Title: It Only Got Worse on Earth
Warning: Making up a background, and dancing.
Rating: PG-13 (for implications?)
Continuity: IDW/G1
Characters: Soundwave, Ratbat, Starscream, Megatron
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.
Motivation (Prompt): A hilariously sexy dancing Soundwave YouTube video ( watch?v=Ck2yEE_ycWc) and a series of GIFs made by Gutterspook ( post/63629034628/sasswave-gifs-for-yall-source) led to a speculations about just how Soundwave came to be dancing like that. And then TwistyRocks commissioned me to write it.
[* * * * *]
It only got worse on Earth, but it all started on Cybertron…
[* * * * *]
To make this perfectly clear at the beginning, Soundwave had no hand in how it started. Back before the war began, back when he was fresh off the assembly line and still assimilating all the data downloaded into him as the brand new assistant to the Senator's office, Soundwave kept his head down and did his job. He did it well. Nobody had any cause to look at him with disapproval.
However, they did have quite a few causes to give him an approving once-over. The thing with custom-builds - which the Functionalist Party disliked in principle and used quite a lot anyway - was that they weren't just custom altmodes and picked programming. When a rich enough mech put in an order at the factory, the new-build was custom designed from the struts out. Soundwave's altmode pre-determined some of how he looked in rootmode, but he was put together with an optic for more than merely functional purposes.
Senator Ratbat's aide had met him at the door to the Senator's personal complex, and he'd dropped his typical air of aloof pomposity to stare the minute Soundwave emerged from the crowd. He'd been told to expect a blocky blue communication specialist new-build. New-builds usually moved in tentative spurts, sticking to the sides of streets as they double-checked directions and gave way to everyone else in order to watch how other Cybertronians moved, how they acted, what they did. The first few days out of the factory, a new-build established a baseline of 'normal' based on what they saw around them. It was why each frametype had a stereotype attached to them: they all tended to act the same because streamlining delivery from factory to assigned function meant there was no variation. Assigning functions at activation ensured that they set the same baseline for behavior and environment by default exposure to the same things.
A communication new-build should have been immersed in Cybertronian media upon activation, this one more than most. Due to a scheduling mix-up, Soundwave's orientation appointment had been pushed back a week, but he'd been supplied an apartment, a vidscreen, a console, and a cable hook-up to the datanet. After a week of uninterrupted media access, the aide expected a loud, boisterous mech prone to speaking gestures and twice as attentive to his surroundings as anyone else. That was not what he got.
Soundwave didn't so much emerge from the crowd as part it with his hips. Whoever had designed him had aimed for hot as the smelter and suggestive as a porn video, because while the altmode had been pre-ordered, the placement of those buttons certainly hadn't been. The translucent flat plane of his Cassette dock gave gleaming hints of internal components held tantalizingly just out of sight, movement visible in joint-tightening shadows behind the glass. Unlike a standard communication worker, Soundwave's helm had no blunt projections protecting his comm. array, and his face wasn't the highly expressive, mobile tool of his trade the aide had been expecting. Instead, sharp angles rose above a smooth mask and visor that only looked sleeker for the broad, boxy lines of his body.
And he moved. New-builds kept still in the background, layering observations on top of their personality components and fitting in the pre-programmed elements of their functions before starting to really fit into crowds. Soundwave didn't quite have the confidence to stride down the center of the street yet, but the way he walked held assurance that the sidewalk would clear before him. Watching him come at them, mechs did exactly that. Their optics locked on the side-to-side pop of buttons in a suggestive location, the scandalous nearly-clear glass of his chest. Soundwave looked like sin incarnate. He moved like he knew it.
The aide hadn't been told to expect, but he'd had a general idea. This hadn't been on anyone's agenda. "Er…Soundwave?" he squeaked when the tall, broad mech stopped in front of the complex gate. The only reason he got the bearings to ask was because the mech finally acted like a new-build by checking the address and glancing around uncertainly.
That visor found him in the crowd, recognized his emblazoned shoulder decoration for the status marker it was, and locked on him with a frankly sultry look. Okay, suddenly the aide's preferences for smiling partners had been replaced by silent, smoldering mechs colored in twilight blue whose visors burned a perfect red iron crimson. "Correct. Soundwave: present and on time for employment orientation."
