LOLZ ya'll! You're loving Miri and Optimus' first interaction. OMGOSH SAME.
Huge thanks to barbara. nob .7 and Jomobabe45 for being new reviewers! So glad ya'll are loving the story, because honestly I'm having a ball writing it!
SOME tHoUgHtS - this is actually a spinoff from a oneshot I developed a few weeks ago, Doing Dishes. It's got some Miri and Optimus interaction that is pure CUTENESS and if you wanna go see, it's up. I also published Zero Trucks, which was a brain noodle oneshot I got thanks to Alana Springsteen's song of the same name. It's got some MAJOR Miri/OP FLUFF for DAYZ so go REEEAAAAD it!
Much love to ya'll...onto more Miri and Prime torture. Errors of any kind are on Megatron because I gotta go back to work and try and sell some Jeeps...xoxoxo
What the heck kind of name is Optimus?"
It took all of a millisecond for Miri to register the look on the man's face as nothing short of astonished, given the way his eyes widened in surprise. It took another second before realization smacked in her the gut that she'd actually spoken her internal thought out loud, which prompted the aforementioned expression from the man standing across from her.
Holy mother, Miriana! WHAT is WRONG with you!? The internal spinning of her mind was almost making her lightheaded.
Her brows shot up, her face contorting to one of horrified surprise before a hand shot up to her mouth, the contents of her purse she'd retrieved falling back to the ground around her feet. Her heart leap so far into her throat that she could've sworn she could actually taste the organ, and blood swam through her ears so loudly that she could practically feel the veins in which it passed.
Despite his look of disbelief at her comment, the man didn't seem offended. His face returned to a neutral, calm looking expression, though Miri noticed she couldn't stop staring into his eyes. Something about them was so captivating, almost world-stopping; they sparkled in a way that was almost physically illuminating. She'd never seen eyes so blue that they appeared iridescent, and she was borderline transfixed. Unable to string two logical words together, it took her physically fisting her hands and pinching her palms with her nails to shake her out the gaze - she almost felt voyeuristic.
He didn't seem to mind. In fact, the corner of his mouth lifted in an amused quirk. "I will admit, the name is rather unusual," he shifted his posture only slightly, glancing down at his feet momentarily before looking back up to her with a leveled look of cool confidence ebbing from those eyes. "Though I don't believe I've met another human named for the depths of one of the Earth's most unexplored places," he smiled at her, his tone stabbing an appreciative clench into her ovaries. "So, consider the sentiment returned in kind."
She blinked at him. Am I hallucinating? The uneasy rise of her gut told her no, she wasn't.
She snapped back into reality, the fullness of her brain engaging back with her spinal cord. "I...oh - oh! Oh my ever-present God, I am beyond sorry!" Heat exploded across her cheeks, and she covered her face with her hands, exhaling a solid sigh that stirred the inner channel of her stomach. Lowering her hands, she closed her eyes, shook her head lightly, and stepped forward toward him.
"I am so sorry," she inserted quickly, her tongue moving faster than her recovery from embarrassment. "I didn't mean to offend, I - good grief. I'm a mess. Sorry." She slipped her hands into her pockets, lifting her shoulders innocently. "I didn't think anyone was up walking around," she murmured.
From the other side of the plane, Miri noticed that Lennox had paused his work on the laptop, eyeing them over the screen amusedly. When her gaze connected with his over-hearing form, his attention spanned back down to his work with an I've-been-caught snap, the illumination of the laptop screen hiding any trace of expression he might've had. As much as Miri would've liked to think the Major had been embarrassed, he didn't strike her as the kind of man who struggled with it.
The man - Optimus - considered her softly, his stare polite. "No apology necessary. I'm sorry to have startled you," he looked genuinely apologetic, his lips flattening in a sympathetic line. He gently nudged himself from leaning against the semi, straightening to his full height. Her attention snapped up into his face, and she couldn't help the stab of heat that sparked in her gut once more.
She considered him for a moment too long to be deemed comfortable, and she let her eyes fall away from the features of his absolutely divine face. Finding the objects of her purse, once again on the floor, she knelt to begin collecting them, righting her purse as she did so. Depositing them in the bag, she felt the man's stare almost boring through her head, and lifted her gaze to him again, only to find that he was kneeling to assist her, moving like a graceful Adonis more than a man.
