Title: Harvest
Continuity: Movieverse - Aegis AU
Rating: Explicit (MA)
Characters & Relationships: Beachcomber/Miles Lancaster, refs Seaspray/Trailbreaker, Beachcomber/Hound, Hound/Miles
Content: xenophilia, tactile, alien sensuality, erotic asphyxiation, mummification-kink, umm Miles getting off on Beachcomber harvesting stuff from his body (what the hell do I even call that kink? Minor non-lethal vore?)

Notes: For Tainry - a late birthday fic. Because she is awesomesauce and snogalicious, and writes such yummy Beachcomber/Miles in Borealis, and for her encouragement to continue this verse. Thank you to Fractalserpent and Swordage for beta-reading!


Miles climbed out of the silt-bottomed geothermal pool, steam rising from his pale, thin body in the early morning desert chill.

"Want me to dry you off?" Beachcomber called over from where he was relaxing by the hottest of the pools (too hot for Miles), soaking his spindly pedes. He lazily moved them back and forth, making the steam swirl above the mineral-rich water. Beneath the steam, Beachcomber's collection fronds were fully extended like some bizarre metallic filter-feeder.

"Bro, you're so weird. You could just... you know, drink some of the water," Miles said even as he made his way through the sagebrush and chamisa to the second pool. Camping with the nature-loving mechs who made up this particular cohort was proving... interesting.

"I could," Beachcomber admitted as a school of chub adapted to the hot spring began investigating his pede components and the collection array. "The lithium and other alkali metals in this spring just react so nicely with the salts and trace elements in your perspiration."

"Whatever, dude. Just admit I'm breakfast. How could my life get any weirder, right?" Miles climbed with ease onto Beachcomber's lap and settled there, leaning back against his torso, knowing from previous experience that a moving, plush blanket of collection cirri would meet his naked skin rather than hard, sharp metal.

"And here you thought it was going to be all anal probing, all the time when we took you from your home," Beachcomber deadpanned, enjoying the way Miles snorted when he cracked up. It was strange to hold someone smaller than himself, rather than being the one held, but Beachcomber enjoyed the friendship and symbiosis. While it reminded the distiller of the connections he'd developed with some of the organics on Aqueous, Miles's sapience made their interactions so much more rich.

"Better hurry and eat me up, dude. I'm already drying off," Miles teased. Beachcomber gave a pleased chirr, loving just how open Miles was, his bizarre sense of humor. The distiller fully extended the array of collectors from the rows of tiny apertures on either side of the human, blanketing Miles from neck to ankles in a shifting mesh of interlaced fronds. They were pure protomass, swarming with nanites. To Miles's eyes, unable to see in the same spectrums, they were a shifting opalescent silver. Some were thin tubes that branched into smaller web-like nets at the ends, others wide and feathery, with tiny independently moving cilia-fibers.

Miles stiffened slightly, but it was excitement and anticipation, not fear that Beachcomber read in the response. "Dude, so fucking weird," Miles murmured as he was enveloped and the tiny cilia began dancing through the droplets of water commingled with sweat while the larger tubes swept over his body, lighting up in phosphorescent flashes as covalent bonds were broken.

Beachcomber knew that from Miles 'weird' was a high compliment. He put one arm around the human's torso, increasing the sense of confinement Miles found so pleasurable while his other stroked Miles's wet hair. Nanotubules from his finger digits absorbed not only the minerals from the spring, but even the keratin and other molecules from the hair that had came loose. Everything had potential use, even if it was only from the energy that could be collected from the breaking of molecular bonds.

Beachcomber felt Miles shift and squirm a bit, his arrector pili muscles activating in the follicles of his extremities. Goosebumps, the humans called them, and not because Miles was chilled. It apparently tickled, but in a good way, Miles had said, like when someone would 'write on his back' as a child. Beachcomber collected the alkalis, along with some interesting symbiotic microorganisms whose characteristics he was considering adapting into a special class of nanites. His systems were designed to evolve and find ever more efficient ways to use the resources around him - after all, none of the hydro-colonists had known fully what to expect on the world on which they were seeded.

This... was not exactly efficient, but Hound was immensely fond of Miles. Hound had actively begun courting the flexible-minded organic after Prime had given the go ahead for human cohort-mates as a means of further assimilating themselves to their new home. Trailbreaker was more reserved on the matter, though not at all disapproving. The aegismechs would not be able to bond with Miles as they would a sparked being, but that would not prevent them from encoding themselves as his guardians and imprinting his bioenergetic patterns on their sparks.

Beachcomber began to move the cirri fronds in more intentional ways along Miles's erogenous zones, caressing the creases between his inner thighs and scrotum, a few long tendrils lazily winding their way up Miles's already stiffening penis. It was pleasant to be able to engage in an activity that was akin to interfacing without conflicting with his distiller coding. While he certainly could find the same materials just about anywhere, keeping the fascinating human from becoming too chilled while harvesting a few grams for Hound felt fundamentally right - a way to deepen connections in this potential addition to Hound's bondweb even as Miles deepened their connection with their new home. And he enjoyed making his human friend feel good.