A casual listener might be excused for mistaking that voice for a monotone, but it was too resonant for that. Like the blank mask, the level tones only drew attention to just how flawless the rest of the package was. Soundwave's tonal shifts were slight but accented every precisely pronounced, exquisitely chosen word. The aide was going to glitch and swoon before the day was out.
The aide was a minor aide, pulling scutwork duty like running job orientations for the newbies. Right now he'd never been so glad for his lack of rank. "Right…right this way."
He knew he was treating the new guy with more deference than was seemly, but he could deal with that. He really could. Because Soundwave fell into step at his side like some kind of ornament that existed to make him look good for being there with those hips swaying beside him. A delivery mech stumbled over his own feet watching them walk by. The aide's boss glanced out of the office door and did a double-take, and the aide smirked to himself, straightening up to stand tall and proud. That was right: he had been chosen to show this beautiful hunk of shiny new aft around. His supervisor could put that in his tank and burn it.
"And, ah, who is this?" his boss asked, scrambling to recover.
The aide gestured grandly in an 'Introduce Yourself, Gorgeous' wave, already smiling wickedly.
Soundwave turned, hips swaying from left-up, right-down, left-down like some choreographed dance move, and one hand rose to perch on an outthrust hip with the fingers just barely brushing an arrow button. That was just this side of public indecency. Primus save them if this mech couldn't play the fine line of elegantly sexy and obscenely crude like a maestro. "Name: Soundwave. Hired to fill communication aide position." Simmering red surveyed the supervisor from helm to waist as the mech was practically pulled to his feet by the power of those sparse movements. Soundwave didn't so much observe him as take him apart, do things in the privacy of their minds, and put him back together again knowing he'd come out on top, name screamed as praise to the high heavens. Soundwave: superior. "Please state name and position."
The aide hid a chuckle as his boss made an inarticulate 'muh' noise. Dear Adaptus, if all the new-builds started coming out of the factories like this, his libido would be in overdrive every day.
Soundwave took to the position like he'd been made for it, which he had, so that worked out so well. It was a quiet position, mostly dealing with data, but he played an important part in Senator Ratbat's media representation. Due to an abruptly missing coworker a couple weeks into the job, he also took over internal communication for the Senator's central office and outlying operations. The Senator had his fingers turning a lot of gears through the city and elsewhere on Cybertron. Security, organization, and keeping up appearances on involvement - or not appearing to be involved - became Soundwave's job.
He did the job, and he did it well. Operations went on without a hitch.
After his shift, he went back to his small apartment and stared out the window.
Someone had, between commissioning the factory and setting up where he would live, skimmed away some essential money. Soundwave had an apartment, and technically he had the vidscreen, console, and cable hook-up for the datanet. None of them hooked up to anything, but he had them. He hadn't known that they were supposed to be hooked up until a few months into working for the Senator, when he located the nearest access company and paid for the program and datanet access himself.
To be honest, he didn't use them all that often. When he was home, just as when he'd first been let into the apartment, Soundwave glued himself to the window as soon as dark fell. Cybertron was currently passing through a fairly bright solar system, and nighttime down in the sublevels was dark as the Pit. Neon burst under the overpasses when the shadows got too dim to do business in. It was then that the illegal taxi-dance club across the street opened its doors.
Yeah, Soundwave didn't move like a communication new-build. He moved like he'd learned to move, from watching out his window. Mechs from the upper levels tried not to be noticed as they slinked down the street to the open ground floor of the building opposite. They sat at the tables set out on the street and furtively paid for dances from anyone who didn't make enough credits to scrape by in their Functionalist Party-decreed job. The dancers came from every area of life: the construction altmodes who passed crate lines between their legs and let it hiss as customers reeled them in; the dock workers who could lift whole tables while other dancers posed on top; the racers who didn't win that day at the track, all sleek plating and weary optics, overheated and exhausted but still looking for enough shanix to fuel their high performance frames.
The music throbbed, deep and seductive, and joints bent as improbable frametypes gyrated without a single frag given for how they should be seen as sexy, how they were supposed to be the manual labor and background figures. Three stories up, Soundwave backed away from the window, arms raising as one shoulder rolled back, his wrists and knuckles flowed his hands through the air, and his body curved one way, then the other. His hips swayed to the beat, and he threw his head back, abandoning himself to the movement and the music. Senseless lyrics, but he felt them vibrating deep in his empty docks.