Miri's hand brushed against his as she reached for the sunglasses case, plucking it away from him swiftly. Warmth shot up her arm from the contact of his skin, prompting another blush of heat across her face. "Oh, please - don't worry about this. You have things to do, you're an important -"
His soft chuckle interrupted her. "It's no trouble," he didn't look up, Miri more than distracted with the pull of corded muscle in his shoulders. Her mouth's moisture suddenly vacated itself from her body, and she forced herself to cough to distract herself from the wave of attraction currently curling down her spine.
They stood at the exact same moment, him extending the items of her purse to her carefully. Before she had time to respond he lifted her bag, passed it to her, and she accepted it, her eyes locked onto his. He didn't break eye contact for a moment, and Miri considered that maybe she should thank him before his hand brushed the front of her thigh, near her hip, a bolt of electricity racing across every pore and hair on her skin.
She was about to strike out and grab his hand when suddenly it appeared between them, her tube of lip-gloss flicked forward in his grasp again. "Best not forget this," he offered it to her kindly, it taking a full moment for her to conceive the fact that he had actually taken it from her pocket. She expected to find a lustful look in his eye, though instead, he bore the innocence of a child, looking boyish and genuinely kind as he smiled softly at her.
She plucked it from his fingers, giving him a cautious side-glance. "Thank you," she said quietly, dropping the cosmetic tube into her purse. Did he just take that from my pocket? Her skin was still buzzing from the contact of his hand, and she dropped her gaze down to her feet, noticing that he'd returned to his militant stance.
After a few brief beats of silence, she tucked a curl behind her ear, moved to set her purse back beside the bench, and looked back to him. She actually wanted to have an intelligent conversation with the sex-idol standing before her, and attempt to recover some of her pride, which had nosedived off a proverbial cliff just moments ago.
He didn't move, just watched her retake her seat, moving to sling her arms through the abandoned harness. "So, you're a member of Lennox's division?" She situated back against the bench, her tone low as she considered Santos, who was snoring quietly beside her. Optimus' eyes drifted to the man as well, a smile spreading his lips into a grin that sent her gut to her knees. She replayed the statement in her brain, snapping to attention and closing her eyes as she exhaled a slow, uneasy breath. "Major Lennox, I mean."
The man looked down at her as she snapped the harness back together, then moved to step in front of her, watching the movement of her hands in almost an intimate manner. She felt suddenly nerved, and once she released the clip, she looked down as if seeking approval from him, her hands lingering over the safety device. He chuckled, shook his head, and she felt her spine almost snap when he drop to a squat in front of her, focused on the harness.
He unclipped it, adjusted it, and snapped it into place - correctly this time. Miri was lost in the study of his hands, which felt enormous as they worked in such close proximity to her waist. She swallowed a nervous breath of air which threatened to suffocate her, her head suddenly swimming with lightheadedness. She'd never been so unnerved around a specimen of the male species before, and that was saying something, because she'd been dating Erik - the local neighborhood stud - for weeks. He hadn't even been able to render her entirely stupid like this man did.
Optimus looked up to her, his eyes filled with a light playfulness she hadn't seen since her youth. "You could say that Will and I work closely together," he clarified, returning to a standing position. "I oversee the division of the Autobots," he nodded over his shoulder to the semi, and a look of realization at her expression of confusion fell over his features. "I believe Will and Robert described them as highly-advanced prototypes."
Her gaze found the semi, brow raised curiously. "But they're called...Autobots?"
The man nodded at her, once. "Correct." He spoke so regally, with affluent confidence that stirred the energy at the base of her spine. "A more formal term around here, if you will."
Her attention fell back to him and the absolutely divine way his shirt clung to every trace amount of muscle his body produced. He reached up to adjust the beret further down, using a finger to brush the hair slightly curling against his forehead. They were subtle fixes, not meant to be studied, but Miri couldn't help but watch him with gauged interest, suddenly feeling like she'd stepped into the presence of crowned leader.
She suddenly was aching for something to do with her hands, which she instead slipped beneath her thighs against the bench, thankful that their nervous moisture was well from view. Curling her toes in her cowboy boots, she found that he was watching her again, though only for a moment, until his attention snapped overhead when the plane's intercom system engaged with an electrified crackle.
It was Lennox. "Optimus, you wanna come up here for a second please?" Miri's attention fell to the other side of the plane, which Le Lennox had vacated. His laptop computer wasn't even there, and Miri cursed herself for not paying better attention to her surroundings - well, for paying too much attention to the stranger named Optimus.
Her own eyes looked to the ceiling as Lennox ended the intercom page, her head righting to look back at the officer. "No rest for the weary, huh?" Was her comment, which sounded so ridiculous the more she pondered it after had it practically exploded off her tongue - of course he was busy, he was a soldier! She gave him a soft smile, moving to slip her computer into the tote purse at her feet, which contained the rest of her work-related documents.
