#but if there's an odd smell. that. still fucking impacts the eating experience. 'it tastes the same' YOU DON'T GET IT

[sergle]

unrelated but the album art for the Autoheart Time Machine EP is actually inhibiting my ability to enjoy it to its fullest potential 

#I am pretty sure it fucks but anytime I tab back to spotify and see it I make a hrghm face #like a scrunch face. It's SOURING it #the vibes of this EP are so good and the album art is so mismatched it's jarring to MEEEEEE #sergle.txt #I know I don't have to see the art the whole time but also sometimes I just like to sit very still in my chair and Listen #w only spotify up. and if the album art there is really bad or really good. that impacts the experience. #if you get it you get it #album art is like a scent note u get off of food. right. so like the most important thing is how the food tastes #but if there's an odd smell. that. still fucking impacts the eating experience. 'it tastes the same' YOU DON'T GET IT #and if the scent coming off of food is EXTRA incredible it also invites you to try the taste out

[elisaphoenix13]

Against All Odds (Ch.4)

Scott fell asleep again after he managed to eat what Stephen had made for him, but another coughing fit woke him up about half an hour later. A quick glimpse around the living room in front of him showed that Stephen and Quill were absent and Scott assumed that they took off. He wouldn't blame them, they had other friends or families they could go to and Scott appreciated that Stephen even took the time to make sure he was okay. Quill was also a pleasant surprise but Scott took his presence with a grain of salt. He probably gave Stephen a ride and only decided to check on him--

He was starting to sound like a broken record player. Quill wouldn't want him. There. He could admit things and accept them.

He didn't have to like it though.

Scott releases one last cough into his blanket before turning over and closing his eyes, and almost opens them again when he hears someone shuffling cards. Were Stephen and Quill still here?

"I think he's still asleep." Quill says from the direction of the dining table.

"Why are you still here? I told you I would be staying with him tonight so I don't need a ride." Stephen asks.

"Hey, he takes time out of his day to help me with math and I know he didn't want to in the first place. It's the least I can do." Quill answers.

The following moment of silence is filled by the sound of shuffling cards.

"Okay...now tell me the real reason." Stephen says calmly.

"What?!" Quill sputters.

There was silence again, and Scott was confused. Why did Stephen think that Quill had another reason for tagging along with him? The staying part was a little weird, but that was just the kind of guy Quill was. He was nice to most everyone unless someone gave him a reason not to. Scott could tell the silence wasn't true silence after a few seconds because he could feel the tension in the air, and that usually meant one thing.

Stephen was staring Quill down.

It was a very uncomfortable experience and always successfully got Scott to cave and admit whatever Stephen was suspecting when the older boy used it on him. It was a look that made it feel like Stephen was staring into his very soul and discovering every untold secret without Scott having to say a word. He was weak compared to Quill. The senior would no doubt return the stare with one of his own and they would at least come to a stand still since Stephen's was nothing to underestimate.

Quill actually caved as well but whatever he said was too quiet for Scott to hear.

"I had a suspicion." Stephen mutters and Scott could hear his smug smile.

"You said you were staying with him tonight, right?" Quill wonders. "Is there something going on…?"

"No. We're just friends." Stephen informs him and the sound of a glass being set down on the table follows shortly after.

"Where are his parents?"

"Out of town."

"Still?!"

No no no. Please don't say anything. I don't need or want his pity.

"What do you mean?" Stephen asks carefully.

"His parents were out of town on Monday!" Quill exclaims. "When are they supposed to get back?"

"...I couldn't tell you. It's going on four months."

Stephen, you dick.

"Are you taking care of him because you feel sorry for him?" Quill asks.

"Of course not. He's my friend. I just happen to know that he has no one to rely on. Scott doesn't know what it's like to be taken care of. He's not just invisible at school. His parents apparently barely manage to send him money for food." Stephen admits quietly.

"That's fucked up."

"I agree...but whatever your intentions are, don't do it because you pity him. If you hurt him, I will come after you."

Whoa. Scott didn't think that Stephen actually cared about him that much. He didn't even know what to think about that. What he did know was that it filled part of a huge hole in his heart. A hole he didn't even realize he had. Was it caused by the years of constant cold shoulders he got from his parents? He couldn't recall a single good memory from his childhood. For as long as he could remember, interaction from his parents was few and far between. They did the bare minimum to keep him alive and the moment he could walk to school by himself, they stopped dropping him off and picking him up.

