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Graham’s mind wandered in a state between asleep and awake, barely aware of slipping in and out of the waves of oblivion. 

A gentle, rumbling voice in his ear drew him to the surface as his hair was stroked out of his face. As far as waking up went, this was a much more pleasant experience than usual. Then of course the rest of his body followed suit, and an aching sort of pain with it. 

Prying his eyes open took more effort than he thought the action really deserved. The left side of his glasses dug into his cheek, and although his vision was a blur thanks to the misaligned lenses, he recognized the cluttered surface of his research station stretched out before him. 

“Ugh…” Graham groaned as he pushed himself up, his neck and his back and his head (his everything, really) aching from having been slumped over his desk. He squinted as he took in his surroundings, not expecting to find the lights in the bunker dimmed. 

“I fell asleep again.” 

Stating the obvious, maybe, but his brain wasn’t good for much else right then. 

The owner of the gentle voice and the hand (servo, technically) in his hair hummed beside him, vibrating deep in Graham’s chest. 

“You did,” Boulder said fondly. 

Graham looked up at him through his crooked glasses, broad and shadowed, the orange filaments in his alien eyes glowing softly. Boulder reached out and nudged Graham’s glasses into their proper place with a single digit and deceptively easy care. 

The breath rushed out of him, and Graham couldn’t help smiling up at Boulder in helpless awe. 

When he thought of his partner, his overwhelming physical strength was never the first thing that came to mind. Boulder’s brilliance and astonishing empathy were far more impressive qualities. But he’d seen Boulder punch through solid concrete and lift cars like they weighed nothing too many times to forget it, either. 

Most things on Earth were inherently fragile to Cybertronians, though the Rescue Bots had long since learned to keep themselves in check when it came to everyday life on Griffin Rock. 

Graham thought of Boulder accidentally tearing out the lever in their old pinball game, back before he was fully aware of his strength, compared to how delicately he held a paintbrush against a cotton canvas or tended to Leafy and all the new plants in his care. Or adjusted Graham’s glasses. 

The precise attention to detail, the extreme control he had to exert over himself to be gentle with something so extraordinarily frail by comparison, made Graham feel cherished in a way he never had before, even in the scant few romantic relationships he’d attempted in the past. More than tender touches and an equal conversation partner, Boulder made him feel like he was the most fascinating person in the room and it was overwhelming for Graham to comprehend at times. 

Like now, still half asleep and hazy, with the partly disassembled components of the Sigma’s proximity array staring back at him accusingly from atop the desk. 

He took off his glasses entirely so he could scrub at his face, wincing against his palms. “Sorry, love,” he mumbled. “I know you wanted to finish the upgrades tonight.”

Boulder wrapped his hand around Graham’s back, a massive thumb stroking his arm. “They’ll keep,” he murmured, cajoling in that warm way of his. “What you need is to get some real rest.”

He was right, as usual. 

Graham huffed, dropping his hands to squint up at his green blur of a partner. “Are you gonna keep working?”

“Just for a little while,” Boulder assured him. “Don’t worry, I won’t get too far without you.” 

That was almost definitely not true, but then Boulder always had been too kind and complimentary for his own good, even toward those who didn’t necessarily deserve it. 

Still, the attempt at placating him burned a little more than it might have on a night he hadn’t fallen asleep on Boulder while mid-conversation for the third time in a row. 

“Wish I could stay awake for days,” he grumbled, feeling out of sorts with his aimless frustration. “Think of how much we could get done if I wasn’t wasting time sleeping.”

Boulder chuckled. “You’re only human,” he said, like that explained everything. And maybe it did. 

-

Since the arrival of the bots and Graham fully wrapping his head around the reality that aliens existed and were living in his basement, he thought he’d kept himself on a pretty even keel. There were secrets to maintain and disasters to avert, so the addendum that their alien partners’ race was embroiled in the final, desperate dregs of a planet-killing civil war on the other side of the country was (somehow) easy to put out of his mind. 

At least until the war, for all intents and purposes, ended and the aliens’ existence was revealed to the world in the process. 

As curious as Graham usually was, the exact details of what went down in that final battle on the Nemesis , far above Earth’s atmosphere, were unknown to him and he preferred to keep it that way. What he did know was already frightening enough. Relayed by Boulder in the darkness of his quarters, nestled against the side of his neck and wrapped in the blanket Graham kept there for their sleepovers, he painted a fragmented picture of bloodshed. 

Bumblebee’s voice restored, but a haunted look lingering in his round blue optics. Megatron, dead at Bumblebee’s hand.

While the rest of the world was sent reeling by the revelation that aliens had been living among them for a decade, while fighting a secret war no less, Griffin Rock remained stubbornly and comfortably unchanged. There was almost a sense of community pride at having been the first ones in the know, not to mention the bots being such a common and welcome sight for years now. 

The mayor even made a big show about Griffin Rock being the bedrock of human-Cybertronian relations, and welcomed any and all Cybertronian guests to the island (these pronouncements would peter out quickly once he learned that most Cybertronians didn’t possess human currency). 

While most Cybertronians didn’t take the mayor up on his lukewarm offer, they were accepting Optimus’ by making Earth their new home. 

They received an updated list of arrivals every few months, which the bots all poured over with various degrees of subtlety, looking for familiar names among their fellow immigrants from the stars. But Cybertron’s dead numbered in the millions, and there were few survivors who weren’t soldiers. The chances of any of their colleagues making it through were depressingly low, but not impossible, as time would tell. 

Inferno, a former mentor of Heatwave’s, had joined the Autobots when the Decepticons started targeting Rescue teams a few hundred thousand years into the fighting. He was currently stationed in the Amazon with a human firefighting squadron. 

A laborer named Clobber who Boulder had known was reportedly on-planet, but she’d been a Decepticon since before the War, which made learning her whereabouts somewhat tricky, to say the least. Still, with the War officially over and what remained of the Decepticon forces joining the Autobots or scattering, it wouldn’t be the height of treason for Boulder to try and reach out. 

But when Graham tentatively broached the subject, Boulder just smiled at him in that heavy, somber way of his when his spark was cracking in two and he didn’t want anyone to know. 

“Thanks, love. But it’s been a long time. I doubt she even remembers me.”

And Graham hated himself for it, was almost sick with guilt over it, but he was relieved.  

Relieved that Boulder didn’t want to reconnect with an old friend, maybe the only one he had left who hadn’t been with him on the Sigma , because it meant Graham had that much more time left with him. It made him feel selfish and small, but Graham was certain that it was only a matter of time before Boulder left him. Not Griffin Rock, or even the team. 

Just Graham. 

If it wasn’t an old friend who swept him away, it would be a stranger, an equal to Boulder. A member of his own species, probably just as brilliant, with centuries if not millenia ahead of them. Even an abstract imagining measured up more than Graham did, frail and embarrassing, needing to fight surges of nausea whenever he had to speak in front of more than five people outside of an emergency situation. 

Falling in love with Boulder, being with him, proved that he was just so good , and deserving of every good thing. And Graham just…wasn’t good enough . 

But Graham couldn’t be the one to end things first. How could he? 

Sure, to the average human, their relationship looked strange from the outside, bordering on ridiculous. Boulder was at least three times his height and a thousand times his weight. Graham was painfully human whereas Boulder was sentio metallico —utterly alien.

But Boulder was the best thing that ever happened to him: compassionate, curious, a willing teacher and an eager student. No matter what they were doing, Graham found himself at his happiest when they were together.

They could be working on Boulder’s greenhouse project, reading to each other in the privacy of his habsuite, or pressed close to Boulder’s chassis as they stargazed, Graham able to feel the rumble of Boulder’s voice in his bones and imagining he could hear the thrum of his spark under his ear. It was all special because it was Boulder. 

The thought of losing that, losing him, kept him up some nights. 

Kept up by the fear that he would wake one day and find himself on the outside looking in, no longer on the receiving end of Boulder’s singular care, his love. That Boulder’s casual touches, caresses to his back and the side of his face, gentle servos in his hair, would belong to another mech, one more deserving of them. 

