#Transformers Drift | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

milkymolle · 2 days ago

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i'm at the point where i'm writing transformers fanfiction. it's dratchet and it's very self indulgent sci fi headcanons. so if you're interested here's the link, and the whole fic is under the read more!

Some patients like to watch Ratchet's hands while he works, curious how he'll fix them up. Sometimes they just glance about the room, quiet or making idle conversation. Ratchet's gotten used to that stuff; he can chat while he works, or not, either way he's wholly focused on the task. But apparently there is something that can distract him--if his patient is silently boring a hole in his head with their staring.

"Can I help you?" Ratchet grumbles. He's already pretty pissed at Drift's general lack of self preservation, manifesting very obviously in the many repair jobs he's neglected on himself. He saw Drift's limp and demanded he sit down to look at it. Having Drift try to melt Ratchet's face with his bright yellow eyes doesn't improve his mood.

"Sorry," Drift replies. Ratchet can see a smile twitch onto his face from his periphery. "I'm looking at your aura."

Ratchet pulls back to make an aggrieved noise. "Great." He leans back over to finish soldering the wires in Drift's knee, in order to keep his own mouth shut.

"I'm serious!" says Drift, though he has laughter in his voice. "You have a really lovely aura. I think it comes across to your patients, even if they don't realize it."

"Uh-huh," Ratchet says, to keep himself from saying something mean. He came all this way, so he ought to at least try to be nice to Drift. "What's it look like?"

Drift's quiet for a moment, still scrutinizing with those damn eyes, like he has to really consider it. "Well, there are layers to auras, but I don't wanna make your head explode. Basically, you always have earthy tones surrounding you, but when you work on someone, pinks and blues come out. Energon and spark colors." Ratchet glances up to see the smile on Drift's face. "You're a healer to your very core."

Drift often says disarming things like this to rile Ratchet up, and what's worse is that he usually truly means what he says. So the statement that Ratchet is a natural doctor is not affecting really, it's something he's heard many times before, but when Drift says it in his way and he smiles so genuinely, it does get to Ratchet. Annoyingly.

Trying to save face, he replies, "Yeah, 'cause Primus made me that way."

"That's what I've been saying!"

Ratchet scoffs and Drift snickers.

They get into trouble again soon, and as much as Ratchet would like to blame Drift as a magnet for these things, he's at least self-aware enough to know he's no better. He only wishes less Decepticons had decided to continue evil-doing in damn near every corner of the galaxy.

The rig they are currently trying to flee is stupidly labyrinthine, and the blaring alarms don't help Ratchet's focus. He shoots out another security camera and shouts, "Are you sure we aren't going in circles?"

"Let me think," Drift shouts back. He's just standing there--granted, with his swords drawn--scrutinizing further down the hallway. Ratchet can't see anything identifying where they are, where they're going. It's all dark gunmetal walls and floors and ceilings.

Ratchet darts his eyes around, checking their six. A door to the left slides open, and as soon as the con's head pokes through Ratchet blasts a hole through it. (Once again, he feels a sick gratitude towards Pharma's hands.)

They'll be more soon. "Drift--"

"This way." He's running off, and Ratchet has to scramble after him. They take a series of purposeful turns, like Drift's been possessed and Ratchet has no better ideas than to follow him. Drift punches open a heavy door, revealing a room with two cons. Drift doesn't hesitate lopping the head off one, so Ratchet guns down the other. Only after they're dead does Ratchet realize they are somehow in the escape pod housing.

"How did you know where this was?" Ratchet asks as Drift wrenches one open.

"You wouldn't believe me," he gruffs, and grabs Ratchet's collar to chuck him inside. He only stumbles a little.

"Were you seriously just guessing?" Ratchet shouts as he finds the controls and frantically works them out.

"I sensed it." The ignition kicks, and they're shooting out from the Decepticon ship. Ratchet opens his mouth and Drift continues, "We'll argue about it later, if we don't get shot out of the sky."

Some part of Ratchet is still loath to agree with Drift, especially right now when he feels morally obligated to argue against the ability to "sense" some escape pods, but he really doesn't want to get blown up so he grits his teeth and gets them the hell away from that stupid rig.

