Swerve’s is closed, lights dimmed to that ship-midnight blue, the kind that makes the viewport look like a window into cold ink. You’re alone with a half-finished drink and a pulsing ache under your chest plates you don’t have the language for. On your datapad, a still frame—Optimus caught mid-sentence, mouth gentle around a smile that was never for the camera but for the person behind it. You don’t hit play. You don’t have to. You can recite the message from memory.

Footsteps in the corridor. You feel the faint harmonic before the door hisses—Rodimus’s cadence, too jaunty for this hour.

“Bar’s closed,” you say without turning. “Perks of captaincy.” He slips in anyway, a slice of hot color in the blue: flame paint, bright helm crest, the indecent cheer of someone who refuses to let a room be sad without a fight. He taps the lock with two fingers; the door snicks shut behind him. “Don’t worry. I’ll pay Swerve back.”

He slides onto the stool beside you, close enough that the heat radiating off his lines troubles the air. He clocks the frozen image of Optimus, the way your fingers tighten around the datapad. Something in his posture softens. He doesn’t reach. He’s learning.

“I miss him, too,” Rodimus says, quieter. The laugh that comes out of you isn’t kind. “You miss him.”

“Shocking, I know,” he says, aiming for light. It skids. “Guy had a way of making the room feel…bigger. Like if he was standing in it, you were already doing better than you thought.” “He was better than you,” you say, the words out before your better self can edit them. You don’t take them back. “And he didn’t have to tell us.”

Rodimus tips his helm, taking it on the chin. “I don’t tell you. I…brand it.” He taps the Rodimus Star at his collar with a rueful half-smile. “Guilty.”

“You’re not a Prime,” you say. It lands like a blade on a table. “Stop pretending.”

“Noted.” There’s a flicker in his optics—hurt, then gone. “For the record, I never—”

“You act like it,” you cut in, heat rising. Months of restraint unravel in your voice. “You posture. You gamble with lives to chase a story about the Knights. You paint flames on everything you touch and call it destiny. Every time something breaks you make a speech and we limp on until the next wreck. And you think that’s…leadership.” You thumb the datapad screen off, the absence of Optimus a slap. “He never needed to be loud to be real.”

Silence sits down with you both. The ship hums—quantum drive purring, the gentle tick of cooling ductwork. Somewhere a compressor kicks on and off like a sleeping animal.