October 3, Monday, 4:12pm
"So, y'know...," Mikaela said, eyeing the street signs as they cruised back toward the base. "If we turn right along here and head out of town a bit, there's a bunch of nice long paved roads. Niiice...long...straight...usually deserted roads."
"...really," Sideswipe said, accelerating to pass a puttering Vespa.
"Mmm hmm... The high school kids use them for drag racing sometimes. Two miles of straight road, with no turnoffs to worry about or cops around..."
"Am I parsing your notoriously inaccurate human language well enough to hear you suggesting we do something illegal?" Oh, he wasn't going to fool her with that tone. Not after the legendary Porsche incident. She'd BEEN there when he'd gotten dressed down for that, and he hadn't looked repentent at ALL, even while Prime had been saying things like "what were you thinking" and "reckless endangerment" and the dreaded "very disappointed".
Also things like "200mph on civilian roadways", which had made her look at Sideswipe in a WHOLE new light.
Mikaela grinned, trailing her hands down the steering wheel. "If that something involves you showing me just how far you can peg your speedometer? YES."
Sideswipe laughed and turned right.
October 28, Friday, 6:36pm
"Mmm. Oh yeah. Riiiight there..."
Mikaela stopped her scrubbing of Sideswipe's incredibly dirty windshield. Who knew that doing 220 in the middle of the desert would result in so much...bug guts? "Wait wait, you're kidding, right? I mean...you can really feel this?"
"Of course. We have sensors on our outer plating, same as everywhere else. Where did you THINK we kept our proximity and environmental scanners?"
"Oh," she said, relaxing a bit as she went back to rewet the squeegee. "Okay, fine, that's different. You had me worried there for a second."
"Worried?"
Mikaela shrugged, wiggling her head a bit. "Well, knowing where I am and all that is different than...I dunno, getting off on the rubdown." For a second there she'd had this horribly embarrassing mental image.
Sideswipe, however, refused to be reassuring. "Well, not...EXACTLY...getting off...but it is pleasurable."
Mikaela, in the middle of leaning over his hood to get at the center of his windshield, backed off like Sideswipe had suddenly gone red-hot. She stared at him for a second, then laughed weakly. "Okay, now you're just messing with me. Right?"
"Not currently." Sideswipe stopped talking as a family exited the convenience store and walked past on their way back to their van. Mikaela tried to look like she wasn't having a conversation with her car. Or refusing to clean its windshield.
The husband's head turned as he walked, but for once she wasn't what he was ogling. He pointed out Sideswipe to the toddler he was carrying, smiling and saying something to the kid before disappearing into the van.
Mikaela could practically FEEL Sideswipe preening.
Once they were gone, Sideswipe continued, "We do have sensors on our outer plating, and like humans, we find the act of washing our outer coverings pleasant. It is something often done between close friends, family, and...the word 'lover' doesn't have quite the right connotations, but it will suffice."
She stared at him suspiciously. It wouldn't be the first time Sideswipe had lied just to mess with her, though usually he didn't have the patience for more than one-liners.
She hoped he was kidding. She...oh god she REALLY hoped he was kidding.
"What?" Sideswipe asked, all innocence. "Is it that surprising?"
"I'm just...thinking of all the times I washed Bee." Slowly. Teasingly. In very little, very wet clothing. For Sam's benefit, but STILL. "I always figured he couldn't...he never told me..." Her words ended in a wordless growl. Oh, there was going to be a TALK had between her and a certain Camaro...
And Sideswipe sounded AMUSED, the bastard. "He probably didn't want to embarrass you."
"Uh huh. Yeah. I'm SURE that's why." She headed back around him to the island. "And thank you OH so much, Sideswipe, for not letting a little thing like my DIGNITY get in the way of telling me the truth."
"You're welcome." He vocalized a sigh. "You're not going to finish that now, are you?"
"Got it. In one," she said, pointedly returning the squeegee to its bucket with a sploosh.
Sideswipe sighed again, turning over his engine and giving his windshield a round with wiper fluid and wipers. "Tease."
"Pervert," she said, kicking a tire on her way back to the driver's seat.