Pull out, go in
Push me over and make me spin
Take me to the height
Take me to the height
The height
The height
Tonight
Whirling, one arm cracked out and in, and both hands flung out, fingers snapping at the apex. Knee out, he kicked, bent, and slapped his hands to the floor, and before the staccato sound died, he was standing back up with one knee cocked out, ready to go down when the music dipped. Below, the songs recycled as customers came in and a new shift of dancers started. Feet lightly crossing - skip, step, tap-tap, stomp - Soundwave spun back to the window and hid behind the frame, visor once again absorbing every move and making it his normal, making it the backdrop his growing experience life experience gradually filled in the blanks around.
Take me to the height
The height
The height
Tonight
The tiny janitorial frame with the sauciest legwork of the whole club was up on a table, and Soundwave zoomed in on him. This was exactly why he hadn't noticed his datanet cable didn't connect to anything for the first few months. The comm. mech dropped into a crouch, thighs spreading in close, conscious imitation. He had to crane his head to keep watching over the window sill, but he managed to keep his balance. Humming small 'tuh-TUM-tuh-tuh-TUM's in time with the music, he let his head fall back and spread the fingers of one hand over his neck and mask before dragging it down the glass of his chest, the plating of his abdomen, and down further to rub a thumb over his control buttons as his thighs spread wide. It was a taunting, sensuously slow move. He had time to finish his version and scramble upright again to check out the window if he'd gotten it right.
Okay, good. He'd need to try it in front of a mirror, but if he could just add on the way the little dancer rose gracefully up, aft leading the way and back arching until hands dragged from knee to inner thigh and ending in a sharp smack against the wandering hands of -
Wasn't that Senator Ratbat's Head of Public Relations?
Soundwave stared. The song ended, and a new one began. The neon lights all shifted, flickering lurid colors over the illegal club. Taxi-dancing was just paying mechs to dance at tables, but the Functionalist Party condemned clubs like the one down below as encouraging mechs to defy the natural order of things. Construction altmodes and janitors weren't supposed to be dancers. Racers should stick to racing.
Hey you ran me down
Check my tag
The coroner better write
'death by frag'
Face to the wall
DJ 'face us all
Face to the wall
DJ 'face me, 'face us all~
Soundwave had never gone down to the ground floor to venture out into the street, sit at a table, or even watch from close-up. He liked the lights, the dancing, the movement and the confidence and the disdain in the dancers' faces as customers beckoned them over. He simply knew better than to approach the club. It was no coincidence that clubs like this one had racy reputations.
Reputations that could ruin a mech found dancing at one - or found buying dances at one.
Strangely, Soundwave found himself promoted at work soon after that night. Perhaps it had something to do with a low-voiced conversation he'd had in passing at the office the day afterward. Prominent mechs would do a lot to keep their reputations intact. A lot.
Soundwave stayed at his window, watching. More often than not, now, he watched the customers instead of the dancers. Some of what he saw was worthless. Some of it was worth more in blackmail than a mere communication mech earned in a year. And when Soundwave ventured down to the ground floor finally, he brought some of his new earnings to spread about rather generously, staying in the shadows and making new friends. Nice friends. Friends who saw the way his hips moved and money passed over his palm, and they smiled at him the way they didn't at their customers. They knew a fellow hustler when they saw him.
He found a new apartment, after word spread about who lived above the taxi-dance joint. The ready blackmail dried up, but the dancers still smiled at him. Even as they spread across the city, finding new places to dance, new customers to seduce, they smiled at him. They reported who they danced for, and he paid them, and they smiled.
It kept the blackmail coming. As long as Soundwave had his small underground network of informants, he could live comfortably. He could dance in his apartment by himself, arms up and hips thrusting at no one as the music blasted.
Hey you ran me down
Check my tag
The coroner better write
'death by frag'
Not bad for a new-build communication mech in Senator Ratbat's entourage. Soundwave would have felt somewhat proud of his achievements, but he didn't really think it was anything other than normal. He learned better, eventually. It took some subtle inquiries, but it gradually sank in that not everyone in Ratbat's personal complex engaged in cut-throat political drama habitually. Just most of them. This was, sadly, normal life for mechs in Soundwave's job bracket.
