Tyrant of the Seraglio

by Bibliotecaria.D

In which Megatron wishes Optimus were less enthusiastic a harem slave.

3. Pt 3: Guard

Title: Tyrant of the Seraglio, Pt. 3: Guard

Warning: READ THE WARNINGS, PLEASE

BDSM (dominance/submission, slavery)

Coercion

Mutilation/Gore

Memos

Rating: NC-17

Continuity: IDW/G1 (AU)

Characters: Soundwave, Megatron, Optimus, Skywarp, Breakdown, Brawl

Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

Motivation (Prompt): Brawl – "dropped connection"

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From TFWiki –
vorn = 83 years

deca-vorn = 8.3 years

stellar cycle = ~7.5 months

orn = 1 Cybertron day

joor = 6 hours
cycle = 1.25 hours
breem = 8.3 minutes
klik = 1.2 minutes

mechanometer ~ meter

kil ~ kilometer

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[* * * * *]

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Blast Off was a dead mech. Lousy fragger didn't know it yet, but when Brawl caught up with him…

Brawl stormed through the halls like a - a - uh, stormy thing. Slag, he didn't know. All he knew was that he was on-shift again after a two-cycle break, and when he caught up with that sad excuse for a teammate, he was going to beat basic courtesy through his thick head. Brawl had had it up to his turret mount with Blast Off dumping duty shifts on him!

Yes, Blast Off had some issues. Like, a lot. Like, all of Swindle's copies of Galactic Purchasing Guide: Guns & Ammo Edition combined. That could probably be said of all the Combaticons, really, but Blast Off was six kinds of special just on his own. Yeah, well, Brawl was sick of it. He understood it, but he was sick of it.

Of course, giving him a piece of his mind about things would be fairly impossible. Slagging shuttle's comm. signature had dropped off the network, and he was long gone from the building by now. If he came back in time for his next shift, they'd still be missing each other by breems. Brawl wouldn't be able to catch up to him for orns, at this rate, and even he wasn't dumb enough to think Blast Off would so much as give him the time of day. It'd be a minor miracle if he could get within shouting distance of the shuttle.

Blast Off made Onslaught look positively clingy when it came to physical contact and actually talking to people, and the Combaticon leader had a habit of avoiding people he didn't want to see. He just sort of…spammed them with memos. Dozens of memos. It was like a memo-barrage on days Onslaught didn't want to talk, and Primus help a mech who had to deal with him in person on those days.

Brawl, Swindle, and Vortex had put together an interpretation spreadsheet for Onslaught's various grunts for those days. Also, a map of allowable physical proximity depending on the tone of the grunts. It was a communication guide for the surly and terminally stuck-up. Swindle sold copies to whatever city district Onslaught was inflicted on that deca-vorn, and it sold well.

Blast Off? Onslaught was like Blast Off Lite. At least Onslaught deigned to send memos or grunt. Blast Off just sort of took one look at a mech and dismissed him from his world. After that, good luck trying to get the shuttle's attention ever again. He was more likely to take off for orbit than allow anyone within a fifteen mechanometer radius, and that was on a good day.

It sucked atmosphere being gestalt-linked to a couple of loose screws. Especially when Brawl had to work with one of them on an daily basis. Every orn, it was a crapshoot whether Blast Off would finish his slagging shift or just randomly take off because he thought guard duty beneath him today. It was never consistent, and slag if Brawl knew what would set the fragger off. All he knew was that the shift roster pinged him out of recharge because he was suddenly back on-shift two cycles after finally getting off-shift.

Shuttle or not, Blast Off wouldn't be able to handle an angry tank on a rampage. Although, okay, it wasn't like Brawl didn't know he'd calm down after a cycle or two on-shift. He had a short temper, but not a long one. By the time Blast Off meandered back from wherever he'd vanished to, Brawl would probably settle for some grumbling and ill-tempered muttering.

Brawl rounded a corner and continued, uh, storming. Like a stormtrooper? No, wait, that wasn't right. Eh, not important. He decided to start practicing his muttering at an appropriately loud decibel - just under a shout - as he stormed. Blast Off was gonna get it. Dead mech walking. Flying? Probably a better bet. Blast Off didn't walk in orbit. Heh, funny image, that.

The fragger would clock in early, at least. He usually didn't make Brawl do two full shifts in a row. Not that it really made up for buggering off in the first place, but being gestalt-linked to each other meant Blast Off sometimes remembered to feel guilty later. Well, maybe not 'guilty,' per se. More along the lines of 'inclined to placate the angry tank who occasionally linked into his very circuitry.'

Although if the link-up thing were true more often nowadays, Blast Off might not have been such an inconsiderate bastard in the first place. He'd been almost tolerable back on Earth, back in the days Bruticus combined every other week for combat. The Combaticons had all been closer, not scattered across a planet and put on separate duties that kept them apart for stellar cycles at a time. Swindle and Vortex had been more controlled because Onslaught rode their afts about teamwork, and Blast Off had sometimes even spoken to Brawl outside of combat, and -

- and it didn't really matter anymore. The war was over. Onslaught did city management and municipal plans. Swindle had more businesses than common sense. Vortex - eh, who knew what he did these days. Blast Off was theoretically a harem guard, but more like an occasional bystander to actual duty.

And despite what he'd thought about all this before going into peace, Brawl didn't really miss them.

Reality check: Brawl liked routine. He loved combat - don't get him wrong, it was fun! - but routine was predictable. He liked predictable. Safe was novel as well, and kind of a welcome change from risking his life following somebody else's orders. He wasn't the smartest 'bot on Cybertron. He was just smart enough to know he wasn't all that smart. In war, that meant he was the grunt who followed orders, not thought them up. Outside of war, that meant he had a thing for schedules and sticking to them.

Compared to the other Combaticons, that made him the one with simple needs. Onslaught needed things to think about. Vortex needed things to poke at. Swindle needed things to sell. Blast Off needed…who the slag knew. Things to flounce about, or read, maybe. Brawl just needed to be told what to do and when. A steady paycheck was nice. Time off to goof around on the datanet, start a fight or two in the bar, and sluff around in his quarters was all he really wanted out of life.

Stability was something he'd briefly gotten from Bruticus, but the war was over. Brawl had come to the conclusion that he didn't want war. He didn't even want his unit back together, because he didn't miss them. He just wanted a place to work, a set schedule, and good times during his time off.

That, and a fellow guard who wasn't a total aft out of the blue. "Seriously, Blast Off. What the frag?" Brawl did his best grumbling while going to work. Usually because going to work was his biggest grievance. "It's my rusted off-shift. You know it's my off-shift. Then you check the frag outta here like it's no big deal, but the roster's pingin' me on auto and you know I'm recharging 'cause tomorrow's my long shift, and what's this slag?"

That last grumble was more like an actual question. Not much of a question, to be honest, but Vortex was the interrogator of the group. Brawl just did walking into the middle of things. Also: shooting. He added the occasional fistfight or grenade to spice things up, but questions? Not really his area of expertise. But since Brawl already knew what this slag was, it was mostly just an announcement of his presence: Brawl is here. Start looking like you're guilty of stuff.

Breakdown took his cue like a pro. He did the guilty look like he'd actually done something wrong.

Which was stupid, because all he'd done was mess around with Soundwave. "Aw, c'mon, again?" Grumble, grumble. Brawl, er, not-stormed down the hall toward the smaller Decepticon. "Don'tcha ever get bored with hittin' somebody who's already down?" he snapped at the Stunticon. Anger had already lost most of its burn, oddly enough. He could never figure out why he couldn't stay angry longer.

Annoyance had replaced the anger. Everybody had taken a potshot at Soundwave at one time or another, but Brawl didn't care. He just didn't like Breakdown. Stupid Stunticons got to stay together, but nooo, not the Combaticons. The Combaticons got spread out across the whole Primus-fragged world because, outside of combat, the other Combaticons were as reliable as HunGrr standing watch over an energon refinery. So no more Bruticus, because Bruticus was dangerous when Onslaught started his plotting. Therefore no more actual team, because what were the Combaticons without Bruticus?

All of which left Brawl standing guard by himself while Blast Off ran off to do whatever he wanted. And, just to rub it in, the Stunticons' resident paranoid loser showed up to make trouble on his watch.

