Come play in the sand box. (Skywarp hits on Optimus Prime. Badly.)
Title: Molest My Ride
Warnings: Skywarp being kinky.
Rating: PG
Continuity: G1, Footnotes AU
Characters: Skywarp/Optimus Prime
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): "Skywarp/Optimus Prime. Skywarp failing terribly at flirting; a bit of a divide between what 'Warp might find acceptable and what just-about-any-Autobot might find acceptable."
[* * * * *]
Everyone has a kink.
It doesn't matter how vanilla an act is; vanilla is still a spice. Besides, taste standards vary depending on situation and culture. Vanilla among the Decepticons could be as tame as pinning Starscream against a bulkhead and kissing him senseless(1), or as voyeuristic as getting off while watching Starscream beat the living slag out of his assaulter(2). The Autobots would probably faint in shock over what the Decepticons considered normal behavior, in or out of the berth. Kinks were an everyday sport, not something to be ashamed of(3).
Take Skywarp, for instance. In fact, taking him was his kink. Skywarp had a thing for transportation.
Skywarp, at spark, was a physically lazy 'bot. He loathed walking. It was slow, and his thrusters weren't made for it. He'd fly, but he preferred to teleport wherever he had to go. Spending a long time in transit under his own power meant he couldn't do other things. Flying required too much of his attention, meaning he could only concentrate on two or three things at once instead of the five or six things usually required to keep him sufficiently distracted. Transit flight time itched. He loved to stunt fly, and fighting tweaked him, but flying from Point A to Point B? Boring. It limited his ability to think without any real result.
Teleporting consumed his peripheral thoughts with calculations, projection models, and short-term planning. He whipped through null space with a gleeful focus the Autobots never seemed to remember once combat stopped. It wasn't that Skywarp was dumb. He wasn't a genius, either. He had average intelligence, overall. He just had a processor that worked at right angles to most Cybertronians' thought processes. He didn't think so much as calculate. Shockwave stole him whenever possible for work on the spacebridge. Hook sent him out to build sites to do estimations and analysis on geography and construction progress.
His warpnode took up a good chunk of his processing power when engaged. When not engaged, however, he had an excess of empty turnover space inside his head. Six or seven trains of thought could cross his mind at once, and only his wingmates could interpret the erratic way he spoke and acted when those thoughts hit terminal velocity. Average intelligence plus parallel processing capability left him hyperactive and prone to stupid pranks when thoughts jumped past his primary filters and straight into action. It gave him a reputation of idiocy, but there were worse things than being underestimated in the army. That was how he preferred it.
So, limiting himself by diverting thought to flight without reward? Ugh. Hitching a ride with others? Much better. It let him think unimpeded. In fact, it was so much better that Skywarp had developed more than a bit of…appreciation for his rides. It was something about the feel of physical movement without all the tiny, nitpicky, time-consuming details of actual thought on his part. He liked it. He really liked it.
He'd never really thought much beyond that point until crashlanding on Earth. Sure, there had been a few wistful ideas, maybe a prank or two out of misplaced energy, but Skywarp had pretty much stayed out of trouble. Until Earth. They'd all been trapped in the close confines of an underwater base, slowly going crazy and climbing the walls, and then came the announcement of the Constructicons' version of a mental health policy. It took a couple weeks for the Decepticons to adjust to airing their plans to whatever Constructicon was closest(4), and there had been the time Skywarp flopped into LongHaul's truckbed for a free ride back to the buildsite, and, well…
Put it this way: Astrotrain never willingly took passengers — but he made an exception for Skywarp after that.
Thereafter followed a few years on Earth, hitting on Astrotrain and Blitzwing, and sometimes trading ride-for-ride with LongHaul. He'd been gradually nudging Thundercracker into letting him try jet-surfing. Skywarp had been honing what he liked into a fine fetish, and it'd been nice.
Then had come Shockwave's urgent warning about an invasion of sand(5) back on Cybertron, and one way or another, Skywarp had ended up in Optimus Prime's trailer.