Graham would be relegated to a spectator because Boulder’s commitment to the team, to the safety of Griffin Rock, was absolute. He and the others would still be here a hundred years —two hundred, even—from now, until the island finally gave up the ghost and fell into the sea, and maybe not even then. 

But, and as ungrateful as this made him sound, Graham had no such commitment from Boulder. Or vice versa.

Graham wasn’t greedy enough to push for more. Even if Boulder never moved on, never realized he was settling, Graham would still be gone within the century. Within a few decades even, while Boulder could technically go on living in perpetuity. It wasn’t fair of him to try and shackle Boulder to a life that would vanish in a blink of his own. What they had was enough. 

Really, it was more than Graham thought he would ever have. Acceptance, a kindred soul, love.

And despite his anxiety regularly making swiss cheese of his brain, he was happy. Disgustingly happy, as Kade would complain, since Graham and Boulder confessed their feelings to one another and the War ended, bringing a measure of peace to all the bots that he hadn’t even realized they were lacking. 

There were no more secrets to keep, from each other, the island, or even the world, and the freedom to build, to create, to bridge with allies new and old was staggering in the best of ways. Though their usual rescues of cats from trees and Mr. Harrison’s wayward propeller pack kept them humble. 

In the long run, they saw little of the new Cybertronian arrivals themselves. By virtue of the Rescue Bots’ noncombatant status, and the dense human population of their relatively small island, Griffin Rock was left largely undisturbed as the rest of the world went reeling. They had their usual visitors in Optimus, Salvage and Blurr, even High Tide. Bee and Blades were practically living in each other’s pockets and Ratchet made the occasional appearance for a series of surly first-aid lessons, with one of his new cadre of assistants in tow.

That all changed when Optimus asked two of his highest ranking scientists, Perceptor and Brainstorm, to examine the island’s defenses. 

While weather-related emergencies were the bulk of their concern, Graham knew that a greater fear was of Decepticon attack against the Rescue Bots. Megatron might be dead, but most of his command staff was in the wind, and his followers weren’t all imprisoned or reformed. The lonely island populated by civilian humans and the last original Cybertronian rescue team was potentially a prime target for retaliation, which made Graham feel a little faint when he thought about it too hard.

The War had seemed so far away when it was still raging compared to how omnipresent it felt now that it was over. It was no longer possible to live in suspension of disbelief, blissfully ignorant of the goings-ons of a million-year, million-light-year spanning war. 

After three years of radio silence or getting slapped with Agent Fowler’s repeated retort of “CLASSIFIED,” they were bombarded with news: how Metroplex was settling in Texas, Optimus’ latest address to the UN, what countries rogue Decepticons had last been spotted in. 

Bumblebee all but moved into the firehouse, first on doctor’s orders and now because no one wanted him to leave (least of all Blades). 

 It had been hard to tell, with the lack of a traditional voice, just how young Bumblebee was. It was obvious now, of course, with his restored voicebox, the harmless mischief he cajoled Blades or Cody into, and the small, crooked grin he sometimes still hid behind his battle mask. 

He fit in well with the team as an unofficial Rescue Bot, following Heatwave and Dad’s orders without fail, and the more time he spent in Griffin Rock, the less intimidating he became. It was hard to think of him solely as the guy who stabbed Megatron through the spark when he was swinging around a giggling, blushing Blades in an impromptu dance or arguing furiously with Dani and Kade over the latest episode of Love Island. 

But Bee’s presence inadvertently brought the War to their doorstep in a way that Optimus’ sporadic visits hadn’t.

Graham knew he wasn’t alone in feeling that meeting new Cybertronians could be disarming at times, especially those who were so different from the Rescue Bots. Team Prime was a good example of just that. 

While not rude, or even disparaging of humans like High Tide or Blurr were at the start, they didn’t much care for them either. Bulkhead, Arcee, Smokescreen, and even Knockout weren’t politicos and had been operating in secret until Megatron blew the lid on the whole robots in disguise thing by creating Darkmount in the middle of the Nevada desert. Until a few months ago, they’d had no real reason or opportunity to interact with humans other than the three high school kids who’d stumbled into their secret, and now lived in protective custody in Metroplex. 

If Graham thought navigating the bunker with four bots in it could get tight sometimes, then the occasional seven or even nine was beyond overwhelming. It didn’t help matters that none of these Autobots were much used to having so many humans underfoot either. 

But they visited for Bumblebee, and when they stuck to the bunker Graham often found them roughhousing and drinking, with the Rescue Bots hanging around in the periphery. 

Team Prime’s bond was obvious in the way Bulkhead would jostle and hug Bee as they spoke or how Arcee wrestled him into submission without spilling a drop of her cube of high grade. Smokescreen could goad him into racing at any hour of the day or night (though they restrained themselves to the obstacle course out back so as to not incur Chase’s wrath). 

Knockout was the outlier. 

While he was never left alone, especially around the humans, he was also the only one to engage them in meaningful conversation. He was a big fan of human culture, movies especially, and was fascinated by the Rescue Bots. Although, being the target of his red-eyed stare and alarmingly silky voice could be, well…alarming.  

They also spoke of the War, old friends, and the current state of the Autobots, all things Graham and his family (even the bots) knew little about. It was hard not to feel like a tenth wheel when these reunions took place, as if he was seven years old again, with the adults’ important conversations flying over his head. 

Of all his siblings, only Cody ever joined these “parties” with regularity, the Cybertronian whisperer that he was. Even then, he was firmly ensconced with Chase or Heatwave the entire time, who could carry him into another room if the conversation left kid-friendly territory. 

Graham’s social anxiety would have him steering well clear of these gatherings, except that Boulder usually turned those big orange optics on him and insisted you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. And Graham was powerless to resist because it was Boulder, and he knew that his partner wanted little else but to reconnect with his fellow Cybertronians, shaped by the War in a way the Rescue Bots could never be, yet still forced to face the consequences of it,  stranded together on the same alien planet. 

So what if he spent a few hours sitting up on Boulder’s shoulder, feeling like a recalcitrant parrot as he was ignored by everyone but the bots he lived with? He basically signed up for awkward interactions with aliens for the rest of his life since Dad admitted their new rescue vehicles had traveled from a little farther than D.C., give or take a few galaxies. 

Speaking of awkward interactions: the day he’d been eagerly looking forward to as much as he’d been dreading had arrived. 

The scientists’ visit. 

Graham was in the living room when his watch beeped a ten minute warning, skimming through the botany guide he’d already read at least a dozen times in the months since Hayley gifted it to them. She’d been an invaluable help in person too, picking out which plants would be the best to start out with in Boulder’s greenhouse. 

While Graham was certain that Boulder already had the entire book memorized cover to cover, on top of all the other texts on botany and architecture they’d poured over, he still wanted to put in his fair share. Boulder felt everything so deeply, and his greenhouse project had been an escape from the stress of rescues and the interstellar politics they suddenly found themselves embroiled in. That it turned out beautifully was just a bonus. 

With the rest of the family out on patrol or enjoying the unseasonably warm April weather, Graham was able to descend to the bunker in record time without anyone to wayleigh him. He found Boulder already waiting at the groundbridge controls, and he traced the lines of his broad back with his eyes as he approached. 

“Hey, hun. Any word yet?”

Boulder turned around, a grin already curving the solid square of his jaw. “Graham!” he exclaimed, eager as he’d ever seen him. “No, nothing yet. But then, we’re still a few minutes early.” 

He knelt and lowered one massive servo to the ground, which Graham didn’t hesitate before climbing onto. Boulder stood and smoothly lifted Graham up to his faceplate, nary a tremble upsetting his footing, accepting his quick kiss with a happy hum. 

Graham pulled back, tracing a hand along Boulder’s collar faring. His armor was designed so thick, Graham sometimes wondered if his meager caresses could even be felt.