Breakdown shifted nervously, never quite meeting his optics and already looking for a quick exit. What a twitchy car. At least Swindle only got twitchy when his latest stash of illegal swag got confiscated. "H-he's not down. Not yet." A brief flicker of optics, like the little 'bot wanted to be defiant and couldn't quite manage it. "I'm just making sure he won't, um. Get back up."

Brawl gave him a black look, making sure he could see him watching. The twitchiness worsened. "All you gotta do is give him an order, and he won't get up again. Like, y'know, ever."

He knew that wasn't what Breakdown meant, but he'd been putting up with Breakdown's obsessive slag since he'd gotten assigned to the harem. The job was kind of, uh, required because of the loyalty programming, but aside from all the fiddly little rules he'd had to learn, it was a cushy gig. Brawl liked it most days. Good schedule, decent quarters in the back wing of the same building, and the occasional day off when Onslaught remembered he was supposed to be on the roster, too.

Then there were the days when Blast Off blew the schedule off completely, and Stunties showed up. Brawl was in no mood for this slag today. The car shuffled his feet, and Brawl just watched. He could see the Stunticon's optics moving, searching for an escape, but he deliberately stood in the way. In this hallway, there was the choice of a window, the harem entrance, or a wall of Brawl. Choose wisely, fragger.

Soundwave knelt there, shaking hard enough to rattle his chin in Breakdown's hand. Even if Brawl didn't know that Breakdown had a weird fixation on blinding the slave, he'd have been able to see what was going on. Soundwave's visor had been discarded, exposing the little sensor bulbs - over half of which were now shattered and dead. A silvery trickle of repair nannies leaked steadily out of the underlying socketboard, swarming the new damage. Wouldn't fix them, though; tiny shards of glass decorated Soundwave's shoulders and the floor under his knees. Repair nannies could fix cracked glass, but they couldn't generate new bulbs.

Shame about that. Soundwave was gonna lose depth perception soon if Breakdown kept popping optic bulbs. Brawl didn't particularly care if Soundwave was deaf, blind, mute, and limbless, except that meant he'd have to do even more work. Brawl liked his routine. Every time somebody screwed with the slave, that messed up his schedule.

Watching deepened to a glare. Brawl was fed up with this shift already, and he'd only been on duty three breems. No slagging Stuntie was gonna get in his way tonight. "Look, you. He ain't gonna suddenly get loose and stalk you." Oowhee, lookit him twitch. Brawl could of phrased that better, he could tell already. "Tell him to keep his head down around you and call it quits. Really. This is gettin' crazy."

More so than normal for a Stunticon, but Brawl had enough tact not to say that out loud. Trying to reason with a crazy 'bot wasn't the greatest plan, but starting a fight with Stunties was like stepping on an anthill: the little things got everywhere and were as annoying as a rust infection. In fact, the more Brawl thought about it, the more irritating he found the whole deal. Always the same! Soundwave got his aft kicked by anyone who wandered by, and then Brawl had to pick up the slack because Blast Off took off for reasons unknown, and frag them all. Why did Brawl end up with the short end of the stick every time?

Breakdown mumbled something in the direction of the floor, but the hand on Soundwave's face had tightened to a clamp. The slave's hands were clenched into shaking fists pressed to his own thighs, and the remaining bulbs were flaring erratically. Right. Deaf and sensor-blind. Probably didn't have a clue what was happening or who was there, since Brawl was standing on his blind side.

"Every time I come out here, there's a mess," the Combaticon complained, picking his way forward. Stepping in bulb glass was gross. It was kind of…squinchy. "He's always a blasted wreck after you're done with him, too. Then I have to do his job, and why the slag should I do a slave's work? That's why we got a slave." Brawl hated fetching and carrying. He gave the tray of highgrade on the floor a peeved look. If he had to do refreshment duty on top of guard duty, Blast Off was going to get a kick up the afterburners.

The tray at least explained why Blast Off had taken off for parts unknown. Soundwave didn't leave the harem unless he was ordered out, and…yup, when Brawl queried the in-building datanet, a time block in the harem came up as reserved. Blast Off hated guard duty during reserved times. The walls between the entry room and the harem proper were thin. It didn't bother Brawl, but Blast Off was kind of a prude. He said it was because he wasn't a voyeur, but Brawl thought he was just uncomfortable hearing mechs get what he couldn't have.

The thin walls were also the reason Swindle wasn't allowed on guard duty anymore. One too many sound recordings turned up on the market. Greedy son of a Toyota didn't know discretion unless it hit him upside the head with a bag of credits. Onslaught would have stopped him, but Onslaught was always busy with other stuff halfway around Cybertron now. He only stood guard seven or eight times a stellar cycle, all told, because that stupid loyalty programming could only be tweaked so far. Starscream had managed to change Shockwave's programming enough that the Combaticons didn't have to obey Megatron anymore, but they were still compelled to keep him 'safe.' At least one of them had to stand guard on him at all times, or the programming started to spaz.

But only Blast Off and Brawl didn't try pushing what they could do under that guideline. Brawl didn't care enough, and Blast Off was too slagging uptight. Onslaught plotted, but he was kept too busy to do much these days. Swindle had tried - well, he'd tried a lot of stupid things. Recordings, vids, even a tactile scan. He'd nearly gotten himself terminated when he'd been caught selling intimate pictures of Optimus. And Vortex? A harem guard? Nobody was that stupid.

Leaving Brawl to cover everybody's shifts, because nobody else could be trusted. Even Blast Off, because Blast Off took off. Schedule said 'Blast Off,' but here Brawl was to save the day. Again.

Oh, well. It had a strange routine to it, and at least nobody was shooting at him.

Yet, anyway. He gave Breakdown another dirty look. "Well?"

Mutter mutter mumble.

"Aw, gimme a break," Brawl growled, storming forward like a tank who'd had it up to his treads with this slag. Yes, exactly like that. Could exasperated tanks storm? This one did. Breakdown turned wide optics up to him, finally turning to face him, but Brawl was in his face before he could skedaddle. "No more of this freaky stalker-car slag, 'cause it's gettin' on my last nerve running into you out here every other joor. You tell him what you want, and he'll do it. Haven't had him disobey me yet, an' I've given him a lotta orders." He grabbed the Stunticon's forearm to make him let go and –

- ooookay. Soundwave on the floor. All over his feet. It was like having a doormat made of ex-Communication Officer, only more…grovelly.

Something dull and warm unfurled at the base of Brawl's spark chamber. It was a familiar feeling. Routine, almost. "See?" he said to Breakdown. He pointed downward at the slave attempting to become one with his feet. "Trust me, the mech ain't gonna start planting cameras in your quarters." Whoops, probably the wrong thing to say. And, yep, there went the twitching. "Just give him an order and get the frag outta my hallway," Brawl said, giving up on reason.

"Not your hallway," Breakdown said resentfully.

Brawl stepped over Soundwave and loomed over the smaller Decepticon. He didn't threaten. He didn't need to. He just looked.

Twitch twitch.

Brawl had just enough tact not to snicker, but he knew his visor gave him away. Fortunately, Breakdown could barely meet his optics for more than a few seconds at a time. Anger gave way slowly to paranoia, and the Stunticon finally took a step back. That was it. Victory for Brawl!

Breakdown's shoulders hunched. His face darkened, but he kept his mouth shut as he edged past the tank. Brawl deliberately turned, always keeping his visor on him, and the paranoia deepened.

Soundwave cringed when the Stunticon grabbed his shoulder, but he didn't resist. Breakdown dragged him upright and slapped him until he lit his optic bulbs, which really didn't make sense to Brawl. If the point was to tell the slave to not look at him, then why do that? He'd never seen Soundwave so much as raise his head around Breakdown, but he was still the evil boogie-man for the Stunticon. Talk about senseless fixation. Sometimes Brawl just wanted to punch mechs and tell them to stop subscribing to issues of Stupid Weekly.

