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Chapter Thirty Three – Five Favourite Moments
J.J tossed the used tea bag into the garbage, taking another sip from the mug in her hands.
"So what did you wanna ask me?" J.J asked
Optimus watched as the muscles in her legs flexed in accordance to how she moved around, the way the tattoo she had on her thigh – that he hadn't seen until now – moved as well. The way her hair swayed slightly as she moved. Her eyes met his again, and they locked with one another.
"Well, there's been something that's been on my mind for a while now, and after listening to a few words from some of those whom I trust greatly I've decided to heed their advice." He started his explanation off.
Her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, "Okay…?"
He took a deep breath in, and took only a second to debate how he was going to say this, "It has come to my attention that you were entangled with another male on base here, Private Andrew Ellis."
She took a deep breath, clearly somewhat annoyed. "Um, yeah. Yeah, I guess you could say that. Well, we were anyway, but not so much anymore."
He tilted his head to the side, "You two are no longer in a relationship?"
She chuckled and rolled her eyes, "We weren't in a relationship to begin with. We had an… agreement, but no commitment to one another. And no, we're no longer entangled, to use your words."
She placed the mug in her hands down onto the counter, and crossed her arms – she was beginning to get uncomfortable, on edge. He had to tread carefully.
"Would it be crossing a line if I asked you about how this agreement worked between you two?"
She looked away from him for a moment, and he heard her sucking on her teeth.
"Just an arrangement between the two of us. When we wanted each other's company, we were there for one another."
He huffed, "I was under the impression that you two were in an arrangement that involved being physically intimate with each other." He pointed out.
Again, she fidgeted under his scrutiny uncomfortably, and her face scrunched, "You make it sound so… gross. No, we set it up so we could fuck, but he broke a rule so I told him we're not doing it anymore."
"A rule?" he asked.
She looked around the room, "Why do you care? Why the fuck is it any of your business?"
She was shutting down, the poking and prodding he was trying to use to gather information was having the opposite effects than he was hoping for.
He plotted for a moment or two, "I only want to make sure you're safe. The idea of seeing you get hurt…"
She scoffed, "Please. If anybody got hurt in our situation it was Andrew. My heart wasn't even close to getting broken."
He processed the information he'd just received.
"So you two aren't affiliated anymore?"
She rolled her eyes again, this time at him. "Pretty sure I just told you that, yeah."
He paused for a moment, hoping the break in conversation would help keep her from becoming to agitated with him, help her breath. He had to choose what he was going to say wisely. Ratchet was correct here, if he wasn't careful then he'd be forced to back track and start over with her, but Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had a fair point too; she had set this up with the human male for a reason, maybe he could work that angle with her.
"Would you be opposed to setting up another situation like that?" his voice was soft this time; he was hoping that a gentler tone would help her open back up, make her a little more willing to talk about the topic at hand.
It worked, but only slightly.
"With him, yes. I have rules, and he broke one of them. If we do it again, I wouldn't doubt he breaks the rules again. So yes, I would be opposed to it."
"What if," he pondered, "The set up was with someone besides Private Ellis?"
She shook her head, her face scrunching up in confusion as she let one loud, rhetorical laugh out. "Ha! With who? There's not really anybody else here I get along with well enough."
He remained quiet for a moment, and watched as it took about twenty seconds before a look of realization crossed her face.
"Wait, are you…?"
He remained silent for a moment as she looked him up and down, "If you are uncomfortable with even the proposition, I would be more than willing to walk away right now and never bring it back up, but I do believe it's the safer alternative currently."
He watched as she licked her lips anxiously and looked away from him, and he was expecting her to tell him to get out.
"How the hell do you think that'll even work?" she asked rhetorically, seemingly amused. "I mean, you're thirty feet tall."
He shook his head, trying not to smile. "As I told you, the holoform can feel touch as much as it can reciprocate it."
She stopped and took a deep breath in and out, and Optimus wondered what his words were doing right now; were they making this worse, or were they swaying her in a direction of his favour. Her posture was pretty locked up right now, with her arms crossed loosely over her chest, and her weight resting through her back onto the counter behind her. One foot was crossed over the other, but her shoulders were straight and aligned evenly – parts of her were tense and anxious, and other parts were relaxed and comfortable.
