Sixshot has no interest in the size of anyone's gun, but nobody else can see what's right under their noses.
Title: Welcome to the Gun Show
Warning: Much comparing of gun sizes, tormenting a third party with sexual tension, dubcon? Nonexplicit hatesex.
Rating: PG-13
Continuity: IDW
Characters: Sixshot, Tarn, Overlord, Megatron
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.
Motivation (Prompt): Commission from Elapuse. Thank you!
[* * * * *]
In a contest over who had the bigger gun, it wasn't surprising that some Decepticons really got competitive. Sixshot was fairly sure most of them didn't know what to do with the guns they already had, but everyone seemed to grease themselves over larger upgrades. Clearly, the best solution wasn't to learn how to effectively use what they were already armed with. No, bigger was better, end of story. Let the macho size-based contests begin.
Decepticon staff meetings were long sessions of pointless Mine-Is-Bigger posturing, followed by complaining about how the Autobots kept making bigger guns, and then of course the only solution anyone could agree on was to counter by building yet larger guns. Meetings like those were exactly why Sixshot had learned to recharge with his optics on. He didn't have anything to prove. His armament and position in the ranks gave him the confidence to not give a frag about status. His unshakable self-assurance meant he could doze through at least four items on each meeting agenda.
He did spare a moment to really appreciate that Megatron's approach to the 'bigger and better' upsizing had been to sizeshift into a handgun. Overlord had nearly sprung a leak sputtering in shock. That had been worth staying awake for.
There were plenty of opportunities to nap during a typical meeting. If it wasn't the Compensating-For-Something gun comparisons between unit commanders, it was Shockwave and Soundwave one-upping each other. Those two hated each other in a frigid, uptight way Sixshot occasionally wondered about. He didn't wonder about the rivalry between Overlord and Starscream. They were so laser-focused on gaining Megatron's attention that Sixshot could have put his feet up on the table and snored before they noticed he'd dropped off.
Anything involving Overlord or Starscream had a tendency to devolve into a fight, one way or another. They'd harassed each other if they didn't get their quota of Megatron-attention, but their leader had them well in hand. He kept them pretty occupied hovering around him instead of bickering with one another. Despite Tarn's grumblings about getting rid of the 'traitors,' everyone at the meetings knew Megatron relished the opportunity to beat the bolts off someone if the bureaucracy stretched out too long. Meetings weren't enjoyable; they were a necessary evil to endure. Primus knew the meeting table turned into Fidgetville whenever the agenda had more than twelve items on it.
Their leader would come back ready to continue talking once the fight was over. Starscream would limp back at his heels. Overlord wouldn't be seen for the rest of the day. It had a kind of monotony to it. Nobody even bothered getting up to go watch, anymore. Sixshot considered the fights unofficial-official breaktimes.
Things changed the day the Justice Division took the next step. Whatever step that was. Frankly, Sixshot didn't care since it had nothing to do with him, but from how the other Decepticons were suddenly eyeing Tarn, he suspected it had to do with the D.J.D. assuming control over all internal policing. There was a wariness between the rest of the meeting table and the leader of the Justice Division. In turn, Tarn's grumblings disappeared overnight, morphing into a shrewd stare that dissected people's helms to reveal any subversive thoughts underneath.
Sixshot didn't mind the staring for the most part. He did mind that Tarn began quietly slipping away to wait out the fights in order to speak with Megatron afterward. It gave them a few minutes of privacy away from the rest of the meeting. Seeing Tarn leave to speak in private to Megatron made everyone else nervous, but Sixshot didn't care. Tarn leaving was fine by him. The first time it happened, Sixshot cheered mentally and put his feet up on the unoccupied chair. Naptime had just become more comfortable!
Unfortunately, Tarn came back. And he came back utterly reeking of lust. Proximity alerts brought Sixshot out of recharge just in time to inhale a sweltering hot wave of charged particles. They wafted off Tarn's plating, air circulating hot and fast in and out of his highly charge electromagnetic field like a churning gravity well of tightly-leashed arousal. Self-control kept the betraying energy field close to the masked mech's treads, but that did nothing to stop the air around him from passing through it and carrying the scent in a dense cloud. His craving heated the air around him into a scent-packet that felt damp, it carried so much hunger.
It didn't so much hit Sixshot as engulf him. It clung to him, a smell thick as smoke, and he woke up suffocating.