"You keep your optics off me, or else," Breakdown said in Soundwave's face, and his false bravado wasn't intimidating in the least. Well, at least not to somebody who could throw his tires out the window. Soundwave probably had a different perspective. "Got it?" The slave dipped his chin in a nod, and Breakdown slapped him again. Another bulb burst in a popkish of sparks and glass. The nodding became much more vigorous. "You'd better. When I catch you next time – "

Oh, come on, really? Was he really planning to come back right after Brawl finished telling him to get the slag out? The level of disrespect was astounding. Brawl's temper had already been simmering, but that just made it boil over. "There won't be a next time," the Combaticon snarled, grabbing the arm going back for another slap. He used it to heave the smaller Decepticon around and up against the wall. "You get your stupid paranoia and your stupid self outta my hallway. I see you again, and I'll use your steering wheel as a Frisbee."

Breakdown struggled futilely against the forearm Brawl used to pin him to the wall. His engine made Brawl's joints ache, and that just pissed him off more. He leaned heavily, and Breakdown's air intakes closed with a strained squeak. "Got it?" Brawl mimicked, getting in the Stunticon's face. He made sure to stare.

Just like that, defiance drained away. Breakdown never did have any courage when up against a superior foe, which was, oh, just about any other Decepticon. "Got it," the little Stuntie mumbled.

Brawl nodded and let him go. "Good. Now get outta here."

Breakdown got outta there.

Brawl watched him go with a weary sense of satisfaction. Blast Off would probably pitch a fit about him picking fights later, but he was finding it difficult to care what Blast Off thought anymore. It wasn't like he ever saw the shuttle outside of passing on duty these days. He saw Onslaught more, and he only saw Onslaught when the team leader showed up for his rare guard shifts between municipal district assignments. Swindle and Vortex wouldn't care, and anyway, he hadn't seen either of them in half a stellar cycle or more. Eventually, the gestalt links would compel them to combine for the sake of their spark stability, but until that day…yeah, hadn't really occurred to him before, but Brawl would kind of be happier not seeing the other Combaticons.

Brawl hadn't been a Combaticon in a long while. Not since the war ended and they went their separate ways. About time he started figuring out who he was nowadays, if he wasn't a Combaticon.

Brawl, harem guard?

…eh. Not exactly glorious, but there were worse fates.

Speaking of which. "What're you lookin' at?" he said at Soundwave. The slave was kneeling in the middle of the hall, clutching his visor in both hands as if he didn't dare put it back on without permission. Brawl didn't recognize the look on his face. He knew what fear looked like, but that looked more like…realization? Of what? Weird.

"Put that back on, and get back to work!" The words were accompanied by curt gestures that conveyed his meaning. One of the drawbacks of having a face mask was that it made lip-reading impossible, but they'd had lots of time to learn how to understand each other. After so long dealing with the deaf/mute slave, Brawl had gotten used to pantomiming everything he said. Which was really why Brawl was puzzled by that look. He'd thought he'd seen all of Soundwave's expressions by now.

Funny look or not, the slave scrambled to obey, snapping the visor back on and wobbling to his feet. He took a few shaky steps toward the tray on the floor, and Brawl dragged a hand down his face. It was obvious Soundwave was in no shape to carry anything, and if he spilled the tray - which he would - he'd get his rations cut again, and then Optimus would get all sad and Megatron would be pissy and fraaaaag. Breakdown always left his messes for Brawl to clean up.

"Gimme that, scrapheap," Brawl sighed, walking over to grab the tray right before Soundwave fumbled it. The slave cowered away, arms coming up defensively, but Brawl just shifted the tray to one hand and started toward the harem entrance. Pink fluid sloshed around the tray, and Brawl slowed so it wouldn't spill off the tray to the floor. "Aw, scrap." He looked at it critically, trying to estimate how much highgrade had already slopped out of the cubes. Enough to make Brawl's life really slagging annoying. "Slaggit. Why you gotta be such a klutz?" Not that it was really Soundwave's fault. He was walking better than he had been, but he still kind of looked like a marionette. He didn't have the greatest control over his own body, especially after somebody got done knocking him around. Stupid Breakdown.

"Frag. I don't wanna deal with those two slippin' gears just 'cause you walk like a drunk." The tank thought of the last time Soundwave had gotten his aft beat and muttered curses to himself. A whole cube had spilled down the door of the dispensary, and the slave had been on quarter rations for orns. The harem had been a miserable place.

Brawl glared at the tray and shook it a little, making some quick calculations. Moody harem slaves plus extra duties - because Soundwave would be out of it - equaled Brawl pulling yet more extra shifts because Blast Off sure wasn't gonna stick around for that. The alternative was fixing the energon shortage. Normal harem slaves plus Soundwave doing his job equaled Brawl getting his time off.

Okay. Fairly obvious which was the better equation, here.

The tank nodded to himself. He lengthened his stride as they went around the last corner before the harem. The entrance was an open entryway leading to the guardroom. It was supposed to be staffed at all times to guard the door leading to the harem proper, but slag if Blast Off seemed to care about that little rule. Not like it really mattered; who would dare go in without permission? The slave-bands were keyed to the inner door and windows, so it wasn't as if Megatron could get out and wander the halls. The place sure would look nicer if Optimus could, though. Mech had a sweet little aft.

...right, energon. Brawl was thinking about energon.

He shook his head and glanced back impatiently. Soundwave was barely keeping up. "Hurry it up, we don't have all day!"

The slave caught his hand gestures, if not his words, and redoubled his efforts. Unfortunately, that still didn't improve his shaken coordination. When Brawl took a sharp left at the entryway, the slave stumbled over his own feet at the threshold and fell flat on his face with a resounding crash!

The tank just shook his head and didn't look back. He went over to the desk and set the tray next to the screen projector, then started going through the bottom drawers. "Swear I had a ration or two in here somewhere. You been snackin' on my stash, Blast Off?" The bottom two drawers on the left side gave him handful of energon goodies with dust stuck to them, a broken stylus, and four gamepads. No ration cubes. "Slaggit, gotta clean this thing more often. I hate cleaning. Why can't the maintenance drones clean in here?" He switched to the right side.

Meanwhile, Soundwave had apparently picked himself up off the floor and made it to the desk, because he was standing there watching Brawl. His half-offline visor looked uncertainly between the tray and the tank. After waiting a while, he hesitantly reached for the tray.

"What are you, crazy? Wait a klik!" Brawl slammed a hand on the desk between Soundwave and the tray, and the slave recoiled so violently he lost his balance. "Serves you right," the tank snickered as the slave fell again. "Here I am tryin' to help you, and you're gettin' in my way."

The last drawer was stuck, and Brawl had to yank it open. It gave with a loud cronk of tortured metal, but that was barely heard over the sound of somebody having a very good time on the other side of the inner wall. Brawl paused to listen for a second, trying to identify who it was by sound alone. He could have pinged a question at any of the other guards currently up on gossip, but where was the fun in that? Sounded like…familiar truck engine, that was Optimus, and somebody was moaning. Too high to be Optimus. An engine rip-roared in a way grounders' just couldn't, so, hmm.

"Flyer," he decided. "Who's got favor today, huh?" he asked the slave currently using the edge of the desk to pull himself upright again. Soundwave froze, looking cornered, but Brawl hadn't expected an answer. "Can't be Thundercracker, 'cause his engine'd have the chair dancing," he mused as he sorted through old ammo boxes. "Thrust is overseein' that fusion plant project over in Polyhex. Maybe he got ahead of project specs? Huh, why the frag do I have .679s in here. I don't even have that gun anymore." He tossed the box aside and blinked as it…sloshed. "What the - oh. Oooh, right."

Combaticon Maxim Number Four: hide anything valuable, because Swindle would steal anything not nailed down.

Sure enough, the old ammo box had two ration-grade cubes hidden inside. He couldn't even remember why he had them here anymore, unless they were from back when rationing was still in effect. But that had been vorns ago, well before the first of the power plants started producing surplus. Maybe it was from when he'd bought his last upgrade; credits had been tight for a while, and he'd been depending on the free guard ration cube instead of the better grade he could buy himself. Yeah, that sounded right. Had they really been in the ammo box that long?

Brawl gave the cubes a dubious look and shook them again. "Ration grade doesn't go bad, right?" Highgrade got better with time, but that stuff was distilled to the point of being pure energy. Midgrade sometimes got that funky gritty particulate if it were left too long, and lowgrade would coagulate into a nasty syrup consistency that'd give a mech's systems the hitches. Ration cubes were manufactured to last, though. Didn't taste too good, but it did the trick. "Can't be all that bad yet," Brawl muttered as he flipped the top off the first one. He passed it under his nasal sensors and shrugged. "Smells like rations. Eh. It'll do."

