Rex is prepared to argue that the mission, technically, is a success. He's already rehearsing the argument in his head, sketching out the outlines of his eventual argument.
"Target," he says, gulping in another breath of air, "eliminated."
"Jesus Christ," someone says. Judging from the wheezing, it's Declan.
"This guy." Ironhide.
"Rex, where… fuck- where are you?" Will asks over the mic, cutting through six channels of chaos.
Rex is on the roof, crouched in the rafters of the abandoned lumbermill a few kilometers north of Nerchinsk, watching Ironhide smack some Decepticon around with an honest-to-god tree he picked up along the way, while Declan is huddled strategically behind cover.
Technically, Rex should be on the ground, but he'd gotten on the roof and taken the first shot at a Decepticon, bringing it down with a well-aimed shot through a weak point in its cranial bones, and that sort of improvisation doesn't give him a lot of time to think. He's never had cause to question his aim. But they've got alien robots slinging energon blasts and throwing trees, and he's not comfortable with any margin of error.
There's a pause, presumably while Will tries to use the limits of his geographical knowledge.
"What the hell are you doing up there?"
"Stargazing, what else would I be doing up here?" Rex says.
"Do you ever shut up?" Ironhide asks.
"Sorry. My team expects a certain amount of snark in every fight."
It's true, almost. Rex knows it drives Will a little nuts sometimes, but it's part of their teamwork, and Rex's very good at knowing how hard he can push before Will gets legitimately pissed off.
"No, we don't," Declan says. His only job was to keep their focus, keep them engaged until Ironhide showed up. Rex figures that's what they mean when they say younger siblings get it easier. He doesn't know if Declan actually is younger than him, but the point still stands.
"Rex," Will says, steady and calm, but unusually urgent. "Get off the roof."
"Yeah, I'll do that, sure."
It's a request, however subconscious, that Rex is happy to honor. The last time he was on a roof in the middle of a battle, he got thrown off and blew out every window of a high-rise building and made his escape by skidding down the side of it in the charred remains of his clothes.
"Rex," Will says, voice breaking across the comms, disrupting the perfectly entertaining show of watching Ironhide beat the shit out of his opponent. "Status Report."
"Jesus, Will, don't you have your own Decepticon to worry about?"
He really should keep his voice down, because any louder and even the Decepticons below are going to notice that the roof isn't as abandoned as it should be.
He checks his guns reflexively, calming a little when his hands close around them.
"Headed down now."
"Rex, you need to get off the roof right now!" Will says, and this time Rex can read the urgency in his voice. "Get down !"
Rex makes a short, aborted move towards the ladder at the side of the building, then twists on his heel and takes a flying leap off the roof instead. And then, seconds later, an explosion sends the whole building flying, and he can tell, immediately, that it's the wrong move. He catches the next roof with his fingers, heaving himself up and over onto the next one.
"Rex, that's not what I meant!"
He shoots the smoldering wreckage next to him a disbelieving look and scrambles to his feet, lurches forward to stare at the river of methane fire and upturned earth in the wake.
"Christ's sake, Will," he says, voice tight. "What. The fuck ."
"Diaz blew up an eighteen-wheeler," Will tells him, probably ducking gun fire and trying to ration bullets by the sounds of it.
Rex doesn't have eyes on him. It's worrying, but there's not much he can do about it at the moment.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine."
He isn't. He was dangling off the roof a second ago, too close to the glass, and the blood rapidly soaking his side might be a cause for concern. There's a shard of probably tetanus-inducing glass buried in his side, and he presses one hand to it to somehow staunch the bleeding. There's a bit of blood on his mouth, but it's from smashing his lip against the ledge during his jump. When he wipes it away, no more leaks out to replace it.
"I'm fine," he says again, and his voice sounds perfectly normal, stable as anything.
He only sounds a little winded as he climbs to his feet. His gun must've gotten lost while he was dangling one-handed from the roof. There's blood on the ground, smeared across the roof like some kind of shitty version of Blue's Clues.
Rex laughs, and there's a click to tell him someone's tapped into his private channel, and then Prime is in his ear, calmly saying, "Alexander, do you need a lift out?"
"No, I kinda like it up here," Rex tells him, but he's too focused on keeping his blood inside his body to put much heat behind it.
"I need you to find a way off that roof."