He'd been hurt. Like, oh Primus kill me please hurt. The undersides of his wings had been so much melted armor even before his out-of-control landing had pulverized them, and the motor control in his legs had been feeble at best. There had been a side order of agony to go with the main smorgasbord of pain. He'd been screaming from the pain when he'd crashed. That meant he'd have to submit to the tender mercies of 'Run away!'(6), who was scary enough to make him cower in a berth. Anticipating that should have left him resentfully sulking along with whimpering with pain.
Instead, Skywarp was a bouncy bundle of giddiness. The Prime had come to retrieve him from the crash site prepped with the Good Stuff. He didn't even know what it was the Autobot leader had injected into his fuel lines. All he knew was that it felt like little bubbles of joy in his head. It didn't make the pain hurt less, but it made him too happy to care.
The other thing was, of course, that he was inside another mech. Movement without effort. Oooooh, yeah.
He lay in Prime's trailer and smiled with glazed bliss at the ceiling. His slagged wings were wedged at an awkward angle, too wide for the trailer, and if he reached up, he'd probably be able to touch the top of the trailer. It was a box. He didn't like being confined on the best of days, and this was like an internment casket. But oddly, Skywarp found he didn't mind at all. The trailer was moving, rocking from side to side as grounder shocks cushioned the rough metal of Cybertron's surface. He didn't have to walk, and he didn't have to fly all the way back to Shockwave's tower. Claustrophobia melted against how nice it was.
Skywarp reached one hand up, managing to scrape a finger across the ceiling. A living mech's field shimmered across his; not dead metal, but real Cybertronian armor and systems. Tiny repair systems entwined with circuitry and wires, the occasional cable pulsing energy or a tube with processed energon circulating. All of it alive, the antithesis to a prison. He was inside a living mech, his favorite place to be. He was surrounded by a miniature piece of Cybertron at its most alive, transmitting familiar power signatures from all angles. Nice.
His head slid to one side, coming to rest against his air intakes, and his vision briefly spun. His arm wavered. His fingers lost contact until they fell against the side of the trailer. There was a seam there. He rubbed it, enjoying the distant sensation through the burn of pain. That was more like it.
A sound like a cough reverberated around him, and surround-sound Prime was nice, too. He'd never noticed Prime's voice before. Sort of how he'd never been into Astrotrain's looks before, well, getting into him. "Skywarp?" Prime asked. "Do you need me to stop?"
Stop? Why on Cybertron would he want him to stop? Skywarp never wanted his partners to stop. Part of the fun was being in motion. "No, this is fine," he said back somewhat dreamily.
More than fine, really, because he'd never tried anything with an enclosed grounder before. Longhaul had that open truckbed, which was fine, but being totally encased was even better. Why had Skywarp never tried this before? Even if the trailer wasn't directly connected to Prime's main systems, there was nothing to beat the sensation of being enveloped in another mech. The feel of tires on ground and the sense of motion that came with it was shiver-worthy. Nice.
His fingers traced the seam, idly seeking a response. The trailer had to have a connection to Prime, or he wouldn't' be able to monitor it. Skywarp just had to find out how much of a connection there was. Challenge: get his ride revved up. Mmm. Skywarp's kind of challenge. Astrotrain had tried to be all stoic and dismissive the first time, but his cargo hold had oddball bits of instrumentation it had taken Skywarp 40 breems to find. He'd mauled the sensors a fingerlength at a time, patiently fondling and licking and digging curious fingers into things until the shuttle hadn't been able to hold onto the attitude any longer.
He'd walked away the victor, as Astrotrain had landed in a steaming heap after that particular ride. Optimus Prime? Bigger challenge yet.
Besides, when would he ever have this chance again?
Pushing aside the pain, Skywarp diverted all his considerable processing threads to the test. The Good Stuff pumping through his systems made it hard to concentrate, but he wanted to. Oh, did he want to. His other arm moved, shaking a bit with the effort, and he scooted himself further into the trailer. One of his optics was cracked, but that left one optic in working order. He looked for a hot spots.
"Skywarp."
"Yeah?"
"What are you doing?"