Soundwave jerked forward when he reached for the tray of highgrade next, but Brawl shooed away the anxious hands fluttering over it. "Cut it out, junker. We ain't got all day to do this. Now, lemme see, what can I use…" He glanced around, wondering what to do about the highgrade sloshing around the tray itself, and grabbed the ammo box again. "There we go. Here, you, make yourself useful. Go get something to wipe down the cubes." The slave stared at his gestures helplessly. "Frag, you're useless. You! Rag! Fetch!" He lifted one of the little highgrade cubes and shook it illustratively, dripping glowing pink onto the tray. Soundwave took a timid step toward one of the wall cabinets, and Brawl nodded. "Good. Now, move your aft!"

The slave hustled. Brawl just sighed his vents and wondered why he bothered. "The things I do for a quiet joor," he grumbled. Another moan underscored his bad day, and he furrowed his visor in the direction of the harem door. Well, that wasn't Thrust. One of the Aerialbots? Weren't they off-planet on one of the colonies these days?

"Who's in charge of the spaceport embassy?" he mused as he set the highgrade cubes on the desk and began using the flap on the ammo box to squeegee the tray. There wasn't a lot of spillage, but it was still a significant trickle he tipped into the nearest cube. "That's gettin' a lotta attention on the news. Lotta new aliens landing on Cybertron nowadays. No, hold on," he used the box to point at Soundwave, suddenly remembering. "That's a grounder. Not an Autobot, but he's got wheels on his altmode." How had he forgotten that? Hrmph. So much for that guess, anyway.

The slave had stalled out when Brawl pointed at him, but he cautiously continued forward when the tank went back to muttering and scraping the tray. His hands shook a little when he reached for the first cube, and he just held it for a moment, looking like he expected to be hit, before wiping down the outside with a rag. He couldn't seem to look away from what Brawl was doing.

Which was eyeing the level in the highgrade cubes. "Not too bad. Should be enough to pull this off." Picking up the open ration cube, Brawl did his best to be delicate. He needed to pour juuuuuust a little in. Just…a…bit.

Argh. No, no. Too much.

He whirred his fans, reaching for patience, and grabbed the next cube. He could use it to level off this one.

"I hate this slag," he complained, concentrating hard. He could reload a minibot's pistol no problem, but Brawl just didn't do 'delicate.' "Why am I doing this, again?" Mystery Guest was making muffled noises of pleasure, which was hardly an answer but it was all Brawl was going to get. "That's it," he told Soundwave while just barely dripping one cube into the other, "next time you're on your own. I'll put up with Blast Off being dead weight over trying to level these stupid things off. Not like I'm not - used to - there we go." Satisfied, he swished the cube to mix in the ration grade. It dissolved easily into the glittering highgrade, hiding the deception and hopefully not tasting too bad in the mix.

The cube went back on the tray. Soundwave had wiped it down, too, and when the cubes were all restacked, it looked fresh from the dispensary. Brawl felt quite proud of his solution. Ta-daa! No spilled energon, no cut rations, no moping harem slaves, and he'd get his time off. Good.

The slave was staring at the full cubes with an expression of amazement, and Brawl cuffed him lightly upside the head. "Get a move on, dumbaft! Somebody in there wants refreshments!" He made shooing gestures.

Soundwave stumbled to one side with the hit, then hurriedly straightened up and gathered up the tray. He stood there for a moment just looking between the full cubes and the tank. After a second, he bobbed a quick bow. Huh, odd. Brawl couldn't remember him doing that before. The ex-officer turned and shuffled for the inner door, and Brawl blinked after him for a moment.

"…okay. Right." The tank shook his head and followed to watch the scanner at the door critically. Soundwave gave him a nervous look and presented the tray to the scanner. A bright yellow fan of light swept through the cubes and - "Yes! I'm brilliant!" Brawl pumped one arm as the slave slumped with relief.

The door slid open, and Brawl blinked again as Soundwave half-turned to give him another quick bow. "Fraggin' weird," he told the slave, deciding that ignoring him was the best idea.

He peered past the bulky blue mech, automatically checking for problems. Also checking for who it was taking Optimus for a tumble today. "Skywarp? Aw, c'mon, really, can't I get a break today?" he mumbled, flicking his visor up in a brief plea for patience from Primus. Skywarp would be a slagging annoyance on the way out. The Seeker was a nutcase on a good day, but he'd be bouncing with post-overload giddiness by the time Brawl had to deal with him.

The tank shook his head and completed the quick check of the room. Berth occupied, check. Happy visitor, check. Optimus, check. And Megatron was sitting over there. Excellent.

Brawl nodded to himself again and keyed the door shut. Refreshment tray delivered, check-off accomplished, and that was that. He could kick back and relax for a while. He wandered back over to the desk and began a half-sparked attempt at cleaning it out. He hated cleaning, but there wasn't much else to do at the moment. Brawl's only real responsibility was to keep Megatron from touching or being touched by anyone, and the ex-tyrant's wristband was pretty good at keeping him in line these days.

It'd been a real duty vorns ago, back when Megatron fought every single slagging thing. The solution to his behavioral problems had seemed fairly simple to the Combaticons, but apparently a beating per day didn't keep the disobedience away. At least not according to their new leader, who did cunning plans and manipulation in a completely freaky way. The beatings hadn't been allowed. It was restraint only when it came to disciplining Megatron. Strength code-dialed back or not, that really hadn't been fun for anyone involved.

But the plan had been sound. Megatron's fierce defiance had sullenly ebbed. Brawl hadn't been stupid enough to want to before, but now he certainly didn't want to get on their new leader's bad side. Megatron had been tamed to hand by everything but violence, and that creeped Brawl out but good.

He'd only gotten what was going on in hindsight, when Megatron's field had begun to crackle with a weird kind of desperation. Deca-vorns of absolutely no touching had done something to the ex-tyrant that Brawl hadn't understood at first but totally got afterward. The wrist band zapped the slave if the proximity sensors were tripped, but Megatron had been picking fights with the Combaticons just to get restrained by the end of three deca-vorns. The threat of longer had effectively brought the ex-tyrant to heel. It'd taken a while, but there'd been no question Megatron had lost that fight well before he finally conceded.

Physical contact didn't seem terribly important…until it was forbidden. Brawl wasn't exactly the touchiest of mechs, but even he'd felt a little bad for Megatron by the fourth deca-vorn. By the end of the first vorn, he'd wanted to smack some sense into the ex-tyrant.

There had been absolutely no touching allowed. Optimus had been learning the ropes of being a harem slave, and he'd taken to it with all the expansive energy available to a mech who'd led the Autobot for millions of years. There'd been times Brawl had slouched in this very desk chair, struggling to wrestle his systems down as the ex-Prime's wild electromagnetic field pulsed lust and pleasure all the way through the harem suite. He couldn't imagine what'd it'd been like to be locked into the same slagging room with that - but be unable to do anything about it!

Sure, Optimus had gotten control over himself sooner than later, but still. The mech could seduce a blank wall when he thought it was his duty. And Megatron was stuck living with that.

Brawl really kind of admired Megatron for lasting as long as he had, honestly. It'd been a losing battle the whole time, but he knew he wouldn't have held out nearly as long.

He flopped back in the chair and sighed air out his vents. Skywarp was making unintelligible noises inside the harem, and it didn't make Brawl any more inclined to clean. He didn't mind overhearing mechs have their fun, but it wasn't helping his mood any. Ugh. Why did Brawl always get stuck working on his lousy days?

Or maybe he had so many lousy days because he was working. Which was a thought that wasn't going to improve his mood anytime soon. Fragging Blast Off. Why couldn't the stupid shuttle clean out the desk during his shift? It wasn't all Brawl's mess. Okay, so most of it was, but not all of it!

He absently blipped a request at the dronemaster on duty, only to get the standard denial. Maintenance drones weren't allowed in this wing. Megatron was only 'tamed' in the same way a chained Sharkicon was: give him half a chance at escape, and he'd leave dead bodies in his wake. Giving him a crack at reprogramming drones was just asking for an evil drone army.

