Like Missing the Sun
Fandom: Transformers Movieverse, Post AoE Relationships: Optimus Prime/Cade Yeager, Optimus Prime/Mikaela Banes, Cade Yeager/Mikaela Banes, Bumblebee/Sam Witwicky, Ironhide/William Lennox, Bumblebee/Mikaela Banes Characters: Tessa Yeager, Cade Yeager, Robert Epps, William Lennox, Sara Lennox, Annabelle Lennox, Baby OFC Lennox, Mikaela Banes, Bumblebee, Crosshairs, Hound, Drift, Sideswipe, Wheelie Content: Angst, grief, xenophilia, heterosexual sex, hurt/comfort, awkward moments
Summary: "Missing him is like missing the sun, though, you know? At least the sun'll come up again. I mean, I saw Optimus come back from the dead. I'm not convinced that anything can stop him."
Tessa wasn't sure how to feel about strangers coming to the door and never leaving. Sure, they had plenty of room. But after so many years of it just being Dad and the sagebrush, it took some getting used to.
Not that life had ever been even remotely normal.
Now it was just crazy on steroids.
She'd let Dad do most of the interacting once the meet and greets were over. She wasn't in the mood to act the hostess. Ever since… well… everything, all she really wanted to do was be alone with Shane or just alone. When Shane was gone, she spent a lot of time sitting in her shiny new room, making a half-hearted effort to catch up on homework or write college essays, all the while watching the surreal scene in the yard and pasture. If they were out of her view, she could simply send one of the security drones and watch on her brand new wafer-thin tablet, available in no store nowhere.
A few weeks before they'd opened the door to a black dude named Epps who could give back as much shit to Crosshairs as the mustachioed menace could give. The only one Epps didn't give shit to was Bumblebee, which didn't make a lot of sense since Bee was the worst of the bunch eight times out of ten.
It was downright terrifying when the next stranger happened to be fifteen feet of razor-sharp metal. Somehow the roller blades didn't soften the image, though the fact he arrived toting a family of four in what should've been a two-seat silver corvette helped a bit - okay - a lot. The toddler and the little girl used him as a piece of furniture. Mom and Dad weren't concerned in the least, not even when Bumblebee'd roughly greeted the newcomer and wrestled him to the ground with the deafening crash of metal that had become the new normal in the yard. The parents didn't even grab the girls, both gleefully cheering the rolling clash of silver and yellow only a few feet away.
They were, however, quick to collect the kids when Drift and the corvette started posturing to decide whose was longer and sharper.
Once the pack dominance issues had been settled (not that she could figure out who'd came out on top), the corvette ignored all the robots other than Bumblebee, and spent most of his time as a jungle gym for the kids.
That was exactly the scene on one particular Sunday afternoon, ten days after the Lennox family had arrived. Sideswipe was being a jungle gym, Drift was being… Drift, Bumblebee was being a dick - this time to Hound who was being a dick right back - and both of them had ended up fighting or training or whatever on the back forty. Her dad was off somewhere with the guys - a category increasingly including Shane. Something about fortifying the fences and alien guns. Crosshairs heard the word "guns" and had stopped mocking them and decided to join them.
Tessa put the tablet down and rolled over onto her stomach, contemplating getting out of bed to do something useful. But like usual since life had turned upside down and sideways, she was having trouble motivating herself to do anything. Not like she needed to do any cooking. Sarah and Will seemed to enjoy keeping everyone fed, quite the team in the fancy, futuristic kitchen downstairs. (Tessa kept expecting all the high tech gadgets to transform).
When Tessa's tablet politely informed her that someone had given the proper passcode at the security gate, she finally had to pull herself out of bed. She certainly wasn't going to make Sarah get up from her nap, not after the night she'd had with little Heidi. Man that toddler had lungs.
Tessa threw her hair in a scrunchie, and was downstairs by the time the new visitor was sliding off a very sweet piece of custom-painted bike. She held her breath for a moment to see if the black and red chopper would come apart and jump to its feet, but it remained solidly on two chrome wheels.
The odd backpack that separated itself from the black-clad rider's back, however, transformed in midair and skated off toward the back yard, chattering like an electrocuted modem, while the rider pulled off her helmet, revealing long black hair and a tanned face - mid twenties if Tessa had to guess - a face that would have been stunningly perfect if it weren't for the thick red scar running all the way from the corner of her eye to beneath her bottom lip.
Tessa started out the door, about to say 'hi', when a blur of yellow and black raced at full speed from the back of the house.
