#THOSE DEFORMED SPINDLY BACK LEGS TOO I...........

[buzzards-sticky-fingers]

don't look at me 🫣🫣🥴🫠

saw this post and had this ficlet unfold in my head. sort of a sequel to this first doodle and features this finial thing

Smitten.

Blurr chews on the word in irritation, holding himself perfectly still as Red Alert delicately corrects the dent across his forehelm. The only parts he allows himself to move are his fingers, the left hand drumming steadily on the medbay berth and the right spinning a small navy triangle. That little chip of blue metal should be inlaid at the center of his forehelm, but the dent had popped it right out.

He very carefully doesn't let himself look at the door over Red Alert's shoulder, where a massive shape shuffles awkwardly.

Smitten, the past participle of smite, an equivalent of smote, as in smote with a mighty blow, smiting enemies on the battlefield, smitten with disaster. To be smitten is to have something inflicted upon you with great force. It is being on the receiving end of doom, and praying that doom is the sharpness of emotion instead of a weapon.

Blurr winces as the seams across his temple realign with a snap.

Perhaps being smitten with these emotions is simply a natural consequence of being bludgeoned in the face, and that bloom of absurd fondness he still feels is in fact the symptom of a concussion.

"Give it here," Red Alert mutters, holding out her hand. He deposits the chip in her palm and she aligns it with the hole in his helm. It's still just slightly deformed and resists sliding back into place under her thumb. He'd twitch if he weren't so focused on staying still, fingers going rat-a-tat against the berth.

Too intent on keeping himself frozen for the medic, he lets his gaze flicker over to the door. The soulful, embarrassed apology in the big yellow optics looking back at him strikes him immediately, and he has to grit his dentae against a blush.

Stricken, another violent word for what should be soft. To strike right for the spark, a fatal blow, all being fair in love and war. Struck dumb with affection or struck dead from mortification, or maybe vice versa with the way his luck has been going. Love-struck, even. Blurr spins the wheels in his pedes in some halfhearted attempt to speed away from the threat.

Buzzard is still watching him. They grimace and mouth "sorry" for the third time. He can't meet their gaze for fear of some further stupid reaction bubbling up inside him, but he looks everywhere else. Their spindly finials click against one another in waves, and the rotors on their back twirl one way, then the other. He follows a line down their arms to where they nervously tap their talons together, and then traces all the way down their legs to where they’re swaying back and forth from one pede to the other. Fidgeting with their whole frame, as usual, except for their wings. Those stay tucked tightly to their sides.

He squints at the corner of the wing that laid him low and swallows a grumble. Of course they aren’t even scratched.

The itch to test that assumption tingles in his fingertips, drumbeat faltering on the berth as he imagines running his hands across the trailing edge of their wing, skating up the flat plane to the faulds around their hip—he catches up to the errant thought and squashes it with a scowl. It earns him a thump on the brow plate.

“Hmm, Buzzard,” Red Alert says. “Would you help me for a moment?”

“Me?” they say from the doorway. “Are you sure I can?”

"If you can manage to resist clobbering Blurr in the face again, yes."

"It was an accident," Blurr defends Buzzard before they can reply. The raised brow Red Alert gives him in return makes him shut his mouth before he can wax poetic about the junker's natural enthusiasm, their full-body glee almost infectious—again he squashes the thought and grumbles "Considering the proximity, I should have dodged anyway, I would've been quick enough."

"And why didn't you?"

He'd been too busy watching Buzzard's face light up in delight at something-or-other to notice them fling out their arms and wings until he was flat on the floor with a dent across his helm, but that's none of her business.

Mercifully she turns to Buzzard. "Which of your finials is thinnest?"

"Oh, uh…" They tilt their head and thumb through their lopsided finials, popping out a long pink one. "Here."

"Hmm. This will do." Red Alert takes it and scorches it with a quick sanitizing beam from her prosthetic. "I need you to leverage it into the gap right here while I work this inlay back in. See how it's just a little concave?"

"Yeah." They have to bend over a bit to get a good look. This close, their flightframe height is almost intimidating, even with Blurr sat up on the berth.

There's no reason to feel their gaze so keenly on his armor. He determinedly chalks it up to lingering soreness. Even when their optics flicker down to catch on his own, and he has to cease his drumming entirely to clutch the lip of the berth so he doesn't do something stupid like reach out and touch them, he reminds himself that this is Buzzard, a teammate, who looks at him every day. Yes, maybe lately he's been a little hyperaware of the moments their gaze finds him, and he might be increasingly self conscious about what they're seeing, and it's entirely possible he's more uncomfortable with the imperfect state of his rebuilt frame under their scrutiny rather than the injury itself… but that really, really has nothing to do with the way he stares wordlessly back at them, enthralled, like a cervinoid in the headlights. Truly.

He could blink at any time.

Red Alert thumps him on the brow plate again, breaking the spell. "Quit craning your head back like that, I need you facing forward."