There was never a nanny or a babysitter to give him more proper care. Business trips became a constant when Scott was old enough to be left home alone for long periods of time, and then his parents were gone all the time. Scott had to teach himself how to cook, how to do laundry, and even how to budget the money his parents sent him twice a month. He didn't know what praise was. Didn't know a parent's love.

No kiss on the cheek or forehead at bedtime from his mother, no pat on the shoulder or hair tussling from his father for getting a good grade, no hugs...no anything. He'd seen people hug each other and he so desperately wanted to know if it was as nice as it looked. Scott was so touch deprived that he lived vicariously through watching others interact.

Love was foreign to him in every way, shape, and form. At least until now. Was that what this warm feeling was when Stephen threatened Quill? He heard that friendships were a form of love. How pathetic was he to not know something like that?

"On a lighter note…" Quill starts. "Want me to go out and get the three of us dinner and a few movies?"

"Maybe two of us since Scott can't really taste anything with his cold.. and I don't know what your taste in movies is like. I think Scott has a few to choose from." Stephen answers and Quill shrugs.

"Dinner?"

"I think I'll make something tonight."

Scott dozed off after that and didn't wake until Stephen woke him with a light dinner waiting on the coffee table for him. He picked at it while the other two found his decently sized movie collection and surprisingly agreed on one, and he managed to eat most of his dinner before lying back down again. That had been about twenty minutes into the movie. Stephen gave him more medicine just before he fell asleep again five minutes later, and dozed in and out of consciousness for the rest of the night. He heard some whispering during one of his moments when he was between sleep and awareness, but he wasn't completely alert. Scott was actually on the brink of sleep when the couch disappeared from under him.

He must be dreaming. He's had weird floaty dreams like this when he was sick before, but he never smelled cinnamon in them. That was definitely new. Scott just chalked it up to his brain trying to comfort him in some way as the feeling of cushions came back under him. He just garnered enough energy to roll onto his side and wrap his blanket around him before falling back into a decently heavy sleep.

When Scott woke again, his head felt less cottony, but his throat still hurt. Which was no surprise considering how much he had been coughing yesterday. The cough wasn't gone yet either. It was just as harsh and congested as the day before and was unfortunately what woke him up. Scott had to sit up in bed so he could try to get some oxygen into his lungs, and when the coughing fit finally passed, he looked around his bedroom. The sunlight pouring through the--

Hold on.

His bedroom?

He most certainly fell asleep on the couch, and as far as he knew he wasn't a sleep walker since nothing like this had happened before. Maybe he was sick enough that he walked upstairs to his bedroom without much clarity to remember it? He'd never done that before either. Stephen wasn't strong enough to carry him, let alone all the way upstairs.

But Quill might be.

Oh my god...the cinnamon.

His dream wasn't a dream after all. The couch didn't disappear because he was having a floaty dream, it disappeared because Quill lifted him from it. The upperclassman that Scott had an enormous crush on and was tutoring, not only came to his house with Stephen to check on him, but carried him to bed! Scott knew the guy was nice but this seemed a little excessive even for Quill.

Scott shakes the thought away and climbed out of bed (albeit a bit woozily) and grabs a clean black shirt and black sweatpants before walking into his bathroom to take a shower. He stood with his forehead placed on the tiled wall in the hopes that the steam would help with his foggy head and his congested cough a little more, and sluggishly got dried and dressed once he was through with his shower. To his delight, his appetite was better than the previous day and he hoped he would be able to taste his food this time. He just needed to make his way down to the kitchen and try to figure out what looked or sounded good.

When he got down to the foot of the stairs, he was surprised at what he saw in the living room. Stephen was sleeping on the couch with a blanket he probably had to go looking for (there was a closet in the downstairs hall with some extra blankets), and a pillow that Scott definitely didn't use. That was actually expected based off the conversation he overheard yesterday. What was really surprising was seeing Quill passed out on the floor, with a pillow and blanket (that was barely covering his lower half), and the glaringly obvious fact that the senior had stripped down to his boxers for bed.

Fate was incredibly unkind to him before, but now it was dangling his half naked crush in front of him, and Scott could do nothing. Nothing but turn, shuffle into the kitchen, and look through the fridge for something to eat. Scott couldn't expect Stephen to continue to take care of him, and he had every intention to thank him and Quill for checking on him and taking care of him last night and then have them go home, but his body had different ideas.

