Title: Sometimes
Author: akisawana
Genre: Aerialbot introspection. Because that much sounds better than fluff
Disclaimer: Theirs
Warnings: Not so brief mention of sex.
Notes: The only way I don't die of humiliation whenever my boyfriend meets my family is to drink vodka. (Don't give me that look. I'm twenty-two.) Like all my drunk!fic, it's a hell of a lot prettier than my regular stuff.
Summary: Just because they're gestalt doesn't mean all five are together all the time.
Sometimes, Fireflight would spend hours tracing every detail of Slingshot's body, every wire and seam, all the little flaps along the edges of his wings. He'd go over them softly, so softly, and in the greatest intimacy he's wrap Slingshot's very soul in all the love he could muster. And sometimes, Fireflight would roll onto his cockpit under Slingshot and give up control, give over his body to his gestalt-mate to do with as he wished. Whatever Slingshot did, if it was over in moments, if it left dents to be hammered out in the morning, if it stretched out all night and left the red jet too wrung out to move in the best way afterwards, it was always exactly what Fireflight wanted. No matter how quiet he tried to be those nights, Slingshot always drew little whimpers and gasps of pleasure out of his throat, and from his end of the connection, where he couldn't lie or hide came nothing but breathless anticipation of what Slingshot would do to him next and absolute faith that it didn't matter what it was, Slingshot would make him feel good.
Sometimes, Air Raid and Fireflight would go out flying over the mountains and plains and desert sands. Fireflight laughed a lot on those trips and pointed out all sorts of things to Air Raid; fox kits tumbling over each other, the first flowers of spring peeking out through the last remnants of snow, the funny cacti that looked like tall humans. Air Raid agreed with Fireflight on the coolness of all these things, and congratulated him on the Cuban Eights he did out of joy, even when they were sloppy, and warned him gently of incoming aircraft and cliffs. After they got back safely to the Ark, Fireflight usually gave him a big, grateful hug, even waiting for them to be fully transformed into root-mode a good half of the time.
Sometimes, Skydive and Air Raid would spend a whole day in front of the TV playing shooter games against humans on-line. The other players were good, but most of them had never shot a real gun, and those that had had never played this game against Slingshot before. Capture the flag, rocket tag and some strange game involving beating fellow players to death with their own skull, Skydive and Air Raid won them all. They rarely played team games, and were never on the same team; that just wouldn't be fair to the other players, not when they knew each other's minds better than their own. Usually it was days when the weather was too terrible to fly, and they'd start in the morning warming up against each other, moving on to the humans who played for fun in the afternoon, pitting themselves against the poor shut-ins for whom this game was their entire lives in the evening, and finishing out the night playing silly games with humans who had chemically altered themselves past any illusion of seriousness, ending sprawled against each other on the floor and laughing like sparklings. And sometimes, they sat on the couch, pressed against each other from shoulder to ankle, shot at aliens and, most importantly, did not think about whichever brother had found himself under the medics' laser scalpel's this time.
Sometimes, Skydive and Silverbolt would climb the mountains around the Ark. The solid rock under his feet was reassuring as the clouds swirling around the peaks were exciting, and on the mountaintops Silverbolt understood why his wingmates loved the sky so much. Sometimes, Skydive would race him up the mountains, Silverbolt climbing and Skydive flying, the strange wind currents in the mountains and the length of the Air Commander's legs making it almost even. Silverbolt even flew off the edge of the plateaus and the flatter mountain tops a few times to practice being high above the ground where he could double back to where the ground was closer if he needed to and Skydive could talk him down.
Sometimes, Fireflight would come into Silverbolt's office, sit on the floor next to his chair, and lean his head against Silverbolt's knee. Silverbolt would listen to the quiet purr of his systems, reach down every so often to stroke his helm, and when he was finally done with his paperwork he would join his wingmate on the floor, pull him against his chest, and listen to Fireflight tell him about his day and all the little victories; Slingshot against Blades when Blades was "talking trash" about jets, Air Raid against the left nozzle of the energon dispenser in their rec room which came loose more often than not and sprayed the poor Aerialbot trying to use it with fuel, Skydive and Skyfire against Perceptor who was fussy about other people using his equipment but who also always seemed to have exactly what they needed for whatever physics experiment they were conducting. Usually, those were the days when Silverbolt's paperwork was memos from Red Alert on whatever he thought the other four Aerialbots had done that time, memos from human agencies on whatever Aerialbot had flown in the wrong airspace, forms from the medbay asking which parts they couldn't live without and how long they could last without the other ones, friendly e-mails from Ironhide asking how the Aerialbots were doing as a fighting unit, requests from Hot Spot for Blades' rotary assembly back, schedules of flight patrols from Prowl and general warnings from Optimus Prime on suspiciously increased Deception activity, or suspiciously decreased Decepticon activity, or suspiciously unchanged Decepticon activity and a reminder that they needed to be prepared for battle at all time. In other words, usually the days Silverbolt wanted nothing more than to put his datapads down, walk out the front door of the Ark, and never look back, the days responsibility weighed on him so heavily he hardly knew how he stood up straight. Sometimes, though, his workload was much lighter, and when Fireflight started talking, it was not victories but defeats he spoke of; Slingshot grounded for another week because the parts shipment was delayed, Air Raid on cleaning duty for a prank Sideswipe had pulled with a jetpack and an alibi, his own run-in with Powerglide who seemed to think that the best way to prove his superiority in the sky was to bring up Fireflight's latest accident whenever they met, the more witnesses the better. Those days, good and bad, they stayed in his office until the shift change at sunset. Fireflight didn't speak to his brothers about the little sounds Silverbolt unconsciously made when he was too exhausted to even be frustrated, and Silverbolt never referred to the times when Fireflight was curled miserably in his lap, hurting from his latest humiliation and double for whatever his brothers were suffering at the time.