Disoriented and blinking, the Warrior Elite's feet crashed off the chair as he sat up hurriedly, making that funny questioning snort-snuffle noise his beastmode did upon catching a strong scent. This scent smothered him in a near-liquid wave, however, and Sixshot bent double as his ventilation system backfired in a spectacularly explosive sneeze.
Conversation throughout the room halted. At the head of the table, Megatron raised a querying optic ridge.
Sixshot audibly wheezed. Optics wide, he stared at the tabletop, one hand pressed to the center of his chest. The torrent of charge assaulting his sensors fed directly into his beastmode's instinct code-level reactions, and he had to manually disable his interface protocols. Evidence to the contrary, he wasn't ready to frag, and he didn't have a partner about to pounce him.
Beside him, Tarn slid into the vacated seat. He appeared completely undisturbed. Everyone kept staring at Sixshot. Tarn ignored the choked coughing and stares alike in order to primly pick up the meeting agenda and scroll down to the next item to be addressed.
Sixshot had to admire that amount of self-control, but come on. He spent the rest of the meeting shooting incredulous looks at Tarn. Most Decepticons had a bit of a thing for watching Megatron fight, but really? Really? There was desire, there was interest, and then there was the point where something should be done, because holy frag, mech. That just wasn't healthy.
He'd heard the phrase 'lust-addled' before, but he'd never realized it applied to bystanders. Tarn seemed unaffected. Sixshot stumbled away from the meeting about ready to interface a chair.
It got worse. It was Sixshot's life. Of course it got worse.
As if it weren't bad enough that Tarn started coming back to meetings charged to Luna 1 and back, Sixshot found out whom he was lusting after. It wasn't Megatron.
No, he didn't ask. He didn't even want to know. Trust him, he tried everything he could to avoid finding out, but he couldn't avoid the molten pool of charge Tarn gave off. Clamping his vents shut didn't keep it from transferring from incidental brushes of their EM fields, and turning his fans off only made him heat up faster. That particular meeting ended with everyone convinced that Sixshot had nothing but interfacing on his mind, as he'd radiated heat like a furnace until he surrendered and opened his vents. Heat billowed across the room. Starscream snickered. Tarn didn't even glance up.
Sixshot tried trading seats, but Tarn scared everyone else. He tried transferring out to a different frontline, but they were in the middle of a big push. None of the Warrior Elite could leave the area. He skipped meetings, but Megatron sent him a personal memo chiding him over that. He disabled his nasal receptors while in rootmode, but turning it off made him paranoid, surrounded by blindspots he hadn't known his sense of smell filled in until it didn't. Saturation via proximity meant the only way to avoid the reek of Tarn's arousal was to turn off his nasal sensors, suffer the paranoia, and rush to the nearest washrack to rinse off before reactivating them. It wasn't a workable system.
So he was sitting in his seat contemplating outright throwing Tarn in Megatron's face when Overlord started slag. Overlord was always starting slag. Put him and Megatron in the same hemisphere, and Overlord would start slag. Sixshot had tuned him out long ago. The Warrior Elite had a cordial unspoken agreement to frag off if they encountered each other, and that included meetings. The whole group had been pretending they didn't see each other during the Decepticons' latest military push into Autobot territory, and Sixshot would have been perfectly happy continuing to block out Overlord's very existence.
Except a dreadful, familiar scent started trailing from Tarn's seams. Sixshot leaned away, eying him. Until now, meetings had been fine up until Tarn left to speak with Megatron in private. He'd assumed it was the fights that were turning Tarn on. If the fanatic loyalist was going to start revving up the moment Megatron started shouting from now on, Sixshot was going to flip a table from sheer frustration. Why was it that he had to be the sole mech with a beastmode in these meetings? Get one other mech on his side - just one! - and he'd be able to confront the blasted idiot with how absolutely exasperating this unrequited crush was.
Despite thinking dark thoughts and holding his breath until his HUD bleated urgent warnings, Sixshot kept ahold of his temper. He had to last until the push ended. He could do this. Truly, he could. It was just charge. Charge and scent and rampant lusting desire swamping his deep code.
Since he was taking desperate notes on anything and everything in the meetings now, trying to distract himself, Sixshot started to notice a pattern. Starscream picked a fight? Evil glares from Tarn, but nothing but a faint whiff of electricity at most. Megatron gave a speech? Complete rapt attention. Overlord made a snide comment? The EM field equivalent of heavy breathing, every single slagging time. Don't even ask what Tarn's field felt like if Overlord was the one who picked a fight, because Sixshot was uncomfortable enough when Tarn's roused charge got to the heavy breathing phase. He was rather afraid anything involving Overlord was enough to set Tarn off, at this point.