Miles closed his eyes, then opened them again, not wanting to miss the bizarrely erotic sight of the undulating mass of translucent, feathery fronds, enveloping him up to his neck. The movement was more vigorous at the bulge that marked his crotch, and the fronds there parted slightly so he could see the mass of tubules that were spiraled around his cock squeezing and moving in a rhythm that was anything but human.

Miles moaned, throwing his head back into Beachcomber's blanketed chest. A few of the cirri there stroked his cheeks, his lips, teasing, before pulling his head more tightly against the audible hum above Beachcomber's oversized spark. The fronds tightened around the rest of Miles's body with deceptive strength for things so soft; he was barely able to give tiny, jerking thrusts into the writhing mass around his cock.

He whimpered.

Beachcomber gave an affectionate croon, and moved his hands to Miles's hips, preventing even that much movement. The distiller could read his responses like the menu at a restaurant - he knew Miles wanted to be held still, wanted the alien rhythms and undulations around his cock to be the only movement. Beachcomber knew Miles was close when he began holding his breath, the time between his little gasps of breath increasing as the human, on instinct, deprived his brain of oxygen to intensify the climax. He slowly added a static charge to his fronds, just enough to make Miles tingle, his fingers and toys splaying with each small surge.

To Miles it was like the tingles were traveling from somewhere deep inside along his arms and legs, shooting from his hands and feet in syncopation with the movement on his cock. Then Beachcomber was wrapping him even tighter, wrapping his neck, his face, even his fingers and toes, cutting him off from sight and muffling sound. He couldn't breathe. The movement along his cock intensified, squeezing him, swallowing him. He was tingling everywhere - was it the static charge or lack of oxygen? He didn't care. If he could move, he would be jerking and writhing, but the only movement was the fronds, everywhere on him, encompassing and undulating over him him, making him feel like his earliest unspoken fantasies of being swallowed whole had come true. A final, tight squeeze, and his release was gushing and gushing from him. He gasped and sucked in air as Beachcomber let him breathe again, hugging him tight and milking every last drop from his cock in an orgasm that just went on and on.

Beachcomber was not quick to unwrap him. He continued to gently squeeze him, the fronds absorbing his sweat, his semen. Later, Miles would watch Beachcomber fuel his massive lover, watch him writhe and keen on Hound's lap, and would know that somehow, his own fluids were part of the glowing nectar siphoned from deep within the Distiller.

It was so fucking hot.

"Not yet, dude," Miles pleaded as the cocoon around himself began to loosen. Beachcomber chirred again, and kept Miles close. They sat for a time, simply enjoying the shifting dawn light of autumn on the high desert plateau, listening to the growing buzz of insects and the call of a mourning dove. In the distance, a coyote yipped a sunrise song. Seaspray, Trailbreaker and Hound hadn't stirred yet, though to be fair, they had only gone to recharge in the predawn when Miles had opted to take a dip instead. Beachcomber did not need to recharge nearly as much as the larger mechs, and Miles guessed that he was the sentry, watching over him and for rogue 'Cons.

The growing morning heat made Miles realize he had nodded off. Beachcomber had unwrapped him to keep him from getting overheated. "You need some rest," the mech said softly.

"Nah, sleep is for the weak," Miles said. "Might slip into Hound's AC and nap when it gets really hot."

"I'm sure he wouldn't mind," Beachcomber said, and they slipped into silence again.

"Can I ask you a question?" Miles said after a moment. Beachcomber wasn't surprised. He was sure Miles had a lot of questions. It was probably one reason he was not asleep.

"Always," Beachcomber said warmly, his fingers stroking Miles's now dry hair.

"You can't have other mech lovers - I get the whole coding thing. Why can you do this with me?"

Beachcomber considered the answer carefully, pausing even longer than he needed to so it was clear to Miles that he was considering the answer. Some humans would be highly offended by the truth. But this was Miles. One of the reasons he made such an attractive link to their new home was his complete openness to what was alien about them. He did not try to create parallels where there were none, and the more alien something was, the more Miles seemed to be turned on by it, both mentally and physically.

"You don't register to my coding as a lover," Beachcomber began, monitoring the human's reactions carefully. "I can't fuel you with my systems, my coding does not require me to be constantly monitoring you the way I do Hound. When we do this, my systems consider it harvesting, not interfacing. But Miles, you need to understand that I enjoy harvesting... very much."

Miles chewed on his lip for a moment, then broke into a silly grin, arching his neck to look up at Beachcomber's visor. "I guess that's a good thing. If you felt like it was 'facing, you couldn't do it with me. This way, I get mind blowing sex, you get to do your feather harvest thing, and then you and Hound do your thing..."

"Speaking of which, Hound doesn't usually get to share me while we're interfacing. He's excited that won't be the case with you."

The O that formed on Miles's mouth as he put those pieces together was one to tag for the memory files.