Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nearly every human being on the planet has a soulmark by the time they're ten or so. Charlie was born with hers and so she never really bothered to pay attention to the exact statistics- some small fraction never get one, but for the majority like her, being marked is just the way life is.

She doesn't think about hers much. It's a small blue-white shape on the inside of her left wrist, kind of like the flash of a camera, or maybe some lightning- she'll figure out what it means later, when she's met the person it matches. The modern age being what it is she rarely bothers to cover it up, only donning a wide cuff on formal occasions, like when she sat crying her eyes out at her Dad's funeral.

It's the last thing on her mind, certainly, when she discovers that her fresh-from-the-salvage-yard car is actually a robot . Then shortly after that they activate a message in Bumblebee's chest and she thinks, he's not just a robot, he's an alien. An alien robot fighting in some sort of interplanetary war. Hollywood has nothing on her life, seriously.

After that revelation has time to percolate, they're hanging out in the garage on a quiet night, a movie neither one is paying much attention to playing while they sit close enough to be touching all along her side. Bumblebee delicately takes her hand and very slowly, like he's afraid of hurting her, turns it over.

"What's up?" Charlie says, watching this happen as if it isn't her own arm he's holding.

Bee extends an honestly, kind of scary-looking little metal piece out of the fingertip of his other hand and very gently taps her soulmark, his eyes meeting hers with wide-eyed curiosity.

Charlie tugs her arm away automatically, because you don't just touch someone's soulmark like that, but then holds it out again for him to see. "That's my soulmark," she says. He doesn't look as if he has any clue what that means, so she explains, "On Earth we have soulmates. They're like, the one person who's a perfect fit for you. I don't know, I kind of think the whole 'One True Love' thing is cliche and that's not always how it works out." She shrugs. "But out of everyone on the planet, there's one person who shares your mark exactly. And when you meet them, you know you're meant to be together, even just as friends or whatever." She considers him; Bee is watching her with interest, antennae twitching forward, but he doesn't move to touch her mark again.

"Do you guys have anything like that?" she asks.

He seems to think for a minute, and then does a kind of half shrug while shaking his head.

"Guess it's just another weird human thing," Charlie says. She grips her wrist in her right hand, covering the mark from view, comforted by the feeling of it on her skin.

"My parents were soulmates," she tells Bee, and he buzzes politely. She settles in against his side a little more- if she finds just the right angle, he's really not so bad to lean on- and describes how her parents met, how they felt that instant connection soulmates are supposed to feel and then went on to find out their marks matched each other.

"It's part of why I can't believe she's moved on so fast," Charlie says in an undertone, though she's pretty sure her Mom has a late shift tonight and Ron never comes near the garage. "Soulmates are supposed to be forever, and she's already settling down with another guy?"

Bee whirs and moves the dial of his radio up and down, but doesn't settle on any actual station.

She smiles up at him and shrugs. "So, yeah. Mine's that blue thing on my wrist. You don't really talk about them but at the same time no one really hides them, so everyone at school already knows who has what pretty much."

She thinks for a moment. "I don't know what Memo has, actually," Charlie says, and wrinkles her nose. "Maybe he doesn't have one. Not everyone does," she explains. "And people without, well, they tend to want to date around more."

Bumblebee looks politely interested and kind of confused, and she smiles.

"We'll watch a chick flick next, that'll show you what I'm talking about," she decides. There's still time before she has to go to bed for another movie, so when Indiana Jones finishes she digs through the collection of VHS's to find one that has a prominent soulmate theme to it.

"Here," she says when she finds one- she's not really a girly movie kind of a girl, so it ends up being Sixteen Candles that she grabs. It doesn't focus on soulmarks, but they're a topic that comes up.

Bee buzzes and whirs and resettles himself as she puts the movie in, and on impulse she grabs her blanket and climbs up into his lap instead of sitting back on the cement floor. "This okay?" she asks, glancing up at him.

He nods, and she smiles, pulling the blanket around her to cushion his metal parts. It's nice to sit like this with him, quiet and comfortable with a movie playing. She should make popcorn next time, she thinks idly.

Charlie doesn't mean to, but she drifts off halfway through the movie. She wakes up when she realizes that there's no sound from the TV anymore, the tape having run itself out. Bumblebee's shifted his arms to hold her in place, like a hug.

She yawns and stretches, and mumbles an apology. She's been getting less sleep lately than she's used to, since she doesn't want to leave Bee alone more than she has to but, despite Tina's prediction, she hasn't yet been fired from her shitty job on the boardwalk.

"Did you like the movie?" she asks.

There's a pause and then, clear as day, Bee says, "I can't believe I gave my panties to a geek."

"Bee!" Charlie says, her eyes widening in shock before a burst of laughter leaves her. "Oh my god. Did you just talk?"

He shimmies in place a little, clearly pleased with himself.

That was definitely a line from the movie, and the voice didn't sound anything like what she would expect his to sound like, which means- "You recorded that from the movie?"

Bumblebee nods.

"I guess it's a hit, then," she says, still grinning. She yawns again, slapping a hand over her mouth to cover it. "Ugh, I should probably get to bed."

He unfolds his arms from around her, clearing the way for her to clamber down off his legs. For a minute Charlie wants to suggest he turn into the car again and she just conk out in the backseat, but she refrains. That's kind of weird, probably- if not to him, then her Mom's going to think it's weird if she comes in and finds her sleeping in her car when she has a perfectly good bed only a few rooms away.

"Night, Bee," she says.

He lets out a sort of quiet hum in reply, and she waits for him to transform back into the Beetle so she can cover him up for the night. He probably doesn't need it- she has a feeling he doesn't feel things like chilly nights the way humans do- but she doesn't like the thought of him just sitting there in the garage, uncared for. He's not a thing, after all.

The first time she feels pain from her soulmark is a few months after Bumblebee left- another significant marker on her internal timeline now, Before Bee and After Bee, just the way she feels about her father's death. It starts as a slow throbbing and she thinks she just hit her arm on a doorknob or something, but it suddenly spikes sharper, the pain more agonizing.

Charlie curls up around her arm on the floor of the garage, unable to stop the ragged moan of pain that leaves her. It scares her at first, this pain out of nowhere, until it begins to ease slightly and she realizes that the sensation is centered right in her soulmark.

She rubs at the skin there mindlessly, trying to ease the pain. When she pries her hand away from her mark, there's nothing wrong with it. No broken skin, no unearthly glowing, no swelling or bruising.

There have always been stories that say that you can feel your soulmate's pain, but she thought it was an urban legend, something made up for romance novels and schoolyard ghost stories. Charlie covers the mark again, but the pain is already receding.

"You alright in there?" Ron calls through the garage door.

"Fine," she croaks out.

"Alright," he says, but sounds unconvinced.

She ignores him, since he isn't going to actually open the door. Ron doesn't venture into the garage unless absolutely necessary, like the few times they've stored the station wagon inside.

She's never considered her soulmark as the connection it is, not really, not until this. It's always just been a marking on her skin, another feature like her nose or her chin.

But it isn't. Somewhere out in the world is a person with the matching mark, and they just got themselves hurt. She wonders how it happened- were they in a fight? A car accident? Did they trip and fall?

Supposedly there's no way to tell how hurt the other person is based on how much pain you feel. They could have gotten a paper-cut or broken both their legs and she would be feeling the same level of pain in her arm now.

Supposedly, a soulmate always feels the moment their other half dies.

Charlie covers up the mark with her palm, glad that the pain is already receding to a dull sensation, one she can almost ignore.

Memo had told her he doesn't have a soulmark, just like she suspected. She wonders what that's like. To belong only to yourself.

The next time the topic comes up is several months later, after she's met the other Autobots at the new base they're constructing. Modifying, really, since it apparently used to be a government facility.

Charlie is the only human on the premise and it's strange, being surrounded by massive beings made out of metal who can also turn into vehicles at the drop of a hat.

"Hey, Charlie!" Bulkhead calls out, and she looks up from the bit of non-essential equipment that Ratchet is 'letting' her fix. Bulkhead is one of the Autobots who intimidated her at first, being absolutely massive, but he's been easy to get along with.

"We're working," Ratchet replies grumpily. As if what Charlie is doing is anything more important than just getting her used to Cybertronian mechanics and circuitry.

"It's alright if I take a break, right?" she says, putting down her wrench. "It's nearly lunchtime, anyway."

"Pah," Ratchet grouses. "You organics and your food. What's wrong with a little Energon once in a while to keep you going?"

She rolls her eyes and hops down from the stool she's using. "I'll be back in an hour," she tells him, not bothering to wait for him to give her actual permission- she'd be waiting a very, very long time.

"What's up?" Charlie asks Bulkhead as she nears his massive feet. And she used to think Bumblebee was huge- in reality, her friend is the second-smallest bot she's met.

"We saw something on the TV and Bee wasn't being any help," Bulkhead says, gesturing for her to walk down the hall with him.

"Oh?" she says, having to hurry to keep up with his pace, even though he's not the fastest of them. His legs are just that much longer that it's practically a dozen of her steps to one of his.

"These two organics, they had these pictures on their skin, and they made a big fuss out of it?" Bulkhead says, and shrugs. "Story didn't make any sense."

"Ah," Charlie says, the problem coming into focus. "That's a soulmate thing."

"Soulmates?" he says, turning to look down at her in confusion.

She waves a hand. "It's a thing, I'll explain." What humans call a soul, Cybertronians call a Spark- or, near as close as she can tell. From the things Ratchet sometimes says as she's observing him work, it might also be a physical property, not just a metaphorical one the way it is with humans.

The Autobots are scattered around the biggest TV they were able to find, in order to make the screen easier on their eyes. Err, optics. Bumblebee is one of them, on his feet in front of Sideswipe and buzzing unhappily which suggests he hasn't been able to explain himself as well as he wants.

His head snaps to her direction as she enters the room and she smiles at him. "I heard you guys need a human interpreter?" she says lightly.

Bee immediately stops buzzing and instead lets out a happy burst of music, the 'wings' on his back swinging in place. It never fails to make her feel appreciated when he's always so happy to see her.

"Buzz-brain's trying to tell us you humans all have Sparkmates," Sideswipe says.

Charlie frowns at the nickname, crossing her arms over her chest like it's going to make her look in any way intimidating to the metal beings. "He's right," she says, chin tilted up to meet Sideswipe's eyes. "I mean, we call them soulmates, and not everyone has one, but most do."

"But how?" Arcee asks, head tilting. She's the only other female in the place besides Charlie and she thought that would give them something to bond over, but Arcee likes to keep her distance from pretty much everything. "Sparkmates are so rare they're practically a legend."

Charlie shrugs. "Well, not here they aren't," she says. She holds out her wrist so they can see her soulmark. "See? That's my mark. When I find my soulmate, they'll have one that matches exactly."

The Autobots lean down to examine her arm, exchanging looks between themselves. Bumblebee moves to her side and she bumps her shoulder against him in greeting.

"Weird," Bulkhead says, straightening back up. "A little decal like that having any meaning, I mean."

Charlie shrugs. "It's just how things work, I guess," she says. "It's weirder to me that you guys don't have soulmates- Sparkmates, sorry."

Sideswipe doesn't look convinced, but Arcee shrugs a graceful, pointy shoulder. "How strange you organics are," she says.

"Speaking of strange organics," Charlie says, and looks up at Bee beseechingly. "It's lunchtime. Drive me to town?"

"Cause I've got a bitchin' Camaro, and they have to ride the bus," Bumblebee sings through the radio.

She rolls her eyes but smiles, and they head out of the base's secret entrance to drive to the nearby town so she can get some fast food. She has a small kitchen on-site (okay, a hot plate and a mini fridge, whatever), it's just more convenient than driving out for all her meals, but she likes taking the time to get lunch or sometimes dinner with just Bee when there's nothing more pressing to do.

When they're parked outside the McDonald's Charlie sucks on her soda and says casually, "I thought you said you guys don't have anything like soulmates?"

There's no response for a little while, and then Bumblebee says, "I didn't remember."

It was pretty early on that the conversation had happened, she supposes, and his memories might not have really been intact enough for him to be sure. She stuffs a few french fries into her mouth.

"Why were they all weird about it, then?" she asks when her mouth is clear again. "So what if humans have soulmates, you guys do too."

Bee's radio swings back and forth, a sure sign that he's unsure of how to say something. Apparently he used to be a smart-mouthed brat, according to the bots who knew him before his voice was ruined, and sometimes she's sad that she'll never know him without that baggage.

"It's rare," he says after a while.

She has to admit she doesn't get it- so what if it's rare? It still happens, so why is it such a big deal? Charlie shrugs and wipes her fingers clean of grease before lightly touching what she's learned is the Autobot's symbol in the center of Bee's steering wheel.

"Do Decepticons have Sparkmates?"

A minute tremor runs through Bee's frame which she interprets as disgust, and she grins.

"Are you up for grocery shopping?" Charlie asks, changing the subject. "I'm out of yogurt again. I swear Ratchet steals it for experiments."

Bumblebee lets out a burst of up-beat music, and once she's settled herself more properly in the seat again he takes off down the road.

Life with the Autobots is exciting some of the time, and really dull at other times. They do a lot of patrolling- apparently they can project holograms of drivers (or riders, in Arcee's case) to avoid drawing any undue attention- and construction work to the base to convert it from a weapons storage facility into someplace fit to live in.

Charlie has what used to be some sort of manager's office as her personal set of rooms, too small for any of the 'bots to fit into. She rarely spends much time in them, preferring instead to hang out with Bumblebee and the others in the main rooms, even sleeping curled up with Bee while he recharges some of the time. It's hell on her back but she's young and spry, and it's comforting to be around him.

Movie nights are some of her favorite at the base. Not all the Autobots attend- she's definitely hoping to get Optimus to stay for one eventually, but no dice so far- but every week or so, she and Bee are usually joined by at least one or two others.

"We're watching Star Wars tonight!" Charlie announces, pleased to have snagged the tape from the rental shop in town at last.

"'Star Wars'?" Arcee says with an unimpressed look on her face.

"Yup," Charlie says, undeterred. "Well, the first of the three, anyway."

Bumblebee drops expectantly onto his side of the couch, antennae twitching. She'd explained the basic plot to him on the ride back, and he'd seemed interested.

"Not sure I'm up for a war movie tonight," Bulkhead says, leaning against the massive doorway of the main room.

"It's not really war-like," Charlie assures him, getting the VCR set up to play on the large screen, instead of the smaller TV she uses most of the time when it's just her and Bee. "The bad guys lose, the good guys win, and," she pauses as she adds her coup de grace, "there are robots."

"Oh really," Arcee says, in a tone that Charlie knows means she's piqued her interest. "Robots in a human movie?"

"Yup," Charlie says, finally all set up. "They're not the type that just follow orders mindlessly, either, they're their own people."

"Well," Bulkhead says, "I guess it might be interesting to see."

She smiles. "Should we wait for any of the others?"

Arcee shakes her head. "Prime is gone, Sideswipe has patrol, and Ratchet's busy."

Three bots is better than none, Charlie decides, and waits for them to get comfortable on their choice of furniture before pressing 'play' on the remote. She was lucky enough to see all three of the movies in the theater when they came out, and the music brings her right back.

She grabs the blanket she keeps on the back of the couch and gets comfortable leaning against Bumblebee's side, listening to the quiet mechanical sounds of his body. He drapes an arm over her shoulder, heavy but not so bad that she's uncomfortable, or couldn't squirm out if she wanted to.

The bots make occasional comments as the movie plays, ask a few questions, but they're used enough to human movies by now not to get distracted wondering about some random human quirk. Charlie grins as Princess Leia and Han Solo interact; their matching soulmarks get revealed in the third movie, but she thought they were a good fit even before then.

Bumblebee buzzes quietly during one of the tense scenes, and she rubs comfortingly at the place just above his knee, where his yellow plating gives way to duller metal. He tilts his head down to look at her and she smiles, before leaning in against his side again.

It's something two friends might do, she's been telling herself for ages now. Nevermind that she'd never dream of cuddling up like this to the others, even if they'd allow it.

An engine cuts through the score of the movie and she frowns, but none of the Autobots seems tense. A few seconds later Sideswipe races in through the 'driveway', transforming out of his car form as he skids to a showy stop.

"Shh," Bulkhead shushes, leaning forward in his seat. "We're at a good part."

Sideswipe snorts. "Yes, patrol was quiet, thanks for asking," he says.

"Ratchet would have let us know if you needed backup," Arcee says, sounding unconcerned.

Charlie feels Sideswipe's optics turn towards her, a sneer pulling at his metallic face. "I see the organic has you all wrapped around her fingers nowadays," he says.

"It's just a movie," she says in her own defense, rolling her eyes. "You want to join us? There's still nearly an hour left."

"Hardly," Sideswipe says. He stands there for a moment, and at times like this, Charlie feels acutely aware of the fact that the Autobots are, well, massive robots. Sideswipe isn't much taller than Bumblebee, she doesn't think, but he's still huge compared to her measly five-foot-eight.

None of the Autobots would ever hurt her intentionally, she fully believes that, but she sometimes get the feeling that Sideswipe wouldn't exactly cry if she did somehow get hurt.

Besides her, Bumblebee lets out a barely-audible buzz.

Sideswipe smirks, and strides out of the main room, towards either his bunk or medbay, no doubt. Charlie forces herself to settle back in against Bee's side and watch the movie, but she can't really focus on it anymore.

She entertains herself with tracing the little scratches in the paint on Bumblebee's thigh instead, drawing patterns between them. The paint is as much a part of their body as her skin is, apparently- it'll fill itself back in within a few days, sooner if given a dose of extra Energon.

She feels Bee's gaze on her and she looks up, smiling. He curls the arm he has around her shoulders and pets over her hair with careful fingers, and she sighs at the contact. Sideswipe might make her a little uneasy, it's true, but with Bumblebee at her side she knows she's as safe as she can get.

Charlie doesn't stay awake to see the end of the movie. She dozes off at some point and wakes as she feels her metal pillow shift underneath her, the room dark and quiet around her.

"I can't believe you're cuddling with it," Sideswipe's voice says, and she feigns sleep as she squints her eyes open just a sliver. Bots are easy to spot in the dark, thanks to all the glowing lights.

"Charlie is to be treated with the utmost care and respect," Optimus' voice says, but it's said from so close that she knows it's Bee playing a recording.

Sideswipe snorts. "I'm not gonna lay a hand on her, Buzz-brain," he says dismissively. "I'm just wondering how you can."

She can feel Bumblebee vibrating slightly under her, probably itching to jump up and scuffle with the other bot. Charlie debates whether to fake waking up and break the moment, or whether it won't do any good.

"She means more than you will ever understand," Bumblebee says, stringing each word together with calm deliberateness.

There's silence for a few seconds, and then Sideswipe says a dismissive, "Whatever. Enjoy your little pet, like I care."

Charlie listens as he walks away, tracking him by the sounds of his metal limbs against the floor of the base. When it's quiet again she starts shifting slightly, pretending to be just now waking up.

Bumblebee whirs quietly, and she smiles up at his illuminated optics.

"Fell asleep, huh?" she asks.

He nods.

"Wasn't it a good movie, though?" she says, stretching herself out a little.

Bumblebee nods again, and plays a clip. "Use the Force, Luke!"

Charlie smiles at him, and he buzzes happily in reply. She considers packing up and going to her bed, or just letting Bee leave and crashing on the couch. "Can I stay with you tonight?" she asks, and he lets out another happy-sounding buzz.