The words aren't delivered like an order, and Rex, who generally takes immense satisfaction in doing the opposite of what he's told, finds himself replying without a hint of sarcasm, and stumbling to the edge of the roof, squinting down. He can't tell who's more surprised, him or Prime.
"Down's a long way," Rex says. "I think I like up a lot more."
There's a crackle of static.
"I've got you in sight. Hold on."
"Anything for you, my liege," Rex hisses flatly into his mouthpiece, dropping his head as bullets whizz just past his head. "Actually, down's great. Down sounds fucking swell."
He spots a ladder on the side of the warehouse next to him, and hurls himself at it, falling a full two seconds before he catches the metal, which shakes so hard he thinks he's going to rip the damn thing off.
It holds, barely. But he slams his injured side against the metal and dangles in the air, kicking his legs and trying to catch the breath that just got knocked out of him. He barely makes a sound as fresh blood wells up under his hand.
"JesusFuck."
It's just a one story drop from this height. It's gonna be a bitch with his injury, but he's dealt with worse. He should probably throw himself backwards, take his chances with the half-empty dumpster.
He's about to jump when a hand closes tight around him, and Rex's jump is caught short. His head twists back to face the threat, reaching into his pocket for his knife, then spots his savior.
Rex will give it to the guy: he knows how to make an entrance.
"Hey," he says. He smiles, bright and wide. "You got here really fast. Your response time is Goddamn amazing you know that?"
From around the next corner, a copped police car tries to trap them between themselves and the methane fire behind them. Rex pulls his Sig from his back holster and aims at the car as it accelerates. He'll have a clear shot in a second—
He goes from being in Prime's hand, feeling the blood soak through the fabric of his shirt, to being in the truck's cab.
" Alexander -"
Rex groans, deep in his throat. "Present," he says.
The way out is a blur: everything seems to be on fire, and there's no sign of their team. Rex isn't worried: Prime is asking pointed questions and giving no-nonsense orders. Rex can hear the collective exhale of at least two people over the comms as training overrides panic. Prime sounds absolutely calm and almost reassuring.
"Ironhide," Optimus cuts through the comms. "Report."
There's no sound for a moment, and then a faint scrambling and a low, reverberating howl of metal. "Fine. I got this."
"I'm taking Alexander back to transport. Finish the mission in whatever way you find most expedient."
Rex's not listening anymore: he's too busy trying not to puke all over himself.
He's breathing too fast, or maybe not at all. He's hunched forward in his seat, just in case he throws up. Probably better to puke on the floorboard than on the nice leather.
And then, " Fuck ."
He rubs at his face, careful not to get more blood on the seat.
He's making a fucking mess. He's always such a mess. Here he is, inside Prime's nice, clean cab, and he's just a mess of blood and shitty exit strategies, making everything more complicated for Prime than it needs to be, messing up every single inch of Prime's cab while he's at it.
Because he's a fucking mess. Because he's always going to be a mess.
"Sorry," he says. The last time he said sorry like that was years ago, a lifetime ago. "I'm gonna— Fuck, sorry. I'm gonna clean it, please, I can't-"
Prime is saying something, louder, more empathetic than he has the right to be, and Rex gets the impression he's disappointed him somehow. He's sorry about that.
"Fuck, I'm sorry."
"There's no need to apologize, Alexander," Prime says. The wheels squeal in counterpoint to the even, measured tone of his voice. Rex hears gears shifting, feels the jolt of Prime putting as much space between them and the battle as he can, as quickly as possible. "Ratchet's already been informed."
"Ratchet?" Rex says, baffled.
" Yes ," Prime says, and, wow, maybe he is pissed, just a little bit. "You're injured. You need medical attention. Ratchet is waiting."
"No."
He exhales hard.
He thought his shirt was dark enough to hide any stains.
"I can stitch that up on the plane. My hands aren't broken. And Epps's a genius with a needle. He can stitch you up and you barely even feel it. He'll tell you crazy stories the whole time, but -"
"Alexander."
Rex sighs. He closes his eyes for a second and then opens them. His side hurts. His everything hurts.
"Why are you so opposed to medical treatment?" Prime asks.
He can't for the life of him figure out how to read Prime's voice here, whether he's stating a weakness or a character judgment.
He's jonesing hard for a cigarette, but he'd rather jump off a hundred buildings than test his luck with Prime.
"I'm just an intensely shy person."
He smiles, like any second now, Prime's going to get the joke, going to look at him and think, somehow, that it's funny.