He chuckled her. "I'm afraid not," he nodded to her, turned, and stepped back a few paces as he ducked his head to give her a light salute. "It was wonderful to meet you, Miss Otten," his tone was strong and boasted all the confidence of his posture, which was beyond perfect as he moved towards the corridor which would lead to the plane's cockpit. "I look forward to furthering our acquaintance."
Who even talks like that anymore? She gave him a half-smile. "Right back at you, Optimus," she nodded at him and offered him a small wave. He then turned away from her, vanishing down the corridor to see to more soldier-esque tasks beyond her scope of clearance.
She bit the inside of her cheek, then glanced down to her feet, bobbing them on the floor as she considered the conversation she'd had with perhaps the world's most attractive man ever. Her mind briefly filtered to Erik, whom she dismissed when she felt a pang of guilt in the base of her chest. Something niggled in the back of her mind, and she fell back against the side of the plane, closing her eyes and wrinkling her nose.
I look forward to seeing more of you too...Optimus Prime.
. . .
The holoform arrived on the bridge quickly, only to find Lennox bent over a small table behind the captain's chair, a black marker in his hand. Sunglasses were balanced on top of his head and he had a pencil between his teeth as he studied papers within his other hand, a contemplative look furrowing his brow. His uniform jacket was off, draped over his arm.
Upon Prime's entrance, his attention diverted to the holoform, reaching up to pluck the pencil from his mouth. "What exactly are you up to, Optimus?" His look gave way to a confused and befuddled expression, prompting one from the holoform as well.
He offered an unknowing frown to the officer. "I don't understand," he replied, taking stance before Lennox. He crossed his arms over his chest, the feel of the holoform's more...organic presence almost unusual. It was so unlike his true form; it felt things differently, even posture. It odd, though not entirely unpleasant - Ratchet had told them it would take some experimenting to grow accustomed to.
"The girl," Will lifted a hand to gesture towards the exit, his brows raised a few inches. "It's not even day one and you're already blowing the op," at Prime's amused smirk he rolled his eyes, covering the side of his face with a hand. "I thought we discussed that we'd use the holoform technology only when necessary."
Prime shrugged a shoulder, a sense of warmth spiraling down the holoform's "spine." He couldn't help the chuckle that filtered from his chest as he recalled the conversation with the woman, Miriana Otten - it had been interesting, to say the least. She'd been so unnerved in the presence of the holoform, even without knowing to whom it actually belonged - he wondered if her reactions to all unacquainted humans was so amusing. He'd been entertained at her expense, which made him feel a bit guilty, but not enough to regret their conversation.
Humans, he thought back to her fluid motions; expressions on her face, such a marvelous species. They have so much to learn, but are unparalleled in their interactions with each other. Fascinating. The way her nose did that wrinkling thing was so different than the way Will's always did - his was always born from a place of confusion. The way she'd expressed the emotion had been...pleasant.
He moved to step closer to Will, putting a hand on his shoulder. The soldiers attention moved to it, considering the appendage as if he'd never seen one before. Optimus supposed it was unusual, since Will knew of his true form and his normal presence - such an interaction was more human, and not attainable when he wasn't using Ratchet's technology. Though, Optimus had to admit - he enjoyed the closeness to Will, the show of affirmation. He didn't get to experience the humans of NEST on such a level; it felt unifying.
He gave Will's shoulder the lightest of squeezes, aware of the holoform's strength which pulsed beneath its "skin." Will lifted his attention to Prime, the corner of his mouth lifted into an amused grin. "Don't worry so much, Major," he appeased the man's nervousness with a light pat to the back of his shoulders. "Everything is fine."
Will gave him a slow nod, his brows lifted suspiciously. "Whatever you say, Optimus," his tone was light, as if he were only placating his capitulation of the discussion. It was enough to satiate the holoform, however, because Optimus smiled at him lightly, turned on his heel to exit the bridge, instead killing the holoform before passing through the doorway.
Hopefully the human woman wouldn't notice he didn't return to the cargo area, though once glance at her from the Peterbilt, which found her reengaged with her small computer, told him that her attention had fallen elsewhere. Using her connection to the internet, he was able to tap into what she was working on, finding her studious attention to the task admirable. Nothing about her countenance told her she suspected anything, which didn't entirely sit well in his sparkchamber. She was so...unsuspecting.
She didn't say a word the rest of the voyage, something Optimus wasn't sure relieved him, or disconcerted him all the more.