"I hate you," Sixshot said in a conversational tone at the end of a meeting. It was probably out of nowhere from Tarn's perspective, at least if the mech's surprised look was anything to go by, but the Warrior Elite couldn't take any more of this. He either let some of the pressure off or he'd start blowing fuses. "I hate you, and I hope you fall into a puddle of fuel. Fuel that's on fire. A deep puddle, so deep you drown. Drown while burning alive. I hope you drown while burning alive, I hate you so much." He paused, thinking that over. It sounded okay.
Tarn blinked at him in shock. "I, ah. Sixshot, what..?" He obviously had no idea what he'd done - what he'd been doing - to earn Sixshot's ire. The other Decepticons still in the room were staring as well, but Tarn was totally taken aback. Usually when a Decepticon lashed out at someone in the Justice Division, it was a traitor scared past common sense or just someone with too few brains to shut up.
Sixshot, on the other hand, was known as the most reliable, trustworthy superwarrior in Megatron's Warrior Elite. There might as well be a giant 'Hands Off!' sign stamped on his back so far as the D.J.D. was concerned. Yet this loyal, relatively calm weapon of mass destruction had just expressed his opinion of Tarn in radioactive-glowing words…all said in a level, calm voice, without a hint of aggression.
Everyone had the vague sense that Tarn owed Sixshot a massive apology for something. Tarn shot the nearest mech a somewhat frantic look - Black Shadow turned his hands up helplessly - before looking back to Sixshot. Nobody couldn't tell what the mech was going to do next. Tarn swallowed hard and braced himself. Was Sixshot about to terminate him or ask him to pass the refreshment tray?
Sixshot stared blandly back at him. He looked relaxed. At peace. Utterly mad, in other words.
"Just thought you should know," he said without expression. He stood up, nodded to everyone, and meandered out the door as if he didn't have a care in the war. Nobody moved until his footsteps faded into the distance.
It came back to bite him, of course. Starscream might have been able to figure out Sixshot's peculiar threat if he'd been in the room, and Soundwave probably would have made the connection, but neither of Megatron's top officers had witnessed the strange little breakdown. Overlord had.
Overlord had been in the room. He'd blinked at the threat, and he'd blinked some more when Tarn sagged back into a seat after Sixshot left. The leader of the Justice Division had been flustered and covering up how baffled he felt. Overlord was immediately interested. Any sign of weakness from him had to be investigated. Sixshot's behavior would have been enough to make the fat-lipped fragger curious, but include Megatron's favorite loyalist and this was a puzzle Overlord just had to solve.
What could Sixshot say, when Overlord confronted him? "I can smell Tarn wants you," didn't seem plausible, said aloud. Neither did, "He's a pent-up Molotov cocktail of rampant lust around you." Yeah, that wouldn't go over well. The reason nobody else commented on Tarn humping the table was because Tarn didn't hump the table. Tarn didn't give a single physical hint that he'd jump on the chance to frag Overlord halfway to Iacon. Sixshot was literally the only one who could sense what was going on, and it was driving him crazy!
Sixshot glowered at Overlord and settled for gritting out what he hoped sounded like a diversion. "You do realize he does nothing but stare at you while you train with Megatron, right?" It was a guess, but he'd bet his stabilizers Overlord hadn't realized it.
Overlord blinked at the apparent non sequitur. He frowned. "No he doesn't." Sixshot snorted the way only a mech with a beastmode could, loud and utterly contemptuous, and Overlord's frown turned to a scowl. "Fine, whatever. What does that have to do with anything?"
Sixshot had to look away. "It's not the only thing he does," he muttered.
Looking back, he could have phrased that better.
Since he wasn't getting any information from Sixshot, Overlord - predictably, and Sixshot kicked himself for not seeing it coming - started paying attention to Tarn. Paying attention outside of the normal amused sneering in response to biting commentary on his loyalty. That was what doomed Sixshot. Overlord, like a lot of the Decepticon heavy-hitters, got riled up when he fought. Fighting Megatron one-on-one did more than that to him. Discovering that he had an audience actively watching him pushed Overlord over the top.