"Look, I'm not trying to cause you guys trouble. I'm gonna save everybody some time and a lot of paperwork if I do it myself."
"Is paperwork a requirement for you to seek out medical aid?"
Rex just pitches his voice down into an impressively accurate impersonation of the NEST suits back home and says, "'It's standard procedure'."
"You fill out this paperwork after every mission, do you not?"
"What bullshit, huh?" Rex says.
Thing is, he hasn't done any of the paperwork. The first time he ran out of shower gel, he stole more from Will when the other man wasn't looking, even though Rex's pretty sure Will noticed. When he needed a new shirt because the bloodstains wouldn't come out of the old one, he sweet-talked the guy in charge of storage into giving him a new one. He's tried his goddamn hardest to avoid any kind of paperwork, and he's fooled himself into believing he could get away with it.
Rex grunts. Audibly. And then he does it again as Prime hits the brakes in the sludgy mud on the far end of the street.
There isn't an inch of his shirt that isn't soaked in blood.
"Shit," he says, for the sake of variety.
The tightness in his lungs indicates that maybe he's forgotten how to breathe a while ago, but he can't remember how to breathe again. They haven't stopped or slowed down, and from the sudden turns and shrieking tires, Rex gets the feeling that Prime is making sure they're not being followed.
When they finally stop, there are hands on his shoulders, pulling him into a more upright posture. Rex makes a noise, almost a yell, and he throws a punch at the side of the person's head. It doesn't do anything, but the shock of it distracts him for long enough that, when Rex looks up, blue eyes are staring hard at him.
"Alexander," the man says, and all Rex's thoughts crash into each other, like a train going off tracks, "I want you to sit up and let me -"
He doesn't know how that sentence is supposed to end, what he's supposed to let Prime do, the fight goes out of him, and he falls against the seat and holds still while Prime is efficiently removing his vest and tugging his shirt off. There's pressure on his side, and Rex almost flinches away from it.
"It's alright," Prime says, soothing him like he's some panicked kid.
Rex thinks, somewhat deliriously, that fresh blood really brings out the bright blue of this version of Prime's eyes, although he will begrudgingly grant that this might be due to the pain he's in.
"Breathe, Alexander. It's alright."
There's something in that voice that says, 'it's alright', something that makes Rex believe that it might be, and that's not something he believes from a lot of people. But Prime sounds certain. The word 'reassuring' comes to mind again, and Rex is not sure he's ever thought of anyone that way before.
"'m breathing. I am ."
He takes in a deep gasp of air, just to prove the point. But the truth is he's not doing it very well. He feels dizzy, like his heart isn't getting the blood to his brain. His heart jerks in his chest, feels like it's going to pound its way through his sternum.
Prime nods, like what Rex says makes sense, like he knows something.
"You're experiencing what I believe humans call a 'panic attack'. Deep breaths, Alexander."
Panic attack , he thinks. It doesn't help hearing Prime say it.
NEST is going to expect a mission report. He will get checked into medical and they will know when he can't even sign his own name on the release form. Hell, they might know already because he still hasn't given them a single piece of paper.
"It's alright," Prime says.
It's a nice thing to say. Prime probably even believes it.
This Prime moves like a perfectly-oiled, breathing, living machine of a man with his soul in his eyes. He's slow, and he's powerful but he's careful. Careful as he assesses the rest of Rex's torso, careful as he moves aside the rest of his clothes, in tatters, and red seeping through the cloth. It's not quite waterproof.
Rex makes a sound and then reaches over and grabs Prime's wrist, right where he's applying pressure to Rex's wound. It's nice. Having Prime's hand there. Rex stares hard at the flex of muscles of Prime's forearm as he leans into the self-assigned task, and Rex realizes that he's tracking his shaky, irregular breaths.
"Easy." He puts a hand around the back of Rex's neck, heavy and reassuring. "You're safe here."
It feels good to close his eyes, rest for a minute. It's an honest kind of exhaustion. He's done his job, the mission is over, and he's still here, and now he gets to go home.
Prime keeps talking to him, trying to talk him through it. He likes the rumbly, deep tones Prime uses when he's talking to him, but there's a special kind of charm to his 'leader' voice that catches Rex's attention every time.
