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He’s young the first time it happens. A memory burned clearly into his processor. It is, upon searching through the archives of his mind, one of the first memories to be recorded. He’d wandered away from his carrier again. Couldn’t pick out her powder blue plating in the crowd that was pushing him farther and farther away from the fountain he was supposed to go to if he got lost.
Fear builds in his chest, hot and too-big for someone so small. Solvent drips down his cheeks and a new heat washes over him. Shame. He is a big-bot. Too old to cry because he’s a little scared. His sire told him the world was tough, and he needed to be tough, too.
Squaring his little shoulders, he takes a deep invent and looks around. He had, while lost, continued moving and gotten more lost. He has ended up in an abandoned looking courtyard surrounded on three sides by crumbling factory buildings. But he isn’t alone.
“E’scuse me!” His lisp whistles through his denta. “E’scuse me!” The bot is huge, but most bots are to Blurr. “I’m lost. Can you help me?” He reaches up and snags the shroud over the mech. “Are you a war-frame, sir?”
The mech freezes, looking down at him with a ruby optic. Tentatively, the mech kneels. Blurr leans in to stare, curious.
“You look funny.”
“Ah, apologies, young one. I am not usually seen.”
Blurr, young and innocent and lacking the critical thinking or listening skills of a grown bot, glosses over the statement.
“Are you hurt, mister?” Looking back, remembering, Blurr can not recall why he’d asked that.
The mech shakes his head and gently offers a servo. His touch is light, as though he were holding his servo still for a butterfly that had taken residency there. Blurr is no butterfly and he latches onto the digits with childish force, hanging and rocking on his heels.
“You said you are lost.” That voice. It was so… smooth. Dark and rich, like high-grade or energon spurting out of a busted line in his wrist. “I am afraid I am also lost. But perhaps I can keep you company.”
Blurr happily agrees.
When his frantic carrier finds him, she’s too relieved to ask about his invisible friend.
. . .
Life passes by, almost as quick as he can run. Before he knows it, he’s outgrown his lisp. His active imagination calms and he becomes quite the celebrity. No matter how many people cheer his name from a stadium, he still feels small. Past his glamor is only himself; awkward, bunt, hard to understand.
But he's lucky to have this build, the mutations that make him a champion racer. If he smiles and nods, shakes hands with managers and takes photos with fans--he can believe that. He’s lucky. A ‘bot in the prime of his life. A ‘bot who has known prosperity.
He watches that prosperity evaporate like precious drops of dew under Velocitron’s sun.
The Quintesson’s, after being long dormant, attack. And just like that an old war rekindles to a blaze. His glittering city is reduced to shards and ash. The streets once packed with life and sparklings are bombed out. Destroyed.
This is why he enlists. Looking out at the shelter, full of younglings who have so much life left to live, he knows he must protect that. His life was touched by death the moment he emerged. He is lucky he had such an easy time racing.
His life has been a dream. He is willing to wake up so these new builds can dream a little longer.
This is the lie he tells himself.
. . .
Academy life isn't easy. Although his speed makes him an asset, his high strung personality and perfectionism do not make him popular.
He does manage to find a few friends. A yellow mini ‘bot that can't shut up, a soft sparked farm ‘bot, and a highly reserved ‘cyber-ninja’.
They're strange, but, so is he.
They make it through basic, and onto the battlefield. Blurr comes close to danger many times, but has always come out unscathed. Never more than scrapes, dented plating.
Kup says he has soldier’s intuition. The pull in his gut for where to step, a prickle at his nape when a sniper has him in their sights.
Arcee says he has a guarding angel.
Blurr just laughs. He's lucky and quick, nothing more.
At least, he thought so.
Currently he is neither quick nor lucky. Quintesson forces have his unit pinned down, and he doesn’t see the disturbance in the earth until he’s triggered the landmine. Napalm explodes around him, smoke and fire sticking to his plating and eating him alive.