He was hoping she was more comfortable than she was awkward right now. He hadn't felt this lost when talking to a femme since he was in his teen aons. He hadn't been unable to read somebody's body language and gauge their reaction, their next move, since he had been in his twenties. Nowadays, it barely took him two seconds to read someone and understand how forceful, versus how stern, or even how gentle he was going to have to be in order to communicate with the other end of a conversation; as Prime he had to be sufficient, fluent in his ability to read someone, and yet here this little human was, throwing him through such a large loop that he almost lost track of what he was going to say next, and next, and next.
"Okay, I'm gonna be honest with you, because to be frank I'm starting to think that if I lie and cover myself up, you're gonna be able to smell a lie at this point," she made the joke, but her face remained monotone, refusing to look anywhere except for beside herself, "I really want to. Like, its almost weird how much I want to, but we can't and I won't."
He felt the knot in his stomach tighten, and his spark almost dropped.
Optimus's eyes watched her intensely, the vibrant blue burning holes into the side of her face as she avoided his gaze. The knot in her throat hadn't disappeared since he walked in, and the butterflies in her stomach were all sitting in her stomach, waiting for something to happen, anything to happen, so they could take off in flight at a moment's notice.
"If that's something you desire, why would you not want to proceed? If you're uncomfortable with it all, all you need to do is tell me to leave."
She shook her head – that wasn't even close to what was going through her head right now.
"No, I don't… I don't want you to leave. Just…" she trailed off for a moment, running her fingers through her hair, "When I do this kind of thing, I have rules put in place to keep me or the person I'm doing it with from getting hurt, intentionally or not. There's only a few, but if any of them get broken then whatever it is stops immediately, and I don't try again. From experience, if you don't have some kind of boundary or rule, someone ends up getting hurt. And if we did this, if we decided that a friends-with-benefits set up would work for us, I'd be breaking rule number one the second it started, and I don't wanna get hurt. So no, we can't, and I won't." her explanation felt sloppy as it came out of her mouth, completely uncoordinated and just kind of… thrown together.
She couldn't bring herself to look at him in the eyes, so instead she kept her vision pointed towards the two Greyhounds that were laying together on their bed.
"If you don't mind my asking, what is rule number one?"
She tried to swallow the knot in her throat, to shove the tears back down before they gave her away, then reached up and rubbed the side of her face. She was trapped; this was a corner she'd actively been trying to avoid being backed into, and here he was, backing her into it while staring at her face first.
"Its, um, its… rule number one is – uh –" she let a deep breath out from her puffed out cheeks as she stumbled and stuttered over her words, her eyes closed tightly. "Rule number one," she tried again, "Says that if either one of us, no matter who it is, catches feelings for the other then we stop. Andrew started wanting a relationship, he started liking me, so I cut it off. But if we tried it, I'd be breaking the rule before we could even get to the actual fucking part. So, again, I can't and I won't, because I'm not about to dive head first into something that's gonna hurt me."
She either didn't notice or didn't care about the one tear that managed to slip out of her eyelid and down the length of her cheek.
Optimus remained silent as he analyzed the side of her face, despite her refusal to make eye contact with him, but he could see her attempt to keep the tears down, to stop herself from crying, and he wondered briefly what she was feeling right now. Fear, or frustration, or some kind of resignation? Was she thinking she was wrong, or that there was something wrong with her for falling for an alien?
"And what happens if both parties begin feeling stronger feelings for one another? What happens if I reciprocate the feelings you have for me from the start, and we're both breaking such rule?"
Her head snapped towards him, her eyes finally opening. She didn't speak as she stared at him intensely, trying to find the joke he was attempting to play on her through his eyes. Instead, he simply matched the intensity of her gaze for what felt like forever for both of them.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled through practically closed lips, her eyes welling up with tears, "Could you repeat that?"
He raised an eyebrow in her direction, "You want me to repeat myself?"
"I do, actually, yeah, very much so, please." She rambled, her eyebrows pulled together in what looked like fear and pain. It took everything in her to stop her bottom lip from quivering.
His lips parted slightly as he contemplated what to say, then decided to just repeat himself.