Was there just the slightest hitch to Prime's voice? Skywarp hoped so. "Keeping myself amused." His fingers picked cleverly at a seam, not trying to pry it open so much as tapping at the delicate webs of wiring at that juncture. "I get bored easily."
"We will be at the tower in less than a breem. Please be patient."
He hummed acknowledgement and didn't stop picking, hands crawling across the floor now. The wheels were down here. He could feel them rolling under his palms. There had to be more sensors to access, or at least some cables connecting the axles to Prime's main body. In fact, there had to be some heavy-duty connectors to secure cab to trailer hitch up at the head of the trailer. Humming broke into muted cackling, and Skywarp deliberately scraped his wings on the sides of the trailer as he felt his way forward.
Prime definitely sounded wary this time. Also, just a tiny bit strained. The nice kind of strained. "Skywarp, it will be easier to take you out if you remain near my trailer doors."
Skywarp paused. "Take me out?"
"We're almost to the tower. Ratchet is standing by for repairs."
'Run away!' was waiting? All the more reason to stay inside Prime. "Make me."
A blank pause. "…what?"
Skywarp snickered and resumed his slow, rasping progress toward the head of the trailer. "I said, make me get out."
"I…" Prime seemed speechless. That was an accomplishment all by itself, although usually Skywarp liked to achieve these type of victories the, ah, hard way. Maybe he'd manage it again later under better circumstances. He was, after all, in the ideal circumstance. Skywarp shivered and grinned. Prime seemed like the resilient type. He'd recover soon enough.
He seemed like a fairly vanilla type, too. Skywarp was looking forward to finding out what kind of kink that hid.
[* * * * *]
Footnotes
[* * * * *]
(1)Megatron. Theory went that he'd run out of other ideas for shutting his Air Commander up.
(2)Also Megatron, making it the one and only time Starscream physically attacked Megatron and won. Even Soundwave had apparently felt it would be…impolite to intervene. The Constructicons had hemmed and hawed when Megatron woke up in the repair bay later and demanded to know what had happened. He'd suffered memory reset. Since Starscream had immediately stormed offbase in a furious huff, the other Decepticons lied their afts off about the whole incident. Nobody wanted to explain to the Supreme Commander of the Decepticons that his Second in Command could kick his skidplate in when inspired by inappropriate touches. Also, it'd been the hottest thing to happen on the command bridge since Laserbeak played the three-on-two Reflector/Frenzy/Rumble film on the mainscreen. They kind of wanted to see if it'd ever happen again.
(3)Part of this could be traced back to the Constructicons' open-door policy on sexually deviant behavior. Hook considered the mental health of the Decepticons to be his personal domain, and sexual activity seemed better than beating each other up out of frustration. Open dialogue and practice of said activity was much healthier overall than fights. The other Constructicons tended to agree, but their addition to the policy tagged on that they would repair anything so long as they were briefed on it first. It made for interesting medical consultations. Some days, there was a line.
(4)Honestly, it'd become something of a open competition. Who Can Scandalize Scrapper? became the Decepticons' favorite game for about four weeks straight. Scavenger could be trusted to find something to try next for the bored, Mixmaster sold enhancers to the interested, and Bonecrusher and LongHaul were fair game for the daring, but Hook was untouchable. Scrapper just never changed expression when the newest perversion got blurted out. It was a challenge. What could they say to make him break composure? The Decepticons liked challenges.
(5)Breakdown had developed an entire philosophy based off of the stupid slag that kept happening since they'd woken up on Earth. He called it Script Writer Metaphysics. It fit into his overarching theory that they were being watched. The basica philosophy was that someone out there was scripting everything that happened, like one of the human television shows. Sometimes, especially when sentient sand invaded, Skywarp bought into that philosophy. What, no, seriously? Sand?
(6)Ratchet had gotten a reputation in the short time the Decepticon jets had been under his care. The weird thing was that the more respectfully they treated him, the grumpier he seemed to get. Skywarp didn't understand it. Hook would kill for the ability to verbally thrash his patients into utter obedience, and the Autobot medic didn't seem to appreciate his own talent for it.