Most of the bots’ armor was denser than that of their fellow Cybertronians, with the exception of war frames or shuttleformers, intended to withstand extreme temperatures and intense pressure, such as collapsing structures or the frames of injured Cybertronians. In fact, the only Rescue Bot with thicker armor than Boulder was actually Chase, with his Enforcer-grade armor triple-layered and able to withstand blaster bolts (and the occasional lightning strike). 

The few times he and Boulder tried to strength test the alloy (separate from Boulder, of course), it blew past any metal manufactured or naturally produced on Earth. It bore the closest similarity to tank armor, but even that was practically eggshell brittle in comparison. 

Graham met Boulder’s dancing optics with expectant amusement. “On a scale of one to ten, how excited are you right now?”

Boulder chuckled, his shoulders bouncing with the movement. He sounded almost giddy. “My real answer would be a number impossible to quantify! It’s an honor to meet Brainstorm and Perceptor, but to have them come all the way here?”

Graham smiled back, trying not to let his nerves turn it into a grimace. 

They’d had three days to prepare for the scientists’ arrival, which hadn’t felt like nearly enough time when it came to these particular Autobots. 

Graham’s inherent anxiety at meeting new Cybertronians was compounded by Optimus’ gentle warning that Perceptor and Brainstorm were from the most recent landing party, and as such knew next to nothing about Earth or the humans who lived on it. Which was Prime-speak for ‘please treat them with kid gloves, even if they turn out to be jerks’—or so Bumblebee claimed, as the resident Optimus expert. 

Two nights ago, while everyone else enjoyed a movie in the common room, Graham and Boulder retreated to their shared lab for the opportunity to plan and worry in peace. 

Well, Graham covered the worrying part for both of them. 

“There’s the dome, the teleporter, eugh we still have the blueprints for the time machine, even if I think we should destroy those too…” Graham paced across Boulder’s ten foot tall desk, dragging his hands through his hair, already mussed beyond belief. “Remind me, Perceptor…you lent me some of his journals, right?”

Boulder brightened. “Yes! I still have dozens of his essays from when he attended the Iacon Academy of Sciences, and even some of his research into synthetic energon from the war. Perceptor’s initial theories were proven wrong by Ratchet and Shockwave, though, so maybe don’t bring that up.”

Boulder stepped away, toward the Cybertronian-sized bookshelf along the wall. Stacked beside regular books and datapads were the pentagonal prisms called datarods, akin to Cybertronian USB drives. Each of the Rescue Bots had a fair collection, though Boulder’s was the largest, brimming with countless scientific essays, art, poetry, and literature all from Cybertron. And Cybertron before the war, at that. 

Boulder’s library had made him something of a celebrity among the Metroplex Autobots, as the owner of the largest repository of Cybertronian culture currently on Earth. Optimus and Lieutenant Jazz both visited to make multiple copies of each text, and Boulder even donated translated versions to the Griffin Rock Library to share with their neighbors. 

Between all the craziness, the name Rewind was bandied about too, apparently an Autobot who was both mech and walking media center, but he and the rest of his crew had been missing since the Exodus. 

Boulder pulled a datapad off the shelf, brandishing it eagerly. “I was lucky enough to find an archivist who was more eager to accept bribes than uphold the law, though you wouldn’t believe what they charged me. It was…what’s that phrase the Chief used? ‘Highway robbery?’ Although, I suppose the essays were cutting edge for the time…”

“What do you–did you say bribe?” Graham sputtered, shocked straight out of his downward spiral. “But they’re just research papers. Theoretical science!”

“Ah.” Boulder glanced away sheepishly, fiddling with the datapad in his servos. “Well, since the information wasn’t relevant to my function, I didn’t have access to it. Legally, strictly speaking. Texts relevant to my function as a Rescue Bot would be assigned to me, but that was all. So we all bent the rules a little to get more interesting material.”

Graham sat down in the middle of Boulder’s desk, abruptly weak-kneed. “Even Chase?” he asked, almost too stunned for proper incredulity. 

He’d known about the caste system on Cybertron, obviously. All the bots had brought it up in some shape or form. It was the reason their robot cover story grated on Heatwave so badly. 

Boulder laid it all out for him, explaining how the violent inequality on their planet had sparked the flames that led to war. Form equaled function, Boulder said, but, like a fool, Graham hadn’t considered how deep it went, how every aspect of life could be stifled by virtue of the body most had no say in choosing. 

Boulder leaned forward with a conspiratorial smile, holding out a hand for Graham to pull himself back onto his feet. “Don’t tell anyone I told you, but Chase has a weakness for Praxian dramas. Real dry, all about duty to the state and the occasional trial over property disputes. I’m glad he’s broadened his horizons and gotten so hooked on mystery novels.”

Graham huffed a laugh. “Secret’s safe with me.” He held Boulder’s gaze a moment longer, squeezing the finger he’d wrapped his hand around. In return, Boulder pressed his thumb against the back of Graham’s hand, their equivalent of holding hands. 

“So,” Graham said as Boulder released him to continue pacing, less frenetic than before. “Perceptor. One of the Autobots’ top scientists. Plenty of scientific breakthroughs to study. But what about Brainstorm? I don’t recognize his name.”

Boulder shook his head. “You wouldn’t. He was—still is, I suppose—a weapon’s designer for the Autobots. He was stationed on Kimia during most of the fighting. It was an Autobot facility specializing in research and development for the war effort.”

Graham faltered midstep, his brain buzzing. He blew out a breath as he dragged his hands up his face and through his hair, holding onto the strands that fell into his eyes more often than not. Time for a haircut, some distant, last bastion of sanity offered idly. The rest of his brain was fixated on a different set of words. 

A weapons designer. An alien weapons designer. They didn’t even allow human military contractors on the island. 

He peeked at Boulder from behind his fists. “Do you ever feel like we’re in over our heads?”

Boulder’s answering smile was all sympathy, and Graham felt like he was falling down a mineshaft a little bit less. “Every day, love.”

But three days were a long time to drown in anticipatory anxiety, and Graham’s stomach swooped as Boulder set him down in front of the chiming groundbridge controls. 

“That’s them,” Graham confirmed needlessly, looking back over his shoulder to let Boulder’s eager smile bolster him. He entered the access code to open the groundbridge. “Bringing them through now.”

The groundbridge whirred to life, a stunning kaleidoscope of swirling neon that never failed to take Graham’s breath away. A terrestrial wormhole localized in his basement. He still couldn’t believe it. 

Two tall, dark shapes began to take form in the center, gaining definition as they approached from within the brilliant vortex. 

“Whoa,” Boulder murmured. 

Graham nodded slowly, awed despite himself. “You said it, partner.”

Preceptor and Brainstorm were unlike any Cybertronian Graham had met yet. 

He’d realized not long after meeting Bumblebee and the rest of Prime’s team that the Rescue Bots were relatively plain in appearance (with the exception of Blades, who was apparently the paragon of Cybertronian beauty) and built to take punishment compared to many other Cybertronians. They were created with a singular purpose in mind, grueling rescue work, and as such their creators didn’t think it necessary to add unnecessary embellishments. 

They didn’t have the option, or the funds, to customize themselves either. That was a fad that only came around once the war started and all the institutions that upheld the caste system were violently demolished. 

Boulder explained that he, Heatwave, and Chase were each products of a base model. Once, there had been thousands of nearly identical Rescue Bots, because they were manufactured to be so. 

Graham was still of the mind that none of them could replicate the gleam in Boulder’s optics when he learned something new, or carry half as much tenderness in their voiceprint. Boulder’s beauty was uniquely his, and one that Graham would recognize anywhere. 

All this to say, Perceptor and Brainstorm looked especially alien to Graham, even after five years of seeing the Rescue Bots every day. 

They were both tall, or at least taller than Boulder, sleek and dangerous where the bots were more boxy and practical. He didn’t recognize any of their kibble, and wondered if they’d even chosen Earth vehicle modes yet. 