He might have been content to stay in his (relatively) quiet job, silently extorting more than his pay from various prominent businessmechs and politicians in the city, but the Senate did rely on elections. Elections ran on fund-raisers. Fund-raising basically did everything possible to strip money from people in any way possible. While the pledges were typically repaid in flimsy promises the Senator had no intention of coming through on, some of his funders did require more than lipservice.
"It's just a fundraiser," the Senator said at the home office peptalk when the campaign season started. Maybe his optics stared meaningfully at a certain blue frame in the crowd.
Perhaps he turned to give that same blue mech a direct look when the closed-door gala for some of his richest contributors came up. Soundwave refused to shift uncomfortably under that look, especially when the plans for the party were revealed. "A minute of a silly dance," the Senator assured everyone, optics glittering. "Something to entertain the contributors. Thinks of it as, oh, giving them something for their money."
"All of my interns are participating," the Senator hinted, and his mouth turned up at one corner. "All of them."
Hushed, nervous giggles swept the room, office flunkies and managers alike suddenly unable to meet each other's optics. Except for Soundwave, because the composed, dignified mech who moved like liquid silk had been built according to specifications that still remained a mystery, but he looked blandly right back at the Senator. Reacting would only feed more fuel into the furnace. Dancing had ruined many high-placed mechs, but not the ones who stayed in the shadows. Soundwave knew his place, and it wasn't sitting out in the open as a target. The Senator smirked at him, but doing what everyone else was required to do wouldn't make him stand out at all.
That was the plan when he first stepped on the stage. Sure, a thousand hungry optics pressed on him, drinking in the sharp angles of his helm and translucent plane of his chest. The front ranks leaned closer, all but devouring him with their optics. A few of the contributors had already overindulged and were shouting suggestions for what he should dance to, but he'd come on the stage to do what half his department had done. A minute of the stiff little routine to an old anthem, and he would retreat backstage to resume spying on behaviors these rich mechs would rather not be spread outside the walls of this party.
Then the music started, and with all those optics pressing in on him, what choice did Soundwave have?
He never forgave Ratbat that.
Thousands of years later, however, it did provide a slick backdoor for meeting with a certain gladiator who wanted to lead a rebellion. "What happens when you get caught meeting with me?" Megatron asked, optics calculating under the concern in his voice.
The Senator would find a way to free him, or one of his many contacts would speak up in his defense, likely. "Alibi dependent on situation at time of exposure," he chose to reply.
Megatron, crude as he could be, couldn't be judged by his mining background. There was a clever mind under the rough exterior. Soundwave still had to find a way to connect with the former low-caste mech, something beyond providing information and insight into the political maneuvering around them. Those made Soundwave a good ally, but not a close confident. Megatron needed a reason to connect with him. Something that brought the poised aide of Senator Ratbat down to the level of the streets.
The gladiator snorted skeptically and turned toward the diorama of Kaon he often brooded over. "Fine. Keep your mysteries. May they be of use to you when the door's broken in and you're clapped in statis cuffs with the rest of us."
Soundwave studied the mech for a long moment. Megatron was taller, plating heavy and thick, and the scars he born went down to the very struts. Today he sat in a chair, nursing the aftershocks of a crushed knee from a match yesterday. He was a means to an end, but Soundwave...respected him in a way he never had the Senator he worked for.
He was worth risking a bit of reputation for.
The quiet comm. mech took a step forward and made a gesture more flair than anything else. "If caught, I may claim favors owed to anonymous benefactor traded hands. My presence: accounted for by employer."
Megatron looked up, frowning, but the flat line of his mouth went slack when the stiff, upper-class political aide melted to the floor in a languid pour of loose joints and heated visor. Fingers delicately walked across the floor to brush along the inside of his foot, and a choked sound of shock escaped the gladiator when Soundwave followed it in a quick roll, one leg sweeping up and over. It turned Soundwave on his knees, back to the chair and hands sliding temptingly up the outside of his thighs, fingers fanning black over blue as they framed that aft and toyed in front, just out of sight. Buttons clicked in naughty counterpoint to the pulse of low music from his speakers.
Scandalized and more than a little turned on by the unexpected show, Megatron coughed the surprise from his throat. "I...take it that you've been sent out on this kind of 'assignment' before by your corrupt Senator."