January 30, Monday, 11:12am
GearMik909: Is this, perhaps, relevant to your interests? :D
AllThatAnd: So...what...I get on the track and go in a big circle?
GearMik909: As fast as you want.
AllThatAnd: I don't do that anyway?
GearMik909: Yeah, but this way doesn't run the risk of getting found out and chewed out by OP.
AllThatAnd: Eh.
GearMik909: Oh, and there will be ALL kind of car geeks there.
AllThatAnd: So?
GearMik909: Don't think of it as a racetrack. Think of it as the area's biggest concentration of humans who will appreciate your fine lines. :P
AllThatAnd: ...I'd need a good wash and wax first. Have to wait until Bee is free. There isn't anywhere around that'll handwash to my satisfaction.
GearMik909: You are worse than a girl, I swear.
AllThatAnd: Uh huh. And you'd let just anyone go after you with a stiff brush and dirty rag, too, hmmm? Primus, I'll be glad to see a proper washrack again...
GearMik909: :sigh: I could do it, if you want.
GearMik909: But! I get five laps around the track, and no holding back.
AllThatAnd: Deal.
GearMik909: And no crude remarks or inappropriate noises during the wash and wax.
AllThatAnd: Fine... Just make sure you use the good stuff. You come near my finish with that cheap synthetic crap, and the deal's off.
GearMik909: You know, I've never had a guy be so picky about the QUALITY of the stuff I was massaging him with before.
AllThatAnd: A mech's got to have standards. Besides. Sunstreaker shows up and my finish is a mess, I'll never hear the end of it.
March 19, Saturday, 8:08pm
The drive had, as usual at the Red Rock track, been AWESOME. Sideswipe had, as usual, made it clear that though Mikaela might be in the driver's SEAT, she was not DRIVING. Mikaela had, as usual, pouted at the THUNK! vibrating through her hands as he disconnected his steering column but not argued.
Sideswipe had kept pace with the other cars for a few laps, until even she could feel his impatience. Then, when the other drivers had arranged themselves, he pulled out, revved his engine, and shot forward.
Sideswipe actually couldn't go as fast on the track as he could on the long straight outside the city, but the pull of G-forces as they shot out of the turns, as they weaved around and passed slower cars in what Sideswipe had called "utterly predictable" patterns, was exhilarating all on its own. Mikaela was grinning so hard her face hurt, when the wreck happened.
As they hit the back straightaway, a red Shelby GT500 (nice, but a rich boy's car, so factory new it squeaked) was passing a late-model black Corvette (lovely restoration, awesome custom engine job that the driver had done himself, and Mikaela drooled over it every time she saw it and not, she insisted, because it reminded her of someone she knew).
In the middle of accelerating for the straightaway, Mikaela saw the Shelby blow a tire. "Fuck," she whispered, hands clenching uselessly on the wheel as the Shelby went into a spin, clipping the Corvette and getting clipped in turn by a green Cobra coming up on the inside. All of this happened about two seconds into their future as they barrelled up the outside with the corner coming up fast and nowhere to go.
She heard the hard, clicking squeal of Sideswipe cursing in Cybertronian before he swerved and she closed her eyes. The world exploded into the sound of transformation gone wrong and whirling metal and gravity going end over end and she probably screamed at some point in there, but it was hard to tell and then she was thrown hard forward with deceleration, the seat belt holding her tight to the seat and other metal parts flowing around and against her and ending with her caged in metal and oddly broken bits of car interior.
Later, she'd realize what Sideswipe had done: swerved to avoid the Shelby, then swerved to avoid the Corvette, then transformed to tumble over the wall rather than crash into it, all the while holding an on-the-fly configuration to keep her from slamming into anything, including him.
Mikaela didn't immediately register that, though. All she knew was that she was cocooned in what looked for all the world like the worst car wreck ever.
"Oh god. Sides? SIDES?"