"Sweet dreams are made of these ," he sings quietly, just above a hum, " Who am I to disagree?"

She smiles at him, and wraps the blanket around herself as she gets up off the couch. She should at least run upstairs and change into her pajamas, but she's too tired to manage the stairs and besides, the clothes she'd worn today are comfortable enough.

Bumblebee's bunk is basically identical to the others, except that on his shelving unit, the lowest shelf is full of things she might need or want. A couple bottles of water, some snacks, extra blankets. Charlie leaves it all and lets him lift her up the short distance between the floor and the top of his actual bed- 'bed' being a generous term for what is simply a raised metal slab. Apparently, Cybertronians don't put much stock in the concept of mattresses.

She fusses around with her blanket once Bee is lying down, pressing herself along his side, hemmed in by his arm. It's not really comfortable to sleep here like this, but some nights the emotional rewards outweigh the dull ache in her back she'll wake up with.

"Night, Bee," she says once she's more or less as comfortable as she'll get.

"Goodnight," he says back in a stranger's voice. The light in the room winks out as he shutters his optics, entering the sleep-like state the bots use to recharge.

Charlie doesn't often go out patrolling. She gets it- Decepticons are dangerous, and won't hesitate to kill her, and she doesn't actively have a deathwish or anything. Most of the time she doesn't mind staying out of the way of giant robots who would happily squish her.

But sometimes it gets really boring at the base, and it's not like the vast majority of patrols even turn up anything out of the ordinary, anyway.

"Hang on a sec, I'm coming with," she says after Optimus finishes giving Bumblebee his instructions for the day.

Both bots turn to look at her, identical frowns on their faces. Well, identical allowing for the differences in their facial structures, anyway. She's always surprised by how many expressions Bee can make despite lacking a proper mouth and eyebrows.

"That may not be wise," Optimus says. It's kind of hard to disobey him just on principle, him being the most massive bot she's ever seen and having a voice like every 'daddy complex' she's ever heard of amplified to eleven.

"Bee's just checking out sector- what was it? Thirty-two?- for signs of Energon residue," she says with a deliberately casual shrug. "It's not exactly dangerous."

Bumblebee looks at her, then up at Optimus. She's still amused by how much shorter he is than the Prime, though she never mentions it just in case he's sensitive to that sort of thing.

Optimus considers her, his gaze heavy. Charlie lifts her chin and holds her spine straight, staring at him right back. Finally, he nods. "The mission parameters are low-risk enough for you to accompany Bumblebee," he says.

She smiles in victory.

Bee looks a little apprehensive, but he doesn't try and stop her. He changes to his car form- and no, she will never get over the fact that he looks like a sleek Camaro now- and she climbs inside, seating herself behind his steering wheel.

The actual mission is as tame as she expected it to be. They nose around the dusty backroads of- she squints at a passing signpost- Lakeridge, which is kind of funny because she doubts there was ever a lake in the area, Bee monitoring Energon levels with some special scanner Ratchet gave him while Charlie mostly looks out the windows and counts cacti.

"Horse!" she calls out when they unexpectedly pass one, and Bee honks his horn excitedly. But any excitement she might have been feeling quickly gives way again to boredom; there's nothing to see our here but rocks and sand, it seems.

Bumblebee plays a constant stream of music on the radio, seemingly with no deeper meaning than that he likes the particular song.

The scanner-thing beeps every now and again, but there's no lightning crackle of a fresh trail. Probably there was some Energon stored here a while ago, or maybe some traces buried deep down in the bedrock. Nothing to suggest it's about to become a Decepticon hot-spot.

"Let's get lunch," Charlie says as they turn onto the highway at last. It's a little early still, but she doesn't want to go back to base right away.

Bee doesn't reply, but he takes the very next exit that has a sign for food.

"I never thought I would say this," she says after she's accepted her bag of greasy fast food from the drive-through window, "But I miss my Mom's cooking."

He plays a buzz of static, then a mash-up of what she's pretty sure are all commercials. "All you can eat - hot off the grill - homestyle cooking - Janey's Diner - next exit!"

She laughs, and reaches into the bag for a handful of hot, greasy fries. Best thing about partnering with a sentient car? She can eat while cruising down the highway. "I actually asked her for a recipe last time I called," Charlie says. "This chicken thing she would make, with some sort of fancy sauce? Well, she told me the sauce from a can would taste the same, but she was so wrong."

"You can visit her," Bumblebee says.

"Yeah," she agrees, hearing the wistfulness in her own voice. "But I don't know, it would be weird now. I have this whole life with you guys, you know?"

He doesn't answer, and she shrugs.

"I probably will at some point, though. Maybe for the holidays?" The weather at the base isn't really going to change since they're so far south, but it's approaching Fall. Her Mom will flip if she doesn't at least call home for Thanksgiving.

Bumblebee's radio spins, and he plays a snatch of a Christmas song, though how he found that on the radio in September, she has no clue.

"You guys didn't know about the holidays last year!" Charlie says, the thought just occurring to her. "Oh man, Bee, you're gonna love Christmas. Everyone is happy, and there's pretty decorations, and you get presents!"

He plays a happy trill of music, and she grins.

"We're totally going to have a Christmas party at the base," she decides. "Cheesy songs and eggnog and a great big sparkly tree, just you wait." And if she starts thinking up presents this early, she's bound to have something pretty awesome to give Bee by the time the actual day rolls around.

In the beginning she called her Mom once a week to check in, but lately she's been dropping it down- first to every other week, and now only once a month. There just isn't a lot to say that isn't stories about 'bots her Mom will never meet, or important secrets.

"There's still time for you to come home," her Mom says one day after Otis has exchanged brief, obligatory greetings. "You could look into college, get another job..."

Charlie tucks the phone more securely to her face and glances around the room. Through the windows of the old office she can see Bulkhead and Sideswipe doing what is either some sort of sparring or else dancing. As she watches, Optimus shakes his head and steps between them, taking Sideswipe's place. A loud thud shakes the facility as Bulkhead is toppled to the ground by a move she couldn't see.

"What was that?" her Mom says. "Are you okay? That wasn't an attack was it?"

"It's fine, Mom," Charlie replies. "The guys are just messing around." Messing around, she thinks, like they're teenage human boys and not who-knows-how-old alien robots embroiled in an interplanetary war.

"I worry about you," her Mom says.

"Really, Mom, it's fine," she says, fingers tangling and untangling the phone's cord as she talks. "I should probably go though, Ratchet thinks we're ready to start testing parts of the groundbridge, finally."

"The what?" her Mom says, but then sighs. "Just be careful, okay? I love you."

"Love you too," Charlie replies. "Bye!" She hangs up before her Mom has a chance to say anything else, suggest any more alternatives to her current life. She's only doing it because she cares, Charlie knows that, but it doesn't make it any easier to hear.

Outside, the sparring has turned into some sort of group exercise, the Autobots shifting from robot to vehicle forms in between doing pushups while Optimus looks on. Do they even need to do things like that, Charlie wonders? It's not like they have muscles to develop.

She pushes the door of the office open and steps out onto the narrow walkway, the sound of metal scraping against metal suddenly much more pronounced now that she's not behind sound-proofed walls.

"Having fun?" she calls down.

Bumblebee slips and falls face-first onto the concrete, and she grins. He bounces up to his feet almost immediately though, ignoring Optimus telling him that he still has another three sets to perform.

"Why does he always get special treatment?" Sideswipe mutters, but the sound carries well enough for Charlie to hear.

She frowns, but otherwise ignores Sideswipe. "I'm just heading to the workshop," she tells Bee as he comes to stand next to her.

He says nothing, and she smiles fondly at him while shaking her head a little at how silly he can be, following her around like there's any danger in the base. Still, she doesn't mind the company, even if it's just to the other end of the base.

Ratchet already has the guts of the groundbridge opened up, technology that was- literally- totally alien to her just a few months ago now familiar.

"Ah, good," he says when they walk in through the open doorway. Autobots aren't very big on doors, except in a few key areas meant to be private. "Bumblebee, I want to have another look at your vocal synthesizer."

"I thought we were working on the groundbridge?" Charlie says with a frown.

"It'll keep," Ratchet says, and waves for Bee to step up onto the massive exam table in the center of the room.

Charlie jumps up to catch hold of one of Bumblebee's dangling legs once he's seated, and climbs up his body to stand on the table next to him. Easier than grabbing the step ladder she keeps in the corner, even if the move isn't something she'd ever do with another bot.

"Lie back," Ratchet says, pressing down gently- for a massive robot, anyway- on Bee's shoulder to guide him down. Charlie kneels down next to his head and smiles reassuringly at him.

"Do you see those frayed wires?" Ratchet asks, and she leans in close, squinting to try and see what he's indicating.

"I think?" she says. This part of Bee's body has become more familiar to her than most, because of all the work Ratchet does to it to try and restore his voice.

"We're going to clean those up and try to patch in a donor part," he says.

Bumblebee looks at her apprehensively, optics flitting between her face and Ratchet's.

Charlie frowns. "Won't that mean clipping the wires? I thought we didn't want to do that."

Ratchet waves a hand dismissively. "New theory," he says. "Just the ones with diagonal bands, anyway, nothing sensory." He produces a pair of human-sized wire clippers and hands them to her.

Charlie appreciates that her small hands make her well suited to this kind of delicate work, but she can admit to still being kind of squeamish about essentially operating on her friends. "You okay with this, Bee?" she asks before she makes any move towards his vulnerable neck.

Bumblebee nods, shifting a little in place on the table as if settling in comfortably. He gives her a thumbs up for good measure and then folds his hands over his middle.

"Just the striped ones," Charlie repeats.

"Diagonally striped," Ratchet says.

"Right," she says with a nod, and takes a deep breath before inserting her hand into the hole left by Bee's injury. The wires don't have any electricity running through them; Autobots have a fail-safe system, apparently, like human blood clotting instead of just continuing to bleed.

"Can I get some more light?" she says, and Ratchet obligingly turns on one of the lamps, flooding the area with almost too much brightness. Bumblebee squints his optics but doesn't quite close them all the way, and she smiles reassuringly at him.

With enough light to see by, finding the right wires is easy. Previous 'surgeries' mean that the severed wires are neatly arranged, more or less, and she carefully separates out the six diagonally-banded wires, clipping off the frayed ends and then stripping a little bit of the casing to expose fresh metal.

"You're awfully slow," Ratchet grouses, "But you got the right ones. Now, take this synthesizer and connect the wires."

He passes off a hunk of metal to her that looks nothing like Earth technology, and Charlie takes it carefully.

"Still good?" she asks Bumblebee, and he nods slightly.

She takes her time lining up the connections before actually twisting any of them together- she'd like to solder them, but apparently Autobot healing takes care of that. A shock of static electricity races up her fingers as she twists the last connection into place and she pulls her hand back with a curse, stuffing her fingers into her mouth to lessen the sting.

"What's that?" Ratchet says, a disgusted look on his face.

Charlie pulls her fingers away and wipes them off on her pants. "Just got shocked, is all. I though the electricity isn't supposed to be active yet?"

"It isn't," Ratchet says, but doesn't elaborate.

She rolls her eyes. "Well, it's connected. Bee, you feel any different?"

Bumblebee sits up slowly, turning his head carefully this way and that. The new vocal synthesizer looks odd against the rest of his metal, the shade too bright and shiny to blend in properly.

There's a burst of screeching, like a microphone throwing feedback, and Charlie claps her hands over her ears, wincing at the sound.

"Hmm," Ratchet says. "Try something else."

The screeching returns, wavering into a pitch so high she can feel it ringing in her head after the noise cuts out. Bumblebee's antennae droop, his eyes sad.

"We'll leave it in overnight," Ratchet says, "Maybe it'll integrate with more time."

Charlie takes her hands away from her ears and tries to smile up at Bee. "That's more progress than we've gotten before," she tells him, patting his arm consolingly.

"Off with you, then," Ratchet says. "Charlie, you've still got work to do on the groundbridge."

"Sir yes sir," she says sarcastically, and jumps down off the table to the ground below. Bumblebee follows after carefully making sure she's out of the way.

"See you later," she tells him. "Don't strain that new synthesizer, either. I'll know."

Bee nods, and plays a clip of music from his radio as if in proof that he'll let the synthesizer rest.

She smiles, and waves him away as he leaves the medbay. When he's turned the corner out into the hallway she turns to Ratchet. "What's on the agenda?"

Charlie is set to running around the innards of the machine, laying in lines of wires mostly. The delicate stuff that they apparently would have had drone-bots do, had they actually had any drones around to use. Lacking them, it's up to her to shimmy into the places Ratchet's much larger frame can't reach without doing some major disassembling.

It doesn't feel as if they're any closer to the device being finished by the time night rolls around- announced by a series of programmed alarms, since this deep in the bedrock there's obviously no natural light to see by. Charlie stretches herself out, covered all over in grease and grime.

"I guess tomorrow's laundry day," she says with a sigh.

"You don't have to persist in wearing those artificial coverings," Ratchet says. "They don't offer any protection, anyway."

Charlie reflexively grabs at her shirt as if he's going to tear it away from her. "I can't just walk around naked!" she says, voice approaching a squeak at the end.

Ratchet gives a pointed sniff. "It's not as if we care about human social customs here," he says.

She shakes her head back and forth so rapidly that her brain rushes inside her skull. "Um, no. You guys might be okay walking around without clothes, but you're robots. It's different for us humans."

"Other organic life forms on this planet wear no such coverings," he points out.

"Yeah, animals!" she says. "This is definitely too weird of a conversation to be having. I'm going to get dinner and forget it ever happened."

Charlie heads for the former office suite first in order to wash up. As she stares at herself in the mirror, rubbing at a smudge of grease on her cheek, she wonders what would happen if she did decide to ditch the clothes one day.

And immediately snorts to herself. Yeah, like that's ever going to happen. She scrubs at the grease on her face and then looks down at the smudges on her arms, and sighs as she decides she'd better just shower.

Being the only one in the base to use the plumbing except for occasional car washes, she's always got plenty of hot water when she wants it. Water pressure isn't too bad, either. She stands under the spray and soaps herself up, still amused by imagining the various bots reactions to her walking around naked all of a sudden. Bulkhead wouldn't notice, she's sure, and Optimus would probably worry about her getting too cold. Sideswipe would be a jerk about it, probably, and Bumblebee-

Charlie sucks in a breath. How would Bee react?

She imagines him not caring, not even noticing. Letting her climb all over him like normal when they watch movies, his cool metal against her overheated skin...

She shivers, and glances around the closed-off shower stall as if someone is going to materialize and scold her for her thoughts.

What would it feel like to have him touching her bare skin? A hand on her back, an arm wrapping around her middle. Charlie presses her thighs together guiltily. But no one's going to know, no one's going to care.

She imagines Bumblebee taking one of his massive hands and running it lightly down her front, exploring. How his metal fingers would be smooth and unyielding, delicate despite all the strength he has. She'd probably have to tell him where to focus his attention, and cups her breasts as she pictures it.

Do Autobots have any concept of sex, she wonders? They have male and female genders, surely that suggests they're aware of the basic idea...

Charlie slides one of her hands down her stomach to rest against her mons, unsure if she really wants to go this far. It's not the first time she's had these thoughts- it's normal, probably, considering she's surrounded by these Autobots all day and all night. Maybe she just needs to spend some more time around humans.

But though she tries to swap her mental image of Bumblebee out with some normal, human guy- maybe Tripp, after he's eaten a big slice of humble pie, or Memo- it's just not as appealing. She doesn't want to feel their hands on her, she doesn't want to imagine them kissing her.

With a sigh she slides her fingers into the cleft of her pussy, incredibly aware of how wet and turned on she is. She thinks back to one movie night when she'd ended up straddling Bumblebee's leg, his huge thigh firm against her legs, and how aware she'd been that if she just rocked forward just a little, she'd have some delicious pressure on her pussy.

Charlie gives herself that pressure now, pressing down so her palm rubs against her clit, fingers curling through the folds of her labia. This is a bad idea, probably, but it already feels too good to stop.

She keeps her other hand on her breast, playing with her nipple. Would Bee learn how to touch her the way she likes? Would he roll and pinch her nipple with his huge fingers? She's seen him be that delicate before, knows he's capable of it.

She breathes in a hitching moan as her clit throbs against her hand, her hips starting to rock in their own rhythm. How would he respond? Do bots have genitals? She lets herself imagine that the answer is yes, and in her mind Bumblebee's cock slides out from behind that plate over his groin, gleaming metal like the rest of him.

It's probably massive, Charlie thinks, her breathing going ragged as she tries to keep quiet, fingers moving to tease at her opening. Probably far too big to take inside of herself, but oh, how she would try. Bumblebee crouched over her, blocking out her view of everything except him, his glowing optics wide as he stares down at her.

Would his cock feel hot, she wonders? Or maybe it's cool, like the rest of him. She imagines it pressing inside of her and has to bite her lip to stop herself from moaning out loud.

Maybe his vocal cords are repaired by this point and he says her name in his own voice, tenderly, massive hands helping to hold her much smaller body in place for them to join together.

Charlie rubs herself frantically now, taking her hand away from her breast to brace against the slippery shower wall. Would he be gentle, considerate? Or would he be as desperate as she feels, plunging deep inside and filling her up so much, almost too much but never quite painful, she just can't imagine him hurting her...

She comes with a spasm, biting her lips to keep her moan quiet. For a few seconds there's nothing but the pleasant afterglow, the water still pelting down warm all around her, and then she's swamped with shame.

She really just touched herself while thinking about Bumblebee, she thinks, and is disgusted with herself. He's her friend, he's a completely different species! Charlie removes her hand away from her pussy and scrubs herself off brusquely, cheeks burning and stomach churning with guilt.

Oh god, she thinks, she's going to have to go out and see him again after this. Look him in the eye and pretend she wasn't having dirty fantasies about him. She leans her face against the cool tiles of the shower stall and squeezes her eyes shut.

As she's drying herself off her soulmark catches her eye, and her stomach twists again. Not only is she imagining Bee like that, but she's completely ignoring the fact that she has a very human soulmate out there somewhere. How are they gonna feel when they find out her hidden fantasies? Sometimes soulmates end up hating one another, though it's rare.

Charlie decides to sleep in her own bed that night, considering. It's lonely, too quiet without the quiet noises of Bumblebee as he recharges. She lays awake for far too long, staring at the dark ceiling and wondering if his new vocal synthesizer is going to work out.

It would be amazing for him, she knows- he's gotten really skilled at manipulating the radio, but it's not the same as just talking directly. Apparently the bots have a communication system that can send text messages as well as speech, and she'd seen him typing away at it a few times when left behind during missions.

Unfortunately, he only knows how to write Cybertronian.

She sighs, and turns over onto her side, hugging her arms in close. Sometimes she wonders if she really made the right choice in coming with him, giving up pretty much everything she knows about her ordinary, human life in order to help the Autobots hide and regroup. She doesn't regret it, not really, but sometimes she wonders if it's healthy to be away from humans like she is.

She sees Agent Fowler on occasion as he does whatever it is that he does as new liaison to Sector 7. And the people in town when she goes for food and groceries.

But most of her waking hours are spent around Autobots and she's pretty much stopped thinking of it as weird that they're so much taller, made of metal, and able to turn into vehicles at will.

Charlie twists herself in the bed again, burying her face into the pillow. Were her thoughts about Bee in the shower just a fluke? Something brought on by not enough human company and too much time spent with her friend?

Sure, she's always appreciated a nice car, feels a thrill at the sound and rumble of a powerful engine, but that's a far cry from lusting after a being that basically is a car, albeit reconfigured into a humanoid shape.