Soundwave arched back, dipping toward the floor in rhythmic waves, further and further between Megatron's knees every time he went down. His hands continued up his sides and played about on his shoulders until, as if by accident, the eject button depressed with a loud clack. The glass of his chest popped open, just barely visible over his shoulders as he swayed back upright, and he chuckled when a startled rattle of feet on the floor told him Megatron had involuntarily jerked forward trying to see into his chest.
"Yes. Soundwave: versatile." Hands crossed over his chest in an appearance of teasing modesty, he swiveled his hips and sank down to sit on his own foot, knees sliding over the floor and visor intentionally sultry as he peered up at the gladiator. "Past history now available to use for your cause, Megatron. Subterfuge is more than lies. The skill of deceit is in using the truth as well."
The ex-miner and wanna-be rebel leader stared at him and swallowed hard. "I'll be sure to remember that."
That he did. Whenever Soundwave felt the gladiator - his leader - needed a reminder in the millions of years following that one night long ago, he found some music from clubs destroyed eons ago and played it. Slow and sweet or hot and fast, he took the rhythm and owned it, wherever and whenever. It was as much self-defense as a reminder. The Decepticon Cause had taken him from the shadows too far to cloak himself in dignified pretense that his history hadn't happened. It was either buckle under it as a shame or flaunt it as a point of pride.
Well, if he had it, he could shake it. And call it a self-indulgent quirk to be one of the few Decepticons fully capable of surrendering to the beat no matter who stared.
Besides, his sheer talent in dance and natural beauty only enhanced his position of power in the ranks. Nothing made him more untouchable than showing himself off and then brutally taking down anyone who dared mock him or tried to take liberties with him because of the show.
Now, those who demonstrated proper appreciation were a different matter entirely.
Frenzy did a double-take as Soundwave passed him in the hall, and not because the navy blue mech's legs were flashing in a snappy strut in time with an old tune. The Decepticons at Darkmount were used to seeing that. "Boss, hold up! You got a - " He pointed uncertainly at what looked like a sticky-tag on the Cassette carrier's knee. "A thing. You got a thing on you."
Soundwave peeled it off, read the flimsy's note, and hummed to himself. "Notice: appreciated. Return to your duties, Frenzy."
The Cassette stared after him. What had that been about?
It'd been about information, and networking. The stoic Decepticon Communication Officer might have chosen to spontaneously demonstrate a few moves more often for a certain mech after that, but he never said why. Following sticky-tags pressed to his armor as he danced expressed further appreciation of the pretty sight, admiration of his moves, and even requests for songs. These were also read and given equal consideration. Equal, that was, if the mechs who wrote the notes fulfilled their duties, succeeded in their missions, or surpassed expectations. A couple shanix or small gifts showered upon him in the halls when he got in the mood to throw in a shoulder shimmy or two while he walked? That certainly didn't hurt.
Word got around that Soundwave wasn't shy about rewarding his admirers for jobs well done. Besides, Decepticons knew about currying favor. As much as Megatron's original Cause had been to build a meritocracy, time and power had warped the faction. Those Soundwave favored tended to do better than those he didn't. Explicitly spelling out the network of secrets and favors owed would require digging it out into the open, and nobody doubted that Soundwave would destroy anyone who dared before the damage became noticeable. So notes and gifts could hint at what those who performed well wanted as rewards, and if he favored the mechs, they might get what they asked for. Some daring mechs even tried approaching him in a bid for a private show or two.
That kind of attention was to be expected. Not so expected was the way Decepticons would drop any and everything they were doing to watch in wide-opticked, vent-gaping enjoyment. It amused Soundwave, he'd admit. Having power over armed, dangerous Decepticons made him mischievous, in his own way. He wanted to see how far he could push his manipulation.
The day he took it so far as to bump Starscream with a hip, everyone thought he'd pushed it too far.
Starscream's helm turned, menacing in its slowness. He studied the officer who was, despite their original ranks back at the beginning of the war, now his subordinate.
For a second, the slightly shorter officer suffered a spasm of doubt.
It passed. Oh, what the frag.