Scott's vision swam as he reached for some yogurt, and then he felt himself falling sideways until he hit the ground with an audible thud. Just loud enough to wake his guests of course.

"What the fuck was that?" Quill demands as Scott groans from his impact with the floor.

Stephen was the first to show up and he closed the refrigerator door before kneeling next to the younger teen. "What are you doing out of bed?"

"'S okay...I can take care of myself. Just slipped." Scott slurs as his friend helps him up. "Just make the room stop spinning an' I'll be golden."

Stephen ignores him and looks behind Scott. "Help him to the couch."

Scott feels himself being pushed back gently until his back collided with the wall, and he blinks when the wall moves and directs him toward the couch. It took a few seconds for Scott's brain to catch up and realize that the wall was actually Quill, but he was already sitting on the couch when he finally managed to process that little tidbit. Actually, Scott was being kindly pushed down so that he was laying instead of sitting, and he felt himself melting into a puddle of goo when the same hand that had pushed him, started massaging the back of his neck.

"Tha's nice…" Scott mumbles as his eyes close.

An affectionate gesture. He was sick and someone was comforting him with a gentle massage and Scott couldn't stop himself from drinking it in. Someone was giving him attention, and while part of him wanted to run and hide, another bigger part wanted to enjoy it while he could.

It's Quill you ginormous dumbass! Quill is giving you the attention! He's the one touching you!

Scott didn't care at the moment. The gesture was more important because he's never been given any kind of affection before. The world had always kept going around him and he felt stuck in a dark corner of it because he was always ignored. He was ignored and neglected so much that Scott used to question his existence, but this small gesture? It was the first sliver of light to visit the dark corner of his reality. Scott almost wanted to cry because someone (besides Stephen) finally saw him and he wanted that light to envelop him. He wanted more.

"Scott? What do you want to eat?"

Scott was too blissed out from the tiniest gesture to answer.

"I think I put him to sleep." Quill responds as quietly as possible.

Scott didn't bother correcting him, and it didn't matter after a couple more seconds of his neck massage. He fell asleep again, and it was the best thirty minutes of sleep he ever had.

[bettsplendens]

Character profile: Five-Alarm

Five-Alarm is a fairly buff medic. His parents were fire trucks, and they thought he would be, too, when his sirens started coming in. Hence the name. Yeah, turns out he’s an ambulance. Same general class of rescuer, though. If all had gone well and there hadn’t been a war, you’d have found him hauling people out of burning buildings and avalanches and the like. 

He’s a bit over TFP Ratchet’s size, same general build but more solid through the midsection, similar color scheme. White, a few hints of red. Lots of bright bio-lights tracing around his frame that flash an undulating pattern of red and blue when brightened up, signalling to anybody he’s just hauled out of rubble that they don’t have to panic at him. He also has a set of relatively large winglets that lift up and flare out, their plates separating evenly to uncover holo-generators, and produce hardlight ‘feathers’ in the same patterns as his bio-lights. The whole thing is basically meant to blast a new patient with “hello I am a medic do not punch me” signals as fast and loud as possible so they calm down. His light bar is flexible and wraps around his shoulders, so if you’re looking at him from any angle, he’s basically just got a giant neon sign over his helm saying “MEDIC”. 

His alt mode is the sort of thing you’d expect to see if someone was designing an ambulance to have land mines thrown at it. Large enough to carry someone small in his cargo bay, heavy tires, heavy armor, stocky build, wide wheel base, the whole nine yards of “don’t even bother fucking with me” features that one can put on a technically civilian vehicle. 

He has this neat feature where some of the overlapping plating on his chassis sorta folds outward, expanding out of its flat structure and uncovering a few layers from his spark chamber. His chamber is still pretty well protected, but the area around it gets thinner, which looks a bit odd until you see the structure it makes as they unfold. They wind up parallel to his side plating, meaning he has something of a hollow in his general chassis area. He can lean over someone with his chassis like that, protect them from just about all angles, and use himself as armor for them, or put them in it and fold things up a bit. It only fits small bots, but they’re the ones who need the extra armor! 

Besides all that, his hearing is sharp, albeit a bit iffy now that he’s been around a lot of explosions, and he has infrared vision that he can turn on at will to try and spot hidden fires or buried potential patients. It’s not quite functioning at full precision in one optic, though, and his long-range vision is pretty shoddy. Medics can’t see very far even when they haven’t been near explosions. 