That was only exciting the first time it happened. The second time nearly got Brawl's head sucked off by a cleaning vacuum set to 'Kill,' and that was just embarrassing.

The fact that it'd been Onslaught's plotting that had given Megatron access to the drones that time really hadn't endeared the Combaticon leader to the tank. He'd refused to combine into Bruticus for half a stellar cycle after that. Brawl might be many things, the majority of them dim-witted, but he was nothing if not stubborn. He'd dodged Onslaught's memos for ages, refusing to forgive him until…why had he forgiven Onslaught? Come to think of it, Brawl couldn't remember. Maybe Swindle had bought him something shiny.

Slag, he'd probably just forgotten why he'd been holding a grudge in the first place. Half a stellar cycle was a long time to hold out against his own combiner team. Megatron thought withholding physical contact felt bad? Mech didn't know a fraction of the pain of a denied gestalt link.

Speaking of which, the links were really starting to itch.

Brawl's grumbling picked up. Onslaught was involved in a project…somewhere. Blast Off was probably in orbit. Swindle was too busy running everything and selling what he didn't run. Vortex - it was best nobody knew what he got up to. Point was, Brawl was on his own until the other Combaticons remembered that they were supposed to be a combiner team in more than name.

For lack of a better target, Brawl chose to blame the Stunticons.

"Stupid Breakdown."

Engines growled on the other side of the wall. The dull roar was kicking steadily upward.

"Stupid Skywarp, too."

The harem door opened.

"..the frag?" Grumbling derailed, Brawl sat up and blinked at the inner door. Megatron couldn't even approach the door controls, and Optimus was clearly quite busy. That left the one slave who had to be ordered on pain of punishment to so much as set foot outside the harem.

Soundwave shifted uncomfortably under his incredulous look. The blue slave bent his head meekly and shuffled out of the doorway, letting it close behind him, and Brawl's bewilderment only grew. If Soundwave had been given an order, he'd have scurried forth immediately to obey. Instead, he was slowly walking toward the desk as if he weren't quite sure where he was going. What the frag was he doing?

Maybe something had broken? Wouldn't be the first time Skywarp had caused more trouble interfacing than he did on the battlefield, but usually Brawl could hear it happen. He made a Yeah what? gesture at Soundwave, but the slave only bowed his head further and stopped beside the desk. If Brawl didn't know better, he'd say that the blasted mech was nervous about something. Indecisive, maybe. What the frag could a slave have to be indecisive about? That was one thing slavery and guard duty had in common: other mechs did all the decision making. Brawl and Soundwave just followed orders.

It made life very simple. Right until it wasn't, which happened when Soundwave started giving him those timid glances like he was about to make a decision of his own. That didn't seem like a very good idea.

"Primus, gimme patience by the bucketload," Brawl grouched, starting to rise.

To his surprise, Soundwave gently put a hand on his shoulder-tread and pushed him back into the chair.

And then he climbed into Brawl's lap.

The tank was so surprised, he actually let it happen. "What the…you…" The half-broken visor peeked upward at him, positively shy, and Soundwave ran his hands down treads, across chest armor, and lower. Fingers lingered suggestively on panels that hadn't gotten lingered on in a very long while. "Oh, you've gotta be kiddin' me, mech!"

Amusement suddenly flooded Brawl like sunrise over the city on a clear day, and he started laughing. His arms automatically wrapped around the boxy blue mech as he roared with laughter, less holding him in place than just holding on to something, anything. The fact that his hands ended up on Soundwave's aft was purely accidental. This was the funniest slag since Swindle tried to con him into drilling holes in the harem wall for cameras. Brawl knew he wasn't the brightest bulb in the light fixture, but c'mon! Seriously?

"Really?" he coughed, laughter and air intake colliding in passing. "I mean, really? You gotta be kiddin' me. You just gotta. Primus, I'm gonna die laughin'. This's too much. Aw, frag, I gotta tell somebody about this slag." He pinged a request at the night roster, seeing who was on duty. This was too awesome not to share. The harem eunuch was hitting on him! It was like something straight out of a comedy skit!

"Whaddya think you're gonna do?" he wheezed out his vents, still laughing too hard to cycle properly. "You ain't got leads anymore, dummy!" Slag, there was nobody he went to the bars with on the roster tonight. This was gonna make one fragtastic tale to tell the next shift! His laughter tapered down to chuckling, and he leaned forward to tunk his forehelm against the slave's collar armor. "Moooron."

The empty, gaping rectangle right before his optics was hilarious proof of just how absurd this was. It'd once been the Communication Officer's greatest asset: the Cassetticon tray where his army of tiny spies rested and reported. Now it was all gone. He could see where Soundwave's connection points had been soldered over and machined flat. Even the nubs where leads had once been were nothing but smooth metal. Soundwave had been neutered.

The slave had frozen the moment Brawl started laughing. It was like having a tense statue in his lap. Brawl couldn't think of anything less sexy. It was like a piece of furniture was trying to seduce him.

Seriously, this was the funniest slag ever.

The fingers had stayed, however. After a moment, they even dared a cautious stroke at the panels they'd stopped on.

Chuckles amped back up to heaving laughter. "Okay," Brawl gasped, "okay. This I gotta see." He released the panels and leaned back in the chair, letting go of the slave's aft in order to balance his elbows on the chair arms. That left his body wide open to whatever happened. "Go ahead," he challenged. "Whatcha gonna do now?"

Soundwave couldn't see or hear the words, but Brawl's body language was obvious enough. The blue slave risked a look up but refocused his attention quickly. His hands delved into the open panels and drew out Brawl's interface cables.

There weren't the standard 72. Brawl, no matter what he'd grumbled to himself earlier, was physically a Combaticon. That couldn't be changed. His cables were meant to hook into his teammates' connections, quickly and efficiently enough to combine into Bruticus in the middle of battle. 72 hook-ups would have created a tangled mess instead of a gestalt. Instead of 72 thread-thin cables, Brawl had four thick cables meant to link up a lot more than mere datastreaming. The energy transmission was intense, but cables like these were meant for straight spark-energy transfer.

It's what made interfacing with combiner members far more of an adventure than most mechs could handle. It's why most combiners kept their 'facing in the team. It's why Brawl so rarely got laid, slaggit. Also, if the blasted cables didn't get used enough, the gestalt programming made them itch. Like they did now. Stupid specialized equipment.

He glared resentfully down at Soundwave's hands as they took out his cables. Maybe letting the slave try…whatever it was he was trying…wasn't a good idea. The urge to hunt down his team and combine had been building before, but now it truly bothered him. What the frag did Soundwave think he could do, anyway?

The slave got the four cables fully unwound and paused for a moment. Brawl almost shoved him away.

A moment later, he was really glad he hadn't.

Fingers carefully slid along the lengths, coiling the cables around knuckles and palms. Field-charge flared out, deliberately pushed into the cables as Soundwave concentrated hard. Brawl knew the slave was concentrating, because he could feel all that concentration being bent on him, on his cables. The charge fluttered, trying to spread across Soundwave's plating the way energy typically did, but the ex-officer nearly shook with the effort to hold it in one place. The boxy blue mech hunched, his head dropping over his hands as if the bundled cables were prayer beads, but Brawl could feel the unstable ventilations from his intakes as the slave labored. Charge reluctantly gathered, struggling the whole while to escape.

It promptly zipped up the cables. Soundwave's thumbs played with the connector leads at the tips, and Brawl jerked in his seat.

Guuuh. This was not how gestalt hook-ups were supposed to conduct charge. Brawl couldn't care less. This was…this was scratching an itch that'd been driving him crazy. Primus knew nobody else was lining up to 'face him, so the rest of the world go find a cliff and jump off it.

His hands came down onto Soundwave's thighs, pinning him in place. At the same time, Brawl's head fell back along the top of the chair. Aw, yeah. Why the frag hadn't he thought of this before?

…probably 'cause he hadn't even known it was possible. Um. Yeah. That was a good reason.

He groaned as charge-laden hands firmly massaged up his cables, working the circuitry inside with pressure and heat until Brawl's spark chamber bleated ready alerts. It was approaching optimal transmission levels, and ah, frag, this was hot as melted slag. A charge-overload was surface release, but that was still a metric aftload more overload than he'd been getting lately. Data interface would be nice, but Brawl'd take this any day.