She can't truly deny that it hadn't been hard to come up with the fantasy of him, though. Not like trying to force her thoughts over to Tripp.

Would it really be so wrong, she wonders. Bumblebee and the other Autobots are all alive and sentient, after all. They're people, even if they're not human. The fact that they look different- well, she knows that there are geeks around who talk at length about the merits of aliens and androids and whatever.

Sleep is slow to find her as she tosses and turns, wrestling with her thoughts.

In the morning, her concerns about Bumblebee somehow knowing what she did in the shower are overtaken by the sad news that his 'transplant' didn't take.

"How could it not?" Charlie asks, peering down at the metal she'd patched in just the other day. The wires already look like they're starting to meld together, the bots' form of healing.

"A vocal synthesizer isn't just mechanical," Ratchet says, carefully snipping away the wires. Apparently a human's touch isn't necessary for the removal, just the installation. "It's biological, too."

She considers this, her hand aimlessly stroking the side of Bee's head. He looks sorely disappointed, eyelids drooping, hands lax at his sides on the exam table.

"So his immune system rejected it?" she asks.

"His what?" Ratchet says, pausing to squint his optics at her.

"Like what fights off germs and things," Charlie says. "Do bots even get sick?"

"There are some illnesses," Ratchet says, "But they're not caused by 'germs' as you call them."

"Hmm," she says. It must be nice not to get the flu or anything. "So what went wrong with the vocalizer, then?"

"Here," he says, and holds the now-separated chunk of metal out at her. "Why don't you figure it out for yourself."

Charlie takes the vocal synthesizer- it's already losing warmth from its connection to Bee's body- and glances at the exposed guts of the main groundbridge apparatus. The structure itself will be stationed in the 'command center' room, but while it's still being built Ratchet likes having the components close at hand. "I thought I was working on the bridge again?"

"I'm sorry, Bumblebee," Ratchet says, ignoring her. One of his hands is on Bee's shoulder and it's hard to tell which of them looks more disappointed. "That was my best shot. Maybe once we retake Cybertron..."

Bumblebee buzzes and sits up, antennae drooping and optics somehow seeming less bright, though Charlie is pretty sure the way they work means they never actually dim. He looks over at her and seemingly tries to smile, but she pats his arm to let him know it's okay.

"I'm sure Ratchet will think of something else," she says.

Ratchet lets out a grumpy-sounding noise, but doesn't contradict her.

Bee eases himself off the table, and holds out a hand to her.

Charlie shakes her head with a smile. "I've got work to do here," she says. "I'll see you for lunch?"

He nods, and with one last look at Ratchet, leaves the medbay.

"Figure it out yet?" Ratchet says after a moment.

"Huh?" Charlie says, totally lost in thought, and then remembers the vocal synthesizer in her hands. "Oh! No, not yet, give me a few."

She turns her attention to the piece of metal, thanking Ratchet when he plunks her toolbox on the metal table for her instead of forcing her to get down and fetch it herself. She works the cover off the synthesizer and starts poking around its guts, trying to not envision herself working on actual guts.

"This doesn't look Cybertronian," Charlie says at last, baffled. She looks up at Ratchet, busy working at one of his computer terminals, and he nods.

"That's because it isn't," he says. "That was my attempt to recreate the proper mechanisms with native materials. Bumblebee's voice would have been drastically different from his original one, but had it worked, he would have been able to communicate vocally again."

"Oh," she says, and turns over the synthesizer in her hands. "But it's not Cybertronian, so it's not biological, and his body couldn't use it."

"Precisely," Ratchet says. "You might as well put it away and work on the relays for the groundbridge surge overflow."

Charlie sets down the failed synthesizer and packs up her tools. The jump down to the floor isn't too far- about six feet or so- but she still takes care to land with bent knees, feeling the shock travel up her spine. Maybe she should petition for some kind of rubber mat on the floor, she thinks, or actually use her ladder instead of climbing up Bumblebee like he's a tree all the time.

Her face heats up as she thinks about how close she gets to Bee when she does that. It makes her wonder, yet again, whether the bots are sexual beings or not and, if they are, if they keep their, um, equipment in the same places as humans. Arcee has chest plates that look a lot like boobs, something none of the other male bots have, which makes her think the answer might be 'yes'.

"Hey, Ratchet," Charlie says with deliberate casualness as she busies herself over a cluster of wires- she swears, you look away from the things for one minute and they tangle worse than her hair on a windy day. "Is there some kind of book on Autobots? A manual for your systems, or something."

Ratchet pause in his typing and squints his optics down at her. "What would you want with something like that?"

"If I'm going to keep learning to be a medic, shouldn't I know what you guys look like before I try and fix you up?" she says. It's a completely honest answer- she really does think it's a good idea to learn more about the bots in general- and if it serves her second, more selfish motivation, well, that's just some icing on the cake.

"That's not too bad an idea," Ratchet says, hand coming up to rub at his chin. He nods to himself. "Unfortunately, the only introductory text I have access to is in Cybertronian."

Well, that is a complication. "Does it have pictures?" she says. Charlie supposes that she can get one of the bots to translate if she needs to, but then she'd probably be far too embarrassed to ask about any sections that even seem to hint about sex.

"Some," Ratchet says. He does something with his computer that she knows no ordinary computer could even dream of doing, and then holds out one of the smaller data-tablets the bots use. "I've loaded it onto this. You may need to press hard to get it to register your fingers."

She takes the tablet; it's an unwieldy size but not as heavy as she would have guessed, a little lighter than a book its size would be. There are no buttons, just a glowing screen showing alien script and a stylized depiction of a Cybertronian body.

Charlie taps the screen. Nothing happens. She presses harder, and the only thing that happens is the screen- soft like plastic, not the glass she was expecting- deforms and discolors under her fingertip.

"Try swiping," Ratchet says, watching her with a skeptical look.

She wipes her fingers across the screen, and the image slides away, replaced with a second. She repeats the gesture, then does it in reverse. "Like moving stacked pages," she says out loud. "Neat."

"Yes, 'neat'," he says with a snort. "You have work on the groundbridge to finish up, don't forget."

"Yeah, yeah," Charlie says, engrossed in flipping through the digital 'pages'. A lot of them are just filled with text that she can't read, or graphs and charts that don't mean anything to her, but there are some more comprehensible pictures as well, showing various parts of a bot's body.

Ratchet clears his throat pointedly- he doesn't even have a throat to clear like a human does!- and she reluctantly sets the tablet down next to her toolbox for later.

Charlie doesn't think about the tablet again until she's packing up for the night, and then she remembers exactly why she'd wanted it in the first place. She coughs a little nervously and says, "I can borrow this, right?"

"That's why I gave it to you," Ratchet says, like he's doubting his decision to trust her already.

"Rad," she says, and takes it with her when she leaves the med bay. The bots don't need to sleep- er, recharge- as much as she does, but things still tend to quiet down around nighttime.

She settles onto the human-sized couch with the tablet in hand and smiles when Bumblebee cautiously sits on the other side of the couch, taking up pretty much the entire rest of the space. They'd had to reinforce the frame with metal after the first time he'd tried that, but she likes that he doesn't have to sit on the floor or the uncomfortable-looking metal furniture the other bots prefer.

He peers at the tablet and looks curious.

"Ratchet's letting me read up on Cybertronian anatomy," Charlie says, tipping the tablet so he can see. "I can't actually read it, of course, but the pictures should be useful."

He lets out a whir.

"Yeah, you could translate it, I know," she says, pulling the tablet towards herself again. "But it'd take forever."

Bumblebee considers this, and nods. She smiles at him again and then squirms around on the couch until her feet are propped up on his thigh, her shoulders tucked against the armrest. The tablet sits quite nicely in her lap like this, she finds, and unlike a regular book, the screen glows to make it easy to read.

She flips through the book aimlessly, looking at the pictures with interest but not really studying them. And then she's flipped the page and stares at something that is, while alien, undeniably similar to diagrams that had graced her sex-ed classes back at school.

Her face burns and she looks up at Bee; he's occupied fiddling with something attached to his arm, though his optics glance over at her when he registers her gaze. Charlie drops her eyes back to the book and hastily swipes to the next page, which seems to be the same organs, just in the female variety. She swipes again and there's a wall of text, which is far less incriminating.

"I think I'm gonna head to bed," she says, swinging her legs away from Bumblebee and standing abruptly.

He lets out a buzz, and she shakes her head. "I'm fine, just tired."

He doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't try and get her to stay, either. Charlie clutches the tablet to her chest and climbs the stairs up to her set of rooms, waving a hasty goodnight to Bee still sitting on the couch, looking perplexed.

Behind the privacy of a door- closed and locked, as if a flimsy lock would really do any good against a bot- she sinks to her bed, and looks at the tablet again. She swipes back to the previous page, and stares at what for all the world looks like a cross-section of a vagina. There's no uterus attached, though, she notes clinically. It simply ends in a cul-de-sac some distance in- about the same proportions as a human vagina, she guesses, but presumably on a larger scale.

Then she takes a deep breath and swipes her finger backwards.

That is, unmistakably, a penis. An erect one, too, jutting out from the nondescript suggestion of a bot's hips. It looks generally the same shape as the human penises she's seen- not in person, no, but she's seen dirty magazines a few times, plus the aforementioned sex ed diagrams. But it has concentric rings all along its length that look like places where it might collapse down, and she realizes belatedly that there aren't a pair of testicles hanging just below.

"That makes sense," Charlie says to herself. Her finger brushes against the image by accident and it moves, to her shock. The penis on the screen does some sort of complicated folding-and-retracting maneuver, ending up tucked away quite neatly and unobtrusively in the diagram bot's body.

She taps the image again, and the sequence plays out in reverse, the plates in the bot's groin sliding aside to allow the penis to emerge.

"Whoa," she says, both at what she's seeing and at the realization that all the images in this book might not be still photographs after all, but little movie clips.

Charlie swipes backwards to another diagram, this one of some weird tangle of pumps and tubes, and taps the image. It comes to life, formerly static arrows suddenly moving, illustrating the flow of... whatever the pipes are carrying.

She grins to herself, delighted with this new information.

She can almost forget what she'd seen about Cybertronian, ah, anatomy as she instead plays with various diagrams that still don't have a lot of context, but now make more sense in some ways.

Eventually though she sets the tablet aside, pretty sure she's looked at every picture inside at least once.

So, Charlie thinks to herself as she stares up at the pasty ceiling, the bots aren't all that different from humans in some respects. It certainly makes certain thoughts she'd had seem more plausible, even as her face burns in shame and embarrassment to have been thinking of it in the first place. She feels kind of like Pandora in the old Greek myths- she wanted to know what was inside the box, so to speak, and now she has to live with the consequences.

Unless there's something more about Cybertronian anatomy that she's missing by not being able to read the text, Bumblebee has a penis.

She claps her hand to her mouth as a desperate little giggle escapes her. Bee has a dick, and- oh god, she thinks, so does Ratchet, and Bulkhead, and Sideswipe, and- jesus, even Optimus Prime probably has a penis. Everyone has a dick except for Arcee, who likely has a vagina.

A louder bray of laughter escapes Charlie, eyes squeezing tightly shut.

They've just got penises hidden away inside their naked robot bodies, which apparently spring out fully-hard and ready to go. She has no idea why the thought is so hysterical, but it's starting to get difficult to get air to her lungs with how hard she's laughing.

Do they ever use them, she wonders? None of them seem fond enough of the others to be having sex, which begs the question of whether Cybertronians indulge in self-love?

Except that thought reminds her that she certainly does, and her laughter abruptly ceases. Her stomach squirms.

So the Autobots have similar-enough junk in their trunks that they probably function about the same way, and that makes her wonder, seriously this time, if they ever touch themselves. If Bumblebee ever gets aroused and takes his cock in hand and strokes it until whatever the robot equivalent of an orgasm would be.

Charlie presses her legs tightly together, but that doesn't do anything to ease the growing heat there, her pussy if anything throbbing gratefully at the pressure.

Once is happenstance, she's been telling herself. Anyone might get curious, even if the person they're curious about is in fact a fifteen-foot metal robot.

But twice... Touching herself twice while thinking about Bumblebee would be declaring something deeper than simple, idle curiosity. And Charlie isn't sure she's ready to admit that to herself just yet.

She takes a deep breath and forces herself up off the bed. What she needs right now is a nice, cold shower.

A few days after getting her hands on that textbook, Ratchet surprises her- and everyone else, by the look of it- by announcing that the groundbridge is ready to be installed and tested.

"Really?" Charlie asks, recalling vividly how just the other day it had sparked so badly her hair singed a little.

"We cannot ignore the tactical advantage of having a working groundbridge," Optimus says with an approving nod.

"I call dibs on not being the one to test it," Sideswipe says.

"Will humans be able to use it?" Charlie asks, louder than her previous question.

Bumblebee puts a hand on her shoulder, like he thinks she's about to try charging off into it right then and there.

"In theory, yes," Ratchet says.

'In theory' is not the most comforting thing to hear, but she's still pretty excited. Instantaneous travel to anywhere on the planet, like something straight out of Star Trek! "This is gonna be really rad, Bee," she says to him. Charlie's been working on the project pretty much since she first got to the base, minus a couple of weeks while Ratchet gave her the side-eye and wouldn't let her work on anything more complex than maintenance of some of their cruder machinery, but it's always seems like a far-away goal.

"How are we going to test it?" Arcee says, surveying the already-constructed ring structures that control the dispersal of energy.

"We'll send inanimate matter through," Ratchet says, "And work our way up from there."

"It is truly an impressive feat of engineering to have constructed this from salvaged and native materials, Ratchet," Optimus says in his usual calm way, as if it isn't totally freaking awesome that they could have the bridge up and running shortly. "And we must thank you for your part in it as well, Charlie."

"Oh," she says, suddenly shy as his optics blaze down on her. "It was nothing. I mean, I couldn't just sit around and not help, you know?"

Optimus inclines his head.

"Well I don't know anything about the science of it," Bulkhead says, "But I know it's a feat that deserves a good stiff round of high-grade!"

"We don't have any high-grade," Ratchet says, his voice exasperated.

"High-grade what?" Charlie asks Bee.

"Energon," he replies in Ratchet's voice while the real Ratchet bickers back and forth with Bulkhead.

"So high-grade Energon is like, what, alcohol for you guys?" she says.

Bumblebee considers this, head tilting and the wings on his back twitching a little. Then he nods.

Charlie grins and considers the possibilities. "We're gonna have to get some," she says.

He seems excited by the prospect, and she wonders if there's a minimum drinking age for Cybertronians like there is for humans, and on what side of the line Bee falls under, given that he's comparatively young. She herself can't legally drink for another two years, not that she intends to tell the bots that.

The actual installation for the groundbridge happens over the next three days, with every bot helping to move components from the medbay out to the command center, Charlie running herself ragged to shimmy between sections and see to it that everything is getting connected up properly while Ratchet barks orders.

Even Optimus helps get the heaviest and most delicate piece positioned, the doohickey that generates the whatchamacallit field that actually enables transportation. Charlie kind of gave up learning all their proper names, but she's still pretty confident she could rebuild this thing from scratch if she needed to.

She's not sure what she's expecting when Ratchet pulls the switch for the first test. The machinery tucked under the floor hums and rattles, and suddenly, a green glow erupts from between the metal rings set into the wall. It swirls kind of like water going down a drain, and try as she might, she can't see if it connects to another side or not.

"It's taking more Energon than I had calculated," Ratchet grumbles as the bridge powers down.

"We may have to accept the expenditure as necessary," Optimus says.

"Let me go over the intake ratios first," Ratchet says, and waves for Charlie to follow him towards the no-longer-glowing area.

"What are we looking for?" she asks, peering into the gleaming cobble of machinery.

"We'll recalibrate," he says in reply, using one of his built-in tools (yes, she's a little jealous but also, a work-belt allows for basically the same thing) to expose the guts of the main Energon pump that fuels the whole operation.

It's tedious work, but not too difficult. Mostly it's strange to be doing it out in the open, rather than in the medbay with just Ratchet for company.

Bumblebee watches them avidly, his glowing optics focused on her every time she glances his way. She smiles and gives him a little wave, and he twitches in place before smiling back.

Charlie laughs under her breath, but her smile fades when Sideswipe drops one of his red hands onto Bee's shoulder, saying something she can't hear.

Bumblebee looks unhappy, but whatever it was, he doesn't put up a fuss over it. He transforms into his Camaro form and drives out through the 'driveway', Sideswipe following in his much flashier car shape.

"How come Sideswipe doesn't like Bumblebee very much?" Charlie asks as nonchalantly as she can a little while later.

Ratchet squints at her. "Who say he doesn't?"

She rolls her eyes. "Anyone who watches them interact," she says, but then considers how much time Ratchet spends squirreled away working on his various projects. "I mean, is it just because I'm Bee's friend? Because that's kind of racist. Species-ist?"

"Sideswipe has no great love of humans, it's true," he says. "But he's a good soldier, and he'll fight to keep this planet safe like any of us would."

"I'm not worried about that," she says, trying to figure out how to word her concerns. She knows that Sideswipe doesn't like her very much, but it annoys her that he brushes off Bee so easily as well. And his comments about Bumblebee's lack of a voice, and small-ish stature (as if he's any taller!), and really, he just strikes her as kind of a jerk. She doesn't like it when people are mean to her friends. "You don't think there's friction between them?"

"They're both young," Ratchet says, and trades one tool for another as he adjusts the pump's nozzles. "In my experience, young Autobots are always rough with one another. Damn fools don't know how to feel confident earning their places themselves yet."

Charlie considers this. She's not sure if it answers her question, but if Ratchet doesn't think there's anything to be concerned about, maybe there really isn't.

She sighs, and reaches in to check that the wires feeding into the pump's processor are secure. And then yanks her arm back as pain shoots up her nerves, making her cry out and clutch her arm to her chest.

"What?" Ratchet says, suddenly giving her his full attention.

She shakes her head, eyes shut tight as she holds in the urge to scream. It feels as if her arm is on fire, throbbing in time with her heart.

"Charlie," he says, and she feels a cool metal finger on her shoulder. "Tell me what happened."

She opens her eyes and gasps in a breath, the pain starting ebb to a more manageable level. It's not her right arm, she realizes only belatedly- it's her left, the pain radiating out from deep under her skin. "Hurts," she says.

"You're not leaking," Ratchet says, gently tugging her arm away from her protective grip. "The bone inside doesn't feel broken. Did you touch any of the live wires?"

Charlie shakes her head. She's felt pain like this before, and now that she's able to focus clearly, there's no mistaking that it's emanating from her soulmark. "I'm fine," she says. "My soulmate."

He goes still, and then lets go of her arm. "You're in pain because of your soulmate?"

She nods, and starts taking in deep breathes, forcing the pain out of the forefront of her mind. "It happens if they get hurt, sometimes," she says. "Should ease up in a bit."

"Well," Ratchet says, watching her warily. She's gonna go ahead and guess that Cybertronian Sparkmates don't have that side effect. "Why don't you go lie down and recharge, then. I can handle things from here."

Charlie nods again, still clutching her arm to herself as she climbs out of the hole in the floor. She doesn't retreat all the way to her room, though, just flops down onto the couch. The pain isn't nearly as bad as it was at first, but it's still noticeable, a throbbing feeling somewhere deep inside her arm.

She stares up at the ceiling and wonders where her soulmate is, what they've done to get hurt this time. She'd almost been able to forget that she has a soulmate, so wrapped up in life at the base as she is.