He tumbles into what looks like, to his static laced optics, a small cave.
The young part of his processor that talked to shadows wonders if it will be his grave.
He crawls pathetically across the sand, pink streaks of energon moistening the rust colored sand and turning it the red of organic blood. His leg is halfway off dragging behind him, and lowering his sensitivity doesn’t stop the dizzying whirl of errors his HUD pops up.
Sticky brown death chews at his armor, hungry for protometal. More error codes glitch across his vision. His optics won’t focus on the words, but he gets the gist.
He’s hit the end of the line.
Luck’s run out.
His frame arches off the rough terrain as he coughs up frothy oral fluids. The motion sends him upward, and he catches the blurred shape of someone watching the entrance.
“Bulk… head?”
Bulkhead hadn't been near him when the mine went off. The shape of the bot didn't quite match the gentle giant, either.
Whoever it is startles, whirling around to face him. With no face.
A new kind of terror grips him. This… thing isn't one of his commanders, or even an enemy--it's a demon.
Set into a void is a single red optic that presses closer. Claws reach for him.
“Blurr.”
It croons his name, strokes those daggers down his cheek with a gentleness that only scares Blurr more. He thought the onslaught of servos reaching for him after his carrier put him to recharge was over. He was a big ‘bot that didn’t wake up screaming from night terrors that followed him into the world of waking.
He didn’t see demons.
Seeing was a curse. One he thought his sire had beaten out of him before he finally left for good.
“Shh, shh, little one. I know it hurts.” Those sharp claws continue to pet his cheek with their blunted backside. A wash of familiarity seeps through Blurr’s leaking lines. The touch, the comfort--he knows them.
His processor, still ringing from the explosion, fragments. A broken string of memories rush to the forefront of his mind--pleasant bits he buried along with the wailing of a hundred voices, the scrape of death-cold fingers of the lost reaching for him.
This thing had been with him, riding on his back, for a long time.
Questions gurgle up his intake but all that comes out is energon that dribbles down his chin. Tears follow. He doesn’t want to die. Maybe once, when the voices made themselves at home and phantom hands nearly dragged him under, but not now.
He can’t die yet. Not like this. He just made the guard.
But he can feel the whirling heat of his spark sputter. Already his internal temperature is dropping.
“Stay with me, little one.”
Suddenly those claws are the only concrete thing in the world. In his confusion he grips one huge servo in both of his trembling ones.
At least he won’t die alone.
But then, he’d never really been alone, had he?
Darkness edges in. The fear gripping him loosens its hold. Not because he’s had an epiphany of acceptance, but because his frame lacks the power to hold tension. This is really it. Please, Primus, don’t forsake him. Don’t leave him lost, shambling and afraid, looking for any source of light to cling to. To drown.
Before the darkness can consume him something pointed scrapes at his chassis. It digs in and a click cuts through the noise of violence beyond the cave. His spark flutters in its chamber, weak as it struggles to not extinguish under the blast of foreign air.
He can hear the distortion of words, low and deep. Sharp digits finger the rim of his spark chamber. Pleasure zings through Blurr’s back struts, chasing away the pain of his blown up leg, his melted plating.
His valve cycles, beginning to lubricate despite the fear pulsing through him. The terrible chill blanketing him thaws, a burning heat the color of that red optic replacing it. Claws that had tricked him into thinking they were merciful cup under his back. He limply lets himself be splayed over the thing’s slim waist, his thighs open lewdly around its hips, one leg dangling. Servos stroke down his back, kind again.
The hiss of decompression makes Blurr’s head jerk up. Light from an inferno bathes his battered frame and Blurr struggles against the firm grip on him.
“You are scared.” The voice says. “Do not be. I have always been here. I will always be here.”
Perhaps the demon means to comfort him. To reassure him he is not alone in this time so near death. Blurr is not comforted. His frame cries out as he pushes back, away from a monstrous spark that chases him.