It was easy to see how frustrated charge could transfer to the nearest available warm body, even if that warm body didn't act available. In fact, Tarn standing aloof might have sealed the deal. Overlord obsessed. It was a thing he did. Everybody knew he obsessed over beating Megatron, but the mech had a one-track mind once something lodged in his thoughts. If he couldn't have it, then Overlord wanted it more. Tarn didn't show any interest, so therefore Overlord was very, very interested.
Overlord stared at Tarn. Tarn stared at Overlord. Every meeting turned into an epic staredown where they seemed locked in their hatred of each other, vying for Megatron's attention. Loyalist and rival at constant odds with one another. On the surface, they could barely manage a civil conversation with one another.
Under the surface was another story altogether.
Sixshot had been condemned to the Pit. A Pit composed of air so stifling hot and crammed with charge that he felt like a live wire shuddering from foreign electromagnetic energy. It rippled through him, triggering far-too-sensitive sensors. He'd never been so attracted and repulsed in his life. He hadn't even known it was possible to get this wound up by someone else's lust. Meetings were prolonged torture sessions.
Fighting Autobots became a refuge.
A refuge that dumped him right back in the middle of things as soon as he returned, unfortunately. Debriefings were twice as bad as regular meetings. Not only was everyone pumped from fighting and itching to prove that they'd won the battle ('I Have The Biggest Gun' Competition 2.0), but the break gave Sixshot's poor sensors just enough time to reset back to combat-ready sensitivity. That was a painfully high setting for wading into a simmering pot of hungry excitement. He gagged on Overlord's charge well before Tarn even arrived, and the two of them in one room after a battle ignited invisible inferno of sexual tension. Sixshot stumbled out of debriefings feeling fried.
"Your fuel pressure is up," the medic examining him post-battle said cheerfully. "A bit stressed lately, eh? You should take some time off to talk with friends! Spend some time relaxing in a nice quiet room. Calm down!"
Sixshot twitched.
Calm...down?
Calm down?!
Tarn found him three hours later, after most of the fires were out. He waited courteously on the sidelines for Sixshot to transform back to rootmode. As a tank, Tarn knew better than to approach a fellow tank while in altmode, especially a fellow tank rocking back and forth on his treads muttering vicious commentary to himself. Such vicious commentary. Whatever Sixshot was seething over, it had his voice dripping bile and acid.
Sixshot hadn't been happy for a while. Rumor had it that his unhappiness stemmed from something Tarn had done. Tarn hadn't the faintest idea of what, but it'd definitely earned the Warrior Elite's anger. The other Decepticons were taking bets on when Sixshot would next explode at him, despite how unnaturally calm the mech seemed during meetings.
Well, Tarn wasn't one to back down from admitting to a mistake. He assumed it was a mistake, anyway. He must have done something wrong to cause Sixshot to lose his temper so violently the Medical Division had evacuated this entire wing of the base. Nobody had died, but the renovation team was going to need to replace a lot of walls.
When Sixshot transformed at last, Tarn stepped forward -
- only to backpedal furiously as the larger mech advanced on him, a mad glint in his optics. "Sixshot, this has gotten out of hand. This isn't like you," he said, attempting reason, but the Warrior Elite continued to prowl through the rubble. "I'm here to talk with you. Just talk!"
"Talk?" Sixshot stopped short. The glint in his optics multiplied exponentially, becoming a devious glitter. "Yes, we should talk. But," he glanced around as if just realizing where they were, "somewhere more private. I've been putting this off for far too long." His optics flared an unsettling bright red. "Far too long. Should have dealt with this the first time," he said in a low voice to himself. "Need somewhere private, somewhere with a door that locks. Hmm."
People like this were why the Medical Division kept requesting additional funding for psychotherapists, in Tarn's considered opinion.
Sixshot couldn't have agreed more. "My room," he decided abruptly. "Meet me in my room in one hour. Code's 03-4119-113."
Tarn took a cautious step back. "Are you propositioning me?"
Sixshot just stared at him for a moment before bursting into laughter. It sounded more than a bit hysterical. "Me? Ahahaha, don't be ridiculous!" He turned to walk away, still laughing. "Me propositioning you. Ha!"
Tarn gaped after him. He shook off his surprise a second later and huffed at the insult. Rude.
The Warrior Elite didn't look back. If he'd noticed he'd just laughed at the idea of interfacing Tarn, he'd have probably laughed harder, but he didn't. All of his attention was on The Plan.