The one he identified as Perceptor, based on Bumblebee’s description, had a combination of red, white, and black armor, with a large cylindrical scope mounted on his shoulder. Over one eye was a blue glass Graham first mistook for a monocle, and belatedly recognized as a reticle. It helped explain the sniper rifle on his back that was at least three times as long as Graham was tall. He had a face of silver metal, which he kept stoically neutral.

By contrast, Brainstorm was a striking teal, all sharp angles, with two layers of wings on his front and back, as well as artillery mounted on either side of his helm, both kibble from his vehicle mode. The majority of his face was hidden behind a gold mask, but his similarly hued optics were bright with a hidden smile. 

The groundbridge closed with a crackle and the abrupt absence of noise it left in its wake was startling and cavernous. Graham barrelled through the silence that threatened to swallow him by straightening his shoulders and white-knuckling a positive attitude. 

“Welcome to Griffin Rock! I’m Graham Burns.”

“Dr. Graham Burns,” Boulder added proudly. “And I’m Boulder. It’s an honor to meet you both!”

Perceptor dipped his helm in a shallow nod. “...thank you,” he said in a smooth, deep voice, at odds with the tense way he held himself. 

“Oi, pay no mind to the stiff!” 

In a flurry of movement, Brainstorm elbowed Perceptor in his midsection, making him double over with a grunt, then dropped down inches from Graham’s face. He fell into a crouch at such a frightening speed that it had Graham stumbling back in instinctive, primal alarm before he could even process Brainstorm’s declaration of, “Howdy, hu-man!”  

“Whoa!” Graham caught himself from falling flat on his ass with a staggering backwards step, heart pounding so hard he felt it in his teeth. 

Brainstorm leaned back, servos hanging in his lap and his wings mirrored them, all dropping in disappointment. “Huh. Your species is kinda jumpy, ain’t it?” 

Graham found himself at a loss for words, opening and closing his mouth soundlessly. 

The bots learned ages ago to check their speed and strength around humans, at the risk of causing more harm during rescues. They didn’t want to panic a victim by coming at them too fast or underestimate the fragility of human-made structures. Blurr learned that particular lesson the hard way, creating new dangers with nearly every rescue he joined. 

A warm, broad weight settled across Graham’s back, and he recognized Boulder’s palm almost at once. 

“Don’t knock it! ‘Being jumpy’ has helped humans survive millions of years of evolution.” Boulder was using his genial spokesperson voice that was usually only ever needed when tensions were high and Heatwave was too embarrassed or furious to speak for the group. But there was an edge to it this time, a discordant note under the cajoling words that only Graham was capable of noticing. 

“There are plenty of animals that are bigger than them, like bears and moose, and all of them are potentially dangerous to humans. And we’re a lot bigger than a bear!”

While grateful for the save, warning bells started ringing in the back of Graham’s mind when Boulder didn’t seem inclined to explain what a bear was. Especially since rhapsodizing about the strangeness of Earth’s flora and fauna was one of his favorite icebreakers to use on new arrivals. 

Graham patted Boulder’s wrist. “You better not be planning another research paper about human behavior based on me.”  

Laughter rumbled deep in Boulder’s chassis, and the subtle hints of tension left his frame. “That was only one time! Give or take.” 

In front of them, Brainstorm was nearly vibrating with excitement, which Graham might have found endearing under different circumstances. 

“Nevermind the humans! Look at you!” Brainstorm stood in a rush, grabbing Boulder by the shoulders. His optics were so bright they practically spat sparks and his accent—now that Graham was listening to it—was something akin to Scottish, which only added to the eccentricity of his rambling. “A real powerloader frametype. I almost didn’t believe Prime when he said there were Rescue Bots on this rock. And the last Rescue Bots? Phew. You guys are practically relics!”

Dwarfed nearly twice over by Brainstorm’s superior height, Boulder startled awkwardly in his grip. “Oh, uh, thank you…?”

“What would you say to a few stress tests once we’re done here? Nothing too invasive, of course, no. Maybe an armwrestling match or two? Just to see what you’re capable of.”

“Need I remind you, we are on assignment from the Prime,” Perceptor chided in a near monotone, folding his lithe, elegant arms over the glass panel of his chest. 

“Right, right, right. Next time! After all, we’re only a hop, skip, and a groundbridge away from Metroplex!” 

Sympathizing with Boulder’s own deer-in-headlights look, Graham spoke up to ease the attention on his partner. “So neither of you have met a Rescue Bot before?”

In disconcerting unison, Brainstorm and Perceptor craned their heads down to peer at him, as if they had almost forgotten he was there and expected him to scurry away when the big bots started talking. 

Graham resisted the urge to tug at his collar as the skin of his ears and neck burned from the shame of committing another social faux paus. But following on the heels of that familiar, instinctive embarrassment was a rising indignation that kept his shoulders straight and his voice from faltering. Graham had faced down every kind of Cybertronian from Primes to former Decepticons, and millions of years old or not, he wasn’t about to be made to feel insignificant in his own home. Bunker. Whatever. 

“Not me,” Brainstorm eventually said. “The last Rescue Force holdout was blown to the Pit and back before I was even sparked. I think Iacon’s was the last to go.”

“Even before the war, Rescue Bots didn’t brush pedes with Academy mechs unless a lab building was on fire,” Boulder explained gently, brushing a single digit over Graham’s shoulder. He’d probably noticed the temperature of his face go up. How mortifying. 

Brainstorm laughed behind his mask, a sound startlingly similar to a car engine backfiring. “Ha! That sounds about right.”

Perceptor dipped his helm. “I believe we had an assignment to attend to.”

Giving a teenage Dani a run for his money in the drama department, Brainstorm slumped backwards, rolling his optics and all. “Ughhhh, fine . What’s first on the agenda, Constructi-bot?”

“R-right.” The odd stumble had Graham looking up at Boulder, but his partner had already turned away, clapping his servos together. “I think the Greene Dome would be a great place to start. It’s an energy field which engulfs the island, to be deployed during natural disasters.”

 Brainstorm nodded sagely. “And you want to know if we can juice it up for you in case any Decepticons come knocking, am I right?”

“Something like that,” Graham said. “We can do a quick demonstration before cracking open the dome’s power source.”

“That would be acceptable.” Perceptor tucked his servos behind his back and walked past them, toward the lift that would take them to ground level. Clearly, he was tired of waiting for them to get a move on. “In this instance, a few durability tests would not go amiss.”

Brainstorm punched the air. “See what I mean, Percy? And you said I wouldn’t get a chance to blow anything up!”

He hurried after Perceptor, and in their wake Graham exchanged a helpless glance with Boulder, who looked similarly at a loss for words. Without any time for optimistic speeches, Graham offered his partner a reassuring smile, tucking the gnawing feeling of misgiving behind his eyes. 

They only had to accompany their guests for a few hours. What was the worst that could happen?

He ignored the voice in the back of his mind, annoyingly reminiscent of Kade, listing: spontaneous lycanthropy, time travel, people-eating space goo, fire tornados, teleportation to the arctic…

-

Sunset spread across the sky with reaching fingers, brilliant colors that darkened to navy the further they stretched from the horizon. Far from the golden glow of twilight, Graham was cast in the cool and lengthening shadows of the trees at the edge of the firehouse obstacle course, his head bent as he paced. And paced some more. 

Back here at least, he could have a measure of peace and blessed solitude. The thought of anyone else trying to press him for answers again made him want to crawl out of his skin, or scream. Maybe cry. Or both. 

At the same time, the thought of going inside, putting a door between him and the rest of the world, was equally suffocating. 

All that today consisted of was putting out (metaphorical) fires, and Graham was utterly spent, yet still wired with the lingering adrenaline of high anxiety. He was sure that half the island had already hounded his dad for details, and he should feel guilty about that. And he did. But not enough to turn his comm link back on. 