Rex glances up at him: the man's eyes are bright with concern, mouth flat. He shifts, and Rex understands, suddenly, why he's such an effective figure. Even like this, there's something about Prime – about the combination of scruff and muscle and intense, bright stare – that's uniquely calming.
Rex makes a low, disgruntled noise. "That's a cool magic trick," he says, with breezy carelessness. "I'd need a crane to shift you right now."
Prime makes a face at him like he can't decide if he's offended or embarrassed. Rex pats him consolingly on the shoulder.
"Nothing to be ashamed of, Big Guy. Body types like yours make the rocking world go 'round ," he says.
"I admit, I don't know what that means," Prime says.
Rex cackles, and Prime looks at him like the little glimpses into Rex's psyche are deeply alarming.
"Don't look it up. If you hate Queen, I don't wanna know."
Prime doesn't say anything. His expression is thoughtful and confused and a little-closed off, like he's not sure how to interpret what's coming out of Rex's mouth. He pulls his hand away from Rex's neck. He's breathing fine on his own now. He's got 'Fat Bottomed Girls' playing over and over, looping in his mind.
But there's a long, terrible moment where he knows he has to take his hand off Prime, but thinks, the second he does, he's going to fade away from him.
"We're almost at the transport," Prime says.
"Mhm."
Prime looks back out the windshield. The lights outside erase all of his tells. Rex can't read anything on his face, but he doesn't fade.
/
/
/
/
He thinks, at first, that it isn't that serious. He's worried about Will, who tends to take these things serious, who gets quiet and serious, leaning into his secret mothering habit like a flower turning toward sunlight, and holds himself to a standard that's so high it might not even be on this planet. He fusses over him on the plane ride back, patches all of Rex's cuts himself. The rest of the team had loaded onto the plane and soon found their own particular patch of gray metal to stare at.
The transport crew is practically shaking in their seats, because Will won't stop marching the length of the plane and then into the cockpit to ask, in a very calm, measured voice, if they can't hurry it up a bit.
It's raining in Diego Garcia when the plane touches down. Will leads him down the stairs to the runway, his arm wrapped tight around Rex's middle. Declan and Diaz are checked by the paramedics and then checked again by NEST medical.
Rex is checked by no one, and he doesn't respond well to Will's well-intentioned but frankly ludicrous attempts to bully him into the direction of the paramedics.
"You want to walk there or be carried?"
It's so ridiculous that Rex almost asks to be carried. It's a joke, probably, but there's a good chance that Will will do it if he asks. Will gets overprotective after missions, and he frets like a mother when Rex is hurt.
He can't honestly remember the last time he was carried by anyone, or in a situation that didn't include a medical emergency. Maybe he hasn't been carried since his father started seeing through him whenever Rex pretended to have fallen asleep in the backseat of their car. Maybe even before then.
"I can walk," he says, and staggers just a little.
Will steadies him, ducks under his arm and pulls him against his side.
"You manhandle me some more… and I'm gonna have to take offense."
He sounds defensive. He sounds like he's going to throw a punch at the next person who tries to touch him.
He's fine. He's barely hurt. He just needs some stitches.
There's nothing wrong. He's fine .
He even goes to Ratchet, like he's supposed to.
"Will," he says. " Really . I'm fine."
"Shut up," Will advices. He posts himself outside the medical bay's door, plants his feet, like he expects Rex to pull a disappearing act on him and he will have to fish him out of the air vents later.
Rex thinks he'd probably sooner fling himself out the closest window than go through the effort of climbing up air vents.
He stares at Will for just a second longer and then turns sharply on his heel and tugs the door open. When he breathes in, it's antiseptic. Soap and the sterile clean of rubbing alcohol smothering out the scent of blood, and Ratchet is waiting for him.
He looks like he might've taken Rex's refusal for help a little personally.
Rex closes the door behind him.
"Hey, Doc," he greets, a little warily. "Missed me?"
"I heard you were responsible for some stupidity today."
"Jumped off the roof of a building right before it blew up," Rex says, with a shrug. "Guess that counts."
"It's hard to tell whether you are gifted or suicidal, did you know that?" Ratchet asks, rhetorical. He stares at Rex for a second longer and then looks to the blood soaking his side.
"I'm a professional," Rex says.
Ratchet looks him over, professional and unimpressed, and says, "What did you use to clean this?"
"My shirt."
Ratchet looks at him, blue eyes focused and intent. "Your shirt."