Oh yes, it was The Plan. Capital letters for extra emphasis on this one. It was The Plan to end all plans, because if it didn't work then Sixshot was going to shoot people until a plan was unnecessary. This had better work. He liked his quarters. They would be such a pain to clean up if he had to commit murder in them, and Megatron would probably have him thrown into a cell afterward, even if he explained that he'd been driven past sanity by two idiots who refused to just get it over with and frag.
Okay, step one of The Plan: get Tarn into his room. He'd put that in motion. Theoretically, Tarn would show up and let himself into the room in an hour. That gave Sixshot an hour to set up step two: get Overlord into his room as well.
It took him most of the hour to locate his second target. "Hey," he said once he found Overlord in the armory searching for a bigger gun.
"Hello to you, too." Overlord looked up and smirked. "I hear you threw a temper tantrum during your medical exam. What, was the doctor's thermostat too cold?"
"No, but I do need to talk to you about that."
Overlord blinked. "About thermostats? I'm not involved in that, I swear. Medical's always been more interested in your altmodes than mine."
Huh?
Wait, what?
Was that why the medics were constantly after him with something new to insert where he didn't want them inserting things? For booting up cold, what a bunch of sadists!
Sixshot pushed the disturbing thoughts away for later. "Not about thermostats. However, we need to discuss you putting things where they don't belong," he said flatly. Overlord stared at him in vague confusion, so Sixshot nodded meaningfully toward the open door. "We should take this somewhere more private."
Confusion became an amused smile. Things that other people wanted to keep hidden were free entertainment as far as Overlord was concerned. Sixshot had been counting on that. Overlord's curiosity would doom him yet.
"By all means," Overlord said, putting down Excessively Oversized Gun #365 and gesturing out the door. "Lead the way."
Excellent. Step one and two were progressing well. The Plan was on track.
Step three was going to be the hard part. Sixshot ignored Overlord's annoying comments prodding at him during the walk as he thought about it. How could he get Overlord into his room? Tell him Megatron was inside? Just walk through the door and hope he'd blithely follow right on in?
He stopped outside his room and folded his arms, glaring at the entry panel. "I don't want to do this."
"Do what?" Overlord all but threw his hands up, smiling but somewhat irritated that Sixshot had stonewalled him the whole way here. Sixshot shot him an ugly look and typed the passcode in to open the door. "What's gotten into - oof!"
"Watch it!"
"You watch it!"
"Get off me, you treacherous - "
"Pontificating glitch - "
Look at that, the simplest solution was best. One hard shove to the middle of Overlord's back propelled him headfirst into Tarn, who'd been waiting right inside the door. Two for one deal. He couldn't believe that'd worked. He'd thought it would be more difficult to trick them.
Sixshot shrugged. Just went to show that the direct approach would work, here. "You," he said, pointing at them both. "'face. I'm fed up with this slag, and I'm not letting you out until you get it out of your systems."
With that, he closed the door, typed a lock code, and punched the entry panel. Keys flew everywhere. Smoke rose from the busted wall. He nodded to himself. Good. The only way that door was opening was by brute force, and he'd be standing right here to pitch them back in if they dared to try escaping without meeting his terms.
Sixshot leaned on door and folded his arms. Now he just had to wait. This was a good Plan. He could feel it.
Overlord and Tarn responded about as well as could be expected, given how far into denial they'd sunk. Sixshot refused to respond to their outraged demands to be let out, they weren't going to frag, of course they weren't going to frag, they weren't even attracted to each other, had Sixshot gone insane? They hated each other, they'd call for back-up if they had to, let them out, they'd destroy his room, they'd destroy each other, they'd never frag, they'd rather frag Autobots than each other. No fragging, ever, absolutely no fragging, where had Sixshot gotten this idea of interfacing from? It was the last thing on their minds.
Meanwhile, the rich ozone reek of highly-charged air began seeping from the room in spurts like a water balloon springing a leak. Contained lust almost gushed from under the door. The scent made him dizzy out here, and he winced as it belatedly occurred to him that everything in his room was going to resonate with residual energy after this.
It was too late to pick a different room. Maybe he could move. Moving off-planet sounded great.
Half of what those two morons were insisting was so patently untrue that Sixshot just scoffed and muttered angry noises back at them. The other half strained his already stressed temper until he disabled his vocalizer to keep from shouting back at them about what cogsucking hypocritical scent-blind idiots they were. How could they not feel each other's EM fields? They were stuck in a small room together! Unless they had their own energies so tightly leashed to their plating they genuinely couldn't feel outside energy past their own arousal? Ugh. That would be just like them.