“Do not fret, I am here.” Those servos that could easily crush him cause no pain as they tighten, keeping him pinned as its spark overtakes him.
Power surges through him. He arches, to his dismay, into the creature rather than away. Devotion, so all consuming it rotted into obsession, swallows Blurr whole. He gasps, plunging under the other’s influence.
It watched him. All these vorns, since he stumbled upon it as a youngling. Soft affection beats through him and Blurr is reminded--inexplicably--of the nature documentaries Prowl watches. Of the intricate, delicate organ all organics had.
A heart.
It slept at the foot of his berth, growled at the lost souls that came for him. When his sire beat him, well and truly beat him, the demon followed him to the bar he frequented. Reaching his phantom servo into his chest and squeezed until the spark snuffed out.
It loved him. It loved him so much it hurt.
And then he stopped seeing. The veil of youth lifted from his optics and left the creature so terribly alone.
Blurr aches for it. Someone sobs, and its soothing murmur begins again, servos rubbing his back. Blurr burrows closer. Never before had he felt loved. Not like this.
The electrifying current of energy, the strength of its love--it’s too confusing. Too much. Blurr’s hips judder against the long stretch of the demon’s frame as his charge crests.
The influx of power stabiles. His spark recedes, steady and strong. Darkness creeps forward again, but this time it does not promise to be the last thing he sees.
How much time passes is impossible to tell. All he knows is the drift of black dissolves and something cool coats him. Broad arms scoop under him and sharpness pokes his neck.
“I've got you, kid.”
Ratchet. The voice calms him instantly. Their surly field medic.
He’s safe.
. . .
When he gets out of basic training he meets Hot Rod, all glossy red paint and charm. Hot Rod slides into the table he sits at, sipping energon alone, and just starts talking. He crunches iron rods, waving them around to exaggerate whatever he was saying. When he notices Blurr staring in disgust at his open-mouth chewing, he offers him a rod.
Blurr is surprised when he takes one.
Smooth as oil, Hot Rod slides an arm over his shoulders, launching into another story Blurr didn’t listen to. He’s too focused on how nice Hot Rod feels against him.
They’re both racers. They go fast on the track, the battlefield, and in relationships. Usually, Blurr sprints to bridges, setting them alight behind him. He can’t help it. Something deep and broken inside of him fears letting anyone get close.
They’ll only be disappointed by what they find.
Hot Rod doesn’t let him off the hook. No matter how snobbish Blurr is, the mech is not deterred. His lips find Blurr’s cheek and Blurr finds himself in Hot Rod’s habsuite. He likes Hot Rod. A lot. But when kisses turn into touching, lower and lower, Blurr feels sick.
Like he’s cheating.
Hot Rod is sweet about it. He rubs Blurr’s back, reassures him they don’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to. Blurr falls against him and cries.
He stops seeing Hot Rod after that.
. . .
“You're lucky we found you, kid.” Ratchet's deft fingers prod at Blurr’s leg before closing the paneling over the newly hooked up wires. “We almost missed you.”
Blurr rubs his thumbs together. Part of him wants to ask Ratchet to run a diagnostic on his processor, check for anything that might cause hallucinations.
Instead what comes out is, “how did you find me?”
“Well, it's the darndest thing. Your locator was damaged. You were reading offline. Sentinel wanted to leave you, but part of the rocks lining that cave collapsed. The noise brought attention to it. And you.”
Blurr wiggles his leg experimentally. All around him are other bots waiting for repairs. No one more damaged than he had just been, but all waiting none the less.
“Ratchet?”
The medic is already cleaning his tools, ready to move on to the next patient.
“What is it?”
Though his tone is gruff, Blurr knows Ratchet has a soft spot for him and all his misfit friends. If he asked, Ratchet would surely run the tests. And if his voice was small and trembling, he might lay a comforting servo on his shoulder.
“Thank you. I appreciate you fixing me up so promptly and with such precision.”
Hardened blue optics soften.