"She's alive! Alive!" Dr. Frankenstein proclaimed even as Bumblebee scooped up the rider and swung her around. The rider didn't object at all, clinging to Bumblebee's neck like she was hanging on for life. "God Bee, I was so fucking worried, you have no idea."
"I get knocked down, but I get up again. You're never gonna keep me down."
"Are you really okay? I mean… is it true?" Tessa could only stare as the robot sunk to the ground with a pitiful sound, holding the woman like a comfort blanket he did not plan on ever letting go of.
Tessa felt like an eavesdropper, on her own front porch.
"Inside my heart is breaking, my make-up may be flaking but my smile still stays on."
"Oh fuck, Bee, I'm so sorry. I should've been there. Maybe I could've saved his ass somehow." The woman bit her lip and blinked back tears, leaning in to rest her forehead against the robot's strange mouthplate.
"You'd be dead, too," he said in the scratchy, staticky voice he rarely used.
"I don't know. I'm hard to kill. What about Carly and the baby?"
Bee played 'God Save the Queen' to answer that one. "Shit, that's a relief." Bumblebee gave a Walle-esque wail in response, pulling the woman even closer.
Tessa slowly turned around, trying to escape indoors. She could meet the newcomer later, and it just didn't feel right watching the emotional reunion, listening in on a conversation she didn't understand.
The movement caught the woman's attention, and she pushed herself back from the strange embrace. "I'm being rude, Bee. Let me go introduce myself and then I promise, you can hug me for the rest of the day, kay?"
"All night long," was Lionel Ritchie's response.
"That, too, Jesus, Bee, you're a limpet." Smacking a kiss on the robot's mouthplate, she ducked under the metal arms still making an attempt to keep her. She slapped his arms away, hopped off his lap and jogged up the porch stairs. "I'm sorry, that was just rude. I just… hi. I'm Mikaela," she held out her hand. "You must be Tessa. I heard it might be okay to crash here for awhile?"
"Um, sure, it's fine," Tessa shook the woman's calloused hand.
"I'm sure it's not… not really. This takes a lot of getting used to. Believe me, I know." The woman gestured broadly to Bumblebee and the whole universe beyond, apparently.
"Mikaela Banes!" Sarah's voice shrieked as she burst outside, pulling the woman into a tight hug. "Good lord, girl, we had no idea where you were. You have any idea how worried we were when you didn't show up at the safehouse?"
Tessa smiled and shook her head. Obviously the newcomer was going to be busy for awhile. She went in and started pouring ice tea.
"How 'bout a hug for auntie Mik, Heidi," Sarah suggested, her eyes twinkling.
"No! No hugs!" the toddler proclaimed for the world to hear. "Want Sipe!"
"Sideswipe's on patrol, sweetpea," Sarah gave an exasperated sigh. "You want your sword? - oh don't give me that look, Mik - you try keeping the Lennox girls from being infatuated with weapons. Only thing that'll make this one happy."
"No! Gun!" the toddler grabbed the stick she'd found earlier. "Bang!"
"So… Heidi, huh?" Mikaela asked, grinning and tearing up all at once.
Sarah put hand to her forehead and shook her head. "Heidi Farren."
"Farren… that's so pretty. Welsh or something?"
Sarah chuckled. "Old English for 'Iron-grey', but also can mean 'adventurous'. You really have to be careful what you name a child, Mik. Just sayin'."
"Seems perfect to me," Mikaela said, collapsing to the floor dramatically after being "shot" by the two-year old.
"He's a guardian-coded mech whose charge died protecting him. Of course he's acting like a glitch," Will all but exploded. "I shouldn't have to explain that to you!"
"The loss of one out of seven-billion-plus beings, most of whom want us exterminated, should not ever have such an impact. I will never understand Prime's logic in allowing bonds with you humans," Crosshairs said disdainfully.
"Well, thankfully for this one of seven-billion, and for his family, Prime disagrees, and so did my ladies' guardian."
"And that got him where?"
"Don't you dare lay that one on humanity, you half sparked spawn of a glitch bitten lube rag. That was done to him by a mech. One that had the same attitude you have about the seven-billion Hide was willing to give his spark for."
"Calm down, squishy. I'm just messin' with you."
"Trust me. I am not a human you want to mess with. Especially within range of my ladies."
"Pfft, I get the feeling your lady can take care of herself and her spawn, squishy."
Help me not to kill this glitch, Hide, because I swear, if there weren't so few of you left.
Not going to get any help from me on this one, Will's inner Ironhide rumbled, cannons already spinning up.
Mikaela turned off her micro torch and raised her mask, leaning closer to critically examine the weld on the secondary antenna to replace the one Bumblebee had lost somewhere in Hong Kong. "That should work," she said with a grimace. "I hope."