Drift's pretty quiet back on their ship. Apparently the promise to continue the argument was empty. Ratchet's not sure if it's a PTSD thing he's going through, being back on a Decepticon ship, or maybe the fact that news of their last location will get to the DJD sooner rather than later. He doesn't have the nerve to ask, just to watch Drift sitting against the wall with his greatsword laid out in his lap.

Ratchet does sit next to him, though. "Y'know," he says, "I was thinking about it back on the con's ship, and I realized I don't think I ever thanked you for it. For Pharma's hands."

Drift looks at him somewhat bewildered, like he'd never considered it himself. "You don't need to thank me for that. But you're welcome."

They sit quietly for a bit. Ratchet maps out all the rivets on the wall across from them. Then Drift says, "They're not his hands anymore, you know. They're yours."

Ratchet smiles a bit grimly. "Yeah. Though honestly, it doesn't feel great. Carrying around a dead person's hands. An old friend's, even." He holds his hand out to look at it, the miniscule differences in Pharma's fingers and wrist from Ratchet's old ones, the ones he had for millions of years. "It doesn't feel great using them, knowing what they did before."

Drift catches Ratchet's hand from the air. He holds it firm while being careful, like it was a precious thing. Ratchet blinks at him.

Drift stares back with intent. "They're yours," he insists. "Because I gave them to you."

Ratchet's not quite sure what he means--though maybe some part of him does, some implicit understanding, but he can't think about that right now. He sees how serious Drift is, so he concedes, "Alright."

After he's sure, Drift lets go.

They spend a lot of time getting far away from that quadrant of space. They also don't head back to the Lost Light, to avoid bringing trouble with them. This little shuttle is so much quieter, just the hum of a space vessel and occasionally a strange creaking. He leaves Drift alone for a bit, or perhaps he wants to be alone himself. He reads, like he usually does when he's not working, and he finds some texts about Spectralism and energy reading that make him pretty angry but he tries to read it anyway. It makes some attempt to connect with reality, citing properties of light and electromagnetism that aren't incorrect, though it always circles back to the soul and to God. It makes it difficult for Ratchet to not mentally construct an argument against religious doctrine that was written many years ago.

There's a knock at the door and Ratchet hides the article away like he's been caught. "Yeah?"

The door slides open, and Drift peers up at Ratchet like he wished he could stay hidden behind it. "Hey. You busy?"

Ratchet laughs a bit; he's currently lounging on his berth. "Nope."

"You bored?"

"I think it's pretty hard not to be."

Drift walks in like that was permission. "If we're going to be stuck in a crappy little shuttle for the next 78 hours, we should probably find something to do."

Ratchet feels very self-conscious on his berth suddenly, and he wishes this conversation wasn't happening in his little room. He meant it when he said to himself he didn't have time to think about this. He lurches to sit at the side of the berth, trying for some scrap of respectability. "Like what?"

Drift stands in front of him with his impeccable posture, looking strong for someone covered in dents and scratches. "Could I teach you some hand?"

For some reason this surprises Ratchet, though it is a pretty good idea. Drift rushes on before Ratchet can reply: "There are situations where it could be useful. It's the only way of communicating possible without being able to hear, speak, or see. I mean, I don't know exactly what would happen to leave us like that, but--it just seems like a good backup."

"Yeah, it does." Ratchet gives a little smile, and Drift smiles back, relieved and beaming. Then he hops up onto the berth, sitting cross-legged next from Ratchet. He holds his hands up expectantly.

"Right now?"

"Were you not just saying how impossibly bored you are?"

Ratchet huffs and moves to mirror Drift, sitting across from him and raising his hands. His hands, the ones Drift gave him. Drift takes them by just barely lacing their fingertips together; Drift's hands are slightly bigger, scuffed, but they feel clever in Ratchet's own. His touch is not firm like it was before, it's something shy but eager. Ratchet briefly squeezes them.

Drift's still smiling. The lesson he gives then is precise and confident, like he'd planned it all out beforehand. Ratchet privately enjoys the thought.

