Title: Aerial Manoeuvres
Continuity: Marvel G1, takes place between "The Hunting Party" and "Cry Wolf!"
Characters: Needlenose, Spinister
Relationships: Needlenose/Spinister
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance
Warnings: Slash
Word Count: +1,800
Summary: Needlenose and Spinister have a quick liaison after Needlenose's final exam and before they must leave on a mission.
"I need to talk alone with Needlenose before we leave," Spinister said.
"Don't take too long about it," Snarler snapped. "We won't wait for you if you're late. We have to join the hunt before the trail gets cold."
Spinister nodded and exited into the hallway. Needlenose followed, wings drooping. He had shown cowardice in the Slaughter City simulation and would not be surprised if Spinister wanted to terminate their courtship-chase by turning upon him and chasing him away. As it was, Needlenose was not sure why Spinister had even passed him in the final exam.
He had been, Needlenose reflected, foolhardy to think that he even had a chance of catching someone like Spinister. I'm just a rookie, after all. Spinister needs someone of his own calibre, someone who won't drag him down. I know Spinister's attracted to me, but the cowardice that I showed may wreck my chances of snagging him.
Spinister led Needlenose up to the roof. The technician-turned-warrior looked around, noting the sensors that extended from the building. They set up patterns of disturbance, casting ripples in the energy field of the planet. Their signatures read bereft and inanimate, not like the vivid glow of a healthy Transformer or even the wan sickliness of a debilitated one.
Needlenose's former career had required him to be particularly sensitive to such fields. A damaged chip would read differently than a functional one. He had retained this unusual sensitivity, the corresponding sensors located mostly in his antennae, with some more sensitive but shorter-ranged ones in his hands, though they were not as useful as they had been. Still, it was easier to change a body than to change the way he perceived the world.
Needlenose made himself look at Spinister instead of the floor, dreading what was to come. Vainly, he tried to raise his drooping wings and slumped shoulders, and straighten out his slouching posture. Misery was never a good look. Well, Needlenose had known some groups that would disagree, but they were not the Decepticon scene.
Spinister's energy fields read neither like those of the unliving machines, the darkness between the stars, nor akin to those of the living machines, the stars themselves. His energy fields – Needlenose had to assume that Spinister had them, as the lack would be noticeable – blended in with Cybertron's own so very well as to be indistinguishable.
Sometimes, typically after Spinister had just startled him, Needlenose would wonder how such a configuration could be achieved. Then he always wished that he had a copy of Spinister's schematics to study, or, better yet, a chance to look at Spinister's internals in the metal. He knew that other Decepticons considered him a bit odd that way. Most were perfectly happy to have the target of their affections keep his armour on, as all that circuitry was generally messy and considered a bit distasteful to see. A deeper fear ran underneath the aversion. Without the protective armour, they were vulnerable creatures, and to allow another such power over their lives and deaths was to surrender control, something that few Decepticons were ever willing to do. Needlenose was semi-retired in the field of chip design, but his oddball curiosity about how mechs were wired and internally constructed had not flagged.
"I didn't pass you on a whim," Spinister said, his voice incisive and exacting. "I know that you have potential. I just needed to know if you could be motivated to do anything with it."
"Spinister, I ..." Needlenose faltered, unsure of what the other meant.
"You passed. We have a bit of time. We could go somewhere a bit more private." Spinister reached out to stroke one of the antennae on his wingman's helmet. Needlenose shivered at the touch. He felt pressure and texture and little else. Still, coming from a non-tactile mech like Spinister, there was little doubting what the gesture meant.
Needlenose's mind raced. Spinister had been aloof and unwilling to touch or be touched before now. Here was the first sign that he was willing to allow Needlenose to bring the hunt to a close. The hunter struggled not to pounce right then and there, lest he frighten off his desired quarry. Needlenose managed, "Now?"
Spinister said, "If you want to wait ..."
"No, no! Where to?" Needlenose asked eagerly, wings perked again. I won't be denied you, my rightful prey.
Spinister shrugged. "I'll show you, if you can catch me."
Off the roof and into the air, Spinister led the jet on a twisting course, doubling, tripling back at points, taking them to the dead parts of the city. Skeletal remnants of buildings and the rubble relics where not even skeletons stood blurred beneath them, bluish metal streaked with rust, corrosion, tarnish, and greasy splatter-marks. Spinister was difficult to track, even when he wished to be seen. Needlenose could no more lock onto his energy field outputs than he could lock onto Cybertron's, but Spinister was moving, and the jet traced that movement.
Then, the helicopter dropped down into a rift in the surface of the planet, and Needlenose knew that he was lost and, more importantly, that he had lost track of his prey. He circled, uncertain of what to do. A shift in the air currents, and the preternaturally quiet thk-thk-thk of Spinister's rotors alerted Needlenose that the helicopter was behind him. Spinister could have snuck up less noticeably, Needlenose knew, and must have wanted to continue the chase. The jet slowed and dropped in altitude, allowing the helicopter to pull ahead above him. As Spinister passed, Needlenose pivoted in the air and dragged a wing along Spinister's tail-boom ever so lightly, then dropped farther to get out of the way. The helicopter jinked oddly, as if to evade an attack, and lost control of his flight for a moment. Another moment's autorotation brought him back to stability, and he returned to his course. Needlenose resumed pursuit, pleased that he had drawn a reaction out of the usually calm and self-controlled helicopter.