Enthralled, dear Primus, as in captured, captivated, made a slave to fascination. He certainly feels like a mindless thrall, following some subtle compulsion rooted into his basal code. It’s ridiculous. He used to be so level-headed!

The medic wedges the shiv-sharp end of the finial into the corner of the hole in his helm. It would be uncomfortable if she hadn't dulled his sensor net already. He wills himself to stay still just a moment longer, rat-a-tatting his fingers again and staring at Buzzard's wingtip at his eye level. Surely they don't need to stay this close—

"A little closer, if you please." Red Alert grabs Buzzard's hand and guides it to his helm. "I need you to provide just a little counter pressure when I slip this back in so it sinks home, otherwise it won't fit correctly and I'll have to do this all over again."

"Um. Okay," they say uncertainly. With two knuckles they stabilize their hand on his helm, and with their thumb they put just the barest hint of pressure on the lever of their finial. "Like this?"

"Perfect."

Blurr is pretty sure his internals have ceased functioning all at once. Even through the dialed-down nervous circuitry, Buzzard's touch blazes against his armor. The scant few sections of his processor not melting down are mourning the days when this would have been utterly unremarkable instead of the mortifying highlight of his week.

"Is this painful?" Red Alert gives him a concerned look. "Vent, Blurr. Has your sensory suite rebooted?"

Venting, right. He should probably try venting again.

"Sorry," Buzzard says softly for the dozenth time.

"I’m fine. You're fine. It’s fine," Blurr croaks.

They glance at Red Alert as she tweaks the corner of his inlay before lining it up with the gap. "Couldn't you do this with your interlink?"

"Not completely," she mutters as she concentrates. "Any hard-light projection can be cut off, so it would simply fizzle out if I had it pressed between two edges like this. I have specific tools for surgery, but this hardly merits breaking out those..."

"Wonderful," he says, pedes pitter-pattering against the side of the berth in an attempt to drag his attention away from Buzzard touching him. "I'll endeavor to avoid any and all injuries, shall I, if our medic doesn't believe the loss of a body part merits the use of proper medical tools—"

"And proper medical procedure." Red Alert gives him an unimpressed look. "You skip half the steps in every recovery plan I give you, I wasn't about to let you make a mess of my medbay just because you got impatient with the sanitation process. Buzzard, a little more into the corner. There we go."

"It was a very small body part, at least," they tell him, finials twitching upward. "She's only got one more edge to fit in."

He can see the hope in their face trying to buoy his mood, as if he's irritated at the injury instead of how besotted he knows he must look right now, over what?? Two measly points of contact?? It's humiliating and thrilling at the same time, and his wheels spin erratically with nervous energy.

Besotted, that's another one he didn't think of earlier. Rendered idiotic, made drunk on infatuation, stupefied to the point of hilarity. He's certain it couldn't get worse if Buzzard actively tried.

"You have a very sleek frame," Buzzard says, clearly trying to give him a stroke, glancing between his face and forehelm. "Knock-out did a good job. The one corner is just stubborn because it's not quite straightened, but normally I think it'd pop right in. All neat and clean-edged. It wouldn't be a problem if I had just..."

They frown and bring their other hand up to cup the side of his face, thumb tracing gently down the line of aching metal where their wing had scored his helm. "I promise I'll try harder to pay attention to you."

Nevermind, it got worse.

Is this what spark implosion feels like? He's certainly hot enough to plausibly be experiencing spark implosion. Blurr sees Red Alert's suspicious expression out of the corner of his unfocused optic but can't spare the emotional capacity to worry about it at the moment, not when Buzzard has both (both!) of their hands on his face. They're still frowning. They shouldn't be frowning, why are they frowning while looking at him?

“Y-you—you, you pay attention to exactly what you need to," oh no he's babbling, "which is quite frankly what I should have been doing instead of—it wasn't you failing to pay attention that caused this and I doubt it would be wise for my sanity to ask that you focus any more on me, so really don't set aside your energy to try and protect me when you have so many other things to be paying attention to, like your rocks or your sticker pages or any of your collection—I don't even know what all you have in your collection, it's impressive that you can keep track of so many pieces with such detail which is reason enough to decline your promise, you shouldn't be holding yourself so tightly when really it was my own responsibility for my safety—and how could you promise to focus on something that clearly worries you when you could instead keep looking at what makes you happy, you should be happy, not frowning, you're still frowning and I don't know why!"

With every word, his jaw presses just a little into Buzzard's palm. Did they catch any of that spiel? Was it intelligible? What was he saying again?

Red Alert gives him a look. "Were we supposed to understand those noises?"

Blurr has no attention to spare for her, caught instead by Buzzard. They blink a bit, frown easing into confusion, or heavy thought, or something solemn and serious when they should be light and free. Their thumb runs down his cheek this time, and he knows, he knows it doesn't mean much, they're equally touchy with Necro and Gremlin and anyone else who tolerates contact, but his spark still jumps in its chamber.