Now she stares at the blue-white mark on her skin like it's betraying her. How can some stranger she doesn't even know mean so much to her that they're on her skin for life? It seems ridiculous.

She listens to Ratchet fuss around with the workings of the groundbridge, holding her marked left arm close to her chest like that'll soothe the pain. What does it even matter, Charlie thinks to herself. Her parents were soulmates and that hadn't stopped her Dad from dying, or her Mom from finding Ron.

If it wasn't for this pain- already fading further and further away- she would have questioned whether her soulmate is even still alive. It's not like the universe cares whether you actually find each other, it just declares you compatible and lets you figure it out for yourselves.

By the time Bumblebee and Sideswipe are back from whatever patrol or mission they were on, Charlie's back on her feet, tweaking a loose connection in preparation for the next test of the groundbridge. She stops what she's doing and smiles at the familiar rumble of Bee's engine, pleased to see him back.

The two bots transform to their robot forms, Sideswipe griping about something or other.

But Charlie's attention fixes itself on Bee's side, where his plating is dented up, Energon dripping down sluggishly. "You're hurt!" she says with dismay in her voice.

Bumblebee ducks his head and flicks a glance to Sideswipe, just long enough for her to know that it's the red bot's fault that Bee didn't comm in. Stupid boys and their pissing matches to look tough in front of the other, she thinks.

"Let me see that," Ratchet says, waving Sideswipe away.

Bumblebee looks less than enthusiastic at this command, belatedly clamping a hand to his side as if to hide the injury. If it's a minor rupture, then there's every chance that he'll be able to heal it himself given some time- but it could easily be something more serious, and anyway he'll want those dents in his plating smoothed out before they heal crooked.

"Now, Bee," Charlie says sternly, crossing her arms.

He whirs, but soon capitulates, looking to Ratchet with wide optics.

She turns to Sideswipe, leveling a glare at him. "What happened out there? Why's Bee hurt?"

Sideswipe rolls his optics. "He's fine," he says, "Buzz-brain didn't dodge a con's shot fast enough is all."

"Stop calling him that," Charlie snaps, fed up with the mean nickname. "He's hurt and you should have at least called in to update us."

Sideswipe sneers down at her, but she's spent the last five months with these guys; she isn't so easily intimidated by them. "He's the lugnut who got hurt, he should have commed himself- oh, wait. He can't."

"Don't talk about him like that," she says, her rage washing over her to the point where she's practically calm again. "Bee's the one who kept this planet safe before the rest of you even got here, he's a hero. You should have enough respect to not be a total dick to him about injuries he got fighting Decepticons!"

He laughs, a vocal noise and a deeper one, like stuttering gears inside his body. "He was only on this planet because Optimus has a soft spot for weaklings," Sideswipe says.

Charlie winds up to say something else, she doesn't know what, but is cut off by the sound of Optimus's measured voice saying, "Enough."

She turns to the sound instinctively, seeing Sideswipe to the same.

Optimus stands in one of the shadowed doorways to the storage areas, his optics steely and mouth firm. "Bumblebee was chosen to protect Earth in preparation for our arrival because he is a valuable and experienced Scout," he says. "Sideswipe, your conduct with respect to him is not becoming that of an Autobot."

Sideswipe clenches his hands so hard she can hear the servos inside whirring in protest. "He's just a jumped-up punk!" he bursts out with. "Why does he get all the special treatment, huh? Always getting the good assignments, and he gets to have his pet on base with him, and now he screwed up getting shot and it's my fault? This is such slag!"

"Assignments are given to the Autobot best suited to the parameters," Optimus says with implacable calmness. "If you continue to behave with such reckless disregard for your teammates, I may have to rethink what missions you are qualified for."

"You're threatening to park me?" Sideswipe says, disbelief plain on his face.

Charlie can't help but feel a little bit smug- finally, he's being held accountable for his behavior. "Serves you right," she says.

"Shut it, human," Sideswipe snaps at her.

"Sideswipe," Optimus says, but then turns his optics to her as well. "Charlie." She instantly feels the weight of his disapproval like it's a physical force. "I expect each and every one of you to behave yourselves."

She breathes out a forcible breath, and makes herself nod. "Sorry, Optimus," she says.

Sideswipe stays conspicuously silent.

Charlie rolls her eyes. "I'm gonna go see if Ratchet needs help with Bee."

"Of course you are," Sideswipe mutters, almost too quietly for her to pick up on.

She clenches her jaw and ignores him, walking swiftly towards the medbay while she hears Optimus take a few heavy steps further inside the command room. He starts to say something to Sideswipe, but she can't make out the words.

In the medbay, Ratchet is just finishing up splicing a bit of fresh tubing into Bumblebee's side, his digits coated in leaked Energon.

"How bad was it?" Charlie asks, dragging over her stepladder so she can haul up onto the exam table.

"Nothing serious," Ratchet says, barely sparing her a look. Bee buzzes and tilts his head towards her, and she smiles at him. "A lucky shot managed to find an opening in his plating, but it was a grazing blow."

"That's good to hear," she says, and peers down at Bee's injured side. Being that they're mostly metal, it's hard to damage a Cybertronian- but as her anatomy text has shown her, they do have softer parts here and there, mostly in the form of delicate wires and rubber-like tubing for Energon and other fluids to flow through. It looks to her like Bee was clipped in one of these tubes, the equivalent of a human cutting a few capillaries- nowhere near as serious as hitting an actual vein.

Charlie wants to ask Bumblebee about Sideswipe's treatment of him, but doesn't want to embarrass him in front of anyone. She settles for helping Ratchet clean up the damage in his side, glad when his plating goes back on, the place he was hit now just a faint dent that'll smooth itself out in a few days.

"Better have some Energon now," Ratchet says, hand on Bee's shoulder as he sits up.

"And maybe a bath," she can't help but add, gesturing to the places his spilled Energon is drying in purplish streaks on his metal.

Bumblebee looks at where she's pointing, and he plays a commercial for some random car wash place.

Charlie laughs, and he whirs happily.

Ratchet makes a grumpy noise and hands over a container of glistening, faintly-glowing purple Energon.

She watches curiously as Bee lifts the container to his mouthplate in order to drink. He doesn't have a mouth, so how is this going to work?

Apparently, the grill-like piece in the center of his mouthpiece can slide open, Charlie learns. She feels the urge to ask why Bee's mouth looks like that, when none of the other Cybertronians she's encountered do, but she's worried it'll be taken the wrong way.

She's forgotten about the twinge of pain from her soulmark until Ratchet says, "And let's see your arm while you're here."

Bumblebee turns to her with a concerned look.

"It's fine," Charlie says, rolling her eyes. "Doesn't even hurt anymore."

Bee buzzes, and says, "You're hurt?"

"No," she says with a shake of her head. "Just felt a little weird earlier is all."

Ratchet holds out his hand, and she sighs and puts her arm into his grip. He peers at her arm, though what he expects to find, she doesn't know. It hadn't even bruised or anything, of course- pain between soulmates is never physical like that.

"Everything seems intact," he says.

"Like I said," Charlie says, taking her arm back. "It's nothing."

Bumblebee doesn't look convinced, and she decides to switch the topic. "But we got the groundbridge up and running!" she says. "We'll be testing it for a while still to be sure it's safe, but how cool is that?"

He looks to Ratchet, who nods. "Yes, you'll be able to get in trouble all over the globe soon enough," he says with obvious distaste for the idea.

She laughs, and when Bee sets down the empty Energon container, she grabs his hand. "Come on, let's get you washed up," she says.

The next time Charlie goes into town, she has Bumblebee drive her to the little thrift shop. She hasn't been in much- what need does she have for clothes shopping?- but she has a goal in mind this time. She finds a simple long-sleeved black shirt and once she's back at base, she cuts the sleeves into a wide cuff that covers her soulmark exactly.

She isn't covering it out of a sense of modesty, but because she wants to pretend it doesn't exist.

Who is the universe to decide that she's going to be tied to some random person she's never met and maybe never will? She's made her decision- she's going to align herself with the Autobots, with Bumblebee, in whatever way he'll have her.

None of the bots notice, of course. They don't really pay attention to what she wears.

Still, Charlie feels freer with the mark covered up, less like there's some ominous sword of Fate hanging over her head. Some people go mad and try to remove their marks, but it doesn't end up going well for them.

Supposedly, if you scratch or burn or even cut off the limb where your soulmark is located, it'll just reappear in another spot. That's a rumor she is content not to put to the test.

The groundbridge gets tested thoroughly, to the extent that Ratchet even acquires a live mouse and sends that through before allowing Charlie to step foot inside the glowing portal.

The mouse is fine, if a little confused.

Charlie's excitement lasts up until she actually passes through the bridge, and gets to experience its effects first-hand. It's like swirling down a drain, or maybe a tornado; her ears pop, stomach churning, balance messed up as she staggers through.

"Oh god," she says on the other side, bent over with her hands on her knees. "That was the worst."

Bumblebee was next to her the entire time- he offered to drive her, but she foolishly, oh so foolishly, thought it would be cooler to walk, at least her first time- and he whirs in concern, one of his massive hands rubbing gingerly up and down her back.

"Does it always feel like that?" Charlie asks, once her head no longer feels like it's being pinched together.

He shrugs. "The first cut is the deepest," his radio sings to her.

"Ugh," she says, and straightens up her back. "I'm gonna need a break before I can go back through it."

Bumblebee smiles at her, and puts his hand up to his head, a gesture the bots sometimes use when communicating. If she's being honest, she thinks the action is kind of cute- their comms are, apparently, built into their bodies, so where would they have picked up the gesture?

"Bumblebee to base," he says, and she smiles when she hears Ratchet's voice, piped through Bee's external speakers instead of just echoing inside his head so that she can hear as well.

"Everything go alright?" Ratchet says, a touch of anxiety in his voice.

"Mission accomplished," Bee says, "Charlie reporting all systems normal."

"Good, good," Ratchet says. "Same coordinates, then?"

Bumblebee sends her a look, and Charlie shakes her head. "Ooh, she's a little runaway," he sings.

"What?" Ratchet asks. "Did you lose her?"

"And with the radio blasting, goes cruising just as fast as she can now; And she'll have fun fun fun, 'til her daddy takes the T-bird away," Bee plays, shimmying just a little to the tune of the song.

She grins at him, and he takes his hand away from his head, cutting off Ratchet's sputtering protests mid-syllable. "Let's just drive for a while," she says.

In answer Bumblebee jumps a little into the air, landing gracefully on four wheels in his Camaro form. He pops open the driver's side door and waggles it, as if she needs any more enticement to get in.

"Where to?" his radio crackles as he revs his engine, tires spinning into the dry dust.

"Anywhere," Charlie says, her hands splaying over his steering wheel without putting any actual pressure on it. He's said he doesn't mind if she drives him, but she doesn't like feeling like she's taking away his control, so she mostly doesn't. "There's no one around; let's find some good road and see how fast you can go."

Bumblebee honks his horn excitedly and leaps into motion, and soon they're racing down a stretch of neglected asphalt.

She rolls down his window and sticks her hand out, feeling the wind grab at her, as if trying to help her fly. She bets he's the fastest of the Autobots, though Sideswipe probably begs to differ, with his overly-flashy car form. And with Bee doing the steering, they can drive all sorts of complicated maneuvers a normal car wouldn't dream of, spinning on a dime, charging in reverse, even tilting up onto two wheels while Charlie grabs the steering wheel and screams, delight coursing through her veins.

After a particularly thrilling jump he executes with precision, she rubs her hand over his dashboard and says, "I love you, Bee!"

His radio bursts with static, chassis seeming to quiver around her. "Did you ever know that you're my hero, and everything I would like to be? I can fly higher than an eagle, for you are the wind beneath my wings," the radio cuts back in with.

"Sap!" Charlie says fondly.

He seems to smile back at her, though of course his actual face isn't visible in this form. They keep driving for a while, messing around, until another car joins them on the road and they have to pretend to be street-legal again.

"We should probably head back in again," she says, sighing a little and sinking in against the warm leather of his seat. Where does it all go when he transforms, she can't help but wonder idly. Ratchet says there's something about pocket dimensions, or something, but she has a hard time accepting it.

Bumblebee's engine makes a noise like a sigh, and she pats his dashboard again in consolation.

Abruptly, she can hear Ratchet's voice again, grumpy as usual. "If you two are done fooling around," he grouses, and Charlie feels her face heat up with the unintentional second meaning that she's definitely the only one to be thinking of. "You should have been back at base hours ago."

"Sorry, Ratchet," Charlie says, unsure if the microphone or whatever will pick up on her voice.

"Send me your coordinates and I'll open the bridge to take you back," he says.

She has absolutely no idea how to do that, but Bumblebee must take care of it, because within short order there's another glowing green portal open just ahead of them. Bee drives through it without hesitation and Charlie tenses, but it isn't as bad this time around. Maybe because she's seated, maybe because she's expecting it.

It still doesn't feel pleasant, but she barely even feels the urge to hurl when Bee spins to a stop in the command center.

"Success!" she says as she gets out, Bumblebee reforming himself as soon as she's clear.

"I'll want you in medbay for a full work-up," Ratchet says, optics trained on her suspiciously.

Charlie rolls her eyes- Ratchet barely knows the basics of human medicine, and only that because he's had her around to be a baseline the last few months- but she doesn't argue.

"Way to go, Charlie," Bulkhead says. "We'll make an Autobot of you yet."

She smiles up at him, accepting the compliment for what it is. "Just you wait," she says, "One of these days I'll turn up with your emblem tattooed on my forehead."

Bumblebee lets out a buzz, and she looks at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Of course I'm joking, Bee," she says, trying to keep the laugh out of her voice. "Not that you're one to talk, though."

He reaches up and touches the Autobot symbol resting on his forehead, looking distraught. Charlie loses the battle against laughing then, taking in his expression.

She gets used to the groundbridge by necessity. Now that it's an option, the bots seem to use it more often than they do their driveway. It's not foolproof though- case in point, the groundbridge deposited them quite safely at their intended destination, but interference is keeping them from opening another, or even radioing back to the base to let Ratchet know.

This would be a minor annoyance, except they're not just out joyriding. No, Charlie thinks to herself, she just had to come along while they investigate a more-than-trace Energon signal.

And now Sideswipe is down on the ground leaking Energon from a hole in his side, groaning like he's about to keel over dead.

"Scrap," she says from the rock Bumblebee tucked her behind once the shooting started. She glances at him; Bee is busy taking on Decepticons, his hands transformed into energy blasters and his battle mask that really makes him look like a bee firmly in place.

Arcee is crouched behind another rock a little further away, similarly occupied.

Charlie swears again and ducks her head as she leaves the shelter of her rock, running to Sideswipe's side.

"Huh?" he says when he catches sight of her. "Get back out of the way!"

"Shut up," she snaps, irritably pushing her hair out of the way so she can get a clear look at the damage. "Unless you want to bleed out."

Sideswipe squints at her and she rolls her eyes. She sticks her hands straight into the hole in his middle as he shouts in pain, grabbing for the worst of the bleeding Energon tubes. When it's actually in their 'veins' it's not nearly as dangerous for her to touch, apparently, though she should really be wearing gloves for this.

"Bumblebee!" Charlie shouts, "I need my toolkit!"

Bee turns to look at her and buzzes in alarm.

"Now!" she says when he hesitates.

He changes one of his blasters back into hands, and reaches into himself where things get stored if he's carrying them in car form. She tries not to think about it too much, because the physics of it all are pretty freaky. He starts moving towards where she and Sideswipe are, his back to them. Drawing fire to himself but also providing cover, which probably balances out.

He tosses her toolbox to her and Charlie grabs it quickly, fingers slick with Sideswipe's Energon.

She doesn't keep more than the basics on-hand when she and Bumblebee go out, but it's far better than just plugging Sideswipe's tubing with her fingers and hoping for the best. She retrieves a pair of clamps and sets them on the biggest leaking tube, and then focuses her attention on the wires still sparking with electricity.

"You need to shut off the power to those," she says.

"What? I can't!" Sideswipe says, starting to wiggle around as he tries to look at what she's doing inside his chassis.

"Yes you can," Charlie says without much sympathy. "I can't do anything to help until you shut off the electricity, so focus."

He frowns and squirms, optics flaring bright for a moment before the sparking abruptly dies down. She pats him on the shoulder plating and dives back in, twisting lengths of donor wires to the most important lines, reconnecting them. She can't do anything about the twisted metal, the gears knocked out of alignment, but she can at least make sure his condition won't deteriorate.

"You're not going to be able to transform, or do anything too athletic," she says as she pulls back, smeared in Energon. "But that should hold you until we can get back to base and Ratchet can take a look."

Sideswipe pokes at the damage in his stomach and she swats at his hand, though she couldn't really stop him if he wasn't letting her.

"I need to get back out there," he says, and she shakes her head.

"Arcee and Bee have it covered," Charlie says, glancing over at where the two bots are teaming up against the last of the Decepticons. "Come on, we have to get away from these hills. I think that's what's causing the interference with the comms."

Sideswipe grumbles but gets up to his feet, swaying as soon as he's upright. "Whoa," he says, "I don't think I feel so good."

She rolls her eyes and packs up her toolkit. "If you faint, fall away from the squishy human, thanks."

He glances down at her with something like surprise in his face, but he starts walking without another word of complaint.

But it's quieter than not most days, honestly. She gets used to finding ways to occupy her time without leaving the base- she rents a lot of movies, invests in a Nintendo. She considers saving up her government "consultant" salary and buying a junk car to fix up.

"Where are we going?" Charlie asks, not stopping to question if she's going when Bee is waiting for her in car form, engine revving and door open.

As she settles into the seat his radio comes to life. "In a world where - two unlikely friends - save the world! - coming to a theater near you - the hit of the summer..."

She laughs a little. "Did you find a drive-in theater?" she asks as the groundbridge powers up.

Bumblebee plays a chirp of music which she interprets as 'yes' and guns it through the portal, not slowing down as he touches down on the other side.

She laughs louder, feeling that same thrill in her chest as always when he shows off his speed and driving skill. "Can I take a spin?" she asks.

"Baby you can drive my car, yes I'm gonna be a star, baby you can drive my car," he plays in answer.

With a grin Charlie takes his steering wheel with firm hands and presses her foot to his accelerator pedal, feeling his engine leap at the touch. Being driven around by Bee is amazing, but taking control for herself is something else. It's not like driving a normal car- she can't forget for even a second that he's his own sentient being, rather than a mindless machine- and the way he responds to her movements, anticipating her actions...

It's sublime, is what it is. She sings along to his radio as they tear up the road, dodging and weaving among other, lesser cars that dare to be on the same road as them. Bumblebee seems to enjoy it as much as she does, the dials in his dashboard glowing in time with the music and the thrumming of his powerful engine, windows rolled down to let the wind blast through the cab.

"We'll be late," he says after what feels like hardly any time at all, and Charlie reluctantly gives him back control of the wheel, considering he's the one who knows where they're going.

The drive-in isn't very crowded, and they're able to find a good spot, near an attachment point for the clip-on speakers but without anyone totally blocking the view.

When the title of the first movie comes on screen, a little washed out because the sun hasn't quite set yet, Charlie bursts out laughing. "Herbie?" she gasps, trying to draw in enough breath between the gales of laughter. "We're watching The Love Bug?"

Bumblebee laughs with the sound of hitching gears, clearly pleased with himself.

"Oh, Bee," she says, patting his dashboard fondly. "You were much cooler than that bug, just so you know."