He carries a war hammer in a specially modified subspace pocket designed to hold just one or two large objects. It has a joint between head and shaft designed to limit the amount of the force of impact that gets transmitted between the head and shaft, though- medics’ servos can’t handle the recoil of such a large hammer swung by such a strong frame. All the force that doesn’t go into the target has to be dissipated against springs to avoid numbing and damaging his servos. The parts of the shaft not used as a handle are a sort of trophy case- badges and weapon triggers from opponents or just from people who pissed him off real bad, fangs and claws from animals, glued in place and then bound with wire to keep them from jostling loose. 

His whole frame is a bit beat up. Plating dull from stress, covered in scars from cuts that never quite healed right, joints that creak a bit oddly now and then, probably some shrapnel in assorted places. 

And his mind is a LOT beat up. 

Five-Alarm has been a medic through the whole war, for obvious reasons. Like every other medic, he was badly overworked, pushed so far past the end of his rope he couldn’t have found it if his life depended on it. Had to start assessing any potential patient with an optic for if he could save them, if he could save them but in an amount of time that would leave too many others to die, or if he wouldn’t be able to save them with the supplies, time, and situation that he had. That’s not great for someone’s mental health, not on a daily basis, not with this lingering idea that if he could just move faster he could save them.

As the war went on, he started taking stimulants so he’d need less sleep. Relatively mild things at first, then stronger, increasingly makeshift substances, with increasingly strong side effects. 

He also started jump-starting his patients with his own spark. He was strong enough, after all, large enough and durable enough and with enough spark energy that his frame could boost someone’s guttering, desperately grasping spark and regenerate afterwards. It worked, sometimes. Often as not, though, the spark that was guttering already flickered and died against his, but at least they weren’t alone, at least they knew someone was here, was trying to help, was with them. 

Somewhere along the way, he started hallucinating. Not too badly at first, flickers and moving shadows and half-heard voices. The occasional thing that someone might mistake for a ghost, if they weren’t a medic with enough scanners and instruments to determine that what he was watching didn’t actually exist. He did have to check that it wasn’t some kind of spark-echo trapped in his own chamber, of course, but he quickly arrived at the realization that he wasn’t actually seeing anything. That it was probably related to stress. That it was fine, it would go away on its own once things were safer.

Then he wound up on what should have been a fairly easy posting. A smallish group of bots, dropped off in a newly constructed base on a moon rich in resources, with no job other than manning the machinery and otherwise collecting resources to be distributed. 

What his superiors didn’t realize was the reason why they couldn’t find any other settlements on that moon. It was inhabited by various organic animals, they knew that much, but they didn’t know what the worst of them was. A fairly large creature, easily the size of most Cybertronians, adapted to both hunt organic prey or dig for energon deposits. A species that wore bone and meteorite shards as armor. Not sapient, but fairly clever, prone to moving in packs. Nocturnal, repulsed by light, initially repelled by the noise and spotlights of construction. Once the main ship was gone (never to return, though no one involved would have known it), the creatures got bolder, and the workers found themselves in their own little horror movie. 

Their first losses were at night. They didn’t know, couldn’t have known, not to go out at night. 

The next, dawn and dusk. They had to learn from bitter experience that the creatures can and will run between shadows if sufficiently curious, or if they smell even a drop of energon from the tiniest cut. 

They stopped going out at any time other than midday, but even that wasn’t enough. The creatures had already torn down their little transport-ships, learned that they liked the taste of Cybertronian-purified energon, and were trying to figure out how to get in. The base had never been made to defend against attacks by a thing that feared light, the spotlight coverage was spotty at best. But it was enough to let them see the creatures, the things that crept up to the edge of the lights to watch them, the things wearing shards of corpses as armor and looking for a way to get more.

The sensible response was to seal off most of the base as thoroughly as possible, even cutting some of it down to remove the potential for shadows, and rig every spotlight they had to cover their existing base. The creatures wouldn’t go through a band of enough light, and that was what it took to keep them out while the remaining crew tried to figure out a way to leave. 

Until the lights failed. Until an electrical storm that shorted out their power, and the discovery that the creatures, if given the chance, could and would rip through doors and walls alike. 

Alarm would have saved the others if he could. He always would have. But he wound up being surrounded, and by the time he’d hammered a couple of the creatures to death, the others were dead. They weren’t even soldiers, most of them, poor things. 