A shudder wracked him when Soundwave meticulously wriggled every wafer-thin lead on the cable tips. Any day. What had he been pissed about before? This was the best shift ever.

When had he shut his visor off? Brawl lit it again so he could watch the blue mech in his lap finger his cables. Just watching this was enough to turn his treads. It was a personalized erotic film right in his lap. Nobody ever paid this kind of attention to his pleasure. The other Combaticons just stuck it in: wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Then they went off to do their own thing once the gestalt links finished required integration. Swindle used to take his time when it'd been them against everyone else back on Earth. He'd called it 'networking.' But that was long over. Vortex was good for a bit of fun, but he was never around. Even when he was, it wasn't anything like this. This was all about Brawl.

The undivided attention was half the turn-on, truthfully.

Now that he thought about it, Soundwave wasn't so bad. Kinda ugly in a boxy way, but Brawl wouldn't be winning any beauty contests either. Some basic maintenance to fill in the dings and dents would help. That, and a polish. Mm, maybe have the slave polish him. Soundwave did it for the harem slaves, so it wasn't like he didn't have experience.

Or, hey, Soundwave could clean the desk!

An entire vista of possibilities suddenly spread before Brawl. The desk? His quarters! He'd finally get somebody to scrub that old oil stain out of the floor panels! Root out the piles of ammo boxes from under the table, and dust the musty gearspider webs from the corners. And when he was in the mood, he could get his cables catered to right in the comfort of his own berth. Afterward, a hands-on detailing in the wash racks before he went out to hit the bars? Slag yes! Frag him upside-down with a building girder, why hadn't he thought of this before?

Excited, Brawl snatched at Soundwave's chin. This was even better than impending overload! The slave flinched, hands too entangled to raise in defense, but Brawl hardly felt the sharp tugs on his cables. He was too busy turning the mech's face from side to side, examining him like a new gun upgrade from Swindle.

"Yeah. Yeah, this could work," he said to himself. The half-broken visor was a turn-off, but optic bulbs were slagging cheap. He could buy a full set from the stim-vendor outside his favorite bar, in all likelihood. Why not? The guy had practically an entire emergency ward for sale after the fights started at closing time. "Don't wanna keep buying 'em, though. Gonna have t' - nnngh - " Right there. Blue fingers had pulled just right, straightening a kink he hadn't known was bugging him until it was gone. Charge zapped from end to end.

Brawl's motor turned over with a grinding growl. "Frag yeah," he groaned, head falling back again. He didn't let go of Soundwave's chin, however, and watched him through the pulse of energy levels mounting. The slave kept total concentration, but he was beginning to shiver slightly as his own systems protested stripping charge from his field. Energy fields weren't meant to be isolated this way. Forcing charge to his hands probably tricked the sensors into registering false input. He was doubtlessly being assaulted by a barrage of error messages. That'd explain why the slave's hands felt so warm, anyway.

How the slag was Soundwave even managing this? Brawl had thought CPU access had been locked away from him. Well, not that field charge was strictly about code programming, but it'd taken the crippled mech vorns to relearn limb control. Unless establishing machine-level work-arounds had gotten him that much closer to his own basic functions…huh. A thought for another day, because yeeeeah. Brawl wasn't gonna waste his time wondering right now. He was more of a Seize the Day, 'Face the Slave kind of mech.

His motor revved, all the power of a tank behind it. Pistons pumped, chugging heavily, and the grinding growl became a throb more felt than heard. Meaning that the vibration was quite impressive, considering the volume of noise. Brawl did nothing by halves. The chair shook against the floor as if there were an earthquake, and even desk rattled.

Soundwave's hands spasmed. Brawl knew because Primus that felt good. He gave a little spasm of his own but still caught the strange quiver in the slave's thighs. It'd have been hard to hide that since said thighs were straddling his own.

Curious, Brawl switched gears and let his motor howl for a moment. The slave's remaining optic bulbs reset, and his hands flexed uncertainly. Then the tank downshifted, and his motor ground.

"Oh, you like that, don't you." Pleased, Brawl upped the deep, pounding bass with another long rev that sent Soundwave squirming. Blue fingers clutched, obviously uncontrolled as the slave's concentration shattered, and the sputter of escaping charge raced straight up the tank's cables. He gasped; the zing had almost been painful, it'd been so strong.

Made sense. Roused charge had more energy than normal field levels.

…huh.

The hand on Soundwave's chin let go, and Brawl grabbed a double-handful of blue aft. Soundwave jolted in his lap, surprised, but Brawl had already pulled him forward, pelvic span to pelvic span. One hand left the slave's aft and grabbed the rim of his empty cassette deck, yanking Soundwave down to press against the tank's torso. Against the armor over his engine housing. Flush against it, and the slave no longer had the thick armor plating of a warrior to shield his systems. Soundwave's visor popped wide, but it was too late to do anything to protect himself.

The tank looked down at him and chuckled wickedly.

Good thing Optimus was so good at what he did, or Skywarp would have wondered what in Primus' name was happening out in the anteroom. Even the door vibrated in its frame.

A klik later, and Brawl overloaded. Hard.

Frag, that felt good!

It took him another klik to recover. Surface overload or not, it'd been a long time since he'd gotten some. The itch, fully scratched, ebbed in slow throbs back into the content thrum of post-overload system turnover. When his sensor grid finally reset, Brawl spread his arms and stretched leisurely. "Ahhhh. Nice."

No longer held in place, the slave slid off Brawl's lap. Well, more like oozed. It seemed that his joints had lost strength. He melted down Brawl's chest, pouring between the tank's legs to the floor, but even his knees were too wobbly to support him. He flopped to one side, propped up against Brawl's leg. Nothing but the looped cables wrapped around his hands were keeping him upright, but he rubbed the side of his head against Brawl's knee in an obvious plea for more. Just a little more. The heavy pulse had cut off too soon, and the sated idle of the tank's engine wasn't quite enough. Not enough.

He'd been keyed up and left hanging. Only a cruel mech would leave someone dangling like that.

Brawl watched him and snickered. "What, ya want something? Whatcha want, huh?"

His engine revved lightly, and Soundwave writhed. Another rev, and the slave's wriggling wrapped him around Brawl's lower leg, thighs parted on either side of his foot in order to press nearer, closer, further into the feel of throbbing bass as charge skittered over neglected, poorly maintained systems. His hands were bound, wrists tied up in Brawl's cables, and Soundwave hooked them over the tank's knee. His head bent beneath them, face mask mindlessly pushing against tank treads.

Heh. Well, he hadn't expected any of this, but definitely not having anyone sprawled on the floor begging for it. Not really his scene, but Brawl could get into this.

Of course…getting a few repairs done would probably be more than a quick interface was worth. As soon as he'd get Soundwave looking a little better, somebody would use him as a punching bag and ruin it. Breakdown would start popping optic bulbs as fast as Brawl could buy them. He could always start telling mechs to stay the frag away, but that'd be like - like - like sticking a flagpole down Soundwave's backstruts. Yeah. I claim this slave in the name of Brawl.

Kinda a hot idea, but all kinds of trouble. It'd be a pain in the diodes taking responsibility for Soundwave, of all mechs. After a hundred-odd vorns standing guard on the harem, taking the harem eunuch back to his quarters would raise some awkward questions. He'd have to clear it with Starscream, for one thing. He'd want to know the whys and wherefores. The Seeker wouldn't get the idea of settling for a decent release instead of an actual frag, and Brawl really didn't want to have to explain gestalt dynamics and why some cable-play was better than trying to hunt down his own combiner team.

Slag, Brawl didn't want to explain anything! Because Onslaught would inevitably find out, and Blast Off would get that haughty look Brawl always wanted to pound off his stupid face, and Swindle would want details, and Vortex would want to break his new toy because that's what Vortex did, and - ugh. It wasn't worth it.

It was probably a one-time thing, anyway. Soundwave was just climbing all over him because he'd fixed the energon measurements. Maybe because he'd told Breakdown to scram. Made him wonder what Soundwave would do if he started scaring off all the mechs who tormented him. Gratitude, right? Might be interesting.