"What happens if, during or even before the arrangement begins, both parties hold feelings for each other that go beyond just platonic emotions and physical attraction?"
Her cheeks pulled in and showed off her jawline as she sucked her cheeks inward to be able to bite down on them. The tears that she had been trying to fight against flooded her eyelids and fell down her cheeks on their own accord as she raised her hands to rub her face. Her hands stopped over her mouth as she let a sob loose, bending over at the waist as the cry session she'd been holding back for so long was finally let loose.
Optimus wasn't sure what he should do, but he didn't have long enough to contemplate and then decide before she straightened her back and stood upright once more. Her eyes were shut tightly as tears ran down her cheeks.
"I've been ho-lding this in," she sobbed quietly as she raised her hands from over her mouth to the sides of her cheeks, "For mo-monnths. All I could think of was if it got out that I'd be fired, or thrown in jail, or punished because you were the first person to make me feel like I wasn't just a bundle of daddy issues and mechanic knowledge. So I-I held it in because I didn't want to get in trou-ble, but it just got worse and worse and worse. The butterflies wouldn't leave me alone, and I tried so hard to just ignore it. I tried to put my focus on different stuff, to overlook it. I tried using Andrew because I thought I was just lonely and looking for someone to crush on, but then he got so annoying and you were still so consistent in how polite you were, and I was just always comparing him to you. I tried to throw myself into work, but then Sunstreaker showed up and I thought I was dead, and you were suddenly just there to save me again and promise that I was going to be okay, and convincing Mr Lennox to speed up the construction of the garage for me, and then my Dad showed up and instead of making me feel like I was so far off the deep end with my issues with him, you made me feel normal, and welcome. You didn't compare us, you just talked to me about your family. And I've been trying to ignore, and not look at my feelings in the face because I was scared about what it was going to do. And then Sideswipe found this out and I thought that was it because I was expecting your reaction to finding out to be having me sent off."
She sobbed between her words, stuttering over herself as the tears fell down her face. His spark twisted in a manifold of emotions for her, from adoration to grief and despair. All he wanted to do was hold her, hug her, promise her she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
"All I could th-think of was once this got out, you'd never look at me again, and all I w-anted was for you to never look away, and the butterflies were there everytime you did. I wanted to grab you, and kiss you, and just not let you go because you make m-e feel so safe, and so important, and everything I've always wanted to feel like from someone. And I had to hold all of this in because I couldn't let anyone know in case they went running and blabbing to others, and I was so tired of it."
That was when he realised what was happening; her crying wasn't out of despair, or frustration, or sadness. The tears were falling so fast, the sobs rolling off her tongue, her shoulders shaking… out of relief. She could finally tell somebody all of it, get it off her chest and come clean, despite it making her feel different, and get some sort of relief from it.
His spark lifted into the air, it sang in joy, but her words didn't go over his head. All she'd wanted was to grab him, and kiss him, and just not let him go.
In three long strides, he closed the space between them. Her hands instinctively seemed to reach out and grab hold of his forearm and wrist as his hands cupped her cheeks, his palms rough and warm against her skin. He lowered his head down to her level and waited until she tried to bring herself closer, making it clear that she wanted this too, before he placed his lips against her.
It took her about half a second, maybe even less, to respond to his touch, her lips moving in sync with his. She tried pulling him closer, as close as possible, and even closer after that.
His hands moved down to the back of her thighs and in one swift movement he placed her on the counter top to equal out the height difference, inserting himself into the space between her legs. Neither of them stopped kissing the other for even a second.
Her hands moved smoothly, the left one grabbing hold of his bicep from above the long sleeve shirt he wore that did nothing to hide the veins and ripples in the muscles on his arms there, and the right reached forward to grab just below the neckline of his shirt, trying to pull him closer, as close as possible. His spark sang, it screamed, in a way he'd never thought possible before. Almost like it couldn't be happier, like they were perfect for each other.
They were perfect for each other.
And this moment was just as perfect too. A memory that would go on to be in his top five favourite moments, a list that consisted solely of instances with her.
FIN
Date Started: December 9, 2020
Date Finished: December 10, 2020
Last Edited: December 10, 2020