He still had his phone on him, of course, he wasn’t completely irresponsible. But nothing urgent had come through, and he was fine ignoring everyone else for now. They all wanted to know the same thing, anyway:

Were they under attack?

Who were those two new robots?

Are aliens invading again?

Just thinking back a few hours to the beach made his blood boil, despair warring with shaky frustration. 

The cove where they’d stationed one arm of the Greene Dome was calm at low tide, and less populated than the larger, sandier stretches of beach on the eastward side of the island. There were only a few scattered dog walkers and kids playing in tide pools present to witness the alien-as-hell-looking white and teal jet landing on the road, accompanied by an equally strange but less ostentatious red and black armored personnel carrier, before they transformed into entirely new Cybertronian faces. 

The beachgoers let out gasps and cries of awe, many of them curiously approaching Brainstorm and Perceptor. In the excitement, few paid attention to the long common sight of Boulder rolling up in vehicle mode until Graham hopped out and he transformed, gently herding the looky loos away to establish a proper perimeter. 

“Official rescue team business,” he and Graham explained apologetically as kids tried craning their heads around to get a better look at their new scientists, who didn’t spare the nearby humans a glance as they pulled various devices out of subspace to fiddle with. 

Despite the awkwardness back in the bunker, Graham tried to be optimistic and give Brainstorm and Perceptor the benefit of the doubt. Earth was alien to them , and among every new thing they had to learn, social norms were likely at the bottom of the list. It was to be expected that they might come off as rude. 

Even now, Graham wouldn’t exactly call High Tide or Blurr a ray of sunshine. The Rescue Bots were also a bit stilted in those first few weeks, as they parsed human interaction and human slang to varying degrees of success. 

Though a couple townspeople still lingered, failing to act nonchalant as they stared at the new arrivals and whispered to each other, they were well beyond the perimeter that Graham and Boulder had created, and he was fine with letting them spectate. 

“I’m gonna call Doc, let him know he’s good to activate the dome,” he told Boulder, his phone already up against his ear. 

“One of the human scientists?” Perceptor asked before Boulder could respond. “I was under the impression that they were not nearly technologically advanced enough to create force field generators, much less one of this scale.”

While he listened to the line ring, Graham watched as Boulder turned to answer Perceptor. 

“You’d be mostly right, but Griffin Rock tends to be an exception when it comes to advanced technology. As for the dome, well…” Boulder chuckled, ducking his helm in that bashful way of his. “I might’ve given Doc Greene the idea after telling him about the force fields we used on Cybertron to protect government buildings from acid rain.” 

“Forget acid rain, we retrofitted those bad boys to deflect missiles and blaster fire and even K-Squads, at least, y’know, the really juiced up shields.” Brainstorm chortled, the sound catching in his intake almost like a snort of laughter. “And now you’re using it to protect from a little dihydrogen monoxide precipitation and a light breeze! How fragile are these organics?”

Doc Greene had finally picked up but Graham barely heard his greeting, distracted by Brainstorm’s word choice. 

Organics? I haven’t heard that one before. 

Boulder huffed air through his vents, which almost sounded like a chuckle to anyone who didn’t know him. But because Graham knew him intimately, had made a point of unraveling the layers of his partner beneath the pleasant smiles and affability, he knew that Boulder only made that sound when reigning in his usually nonexistent temper. 

Graham stared up at him, wide-eyed. He might’ve said something in response to Doc, his body working on autopilot, but the conversation he was supposed to be having was the furthest thing from his mind right then. Most of the times he’d heard Boulder growl like that he’d been in dino mode, and mid combat. 

“I’m sure you’ve heard that Griffin Rock can be something of a danger magnet,” Boulder explained, unsmiling. “We’ve had plenty of extreme weather that could easily harm a Cybertronian, and the dome has saved thousands of human lives a dozen times over by now.”

Locked into the conversation going on over his head, Graham almost didn’t hear poor Doc Greene in his ear, calling his name. 

“Hello? Graham? Do I have the all-clear to activate the dome?”

He scrambled, startled, and almost dropped his phone. “Yeah! Yes! Sorry, Doc. You’ve got the all-clear.”

Graham said his goodbyes and ended the call, tucking it back into his toolbelt. He looked back up at Boulder, whose tense jaw and furrowed brow had softened into something pained and troubled. Brainstorm and Perceptor had gone back to ignoring everything around them, poking at gadgets that just a glance made Graham itch to take apart and reverse engineer them. 

Perceptor pulled the rifle off his back, seemingly fiddling with the scope for want of something to do. 

Seeing a gun that large, that close, was mildly anxiety inducing, though Graham did his best to shrug off the instinctive discomfort. For most Autobots, their weapons were part of everyday life. He knew Bumblebee had blasters, he’d seen them, but bar a serious emergency they were transformed away. Dad even refused to carry a gun, the only weapon he kept on him being his taser. So Graham thought he could be forgiven for side-eyeing the gun almost as tall as a telephone pole.

He pressed a hand against Boulder’s ankle.

“Hey. The dome’ll be up any minute now.”

Not soon enough, an uncharitable part of Graham snipped, but he couldn’t really bring himself to feel bad about it. Today had been full of disappointments, and only a cup of tea and a few hours in a dark room, curled up in the space between Boulder’s neck and shoulder, would put his mood to rights.

A low chime echoed across the island through a number of cleverly hidden speakers created as part of their emergency alert system. A calm automated voice spoke.

“This is a test of the Greene Dome. Do not be alarmed. The Greene Dome will be deployed in T-minus sixty seconds. This is a test of the Greene Dome. Do not be alarmed. The Greene Dome will be deployed in T-minus fifty-nine seconds.”

In the water, just beyond the rocky shore and exposed tidepools, the nearby anchoring for an arm of the dome began to hum, gears and hydraulics churning. The support arm rose out of the ocean with a splash, dripping in a glistening, rainbow torrent as it extended, pillar-like. At fifty feet wide, the arching sides of the dome alone were an impressive sight to behold, built so tall that they blurred indistinct. On the beach below them, the spectators murmured in awe, voicing Graham’s own thoughts. 

Graham had seen and done things most people could only dream of (or have crippling nightmares about), but the dome still managed to take his breath away. Doc had truly outdone himself.

He was distracted from his admiration by Brainstorm, not that the scientist was speaking to him. 

“Ol’ Hatchet mentioned you already got energon to work on this bad boy.” The white and teal scientist scratched at the side of his mask, nonchalant. 

Graham grimaced, unseen. It was a memory he hated to be reminded of. The cold like needles against his skin, flooding his lungs. The suffocating, exhausting, endless anxiety. Everyone’s life on the line, the threat of the island dropping like a stone eating at his mind. Desperately clinging to Boulder’s unmoving, frigid servo as his optics went dark. 

“Yeah,” Boulder hedged. He didn’t enjoy the reminder of their sacrifice any more than Graham did. Before synth-en, energon was so scarce as to be nonexistent, and they’d had no idea if Prime’s team even possessed enough to revive them all. 

“But it was an emergency,” Boulder quickly elaborated. Much like Graham, he couldn’t help but elaborate. “We have no idea how a fully energon-based power source would interact with the dome’s structure or existing power cells, much less synthetic energon.” 

Brainstorm rolled his wrist in a flippant motion, not even looking at Boulder. Graham thought he sounded bored, but surely it was just the mask in the way. Right?

  “Yeah, yeah, I foresee plenty of experiments in our future. But once we get the data, it’ll be such a hassle to drag ourselves here every time.”

Graham started to feel sick. A heavy weight fell to the pit of his stomach, twisting tightly, but his head felt light, hazy with dread. 

There was no way. No way the future he’d predicted in his worst moments, in the dark and lonely hours, was taking shape right before his eyes. The universe couldn’t be that cruel. 

“Oh?” Boulder responded politely. 

Before them, the arms of the dome continued to rise in conjunction with four unseen others, surrounding the island, on the brink of locking together and activating the shield. Graham saw without truly seeing, his shaking grip so tight around his tablet that his fingers ached. 