Bah, that was just wishful thinking. Most of the time, the eunuch couldn't be pried out of the harem with less than a direct order. He'd disappear back through the door any klik now.

Brawl sighed his vents, feeling oddly depressed. It'd been a nice fantasy while it lasted. "Too bad," he said at the slave trembling against his leg. He absently let his motor chug faster as he reached down to untangle his cables and tuck them away again.

Soundwave squirmed almost happily. Charge blossomed in tiny white sparks inside his open chest compartment. The sight unfurled something dull and warm at the bottom of Brawl's spark, because he could do this. He could overload someone by just running his motor. "Coulda been fun," the tank muttered regretfully.

There was a loud CRACK! and two even louder shouts. It sounded like a barfight in the middle of a brothel: lots of property damage and overloading.

Brawl was up out of the chair before the sound of things breaking even finished. Slave, desk, and chair were thrown aside, and he transmitted the access code from halfway across the room. The door whipped open, fortunately before he ran right through it. The harem door had been made for style, not strength, and in a competition between burly harem guard and flimsy harem door, well, only one was going to emerge unscathed.

Much in the same way angry harem guard versus furniture-breaking intruder would end. Bets would likely not favor an intruder.

- except that there was no intruder. There was broken furniture, but the only mechs in the harem were the ones cleared to be there.

Brawl slowed and came to a halt in the middle of the room. He stared. He dragged one hand down his face and prayed for patience, because frag his life.

Then he stormed forward and yanked Skywarp and Optimus off of Megatron, because the stupid slaveband had the ex-tyrant paralyzed in pain as it zapped him over and over again for touching two mechs who hadn't given him a choice in the matter. The moment the other two were off him, Megatron rolled to his hands and knees and scrambled away, teeth gritted and face locked in a furious, humiliated grimace that didn't cover just how much pain he was in. Brawl's HUD scrolled through the list and finally found the correct cut-off code, and the sudden end to the punishment got a pained grunt from the slave. For a split second, Brawl could actually see Megatron's elbows weaken.

It didn't last. Megatron looked up, red optics glaring an enraged crimson. "Skywarp…" he growled.

Skywarp didn't even notice. But then, the dumb Seeker hadn't noticed teleporting off the berth, either, which said a lot more about his intelligence than mere listening skills. A processor set complicated enough to drive Hook to drink after repairs were required, and the stupid flyer still spontaneously warped when he got overexcited. Skywarp was living proof that Primus had a horrible sense of humor.

At least Optimus kept a few wits about him. His vocalizer had maxed out in the first surge of what had to be a massive overload - Skywarp just kept yelling, the fragger - but he managed an apologetic look in Megatron's direction. Er, vaguely in his direction. Brawl didn't think his optics were tracking quite right.

"I'm gonna kill Blast Off," Brawl decided. It seemed like the best solution available.

He stepped over the two mechs moving together on the floor and ignored the smell of ozone and hot metal floating off them as their datastreams continued to sync up. They'd be at it for a while longer, if he was any judge, and it'd take them even longer to unknot their cables. Teleporting halfway across the room, falling through a table, and getting dumped aside had twisted them up, and both mechs had the standard 72 cables each. Brawl felt a little smug about that at the moment. Not smug enough to not want to kick Skywarp in the head, but he wasn't allowed to do that.

He'd asked, the first time this had happened. Slag, he'd asked the second time, too. Starscream just got the long-suffering look of a mech cursed to put up with idiocy and denied Brawl's requests every time.

Instead of some well-deserved kicking, Brawl went to inspect the latest furniture fatality of the harem. "So much for that table," he said loudly.

Optimus' optics flickered pale blue, but Skywarp had him extremely distracted. Brawl shook his head and used his feet to start gathering the table pieces up into a more tidy pile. Because a pile was all that was left. The thing hadn't been made to bear up under a single mech's weight, much less the weight of two mechs vigorously interfacing on top of it. There were pieces of lacy scrollwork scattered everywhere. The legs were snapped in several places, and anything that wasn't snapped was crushed.

The chair was better off. Megatron had righted it and gingerly sat down again, looking as if he expected it to collapse under him any second. When it didn't, he relaxed and went back to glaring at his fellow harem slave and former subordinate. It'd be quite the show if it weren't so annoying.

Brawl kept grumbling. Cleaning sucked. "I'm gonna have to order another table, slaggit. I hate request forms. It takes forever, and then they always gimme the run-around because I filled out the wrong form for this orn or some such slag. The blasted desk-pilot in charge of maintenance thinks I'm buildin' a furniture army. I gotta account for every Primus-slagged bolt that goes in an' outta here." Megatron was giving him an odd look. Brawl shoved more table around. "What, am I gonna start stockpiling tables? I ain't Swindle! Slag, maybe I oughta start selling him the scrap, 'cause it's like a regular thing. Get table, throw table out. Get table, throw table out. Brawl! Go get another table, 'cause, yeah, what a surprise - this one broke!"

The two mechs on the floor were starting to come around. For some reason, even Optimus was stifling a smile. Skywarp was outright laughing. Brawl shot him a disgusted look, and the Seeker gave a shameless shrug of his wings back.

"It felt good at the time?"

"'It felt good at the time,'" Brawl mimicked nasally. "Lemme tell ya, my foot up your aft would feel good at the time! Oh, for frag's sake, get outta my way." Soundwave timidly shrank back before the tank's shooing gesture. "I got this. Go…help Skywarp get his head on straight or somethin'."

Skywarp barked a laugh, but Optimus smiled gently when the blue mech hesitantly took a step toward the two tangled mechs. "How about some high grade?" he suggested to Seeker, slow and clear so Soundwave could read his lips. "And perhaps we should relocate to the berth?" His lips quirked. "Again?"

The eunuch scurried off to fetch the refreshment tray set on a low table near the door as Skywarp and Optimus maneuvered themselves upright. There was much hissing and a couple yelps from Skywarp as the connected cables pulled in ways that had to hurt. "It felt good at the time," Skywarp repeated ruefully.

Brawl chuckled cruelly. Optimus gave him a mild look of reproof, and the tank busied himself shoveling table-bits together. Leaving even fragile table pieces unguarded around Megatron wasn't going to happen on his watch. With Brawl's luck, he'd get a broken table leg thrust through his visor next shift. So half his attention was on the mess, but he watched Megatron every moment.

The ex-tyrant sneered and rose to stalk across the room toward the berth. Skywarp and Optimus had settled onto it again, nestled together near the headboard, and Megatron rigidly sat on the very end, putting his back against one of the corner posts and folding his arms like the world's grumpiest berth ornament. He pointedly didn't look in Brawl's direction. Brawl didn't stop watching him. It was when Megatron's temper got riled that he was at his most dangerous these days. Slavery had taught him to be sneaky instead of blunt.

Optimus and Skywarp didn't pay attention to the silent drama. Brawl kept his grumbling to a complaining mumble out of respect for the Seeker's reward-time, but Skywarp had more interesting things to focus on. The flyer's wings were flat on the bed, his head propped up on a pillow, and Optimus reclined beside him. The ex-Prime was delicately unweaving their cables, unclipping the connections and patiently spooling them back into their casing. Skywarp hummed under the lingering touches, pampered and loving it.

Brawl's own cable tingled faintly in remembered pleasure, but he dismissed the sensation. Business before…whatever the frag that had been.

"So what brings you to us today, my lord?" Optimus asked as he worked. Megatron's head didn't turn, but the level glare at the opposite berth post slid to the side.

It was funny, Brawl mused as he piled metal shards on the dented tabletop. No matter how far down the previous leaders had fallen, they couldn't stop craving news of their factions and their world. Only Cybertron's best and brilliant came to the harem, and the slaves inside hung off their accomplishments. The slaves weren't kept ignorant; Optimus, at least, could access the news on the datanet like anybody. But the mechs who earned a visit to the harem were questioned every time for updates and information as if the former leaders couldn't get enough.

"Mmm, what? Oh." Skywarp stretched and resettled a bit more comfortably, optics dimming slowly. "Right, so space bridge construction for the Deltoid Asteroid Belt mining project kept getting set back because the materials were getting intercepted by Skuxxoid pirates. And half the patrol platoon was out chasing them around, but no luck. It's an asteroid belt, y'know? It's like trying to find a gear in the scrappile. So I told Scrapper to hide me in one of the shipments, and he told me I was crazy but packed me in one of the load boxes." Optimus made an amused noise, mostly just indicating he was listening as he plucked a highgrade cube off the tray and sipped. He immediately bent down and kissed Skywarp deeply, sharing the energon. The Seeker paused, eagerly accepting the kiss and the highgrade in one.

