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Okay, so I (an Autobot) have this friend, let’s call him O. He’s quiet, responsible, very self sacrificing.
The sort of mech who offers to take extra patrols even while he's still in the medbay. Absolute saint. Quietly tragic.
Has a vibe of someone who’s emotionally exhausted all the time but insists he's fine. You know the type.
Anyway, for as long as I’ve known him, he’s been weirdly close with this one ex-enemy, we’ll call him M. Evil voice. Claws. Used to lead a whole faction. They tried to kill each other for, like, eons.
But then the war ended and suddenly they’re co-leading reconstruction efforts. Along with joint missions and sharing quarters and practically spending every moment together.
M started calling O “my archivist” during briefings. O didn’t even correct him??
Not the archivist. My archivist. In front of the whole room. O just accepted it, like that was normal. He even seemed a little happy.
Then O started calling M, "beloved Gladiator."
(Neither of these are said sarcastically.)
I watched M stare at O for three minutes straight during a debriefing, completely unprompted. Or O almost smiling, nearly smiling at M.
They once argued over the correct pronunciation of Vosian entropy shifts and O said, deadpan, “Of course you’d ignore the common consensus, beloved Gladiator,” with a little eyeridge twitch like he was fondly exasperated. Emphasis on beloved.
Since then, I’ve been watching them even more closely. They do these tiny things, O’s always making sure M’s eats properly after a mission, M sometimes brushing a stray spark of dust off O’s shoulder armor like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Little moments where their hands nearly touch but don’t, and neither one mentions it. Instead, they share long, unreadable looks and subtle smiles, like sharing a secret no one else can hear.
Tell me that doesn't say I'm in love??
Naturally, I assumed they were formerly sparkbonded.
I mean, who wouldn’t think that?! They argue like they’ve been together forever, and they’ve got that intense "we’ve been through hell and back together," thing going on.
I even heard M refer to himself as “the other half of the Autobot-Decepticon peace accord,” which sounded very matrimonial to me.
Soon after I found out that the two had known each other since they were teenagers (which to me explained everything).
I discovered said info from archived comms from when they were teenagers.
M apparently once wrote in a poem addressed to O.
"I sit beside him in class and cannot focus on the lesson. He is made of logic, light, and joy. And it ruins me."
O’s early archivist notes read.
"M is infuriating. Brilliant. Loud. His ideas are dangerous, his temper worse, but Primus help me there's no one is rather list to more.”
Along with some debates they had on online forums.
O to M:
“You’re infuriating. I’ve filed three complaints about your speeches, and I plan to file three more. But your theory on energon stratification in the northern hemisphere is… compelling. If you ever wish to debate it properly, I’ll be in the Hall of Records after curfew.”
M to O (response, same day):
“Is that an invitation or a challenge, my archivist? Either way—I accept.”
I even tracked down old archival logs from their exchanges during the war.
M once wrote a treatise about O’s work in historical preservation that included a line about, “his steady hands preserving the truths our oppressors fought to silence. His clarity is a reminder of what I fought against, and what I failed to forget.”
O described M in an ancient war report as, “The storm that could not be contained. The brightest mind of fire, corroded by grief and buried in the rust of vengeance and tragedy.”
They also once had a whole radio exchange intercepted during the Kaon incursion that went.
M: “You never stop believing in things, do you?”
O: “Not even when I believed in you.”
M: “…That was your first mistake.”
O: “No. That was the only thing I ever got right.”
TELL ME that doesn’t sound like breakup aftermath??
And so on and so on.
So, during a team dinner, I kind of said, “You two co-leading Cybertron despite being post-divorce is actually really inspiring.”
Silence. Absolute. Total, unforgiving, gut-sinking silence.
O blinked at me like I’d slapped him. M stared into his cube of energon like he was trying to crush it with his mind.
Apparently, they were never actually bonded. And also, they’re not divorced (because again: never married). They were only ever friends this entire time?? And now O won’t look me in the optics and M muttered something about “poisoned reputations and premature assumptions.”
I was just trying to celebrate their healthy, functional post-relationship (that apparently never happened).
And I’m pretty sure now half of our support crew thinks I revealed some secret high command scandal that never actually happened.
r/help for reading romantic tension that wasn’t officially there and making it worse by suggesting they’d already ended a relationship they never confirmed in the first place??