Then everything shifted around her, again, but blessedly slower and with the obvious intent of transformation. The seatbelt released, the seat tilting to raise her to her feet on a somewhat lumpy metal palm, and she crouched to steady herself as she got her bearings. The track off to their side was bright and buzzing with shouts and scattered cars, but at that point she didn't really register it. She grabbed at Sideswipe's nearest finger. "Are you ok?"
Sideswipe just stared down at her incredulously. "Am I ok?" She felt the all-over prickle of a scan, then he vented a sigh of relief before falling slowly back out of his crouch into a sitting position. "Your fuel pump has accelerated, but I detect no significant structural damage. Are you in any pain? Dizziness or blurred vision?"
"No. I'm fine. I didn't even hit my head." She put her hand up to her helmet, unstrapping it with shaking fingers. "I'm...fine. Really. Wow. Thanks. That...that can't have been comfortable."
"Hah! I've taken worse horsing around with Bee."
There was a shout from the track, and they both turned to look. "Oh," Mikaela said. "Guess we blew our cover. What's the procedure for this?"
Sideswipe's optics flickered, then he muttered. "Optimus and Ratchet are en route. Be tactful, he says. Sure. No problem."
Mikaela couldn't help but snort a chuckle. She fought back anything more than that. She had the feeling she was going to have to be serious in a second. This feeling only got worse when Sideswipe said, "One of them has a weapon."
"What?" She turned, scanning the crowd that was caught between milling at the wrecked cars and staring at Sideswipe. "Oh. Crap. Mark's a cop. I forgot he was here."
"Standard shell shotgun. It cannot harm me, but it may be deadly to you."
Mikaela looked back up at him, then grabbed a forearm armor edge to steady herself as she climbed out onto his arm. "He's not going to shoot you while you're holding me. And you haven't done anything wrong. We just tell him you're an Autobot. Show them how harmless you are."
Sideswipe snorted.
"Fine, how much I trust you, then," she said as she clambered up and hauled herself onto his shoulder. "S'cool. Just stay sitting and...don't move too fast."
Sideswipe vented a sigh. "This is so undignified. Can't we just leave? Human interactions are so messy."
"You all right, miss?" Mark's shotgun (and where the hell had he been keeping it that he'd come up with it so fast anyway?) was out but not aimed as he yelled up. He and several other guys had come through the door in the wall and were clambering down the embankment toward them.
Mikaela put on a big, hopefully reassuring smile and waved before growling at Sideswipe, "You're a fricking Autobot warrior. Don't be such a wuss!"
As it turned out, it only took a few minutes of Mikaela being cheerful and reassuring and utterly unfazed by the giant alien she was perched on before attention turned back to the wrecks. The Corvette and the Cobra had gotten by with nothing but some body damage, but the Shelby had glanced off the wall hard, then flipped, trapping the driver. The track's rescue team had brought over the jaws of life, but by the time attention turned back to them, they were swearing at the spreader's engine, which had sprung a leak and was refusing to start.
Sideswipe, realizing the problem, set Mikaela down carefully and offered to help.
Everyone from rescue personnel to cop to spectators stared up at the very large alien in their midst.
Mikaela held her breath.
Then the trapped driver's father, on his knees by the driver's side door where he could grasp his son's hand but little else, said, "Oh, hell yeah. Please!"
In most cases, seeing an Autobot rip a car apart, no matter how gently, would have caused mass panic. That night, Sideswipe listening intently to the rescue personnel and then ripping the car's frame open where indicated earned him a freaking standing ovation. By the time Optimus and Ratchet arrived, Mikaela's cellphone video of the whole incident, complete with father and son hugging each other and thanking Sideswipe profusely, was on Youtube and well on its way to setting a new record for most views.
Sideswipe's only damage had been from the on-the-fly transformation as he'd flown over the wall. The half-calculated altered sequence had kept her safe but scraped together and crumpled bits of his frame that hadn't gotten out of the way fast enough, as well as crunching a few supposed-to-be-internal parts that had been on the outside when he'd landed. Mikaela insisted on repairing him herself, then repainted, washed, and triple-waxed him until he was the shiniest, smuggest Stingray Nellis Air Force Base had ever seen.
A Stingray that never had to pay to race at the Red Rock Raceway ever again.