If step four of The Plan involved walking in there and tying them together, well, Sixshot didn't know what he'd do. He prayed it wouldn't come to that.
For now, he contented himself making graphic strangling motions at no one. Traffic down this hallway had already come to a screeching halt when Sixshot casually pushed Overlord into his room and locked the door, but Decepticons took one look at the Warrior Elite mauling empty air and fled the area.
"I think he's actually serious about this," Tarn said at long last.
Sixshot harrumphed and turned his head to glare sidelong at the door. About time they realized that.
"I can't believe he thinks you're attracted to me!" Overlord raged.
"Excuse me? I'm attracted to you?"
"Obviously I'm not attracted to you." As if that were even remotely true. Sixshot closed his hands around thin air, pretending it was Overlord's throat. "You must have given him some kind of sign he...misinterpreted as attraction." A hint of sneer colored Overlord's voice, as if he harbored doubts about whether or not it'd been a misinterpretation.
Offended, Tarn barked a derisive laugh. "Of course I'm not attracted to you! I can't believe he thinks you're attracted to me. Although I suppose I can forgive him that, seeing as you bleed charge indiscriminately while panting after Lord Megatron's heels the way you do."
Sixshot slapped a hand over his optics, groaning silently. Could they stop arguing for two minutes? Temper boiling, he onlined his vocalizer and yelled, "Stop arguing about who has the biggest gun and get on with it!"
There was a startled pause. "...biggest gun?"
Oh, for the love of artillery support. "Frag. Now," he ordered. "I'm not putting up with this anymore." They started to shout back at him, but he maxxed out his vocalizer and roared, "You're not getting out of there until you clang!"
The three Decepticons who'd just turned the corner promptly spun about and ran back the way they come.
The door creaked, denting out in the middle as Overlord hit it. "You've lost your mind," the other Warrior Elite growled through it. Sixshot snarled back and braced for the next impact, holding the door up. "When I get out of here, the medics will pump you so full of sedatives your stabilizers will float away!"
"I will shoot you in the face if you break my door," Sixshot grunted between Overlord's attempts to ram it down. The frame rattled in the wall under another blow, and he heard the hinges go. The only thing holding it in place now was Sixshot himself.
"Overlord! Overlord, will you just - stop a moment." Metal scraped metal, and Tarn's voice dropped to a harsh whisper. He probably thought he was being quiet, but Sixshot's beastmode granted him more than enhanced nasal sensors. "We'll level the base fighting at this rate. All we have to do is distract him until support gets here. My team knows I came to meet him here tonight. They'll hear about this soon enough, and I'm sure they'll be able to get a medic close to sedate him if we play along."
"'Play along.' I'm almost afraid to ask what you mean by that." Overlord kept his voice similarly low, but Sixshot shook his head at their sad attempt at secrecy. Plotting within audioshot was a mistake, but he knew Overlord had an overconfidence problem. Tarn, he'd expected better of.
It seemed that Tarn thought himself clever, however. "Come now, Overlord," he said in that mocking tone he'd perfected for pointing out errors in people's plans at meetings. "Surely you're better at acting than you are at winning."
Face, meet hand yet again. Sixshot wished he'd thought of gagging them both before shoving them into the room together. It would have solved so many problems. The horny glitches couldn't stop sniping at each other long enough to interface.
Pricking Overlord's pride did seem to do the trick, at least. A wordless noise of rage announced Overlord accepting the challenge, and something crashed inside the room. Sixshot tried to picture what they'd just broken, but the picture included what act might have done the breaking, and he quickly banished the thought from his mind. A short scuffle dented the wall beside the door, and then Tarn moaned, exaggerating it a smidgeon too much. It didn't sound right. Sixshot squinted at the dented wall, suspicious. The surge in heated air puffing from around the door was making it hard to think straight, but he wasn't lust-crazed enough to believe they'd finally decided to go at it like they should.
Especially since Overlord mimicked the moaning a second later in a crude, over-the-top parody. "Oh, Tarn, harder," he cried breathlessly. "You're so commanding. Take me, I'm yours!"
"I hate you," Tarn hissed.
"You say the sweetest things, lover."
