Title: Miners & Holes
Warning: Sex fantasies?
Rating: PG-13.
Continuity: IDW
Characters: Impactor/Megatron
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.
Motivation (Prompt): Prewar miners + "Impactor's back."
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Part 2.5
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Impactor marveled over Megatron's casual possession of light, down here in the dark, but most of Megatron's use of it passed unnoticed. He wrote his poetry late into their off shifts, while Impactor rolled over and conked out like clockwork, determined to wring the most rest possible from the hours. Anybody looking into their slot would see the big silver miner hunched over on his bunk, face lit from the tablet held in his hands, the lines of his expression tense as he concentrated on word choice. In the opposite bunk, the darkness would hold the loud, snoring frame of his shift partner, hidden in the shadows made somehow a denser black by the light Megatron held.
Except sometimes, the light illuminated Impactor instead. The tablet blared its optic-hurting blue-white light, but it was held out toward the other bunk by a careful hand, a hand ready to fumble it back into an 'I was writing, yup, I sure was' position at the slightest hint of Impactor waking. The light would blind the other miner for a crucial second, but Megatron didn't want to be caught looking by anyone. He couldn't count the number of times he'd whipped the tablet around just in time. Curious optics peered into the slot as miners passed, and Megatron seemed absorbed in his writing.
As soon as they were past, however, he turned the light toward his partner. Shift partner, slotmate, occasional lover, and friend, but Megatron couldn't identify the mech without using his hands in the dark. He hadn't been down underground long enough to hear the subtle difference between a dozen other similar frametypes, pick out the right set of red optics bobbing along in a formless crowd of miners comfortably walking along in the total black. He could, in the rare silences between shifts as handlers signed off and heavy digging equipment idled, hear a particular gait coming up behind him and know that was how Impactor alone walked.
He would learn the differences the longer he worked in the dark. Impactor's swagger would become as familiar to him as the constant background noise, part of his everyday life, and he'd know the difference between individual creaks and sighs depending on Impactor's moods. Frag, he'd know the shape of their supervisor's optics after another three months down here, and he only saw the mech at the beginning and end of the shift. He saw Impactor's optics most of the shift. Their shape would soon slide into the back of his mind to lodge in his longterm memory, knowledge he didn't know he'd internalized permanently until one day far in the future he'd glance across a battlefield and know who the brawler in the shadow of the downed assault vehicle was, despite the darkness.
Experience would ingrain that in him. For now, he was still a newbie miner curious about the details he'd felt but couldn't actually describe.
He couldn't just ask Impactor for this. Miners didn't let each other explore kibble and study the hard lines of their bodies. It was barely acceptable to sneak more than a grope during interfacing. Megatron had felt up Impactor's back plenty during their clanging, in one position or another, but there was a world of difference between a patchwork mental picture made of hurried stolen caresses and a detailed examination of the subject at hand. Or at optic, as the case might be, as Megatron didn't dare reach out to feel for himself the piece of back armor that became the top of Impactor's altmode. He wanted to slide his hand around the narrow waist, feeling out its power as if he could prove to himself that it wasn't as tiny as it looked in contrast to Impactor's thick hips and broad upper body. It was a visual illusion, one belied by what he felt in the darkness when they fragged. He had to look twice in the light.
He hadn't realized the support hydraulics of Impactor's altmode tucked into slots on his back until he saw them in the light. They were well-concealed. Megatron hadn't felt them while clawing Impactor's back during their fragging, but he'd crept as close as he could risk to memorize their location in the light. He'd held the tablet up and looked at the rough metal of a career miner, and Impactor had groaned a strangled, incredulous curse the next time they clanged. The hydraulics turned out to be sensitive if teased out and pumped. Megatron squeezed them in his hands as he stretched them out to their full extensions before a sudden release, Impactor curling over him to gasp at the jolt of pleasure.
Megatron liked having that sort of advantage over Impactor. At least in fragging, he wasn't being shown the ropes. He knew how things worked in a good hard frag. Life underground felt foreign and strange still, but the playing field was level for interfacing. He'd shown Impactor a thing or two.
