Windblade didn't even know why she was so nervous- Iacon's Sparxli district was hardly an intimidating place, with its candycane red and light street lights lining the boulevard of ring stores, sparkmate registries and other venues for new couples. Cybertron's own unity traditions didn't seem much different to those on Caminus, except a bonding ceremony was never mandatory and usually only high-caste bots could afford to hold them before the war hit.
Windblade remembered a bitterness in Starscream's tone that she wasn't able to decipher as he described the affairs to her over a diplomat meeting. It made her wonder what the war had taken from him.
Of course, with the new peace time came a cause for celebrations, including new marriages. With marriages came honeymoons, and with honeymoons came the tucked away interface stores like the one she'd spent the last few decacycles passing by on her way to her dwelling at the center of Iacon. Also, conveniently, the same one Chromia had told her about while she was looking for something to stop her acting... unprofessional with Ironhide.
Windblade knotted her digits together again, trying to force herself out of the shade of the awning. If she took just one step forward, then she'd be able to make the rest to take her across the street, and as long as no-one saw her go in she could keep some of her dignity intact. As for what she was out to get... well, she'd fly that bridge when she got to it.
Air sighed through her wing fans and vents as she collected herself. She'd made it this far to Cybertron alive; she deserved a reward for it, dammit.
Her peds shot forward, one after the other, carrying her weightlessly into the shadow of the store. She was through the door before her nerves could freeze her to the floor again, enveloped in a dim violet glow that came from the tiny spotlights in the ceiling. The windows were blacked out, banishing all natural light from entering and giving the store a basement quality. Shelves and cabinets lined the adult advertisement and pin-up plastered walls, and there were displays set up in lanes along the center.
As for what they showed off... Windblade didn't even know the names of half of what she saw. One side of the store seemed to cater to femmes while the other was for mechs, spike models and rubber valves and a thousand other toys in each one respectively. Just looking at the models made her flare with a heat that she prayed didn't carry through the air.
At the sound of an entrance a mech shot up from behind the counter at the back, holding a bottle of something with a long tube coming out of it. Spotting Windblade by the door, he threw the apparatus over his shoulder and broke into the grin of a professional businessmech.
"Welcome, welcome! Don't look so shy, please, come in." He vaulted over the counter and folded his digits together as he approached her. In the lighting his plating had a ghoulish quality to it- the violets illuminated and the creamy golds cast in a dull gleam. He looked like a high contrast version of Swindle, and their grins had the same greasy edge to them.
"First, let me assure you, I exercise complete customer confidentiality, so there'll be no personal questions, no judgement." He had a habit of speaking with his servos as well as his vocaliser, almost hitting shelves of... equipment with his gestures. "I am just here to get you the best interface toy credits can buy." With Windblade so distracted by the wares, she didn't notice the mech draping a servo over her shoulders, bringing her into a rough camaraderie even as her wings dropped low.
"But first, before I forget my manners..." He placed a hand over his spark chamber. "Sire called me Payday, carrier called me and my brother a useless strain on her spark chamber." He chuckled at his jab, and Windblade couldn't help lowering her guard just an inch (even if he was a little closer than she would have liked).
Either he noticed her tense stance or decided to get right down to business, as he brought his servo back down before whirling off towards a cabinet near the back of the store. "Now, you look like the type of femme who likes the big mechs, am I right?" Payday didn't wait for an answer, already opening the glass doors and scanning the shelves. Windblade dimly wondered how he even knew what she was wanting. "Of course, we've got the standard Optimus and Megatron class spikes- technically we're not allowed to actually call them that, copyright and death threats and all, but hey, war's over!" He dismissed it with a wave while his other servo ran along a line of scrawl-labelled drawers. "But if you're after something more original, we've also got Phase Sexers- you can guess what they're modeled after- and our biggest goes right up to gestalt size." He pushed himself back up and placed his servos a considerable distance apart for a rough idea of length that made Windblade blush. The flush of energon must have stood out under the purple lights from how he smirks. "Though something tells me we'll be getting demands for Metrotitan ones, but Primus knows where we'll keep them." He shrugged as if it was a concern for another day, and Windblade was grateful. She wasn't sure if she could keep composure around Metroplex knowing what his spike looked like.
Payday was looking at her with an eyeridge quirked, and she realised he was waiting for her to speak. All at once her vocaliser squeezed on static as self-consciousness tumbled down on her, and she tried distracting herself with fiddling servos as she muttered. "I... I, um... well, I was after something of a Seeker model-?"