Soundwave met his optics, threw his arms up, and popped his pelvic span in a deliberately provocative move that thrust his buttons forward. It was less of a challenge than a blatant proposition as his torso twisted around, head turning last to tear their gazes apart. He toss his helm back, pivoted on his heel, and pushed his hip out to the side to swing his aft back -
- and the side of his hip into Starscream's hand as the Seeker grabbed onto the dare as if it were a strong headwind. "Oh?" the Air Commander teased, pulling him back until they rolled front-to-back, energy fields melding together as they moved from neck to knee in a long ripple of metal and smooth plating. "You think you can keep up with me? Tornados are my dance floor of choice, groundpounder." His chest pushed forward, and Soundwave's speakers boomed the chorus of song whose lyrics weren't half as intimate as the two of them when he followed Starscream's lead.
"Dancing indoors. Advantage: mine."
"We'll just see about that."
Their legs spread, pale thighs fitting together, Soundwave's between Starscream's as he rose to the tips of his feet and pressed his aft flushed under Starscream's cockpit. He leaned forward against the heavier Decepticon's weight, relying on the fingers stroking his buttons to keep him balanced. Their circuitry fell into a low-grade sync, common systems stuttering until they picked up the same rhythm, and their energy fields throbbed around them in an expanding pool of erotic intent that would have stopped passing mechs in their tracks if the entire room hadn't already frozen into a tableau of open-mouthed statues. Across the room, Megatron reset his optics rapidly, drew in a deep vent, and said not a word in protest.
By the time Starscream brought them back upright, one hand sliding up and the other down, the sounds of fans running on high could be heard over the music. Starscream's fingertips drew patterns on Soundwave's throat and scraped over a white thigh. Hands gripped in front of himself, Soundwave peered coyly over his shoulder at the Seeker and worked their thighs and hips together in a tight drop and figure-eight from side to side. Energy fields in perfect sync, they moved as one. The Seeker slid back, wings flexing up in a shamelessly luxurious stretch to a long note at the end of the song while his hands trailed around to stroke down his partner's back. Soundwave's hips moved just as lazily to one side, and the music hit one last quick series of loud beats.
Starscream stepped sharply forward, whirling to put his back to Soundwave right as the beat seemed to yank the boxy mech into him, and those blue hips snapped to the side and around to grind against bright red. One hand slapped back onto that red aft in a resounding smack, and then -
- and then they went their separate ways across the room as if nothing had happened.
"What…I…" Skywarp gaped at his wingleader, mouth moving but words failing to connect in his mind.
Rumble had less of a problem, but he was more uneasy about confronting the mech who carried him around in his chest. "Uh, boss? What was that?"
Starscream and Soundwave looked at their respective teams. They glanced at each other. Both of them shook their heads in mutual exasperation at the lack of processing power on display.
"It's called dancing, you nitwick," Starscream said irritably. "You've seen it before. Get over it."
Soundwave didn't bother acknowledging his Cassette's hesitant question. He returned to work. Absolutely no reply was given to questions about the impromptu show. Starscream shot anyone who asked. When someone finally gathered the wits to look, Megatron didn't appear to have even seen what his two top officers had just done. Background music from Soundwave wasn't unusual, and even an innuendo-laden song crackling with electricity that'd been connected cables away from transmitting back and forth in public hadn't seemed to shift the Supreme Commander's attention from his work.
Everyone else couldn't drag their minds out of their interfacing equipment, and Megatron didn't have a fan spinning? What did his fuel pump move through his tubes, liquid nitrogen?!
He never reacted. Not then, and not later.
Not the time after that, either. Or the one after that.
Although if anyone had been able to keep from panting and cheering, they might have noticed that Megatron kept his Second and Third on increasingly short leashes. They were never far from his side as the war progressed. The Air Commander always returned to land beside him like a falcon returning to his handler. Soundwave stayed in the shadows at his shoulder, observant and ever-present. Call it prudence, distrust, or chain of command, but he kept them close. He stood ahead of and between them.
Megatron represented the Cause. He was the Decepticon Supreme Commander and living ideal. The optics of every Decepticon rested on him.
But if the spotlight shifted off their leader every once and a while, at least he had a good seat to watch the show.
[* * * * *]
[ A/N: It really did get worse on Earth. Turns out that Soundwave liked hip-hop music, and trapping Starscream in an underwater base meant that he had bucketloads of nervous energy to get rid of.
Commissioned by TwistyRocks! Thank you! ^_^ ]