Sometimes, Skydive would spend the whole day on Wikipedia following any link that looked interesting, even those that didn't have anything to do with flying or robotics or war. It was almost a game, how long the website could hold his interest, always measured in hours with the enormous variety of Earth from human culture to the way maple seeds fell. Bursting with new facts, amazing facts, he'd seek out Fireflight to share them. Fireflight hung off his every word, both their optics shining as Skydive illustrated the more exciting points with his hands. Fireflight would pepper Skydive with questions, and half the time they would bound back to the computer console to find the answers. Some of the articles came in handy, like the lake effect on weather, some were pretty like fractal art, and some were just cool like the flight mechanisms of bees. Every so often, the subject of a wiki page would come up in random conversation and the two of them would look at each other and smile, then share what they had learned with the rest of their team.
Sometimes, Skydive and Slingshot would make model airplanes, take them outside and fly them. It was better to test new flight patterns with models; equations could only have so many variables before their heads started to hurt, and wrenches hurt more. So Slingshot built model planes out of scrap metal and Skydive took apart human youngling toys for radio controllers to put in them, and they tested anything they came up with before trying it out themselves. Skydive even managed to make working replicas of everyone's weapons except for his own nega-gun, since there was no way to get the generator small enough, to test that anything that didn't end with them afterburners over nosecone on the ground. A jet could never know too many evasive maneuvers, but evasive maneuvers that did not also involve torquing your own wings were preferable. They damaged a lot of planes, some repairable, some not so much. Still, the unsalvageable ones had other uses. Figuring out exactly how Fireflight managed to get stuck in that tree was one. Racing, and figuring out what was the bare minimum needed to fly was another. Somehow, their test flights always turned into mock battles, and even the ones that were originally repairable became so much debris scattered across the meadow they used.
Sometimes, Slingshot and Air Raid would take over the sparring ring in the back corner of the training room, the one hidden behind the rack of practice rifles. Neither of them were naïve enough to believe that fliers had no need to learn hand-to-hand combat, or dumb enough to think that Prowl would not appreciate them not practicing it on other Autobots in the rec room no matter how much some of them might deserve it. They usually went when it had been too long between battles, when the tension was built high inside their sparks, when Air Raid couldn't stop pacing and Slingshot felt everyone's eyes looking down on him when he walked through a room. On the ground, Air Raid's longer arms were a liability, as it made it that much easier to get inside his guard, but so was Slingshot's mass, which just didn't power his blows enough. It was rare they used weapons, and even when they did, it was rifles used as makeshift clubs. It was rare they were in there for less than three hours, more commonly all night. It was rare the nights that Red Alert called someone down to keep them from killing each other, but at the end they always laid across each other, and a hand came up to ruefully trace a dent, and another one covered it gently, forgiveness and gratitude in one touch.
Sometimes, Silverbolt would online in the middle of the night and hear the TV playing softly in their rec room. He'd wander out to find Air Raid sprawled over the couch, flicking through channels too quickly to actually see what was on. When Air Raid noticed him, he'd give a little salute and sit up to make room for his big brother. Silverbolt would sit down as Air Raid hit the mute button, and in the flickering light of the television they would talk. In the dark, Air Raid never talked about hockey or Red Alert's latest set of rules, but about the Seekers' new favorite tactic or the rumors running through the Ark or the real reason Slingshot and he had stolen Blades' rotary assembly. Silverbolt would listen to what was kept hidden and offer what absolution or advice that he could. He'd then ask questions, what possessed him to paint the lenses of all the security cameras he could find with a veritable rainbow of colors, or why Ratchet had called him and told him to order half his team out of his medbay before they left in pieces, or if Air Raid had any suggestions for what to do about Motormaster's latest trick. They never turned on lights when they spoke; such things can barely survive the meager light from late-night infomercials; anything brighter would leave them pale and dead and invisible as ghosts.
Sometimes, Silverbolt and Slingshot would go miles out to a little meadow surrounded by mountains, untouched by man or machine. They'd lay in the grass or the leaves or the snow, whatever the season dictated, and watch the bright stars wheel across the heavens, chased by the moon. No words were spoken on those nights but Slingshot, restless at the best of times, always eventually settled his head on Silverbolt's chest, and once the Concorde's hand rested on his head, he stilled.
Questions, comments, concerns, confessions?