Now. What is your name, human?”

You stare at him.

“Uh, it’s-- Uh, call me Butterfly,” you fudge, because it’s a nickname no one’s called you since childhood, but it’s the first thing to come to mind.

“Well, Butterfly, I am indebted to you, it seems. Now bring me that cloth over here,” he instructs, holding out a large hand. You can’t help but flinch as it moves near you, before you remind yourself that if he wanted you dead, you would be.

“Sure thing,” you agree as you stoop to pick it up off the ground, then cautiously draw closer. Once you’re actually standing next to him, your nerves slowly melt away-- he doesn’t move to grab or swat at you, and in fact he keeps carefully still. He accepts the small fluffy rag, pinched carefully between sharp thumb and forefinger, and you watch him consider it with a frown. “What’s your name?”

“My designation is Knockout, for obvious reasons,” he says, gesturing to himself with his free hand.

Pursing your lips, you look at how comically small the scrap of fabric is in his other one.

“Let me get you a towel that’s more… You sized,” you offer. “Be right back, don’t touch anything, please,” you add, just in case the robot-- alien? --gets curious.

He shoots you a glance.

“If you call the authorities, know that there is no-where on this measly rock of a planet you can hide that we won’t find you.”

His casual threat halts you in your tracks. You turn to look over your shoulder, hand on the doorknob. He says it so easily, like he’s talking about the weather, and that somehow makes it scarier.

“Did… You just threaten to kill me if I tell anyone about you?” you check cautiously.

He looks smug as his head tips up a bit, and he smirks at you.

Those red eyes suddenly look a little more sinister than before.

“How refreshing, a smart fleshy.”

“...keep calling me fleshy and I’ll stop being so nice, but alright, that’s reasonable,” you decide on saying, unwilling to accept the role of ‘wet dishrag’ or ‘floor mat’ to be stomped all over. You’re equally aware that the odds of staying alive are, quite suddenly, largely dependent on your ability to not piss off the killer robot alien guy in your garage.

He laughs at you.

You take the opportunity to vanish into your house, shooing Gizmo away from the door with more panic than you’d meant to let slip past your guard. The idea of that big giant metal being possibly causing harm to one of the critters under your care makes your stomach heave and your chest feel tight.

~*~

The human returns in short order. He thinks she’s aptly named-- ‘Butterfly’ moves with a light, fluttery grace as she flits here and there, her alien features delicate and overtly feminine. He likes the fact she’s armed-- so many humans aren’t, and while her tiny pieces of metal wouldn’t be able to do any real harm against him, it’s still refreshing.

If he does end up having to kill her, it’ll be more entertaining, because she’ll no doubt attempt to do something futile.

“So… interstellar travel,” she says behind his back, breaking the silence. Her delicate hands carefully winding what she’d introduced to him as ‘electrical tape’ around a cracked strut in his shoulder; he allowed her access to it by removing the metal plating in the way, and his shoulder pauldron sits nearby on the ground beside his knee. He busies himself wrapping a much larger roll of the same style of flexible bandaging she’d found for him, around the cracks on his forearm, also beneath the armor plating.

“What about it? Curious to know what else lay out there in the infinite void of space, and all its glittering jewels of stars and planets?”

“Of course I am, why wouldn’t I be?” she answers easily. Knockout was expecting it to take much longer for her to calm down in his presence, but she seems to be the adaptable type.

As far as humans go, he supposes he could have ended up with a worse one to consider making an ally of, and so far, she still seems a good prospect.

“Well, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. I’m not in the business of educating lesser life forms,” he drawls in bored tones.

She sighs.

“Of course you’re not,” she mutters, then sideswipes him with her next words. “Listen, don’t show up at my house again, alright?” the small femme commands abruptly. “If I only had myself to worry about, that’d be one thing, but I have… Others who depend on me, and if something happens to me, they’re shit out of luck.

“I don’t want to be involved in whatever it is you have going on, but… this was pretty cool,” she admits, then pats his shoulder in a show of familiarity he’s somewhat annoyed by, but also maybe doesn’t hate quite so much as he expected to.

“Believe me, I have little interest in involving myself with more of your squishy kin,” he stresses, though he’s displeased at her rejection before he’d ever even asked. “I can’t convince you to go for a drive now and then?” he offers, wondering if she’ll take the bait of a more social acquaintance. If he could get her to accompany him willingly, the use she’d be for infiltrating certain human areas…

…like those races he so enjoyed, the ones that required him to show a face to if no one else, the event organizer.

If only his holo-form generator worked, he could do it himself. Alas.

Her answer is more disappointing than he expected refusal to be.

“No. I have responsibilities,” she says firmly. There was a long enough pause before her answer he’d had hope.

“I’m sure you can sweet-talk your way out of a family dinner or two,” he coaxes. “How often do you get to meet a highly advanced being from outer space?”