He spent the night crammed into a closet with every portable light he’d been able to find, most of them rigged to plug into his own frame in various ways to keep them running, fully aware that to sleep, to let his headlights and his display-lights dim, would mean he would die too. 

The creatures left back to their burrows in the mornings, having drained every bit of energon they could find, and took much of the material from the bodies with them. That left Alarm, on his own, in a base that never should have been maintained by fewer than 5 bots, with full knowledge that letting anything crumble meant the creatures would be back to eat him. 

He brought the spotlights back online, he found as many lights as he could get to keep right next to his berth, he hauled his chemistry kit into the single room he was keeping alive, and he cut away every piece of base that attached to that one to be sure its own shadows wouldn’t let something up close to him. 

That’s about when things started to unravel further for Alarm. He couldn’t sleep during the day because he had to spend all his time repairing the base’s lights and the generators that kept them running, because if any of it failed, he would absolutely die. He couldn’t sleep at night because it was dark, because he had to be awake to carry out disaster scenarios if something failed, if another electrical storm or something worse put things out of commission, if the radio still running in the background got any signals that might indicate some kind of hope to get free, if, if, if, and on and on and on. 

By the time anyone found him, he was a mess. Hyped up on a very makeshift injectable stimulant to keep him awake, keep him moving fast enough to do everything he needed. 

Hallucinating almost constantly, to the surprise of no one with any information on his circumstances. Ghosts, primarily- echoes of bots he couldn’t save. Bleeding from various wounds, crushed, broken, mutilated, occasionally outright on fire, but never acting like it. Watching him, even talking now and then, about nothing in particular. 

Or the not-ghosts. The images of bots he did save, reappearing now, possibly as some kind of coping mechanism, so he could talk to them and they could tell him about important things he’d seen but hadn’t consciously registered. 

Or fragments. Corpses scattered across the floor, energon pooling around his pedes, enough to mistake for something real if it hadn’t been for the lack of tactile sensation. 

When someone else finally found him, he didn’t realize it. He assumed the big, healthy-looking bot standing in front of him was a hallucination, someone he didn’t remember seeing, and, not in the mood to talk, tried to walk through him. 

It didn’t really work, of course, he ran smack into Bracer and fell on his aft. And, after a few moments of prodding to be sure he hadn’t run into, what, a stack of crates, he immediately clung onto the first bot he’d seen in who knew how long and insisted that they leave, now, now, now, before nightfall.

Bracer is a smart bot. If someone is alone, thoroughly haggard-looking, and marked up with scars of claw and bite marks that haven’t healed right, and they’re insisting that everyone leave before nightfall? He will do that. 

It took a long time in deep sedation for the stimulants to work their way out of his system. That took the worst of the hallucinations with it, but he’s still seeing things. Mostly relatively benign things- ghosts, or bots he saved at some point, turning up to talk to him. Occasionally something more concerning, like wounds appearing on the frames of actual people. Every now and then, if he’s especially stressed, shades of the creatures that tried to eat him and just barely failed. 

Five-Alarm is still not exactly what we’d call stable. Paranoid, overly concerned with the welfare of others, their need to be in ideal shape, to the point of harassing other bots whose scars he deems too likely to cause trouble. He’s trying to help, he really is, but anxiety and mania can make him too pushy. 

He’s definitely still hallucinating!

And he doesn’t sleep. Not by any force of drugs, but mostly out of anxiety. He doesn’t sleep, he paces, and occasionally crashes and naps for a little while crammed into whatever corner was nearest when he crashed. Usually clutching a weapon of some sort for protection against... nothing, actually. 

He can’t convince himself that he’s safe. And he can’t sleep, he can’t, it’s not safe, something might get in, he needs to be awake, to be aware, but dear Primus it’s getting hard to exist. The only reason he isn’t back on stimulants is because he’s not allowed to have them, or the structures to make them. Probably a good idea. He’s not inclined to argue too much with it. 

He’d probably, definitely sleep better if he had someone to sleep with. Contact would help. 

And, not shockingly, he’s terrified of the dark. Not just because of the uncertainty, not just because he can’t see what might be here. Because he knows, he’s already made the associations, that the darkness brings death with it. 

He should really be on antianxiety meds. He isn’t, he’s afraid they’ll dull his senses, but he really, really should be.  

#Five-Alarm #Alarm #Five Alarm #hard to tag names with hyphens #my OCs #my work #my fic #OC #TF OC #somebody help this boi