Car Wash - WIP

“Oh…my…GOD.”
“Where was the mission, guys—the bottom of a swamp?!”
The seven vehicles in front of us remained innocently quiet, as if confused by our blatant shock. I was personally trying to pick up my jaw. How did they managed to get THAT dirty? Sam slapped a hand to his forehead as he circled his once pristine “car”. Bumblebee’s bright yellow paint was hard to find under the mud and leaves covering the Camaro. “Holy shit, Bee.”
Sunstreaker, the only one who had managed to stay clean (big surprise), drove off, leaving the “glitched slag-heads” behind. I watched him go, still a little staggered, and then turned back to the bedraggled group. Optimus, Ironhide, Jazz, Sideswipe, and Prowl were all just as messy as Bee, leaving me seriously wondering what the hell their latest mission had entailed. Hacking through a rainforest?
“It has been rainy lately,” Optimus replied serenely, as if this answered everything. It almost worked on us. But only almost.
“Raining, what, mud? Or did you all just have a dirt fight? You know, fun times.” Sam grumbled, trying to pick leaves out of Bee’s grill and earning several chirps from the (supposedly) yellow Autobot. He looked up at me and we exchanged a knowing glance. I nodded solemnly, coming to the same conclusion.
I faced the group, hands on my hips and a look of grim determination on my face.
“You know what this means…”
Their puzzled and prolonged silence proved that, no, they very much didn’t know what that meant.
I smiled, just a little bit evilly.
“It’s time for a car wash.”

-------

After facing down vicious Decepticons for millennia, you’d think a bunch of super-advanced robots would be less intimidated by a little wash. It was soap and water, not high grade explosives and acid. We were two unarmed and pretty much defenseless teens a tenth of their size. It wouldn’t seem like this would make for a threatening situation. Especially for beings with cannons bigger than both of us put together.
But where Sideswipe, Prowl, and Optimus were hesitant about getting cleaned up, Ironhide was flat-out refusing.
He had backed himself into a corner, still in his alt mode but with a cannon whirring on top of the bed, and was threatening to shoot anyone who came at him. We were pretty sure he was all talk, but Sam and I both didn’t want to be the one to find out.
I had to hand it to Captain Lennox—he had no fear when it came to facing down those gigantic weapons. Which is why he had been recruited from his base duties to help coax the large black tuck to the spot outside the base where we had our buckets and hoses set up. He clearly had a way with words, especially knowing the gruff soldier bot so well. He was having more luck than the rest of us, but the weapons specialist was determined to stay right where he was.
“Come on.”
“No.”
“But, Hide, you’re filthy!”
“No.”
“Sarah will never let you near the house OR Annie looking like that!”
“No.”
“How else are you going to get clean?”
“I’ll just wait for a rainstorm.”
Sam made a great show of checking his phone. “None for the next three weeks. That’s some tough luck, sorry! Now let’s go.”
“That’s preposterous—“
“That’s the desert, man.”
Only when Ratchet finally threatened to disassemble his cannon if he didn’t get his “sorry aft cleaned” did Ironhide finally take his spot (still grumbling) next to Prowl.
Sam and I decided it would go faster if we split up the cars to wash. We were starting with Bee and Jazz, since they were the only two who were…well, excited. Sam had washed Bee before, and Jazz was just perv enough to be thrilled about a good rubdown.
“Oooh, car wash, car wash!”
“Alright, alright!” Sam laughed as an eager Bee bumped him gently with his passenger’s side door, almost sending him sprawling on the pavement.
After Jazz, I had Sides and Optimus to wash, while Sam took Prowl and Ironhide.
“Ah, man!” Sam groaned. “Hide’s not gonna be pleasant!”
“All the more reason you should take him, not me!” I grinned cheekily and ducked a soapy sponge flying at my head.
While the others watched on to see that a little car wash wasn’t going to kill them, Sam and I picked up our hoses and sprayed down the two cars.
“DAMN! That’s COLD, woman!”
“I said, brrr! It’s cold in here—“
“Whiners,” Sam teased, grabbing up a sponge.
I fished around in the giant bucket of soapy water next to me and pulled out a yellow loofah. Sam was already getting to work on scrubbing the muck off Bee, and getting some very happy noises out of the bot. I smirked.
Jazz was practically quivering with excitement as I approached. Then, because I’m a horrible person, I just let the soaped-up sponge plop wetly right in the middle of his hood.
“Bitch,” he whined, trying to shake off the offending discomfort.
“Just kidding, Jazzy,” I laughed, grabbing the loofah back up and starting to scrub.
Any comebacks were completely forgotten as I made my way across the hood and then down to the front grill and headlights. I took extra care getting all the dirt out of the grooves and Jazz groaned so happily my face went pink. I heard laughter and turned to see that Sunny and Ratchet had joined the group of onlookers and were quite clearly amused by Jazz and Bee’s pleasure.
Since he was such a small car, it didn’t take long for me to work down both sides, scrub off the tires, and clear off the windows. Considering the amount of muck on him, that is.
“I swear this was deliberate. I don’t know how else you got this dirty,” I muttered, trying to get a spot off his side mirror. Jazz didn’t say anything. “And next time, I won’t be doing this. You just get a cold shower, McPervy.”
“Awwwww…”
I was finishing up on the tail fin by the time Sam reached Bee’s rear side, to Jazz’s disappointment. I showered him off with warmer water this time, and sent him to dry in the sun with an uncalled-for-but-hilarious pat to his ‘aft’ that made him jump on his shocks. Mumbling about making this a tradition, the silver sports car rolled languidly off. Sides took his place, suddenly eager. “Me next!” he chirped.
I pretended to yawn, twirling the hose in my hands.
“I don’t know, I’m pretty tired…”
“You know, I think some of Ratchet’s evil is wearing off on you, girlie.”
“I know where you recharge, Sideswipe,” came the gruff but amused reply from behind us.
If possible, he was even more vocal than Jazz and Bee. Sam shot me a wide-eyed look from where he was washing the stoic Prowl, clearly wondering what the hell was going on.
That would have been two of us.
It was bordering on bad 70s porn, and Sunny was definitely laughing his ass off.
Sides was just a bit bigger than Jazz, but just as sleek, which made my job easier. Sam and I finished our second cars at about the same time. Even though he was in his car form, Prowl was giving off the distinct impression of a disgruntled wet cat. I had to laugh (quietly).
Then came the real challenges. For Sam, it was dealing with a large angry truck with a cannon that really didn’t want to get washed. For me, it was the thought of washing a semi truck about three times my height. Suddenly feeling a little daunted, I stared up at Optimus, his flame paint job barely visible under a thick layer of mud.
Glancing back over at the group, my lips twitched up into a smile. “Anyone have a ladder?”