Spinister took him down into that rift. Needlenose quivered, not liking the jagged metal walls rising above him. He had been ground-bound at creation but, upon assuming his jet body, had quickly assimilated his fellow fliers' unease in enclosed spaces. The helicopter led his hunter lower, and the sky vanished, taking with it much of the starlight.
Needlenose teetered on the edge of discomfort. Then, the passage widened and some of the light returned. Spinister stopped here, hovering, but Needlenose shot past him, eager to explore the place. The jet quickly saw that it was an old arena of some sort, spacious and long abandoned. The roof was broken in places, letting in starlight. The pressure to escape lifted.
Then, Needlenose steeply increased his rate of climb, looped over as if to fly upside down, and righted himself. This trick put him travelling towards and above Spinister, a decent position to shoot down at the helicopter, especially knowing that Spinister's blades were the weakest of his components. Gratifyingly, the helicopter sidled off to the left, taking him out of Needlenose's best range of fire. The jet flew near Spinister and then away, as if baiting the helicopter or threatening, I could catch you anytime I wanted. Needlenose was not sure what to expect. Decepticons tended to do things differently, from what he had heard. When he was popular and a neutral, Needlenose had been deluged with plenty of offers, but he had turned them down. What did he need them for? Still, a mech picked up things about how it was done.
Quickly, Needlenose tired of his sport, as the helicopter did not seem to be interested in running. Spinister simply moved out of the way without taking any real defensive action of his own, as if not taking Needlenose's actions seriously. Bored, the jet decided to end the hunt and flew dangerously near the helicopter. If the threat of collision did not make Spinister show a bit of proper alarm, nothing would.
Abruptly, the helicopter transformed and caught Needlenose by the wing. Startled, the jet spun, trying to shake the other's grip. He was supposed to be the one to set the snare, and now, he found himself the one caught. Spinister held him fast though, and flipped himself to face Needlenose's undercarriage. Hanging upside-down and facing backwards, he wrapped his legs around the jet's fuselage firmly, keeping himself from falling and preventing the jet from transforming.
That done, Spinister let go of Needlenose's wing. The jet was about to speak when Spinister inexpertly ran a hand across his wing-flap. Used to no manual task more delicate than holding a gun or operating a computer, Spinister pressed too hard, and his touch could have been smoother. Still, it drew a low purr from Needlenose, not from his voicebox, but from his engines, so Spinister continued, more careful and deft as he got into it.
Needlenose slowly, gently circled around the arena, enjoying himself too much to want to disrupt his partner. Spinister shifted his attention to the jet's vertical stabiliser, and Needlenose faltered in the air only to find himself steadied. Spinister must have engaged his own flight system to support them both. The choppercon paused and pressed his hands against Needlenose's undercarriage, considering. Still holding the jet tightly with his legs, Spinister swivelled 180 degrees on his waist joint, a trick of his transformation allowing such flexibility, and wrapped his arms around Needlenose's nosecone. The stimulation was enough to make the jet cut his engines, trusting Spinister to retain enough sense to keep them aloft, as the jet no longer did. Spinister did but started them tumbling, smoothly but on several axes. If Needlenose had thought that his sensory inputs were muddled before, they only became pleasantly worse. Spinister caressed the jet's nosecone, setting off the various sensors, drowning his partner with data, all of it nonsense but immensely agreeable. He snuggled closer, bringing his torso into contact with Needlenose's undercarriage, earning a deeper, louder engine-purr. Spinister traced the edges of the jet's landing gear cover, then wrapped his arms securely around Needlenose's nosecone, loosened his leg-grip, and slid into a full-bodied embrace, getting a surprised cry this time.
Without warning, Spinister let go and transformed. Needlenose squawked indignantly as he fell, getting himself together shortly before he ended up getting intimate with the floor. The jet pulled up and looked around the arena, trying to locate Spinister. The helicopter was already making to leave. Levelling his flight, Needlenose chased after him and called, "Hey, wait up! Why'd you stop?"
"Do you want to be left behind? We're running on a tight timeline. We'll have more time to catch up on this later."
"Later? But we'll be on Earth, hunting those deserters." Inwardly, Needlenose winced. He'd shared combat training with one of those deserters and knew how much of a killer that deserter was. Needlenose tried to reassure himself, I'm a Mayhem now, and I'm not going to disappoint Spinister.
"All the more reason to kill them quickly."
The jet just wagged his wings, the equivalent of making a face, and he thought, Easy for you to say.
The End
Author's Notes: This fanfic is one of my oldest works, being many years older than most of the pieces I have here. The way I view Spinister and Needlenose's relationship has changed considerably since I wrote this piece. Now, I tend to imagine that Needlenose is very, very experienced in amatory matters, instead of a relative novice as I wrote him here, and I tend to imagine that he is the more aggressive partner in a relationship as far as intimate matters are concerned. With Spinister, I tend to imagine he is rather inexperienced in romantic matters, because he's so focused on his duties, and he tends to be a very passive partner in a relationship, because he lacks experience, as opposed to the fairly aggressive portrayal I gave him here. The other issue with this fanfic is that, in Marvel, Spinister cannot fly in robot mode, something I had not realised when I wrote this story, which makes this fanfic a bit wonky. Anyway, I would write these characters very differently if I was writing this piece now, but I do want to collect my fanfic in one place, so here this is.