robothell | tagging this log constitutes consent to be hugged by a small purple autobot

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tagging this log constitutes consent to be hugged by a small purple autobot

Who: Nautica and whoever is not going to start shit
Where: the clinic
When: after she gets hurled into a wall (thx tfp megatron) and before she's off the robot drugs
What: drugged-up Nautica is even friendlier than regular Nautica
Warnings: shameless fluff?

A docile patient, particularly in comparison to the other people around here likely to end up in the clinic, Nautica was curled up on her side in a berth, uncomplaining despite the fresh welds spidering silver across her back and impeller housings. The circuit dampers keeping those welds from bothering her might have been slightly miscalibrated--she was a small mech, and didn't have a tolerance built up from a lifetime of hospital stays over the course of an unending war. It was hardly the medics' fault they'd erred on the high side, especially considering the scavenged supplies they had to work with.

It did mean, however, that she was feeling no pain, either literally or in the colloquial sense, and for the moment was quite involved in watching her fingers as she repeatedly flexed them into claws or drummed them somewhat less than rhythmically on the edge of the slab. Hands were so complicated.

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For once, it wasn't Tarn's fault.

"Hi, Captain!" Granted, absurd good cheer was normal for Nautica, but given the circumstances, it didn't take Nightbeat to figure out that powerful painkillers were involved. She propped herself up on one elbow and waved at him. Then she remembered he'd asked a question, though it took her a second to also remember what that question had been.

"I got thrown into a wall." Not really a useful status report, but she was trying.

Good grief, he manages not to say, with no small amount of effort.

"I see." He is really, really glad that he just put Tarn in the hospital. He pauses thoughtfully. "And what... led to you being thrown into a wall?"

"I really, honestly don't know," Nautica said, exasperated, but not at him. Between the head injury and her general tendency to miss social cues, the entire encounter with the other Megatron was a jumbled mess in her memory.

Megatron frowns. He pulls up a chair, and sits down, his hands clasped in front of him. "Do you remember where this was?"

With more painstaking effort than was usually required, Nautica finished pushing herself upright. Those new welds hadn't seen much action yet. She sat on the edge of the berth, feet dangling and attention focused on evaluating whether being vertical was a good idea.

Well, the world wasn't swimming, so, progress, and on to bigger things, like answering Megatron's question. That much she could remember, at least. "It was at one of the power substations I was repairing. A few blocks south of the forum."

"Hm," says Megatron, tapping his chin with his thumb. "What about when?"

Implying the timelines make any sense Harry you're killing me.

"I don't...properly know how long I've been in the medibay." Nautica reached up to rub the back of her neck sheepishly, but then the welds tugged and she thought better of it, letting her hand fall back into her lap with a clank. "A few days at least. First Aid would know."

Ha Ha Ha Ha :')

He nods thoughtfully, a deep frown still in place. "And you don't know who attacked you." He can only assume it must indeed have been Tarn, though.

"Oh, no." Nautica shook her head vigorously to correct the misconception. "It was Megatron."

Wait, that sounded accusatory. Well, it did inside her head, though the inside of Nautica's head wasn't exactly the most reliable when it came to reading a room. Better not to take chances. "Uh. Not you, obviously. Or the cute one." Ha ha she just called pre-war Megatron cute that sure was a thing that happened. She gestured to her shoulder. "The spiky one."

Megatron sits up in surprise. He still hasn't met the 'spiky one', just heard about him from the others... Unless Nautica means Megatronus, which he rather doubts. He should have anticipated he'd be trouble – had assumed he would be, sooner or later, but he'd been anticipating something more calculated than this.

He frowns. There's a little pause.

"... The cute one."

"Your younger self is adorable!" Guileless as she was, Nautica would likely still have informed him of this sentiment without being all fucked up on robot drugs, but she would have been less enthusiastic about it.

"Don't worry, I like you, too." She leaned in to pat his hand reassuringly. Because clearly that was the problem here.

He draws his hand away a little, looking kind of baffled and slightly offended by where this conversation has ended up going.

"I sincerely hope you don't think I'm 'cute', Nautica."

Technically he started it by opening a conversation with her at all. He could ask just about anyone how normally that ever went.

Nautica rested her elbows on her knees, propping her chin on her hands. "No, that requires a degree of vulnerability--actual or perceived--that you don't project."

"Do you mean to say you consider my... past self... vulnerable?" says Megatron, as if he can't quite decide whether to be indignant or amused.

"You didn't see how mortified he was after he realized he'd been bullying someone who wasn't any threat to him." Nautica giggled at the memory, which was not what most people would do at recalling the time Megatron angrily ground their face into the dirt, even on a lot of drugs.

He puts his head in his hand and makes an indistinct sound. Despair, perhaps. "I think I can imagine how mortified he was, Nautica, I can remember being him."

Nautica's frame of reference regarding Megatron was...unique. That explained why, when an idea occurred to her, she didn't hesitate in executing it it.

Leaning forward, she gave him a hug. Well, she gave the part of his upper arm hers could fit around a hug. Close enough.

"He'll be fine. I'll be fine. You do what you need to make sure you'll be fine. You always seem so tired. I worry about you."

Megatron goes very, very still.

His impulse is to straight up pick Nautica up and throw her away from him, because for millions of years nobody would have dared even think about doing something like this without getting shot in the head. His second is to pull his chair back or get up, but he realises that if he does that she'll probably fall onto the floor or something, and he can't imagine that would be good for her in this state. He'd kind of be willing to take that risk, honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that other people would probably see.

He stays where he is with the utmost reluctance.

"I assure you," he says stiffly, "I am as well as can possibly be expected."

Fortunately for Nautica, self-interest prevailed where ethics couldn't. Yay!

She held on for another few eternities, or, as they were more commonly known to people who weren't in their own personal hell, seconds.

"That's a heck of a qualifier," she said as she returned to the status quo of not hugging retired warlords.

He relaxes noticeably once she lets go of him, but he's eyeing her warily for a moment or two after the fact, as if concerned she might do it again.

"... Yes," he says, after a slightly unnecessarily long pause, but a moment later he's completely content to pretend no physical contact ever happened. "Yes, it is." He leans back a little, now that he can. "I'm as fine as I need to be, how about that?"

It was a reasonable concern, given the solicitous expression she was still wearing.

"Just...talk to someone if you need it, okay? Optimus, Ratchet...whoever. You don't have to be untouchable anymore."

Nautica, for all she had trouble reading people in specific, had a pretty solid grasp of them in the abstract...hence why she understood the kind of leadership the Decepticons would have had, but not why Megatron might not want to discuss it with his stoned ship's engineer.

Megatron frowns. He leans back a bit more, and folds his arms. "I don't need it. Believe me, Nautica, that's the least of my concerns, and it should be the least of yours, too... And between you and me, somehow I doubt Ratchet would be very receptive."

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