“Leave running for tomorrow, lube the joints. If you have anything besides a lite soreness or itch, come see me.”
Blurr hops off the gurney and salutes unnecessarily, as both a way to rib the medic and to show how much he truly respects him. Before Ratchet can hit him with a projectile he darts away, followed by Ratchet's yell not to run.
. . .
Their rooms on the ship are small, but private. At least for right ranking officials like Elite Guardsmen. Blurr appreciates the solitude, but sometimes misses Bumblebee and Prowl's squabbling over the communal monitor. Or Bulkhead tripping over his buckets while late night painting.
Blurr should visit their quarters. Since making the Elite Guard he had not been put on many missions with them. Bumblebee surely has many gripes to share with him about being stuck on maintenance duty.
Exhaustion pushes him towards recharge instead.
His door beeps open and he's ready to fall face first into his berth. He doesn't get the chance. The door shuts behind him, closing him in his room with the creature.
It's massive. A deformed, hulking frame with a long neck that's split under the helm, breath seething though the cut. When the creature notices his presence, its neck stretches up and reveals a flash of slanted rows of denta. It lumbers towards him. Reaching antlers twitch as they rotate to brush against him. Their touch is soft.
Paralyzed, he does nothing as the monster's helm nuzzles against his own.
“I failed to protect you, forgive me, little one.” It murmurs.
It moves away from him to linger in the doorway.
Static buzzes angrily through his helm. The floor warps beneath him. It hadn’t been a hallucination. It was real. Had been real all this time.
A foreign feeling curls through his spark. Something old and familiar. Fear dampens and his stabilizers wobble. Shockwave. He remembers.
“S-s-s--” His vocalizer clicks.
The demon turns, looking puzzled despite lacking the features to do so.
It lays a palm on his shoulder and jolts when Blurr’s servos wrap around it, holding on for dear life.
For the second time that day, Blurr passes out.
. . .
When he wakes again he feels like a child, afraid and trembling. Things long repressed are coming back. Sockets lacking optics that stare at him from beyond his berth. Open-mouthed moans, fingers scraping at his plating, the cries of many begging him for help.
He can see them. They want him to save them.
But he can't. He's just a kid with a series of unfortunate glitch-codes that let him glimpse what should remain unseen.
He tries to get away from them. He runs as hard as his little legs will go, runs until he hits the ground and still they find him.
Until he finds Shockwave.
Shockwave made everything he feared better. Blurr looks for that comfort again and tugs the demon onto his berth with him. Shockwave takes up the whole thing, but Blurr doesn’t need much room. Not when he lays himself on Shockwave’s chassis and presses his helm into the dulled purple plating.
Thick arms wrap around him as they had done many times before.
“Why couldn’t I see you anymore?” Blurr’s small voice wavers, so quiet Shockwave might not have heard him if there was any distance between them.
“You did not want to.”
Blurr’s head lifts, his frame stiffening.
“No,” he pushes himself up frantically, looking into the empty face he had loved a long time ago. “No, no I'd never!” But it was true. The moment Shockwave says it he remembers.
“It is not your fault.” Warm servos stroke his body. He's so small, and Shockwave so large, that one servo spans half his frame. “You wanted to be normal. You wanted to forget.”
“I’m sorry!” He wants those arms to wrap him up. He wants to feel whole again. Shockwave shushes him.
“I would have waited an eternity for you.”
“Why?” Blurr’s hurt wobbles his lip.
A claw strokes his cheek and he shivers. The comfort the action had brought earlier distorts into the dark curl of pleasure. Shockwave's other servo cups his aft, the tip of his digit rubbing lightly at the fork between his thighs.
“You were mine once, in another life.” Blurr listens, enraptured. He still feels the pulse of Shockwave's love for him in his spark. Here, laying atop the monster, he feels not fear, but desire. As though he has reunited with a long lost love--the kind he would mourn on his deathbed, rather than a demon stray.