It's a silly movie, not one she'd watch on her own, probably, but it's fun watching it with Bumblebee, who takes to quoting some of the lines and sound effects as the movie plays. When the end credits roll, Charlie reassures him that she knows he would have won that race no contest, in his present form or as a Beetle again.

He whirs happily in reply.

"Is there another one after this?" she asks; she hadn't checked the marquee at the entrance, just handed over her money and bought herself a ticket.

"Stay tuned for more," Bee says.

"Rad," she says, getting out with a stretch. "I'm gonna use the bathroom and get some popcorn. You want anything?"

He spins his dial in response, and she takes that as a 'no', not that she was expecting different. The line for the bathroom isn't too long- apparently, this drive-in isn't doing all that great- and the popcorn is fresh, salty and buttery. As she heads back to Bee she notices that the crowd is changing; instead of families with kids, it's more young people, groups of friends and couples. It makes her wonder what the second movie is going to be.

She settles back into the seat and waggles the bag of popcorn. "Sure you don't want any?" she asks.

Bumblebee doesn't reply, and she shrugs, popping a handful into her mouth. "More for me," she says with her mouth full.

"A lady of refined tastes," he says.

Charlie smiles. "You know it."

The second movie begins playing and, again, she laughs when she realizes what it is. "First The Love Bug ," she says, "and now Christine? Bee, I'm sensing a theme here."

He laughs loud enough that it drowns out the sound from the speaker for a moment, his whole chassis shivering with obvious glee. She laughs too, enjoying his sense of humor. How did he even find out about this drive-in out in the middle of wherever playing this particular double-feature?

"Hey," Charlie says as the Plymouth on screen terrorizes some scabby teenage punks, "You know I don't see you guys as actual cars, right?"

Bumblebee's dial rotates. "I know you don't," he says, and she relaxes.

"Good," she says with a nod. "But do you see me as just another organic life-form?" she can't help but ask, making the teasing obvious in her voice to cover up the seriousness of the question.

There's no teasing in Bee's response. "You are dear to me," he says, "There is no one like you in the universe."

Charlie's breath hitches, and she tries to hide her reaction with a silly smile. "Aww, Bee," she says, and traces over the Autobot symbol in the middle of his steering wheel. "I love you too, buddy."

Most of the time when she sleeps with Bee, she curls up along his side. Tonight she's actually splayed out over his chest, an extra blanket underneath her to smooth out the awkward angles of his plating.

He has one of his hands resting against her back with barely any pressure, just enough weight to feel the touch, securing her in place should she start to slip. Charlie can't help but think of how intimate the position is, how she would never lay like this against someone who's merely a friend.

She tried as hard as she could, but that fluke of touching herself in the shower thinking about him wasn't so much a fluke as the start of a habit. Charlie just can't help herself, not when she spends most of her day with him, always in each other's company. She cares for him deeply and it's definitely not just friendly feelings. She's started noticing that she gets aroused when they go for drives, that when they cuddle on the couch she wants to move closer and closer, her fingers itching to touch and explore in ways she hasn't been able to thus far.

And she has a hunch, though she isn't sure if it's not just wishful thinking, that he might feel a little of that for her, too. Cybertronians do form relationships and have sex, and he's said that he doesn't see her as 'just' a human, so why couldn't he be having the same type of thoughts as her?

Bumblebee is deep in his recharging cycle, optics shuttered and his ventilation system whirring softly, too inhumanly steady to really sound like breathing. She can't sleep, her fingers restlessly tracing patterns against the smooth plating of his shoulder.

She'd said that thing about getting the Autobot symbol tattooed as a joke, but there is some truth to it. It feels like a more meaningful symbol to her these days than her soulmark.

Some couples get matching tattoos done when they don't have matching soulmarks, but they're not fooling anyone. A tattoo is just dead ink trapped under the skin, it isn't alive like a real soulmark.

Charlie tugs the cuff up on her arm, exposing her soulmark. Such a stupid little symbol and yet all of society tells her it should be the most important thing in her life. She scowls at it, realizing belatedly that she can see it better than she ought to be able to in the dark room.

Bumblebee's optics are open, trained on her with a soft questioning gaze.

She covers her soulmark again and musters up a smile. "Just having trouble sleeping," she tells him, voice a whisper.

He shifts, carefully holding her in place while he sits up, until she's cradled in his lap. He whirs faintly, a digit touching delicately under her chin. "Wanna talk?"

Charlie shakes her head, reaching up to grasp his digit, wrapping her fingers around it. She won't ever get tired of looking into his eyes, she doesn't think, his face as dear to her as it was once alien. Impulsively, she leans up against him and presses her mouth just to the side of his mouthpiece, kissing the smooth metal there.

She pulls back and he looks surprised, but not displeased, she doesn't think.

"I don't know if it's the same for you," she says, gathering her courage. "But, Bee, I care about you. A lot."

Bumblebee's optics blink, his antennae twitching. Static and incomprehensible bits of sound play from his radio as he adjusts the dial before settling.

"As more than just a friend, I mean," Charlie presses when he doesn't say anything. She can feel the slight vibrations of his mechanical workings against her body, his expression giving no hint to what he might be feeling.

He cups her head tenderly with one of his massive hands and looks at her in silence, before shuttering his optics for a too-long moment.

"Bumblebee?" she says, worried now. Did she mess up? Imagine more of a relationship between them than what was really there?

He opens his optics again and moves his hand from her face to her arm, gently tapping against the band of fabric covering her soulmark. "That's my mark. When I find my soulmate, they'll have one that matches exactly," he says in her own voice.

"I don't care," Charlie says, yanking her arm away from his touch. "Not everyone ends up with their soulmate, or even has one. It's just a dumb little mark."

But he shakes his head, expression downcast. "You have a Spark mate," he says, "I can't take that away."

"It's not like that for humans," she says.

Bumblebee lets out a sigh of air.

"It's not!" Charlie repeats. "And even if it was- I don't care. I'd rather be with you than some stranger I don't even know."

He shifts himself on the bed so that his legs are hanging over the edge, and gently starts to ease her away from his chest, obviously intending to set her on the ground.

"Wait!" she says, hands scrabbling at his plating for a good hand-hold. "Bee, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, we can forget it ever happened, okay?" Shit, she thinks, she's messed this up big time. He obviously doesn't feel that way towards her and now he's disgusted with her, he hates her, oh fuck, she thinks, she just had to open her mouth!

"It's okay ," Bumblebee says. "We need some space."

She shakes her head but also stops fighting and stands on her own feet, blankets pooled haphazardly on the floor around her. "I'm sorry," she says.

He whirs and leans down so that his mouthpiece touches her forehead, just barely brushing his metal against her skin. It feels like a goodbye. She squeezes her eyes shut as he pulls away, hating that she can feel her chin quiver, her throat burning with the threat of tears.

"Bee, please," she says, forcing herself to look up into his optics.

Bumblebee's body language is subdued, his eyes sad and antennae drooping. "I'll see you in the morning," he says, head nodding a little.

She hates this feeling, hates knowing that she's messed up the most amazing friendship she's ever had. Maybe she can fix things, but it's clear that it won't happen right now. Charlie grabs up the blankets off the floor and holds them to her chest as she turns away from Bee, towards the door.

The sensors in here are calibrated to open for her automatically, something the other berths don't have. Another wave of tears threatens, prickling sourly in the corners of her eyes, and she forces herself to swallow them down before marching down the long, dark hallways.

Her set of rooms are where she sleeps most nights, but somehow they seem cold and empty as she enters them now, like they haven't been inhabited in years. Charlie cocoons herself in the blankets she's taken from Bee's room and lies on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

What was she thinking?

She squeezes her eyes shut tightly, but on her next inhale, ragged and harsh, she loses her battle against crying. Tears gather in her eyes and spill down her cheeks, her nose instantly stuffing up, face crumpling up and probably turning red. She's not an attractive crier, if there is such a thing.

She just- she just wanted to be closer to Bumblebee, to explore the interest that's been tugging at her for months now, the interest that she'd thought could have been returned. But he turned her down flat and wouldn't even let her stay close to him platonically, probably freaked out by her weird human urges.

Fuck, Charlie thinks, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes, she messed up and it sucks worse than anything she's ever felt before. Almost the worst, she amends, thinking of how heart-rending it was to lose her Dad, and then cries more because even comparing the two feels like a betrayal of her father.

She cries herself out, not even trying to keep quiet considering the amount of sound-proofing the former office has. Just lets herself wail and sob and feel horrible pity for herself, for being so selfish that she wanted what she couldn't have.

When the tears finally dry up her whole face is swollen and sticky, her breathing wet as she gasps through her mouth. She lays there for a while longer, luxuriating in the feeling of misery, before eventually dragging herself to the bathroom to wash off her face.

Her reflection looks awful, face red and hair a matted tangle, a big splotch of either tears or snot darkening the collar of her shirt. Charlie wipes her face down with a warm washcloth, changes her shirt. She imagines her mother doing this for her like when she was little and scraped up her knees and feels a rush of homesickness so severe she nearly starts crying again.

It takes five rings before the phone gets picked up, Ron's voice thick with sleep as he says, "Hello?"

"It's Charlie. Can you put my Mom on?" Charlie says.

"Everything okay?" he asks, sounding genuinely concerned.

"Please, just give her the phone," she says, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Okay, kiddo," Ron says, and there's the sound of muffled movement, a long pause of nothing.

Finally she hears the phone being picked up again, her mother's concerned voice saying, "Charlie? Is everything alright?"

"Hey, Mom," Charlie says, and slides down the wall to sit on the floor, legs stretched out in front of her.

"Baby, what's wrong? You never call this early," her Mom says.

Charlie looks around until she catches sight of the clock. Four AM, and she winces. "Sorry for waking you up," she says.

"Have you been crying?" her Mom says.

Charlie doesn't answer her except to say, "I think I need to come home for a little while."

There's a moment of silence as her mother digests the idea, and then she says, "Of course. You know you're always welcome here. Are you sure you're okay? Nothing's happened with those robots?"

"No, it's just," Charlie shrugs self-deprecatingly. "I need a break."

She and her Mom talk a little bit, but she doesn't say much. Can't admit that she made a move on her best friend, a fifteen-foot-tall alien robot, and got shot down.

When it's a more reasonable hour of morning Charlie takes a shower, and packs up a few things she won't want to leave behind.

"Hey, Ratchet," she says, ignoring Bumblebee's gaze from the other side of the room.

Ratchet turns and squints down at her, though she knows by now that his optics are as sharp as any of the bots, and he only does it to further his image of old grump. "Yes?"

"Can I get a groundbridge to Brighton Falls?"

She swears she can hear Bee inhale sharply, though of course Cybertronians don't work that way.

"Of course," Ratchet says, a little bit of confusion on his face.

"Great, thanks," she says. "Let me just get the Corvette out of the garage first."

There's a burst of audible static from Bumblebee, and it takes a great deal of self control not to look at him. He said they needed space, and space is in short supply around the base, being that it's basically two public rooms, so she's making space.

"You're leaving?" Bulkhead says, sounding absolutely perplexed.

Charlie forces a smile, and shrugs. "My Mom's been bugging me to visit," she says, which is technically true but is also not at all the reason for her sudden departure.

"Charlie," Arcee's voice says, but when she looks, she's pretty sure it's Bumblebee who's spoken since Arcee isn't even in the room.

She flashes her teeth at him, refusing to let her hurt show on her face. "I'll be back," she says, intending for the words to be flippant but finding them all too heartfelt on her tongue.

"So," she says, turning back to Ratchet, "Do I need Optimus to sign off, or something?"

"No, no," Ratchet says. "I'm sure that won't be necessary."

"Why're you running off so fast, though?" Bulkhead says, crouching down next to her as if that'll actually make them see eye-to-optic. In an undertone he asks, "Everything's alright, isn't it? No one's been making you feel like you need to leave?"

"Everything's fine," Charlie assures him. She resists the urge to look towards Bumblebee, unable to handle the squirming of feelings in her gut when she thinks about him and the night before.

She heads towards the 'garage'- really just another storage bay, but one she's taken over for her Corvette. She's hardly driven it since coming to the base; usually Bumblebee takes her where she wants to go, and if not him, one of the other bots. But she takes good care of her things and it starts up readily, engine purring smoothly as she reverses from the garage and into the wide hallways that connect the base.

When she returns to the command center, Optimus is standing there next to Ratchet.

Charlie swallows down her nervousness- just because he's the divinely-appointed leader of the Autobots, or however that whole 'Prime' thing works, doesn't mean he has to be intimidating to lowly human her. She parks the car, and waves at him in greeting.

"Ratchet tells me you plan to spend time with your family," Optimus says.

"Yeah," she replies, figuring she should get out of the car.

He inclines his head. "You are, of course, free to leave as you wish," he says. Well, that's good to know, she guesses. She hadn't really given any thought to them not allowing her to leave. "I only hope it is not a decision based on negative experiences you may have had."

She assumes he's talking about Sideswipe, and as tempting as it is to pin the blame on that jerk, she shakes her head. "Nothing like that," she says. "Just homesick, is all."

"Well, take this with you," Ratchet says, and holds out what looks like a very small data tablet. "It's still a prototype, but the emergency channel should be stable enough."

"Emergency channel?" Charlie says, taking the tablet from him. It's about the size of a paperback book but slimmer, and when she brushes her fingers across the screen, it lights up with the Autobot symbol.

"It's an external comm device," Ratchet says, clearly pleased with himself. "Keep it with you and we'll be able to track your location and send you help should you need it."

"Cool," she says. "But you know that Brighton Falls isn't exactly a dangerous place, right?"

"With the numbers of Decepticons on the rise, we cannot afford to take chances," Optimus says gravely.

Charlie nods, and tries to slip the comm unit into her pocket, only to find it's too large. "Well, thanks," she says. "I'll try not to need to use it."

She considers waiting to say goodbye to Arcee, but they don't really have a close relationship. Heaven knows she isn't going to bother saying anything to Sideswipe, though he hasn't been so bad since that time she saved his butt.

"I'll see you guys later," she says. And she will. She's running away right now, but she doesn't plan to run and hide forever. She just needs some space, needs to put distance between her and Bee, her and her mixed up jumble of emotions for him.

Bumblebee finally approaches, buzzing nervously. "Everybody needs a little time away, I heard her say," he sings, the car-door wings on his back twitching up and down.

"Yeah," Charlie agrees, unable to resist the urge to reach out for him. He ducks his head and they hold hands for a moment, the blocky angles of his fingers pressing against her flesh. "A little space, right?"

He nods, still looking dejected, as if this wasn't his idea in the first place. She forces herself to smile, pretending everything is just sunny and fine. "Anyway, I should head out," she says to the room at large, "Don't wanna get stuck in traffic."

No one laughs at her joke. Ratchet has her double-check the coordinates and then opens the groundbridge, and Charlie drives through it smoothly, forcing herself to not react to the swirling, pulling-pushing sensations that she's almost become used to.

It closes off behind her with a faint rushing noise and she leans her head against the steering wheel for a long moment, before continuing to drive.

Her Mom hugs her really tight as soon as she sees her, and it's almost enough to make her feel like crying again.

Instead Charlie plasters on a bright smile and pretends that everything is fine, deflecting her Mom's questions as well as she can.

She's shocked when she realizes that it's a week before Thanksgiving. Time gets kind of weird and unimportant at the Autobot's base, where she can easily go days without seeing sunlight, and it's not like the bots themselves care about her human calendar.

She'd tried to get them interested in a Halloween party, but all that resulted was a horror movie marathon and a big bag of candy in her lap, interrupted halfway through by a perimeter alert.

Her room is exactly as she left it, the same posters on the walls, the same jumble of clothes in the drawers. She places the photo of her Dad back on her dresser, the Polaroid of Bee stuck into the corner of the frame. She should have brought her camera and taken pictures of the other bots, she thinks, and very nearly puts the camera into her bag to be taken back home- to the base, she corrects forcefully- before remembering that she isn't sure when she'll be going back, if ever.

"Why'd you come back?" Otis asks, tactless as always. His nose wrinkles in disgust. "You were living with robot aliens , from outer space. I'd never leave!"

"They're just people," Charlie replies with a shake of her head.

Otis looks far from convinced and walks away, muttering under his breath about her mental status.

"How long are you staying?" her Mom says, unhurried for the moment on a rare day off.

"I'm thinking about cutting my hair," Charlie says in answer.

They take the Corvette to the hairdresser's their family has been using for years, and she has them chop off her hair into a severe bob, hair falling just to the bottoms of her ears.

"It's different," her mother says, holding up a mirror.

Charlie surveys her reflection and thinks she should feel different, but she really doesn't. "Cute, right?" she says with a smile she only partly feels.

"Cute," her Mom agrees. "You look more like your Dad with your hair short, you know," she says when they're in the car again, and Charlie forgets for a second that the Corvette can't take over and drive for her when she falters.

"Yeah?" she says, reaching up to touch her newly-short hair. It's strange not having it brush against her neck, lying against her back.

"He'd be proud of you," her Mom says.

Charlie grips the steering wheel and wonders at what part her Dad would be proud- that she ran away from home to live with the Autobots, or that she came scampering back as soon as things turned sour? She tries to think of something to say to her mother that isn't an admission of how much she still misses him, even four years later, but she stays silent instead.

"So what's the mission?" Memo says, practically ambushing her as she takes out the trash.

"Huh?" Charlie replies, and wipes her hands off on the sides of her shorts.

"You know," he says with a significant look, "The real reason you're here? I won't tell anyone, you know I won't."

"There's no mission," she says. Just her mission to run away from her embarrassment.

He looks suspicious. "Really?"

"Really," Charlie says.

"Oh," he says, shoulders slumping. "Well, it's still cool that you're back visiting."

"Yeah," she says, and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. He stopped trying to date her during the months between meeting Bumblebee and when she left, but she's always kind of gotten the feeling that if she asked him out, he'd still jump at the chance.

"Sector 7 asked if I wanted to join them," Memo blurts out.

"What?" she says, all her attention snapping to him. "You said no way, right?"

He shrugs, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Agent Burns has been by a few times to see me," he says, "He says they're changing the organization. That they know it's the Decepticons who are the real bad guys, now."

"Memo, you can't," Charlie says. "After what they did to Bee?"

"They thought he was dangerous," he says, and scuffs his foot along the ground. "It's just a thought, anyway. I'm not sure I'm cut out for the military life."

She doesn't know what to say. Technically even she is a part of Sector 7, a 'consultant' or somesuch thanks to her relationship with the Autobots. But that's different than joining up deliberately.

After Thanksgiving comes and goes in a rush of way, way too much food, her Mom starts pestering her about what her plans are. Is she going back to the base? Is she going to stay longer?

"Because you can stay here as long as you need, but you're going to have to start picking up the slack. Starting with a job, or some college applications."

When she's alone in her room Charlie considers the comm Ratchet gave her and thinks about activating it, asking for a groundbridge. She could be back at the base in minutes.

She's not sure that she's ready to go back. She misses Bumblebee fiercely, misses the other bots to varying degrees, but she left for a reason and it doesn't feel as though she's accomplished what she came for.

She dreams about him now, both innocent dreams- riding around as he drives her new and exciting places, lying in a field of flowers and weaving a crown for his helm, memories of the times they'd spent together- and dreams of another sort, ones that make her wake up flushed and needy, covered in sweat. It's her secret that she touches herself when she wakes up like that, working her hand between her thighs until she's muffling her voice in her pillow as she comes.