Of course, then Impactor pulled out some dirty tricks of his own, but Megatron was hardly going to complain about that.
It wasn't just about fragging. Megatron turned light on Impactor in the dark in order to truly see him, but it was more than that. His hands caught on rough metal covered in old dents and dings, normal wear and tear from grit Impactor's drill backblast, but seeing the minor damage registered it as more significant in Megatron's mind. A sickening lurch of sympathy jumped his tanks, a profound rage that Impactor would never have the healthcare coverage to seek a medic's advice on the chronic ache so many small problems added up to, an unhappy determination to draw attention to the lack of sufficient safety equipment provided by the mining company. He wanted to change what he saw in the light. He wanted to force the world to right its wrongs, until Impactor no longer bore the bruises and scars miners took for granted. Cybertron hid them underground, out of sight and out of mind. Megatron wanted to bring them to light.
The sight of Impactor's back inspired a need for justice in Megatron. It also stirred desire in the depths of his systems. His breathing deepened. His fuel pump cycled faster. The longer he stared, the more his optics dwelled on how Impactor laid instead of the raw scrapes in purple and yellow paint. He wanted to get up and join him, the longer the light lingered. The tablet moved slowly down the length of the slumbering miner's body, and lust inevitably rose in Megatron mind, the burgeoning words addressed to his fellow workers turning to more heated poetry meant for private audiences.
"Tryin' to sleep," Impactor muttered whenever the words grew too strong to resist, but the tight grip on his waist and tangle of their open mouths usually persuaded him that carnal pursuits were a better use of his bunk.
On off-shifts that Megatron resisted, Impactor turned over and squinted across the aisle between their bunks. "Don't you ever get tired of lookin' at that thing?"
And Megatron, still scribbling feverish verse, smiled into the light of his tablet.
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"Impactor - catscratches"
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"So tell me somethin'," Impactor said, because the best time for a conversation was clearly while he had his partner pinned facedown, chest splayed open against the rough surface of the bunk.
Megatron groaned protest, but Impactor leaned a bit more weight on him. The low growling groan turned into a throaty, slurred plea for harder. The miner currently on top grinned, savoring his position and the power therein. It wouldn't last, but might as well gloat while he had it.
"You listening?" he asked his partner.
Megatron gathered his composure enough to bite out a sharp curse. Metal squealed as Impactor planted his knees and thrust his chest in a peculiar forward circling motion. It pushed Megatron along for the ride, which was where the metal-on-metal noise came from as his open chest met the bunk. Black hands spasmed in Impactor's grip, fingers curling. His partner had scratched his finish so many times doing that, Impactor had finally wised up. Grabbing Megatron's wrists right away when they fragged kept the scratching to a minimum, plus wrestling about to keep his grip revved them both up as a bonus.
Megatron's optics flashed so brightly they reflected off the rusty support struts for the bunk above them. They brightened further as Impactor pushed with all his weight behind it. A grating noise replaced the squeal of metal as he flattened Megatron entirely, Impactor's chest pushing him into the bunk to really give the silver miner's spark chamber the heavy, grinding attention it deserved. Megatron's mouth fell open in a soundless shout, optics flickering like a strobe light. If they were loose, the lenses inside would have been rolling back into his head.
Impactor smirked as he canted his head down to see. Watching closely, he gave another two thrusts. Optics brilliant-bright, Megatron bucked in time, bruising his own spark chamber against the bunk.
His partner, being a glitch with a sadist's perfect timing, waited until the last second to suddenly push up, releasing him in a blatant tease. Comparatively cold air flushed down his back. Megatron, of course, made an angry static noise like everyone on the mine tunnels losing radio signal at once. It spat frustration. It promised violence.
Impactor bent forward over him, back bowed to keep his heavy mass out of reach. He hovered against Megatron's back in a delicious temptation, just an answer away from covering him again. "I said, you listening?"
Legs kicked. Wrists twisted. Megatron went nowhere. All he succeeded in doing was squirming against the looming hulk refusing to finish him off. He could feel Impactor being smug at him. "Yes," he grated at last.