“You were my only love, Blurr. The only one I ever had in my life. And I have lived a long time.”
Blurr can feel the sadness inside his friend and rests his servo on his cheek.
“What happened?”
Shockwave lays a servo over his own, holding it there and leaning into the touch as his optic dims.
“You died.” The demon nuzzles his palm, reverent. “I killed the mech responsible savagely. I killed all of his kind and damned myself to this punishment. I have searched for you for longer than you could imagine.”
Warmth creeps into Blurr’s face and he denies the prompt to turn on his fans.
“I missed you.” Blurr confesses. It’s the truth. With Shockwave below him, solid and real, he can’t imagine any other place to rest his frame. “Don’t leave me. Please.”
Those sinful digits rub his modesty panel harder and he shudders. How did Shockwave know what he wanted? He surges up, kisses the side of Shockwave’s helm and down his neck, skirting the slit in his throat. The kisses start sweet and devolve into wet, desperate things. Blurr has never wanted anything more than to rest his helm between these thick thighs, warm and cradled and stuffed full.
The servo on his aft stops him from reaching this goal. It palpates against the firmness of his cheeks, two digits rubbing the hot swath of metal over his valve.
“Do you truly want me, Blurr? After all this time, none other has caught your attention?”
“No,” Blurr gasps out, breathless with want. “No one. I have been alone, Shockwave. So alone. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“Oh, dearest, I will always be with you.” Shockwave coos, touching him harder. The pressure over his throbbing valve has tension coiling through his belly. Slim thighs clamp down around Shockwave’s broad torso. He trembles, coming undone from the overload.
“Please,” he begs. “No one has ever made me feel good.”
“No one else will ever make you feel good. Not like I can.” The demon’s dark voice washes over and through him. “I will give you everything you need. I will take care of you.”
Blurr sobs unexpectedly, tears flooding down his face. No one had ever said such sweet things to him.
“Hush,” Pointed fingers press inside him. He doesn't even remember opening his panel. It was easy to float here, safe, without the need to think. Shockwave knows what he needs.
Shockwave will take care of him.
And he does.
The demon fingers him open sweetly, coaxing his calipers to release. Blurr can only shiver on his lover's hot frame, crying as pleasure consumes him again and again. No one has ever touched him this way. No one has ever loved him so thoroughly. All this time--how had he gone without?
The hole of loneliness that leaked him dry, that drove him once to remove his forearm plating and carve at his wires, is filled. He does not have to pretend to feel blessed, lucky he is fast and a valuable cog of the great machine.
Shockwave relieves him of these burdens. Shockwave is all he needs. All there is or ever was.
He sits back on his heels, knees spread wide and chest puffed up. The glossy window of his chest panel retracts. He bares himself to Shockwave, spark and dripping valve rendered up for the taking.
He prays he's enough.
A purr rumbles through the chassis he's perched on and Shockwave sits up, situating Blurr in his lap like a doll. Blurr keens, all too happy to be accepted.
How lucky he is to be so loved.
. . .
Pleasure slithers through Shockwave’s spark. He has finally succeeded. Failure after failure, Blurr after Blurr who had loathed him, feared him, mistrusted him--he has curated the ideal specimen.
Oh, it had taken time. So many of the reincarnations before this precious one rejected him. There was a certain pleasure in breaking them, moulding them into a facsimile of his original little lover. But eventually they fell into a disrepair he could not fix. Became needy little play things that lacked the fire he so enjoyed about his first.
That Blurr had spit fire to the end.
This Blurr is sweet, gentle and needy in a way his original had not been. He had, after all, designed Blurr to be that way. He feels the hole Shockwave carved into him.
Slender digits grasp at Shockwave's claws and hold on tight. That pretty helm nuzzles against his chassis, as though trying to burrow deep. Rapid-fire kisses press over his plating, a silent plea and apology.
Blurr craves attention. Reassurance. Shockwave will give him these things.
He is truly lucky to have such a sweet little pet.