Rex leans with his hip against the exam table. His side hurts. He strips out of his shirt, balls up the cloth and scrubs at his face, his hair, his hands. He cleans the wet smears of blood off his boots, and then he drops the shirt on the ground and turns towards Ratchet.
"Good?" he asks, holding his arms out away from himself.
Ratchet just stands there, arms crossed, shoulders back, and somehow he's manifested damn near Prime-levels of intensity with his eyes alone. He leans forward and frowns, and fucking looms over Rex in a way that would even bring Will close to tears.
"Wow," Rex says, entranced. "You're pissed."
He's only cried twice since he joined the army, which he thinks is pretty impressive, considering the last time he cried was that time Epps broke the coffee maker, but he thinks it would be real easy for him to cry now.
Ratchet looks like he's looking for something, or maybe like he's realizing something.
"You're bleeding."
"Surprise," Rex says. He's bloody and he's a mess. "It'll stop. It's not that bad."
"If it hurts, if you are bleeding," Ratchet says, "it is 'that bad'."
"We really should get a better uniform," he says. He doesn't say that black hides blood better than green.
He sits in mutinous silence while Ratchet checks the cuts.
"You will need stitches, obviously," Ratchet says, gauging the depth. It's a clean, sharp cut, actually. Conveniently located, too.
There was a time when the sight of all that blood would have made Rex sick, but that was before he joined the army.
He thinks about Prime, while Ratchet puts a neat line of stitches in the cut down near his hip. He thinks about the blood that spread across the cab's upholstery, about the way Prime had looked at him, when he curled a hand around the cut in Rex's side and tried to hold him together.
When he looks down again, there are deep, ugly gashes perfectly held together by a line of butterfly stitches.
Rex raises an eyebrow. "Wow."
"Rex. I have seen the files documenting your injuries, and comparing them to an average human's timeline. The amount of injuries you've sustained in the past is - extraordinary."
"Nice of you to notice," Rex says.
Ratchet looks at him, hand pausing over the stitches, eyes narrowing at whatever he sees on Rex's face.
"I was referring to injuries pre-army."
Rex rolls his eyes. "I was just a real accident-prone child. And my dad didn't care, but my mum worried about everything, so she brought me to the ER every time I scraped a knee."
"The last time you were brought to the emergency room," Ratchet says, "you needed twelve stitches, in your arm."
When Ratchet tilts his arm, he sees the shiny scar on Rex's elbow where the bone broke through the skin, after he fell off the roof of their house.
"I'm sloppy," Rex says.
For no reason at all, he has a hard time making himself smile. There's a quietly assessing look on Ratchet's face that Rex knows he's not equipped to deal with right now.
"Ratchet, are you worried about me? Big Worry Wart, huh? Is this a lecture about accepting help?"
"I am not lecturing," Ratchet says.
Which is too Goddamn bad, really, because Rex is exceptionally good at patching up all the cuts he doesn't want to go to medical for.
"Yeah, okay," Rex says and then blinks. "Wait. Are you gonna hand me papers after you finish this up? Because then you can take these right back out."
"No need," Ratchet says. "Optimus just put everything in order. He notified Will that you are 'benched' for the foreseeable future. For weeks, Rex. Twenty-four hours of rest. You will finish your rest, and after that, you can go wherever you want as long as it's not on a battlefield."
Rex blinks. "He –what?"
He hadn't really thought about where Prime went. That whole time frame between Will pulling him out of the truck's cab and coming back to himself two hours later, with Will wiping the blood off his hands, is a little fuzzy.
He figured Prime was off somewhere, doing more important things, or recharging.
"Yes," Ratchet says, jerking his chin towards the door. "He called me to tell me you were injured and refused to seek medical aid."
And he has no idea what the hell to do with that. But he likes the thought of it.
For a moment, and, inexplicably, Rex feels very warm.
But then, before he realizes what's happening, he feels the cool sweep of an alcohol-dipped cotton ball and the prick of a needle in his exposed bicep.
"The fuck?"
"Sedative," Ratchet replies with a shrug, already withdrawing the syringe. "Optimus' orders. He thought you would be fighting me on this."
"Fuck you," Rex says, and he tips forward, but his arm doesn't follow the movement, goes limp at his side, and then, suddenly, he's slumping over.
"You need to get better, Rex," Ratchet tells him, in his 'that's an order' voice.
"Just to spite you," Rex mutters.
When he breathes out, he's unconscious.