"Could've used you when I was repairing Prime," Cade said from the next worktable over where he was attempting to code a batch of transformium, or protomass as Mikaela called the stuff. So far, he'd managed to get it to shift from one amorphous blob to another, flatter blob. Nothing even remotely resembling the energon processing component that would replace Hound's faulty one.
"We could both use Ratchet. I… Cade, I'm not sure how we are going to keep this bunch functioning without him."
"Well, he trained you, so that's something. We can always ask Joshua for a hand."
Mikaela shook her head. "Those things KSI made - no matter how fancy they seemed - I can guarantee you that they don't have a tenth of the complexity of the systems we are working on now. No way something with that kind of transformation sequence'd last more than a couple times online, anyhow, not to mention their coding - think 'Go, Dog, Go' compared to Kafka."
"See, that's what I mean. You know that. You have experience working with these guys."
"Experience? I'm not even as qualified as an unsentient medical drone, and that's simply the truth. Ratchet taught me to be a handy tool who could get in small places with his guidance. The only reason those glitches are calling me a medic is because they are fucking terrified not to have one."
"Well, we're all they got, so we're just gonna have to do the best we can."
"You wait until one of them extinguishes on our watch and see if you can be that nonchalant about it."
"Look, I'm sorry about earlier. It's not right for me to try to suck you into my funk." Mikaela took a long swig of her beer, wiped the condensation across her brow.
"You didn't. But I don't think it helps any of them for you to go there. They really do need us."
"I just miss him so fucking much, Cade. I can't believe he's gone."
"Optimus?" Cade could understand that feeling.
"Well… that goes without saying. But I was thinking Ratchet. But yeah, of course, I miss Prime, too. Missing him is like missing the sun, though, you know? At least the sun'll come up again. I mean, I saw Optimus come back from the dead. I'm not convinced that anything can stop him."
"He didn't seem that way when I first found him," Cade said, his eyes going distant. "Seemed ready to give up on everything, everyone."
"Loss of bonds will do that," Mikaela said quietly.
"You keep saying that, but I'm not sure I get what you mean."
"Optimus, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Jazz, Ironhide - all of the original group - they were a cohort, see? Sort of a family of choice, but connected on a quantum level through their sparks."
"Like...soul mates?" Jesus, he sounded like Lucas. And that made his throat get tight, fuck it.
"Hmm… I don't know if that translates. They were certainly all as different from each other as anyone could be. More like… together they made a whole. They anchored one another. Losing Jazz destabilized them. Optimus was… he was different after Jazz - more violent according to Ratchet - and a hell of a lot worse after Hide. Bee, too. We all noticed. Optimus... he's got a prime spark, a really strong one. He'll recover. He has to."
"How do you know?"
"Well... that's what Ratchet always said. I've seen their sparks, before they lost Hide and then after. Dim, fissured, not… stable. Ratch said it can take thousands of years for those fissures to heal, for their spark to come back to full strength. Now Bee's lost Sam, too. Glitch coded a bond with him, knowing he was going to lose him in a vorn or less. His bond with Ratchet's ripped to shreds, and from what I hear, he was blocking Optimus. He's not himself… but he's a fighter. Hopefully he just needs time. Maybe he'll find a new cohort or Optimus will come back or something…" her voice trailed off, unsure.
"He's got you… you seem really close."
"But that's part of the problem, right? It's just like it was with Sam." Her eyes were dark and sad. "He went and coded a bond with me, and … even if I live until I'm an old lady, to him, I'll still be gone in less than a Cybertronian year."
"Cade?" Mikaela spoke into the silence as they stared at the stars from a blanket spread out in the yard.
"Mmm?"
"It's okay to love him, you know." Mikaela finished off her third Corona and put it alongside the others.
"Say what?"
"Prime. Look at you, staring up at the stars. You're pining. Of course, so are the rest of us - human and mech alike." She stretched back on the blanket, her hip brushing his leg.
"I'm not pining. I… I respect him. I learned so much from him. He's like… Buddha or Jesus with guns and swords or something. Changed my life."
"Mm hmm."
"What does that mean, mm hmm?"
"You worked near his spark, right?"
"Well… yeah."
"And what did that feel like? How often do you think about it, and how often do those thoughts get you hard?"
"Fucking hell, Mikaela!"
"You're not denying it."
"..."
"Look, it's better just to own it now, before you get all freaked out. Ask Will or Bobby if you don't believe me." She gave him a knowing look. "It doesn't make you gay if that's what you're worried about."