"I understood it," they say softly. "Thanks, I guess, um. It's not that I need to watch you all day or anything, but... I don't like hurting you on accident, Blurr. I don't like hurting you at all."

"You were expressing happiness," he insists. "and I was being stupid. A dent is worth it."

They're back to frowning, shaking their head with finials pinned down. "No, that's not how it works. I'm not happy if I'm hurting my friends, y'know?"

"This," Red Alert says drily. "is a uselessly circular conversation which can be easily had anywhere else on the ship."

Both Blurr and Buzzard look at her. "You're done?" the junker asks.

"I was done before he finished word-vomiting."

"Oh," the two of them say simultaneously.

Red Alert plucks out the makeshift lever of a finial from under Buzzard's fingers. "Here. If you want to use that guilt in a productive manner, you can check that hoard of yours for any spare transistors, I need a couple."

"Uh, transistors? Yeah, I think I've got... hang on." Buzzard sticks their finial in their mouth for a second to rifle through their cockpit.

Blurr watches them blankly, cheek still warm where they were touching him. He raises a limp hand to feel at his forehead before Red Alert bats it aside and wipes his browplate with a cloth. He hadn't even felt the little chip snap in place. It couldn't have been missing for more than fifteen minutes, but his processor is spinning from an emotional marathon.

Buzzard closes their cockpit and hums in thought. "They're back on my shelves, I think. Gimme a minute."

"Thank you. Try not to dent anyone else on the way over," Red Alert says. They give her a sheepish smile and then duck out the door with one last glance at Blurr.

It may be wishful thinking, but he's pretty sure their wings were no longer huddled so tightly to their sides.

"Well?" the medic asks him a few moments later. "You're healed. Will you sit there staring at the wall all day? I thought you'd be halfway across the ship by now."

He runs a thumb across his helm and can barely feel a dip now.

"It isn't as if I doubt the quality of your work as a medic, Red Alert," he begins cautiously. "and believe me when I say I'm grateful for your skill and care, no matter how abrasively that care may be expressed at times—"

She raises a brow. "The point?"

"Would you mind checking for a concussion again, please?"

"Why?"

Because he wasn't this hopeless half an hour ago. Surely his refurbished neurocircuitry had been rattled into insanity. It couldn't be genuine, a single touch shouldn't be making his spark pound just at the memory of it. And all over Buzzard. They are just. Just. It has to be a concussion. He opens his mouth to confess just how unbalanced he feels, simply helm over pedes, utterly crazy about the very one who nearly knocked him out, and just barely manages to swallow the building monologue with the most impressive feat of self control he's accomplished in years.

"I feel... woozy."

Red Alert guffaws. "Yeah, I could tell!"

He hunches into himself on the berth, fighting another blush at feeling so uncomfortably seen. Despite the wry look on her face, Red Alert runs a quick check, testing the vibrancy of his optics, his sense of balance, his memory.

"You appear to be functioning optimally," she announces, like he was dreading she would. "No processor issues apparent. If it weren't for the particular faults of your current frame, I doubt you would've gotten much more than a light ding in the first place."

Crazy, then. Crazy about them, or driven to insanity, and just all of a sudden aware of how far down he's spiraled. Keen on them, twitterpated, out of his mind, lovesick. Is this going to be a reoccurring problem? Should he start accounting for loss of processor power in their presence? Could he accidentally end up staying too long around Buzzard and dropping all higher function until he forgets the need to escape entirely?

That actually doesn't sound too bad. Now he knows he's going crazy.

"You seemed pretty intent on not letting Buzzard take responsibility," Red Alert says as she cleans her workspace. "Staring at them the whole time, too. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're smitten."

He freezes on the edge of the berth, flushing purple.

She glances at him with a half-smile, like her statement was supposed to be ironic, but it drops when she sees his expression. "Wait. Hang on, you actually—?"

But Blurr is already halfway down the hall outside the medbay and picking up speed. He doesn't stop running until he's clear on the other side of the ship.

This whole... love thing, it's rather violent, and destabilizing, and uncomfortable. Buzzard is—well, not perfect, but close enough, they're certainly not the problem here. He can't help but feel the accidental victim to an oblivious perpetrator, squeezing his spark like a stress toy while he's putty in their hands.

Actually he doesn't much mind the thought of their hands on his spark, and wonders if they ever think of that, of letting their touch explore further than armor—he smacks his newly repaired forehelm with a growl as he squashes the thought.

Clearly, being in love is an uphill battle. It's not very pleasant from his perspective, with Buzzard winning handily without even trying, as far as he can tell. He huffs and shakes himself out a bit, trying to find some semblance of equilibrium again. If he weren't so smitten then maybe he'd stand a chance, or if they were on even ground and Buzzard was smitten... Blurr closes his optics against the rush of warmth that thought elicits.

Right, then. If he's going down, he won't go down without a fight. Buzzard shouldn't get all the victories here. Time to start punching back.