-------

“Don’t fall,” Sam warned from his spot in the truck bed, currently working on cleaning off Ironhide’s massive smoke stacks.
“I won’t, I won’t,” I smiled, wiping down the large window in front of me. Bee had transformed and set me up right on Optimus’ hood once I finished all that could be reached at arm’s length, and I was now attempting to stay on the slick metal surface and scrub the truck down. This was all so much easier when I tried to forget that I was soaping down the leader of the Autobots, but it was hard to forget. For one thing, the hood underneath me was vibrating steadily and now and again Optimus would speak—usually to make sure I was being careful.
It was only when I started to clamber up onto the roof of the cab that he almost started to transform. “Lily, that is not a good idea—“
“I’m fine, Optimus. Bee’ll catch me.”
The yellow bot nodded and chirped.
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down—“
That made me laugh so hard I actually did almost slip, but I managed to hoist myself up and finish the scrub-down. And it was going fine, too, until Jazz—newly dried and back to his old mischief—decided it would be a good idea to yell ‘You missed a spot!’
When I turned to give him an unfriendly gesture and a retort, my foot flew out from under me on the slippery roof, and suddenly the ground was coming up pretty darn fast.
Before I could become a painful heap on the tarmac, a hand darted out and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. My fall stopped with a jolt and my air supply cut off abruptly. Dangling in the grip, stunned but mercilessly unharmed, I blinked rapidly as my brain caught up to what had just happened.
Then, with a glare that would have done Ratchet proud, I turned myself to face a horrified-looking Jazz. “What…the hell.”
I was lowered slowly to the ground just as Sam ran over. “Are you okay?!”
“I’m fine,” I said serenely, smiling my thanks up at Bee. “But Jazz is a dead man.”
The silver bot was the picture of innocence…until I sprayed him directly in the face with a jet of ice cold water.