There's a lively port they deem far enough away that they decide to dock at. It's good-sized moon with an atmosphere that supports organic life, and Drift assures Ratchet that the DJD avoid organic space as much as possible. (Apparently, the pleasure they take in murdering non-mechanical life is outweighed by their pure disgust.)

They stock up the shuttle and take a moment to sit on a bench to rest, and to enjoy the life around them. It reminds him of the Lost Light in a way, feeling like a very small piece in a large, loud world. It's something of a comfort.

Drift is rather impassive when Ratchet takes peeks at him. He briefly, mortifyingly, wishes he could sees people's emotions the way Drift claims to. It's such an absurd and sudden thought that he can't help but linger on it.

"Hey." Ratchet points out someone in the crowd. "Can you see their aura?"

Drift gives him an absolutely disbelieving look. "What, is this a joke?"

"No, seriously, I wanna know."

Drift still scowls at him, but he does turn to look at the person Ratchet pointed out. Then he gets that focused look. "Hm. They're getting old. They give off deep colors, like someone who carries a lot with them."

"What kinds of colors?"

Drift tilts his head. "Deep, purply colors. It's harder to define than just the color wheel."

Ratchet stares at the person, a wide mechanical that puffs out steam from their vents every half minute or so. He can't see anything other than the off-white of the smoke.

An organic person walks up on two pairs of legs to speak with the mech. Ratchet jerks his head. "What about them?"

"It's harder for me to read organics, I'm not as used to it." He studies them. "Hmm, they're warmer, sort of green? They remind me a bit of you."

Ratchet huffs. "I thought I was pink and blue or whatever."

"You are, sometimes. Auras change constantly. But something about them...it reminds me of you when--we first met."

Ratchet watches the organic quietly. Drift thinks about that time a lot; he's admitted as much. Most of them probably think of the days before the war, for many different reasons. Ratchet spent a lot of his life thinking of it, thinking of what could be different, of what he should've done. Like there's some way he could've saved more lives. Eventually he'd learned that it was a useless endeavor, trying to calculate the right decisions for things that were long dead. He tries to let go of his regrets now.

He thinks of the day he met Drift a lot, too. There was a time where he'd thought of what would happen if Drift had died; how many Autobots would still be alive? He'd operated on soldiers that had been shot by Deadlock, or he tried to. But like he'd realized, it's a useless type of math. He doesn't regret saving anyone's life, not a single person.

He's been staring at that couple for a long time, and when they finally notice him he glances down to his feet. "Guess I was greener back then," he says.

Somehow he can feel Drift rolling his eyes. "Uh huh. So are you asking this to make fun of me or what?"

"No, I'm just curious. I'd like to know how it works for you."

Ratchet turns to see Drift making yet another face at him. "Did something happen back on the Lost Light that made you less of an ass?"

Ratchet flicks at his finial.

The only windows on the shuttle are in the cockpit, and occasionally Ratchet would sit in there just to observe the space outside. He'd honestly seen enough of space at this point in his life, mostly flat black dotted with pinpricks. Though sometimes they pass a nebula, or sail over the ring of some planet, and those are things Ratchet can still appreciate.

Drift spends a lot of time in the cockpit. He seems to just stare out at unmoving stars with intent focus; it may be his way of meditating, though his eyes are searching. A lot of Cybertronians are drawn to the stars, and it doesn't surprise Ratchet that Drift is one of them.

"Are you one of those people that think stars are alive?" Ratchet asks him, startling Drift from his reverie.

"Aren't they?" he asks.

Ratchet sighs. "Well, a lot of people argue that they meet the qualifications of being 'alive.' There's a lot of things you could argue are alive, if you broaden the definition enough--they're similar enough to sparks. I guess I meant if you think of them as...people."

"Ah." Drift turns back to the window. The cockpit is dim except for a green light emitted by the HUD. "They're alive, but I'm not sure they're 'people.' They don't have the aura of something sentient. I know some people think they're the souls of the departed, sparks reformed far off. I think there's merit to thinking that our sparks are reformed somehow--when they fade, it's just the energy scattering, and it could go any number of places, become anything really. But...the soul isn't something material, something you can see. It's held in our spark, and when the spark dissapates, it's freed."