He felt trapped, his protests only echoing from within his own head, like he’d been tied to train tracks and could only watch helplessly as the ground shook, the tracks rattled, and his fate came bearing down on him. 

A terrible part of him prayed for some sort of emergency to happen. A kraken appearing in the bay, Morocco coming back from the future, for one of the beachcombing kids to fall and scrape their knee. Anything to prevent the inevitable conclusion of his worst nightmare from reaching its end.

And because the universe, or Primus, or Unicron under their feet, truly had no sympathy for Graham and his insignificant hopes, Brainstorm was able to continue, uninterrupted.  

“What if you came to Metroplex? Solves the problem of commuting.”

Boulder seemed taken aback, though that barely made Graham feel any better.

Metroplex was the center of everything Autobot. It was its own city; their top scientists were stationed there, with an endless supply of Cybertronian tech, thanks to a steady stream of salvage trips through the space bridge to Cybertron and its moons. 

According to Team Prime, it was the next best thing to Cybertron before the War. What was Griffin Rock compared to that?

 Graham hadn’t even seen Metroplex. None of them had, save Heatwave, and that was on official business from the Prime. 

Boulder hesitated before responding, and Graham could’ve lived an entire lifetime in his pauses. “Well…yes, taking turns visiting sounds more than—”

Brainstorm cut him off, as if he were physically incapable of letting someone get out a complete thought before him. It drew Graham a few inches out from under the heavy, deafening shroud of his panic, staring hard at Brainstorm with clenched fists. It wasn’t like the scientists were paying him any attention, anyway. 

“You’ve gotta bring that teleporter I saw on Hatchet’s list. And those energize weapons!”

“They’re not really weapons—”

It was barely a surprise when Brainstorm steamrolled over Boulder again. Graham had moved onto openly glaring. 

He barely noticed when the dome finally formed around them, painting a green haze over the horizon. 

Brainstorm’s second pair of wings fluttered giddily, either deaf to Boulder’s protests or purposely ignoring them, Graham couldn’t say. “Think about it! You could help us out in the lab with all of your cute hu-man inspired tech. But first, let’s get this durability test over with. Percy, you ready?”

Graham assumed, like any reasonable person would, that Brainstorm and Perceptor had brought equipment to gather readings from the dome. After all, that was all this excursion was meant to be. Just data gathering. 

But Graham turned just as Perceptor wordlessly raised his rifle, the scope at his optic, and fired at the dome, point blank.

A streak of blue, alien in its brilliance, pierced the energy shield and a horrendous crash split the air, like the dimming sky itself screamed open. Graham dropped his tablet in a blind rush to cover his ears, desperate to deafen himself if the shrieking of the dome didn’t get it done first. Darkness fell over him, a gentle pressure against his back, and he knew distantly that Boulder had knelt to shield him with his hands. 

Around them, the westward energy barrier shuddered, flickering before going out altogether. The shrieking, at last, disappeared with it, though Graham felt his ears would keep ringing for another week. 

The vacuum of silence it left behind was suffocating, even for as few seconds as the sky had seemed to rent itself in two. There was no birdsong. Somehow, even the ocean had gone dead quiet.

Then the dome’s security measures let out a blat of warning for the failed shield, startling Graham into breathing again. The frame of the dome remained standing in front of them, jutting hundreds of feet in the air, just one of many spindly fingers encircling the island. Graham had no idea if the rest of the shield had collapsed too.

The people on the beach were screaming. Most were running. 

And Graham, frozen in uncomprehending incredulity, was swept away by a roaring, blazing tide of apoplectic horror like he’d never experienced before. 

“What the hell was that?” He could barely get the words out, blood rushing in his ears, fury choking him to the point he wouldn’t be surprised if the snap of his teeth shot sparks. The reprimand tore out of his throat at a volume he’d never used on anyone before, ever, except during dire, life or death emergencies. Now, it ensured he wouldn’t be ignored again. “Put the gun away, now. Where do you get off firing a weapon like that without any warning?”

Perceptor frowned blandly, leaning away from Graham’s explosive, emotional tirade.  “I was testing—”

No excuses. It was Graham’s turn to talk, and he plowed forward scathingly. “You can’t fire weapons around civilians, are you insane? What if the bolt had ricocheted, or caused an explosion—”

“Neither outcome was likely,” Perceptor continued to insist, looking properly annoyed now, even under his perpetually stiff expression. Too bad Graham couldn’t care less what they thought of him now. 

“Unlikely, not impossible! Why would you think—no, I can’t deal with this right now.” He stopped mid sentence as a chilling, crystalline realization fell over him like a bucket of ice water, that he was wasting time arguing with people who didn’t respect him, and thus would never listen to him. 

So Graham turned away, activating his comm link. Damage control was the only priority now. 

“Everyone, we just had a C10-57 on west beach. Repeat, C10-57, on west beach. The issue has been…contained. No injuries to report.” 

His dad’s voice came over the line, and his gruff timbre would usually be a blam to his fraying nerves. Now, it did little to settle the queasy sense of guilt and powerlessness churning in his chest. “10-4, Graham. We hear you. Do you need any support?”

“People on the mainland heard that! What the hell?” Kade demanded crassly, never one to let proper comm link etiquette stop him. “I thought he was just giving the eggheads a tour?” 

Still shaking with leftover adrenaline from having screamed at a twenty-foot tall alien, Graham barely stifled a snort in time. Me too, Kade.

“No, but thanks, Dad. I'll give you the full rundown tonight.”

His hand dropped from his comm, but not before taking his glasses with it. He scrubbed his hands up over his face, glasses dangling from a few fingers, and pressed the heel of his palms against his closed eyes until he saw stars amid the black. Taking deep breaths, he let the crash of the wave below replace the pounding of blood in his ears. 

There were no dog walkers, no more kids exploring tide pools. They’d smartly booked it when the giant alien gun came out.

It wasn’t the end of the world. Dad clearly trusted him to deal with the immediate fallout of this mess, and he tried to take some measure of comfort in that. Key word: tried. 

Behind him, he heard Boulder speaking in short, clipped sentences. As out of character as Graham’s fury had been, this was somehow even more so. 

“I’m sorry, but I think it’s best if you both went back to Metroplex now. We can reschedule a better time to run your tests.”

“We didn’t mean to freak out the little guys,” Brainstorm nearly whined. 

“I know you didn’t. But you were careless. And right now, I need to make sure our citizens are safe.”

Our citizens. Hearing that soothed some of the ragged fear inside Graham, well-worn but freshly raw since the scientists’ arrival. 

Behind him, he heard the churning, mechanical sounds of transformation, swiftly followed by an engine smoothly turning over, drowned out by the twin turbines of an alien jet, shooting off into the sky, kicking up a breeze in its wake that threw Graham’s hair into even more disarray. 

Then Boulder’s voice again, infinitely gentle, to the point that the brusque tone of before could almost be mistaken for another person’s. 

“Graham?”

He turned to look at Boulder for the first time since the gunshot went off. Graham was grateful, in a guilty sort of way, that Boulder was already in vehicle mode. Brainstorm was a speck over the tree tops and Perceptor was already driving in the direction of the firehouse.

Graham opened his mouth to make his excuses, when his phone started going off like crazy on his belt. A glance revealed Doc Greene’s contact, and he grimaced. Still, it gave him reason to beg off a ride. 

“Let me talk to Doc, see what the damage is. I’ll see you at home?” He didn’t mean for that last part to come out as a question. Was he still somehow pathetically afraid of Boulder stealing away to Metroplex and forgetting he existed? Maybe a little.

“See you at home.”

Graham turned back around to answer Doc’s call, so he didn’t have to see Boulder turn and drive away from him.

Now, hours later, after a lengthy diagnostic of the dome with Doc, followed by meekly requesting a ride back to the firehouse, Graham found himself at a loss. 