Payday was back by her side in an instant. "Ah, keeping it in the frame class, huh?" He jabbed an elbow playfully against her servo before setting off down a different lane on the store's femme section. He spoke as he searched through the seemingly random jumble, "I'm sure you already know Seeker mechs don't pack much in terms of girth, but instead it's all put into length. It creeps some femmes out, I know my Felonie dumped her first fly-boyfriend as soon as the armour was off, but hey- to each her own." He shrugged again, sliding drawers neatly packed with fake spikes out as he looked for Seeker ones.
Windblade watched each set as it was briefly brought out and put back, on the lookout for something specific. She tried rebooting her vocaliser to get her question out before it retreated back to the pit of her spark. "Are there... named examples for them?"
"Well, sure, there's more than a few famous Seeker's who've-" Payday stopped himself in the middle of pushing a drawer back, glancing sideways at Windblade with a knowing smirk spreading like an oil spill on his faceplate.
"Oh, I think I know exactly what you're after." He closed the drawer cabinet and walked to a doorway behind the counter, leaving behind the sound of rummaging before emerging a klick or so later with a case in his servos. He stopped before her, and with agile digits he flicked the clasps open and lifted the lid up.
Windblade's breath caught in her fans. As expected it was thin, with a sloping tapered point rather than the bulb head mechs usually had. There were irregular bulges and red ribbing along the blue and white shaft, meticulously modeled. Heat flared all over her frame, and this time she didn't care to hide it.
"Seems just about every femme on the planet is enamored with our new leader so we only just managed to get them in yestercycle," Payday explained, seeming to enjoy the look of awe on her faceplate. He lifted it out by its thick base, letting her take hold of it.
Hesitantly she felt along the shaft, rubbing curiously over the rubber ribs and brushing a thumb over the tip. Even knowing it was just plastic, it was so similar to a real spike that she was almost convinced Starscream was right in her palm. She was blushing again at the thought, but she didn't mind so much now. "It's... perfect." She set it back in the snug foam interior of the case, looking at Payday with a barely-hidden smile. "I'll take it."
The mech grinned back at her. "Excellent." He snapped the case closed and flipped it over to one servo, sliding himself back over to the counter and running a scanner over the bottom of the case. "Now, I don't mean to come off as creepy, just throwing this out there..." He started, typing something into a small monitor at the side of the counter. "But we do let customers pay by allowing us to... use them as models."
Windblade raised an eyeridge at the implication, trying not to ogle the case as it was rung up. "I'll just pay with credits, thank you."
After the processing was done, Payday held the scanner to his chin as a musing look took over his faceplate. "Funny story, actually; last vorn we had a big blue mech in, desperate for a purple techno-organic styled valve. Now those are hard enough to get even in peace time, so we let him pay a deposit by making a new model of his spike for sale. Either he was a gestalt mech or an addict for upgrades cause, woo, he was a big one." He shook his helm, setting the scanner back down and nodding toward the door. "Anyway, about an orn passes and y'know who walks in? TO femme, all weird legs and black plating- creepy but in a hot way, y'know? She's about to place her order when she sees the new spike on display, and I swear it was like she just overloaded then and there. Never have I seen two bots with hardware so perfect for each other."
Windblade blinked as she absorbed the story. "Did they ever meet up?"
Payday chuckled, mostly to himself. "Oh, they didn't just meet up. Just a few solar cycles ago I saw some familiar plating at the sparkmate registry just across the street- sometimes I think they put it there on purpose, y'know, wedding and honeymoon supplies all in one place. Anyway, both of them were there officially getting hitched. Sweetest thing I ever did see." He gave a wistful sigh, leaning on the counter. "Things like that make me glad I got into this."
Windblade shared his sentiments, but a realisation hit her before she could show it. "Didn't you just break customer confidentiality by telling me all that?"
Payday's smile flickered for the briefest of nanoklicks, with an imminent self-flagellation flashing across his optics. He chuckled again, nervously now, and pushed himself back up to standing."Tell you what... how 'bout a discount? Between friends? I'll even gift wrap it for you."
Windblade tried to hide the smugness of her smile, suddenly thankful for all those mandatory seminars on negotiation. "That would be lovely, thank you."
xx
This fic does have a NSFW sequel called The Unconventional Day Off, but due to its explicitness it's only available on my AO3 profile.
Payday is a character I pretty much made up on the fly since none of my other OCs fit with being a sleazy sex store owner. Anyone familiar with Transformers Prime might recognise the blue mech and his new spider wife...