Ratchet's quiet, and Drift glances at him with something like discomfort on his face. Before he can continue, probably to defend himself, Ratchet says, "No, I think it's...interesting. How you think of things. There's a logic to it, if you believe in things like souls. It's just...how do you believe in something that you can't see, or can't be proven?"

Drift gives a small smile at that. "It can't be proven in the scientific sense, but it can definitely be experienced. I have." He pats at the greatsword laid in his lap. "I feel Wing with me, always. It's like another sense, and you can't really understand it until you identify even having that sense. Like...you won't know what 'tasting' is until you put something in your mouth."

Such a strange way of putting it. There's a knee-jerk reaction Ratchet has to things like that, things so esoteric they border on nonsensical, but when he thinks on it he can sort of understand what Drift's trying to say. But he can't help but ask, "Is that how you 'sensed' those stupid escape pods?"

"That was Primus' guidance."

"Right." Ratchet sits in the copilot seat and shuts up, for his own sake.

When they're not practicing chirolinguistics, and there's no more frivolous repairs for Ratchet to work on, he demands regular check-ups on Drift. He reasons that he needs to keep up his practice and that Drift is far overdue for extensive repairs. They both really need an overhaul, if they can scrape the money together. For now, he resorts to rote examinations to make himself feel useful.

He examines the jagged scar on Drift's spark chamber. Of all the Decepticons' stupid beliefs, forging their badges from their own metal, ripped from the most vital organ of their bodies, is one of the more irritating. There's any number of conditions that can arise from the practice, if not an almost instant death that can come from a botched surgery.

"I can practically smell you judging me," Drift says from above. He sounds hauty for someone with his chest wide open.

Ratchet huffs and pulls back a little from his scrutinizing--all the scans came back fine, anyway. "You know, I'm just annoyed because--"

"--you worry. I know." Drift smiles at him. Ratchet still doesn't like having his sentences finished, but he lets it go with just a scowl.

"What did you even do with your badge? I know some defectors have it smelted down and reattached."

"It's long gone--I didn't want it anymore." Ratchet pushes his chair away from the examination table, and Drift shifts his chest plates back. "For a while I regretted it, but I think it's good that the scar is there. It's not something I want to burnish over and forget."

Ratchet remounts the scanner into its port, and his gaze feels distant. "Yeah, I get that." He swivels back around with his penlight out, reaching for Drift's face. He places his chin in the hand, and Ratchet maneuvers it to get a good look at Drift's eye.

The last time he'd looked at them like this, they'd been leaking rust. They're clear now, healthy, though they certainly have some wear. The light sensor at the back of the eye seems standard, a CMOS with a few dozen gold wires. Ratchet counts six lenses instead of five, which isn't unusual and makes sense for someone who was a sharpshooter. Ratchet frowns as he moves to the other eye.

"I didn't ask you what you think of the stars," Drift says suddenly.

Ratchet thought they'd moved past that. "They're giant balls of gas formed by gravity and nuclear fusion."

Ratchet decides to be satisfied with his exam, so he shuts the light off and frees Drift. Drift's smiling and says, "I figured you didn't have a very romantic view of them."

"The similarity to sparks is interesting," Ratchet says. "I agree with the theory that stars are our ancestors; Vector Sigma is likely a small neuron star that evolved to carry code. But no, I don't think of them as gods or souls or anything. They're natural phenomenon that, in incredibly rare cases like with Cybertron, learned to reproduce as small bundles of positrons and code that formed a protective shell around them that we call our bodies."

Drift puts his chin in his hand as Ratchet speaks. "You know, that seems far more miraculous than a higher being granting life to a planet."

"Something I've learned after all this time--especially on the Lost Light, is that the universe is far, far more vast and old and unknown than we like to imagine. Things that seem unbelievable can find a way given enough time and the right circumstances. I think it cheapens the grandeur of the universe just say a god made it all and stop questioning how and why things are."

