Title: Stripped to the Bone

Authors: The Two Brit Twits

Fandom: Rocky Horror

Rating: PG-13

Characters/Pairings: Frank/Riff Raff

Summary: There was an unexpected occurrence at work.

Chapter One

The working day did not have an auspicious beginning for either master or servant.

For Riff Raff's part, there was nothing for him to do until receiving orders from Frank. He was meant to be painting the new sonic transducer that he'd recently built and installed, but the first coat had yet to finish drying and there really wasn't much else to do. Yanking a rag out of his sleeve, he began to idly polish the statues in a bid to avoid accusations of shirking should his master make an appearance.

The rattling of the lift announced Frank's imminent arrival. Shoving the lift door aside when it finally juddered to a stop, he marched out, the vicious clicking of his heels echoing throughout the lab.

Riff Raff's shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly, but he gave no other acknowledgement of Frank's presence, having no desire to draw attention to himself when all his prior interactions with the Master had ranged from the neutral to the decidedly unpleasant. Focusing on the task at hand, he began to polish the statue's left shin until it shone. Frank walked past his servant, offering no more recognition than that he was given, going instead to scrawl out some of his theorising on the tiles of the wall.

Silence stretched out. Being ignored, however, was not a state Frank ever intended to spend a great deal of time in, and he turned to watch the movements of his handyman. "I doubt it will be any cleaner for your interference," he commented, observing the state of the rag.

"Very well, Master," Riff Raff replied and straightened up into his usual slightly stooping posture. "Was there anything else you... required?"

"The transducer. You haven't finished, I presume? Do so." Frank strongly believed that if servants became accustomed to a light workload then they would forget their place. As he surveyed the lab for potential chores, he noticed his scribblings on the wall from one of his earlier experiments. Gesturing towards them, he continued. "And these plans. I expect you to familiarise yourself with them immediately." Unlike his smirking factotum, he was quite unaware that a) the paint was still wet and b) his theories had already been covered by a research group on one of Transsexual's colony planets two months ago.

This lack of perspicacity is unfortunate in any leader, but doubly so in one with an underling of Riff Raff's paranoid intelligence. Nevertheless, everyone is born with some sort of survival instinct, and Frank's sent a particularly icy shiver down his spine. He stepped back as Riff Raff trundled over at his usual (and surely deliberately) maddening pace, coerced by some unconscious force into observing the handyman as he contorted until eye level with the writing.

"And the transducer," he snapped, becoming increasingly aggravated as his servant explained patronisingly that he "was still waiting for the undercoat to dry," before asking, almost with amusement, whether that would be all.

"No, that will not be all!"

Frank would need to move on to other projects come sunset, but until then he was determined to make sure that his handyman actually worked for once. "You may not leave until the transducer is completed," he announced, before returning to scrawling on the wall, though the decidedly unpleasant burning around his ears that occurred whenever he'd felt the weight of Riff Raff's stare made his writing frightfully erratic.

"Sir... there is very little that I can do until the.... current coat of paint dries," Riff Raff noted, his voice a little more deferential to avoid further outrage. He paused, biting his lip in uncertainty. "Might I not be more... useful elsewhere?" Normally he would deem such a question imprudent, but the Master did seem (much to his servant's barely-hidden amusement) unusually distracted today.

Frank took one look at Riff Raff gnawing his lip before he snapped back to the jumble of words on the wall, flush rising. "Fine," he said sharply, not wanting to concede anything to Riff Raff, but nevertheless suddenly eager to get him out of his presence. "Go and see to the differential mass analyzer in the workroom." He could, after all, keep an eye on his progress via the monitors.

"As you wish, Master." Riff Raff hopped down from the stool and exited, smirking, via the lift. He stopped briefly on his way down to the workroom (his sister could be most distracting) but reached the dank little backroom soon enough. Tools and bits of rag were spread over most of the work surfaces, though a few had been kept meticulously clear and clean for the more delicate instruments.

Riff Raff adjusted the lamp and groaned. The DMA was a particularly annoying repair job - over a metre long and with several layers of hex bolts to get through before he could even begin to lift off the outer casing. Slowly, he set to work.