Metal ground against metal, squealing quietly but in a distinctive rhythm. Sixshot closed his vents and tried not to inhale any of the charge particles peppering him in hot wafts of air coming in time with Tarn's thrusts.
Overlord chuckled. "Is that it? Really, Tarn. I expected a better performance." A fist thumped the wall. "After all, we should do our best for the audience."
Tarn's engine, already revving angrily, roared his affront. "I," metal-on-metal-on-metal-on-metal, squeaka-squeaka ad nauseum, "am trying to get this over with as quick and painless as possible."
Overlord laughed carelessly. "I have interest in neither quick nor painless," he said right before the door, the wall, and even the floor shook from a massive CRASH! "Do allow me to demonstrate where my interests lie."
Sixshot staggered from the door as everything shook, but both mechs inside his room were too occupied to escape. Tarn's enraged shout turned into a startled yelp. Overlord laughed again, this time dark and self-satisfied. Sixshot braced his back against the door once more, just in time to catch an obscenely loud, dripping wet squelch noise.
Tarn's moan was much more convincing this time.
Sixshot huffed. It would have been a laugh, but none of this was funny. He was holding the broken door to his own room into the frame, supposedly to trap Overlord and Tarn within it but in reality now just to preserve whatever scraps of modesty they had left. Between the steady clank of metal and the wet schlurch-slurch-schlurch underlying it, there wasn't much question of what was happening behind the door. It didn't help that Overlord kept narrating.
"Oh! Nnhh. Ah!"
"This is how you frag."
"Fraah! F-frag you!"
"Ask nicely, Tarn."
"Nngh!"
"I said, ask nice. It's only polite." Sixshot dug the heels of his hands into his optics and tried to erase the mental images as the clanging picked up to a violent pace. Overlord's rough panting made that difficult. "I can do. This. All. Night!"
Tarn gave a ragged moan. "Harder!"
"Harder? You want harder?" Metal scraped and shifted, and Tarn gasped a high-pitched sound that wanted to be a shout and came out closer to a squeal. Two footsteps crossed the room, and Sixshot almost didn't set his feet in time. "How's this?"
Tarn's answer was lost in the clatter.
Sixshot scrambling to keep the door propped up against the heavy weight pounding in fast, hard bursts on the other side. "Scrapwaste rustbucket emptyheaded - cut it out!"
"You wanted us to frag," Overlord sang out sweetly to the Warrior Elite cursing him to the Pit and back. "We're doing what you wanted, mmm, Sixshot."
He'd pay a mound of shanix to erase hearing how Overlord said his name while fragging Tarn against a door. Or hearing the fragging at all. Could he just erase this entire day from his mind? Pleasure and lust were drenching him in dense waves of air and electromagnetic energy, and dread chilled his tanks as his left foot slipped. He was losing traction. His foot slipped further, and the door pushed out a fraction. Tarn's demands for more, faster, harder were coming through the crack loud and clear. Overlord made a throaty sound. Sixshot never wanted to hear him make that sound again, and he definitely didn't need to hear about how much Overlord enjoyed it when Tarn squeezed around him.
"Shut up shut up shut up," he chanted, trying to block out the obnoxious sounds. He shut up a minute on, horrified that'd he'd unconsciously fallen into their rhythm. Could this get any worse?
Of course it could.
A familiar figure appeared at the end of the hallway. Sixshot stared. A sense of doom closed about him. The universe really did have it out for him.
He should have seen this coming. In retrospect, it wasn't even surprising that Megatron would come see what the commotion was about. Two of his Warrior Elite and the leader of his Justice Division were involved. Nobody else had the authority and sheer might to break them up.
From the look on his face, he wouldn't be breaking anything up. He wouldn't be touching this situation with a pole and welder's gloves, if he could help it.
His optics traveled slowly from Sixshot - frozen in place holding the door up, mortified beyond words, and staring mutely back at him - to the dim shapes just barely visible through the cracked door. They moved intently. A variety of disgustingly pleased noises accompanied the motions. Megatron studied them, his face falling into an oddly detached but resigned expression. It was the look of a mech who knew he'd brought this on himself. Start a revolution, build a military, deal with the inevitable, unending gun comparisons.
For the record, from where he stood it looked like the size of the gun didn't matter. It was all in the handling.
He seemed to reach a decision, and he strode down the hall. Sixshot shifted uneasily. Now what?
Megatron nodded curtly as he walked past. "Carry on."
There wasn't much Sixshot could say to that.
[* * * * *]