"I am not some south Texas homophobic hick!"
"Never said you were. I'm just saying… it's normal, to feel that way, no matter what flavor you prefer. You feel it with more than just your mind and heart, you know? It's part of what makes him Prime."
The silence got thick again, each of them staring at the stars.
"Did you ever… you know?"
Mikaela rolled over to face him. "Did I ever you know what."
"Like… Jesus, how do I say it."
"Did I ever get it on with Big Buddha?"
"..."
"Maybe. You?"
"..."
"Mm hmm. You wish you had? You want me to tell you the details?"
"No!"
"..."
"Okay, yes."
Mikaela leaned over him, breasts brushing his chest, and kissed him again, sucking and biting on his bottom lip, then licking away the sting.
"It feels nothing like that," she whispered into his ear.
"Mmm… but this feels really nice," he murmured, pulling her fully on top of him, his other hand tracing the curve of her hip.
"This is nice," she murmured between kisses, parting her thighs to massage his length between them, quickly slick with their excitement. "Really nice. But it's a different nice." She gave him a tighter squeeze.
His breath caught.
"I'm gonna come right here between your thighs, woman, if you keep that up. I told you it's been awhile."
"You go right ahead," she moved her hips to encourage him. "That way you'll last longer in me when I get you revved up again."
"Oh God, this is nice," he whispered, pumping faster into grasp of her soft thighs, giving himself over to pure sensation, closing his eyes, remembering a halo of glowing blue, a bright white star beneath.
"That's right, baby, let it go," she whispered, moving her legs in circular motion, massaging and milking him.
"Oh God… Optimus!" And the star went supernova.
"I know this is awkward. Do you want to... talk about it?"
Tessa stared straight at the older… very slightly older woman for what seemed an eternity. Okay, seven years older, but still.
"For the first time, like ever, I think I understand a little bit how my dad feels about me dating."
"Well, that's honest. And how do you feel?"
"Like I want to get that big alien gun he was using and make you swear to God you'll never hurt him."
Mikaela smiled. "I felt the same way, every time my dad brought someone home. Don't even get me started on the ones who were only seven years older than me and pretended to be my mom."
"Oh yeah, that would make it… I think I might have to actually shoot you."
"So, how about we make a deal. I promise to be as honest with you as you want, to help get your dad off your back a little about Shane, and I swear to God I will never, ever try to be anything other than a friend, if you want me to be."
Tessa determinedly looked anywhere but at the latest crazy spiral in her roller coaster of a life, settling on staring out the window at the rest of the roller coasters. Or maybe clown cars would be more apt. "I guess that would be a good start. What about the not hurting my dad part?"
"I'm gonna be honest with you. It's just comfort. For both of us. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not the one he really wants. He knows that, I know that. Not much chance of hurting one another as long as we're being honest."
Tessa gave a quick nod. "Just don't expect me to become your best friend overnight."
"Wouldn't dream of it. I just want you to understand I have no intention of hurting your dad. All of us have been through shit no other people on earth would understand. If you find you want someone to talk to about that, I'm here. But so are Bobby, Sarah and Will. You won't hurt my feelings if you don't want to be my friend."
Tessa hugged herself. "Anyone ever tell you that you're sort of blunt?"
Mikaela gave a hollow sounding laugh. "I had a teacher… and a friend... who was the bluntest being I've ever met. I guess some of it rubbed off. I just don't have much patience for pussyfooting around anymore, I guess. Life's too short. You are welcome to be as blunt with me as you want. I can take it."
"Okay. Can you leave now? I-need some time to think."
"Sure thing," Mikaela got up and started for the door.
"One more thing," Tessa stopped her at the door. Mikaela turned and faced her. "Who does he really want? It's not like my dad ever sees anyone."
Mikaela blinked. "You'll have to get that one from him, I think. Though it's not hard to figure out, if you think about it." She gave Tessa a sympathetic look as she stepped through the door.
AN I finally saw AoE in the theater, and knew as soon as it was over that I was going to need to write. It was hard, but there was also a lot I liked, and a lot of potential for fic and fixits. I'm not sure this would qualify as the later. But I did find myself really needing to account for some of the characters who vanished, and account for the actions of some of those who hadn't. I know the last thing movieverse needs is more humans, but I happen to really love this particular group of humans, and so do my movieverse mechs. Besides, I can't resist the urge for Mikaela Banes to show up and save the day or stir the pot. This may be the only chapter, or I may continue, as life and time and muses allow. Thank you for reading! It felt wonderful to finally write again.
Thank you so much to HopeofDawn for the beautiful edits and suggestions!