He doesn't want her in that way, Charlie tells herself firmly every time she's finished, left with nothing but a wet spot on her sheets and a sticky hand. But every time the dreams occur again she can't resist the impulses of her body, imagining all the ways he can touch her, all the secrets she can discover in his alien body.

She's woken from another such dream and has decided that no matter what, she won't get off thinking about her friend. Her body thrums, begging for release, and she flips over onto her stomach, burying her face in her pillow to groan in frustration.

Charlie has never been the type to laze around in bed- once she's awake, she's awake- but she isn't ready to completely let go of the dream she just had. It wasn't even outright sexual; she was reclining on Bumblebee's chest while they looked at the stars up above, his hand stroking her in a gentle back-and-forth motion.

It's just that in the dream she was naked, and his touch had made her shiver. Everywhere she was pressed along him had felt electric, even though they were only cuddling like they might have in real life.

She groans again in dismay and, with a truly heroic effort, forces herself up to her feet instead of reaching inside her shorts to touch herself. She almost immediately regrets it, but she continues on with this new course, plodding into the bathroom and dunking herself into the shower- lukewarm, because everyone else has been up before her and used all the hot water.

When she's dressed again, the arousal she'd woken up with now just a tight kernel of tension in her belly, Charlie takes out the comm device Ratchet had given her.

She activates its screen and stares at the glowing blue Autobot symbol, wondering if she should give them a call. If she asked to go back to the base, they'd have a bridge open for her in minutes, she is sure.

But she isn't sure she's ready to go back. She's pretty much accepted that she will go back, at some point, but it's only been a couple of weeks.

She turns her head to the calendar hanging on her wall. It's only about three weeks now until Christmas, and she remembers with a flash of something like nostalgia that she'd promised to teach Bumblebee all about the holiday. Of course, she had been assuming at the time that she'd be staying with the bots pretty much permanently, at that point.

Just giving them a call can't hurt, can it?

Even if she made an ass out of herself, and, okay, she can admit now that she's cooled down that she didn't need to run away so dramatically; even so, she's friends with them. Most of them. Sideswipe is still a total asshole.

Charlie taps her fingers against the edges of the comm device and then takes a deep breath. She'll just call for a quick status update, she decides.

She taps the Autobot symbol, and the screen glows brighter for a moment, before a little box pops up underneath with sound-waves mapped onto it.

"Charlie?" Ratchet's voice says. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she says, belatedly remembering he had said it was for emergencies. "I just thought I'd check in."

Ratchet harrumphs, and she smiles at his ever-present grumpiness.

"How are things? Everyone okay?" Charlie says.

"Shocking as it may seem, your absence has not led to a total collapse of our base," he says, but she can easily hear beyond the gruff words.

"Things are fine here, too," she says.

"Bumblebee's off base at the moment," Ratchet says, "But I'm sure I can link up the comms..."

"Oh, that's alright!" Charlie says, torn between relief and disappointment that Bee isn't around. "No need to bother him. I was just saying hi."

"Well, 'hi'," he says drily.

"Yeah, so I guess I'll hang up, now," she says. And then looks down at the comm. "Uh, how do I hang up?"

"Goodbye, Charlie," Ratchet says. "I'll pass along your updated status."

"Thanks," she says, but she isn't sure if the message goes through, because when she looks down the comm's screen is dark.

When she returns from buying a load of groceries, the house is on fire and there's a Cybertronian standing over the wreckage.

Charlie slams on the brakes, transfixed in horror.

The Cybertronian is definitely not one of the bots she knows, and through the smoke she can see a flash of a purple emblem, more triangular than the Autobots'. A Decepticon.

The Decepticon swivels their head towards her direction, red optics blazing brighter than the fire consuming her home. "Located," a flat, mechanical voice says. "Retrieving target."

They're talking about her, she realizes, but it's only the fact that she knows for certain everyone is out of the house that allows her to throw the Corvette into reverse and speed away.

The Decepticon transforms into something with wheels and an engine that whines rather than roars, and they slam into her from behind before she's turned the corner for the next street. Charlie clutches at the steering wheel as the Corvette fishtails, but she manages to keep going.

The Decepticon pulls up alongside her, too quiet for the size of the engine it must have, and slams her car bodily.

She doesn't get lucky this time, the Corvette spinning wildly out of her control, over the side of the road and down a narrow ditch. She screams and tries to protect her head, thankful that the morning's drizzly weather had prompted her to put the top up for what little good it'll do.

Her head ricochets off the steering wheel and she knows no more.

Charlie wakes up with a headache that feels as if her head is literally split open at the skull, lying on a cold metal surface. She groans and tries to blink her eyes open, panicking when one of them won't open.

Through the eye she can see from, she realizes that she's not at a hospital. The room is empty, entirely metal and lit by strange recessed bluish lights, with totally unfamiliar architecture.

She reaches her hand up to her head and discovers that her left eye is stuck shut, crusted with what she's guessing is blood. Her fingers find a sizable bump on her forehead and a decent gash as well, which she can only hope has stopped bleeding.

She licks her fingers and works the dried blood off her eye, sighing in relief when she finally is able to blink it open.

Sight restored Charlie then looks around slightly more calmly, this time seeing what looks like a door, only several times larger than normal.

That Decepticon must have taken her captive, she realizes, her blood running cold. She's not in a hospital because she's in a 'con base.

"Okay," Charlie says out loud, her voice sounding small and strained in the big metal room. This is bad, obviously. She doesn't know what the Decepticons want with her, but she can guess that it has something to do with the Autobots.

If they'd wanted her dead they would have killed her after crashing her car- and here, she can't help but flinch at the thought of her car, her Dad's car, being destroyed. So she's probably going to be used as a bargaining chip, or else they want information from her.

Not that she'll tell them anything, Charlie thinks with a stubborn frown.

Her head throbs and she considers whether she should lie back down, conserve her strength. She almost certainly has a concussion but her Mom's always grumbled about how that doesn't mean what TV and book writers think it means.

She drags herself to the corner furthest from the door, cataloging her injuries as she goes. Head bashed in, obviously. Her left wrist feels like it might be sprained. Legs and torso bruised. Nothing broken, thank god, and when she lifts her shirt to check, the bruises she sees don't look deep enough to be internal bleeding, not that that's a sure way to tell.

So, probably not going to die from her wounds in the next few hours, anyway. That's good to know.

Charlie carefully tears off the bottom few inches of her shirt, frowning because she'd liked said shirt, and uses the fabric to wind around her head in case the wound there is still bleeding. It's sloppy, and won't do much good if the cut reopens and starts really pumping like head-wounds tend to do, but it's better than nothing.

Then she curls up into herself, hugging her knees to her chest. How long until the Autobots realize she's missing?

The communicator! But she'd left it at home, she thinks, sinking back down. No doubt the 'cons would have taken it from her had she been carrying it at the time, anyway.

Alright, so she can't call for help. She lifts her head and scans the room again, but there's still nothing in it, not even a lightswitch or a way to open the door. The odds of the door being unlocked and responsive to her are so slim that she doesn't bother trying to drag herself over to check. Maybe once she's feeling a little less like her head is being split with an axe.

Lacking any other options, Charlie closes her eyes and attempts to rest.

She barely dozes off, waking herself every few minutes, straining her ears for any sort of noise. After what she guesses is two or three hours, the door of the room suddenly opens with a sliding swish. Charlie lifts her head off her arms but doesn't otherwise react.

There's a single Decepticon standing in the doorway, not the one who took her. They're mostly unpainted silver, with what looks for all the world like parts of an airplane sticking out of their body. She's never seen a 'con up close before.

"So this is the Autobot's pet," he says with a sneer.

"I'm no one's pet," Charlie shoots back before she can decide if it might be better to just stay quiet.

He lifts an eyebrow and- well, if he had a nose she'd say he was looking down it at her. "I will never understand the appeal of... 'squishies'," he says, as if she hadn't spoken.

She wrinkles her nose at the insult.

The door is open behind him, two equally large 'cons in the hallway. If she's fast enough, could she dodge between their legs and escape? Maybe, but her head throbs at even the thought of trying to move that fast.

She has to try though, Charlie thinks to herself, and gets up to her feet.

"You're even more pathetic up close than I imagined," the Decepticon says.

She grits her teeth and makes a break for it, but the con casually lashes out with a metal foot, kicking her back to the ground.

"Stupid, too," he says. He crouches down, red optics searing into her. "Tell me where the Autobots have their wretched little hide-out and I'll let you go, human."

Charlie spits at him, a little sad to see that it doesn't actually get enough distance to land on him. "Go to hell," she says.

"Charming," the Decepticon says, and straightens back up. "Well, perhaps some time alone will loosen your tongue. I'm told your kind need constant access to oxygen, a weakness we certainly do not possess."

She doesn't understand what he means until the door's closed behind him again, and she realizes that there aren't any vents set in the walls or ceiling. If that door is air-tight...

Fear trembles down her spine as she considers this. A room this size will have plenty of air in it, but for how long? If the Autobots don't know she's missing, or don't know where she's been taken- she doesn't even know where she's been taken- then rescue might not be coming for a long time, if ever.

Alright, she thinks to herself as she moves back against one of the walls. She has to get out of here on her own, and fast. The door is the only way in or out of the room- she might have been able to smash out one of the recessed lights and crawl through whatever sort of area they have between the walls for wiring, except they're all far too high up for her to reach.

Charlie sits for a while, gathering her strength. That kick did her no favors, her stomach throbbing in time with her head.

Then she gets up to wobbly feet and moves to the door. It doesn't open for her, of course- even Bumblebee had needed to program his door specifically to respond to her human signatures.

The thought of Bee nearly makes her sag against the wall. She misses him, now more than ever.

She shakes her head- bad move. The room spins as her head throbs and she staggers against the wall, waiting for the pain to pass. When her vision is clear again she starts testing the seam where the door meets the wall, but the gap is so small she can't get so much as a fingernail into it.

"Fuck!" she curses, slapping her palm against the metal.

Charlie tests every inch of the door that she can reach, all with the same result. Maybe a Cybertronian could reach a weak spot and bash their way out, but she sure can't.

She slinks back to the corner, trying to think of what else she can do. Waiting for that con to show up again and somehow getting out then seems like her only real choice. Maybe she can convince him to take her someplace else?

Yeah, right, she snorts. And even if she could, would any of the rest of their base be built with human escapes in mind? Unlikely.

Several hours pass, and Charlie becomes aware that she is incredibly thirsty. And that her bladder would appreciate being emptied.

The air doesn't seem to be getting thin yet, though it is starting to taste stale. How much longer does she have before she starts running out of oxygen?

"Hello?" she calls out. "I'm gonna need a bathroom pretty soon..."

There's no answer, of course. She wonders if they even have surveillance on her- she can't see any cameras, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.

She really doesn't want to pee in the corner, but she might not have a choice pretty soon. It would serve them right to have to clean up after her, though, she thinks with a mean smirk.

The lights haven't changed at all, which means she's just guessing at how much time has passed. Do the Autobots know she's missing, she wonders. Maybe the con told them to gloat, or for blackmail?

Charlie chews on her lip as she considers the fact that no one might know where she is. Her Mom and Ron and Otis certainly don't. Finding her car smashed on the side of the road wouldn't exactly scream 'taken hostage by Decepticons' to most people, plus, they have the house being on fire to deal with.

And the bots... She called them just a little while ago, telling them everything was fine. They won't think there's anything wrong unless one of the Decepticons tells them.

She slumps further against the wall, grimacing when she jostles her head wound. At least it's stayed clotted, rather than reopening. Small mercies: she won't die of blood loss.

She ends up peeing in the corner.

What feels like days later, the door opens again. Charlie sucks in a huge breath of air, grateful for the surge in oxygen. Her head has been spinning for hours now, limbs trembling, breath starting to come fast and shallow despite her efforts to keep calm.

The same Decepticon as before sneers down at her, and she takes a vindictive bit of pleasure in knowing that he'll have to deal with the mess she left in the corner. Well, probably an underling will, but whatever.

"Are you ready to talk?" he asks.

She hauls herself upright and staggers towards the door. The con doesn't even bother to kick her this time, just watches as she wobbles on unsteady feet.

"You humans really are pathetic," he says. With an almost gentle nudge of his foot, she's sent sprawling out on her back.

Charlie glares at him, and immediately starts crawling towards the door, until he slams his foot down just inches from her, blocking the way.

"You are testing my patience," he says. "Tell me where the Autobot's base is or I will- will- I'll squash you!"

She stares up at him; he's taller than Bee, but shorter by far than Optimus, slim in build like Arcee. He could squash her easily enough, sure, but once her bots get here she has a feeling he's toast.

"Nah," she says as casually and insolently as she can.

He looks flabbergasted for a moment before collecting himself. "Such devotion for a lowly pet!" he says. "Your precious Autobots don't care about you, you must realize. It's in your best interest to tell me what I want to know."

Charlie shrugs and tries to project more bravery than she's feeling. There's a very real chance that she's going to die in this room, she realizes, and yet- she still won't give up the Autobots. They're her friends, and they're fighting a war for a righteous cause. She won't hand them over on a silver platter to these bastards just because they're threatening her a little.

Bumblebee lost his voice because he wouldn't talk, she recalls, and other bots lost more than that. She owes their sacrifice as much as she can give.

"Ugh," the Decepticon says, and without warning plucks her off the ground, his fingers digging into her side as she struggles instinctively.

"Hey, let me go!" she shouts, and is ignored.

He carried her out of the room and down a long metal hallway instead, the two cons from outside the room trailing silently. He stops in front of an identical door and punches a code into the glowing panel on the wall, sliding the door open.

"What do you want, Starscream?" a new voice says, and Charlie sees a red Decepticon standing in front of a computer console.

"Make the human talk," the con holding her- Starscream- says.

The red con pulls a face. "I already told you, I don't work with organics."

"Well you do now!" Starscream says, and throws her none-too-gently onto the ground.

She cries out as she lands, holding still for a moment to check if anything's been broken by the fall, but she got lucky.

"See to it that she tells us where the Autobot base is, or you can explain to Lord Megatron how you failed to extract the information from a mere human," he finishes, looking smug.

The red Decepticon sighs, and steps away from the computer. "Ew," he says as he focuses his red optics on her, "She's already leaking."

"Yes, they do that," Starscream says. "I expect results within the cycle." He turns and leaves without another word, leaving Charlie on the floor and the red con to stare at each other.

This room is most certainly not empty. She gets to her feet and runs as fast as she can for the first bit of cover she can see- a gap between two metal blocks that she assumes have some function which she could not care less about.

"Why you!" the con says, and she can hear his footsteps ring out against the metal floor as he makes after her. "Get back here."

Charlie takes the risk of dashing to another spot, this one a narrow gap between the wall and the huge computer console he was using.

"Stop that!" the con complains. "Stand still where I can get you."

"Why the hell would I do that?" she can't help but call out. Her head is swimming, her limbs still feel weak, but she's nearly overcome with adrenaline to wash it all away. She has a chance of getting away from this con, getting out of this room.

There's a pause and then the con says, "Okay, fair enough."

Charlie snorts to herself and wiggles in the narrow gap until she gets to a bundle of wires leading from the computer to the wall. The wires are thick, and she doesn't have any tools on her, but she figures she has to at least try and cause the Decepticons as much annoyance as she can. She grabs the cables and yanks as hard as she can.

Nothing happens. She keeps yanking until she's suddenly illuminated in a red light, and she looks up to see the glowing optics of the con looking down at her from over the top of the computer console.

"Gotcha," he says, and reaches a hand in to grab at her.

Well, he tries, anyway. His forearms are too thick to get very far, and she flinches out of his reach easily.

"Hmm," the con says, pulling away. "Wouldn't want to scratch the paint job, anyway."

Charlie rolls her eyes and goes back to tugging at the wires, finally feeling one give way, then another. Her success is short-lived, however; the computer console jerks, then pulls away from the wall with a loud screech of metal on metal.

Suddenly there's more than enough room between computer and wall, and the red Decepticon plucks her out from the gap with ease.

"Such strange creatures you are," he says thoughtfully as he dangles her in the air by her arm, turning her this way and that.

"Let me go!" Charlie shouts, grabbing at her arm and kicking out wildly. The blows just bounce off the con's tough metal hide, of course, but it's not like she's going to not try and get herself free.

The Decepticon merely smirks and brings her over to a metal table, where he holds her with one hand and attempts to get restraints fastened on her squirming limbs with the other. "Hold still, won't you?" he says, almost conversationally. "This isn't the painful part."

That just makes her thrash harder, but soon all four of her limbs are encased in metal straps that she really doubts she can break out of, considering the beings they were originally designed to entrap.

"There now," he says, stepping back like he wants to survey his handiwork.

Charlie can feel liquid starting to seep out from under her makeshift bandage, her head wound bleeding again after the struggle she put up. "I'll never talk," she says.

The red con shrugs as if he doesn't care. "I don't care," he says. "It's all on Starscream's head if you don't, anyway."

His arm shifts, and suddenly instead of a hand he has something long and pointed and spinning like a drill coming out of his wrist. "Of course, if you do want to cooperate... I've heard organics have so many gross fluids inside them, and I'm not eager to scrub down the lab."

Charlie flinches, but does her best to hold onto her nerve.

The con looks disappointed. He raises the drill-thing and hovers it over her body, clearly about to bring it down, when a red light suddenly flashes out through the room, followed by a loud blaring siren.

"What the?" he says, looking around the room. "Why would the alarm be-" He looks down at her, suspicion on his face. "How would the Autobots have found us? Unless Screamer didn't think to check you for bugs, ugh."

He puts away the drill-thing and she relaxes fractionally. Instead he picks up some sort of device off a nearby table, and waves that over her body.

"Hmm, no trackers," he says, sounding clearly confused.

Charlie could have told him that, had he asked.

"Well, no matter," the Decepticon says, and sets the scanner back down. "You just stay here and-"

An explosion sounds out, rocking the building (would a building rock like that?). The con looks down at her; she raises an eyebrow because it certainly wasn't her doing.

"Right," he says, and turns away from her to move towards the door. Another explosion sounds out, and if she strains her ears, she can hear what sounds like gunshots and various other types of weapons.

Charlie smiles to herself; she has no proof, but she'd be willing to bet serious cash that the Autobots are here to rescue her.

The door slides open right before the Decepticon reaches it, and she tries not to be disappointed that it's not Bumblebee, but Sideswipe she sees.

"Found her," Sideswipe says, obviously into his comm because he's alone in the hallway, save the bodies of felled Decepticons behind him.

"Well this is a surprise," the red Decepticon says. "Come to finally join the winning side, Junior?"

Junior? Charlie thinks to herself, eyes darting between the two bots. They are both red, and about the same size, and... Okay, she thinks, now is not the time to be contemplating whether there's any family resemblance between the two.

She's missed Sideswipe's comeback, but that's no great loss.

The two robots circle each other warily, bantering back and forth, neither one really lashing out. Charlie wriggles against the restraints on her, but they continue to hold firm.

Why couldn't it have been one of the other bots who stumbled on her, she wonders sourly. Of course Sideswipe isn't going to want to wreck his paint job getting in a real fight, and-

Oh shit. A Decepticon from the hallway blasts a series of shots into the room, narrowly missing her and catching Sideswipe in the leg.

"Hey!" the red Decepticon shouts, "We're busy here!"

The con in the hallway stops shooting, looks at the red Decepticon warily, and then shrugs.

"Look at you, you're leaking all over the place," the Decepticon says to Sideswipe, and tuts.

Sideswipe shifts his weight off his injured leg and finally takes a real lunge with his sword, the blade scraping against the con's shoulder armor.