Drift nods. "Religion doesn't negate the need for scientific inquiry, I think. There's nothing wrong with trying to understand and finding answers for yourself--we know what it's like to have those in charge tell us what to believe without explanation. But don't you think all this is the way it is, that anything exists at all because the universe itself has a will--many wills, even--that make the shape of everything?"

"That's stupid."

Drift laughs. "That's more like it."

They take time getting back to the Lost Light. More than necessary, but things always seem to get out of hand. They need to get the shuttle repaired and they need to find a place that supplies energon, and then there's a stop Drift wants to make nearby, and somehow they'll end up being chased out of that town and onto the next. They are currently stowing away in cargo that's being shipped back to the station they left the shuttle at to be fixed. It's cramped and humid and dark, huddled together behind large metal drums that rattle as the ship fires its thrusters. It's not so bad though. It gives Ratchet time to think, to piece things together in his head like he's had so little time (or will) to do.

Drift's hand finds his. Ratchet turns it over appeasingly without thinking. Then Drift does something with his fingers, and Ratchet realizes it's chirolinguistics. Drift does it again so Ratchet can catch it:

Are you okay?

Ratchet has to make the translation in his mind. Fine.

You seem happy.

Drift has that pleased little smile on his face. It used to grind Ratchet's gears, but now it feels like a good-natured tease that he needs to return. Somehow, talking in hand has a layer of removal that makes talking about things like this a little easier.

Yeah. Weird, he signs back. Drift grins.

Drift's refueling when Ratchet puts down a stack of pads on the table before him. "Hey," he says, and he doesn't bother sitting or letting Drift reply before he continues: "I've been reading and thinking and it's possible you have very mild outlier abilities. Being able to see an energy field--if that's what 'auras' are--says to me that you're processing light in a more advanced way than average Cybertronians. It's possible you have general enhanced senses, like how you're able to do so much crazy shit with your swords, but by just looking at your frame there's nothing suggesting any unique hardware helping you run like this. So I can only guess that there's something in your CNA that developed a unique code for how you process stimuli. There's really no way to know without looking directly at the code in your brain, but that's leaning way too far into mnemosurgery than is comfortable, in my opinion. I think the theory is sound, though. I'll ask First Aid to read what I've written when we get back.

Drift's staring at him. Ratchet suddenlt desperately wishes he hadn't run out of things to say. Somehow he thought if he just talked enough he could bowl over the awkwardness of the conversation. He debates opening a datapad and showing the research he'd gone over when Drift speaks: "You believe me?"

"Hm?"

"You think I--that I can really see auras?"

Ratchet huffs. "Well, obviously you're seeing something. I don't think it's emissions from your soul or whatever, so I'm trying to figure out what. If...you wanna read what I wrote, maybe it'd help..."

Everything becomes increasingly embarrassing as it stays quiet. Ratchet feels very, very exposed, standing before Drift and being honest, being thoughtful. He then realizes that he's not quite sure what he hoped to accomplish with this; Drift is more than satisfied thinking that he can read people's auras and doesn't need a scientific explanation for his beliefs. This was an entirely self-serving affair that he has dropped before Drift and expected a response.

As Ratchet is thinking through an escape strategy, Drift stands up and takes Ratchet's head in his hands and leans forward to kiss him right on the mouth. It effectively stops every process in Ratchet's brain, so he's just standing there with his hands half raised and his eyes open. He can see the pretty color of the metal on Drift's face, a mild color that looks like a rich grey but has the warmth of lavender in it.

Drift pulls back pretty quickly--the whole kiss lasted maybe a second. Drift's still staring at him with his eyes brighter than Ratchet ever remembers seeing them. Implausibly, he sounds out of breath as he says, "Thanks."

Ratchet doesn't say anything so Drift drops his eyes and his hands to scoop up the pads Ratchet had brought. "I will read these. If that's alright."

Ratchet replies, "Yeah. Great."