The damage was low, nobody got hurt, reports had been properly submitted. Optimus was notified of the clusterfuck his scientists brought upon the island and already conveyed his deepest apologies, assuring with steady vehemence that it would never happen again. Graham would not want to be Brainstorm or Perceptor right now. 

Even with all that, Graham didn’t feel settled. 

He picked at the skin around his nails as his pacing slowed, legs turning heavy with exhaustion. Why couldn’t he let this go? Why couldn’t he be like his family, sitting down to Kade’s spaghetti and meatballs, content to let the day wash off of them?

What was he missing?

Heavy, familiar footsteps approached him from behind. He stopped, looking up to meet Boulder’s softly glowing gaze. 

“Hi.”

“Hey,” Boulder rumbled, so low that Graham felt it in his chest more than he heard it. 

They stared at one another, letting the sounds of encroaching evening sweep over them. Birds calling, cars passing by on the road, even Kade through the open kitchen window, getting dinner ready. 

Boulder turned, gesturing for Graham to follow. 

“Come with me.” 

Graham was already stepping forward before he even made the conscious choice to follow. 

He traced Boulder’s back as they left the pavement and entered the wooded area behind the firehouse, beyond the training course. Through the dim, dappled sunlight through the treetops, Boulder’s form lost some definition, shadows softening his blunt, broad shapes. At his shoulders, his biolights glowed softly, beacons in the quickly encroaching dark. 

Graham knew their destination even before the brilliant, geodesic glass dome of Boulder’s greenhouse crested the treeline. 

Construction was going well; the greenhouse was about 78% complete. A towering structure of glass (technically, a high-tensile, transparent, tempered facsimile) and deceptively delicate-looking green metal, it was already a masterpiece of architecture to rival any of the famous botanical gardens of New York and Europe. It was also easily the largest. 

With doors that could fit Optimus standing at full height with Chase on his shoulders, and wide enough for two Boulders to walk side by side, it was a greenhouse built with both humans and Cybertronians in mind. Far enough from the hustle and bustle of town without being smack dab in the middle of the woods, it would soon be open to the public. 

A few dozen feet from the entrance, their feet touched the smooth stone path they’d built with help from Salvage. Boulder wordlessly reached out a hand, and Graham climbed on without needing prompting. It was comforting, he knew, for him to be held and for Boulder to hold him, safe and close and warm, the hum of Boulder’s inner mechanisms and engine under his ear, and Graham’s heartbeat in his audial. 

The security system registered both of their IDs and the doors to the greenhouse parted with a rush of air. Gurgling water reached Graham’s ears from the stream in the first chamber, framed by drooping willow trees that rustled through the breeze allowed by the carefully calibrated air circulation system. 

Each chamber housed a different climate and the plants native to it. So far, they had completed the Chihuahuan Desert pod, Amazon rainforest, and Congo Basin, as well as the entry chamber, which featured local flora. 

Boulder sat them down by the edge of the lily pond, where the water was calm and the resident frogs croaked quietly in the dark. The canopy above the nearby walking path was decorated with fairy lights, and a trail of fireflies bobbed along as if they’d been plucked from the trees and freed to roam. 

Graham felt Boulder’s optics on him, heavy with concern, but couldn’t bring himself to look up. Instead, he traced nonsense designs on Boulder’s fingertips. 

“What’s wrong?” Boulder asked, a murmur. 

The willow branches trailed in the water, creating ripples. Graham fought against a grimace, knowing the dark would do nothing to hide his expression, much less fool Boulder. 

“What hasn’t gone wrong?”

Boulder nudged him with a thumb, trailing over Graham’s shoulder. “I’m not talking about what happened with the dome. Although that was pretty bad.” Boulder’s thumb, nearly the size of Graham’s head, rose to his chin as he coaxed Graham into tilting his head back. Their eyes finally met—wide, watery, and human staring into luminescent, complex, and ancient. 

And now, clouded with worry. 

“Something’s been going on with you for the past few days. And…I think even longer,” Boulder rumbled, his brow furrowed under the brim of his helm. “Am I right?”

Old, familiar lies bubbled up in his throat, dismissals that had gotten Boulder to drop the subject in the past and let Graham have one more day, another night, without Boulder knowing about the pathetic, heartsick insecurities at the core of him. If Graham shut the conversation down, Boulder wouldn’t push. He would respect it. Was practically resigned to it at this point. 

But he would also watch Graham with growing unease when he thought Graham wasn’t looking, wincing at the avoidance and every weak lie. 

Graham trusted Boulder more than anything, more than anyone. The thought of his own doing causing Boulder to doubt that was unforgivable. But to admit how selfish he really was…could Graham really bring himself to dump all of that on Boulder, who never asked for it?

“I can’t read your mind, partner,” Boulder said, like a liar, as he stroked Graham from jaw to temple, practically turning him into putty in his palm. “Please, talk to me.”

Graham almost wished that Boulder could read his mind, if only because getting his teeth and tongue to cooperate after that stunt was proving impossible. His thoughts buzzed restlessly as bees, rattling against his skull and pouring out in jumbled, stuttering starts. 

“I’m afraid—” He blurted, and nearly bit his tongue off in his haste to nip the sentence in the bud. “I’m worried I’m not…”

Boulder cradled him even closer still, his thumb falling across Graham’s lap in a careful embrace, staying silent all the while. And Graham knew he wouldn’t hear a word of prompting from his partner, who had the patience of a saint and actively enjoyed watching grass grow, because Boulder respected him enough to give him all the time in the world to put his thoughts in order. 

Graham leaned to the side, doing his best to hide his face against Boulder’s fingers. “That I’m not good enough,” he admitted, haltingly. “For you.”

Boulder gave him a pained look, as if he’d just said something cruel to him. “Graham, of course you’re good enough. You’re incredible. Why would you ever think otherwise?”

Instead of calming him, Boulder’s gentle conviction did the inverse, and years of bottled anxieties fought to be at the forefront. 

“But I’m not Cybertronian! I’m not-not like Perceptor or Brainstorm.”

“Neither am I!” Boulder’s volume, his vehemence, rose to match Graham’s. “You don’t think I'm intimidated by them, too? They’re real scientists; from the moment their sparks ignited their frames, it’s what they were made for. They’ve been doing this for millions of years. I was running experiments illegally in our old shared habsuite for a few centuries, and I’ve only had an actual lab for five years.” 

Graham fell back into the cradle of Boulder’s palm, uncomprehending. “But I'm just…me. I’m just human. There’s seven billion others just like me.”

Boulder chuckled, pressing the fingers of his free hand against Graham’s chest, resounding with his heartbeat. “I fell in love with you because you’re human. And there is no one else like you.”

His smile changed, tempered with familiar grief that Graham was one of few to witness. 

“I miss my people, and I mourn our world. I wish the War had never happened and that so many hadn’t suffered. But I don’t miss our old life. On Cybertron, I wasn’t expected…I wasn’t allowed to be anything other than what they made me to be. They wouldn’t have allowed me to become a scientist, or an artist, or…or to fall in love.” 

He smiled down at Graham with all the heat of a banked fire smoldering in his optics, brilliant as glowing embers. Graham swallowed thickly at the sight of him, framed by distant stars beyond the clear panels of his greenhouse, massive and alien, and his. 

“I want to show you something,” Boulder intoned in his resonant voice, almost insistent. 

Graham nodded slowly, knocked off kilter by Boulder’s sudden earnestness. “Okay.”

Boulder’s chest plates folded open with astonishing smoothness, but Graham couldn’t even take a moment to marvel at the innate ingenuity of his body, how it tucked away metal and glass so efficiently, because he was too overwhelmed by the gleaming light at the center of Boulder’s chest, brilliant but somehow not blinding. 

His spark. 

The glow filled the entirety of the greenhouse, brilliant as a star fallen to earth. It bounced off every window pane and polished metal frame, blossoming like one of Boulder’s flowers. Graham desperately hoped that nobody was outside to witness the explosion of light—no one deserved to see this. Especially not Graham. 