"Hey now," the Decepticon says once he's leaped out of the way, "Why don't you just hop up on the table and I'll patch you up, hmm? For old time's sake."

"And let you bug my system? No thanks," Sideswipe says, lashing out again.

The con barely deflects the blow, but Charlie has seen enough fighting by now to realize that he's not really fighting back. And combined with the familiar way they're talking to each other...

Well shit, she thinks. Sideswipe's father is a Decepticon.

"Still over here," she calls out, which gets both bots' attention.

"Was this your pet?" the Decepticon says. "So sorry."

"Not mine," Sideswipe grits out, but he does start working his way towards her as if remembering that she exists.

Charlie wriggles in place, unable to help the urge to try and escape. Knowing Sideswipe, he's going to forget all about her in favor of showboating around, and she'd really like to not be held captive for longer than she needs to be.

More gunfire erupts from the hallway, but this time the bot who steps into the doorway is Arcee, and Charlie sighs in relief.

Arcee trains her arm-blasters on the red Decepticon, optics narrowed. "Need help, Swipe?"

"Pfft," Sideswipe dismisses, "You get the human, I'll handle this old rust-bucket."

"Hey!" the Decepticon says, "I have never been rusty in my life."

"That's what you're objecting to?" Arcee mutters, but starts making her way towards the table where Charlie is restrained, blasters morphing back into hands. "You okay, Charlie?"

"I've been better," she says with her best attempt at a smile. In the background, Sideswipe and the Decepticon keep bantering, Sideswipe seeming to do his best to attack but hindered by the wound in his leg, now leaking Energon.

Arcee nods, and does something that disengages the straps holding her down. Charlie immediately sits up, her head spinning at the action.

"Where's Bee?" she says, "Do we have an exit plan?"

"Bumblebee's fine," Arcee replies. "Now that we have you, we'll rendezvous and groundbridge out of here."

Charlie nods, and jumps down to the floor. And immediately regrets it. Her adrenaline has worn out and she stumbles, nearly falling before she catches herself. How long has it been since she last had any food or water? And her head is still concussed, she can hear her mother's voice saying.

Arcee reaches down and steadies her, then transforms into her motorcycle form. "Get on, it'll be faster," she says. "Sideswipe! Finish up or we're leaving you behind!"

Charlie climbs on, feeling a little awkward about it. There's something different about riding around in the other's cabs, and actually having to drape herself over Arcee's back.

"Oh, go on," the Decepticon says.

"Sideswipe!" Arcee barks, her engine revving.

Sideswipe growls and delivers what Charlie reluctantly has to admit is an impressive blow with his sword, sending the Decepticon backwards into the computer bank. Then he's turning and bolting for the door, Arcee peeling out behind him in a squeal of rubber.

Charlie focuses on staying balanced as Arcee and Sideswipe race through the halls of the Decepticon base, dodging fallen cons who litter the floor. They get shot at and she yelps, pressing herself down closer to Arcee's back, but none of the shots land as they zoom around a corner.

"Optimus and Bumblebee should be ahead," Arcee says, "Bulkhead's smashing his way-" She breaks off as a section of wall abruptly explodes, Bulkhead charging through with a war cry.

"Charlie!" he says when he comes to a stop, grinning.

"Hey Bulkhead," she replies, not daring to lift her hands off Arcee's handlebars to give him a wave.

"Faster would be good," Sideswipe says, and they begin moving forward again, Bulkhead and Sideswipe taking out the handful of Decepticons they encounter while she and Arcee nimbly dodge the wreckage.

The sight of Bumblebee makes Charlie cry out in relief; he looks unharmed, hands transformed to blasters and his battle mask lowered. He whirls to see her and lets out a burst of music, and she jumps off Arcee's back and runs to him.

"Ratchet, open the groundbridge at our coordinates," Optimus' voice says, but she doesn't even bother to look and see him, too busy hugging Bee, her face buried against his soot-covered chest as he holds her tight.

She registers the green glow of the groundbridge but doesn't pay it much mind, not until they're passing through it and she feels her empty stomach lurch and her shaken head swim at the sensation of the portal. Charlie squeezes her eyes tight and clings to Bumblebee, fighting the urge to be sick.

"Charlie, are you unharmed?" Optimus asks.

"Yeah," she manages to say, cracking her eyes and seeing not the base, as expected, but an expanse of empty green grass. "Where are we?"

"We are groundbridging to multiple locations in order to lose any Decepticon pursuers," he says, and she can't help but feel relieved by the calmness of his voice.

Another portal opens up a few yards away and Bumblebee heads for it, transforming into his vehicle form as he goes, transferring her from his arms to his driver's seat fluidly. Optimus and Sideswipe follow, while Arcee and Bulkhead remain in the field.

"Are we splitting up?" Charlie asks, sinking back against the leather of Bee's seat.

"It's safer," he says, radio crackling more than usual.

At the next stop Sideswipe and Optimus peel away, and then Bumblebee coasts through one more groundbridge to emerge at the base, a worried looking Ratchet at the controls.

"Well?" he says.

Charlie starts to climb out of Bee's cab, but he transforms before she's so much as gotten the door open, and she ends up cradled in his arms again. He looks down at her and she smiles, glad to see his familiar face again.

"Get her to the medbay, Bumblebee," Ratchet says.

"I'm okay," Charlie says in protest, her throat dry and rasping.

Bumblebee doesn't even hesitate, just nods and starts walking away from the command center as Bulkhead's voice on the comm system calls for a groundbridge.

"I can walk," she says, but she doesn't put much force into it. Bee whirs in response and sets her down carefully only once they've reached the medbay, and he can deposit her on the raised exam table.

Charlie tries to remain standing, but her legs feel like jelly, and she transitions to sitting down instead. She reaches out and taking hold of Bumblebee's hand, glad for the comfort of his stabilizing touch.

He ducks his head, radio dial spinning, optics scanning over her face like he's analyzing it or committing it to memory.

She tries to ask how they knew where to find her, but her throat has finally remembered that she hasn't had a drop to drink in what must be at least a day, and all that comes out is a hoarse croak.

Bumblebee buzzes, antennae twitching as he leans in a little closer.

She coughs, and tries again. "Water?"

He nods, and she regretfully has to let go of his hand to allow him to find something for her to drink. There's nothing but Energon in the medbay, and heaven knows she isn't going to drink that.

Bumblebee hesitates at the doorway, and she nods, making a shooing motion with her hands. She's fine enough for him to leave alone a few minutes.

Ratchet appears before Bee does, Sideswipe griping as he follows the medic. "You, sit down," he says to Sideswipe, "I'll deal with you in a minute."

Then he turns to Charlie, unexpectedly looking not grumpy, but concerned. "Where are you damaged? What did those Decepticons do to you?"

Bumblebee arrives before she can answer, a pair of water bottles and a granola bar in his hands. He puts them down on the table next to her and Charlie cracks one of the bottles open, eagerly gulping down the water.

She coughs again, trying to clear her throat and only really succeeding in making her aware of her headache once more. "I hit my head when my car crashed," she says, and gestures to her makeshift bandage. "But the bleeding's stopped, and I feel fine, so I don't think there's more damage than that. Um, my wrist might be sprained? And I'm kind of bruised up, and really thirsty and hungry."

"Let me see that wound," Ratchet says, leaning down to peer at her closely. Rather than make him undo the bandage with his huge digits she takes it off for him, wincing as the fabric pulls at the blood crusted to her skin.

A wave of pain goes through her and she hunches in on herself, then abruptly turns to the side and heaves up the water she'd just drunk.

Bumblebee makes a noise of alarm, and she hears Sideswipe say a succinct, "Ew."

"Ugh, sorry," Charlie says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "I think I drank too quickly, is all." And a concussion could easily make her nauseated, though she hadn't noticed anything except hunger before.

"That's it," Ratchet says, "We're taking you to a human- what are they called? Hospitals?"

"It's okay," she says, "I just need to rest."

Two sets of optics look down on her, equally stern, and she knows she isn't going to win that battle. She sighs. "You should send me back to Brighton Falls," she says in capitulation. "I can say I hit my head when my car crashed, and wandered around for a bit before finding the hospital." She shrugs. "It sounds better than 'abducted by aliens' anyway."

"That's not a bad idea," Ratchet says.

"How long was I gone, anyway? How did you guys find me?" Charlie asks, trying to ignore the rise of nausea from sitting next to the puddle of regurgitated water. Maybe a hospital isn't the worst idea, she concedes.

Ratchet looks at Bumblebee, for some reason, before answering. "It's been about a day and a half since you commed me," he says.

That's not too bad, then, and matches up with how much time she thought was passing. She nods, and regrets the motion. It doesn't answer how they found her, and she assumes that Decepticon- Starscream or whatever his name was- had taunted the team with her capture.

"Hello, leaking Energon over here," Sideswipe butts in with, and Ratchet actually rolls his optics.

"Pipe down, you'll be fine another few breems," he says.

"I'll take you to the hospital," Bumblebee says. Charlie smiles wanly at him.

"Let's get the groundbridge up," Ratchet says.

Bee once again insists on carrying her, rather than letting her walk, and she sighs and allows him to do so. She isn't sure why he's being so touchy-feely with her now after their last parting where he'd insisted on needing space, but she's in no mind to complain.

Ratchet types in the coordinates while Bumblebee transforms into his car form, and Charlie grimaces as she considers how the groundbridge is going to affect her head and stomach. Oh well, she thinks. It's this or showing up at a random hospital several states away from where she was last seen.

She closes her eyes as they go through, which helps a little. She isn't sick, anyway, which she's counting as a win.

"You'll have to drop me off and let me walk in myself," Charlie says to Bee.

There's an unhappy sounding buzz over the noise of his engine.

"You can't go in with me, and we can't let people see a car driving itself," she says. "Plus... I'd like you to go to my family. They don't know what's going on and I'm sure they're worried." She should have taken the time to call them from the base, she thinks.

"I'll be watching you; Every breath you take, every move you make," Bumblebee plays in answer, which is a little creepy but she takes it as agreement.

"Thank you," she says, relieved. He pulls into the parking lot of the hospital and Charlie gets out, careful not to slam his door behind her.

As she watches, a generic human figure flickers into being in the driver's seat, stiff and mannequin-like, a little bit translucent in the sunlight, but enough to satisfy people about him having a 'driver'.

She brushes her hand against the metal of his door as she says goodbye and then starts walking towards the ER entrance, dreading the whole process already.

The doctors confirm what she already suspected: a concussion, sprained wrist, and plenty of bruises. They hook her up to an IV to rehydrate her and Charlie has to resist the urge to pick at the cannula where it disappears under her skin.

Her Mom and Otis and Ron all show up just after she's been admitted, frantic with worry. Well, her Mom is anyway- Otis looks kind of numb, and Charlie remembers suddenly about the house being burned down. It had completely slipped her mind with everything else going on.

"How bad is the house?" she asks, feeling silly lying on the hospital bed.

Ron sighs deeply, and her Mom pats him on the shoulder. "It's a total loss," her mother says. "We're saving what we can from the smoke and water damage, but what's left of the structure isn't safe anymore."

A wave of sadness swamps over Charlie. That house was where she'd grown up, where her Dad had spent his last days, where Bumblebee had come into her life. And now it's gone.

"I'm sorry," she says, her eyes suddenly filling up with tears.

"Oh honey, it's not your fault," her Mom says, but Charlie shakes her head.

"It was Decepticons that set the fire," she says, "If it wasn't for me they'd have never known you even existed."

She can see that they hadn't been aware of the cause of the fire. "Don't even think of blaming yourself," her Mom says firmly. "We're all just glad you're okay. I was so worried when they found your car."

Charlie lifts her hand to touch the cut on her forehead, cleaned up finally and held shut with butterfly bandages. "My car," she says sadly.

"It's totaled," her Mom says before she can ask. "I know it meant a lot to you..."

Charlie takes a deep breath and drops her hand back to her side. "It's fine," she says. That car had for so long felt like her last link to her father, her last real piece of him in her life. Losing it now hurts more than losing the house, which she always planned on moving out of some day.

Her Mom makes a quiet noise and then wraps her arms around her, and Charlie lets the tears in her eyes fall.

She spends a day in the hospital calmly answering their questions with lies- she must have hit her head and become confused, wandering aimlessly until she found her way to the hospital- and then assuring them that she feels much better now, of course. And she does feel better. The cut on her forehead shows no signs of infection, she's fully rehydrated to the point where she's annoyed by how often she needs the bathroom, and she's received extensive instructions on how to wrap up her wrist.

"We're staying at a hotel right now," her Mom says as she's discharged.

"Oh," Charlie says, feeling awkward. "I was going to go back to the Autobot base."

"What?" her Mom says, turning to look her in the eye with a disbelieving look. "You're not going back there- it's their fault you're hurt!"

"Mom," she says. "It's not the bots' fault. If anything, I'm safer with them- and so are you guys, with me gone."

Her mother is stubborn, but so is Charlie. They argue about it all the way until her Mom realizes that they're standing next to Bumblebee and not the family station wagon, and then she deflates.

"You can come home anytime you want," her mother says, wrapping her arms around her in a tight hug. Charlie can smell her familiar hairspray, the faint scent of hospital that clings to her from her shifts no matter how many showers she takes, and she closes her eyes for a moment, feeling all of nine again instead of nineteen.

"I love you," she says.

"I love you too," her Mom replies, squeezing a little harder before letting go. To Bumblebee she says sternly, "You had better take good care of my girl."

Bumblebee flashes his lights and plays a clip of music in answer. The Smiths again, Charlie notices with a faint smile.

Things feel off-kilter when she returns to the base, but she can't put her finger on why. She showers off the smell of the hospital and changes into clean clothes, determined to get back to normal.

But Ratchet bans her from the medbay, and Bumblebee isn't going patrolling, and she doesn't have her car to poke around on. Charlie cleans up her room a little- why had she left in such a hurry, she thinks as she empties out the mini-fridge- but that doesn't hold her attention for very long once the gross stuff is taken care of.

She curls up on the couch before very long, Bumblebee sitting carefully next to her, arm on the back of the couch to wrap around her shoulders like nothing had ever changed between them.

Arcee is on another seat tapping away at a data tablet, and Bulkhead is trying to be sneaky about watching her like she's going to collapse at any minute while he sorts through a pile of what she's pretty sure is junk.

Charlie cuddles up to Bee, not paying any attention to what's on the TV.

"How did you guys know where to find me?" she says. It's been bothering now that she has time to really think about it. "I thought we didn't know where the Decepticon base was."

Bee shifts a little, and she looks up at him, waiting for him to find his words.

"I followed my Spark," he says.

Charlie frowns in confusion. "Huh?"

He looks around the room and then hunches down closer to her, like he doesn't want to be overhead. "My Spark," he says. He reaches out and takes her left hand in his, carefully and slowly turning it over. Her soulmark glares up at her, only half-hidden by the wrapping on her wrist.

"Yeah, Sparks are like souls, I got that already," she says, but doesn't yank her hand out of his delicate grip.

Bee shakes his head and then abruptly stands up facing her, his optics seeming to search her for something.

"Hey, Bulk," Arcee says, "Let's go check out that quarry."

"I thought you'd never ask," Bulkhead says, practically leaping away from his pile of scrap.

Charlie watches them abruptly leave the base, feeling very confused. "What's that about?" she asks, not really expecting an answer.

Bumblebee crouches down on the floor in front of her so that he's closer to her eye level, and taps the center of his chest plating. She just looks at him in confusion, not understanding what he's getting at. And then Bee starts to shift his plating aside, opening up his chest, and she jerks back.

"Bee, what are you doing?" she says, uncomfortable with the feeling of watching her friend, her- her Bumblebee root around in his own chest.

He keeps going though, until there's a hole right through the center of him, and her breath leaves her in a rush because that's his Spark glowing in the middle of his chest, it has to be.

"So it is physical," she says dumbly, eyes transfixed by what she can only imagine as if she'd exposed her own beating heart.

He takes her hand again, and moves it so that her left wrist is next to the exposed gap in his plating.

Charlie's breath catches by what she sees. Her soulmark looks exactly like the Spark pulsing in his chest. It's the same color, the same shape, even the size of it. She snaps her eyes up to his face, mouth open in surprise.

"Are you kidding me?" she says.

Bumblebee shakes his head. "I felt you here," he says.

She licks her lips and tries to make sense of things. "My soulmark and your Spark..." she says, "They're... Are you saying that you are my soulmate?"

He looks nervous for a moment, then nods.

Charlie feels the sudden urge to smack him, but she resists. "But you pushed me away!" she says, confused, and yet her heart is beating fast, hope filling her. Maybe she wasn't weird and broken for wanting someone who isn't her soulmate. Maybe feeling so drawn to him is natural, a byproduct of the link between them.

He ducks his head. "I didn't know," he says.

She takes in a deep breath, her eyes lowering again to his Spark glowing inside his chest. It makes him look so vulnerable, so fragile despite his metal exterior. Her fingers reach for it before she's aware of what she's doing and Bumblebee lets her. He holds himself still and open, and her fingers brush up against what is essentially his soul given physical form.

His radio bursts out static, and Charlie hears herself make a surprised noise at the feeling. It's electric, but it's more than that- it's like she's dipped into a warm tub of water, like getting a hug with the perfect amount of pressure, like what she imagines really good kisses are supposed to feel like. It's incredible.

She looks up at Bumblebee and his optics are fixed on her, glowing bright, his hands hovering in the air like he wants to touch her but isn't sure if he should.

"You feel that too, right?" she asks, whispering for some reason even though they're the only two beings in the room. Possibly in the entire base.

She can feel his love for her and it's nearly overwhelming, having a direct line to his heart and soul like this. And he does love her, she has no doubts about it now, feels it like a blanket draped around her shoulders, like a balloon tugging her up into the sky, like everything good and right in the world. He's her soulmate, Charlie thinks to herself. Her soulmate.

He nods, and one of his hands finally settles on her back. She hopes he can feel her love for him in return, focuses on projecting it as strongly and as clearly as she can. She's cared for him right from the start, almost before she knew he was himself rather than just a car, but now she admits to herself that she's outright loved him for a long time.

It's not much longer before she has to move her hand away from his Spark; it's too much, too overwhelming to feel him like that. "I really want to kiss you," she says, practically vibrating in place with the urge.

In answer Bee dips his head down towards her, and she stops holding back. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses herself to his front, planting unpracticed kisses to the metal of his faceplate. He curls his hands around her and holds her tight, making little buzzing noises, radio dial spinning out meaningless notes of music.

"Can I touch you?" Charlie asks, barely restraining herself. Maybe her humanity is just too strange for him.

"Baby, I'd love you to want me, the way that I want you, the way that it should be," his radio sings to her. But he pulls back from her a little, and looks around.

They're in the middle of the command center, she realizes with a blush. Everyone is out but that could change at any moment. "Your room?" she asks, suddenly shy.

Bumblebee nods, and slides the plating of his chest back into place. She aches for the lack of connection but can't deny feeling better, knowing that he's protected again.

They walk to his bunk hand-in-hand, Charlie unable to completely stifle the giggles that keep trying to erupt out of her from nerves. Like most other people on the planet, she's dreamed about meeting her soulmate. Fantasized about what they would look like, how they would react to meeting her, imagined the rush of connection they'd surely feel.

What she feels with Bumblebee is better than anything she'd ever imagined. She knows him, already trusts him with her heart and soul completely. How could she have ever thought her soulmark was for anyone else?