Drift walks right out the door. Ratchet watches as it closes and he stands there and wonders if he'd secretly hoped something like this would happen, if his own mind betrayed him into being vulnerable so Drift could take him and do whatever he wanted with him. It's very, incredibly possible, so Ratchet stops thinking on it and makes his own hasty retreat from an empty room.

#writing #transformers #mtmte #dratchet #transformers drift #ratchet #ANYWAY!!!!!!

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tinydefector · 8 months ago

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Do you think cybertronians ever get a bit freaked out on how tough we are? Yes they can break us like toothpicks but humans seem to be able to take a good beating as well with adrenaline helping. Even our own body and oxygen trys kills us and yet we stick around like roaches. We're fragile in some reasonable and dumb ways and then resilient in the most dumbest ways.

Oh definitely, alot of the bots are very off put by how fragile humans are just in general and tend to avoid them.

But then there's the moments like Ratchet working a late shift and a small knock on the door alerts him someone's there, he turns around expecting it to be Rodimus or Whirl who he's about to scold but instead it's one of the humans and they look worse for wear. After fussing over them for a moment, detailed scans relay fractured ribs, a broken collar bone, and a heap of bruises and yet the humans just like. "Can I have some Panadol, Nurophen, and a glass of water?" Because they don't know what else to do its what they would get. Most of the times they ended up in the hospital. Ratchet is losing his God dawn mind as he rushes around looking for the best painkillers he can find for orgaincs in the smallest dosage he can give, hoping to primus it doesn't shut their heart down. In the end, they end up on a medication that makes them extremely drowsy, almost like the green whistle/ Weed.

Ratchet ends up doing alot of study on the human body and realises just how fucked up little monsters we are. We literally need oxygen to survive but he we have to much pure oxygen it will kill us. Water, we need a certain amount of it, if we don't have enough we will get dehydrated and die, if we have to much we will get water poisoning, intoxication, or a disruption of brain function. This happens when there's too much water in our cells, such as the brain and blood cells, causing them to swell. When the cells in the brain swell, they cause pressure in the brain, resulting in death. The issue is that it can become an addiction to drinking too much water for the effect it has on the body. Same with nearly everything we consume, it can kill us, but we need a lot of it in moderation.

Human: "I just need some basic pain killers and a nap"

Bot: "No, you need full surgery, sedations, and 3 weeks of recovery!"

Human: "nah she'll be fine!"

Bot: "Absolutely Not, bed now before I cuff you"

____________

Following that imagine a first contact AU where Cybertronians and humans are just slowly getting to know how the other works and next thing a human is kneeling over in horrific pain and it send the bots all into panic mode trying to help them, wondering what's happening and thinking they are dying. And the human after about ten minutes some pain killers still looking rather pale and unhealthy just go. "Sorry about that fuck I hate, Cramps/palpitations/ phantom pains/ and such" and the bots are just looking at them horrified like.

Bot: NOT NORMAL!!!"

Human: what you talking about?

Bot: everything that just happened you literally just short circuited!

Human: nah that's causal wait till you see the really funky shit.

______________

Human pet AU

Cybertronian's keeping humans as pets is like humans keeping hamsters. Humans are some of the most homicidal, suicidal and just deranged creatures that Cybertronian's could keep as pets. It's gotten to the point that they are a luxury/ exotic pet because if you do not feed them the right stuff, give them the right amount of light and socialising, and they will just die. There are so many Cybertronian's who take their human into clinics worried as and its just the human being a little bustard because they didn't get the treat they wanted 2 weeks ago and are still holding that grudge. Not to mention, we are prone to causing as much trouble and issue. We are like cats.

But we are also very easily sick and primus forbid a human gets sick because to a bot they think it's a death sentence for their sweet little spitfire of a human who they have had now for ages. And the human looks ready to die, and the next day, they are up and about like nothing ever happened.

Human: if you don't feed me the meals I want I'm going to pretend to die. If you do feed me what I want I might actually die because I shouldn't be eating it.

Panicked bot: "MY HUMAN HAS GOTTEN SICK. HELP!?!"

Human: totally worth it.

_________

In conclusion, the cybertronians are rather wary/ concerned about how resilient humans really are.

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