The upper casing was off and clear in barely half an hour. Then came the more difficult part: lifting off the metre long and very heavy outer sheath without touching the delicate inner electrode. Slowly... slowly... muscles straining, Riff Raff began to raise the metal cylinder up, inch by painful inch.

Frank didn't care to look away from the writing on the wall until the clattering of the lift faded away, heaving a sigh of relief as it did so, his breath having been held for what seemed like an age. This was...unfortunate, that he was left in such a state by the insolence of his servant, and that no measure of masterly exertions seemed to be any use when it came to correcting his unruly underling. He rested his forehead against the coolness of the tiles for a moment, before turning the monitor to the workroom. At least now he could keep an eye on the fulfilment of his commands without being subjected to such impertinence. What he saw on the monitor, however, he thought – for a moment – must be deliberate provocation, and his hand hovered over the lever as he contemplated sending Riff Raff back to the lab and away from that instrument that very second.

Back in the dank little workroom, Riff Raff stretched his arms out, then arched his back. The outer casing lay safely on the work bench and the electrode soon joined it. He stood it upright, then examined it closely for scratches until he was satisfied that it had suffered no damage. "Must be the filter then..." he muttered to himself absentmindedly, then frowned as he heard the steady chug-chug of the cantankerous old boiler limbering itself up; someone clearly wanted a hot bath and wasn't prepared to wait the two hours until six o'clock. He removed his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair before unscrewing the base and removing the electrometer. It was easy to change the cartridge, but the o-rings were shot. He doubted that was the problem but it was good practice to change them anyway. Eventually he found a few of the right size buried under a pile of drek. He squirted a little vaseline onto his finger tips and began to work it into the rubber- a small amount of grease was essential for making a properly airtight seal.

From the monitor came the hysterical quaver of Frank's voice. "The floors--mop the floors! Now."

Annoyance at being interrupted battled with amusement (and not a little surprise) at Frank's tone for dominance. Eventually confusion won out. What was his Master up to?

He shrugged and gathered up a mop and bucket from the cleaning cupboard just outside the workroom door, then rolled up his sleeves, filled up the bucket from the workroom sink and got to work. He supposed the airless little den did need a bit of a scrub down, but couldn't fathom why Frank would be so concerned about a part of the castle he would probably encounter only on a viewscreen.

At least prior to this, Frank could have said that he had never, at any point, formed any sort of opinion on the particulars of anything that Riff Raff normally kept covered with his filthy clothes. This was blurring a line, and he dived out of view from the monitor, both to avoid any further spectacle and to keep his own reaction out of Riff Raff's potential sight. Perhaps Riff Raff already suspected; perhaps it was merely the efforts of an upstart underling trying to seduce him out of their own desperation. Still, there were things that just weren't done, and degrading oneself through panting after lackeys ranked very highly. He stood for a moment to catch his breath, before trusting himself to let Riff Raff near DMAs again – he was in control of himself now, and he would prove it. "Yes, that that will do," he said, daring to edge back towards the monitor. "Return to the repairs."

"Very well, Master..." he replied, then muttered "you indecisive moron." He'd known Furter was... eccentric... to say the least when he'd signed up, but this was becoming ridiculous. He stowed the bucket away in a corner just in case Frank decided to change his mind again, then returned to the DMA. He cursed whoever it was using gallons of hot water - the room was unpleasantly muggy and his shirt was beginning to stick. He found a cloth and wiped his hands and began to return each piece to its place, a painstaking job that was accompanied by much buffing, polishing and greasing. Eventually it was time to lower the casing back on. By this time his back and arms were shaking, but he steadied them enough to get it back in place without a scratch. A couple of o-rings and a few dozen bolts later and the DMA was nearly as good as new. Now he simply had to carry the bloody heavy thing up to the lab without letting the polished metal slide through his hands and crack on the floor. Joy.

Authors' Note: A DMA is a metre-long metal pole with a rounded tip. So, Riff spent most of this chapter polishing a prime bit of scientific phallic imagery.