The door closes silently behind them, and Charlie hops up onto his berth, which gives her enough height that she's really not much shorter than she'd be with a human guy. She puts her hand on his jaw, and he leans into the touch just like he had so long ago when they first met.

"I can't believe it's you," she tells him.

He smiles at her, his hand curling around her head carefully, digits stroking her hair.

She leans in and kisses him again, liking the way his alien metal tastes under her lips. It's not at all like kissing another person would be- he can't really reciprocate, not with his inhuman mouthpiece- but he moves with her all the same, keeping it from feeling like she's just pressing against some inanimate object.

"Can I touch you?" her own voice says, and Charlie pulls back a little.

"Yeah," she says, eyes flickering to the shut door behind him before focusing on his face. She nods, building up her courage before abruptly stripping off her shirt.

Bumblebee's optics are wide in surprise, antennae quivering. He reaches out with a single digit and brushes her skin from the base of her neck down between her breasts, down her belly and then back up. The light touch makes her shiver, just this side of ticklish.

"Kind of doesn't feel fair that you're already undressed," she says to cover her nervousness. She wants him, but she also wants him to want her- what if her human body isn't appealing to him? What if it's not the human part but something else? She's never been particularly ashamed of her body, but it's hard not to be critical when she's talking about someone who's used to giant metal robots.

He tilts his head to the side, apparently ignoring her words as he explores her torso. Charlie takes off her bra next, then bites her lip before shucking her jeans and panties in one go.

Bee's radio crackles with static as she stands before him naked, and she just hopes it's a good reaction.

"Beautiful," he says in his radio voice, his optics lifting from her body to lock gazes with her own eyes, and she smiles in relief.

"You're not so bad yourself," she says, and reaches out a hand to touch him in return. His metal plating is familiar to her by now, but now she reaches her fingers around the edges, to where more delicate mechanics lay.

He shivers a little, and she leans in to kiss the wires and tubes that run along his neck, careful to avoid the place where his voice box used to be. His hands become just a smidge less light on her skin, exerting enough pressure that the ticklish feeling dissolves and instead she's left with a blooming warmth that catches at her breath.

His hands are massive; they span nearly her entire torso.

"Touch me here," Charlie says, and guides a hand to her breast, demonstrating how to pinch and roll her tightened nipples.

He learns quickly, enveloping her in metal that soon warms to her skin, his digits nimble as he touches her with such care it's nearly overwhelming. She can hear his ventilation system kicking on with a hum of fans, and she can't help but glance down at his groin.

Where there's just the same plating as usual.

"Are you turned on?" she asks, nervous again. She knows she is; her clit is starting to throb with a need for contact, pussy getting wet in anticipation.

Bumblebee nods eagerly.

She licks her lips. "Can I see?"

He draws back a little from her, looking unsure. She smiles encouragingly, and as she watches the plating at his groin slides away, and from the space behind emerges his cock.

Charlie's breath catches. It's huge, massive to match the rest of him, surprisingly pretty with its yellow-and-chrome color scheme. And it's glowing, something the textbook diagram hadn't indicated. Where the metal segments join there are rings of glowing blue, the same shade as his optics, as his Spark.

"Oh," she says, at a loss for words.

Bee whirs audibly and she looks up at his face.

"I don't know if it'll fit," she says honestly. "But I want to try."

He lets out a loud buzz, and she smiles. Her hands reach for his cock without any input from her brain; it's warmer than the rest of him, almost hot. He shakes so hard that he rattles when she strokes up the length, fingers stuttering over the ridges formed by the different sections.

It feels almost like touching his Spark had when her fingers brush against the glowing sections, and she idly wonders if it's connected.

Bumblebee dips his head down so it rests against the curve of her shoulder, radio dial spinning. "You gotta squeeze a little, squeeze a little, tease a little more," he sings.

She tightens her grip, bringing her other hand in to help- the both of them together just barely meet at the fingertips, he's so thick. There's no way he's going to fit, Charlie thinks to herself, but her pussy is practically aching with empty hunger to try.

His ventilation kicks up a notch, hips thrusting once against her grip before he raises his head again. "I want to touch you," he says with what sounds like a great deal of effort.

She's on board with that plan, but it means figuring out how else to arrange themselves, because standing up isn't going to be the best way to go about this. She reluctantly takes her hands off his cock and sits down on the edge of his bunk, shivering at the cold metal on her bare skin. It doesn't really feel much like his metal, she's starting to realize- the bed is just empty, lifeless. A world away from his own living metal.

She spreads her legs, feeling very self-conscious as she does so, and uses her fingers to part the folds of her pussy so he can see what he's working with.

Bee reaches for her immediately, dropping down smoothly to his knees. His finger is a little cold, and blunt and hard- not at all like her own touch that she's used to, and she flinches.

"It's okay," she says to reassure him when he hesitates. "Just new."

He nods, and she doesn't know if he knows anything about human anatomy, if it's really much different than what a female bot would have.

Then she wonders if he's ever seen a female bot to be able to compare, and her face flushes.

He's careful as he explores her pussy, her wetness easing the way as he fingers through her folds, carefully nudges against the little nub of her clitoris. Charlie lets out a breathy noise when he makes contact, a shiver running up her spine, and he snaps his optics to meet her eyes.

She nods, hopefully reassuring him. "You can..." she says, trailing off before she starts again, her voice as confident as she can make it. "I want to feel your finger inside me."

Bumblebee's radio spins and churns out static, his optics going from her pussy to her face. She nods again, spreads her knees a little further apart.

Just one of his digits is bigger than three of her own fingers put together, and she inhales shakily at the blunt stretch of it as he slides inside. It feels good, but intense.

"You can move," she says after a moment, when the stretch is a little less shocking. She already feels full of him, and this is just a single finger!

He obliges, sliding his digit in and out in small movements, the metal widening right before the knuckle, at which point he pulls back again. Charlie leans back against the metal bunk beneath her and closes her eyes, focusing on the feeling of it, the friction of his digit against her walls.

She moans openly, unashamed to let him hear how much she enjoys it, enjoys his touch. "You feel good," she says.

Bumblebee buzzes and when she opens her eyes again, he's staring at her intensely, watching the place his digit disappears into her body.

Her breath hitches and she reaches down without thinking, rubbing her clit just the way she likes, an orgasm practically exploding out of her.

"You are incredible," he tells her, optics fixing on her face again.

Charlie reaches for him, grabbing his wrist. His fingers are big, but his cock is far bigger. "Put another one in," she says.

He hesitates, so she nods in encouragement. A second one of his digits presses against her entrance and she tries to relax, tries to welcome it in. She's wetter now after coming once, and she wants him inside of her so much, wants to feel full of him.

One of his digits was a stretch; two is almost overwhelming, absolutely no give in his metal where he's opening her up around him. She bites the inside of her cheek and tries to decide if what she's feeling is pain, or pleasure. Possibly both.

"Don't stop," Charlie manages to force out, trying to get her body to adjust to the feeling. There's no way she's going to be able to take his cock, she thinks with despair.

Bee rocks his digits back and forth slowly, his other hand caressing her in random places; her belly, her thigh, her breasts, her arm. The feeling of it being too much fades under his careful ministrations, and she even starts to rock against his fingers in her own rhythm.

"Fuck," she gasps out, looking down at his hard cock where it pulses with light between his legs. It's not that much bigger than two of his digits, is it? "Bee, I want you inside me."

His optics slide shut as he vibrates all over, the unexpected sensation of it traveling through his fingertips making her shout.

He goes still and she stares at him in surprise. "You can vibrate?"

Bumblebee blinks at her, and shrugs a shoulder. Then the hand he's fingering her with starts to rattle and vibrate, and she moans low in her throat.

"God, yes, keep doing that, Bee," she tells him. She's known that vibrations are supposed to be good, had felt a shadow of it for herself straddling her moped and even- she flushes in shame- when riding Arcee's bike form. But she's never felt concentrated vibrations like this, pulsing deep inside of her, stimulating her from the inside out.

She fucks herself on his digits with a bit more confidence, feeling her pussy clench and relax without any input from her brain, another orgasm seemingly building up out of nowhere.

"I need you to put your cock in me," Charlie says. She knows she can come on his fingers again, and again- especially now that he's vibrating for her- but she wants more. She wants to be properly filled by him, feel him seated deep inside of herself.

Her answer is static, and then, "Are you sure?"

She licks her lips and hopes she looks even a little bit alluring. "I want you," she says. "I want to try."

He nods, and leans down to nuzzle his face against hers for a moment, slowing and then stopping the vibration in his digits. She presses sloppy kisses to his mouthplate while he's in reach, tasting his alien metal heavy on her tongue.

Then he's sliding his digits out of her, and she winces at the discomfort of it. His cock feels huge when he positions it against her, blunt and hot and heavy.

Charlie's heartrate spikes with nervousness as she really looks at the size difference, his cock massive where it juts between his legs, hard metal contrasting her soft flesh. She reaches out with her left hand, her soulmarked hand, and grips his arm tight.

He pushes against her, but his cock won't go in. He pulls back, repositions, and tries again, but the results are the same.

She lets out a frustrated breath. Rather than admit defeat, however, she sits up again and takes a moment to think of their options.

"Maybe if we try it another way?" she says, and Bumblebee tilts his head a little.

"You sit up here," she says, and pats the berth underneath her, "And I'll sit in your lap."

He nods and they shuffle around, and as she moves to straddle him she's struck by the familiarity of the position. If she was facing away from him, it would be just like sitting in his lap to watch a movie.

Well, she considers as she strokes down the length of his cock, not quite the same.

He shivers again at the touch, and she has an idea.

"Can you make your cock vibrate, too?" Charlie asks, positioning herself with her knees perched on his thighs, hovering over his cock.

He nods, and a moment later the rattle-buzz of his vibrations ring out again. She lowers herself, rubbing her pussy all around his blunt cockhead, letting the vibrations travel through her entire body as she moans.

She likes this position, she decides; she can look into his optics easily like this, can feel like she's close to him as she grabs onto his shoulders for leverage. She presses herself against his cock, feeling that same blunt pressure, like there's just no way her body can stretch to accommodate him.

But at the same time she can feel little hints of movement, the deep vibrations rumbling through her and easing the way, making her so wet there's absolutely no friction against his metal.

"I think we need some lube," she says after a minute of fruitless grinding, frustrated. Charlie can feel herself trying to open for him, her body yearning for it, but even as wet as she is, there's just too much resistance.

He whirs in agreement and she clambers off as he starts to move, getting up from the berth and picking through the few items he has on his shelving unit. Bumblebee holds out a jar of axle grease, and a little bottle of mineral oil.

She considers the options. Neither one is something she really wants in her vagina, but she decides that mineral oil is the least bad option. "That one," she says, pointing to the bottle.

He looks kind of silly standing up with his cock jutting out from his pelvis, hard and glowing, but at the same time it makes her mouth water with how much she wants him. He sets the axle grease back down and she takes the mineral oil from him, splashing some of it into her cupped palm.

She rubs it all over her pussy, trying to get the thin liquid up inside of herself and only somewhat succeeding.

"Your turn," she says when he's sat back down, optics watching her intently.

Charlie straddles his lap again, and drizzles his cock with the mineral oil. It slides off almost as quickly as she puts it on, and she finds herself giggling as she rushes to set the bottle down and stroke her lubricated hands over his length.

Bumblebee's ventilation system is loud in the small room, the whir of gears inside of him as he holds himself still for her.

"Alright," she says before she can get too carried away, positioning herself over his cock again. "Can you make it vibrate again?"

He obliges, the vibrations starting up again with a deep purr. She shivers at the changed sensation- she'd thought there was no friction before, but now it's truly effortless. Her hips rock without her consciously controlling the motions, squirming as she tries to fit his cock inside of her.

"Almost," she says with a gasp, letting her eyes drift closed as she focuses.

The impossible happens. His cock pushes just enough inside of her that he is inside of her, and she shouts at the feeling, unable to figure out if it's pain or pleasure or pure animal sensation.

Charlie draws her hips up and away almost immediately, recoiling from the feeling, but she finds herself moving back almost as quickly. It does hurt, she decides, but it hurts in an amazing way, hurts like holding his Spark had started to hurt.

She grunts and groans as she works herself against his cock, the head slipping inside a second time. This time she holds herself there, feeling impaled for all that there's only maybe an inch of his length actually inside of her. The pressure is intense, her walls forced to stretch tight as a drum as she makes room for his cock.

She feels his hand against the side of her face and she opens her eyes to see him looking at her with wonder, optics wide. She smiles at him and licks her lips, and starts to move further down his cock, aided by the mineral oil still clinging to his shaft.

The stretch only gets more intense, teetering on the edge of outright pain. She gets one glowing ring inside of her and shouts at the feeling; it's almost like touching his Spark, makes her feel so deeply connected to him that tears spring to her eyes.

Bumblebee buzzes and whirs and lets out strange beeping noises, apparently abandoning his radio altogether. The vibrations in his cock deepen, strengthen.

"God, Bee," she pants, sweat dripping off every inch of her skin. "You feel so good inside me."

She doesn't honestly know if what she's feeling is a physical pleasure, but the satisfaction of taking him inside, the rush of being connected to her- that's sublime. She rocks and wriggles her hips slowly, but when she's about halfway down on his cock she abruptly knows she can't take any more. It's too intense, too thick, his cock already hitting her incredibly deep inside.

Charlie starts rocking back and forth then, slowly drawing his cock out and impaling herself on it again, feeling like she's going to be split in half with every movement but unable to bring herself to stop.

"Can you come like this?" she asks, leaning herself against his chest for support, his metal cooling off her overheating skin.

He lets out a noise that she's going to consider affirmative, and she reaches down to rub at her clit, shouting at the added sensation.

She almost thinks she isn't going to be able to come- she's stretched so tightly over his cock, so incredibly aware of every inch inside of her. But Bumblebee keeps vibrating underneath her, his hands caressing her back, that amazing connection rushing through her whenever she brushes against the glowing divots in his cock.

She screams his name as she comes, body going completely ridgid, stretched so taut she fears in the back of her mind that she might snap.

Bee's radio bursts with static, a deep noise like gears grinding against each other emanating from his chest. His optics flare bright, so bright she has to turn her face away, his ventilation a dull roar in her ears.

Charlie hisses as the sensations in her pussy suddenly tip over into discomfort, and she pulls herself off his cock.

"Bee?" she says, laying herself all along his front, finding relief in his relatively cool metal. She squirms her legs tightly together, feeling a phantom pressure still inside of her. "You okay?"

He blinks, his optics dimming down to normal, the vibrations in his body stuttering and stopping. He nods enthusiastically.

She smiles at him, and kisses just to the side of the grill of his mouthpiece. "You totally just came, didn't you?"

He nods again, and his radio crackles to life. "Shook me all night long, yeah you shook me all night long."

Charlie laughs, feeling victorious, like she could take on a hundred Decepticons. At least until she moves, and she can already feel an ache growing between her legs that sobers her.

"I love you," she tells him, completely serious.

Bumblebee nuzzles his face against hers. "You are my Spark," he says.

She's not entirely sure that she understands the deeper meaning to the words, but she can guess the general gist. She sighs, and wraps her arms around his neck, trying to keep weight off her legs. She's definitely not going to be running around all over the place tomorrow, she thinks ruefully, but it was so worth it.

It wasn't particularly late in the day when they retreated to his bunk, but neither one is eager to get back out to the real world just yet. Charlie drinks some water from the stash he keeps for her, padding the cold metal bunk with a blanket as she stretches out alongside him, still totally naked.

Bee can't seem to stop touching her, just exploring lightly. She breaks out into laughter more than once as he tickles her inadvertently- and then on purpose, the devious bot. He doesn't have a similar weakness, she's disappointed to find out, but she doesn't really mind.

"Did I imagine things," she says, "Or is Sideswipe's dad a Decepticon?"

Bumblebee ducks his chin, optics darting off to the side. Then he nods.

"That's so weird," she says. "I guess it explains why he's such a jerk, though."

"He tries," he says, but somehow he doesn't sound particularly convinced of the idea.

"He's an ass!" Charlie retorts.

He laughs quietly, and brushes her hair away from her face.

"He is," she says firmly. "I mean, sure he's gotten a little better lately, but he's still a total asshole."

Bumblebee has no answer for that, his digits drawing patterns against the skin of her back that she thinks might be Cybertronian. She snuggles in closer to him and yawns, starting to feel chilled but too stubborn to put her clothes back on.

"When did you know you were my soulmate?" she asks, her hand resting against his chest in such a way that she can see her soulmark. It looks almost like it's glowing to her now, luminous in a way it wasn't before.

He's quiet a moment. "When you were taken," he says. "I felt you."

"Oh," Charlie says. "So you really did think you were turning me down for my own good."

He looks guilty. "If you love something, set it free," he says.

"I still think that was a dumb move," she says. "I get it, I think, but I would have been happy with you even if you weren't my soulmate."

"Spark mates are so precious," Bumblebee says with a shake of his head. "I couldn't stand myself to take yours away. "

She sighs, and kisses his mouthpiece. "It worked out, though, and I'm glad."

Eventually she does have to emerge from his room, though she's reluctant about it. It feels like she can feel every bots' optics on her as she makes her way up to the bathroom, trying her hardest to keep her steps steady. She aches in the aftermath, a dull, deep throbbing, but she's decided that she likes it. Mostly.

When she's cleaned up again and dressed in fresh clothes she grabs a box of- stale, ugh- crackers to munch on, stepping back out into the command center.

She decides to be nonchalant about things, planning to take it easy with another day of TV-watching. Bumblebee is having some sort of intense conversation with Ratchet in the corner, which she does not want to know about.

His head whips to her direction as she walks down the stairs from her room, though, a smile brightening his optics.

"So when's the bonding ceremony?" Bulkhead asks gleefully.

"Bonding?" Charlie says before she can stop herself.

"You know, making it official," Bulkhead says.

"He means 'congratulations'," Arcee says, elbowing the larger bot in the side.

"I cannot believe you two got together," Sideswipe grouses, arms folded where he's leaning against the wall.

Charlie glares at him.

"I had three units of high-grade riding on you finding your human whatever in town!"

"What?" she says, drawn up short.

He sighs. "Not like it matters now."

"Once we find some high-grade, you all owe me," Ratchet says, clearly delighted. "Never doubt a medibot's intuition about Sparkmates."

"What?" Charlie says again, feeling like the conversation has gone sideways.

"They all made bets about you and Bee," Arcee says with a roll of her optics.

"No way," Bulkhead says, "I said they'd get together after a con attack! You owe me!"

He and Ratchet start bickering over the terms of their bet and Charlie finds herself looking up at Optimus, wondering if he was making bets as well.

Optimus looks down steadily at her, then looks to Bumblebee. "I am glad that you two have found each other," he says. "To have a Sparkmate is one of the most precious things in this universe."

She smiles up at him, relieved that he at least has managed to be mature about things.

Bumblebee moves next to her and puts a hand on her shoulder. She turns her smile to him instead, leaning in against his side.

"Let's get out of here," Charlie says. "There's a drive-in diner I read about in Georgia, we can call it a date."

"I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear," he sings to her in the familiar voice of The Smiths, and she smiles.

"Somehow I don't think that'll be a problem," she says, reaching up to wrap her fingers around his large digits that rest against her shoulder. Life with an Autobot for a soulmate is going to be- she winces as Sideswipe and Bulkhead start scuffling, metal clanging against metal as they trade insults over the terms of the bet- it's going to be interesting, for sure, but she wouldn't trade her relationship with Bumblebee for anything.