The novelty doesn’t seem to tempt her at all. She hops off the stepstool she’d set up behind him, then drags it around to his front, between his legs. Knockout pauses in his winding of tape to glance at her as she steps up, then begins casually wiping Energon stains off his red chest plating with a wet fluffy towel.

She seems to be thinking about how to answer his question, rather than being much concerned about her task aside from doing it well, She has absolutely no clue, he understands, of propriety.

Or maybe she does, and just doesn’t care. Either way, he doesn’t feel inclined to press the matter as he lets her work, and instead simply lifts his arm a little higher to stay out of her way.

“I don’t need anyone’s permission but my own,” she says after a long silence. “I have cats, and I take care of the animals in this area when I find one who needs help. If something happens to me, assuming animal control even finds them in time, they won’t be well treated. This area is shit for caring about other species,” she mutters. “And the shelters are already over-taxed as it is. Gizmo would find a home easy peasy, but Tia might get euthanized.”

“Wait… Are you saying you’re concerned about the safety of your pets?” Knockout asks, befuddled.

The way she’d spoken, he’d expected to hear her speak of close family members like the fleshy version of Sparklings, bonded kin that humans are always so nit-picky and particular about labeling and keeping track of.

She bristles, and shoots him a glare.

“They’re not my pets, they’re my family,” she stresses archly. “And yes, I am concerned for their safety.”

He studies her thoughtfully; this isn’t a trait he’d ever encountered in a human before.

“Why?” he wonders honestly.

That seems to give her pause, the cloth stopping on his chest before she hops off the stool to go dip it back in the soapy water bucket she refilled.

“Why not?” she tosses back. “I treat them the same way I treat you. You’re not human, so should I suddenly care less about you?” she challenges. “Assume you’re less intelligent than me, just because you have different life priorities and ways of communicating, due to your species and culture?”

“Please, I’m not a common cat,” he tsks, but there’s something appealing about the way she speaks. Sort of.

“Nope, definitely not,” she agrees, and to his delight, resumes her washing. He tears the tape and studies the dull silver wrap around his arm with distaste. It’s hardly a permanent fix, but it will be more than enough to get him back to base without leaking anymore Energon. Pleasingly, it’s nearly the same shade of gray as his own metal frame, so it blends in nicely. No one who catches a glimpse of him in the warship’s halls will notice overmuch the extent of his damage, and he can patch himself up properly in peace.

Which, thinking of it…

“Hmm, well, this has been nice, but I need to be getting going,” he says as he picks his armor back up to reattach it. “Do clean up before anyone else comes snooping.”

“You sure you don’t want to wait to drive out until after the storm?” she wonders. “We’re supposed to get hail again, unless your pretty paint is weather-proof,” she adds, eying his armor.

He scoffs.

“I have the real thing,” he boasts, then realizes she probably has no clue what that means, which means she won’t properly understand the accomplishment. “I have real paint , not some electronic nanite nonsense.” While the durability and ease of application was a strong selling point, Knockout preferred the rare, elegant quality of the real thing the nanites merely imitated.

They simply couldn’t capture quite the same depth and lustrous light refraction as a well layered design with a smooth gloss coat. Luminous, sleek, perfect.

So much better than the lazier options.

She smiles a bit, the first one he’s seen her wear, and the way it softens her serious, stern face is startling.

“Well, it’s very pretty, and it’ll get scratched the fuck up if you drive through hail. Er, those are big ice balls that drop from--”

“Yes, yes, I know what hail is,” he interrupts impatiently. He considers telling her that he doesn’t need to worry about it, that he can simply drive through a space bridge-- he could even have one summoned here, inside her garage, if he wished it. There was no need to even step foot or roll tire outside.

Except… he’s bored, and the only thing waiting for him back at base is being berated for being both tardy and injured, but at least the mission objective had been a success. He won’t arrive to total failure; in fact, being away a little longer might even make Megatron more sympathetic to him, perhaps. Maybe he could get some leave time granted to attend the races coming up in the summer…

Sudsy water flows over his armor as the woman turns from washing his stained chassis to wiping the dried Energon off his hip and leg.

Knockout stops what he’s doing, securing his vambrace, to stare at her. She works with a methodical care and a distinct lack of any embarrassment or concern, calmly scrubbing metal and dipping the cloth to get more soap. The water that cascades and dribbles onto the ground slowly feeds off down a drain in the center of the garage, so she hasn’t been careful about overwash.

As she works her way down his leg from his hip to his pede, Knockout debates on whether or not to tell her how forward she’s being, then decides it doesn’t matter. If the human wants to help him with detailing, all the better.

It’s not weird, he tells himself; it’s just good self-care, no different than asking a minicon to help him reach where he can’t.