"Good." Impactor knocked his chest against Megatron's back lightly as a reward, and pleasure choked the snarl in his friend's throat. "So tell me this: why'm I younger than you, but I've been down here longer? We're both manual class. You should'a been shipped out to a mine just like me the minute you came online, but I had to teach you practically everything." He pushed, deliberate and slow, and Megatron's angry denial - he wasn't that fresh a newbie! - cut off in a very appreciative groan for the pressure scraping his open chest on the bunk. "So where'd you go after you came online? A library?" Wouldn't surprise him. He'd never seen a miner bury his head in literature before, but it took throwing his partner down on the bunk to get him to put the poetry aside.
"I - ohhh, frag, do that - do that again."
He bumped his chest to Megatron's back in a few teasing nudges. "I'm waiting."
"So am I!"
Impactor's knees squeaked from mine dust as he sat up, threatening without a word. Megatron slammed his forehelm down on the bunk, growling, and Impactor chuckled nastily at his frustration. They both knew Megatron could finish himself off, not easily with his hands trapped by Impactor's fists, but he could do it. He just didn't want to, not with Impactor straddling his aft, the thick bulk of him so close their fields overlapped.
"I don't know," Megatron said at last, voice uneven. "They had me in labs for months. Years. They ran tests on me I don't even have names for, and they never told me why. My spark's - " Wariness filled the optic turned to look up at Impactor. "Nevermind."
There was a hardness in his voice, stubborn denial in his field, and Impactor knew about bad history. He nodded in response to the wary look without knowing what he was agreeing to, only that it was the right response for that kind of personal junk. Mechs told only what they wanted to, down here in the dark. Digging up dirt on somebody wasn't a miner's job. Miners didn't care about each other's pasts. They cared about fair ore weights, decent supervisors, repaired equipment, and reliable partners. They lived day-by-day, always in the present, not by the past.
If they talked about it, they whispered from mouth to audio, secrets told to trusted friends, identities protected by the dark. It wasn't pried from the walls like energon from a hidden vein. People didn't come here to be recognized. They disappeared into the mines, staying down where everybody looked the same with the lights off.
Truth came out like wounds down here: hidden under the surface, hinted at by glimpses in passing, but only exposed up in the light.
So Impactor didn't need to know. He wanted to know, curious as he was, but it was Megatron's business. "What'd you do sitting 'round labs all day?" he said instead, snorting contempt. It invited a tangent into complaining about stupid little things instead of anything important. "Sounds boring."
"You have no idea." Megatron turned his head away, echoing the contempt, but his field rang relief. "They didn't have me do anything. I honestly believe they didn't even think about what I did outside of their tests. Once I was out of sight, they probably thought I sat in my room staring at a wall like an automaton."
"Walls are exciting."
The sarcasm got a laugh, at least. "Sure they are. I spent enough time staring at those walls we probably count as amica, but no. A doctor gave me a tablet and forgot to take it back. I downloaded half the infonet onto it out of sheer boredom. They never caught on that I was buying literature on their bill."
Of course the nerd downloaded books. He got off on words, Impactor could swear it. He'd probably overload on the spot if someone regaled him with classic poetry. "Tell me you used the lab's access account to buy dirty vids."
The small restless motions under Impactor stopped dead. "No, but I should have," Megatron said after a second of obviously picturing that.
Impactor snickered, and after a second, Megatron joined him. They had a good laugh imagining some stuffy accountant finding that entry.
It clicked over in Impactor's head, however. "Waaaaait, who taught you to read?" he asked. He'd always wondered, but some mechs were brought online with the programming installed for instant access like that. He'd sort of assumed Megatron was one of those mechs, but it didn't make any sense the longer he thought about it.
"A med assistant. He got tired of having to read me the instructions for every test." Megatron rutted futilely against the bunk, spark chamber clanking. His patience for questions had long run dry. "Are you done playing junior inquisitor, cogsucker? We take any longer and the next shift's going to think they're invited."
Sounded like a good idea to him, but then again, maybe not. Impactor didn't particularly want to share his partner, not that he'd ever say that out loud. "Getting' impatient?" he asked, bearing down, and Megatron's moody huff turned into a low moan.
Metal started a rhythmic scrape, this time uninterrupted.
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