Chapter Text
Noah walks into the garage on a Saturday morning to find Mirage already up and in his robot mode, standing right in the middle of the room like he’d been waiting for the human to show up. Noah is immediately on alert, because while Mirage is always up early, he’s usually entertaining himself with the TV or radio by the time Noah makes his way over to visit. He doesn’t really do patient, so this calm is a little unnerving.
“Oh hey, Noah,” Mirage greets with a wave, one hand held behind his back. “Bout time you showed up!”
Noah rolls his eyes. “Man, I get here the same time every day.”
“Yeah, okay,” Mirage snorts, but Noah notices how it sounds almost forced. He’s also taken note of how Mirage is shifting from foot to foot, clearly trying to be subtle about it but very much failing, given that he’s fifteen feet tall and every movement has weight to it. Now Noah’s sure that something is definitely off. Mirage is constantly on the move, but he doesn’t fidget the way he is now.
“You good, ‘Raj?” Noah asks, stepping forward and tilting his head up so he can get a good look at Mirage’s face. “You’re acting… not you.”
“What? Nah, nah, dude, I’m fine.” Mirage shakes his head. “I just got something for you.”
“A gift, huh?” Noah grins. “That’s why you acting so weird? Shit, I thought you were gonna tell me you went out and got chased by the fuzz again.”
“Aww, you know I wouldn’t do that without you,” Mirage says, smiling back. “But yeah, I made this for you.”
Mirage starts to move the arm he’s holding behind his back, then pauses. He looks away, clears his throat. Is he… nervous? Noah can’t remember ever seeing his friend hesitate. This must be one hell of a gift.
Finally, Mirage lowers his arm to Noah’s height and opens his palm, revealing a small, clear vial filled with a glowing blue liquid. It’s small enough that when Noah reaches out to take it, he can hold it in one hand, which kind of makes him wonder how Mirage managed to handle it without breaking it.
He tilts it from side to side, watching the liquid move within. It’s almost mesmerizing, the blue glow of it nearly the same color of Mirage’s eyes. He’s never seen anything like it before, so it must be Cybertronian. Where the hell would Mirage find something from his home planet down here, though? Maybe the Autobots have some sort of secret stash of alien stuff hidden away somewhere. Noah makes a mental note to ask about that later. “Pretty,” he says. “What is it?”
“It’s energon. Uh, innermost energon, actually.” Mirage pauses. “You think it’s pretty?”
Noah can’t even be flustered by that last part, because his brain has already latched onto the word energon. The thing that brought Bumblebee back. The thing that, presumably, Cybertronians will die without. “Your fuel? Dude, don’t you need to keep all of this, like, inside your body?” He doesn’t know what it is with Mirage and constantly getting himself injured, but Noah is going to have a heart attack by the time he’s thirty if this keeps going on.
“Mm, some of it’s like fuel, but this stuff is more like blood, if you’re trying to put it in human terms,” Mirage says, waving a hand nonchalantly. “And nah, taking that little bit out isn’t going to hurt.”
Noah nearly drops the vial. He looks down at it, then back at Mirage. Looks at it again, and finally settles on staring in disbelief at his weird-ass car who has apparently decided this is an appropriate thing to spring on him at nine in the goddamn morning. “You gave me a blood tube.”
“I mean, yeah?” Mirage pauses. His eyes dim, briefly enough that Noah nearly doesn’t catch it. “You… you don’t like it?”
Noah gets the feeling he’s somehow fucked up, but he honestly does not know how else he’s supposed to handle this situation. “I mean, it’s just kind of weird, man. It’s not like I’d just hand you a tube full of my blood as a gift.”
“Oh,” Mirage says. “Okay.” He takes a step back, eyes flickering with an emotion Noah can’t recognize. “Cool. Sorry. Uh, you keep it, though. If you want. Like, you can give it back, but…”
“Nah, I’ll keep it,” Noah says, trying to backtrack. He and Mirage have had some arguments before, a lot of them due to the significant cultural differences between them, but he’s never seen Mirage like this. The bot exudes nothing but confidence, sometimes to a ridiculous degree. Right now, though, he looks almost…ashamed? Defeated? Guilt is coiling in Noah’s gut, but damn, was he not supposed to be a little freaked out? Maybe blood rituals are a normal thing for Cybertronians, but…ugh. In Noah’s opinion, he’s probably handling being given what’s basically a cup full of blood better than most people would. “Uh, thanks.”
“No problem,” Mirage says, sounding strangled. “Sorry you didn’t like it. I’m gonna, uh, go, actually. See you later!”
“Wh—’Raj! Go where?” Noah barely gets the words out before Mirage makes it to the other side of the garage in record time and yanks on the cord that opens the garage door. It lifts with a screech of hinges that desperately need to be oiled. “Hey, Mirage!” Noah jogs over in an attempt to get in front of the Autobot before he can leave, but Mirage transforms and tears out of the garage before the door has even opened all the way.
“Mirage!” Noah calls out after him, but his only answer is the squeal of tires as Mirage disappears down the street. He throws his hands up in exasperation and swears. It’s crystal clear that he’s messed up big time, but for what? Not being over the moon about the energon? He gets that Mirage might be insulted, but this is just petty. Not that Mirage is above being petty, but just racing off like that? That’s new, and Noah really, really doesn’t like it.
He decides to try to wait it out, sure that Mirage will get bored of driving around aimlessly and return, hopefully ready to explain what the hell all of this is about. Why energon? Why now? Did he just randomly decide to slice through a fuel line to give Noah the strangest gift he’s ever gotten?
And that’s the root of it, really. More than anything, it’s the idea of Mirage hurting himself for Noah yet again that disturbs him the most.
Noah groans, running a hand down his face. Honestly, trying to deal with Mirage’s self-sacrificing tendencies is sometimes harder than his job. And since said job literally involves saving the world, that’s saying a lot.
He puts the vial in his pocket and occupies himself by tinkering with the little projects he still helps Reek out with on the side. He keeps them in the garage now both because he has more room to store his tools, and so he can spend more time around Mirage, who enjoys watching him work.
Somehow, nearly every part of Noah’s life now comes back to his friend.
He focuses on fixing up the busted Walkman that apparently belonged to Reek’s niece until his back starts to ache from sitting hunched over for so long. He stands up to stretch, wincing as he feels the familiar pop of joints when he cranes his neck from side to side. He glances over at the clock above the door and startles. There’s no way he’s been at this for over two hours now, but unless the clocks somehow magically jumped forward, that’s exactly what he’s been doing.
Clearly, Mirage isn’t coming back anytime soon. For all Noah knows, he might stay out the whole night getting into whatever trouble he can find.
Maybe he’s not coming back at all, an insidious voice of doubt whispers in his mind.
Noah shakes his head. No. Mirage might be upset, but he wouldn’t just leave like that. Besides, half of Noah’s job is to work alongside the Autobots. Mirage can’t avoid him forever.
Almost of its own volition, Noah’s hand slips into his pocket to curl around the vial. It’s still cool to the touch despite being so close to his body heat. He pulls it out to look at it again, the familiar blue now making his chest ache with regret and confusion. It’s one thing to know he’s screwed up, but it’s so much worse when he doesn’t even know how.
It’s fine. It’ll be fine. Mirage just needs some time to sulk, and then they can go back to normal.
…Right?
Noah’s hand tightens around the vial as he realizes with a sinking feeling that the word he was looking for to describe Mirage’s expression as he ran away was wounded.