Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: From the pairing generator. The prompt was Shockwave/Hook/lost.
--
It wasn't attraction, or sentiment, or desire for one another. It wasn't dictated by the logic around which he'd constructed his life, nor compelled by bonds so deeply coded they were indistinguishable from personality. Because Hook was all alone, his bonds either severed or atrophied, and nothing could have been less logical for Shockwave than to forge an attachment under circumstances as dire as theirs were, least of all with one fifth of a broken gestalt. Bonecrusher was dead, offlined in the bombing of Kaon – the same strike that had lost Hook his crane arm – and in the din and confusion that had followed, the remaining four had been separated. The last solid bit of information Hook had been able to barter his services for before he and Shockwave had found each other by chance, Mixmaster had somehow gotten off-planet, but Scavenger was rusting in an Autobot stockade. No one either of them knew had seen or heard from Scrapper in a metacycle.
Hook called for him, sometimes, while he recharged, arms reaching out for a chassis that wasn't there, that probably would never be there for him again – reaching out and meeting his instead, and the cave they were using at the time too small to let Shockwave move away from him. The first few times it had happened, he'd shoved Hook awake. And then, he hadn't. Then, grudgingly, he'd tolerated the closeness. Then not so grudgingly, and finally, when hands clutching at his arms jerked Shockwave out of recharge, he would shift and roll Hook into a loose embrace, let Hook mold himself to his body because he was sure he'd woken Hook just as often, vocalizer hissing and crackling with Megatron's name.
Finally, the warmth and the rumbling of Hook's frame pressed close to his would help him sleep.
It was convenience, self-interest too ingrained for either one of them to turn down what little the other offered, to pass up distraction in companionship. Once, while the war had dragged on with no major gains or losses on either side, they had been neither enemies nor friends. They'd hardly known each other, except by reputation. Hadn't crossed paths enough to tip things one way or the other, had only worked together occasionally, and then, he'd had command of Cybertron, and Hook had had his team. A reality so far distant it might as well have been lightyears ago. Before Praxus fell and Vos was leveled. Before Polyhex. Before Kaon. Now they had nothing but their necessitous existence, and each other.
It was desperation, because even deep in the Acid Wastes, they weren't safe from the sweeps and search parties. Because since falling in together, they'd had to pack up and move three times to avoid detection. Because they were forced to rely for the bare minimum of fuel they needed on roving packs of factionless salvage-mechs, with their pock-marked, radiation-scarred chassis, forced to bribe gray-plated Empties for their silence, mechs who would tip an Autobot patrol off to their location for a half-dead battery with barely enough electrolyte paste for a single hit.
It was the strut-deep need for metal to metal contact, driving them together, making them cling to each other in and out of recharge. It wouldn't have mattered if they'd hated each other. It wouldn't have changed anything if either of them had still had someone to be reunited with, choice in such matters a long-forgotten luxury.
Their couplings were rushed, frantic touches and hastily cycled energy, a way to comfort, or forget, or just to pass the time. Intimate in their lack of intimacy or terrifyingly personal.
Hook's hands, once more skilled than any other's with a laser scalpel, moved over Shockwave's chassis with micrometer precision, working him quickly toward overload while he ran currents across Hook's faded radioactive-green and purple plating. Hook was straddling him, rocking, jaw set in concentration. Behind his visor, his optics were offline.
The way Hook's body arched in the grip of his claw hand when Shockwave tightened it on the panels of Hook's abdomen, when he ramped the voltage until it made Hook's lips peel back in a grimace of pleasure, the electrostatic build-up everywhere they touched - his body responded, twitching and jerking, his vocalizer locking up on a moan. Hook's fingers pried under his chest armor, stroking a bundle of sensors, and he released his energy into the body above him, carrying Hook with him over the edge, crashing into overload.
--
The atmosphere was electric with the promise of rain when he onlined. Hook was squeezing himself through the too-small mouth of their cave.
Shockwave paid him little attention until Hook came to crouch near him, and pushed something in front of his single optic.
"Energon."
"Where did you get it?"
Hook was silent, holding the cube out to Shockwave until he took it, then wrapping his arms around himself, such an unexpectedly vulnerable gesture for a boxy, solidly-built construction mech like him. His fingers rubbed at the plating, drawing Shockwave's optic.
On his chassis, there were scratches, fresh and glaring. They weren't from the tight, jagged entrance to their hide-out, and Shockwave knew he hadn't put them there.
He drank as much of the diluted energon as he could force down without purging his tank from the taste of whatever it had been cut with before he passed the cube back. Hook released his grip on his own upper arms to take it, and Shockwave saw that the scratches were more numerous and deeper than he had first supposed.
He looked at them while Hook drank, anything to keep him from having to look him in the face.
"Want any more of this?"
"It's yours." Hook jerked his head in acknowledgment, cupping the cube in his hands. Only looking up from it when Shockwave's claw hand clamped around his wrist, and the contact was gone almost immediately.
"Don't go out on your own again," Shockwave said.
Hook's visor gleamed dimly with the energon's sickly glow.