But he wasn't strong enough to look away. 

Round, yet somehow amorphous, Boulder’s spark coruscated like an aurora in a dizzying array of colors. The warm glow splayed across Graham’s face and body like holy light, the very sum and soul of Boulder’s whole being. Tears sprung to his eyes, and he became aware of his ragged breaths. 

“B-Boulder,” he managed in a whisper. “Why…I don’t understand.”

Boulder’s fingertips brushed over Graham’s back in reassurance, and even that scant contact nearly undid him. “You know that our sparks are sacred. Baring my spark…it’s the only thing I could think of, to prove what you mean to me. To prove my commitment to you, above any other.”

“How can you say that, though? You don’t know who’s out there. Another Cybertronian—” Graham’s voice broke.

Boulder touched a finger to Graham’s chin, gently tilting it up. “I didn’t know you were out there. But I found you somehow.”

Graham laughed breathlessly, wiping at his watering eyes with the heel of his palm. “We found each other.” 

Was that enough? A twist of fate? Luck, that went against every one of his scientific principles. A one in a million chance that by being trapped in stasis, Boulder would survive the war on his planet and come here, where he would fall in love with Earth and then fall in love with Graham. 

He looked down, unable to resist anymore, and he couldn’t help but stare. Boulder’s spark throbbed with the ebb and flow of his life force, almost like a pulse, but utterly alien and otherworldly. 

“I…Boulder. You’re beautiful,” he murmured, at a loss. 

Boulder coughed through his vents, and when Graham glanced up his optics were averted in embarrassment. Graham grinned; it was rare that he flustered Boulder, who was so often the face of unflappable zen. 

He looked back at Boulder’s spark, unable to tear his eyes away for long. His grin dropped into a more chagrined expression. 

“I just wish I could return the favor somehow. But I can’t show you my soul the way you can show me yours.”

“Sure you can.” Boulder caressed Graham’s cheek and shoulder with the back of his digits. “You show me every day.”

Graham leaned into the caress, closing his eyes as he wrapped a hand around one of Boulder’s fingers. Being reminded of their size difference was overwhelming sometimes and breathtaking always for the care Boulder showed him, knowing all the while what the astonishing power of his frame allowed him to do.

He could see the glow of Boulder’s spark through his closed eyelids, beckoning him to look. When he opened his eyes, Boulder's spark seemed to grow even brighter, inviting him closer. A tendril of light uncurled before his eyes, like the corona of a star, and Graham reached out without thinking.

Common sense snapped back into place and he snatched his hand back before he could make contact. Boulder’s spark pulsed in response, and his frame shuddered, a full body shiver the likes of which Graham had never seen before. 

Above him, Boulder’s voice was choked. “Y-you’re fine. You can touch my spark.”

Graham eyed his spark warily (hungrily). “Are you sure? For humans, it’s considered pretty rude to root around inside someone’s chest cavity.” 

“It’s okay. I trust you.”

He reached out again, painstakingly slow, desperate to be closer but terrifying of hurting Boulder in any way. That tendril rose off Boulder's spark again, and Graham hesitated again before his fingers brushed against the arc, passing through the light. 

At first, nothing much happened. 

Gradually, the hair on his arms and on the back of the neck prickled, standing on end, and a deep bass hum, almost out of his range of hearing, vibrated deep in his chest.

Then, Boulder’s spark flashed and, oh, he was falling into a well of emotion, of love, so deep he thought he might never come back up for air. Love, and longing, and piercing fear, not all of it his, it was Boulder’s, he was feeling what Boulder felt. 

Graham gasped. Above him, Boulder sucked in a ragged vent of air.  

He felt grief. Grief for a dead world, the billions who’d lived there, now lost. It was a gaping wound, torn fresh but slowly healing. 

That fear…When Graham broached it, it bled insecurity, anxiety he associated more with himself than Boulder, so sure of who he was, what he wanted. 

But the fear was tempered by love—not just the boundless love he felt for the plants and the animals, the team and their neighbors, every living thing. It was a specific love, for a person, for Graham —the fear of losing that love. 

Maybe Graham had been thinking about this all wrong. 

He was of the mindset that Boulder was settling, making a mistake by choosing a human as his partner instead of one of the hundreds of Cybertronians coming out of the interstellar woodwork. But…maybe he’d had the same fear about Graham. Graham, who was among his own kind. Who could, theoretically, pick any one of millions of humans to be with. A relationship with an alien was much more daunting from a human perspective. Boulder had every right to worry that Graham was acting out some xenophilic fascination that would pass with time. 

“I’m sorry, baby,” he murmured. Boulder gasped raggedly, trembling under Graham’s hands. “I’m sorry for making you doubt.”

“It’s okay,” Boulder panted, his vents gaping wide and fans spinning so loud they were like a second engine in his chest. He lifted his hand sluggishly, brushing it over Graham’s side. 

Acting on a whim, Graham leaned forward and kissed the metal around Boulder’s spark chamber. Boulder’s breath hitched, and his back arched, rising up off the grass. 

“Can you feel me?” Graham murmured against the metal. “And I don’t mean this, I mean…what you’re giving me? Can you feel me?”

And he thought of his love, his own adoration for that brilliant mind and earnest face and gentle soul, how safe Boulder made him feel, understood and loved. 

Boulder groaned, so low and long Graham felt it vibrate through his back teeth. “Oh, yes, sparksong. Yes, I can feel you.” His optics flared, almost bleeding orange light, and his voice broke as though he were crying. “You’re…Graham, I love you.”

Graham laughed breathlessly, closing his eyes against the burn of tears. They’d only said those three words to each other a few times before, and each felt as electric as the first. 

“I love you too.”

They crested on their shared waves of emotion for what felt like hours, but must have only been a few minutes more. Boulder closed his chest plates, though Graham didn’t go far, still pressed close against his chassis. Boulder’s servo wrapped around him, warm and all-encompassing. 

Graham allowed himself to enjoy the peace of the greenhouse, heightened by solitude of the evening hour. Branches rustled, and the water at the pond’s edge lapped at the shore, still redolent with the dewey scent of waterlilies, though their petals had long since closed. 

He inhaled deeply, letting his breath out in a rush. “Wow.”

Boulder’s chest rumbled under his ear. “Heh. You said it.”

“What…what was that?” Graham asked, finally giving voice to one of the million questions poised on the tip of his tongue. “How did we…how could we…?”

“It’s…a sparkbond, or-or close to one. To become amica or conjunx, you share your sparklight. Y-your thoughts and emotions, in one harmonious merge. I…I never thought I’d…” Boulder’s voice shook and he trailed off into silence that had Graham raising his head worriedly. 

“Boulder?” he whispered. He watched Boulder work his jaw for a moment, words slow to come. 

“Rescue Bots aren’t allowed,” he explained distantly, though Graham caught the undercurrent of resentment that Boulder couldn’t hide, even now. “Technically. We aren’t…we weren’t deemed capable. That as constructed cold mecha we lacked emotions to share.”

There was old pain in his voice print from millenia of injustices that were, to them, still egregiously recent. 

Graham traced the contours of Boulder’s chassis, a meager distraction, knowing that an apology would be pointless. He knew the lies that Boulder and his team had been fed. More importantly, Boulder knew. 

Still, he didn’t let the silence linger for long, as a smirk stole across his face. 

“So…conjunx, huh? Are we engaged now?” he teased. 

“Not yet,” Boulder rumbled. 

A wave of heat rushed under Graham’s skin, and he burned at the calm confidence in Boulder’s voice. “Is this you proposing?”

Boulder chuckled, reaching out to brush Graham’s hair back. “Not yet,” he repeated. “You’ll know when, I promise. I want to get it right.”

Love pounding a steady drumbeat in Graham’s chest, and he grinned with it, bright and silly. His dread of that morning, of the last few weeks, felt so remote as to belong to a stranger. “What if I beat you to it?” 

“Slow but steady wins the race,” Boulder recited smugly. 

“Sap.”