He licked his lips when the ex-Prime sat back and launched back into his story. "And it would have worked, but it turns out the Skuxxoids were stealing our stuff 'cause the Gleaty - Gleats - Gleatymun - something like that - anyway, they were trying to start a war with the Skuxxoids, and this time they took the shipment. I get out of the box and find out I'm halfway across the blasted galaxy from my back-up, and I've got twenty aliens pointing weapons at me. So I start talking because, yeah, I don't wanna die, and I convince them I'm a space bridge engineer." This time, even Megatron snorted an explosive sound of amusement. Optimus smiled and went down for another shared kiss.

Skywarp grinned crookedly when their lips parted. Optimus licked a trickle of energon from the corner of his mouth. "Wait for it, because it gets better. They tell me start building a space bridge to the Skuxxoid home world, and, well, what else could I do…"

The story continued, rollicking through an adventure of inept engineering, tricking aliens every which way just to stay alive, and a completely botched rescue attempt by the patrol platoon that had been assigned to catch the pirates in the first place. Optimus' rich laughter rolled through the room when Skywarp admitted to trying to make the space bridge explode and accidentally making it work instead. Sometimes Megatron cracked what might have been a smile, but mostly he just listened. Brawl kept cleaning and resolved to tell this at the bar later. He could not wait to hear the platoon's side of this, because there had to be a group of seriously embarrassed mechs trying not to be noticed out there right now. They blew up their own ship? Really? Now that was buying the special edition extra big bonus issue of Stupid Weekly.

Brawl shook his head and started toting pieces of table toward the door. Making sure he had all the little bits was going to take a while longer, but Skywarp didn't give a scrap about having an audience. Optimus interspersed the story with languid, tasty kisses throughout, and that occasionally led to a klik or two of impassioned groping. The two mechs switched places more than once, Skywarp pinning Optimus down by the wrists as he ravished the slave's mouth for every last drop of highgrade. Megatron stayed impassive, not watching either the berth or Brawl directly.

Soundwave discreetly moved the refreshment tray out of range of an errant wing or elbow, keeping his head down and body tucked in submissively, and went back to hunting for the pillows. There were far too many of them, in Brawl's opinion. The Earth embassy sent the harem one per vorn on the anniversary of the diplomatic conquest of Earth.

No matter what the humans told themselves, everybody knew the planet surrendered on the Autobots' advice to prevent a full Decepticon invasion. The loss of human life would have been catastrophic. Not that the Decepticons would have cared, but the Autobots had still been negotiating their own surrender at that point. Straight genocide of the human race hadn't been a very peaceful solution. More importantly, it hadn't been an efficient solution.

Brawl had been in favor of death and destruction, personally, but he'd mellowed after the first of the cooperative energy harvest projects starting shipping some truly excellent highgrade back to Cybertron. And Earth had developed some bizarrely fun exports over time, too. Humans were fragging irritating sometimes, but so long as they stayed on their little dirtball planet far away from where Brawl had to deal with them…whatever. Live and let live, and keep exporting the good stuff!

Optimus still remembered the humans as friends, and the feeling was apparently mutual. The first dozen vorns or so, the pillows had been elaborate remembrance creations made from organic materials. Optimus had requested and gotten a sterile case for displaying and preserving them. One of the Autobot visitors must have told the humans about it, because eventually they started making them out of sturdy synthetics meant to be used instead of displayed like art.

Hence, pillows everywhere. Optimus seemed inordinately fond of them.

Sometimes Brawl wondered if keeping track of the slagging pillows was Soundwave's main duty. He could swear that they migrated, some days. They even appeared outside the harem door every once and while, and even though he'd scanned them half to pieces checking for hidden moving parts, they came up as just…pillows. Pillows that tried to escape. It was kind of entertaining, especially when that old codger Ironhide had to backtrack across the city to return pillows that somehow stowed away under his seats. Brawl had never seen that Autobot look so flustered, possibly because Brawl had made a point of asking just what he'd been doing to lodge a pillow there.

Optimus encouraged the Autobots who earned a harem visit to use him for his intended purpose, but frag if any of the Autobots wanted to admit to it afterward. It was the funniest slag running when Brawl applauded as they exited. He wasn't supposed to, but they were just so prissy about it!

Skywarp was like the living embodiment of the opposite. Prissy? Pfft. He absolutely gloried in his reward, lazing about on the bed letting the ex-Prime feed him kiss by kiss. If he were any more of a hedonist, Brawl would be getting a charge off him from all the way across the room.

The tank scoffed to himself and pushed Soundwave out of the way. "Move it, scrapheap." The eunuch stumbled and almost fell, and Optimus looked up from a comparatively light liplock. As in, Skywarp didn't try to tongue his vocalizer out. "Don't gimme that look," Brawl grumbled at the ex-Prime. "He knows better than t' get in my way."

Skywarp glanced over. "Oh, yeah, that reminds me. The brats were running interference on the Skuxxoid ship that eventually picked us up. Hey. Hey! Slave-bot!" Brawl sent another prayer for patience up and elbowed Soundwave until the slave stopped peering behind the table wreckage for more pillows. Skywarp had never quite got it through his head that 'no communications equipment at all' meant yelling louder wouldn't magically get through to Soundwave. It seemed to be a common problem among the dafter harem visitors.

Soundwave looked up at the tank, confused. Brawl used one hand to physically turn his head toward the berth.

"Your little thugs are doing okay!" Skywarp shouted slowly, which really only served to make his voice more obnoxious. Brawl hadn't known that was possible. "They say hi!" Megatron looked pained and turned his head toward the ex-Communication Officer, mouthing the words so Soundwave could actually understand what was being yelled at him. "Rumble's got another altmode now - some kinda skimmer - and Frenzy's painted himself pink and white!"

"Skywarp," Optimus sighed. "My lord. Be nice."

The Seeker grinned unrepentantly. "Okay, maybe not that last part. But Ravage did get white racing stripes!" He noticed Soundwave looking at Megatron instead of him and upped his voice even further, assuming he still wasn't loud enough. "Haven't seen the little flying pests for stellar cycles, but Frenzy said they're doin' good!"

Optimus was giving Skywarp an affectionately bemused look, as if he were watching a turbo-hound chase its own tail. Megatron looked like he'd ingested old, gluey lowgrade. The Seeker's shouting was well-meant but not well thought-out. As per usual.

Soundwave looked like he'd been handed a whole cube of highgrade all his own. Brawl supposed he had some kind of attachment to the Cassetticons, even though they weren't his anymore. They weren't even allowed into this city quadrant, but Onslaught sometimes checked in because one of the little glitches bribed him for details on how the ex-communications expert was doing. Slag, one of Brawl's favorite bars was on the other side of the city, but he hadn't been there in vorns because he kept getting completely over-energized off free highgrade every time he went. He'd suffered the worst hangover-nightmares of his life about a table full of tiny mechs with beady optics asking him endless questions.

Brawl finished kicking the last of the furniture pieces out the door and checked the reserved time block. "Hey, hero of the orn," he said mockingly at the berth. "You got a breem left. Use it or lose it." With those words of wisdom, he went out the door himself. Something dinked off the inside after it swished closed, and the tank huffed a half-laugh. Seeker had probably thrown an empty cube at his head, knowing Skywarp. Mech would be a menace if he weren't such a lazy fragger.

He looked at the pile of scrap that had been a table and blasted air out his vents. He could see acquisition forms in his immediate future. Ugh.

Well, one thing in Brawl's favor: he didn't do procrastination. That'd be like…getting an order and not carrying it out. Grunts didn't do that. Besides, he'd only have to do it later if he didn't do it now. Even worse, if he didn't do it himself, Blast Off would probably desert his post again to avoid having to do it himself. Brawl added up the equations glumly: don't fill out forms now + sulking shuttle = pulling extra shifts. Or, fill out forms now + (moderately less) sulking shuttle = (possibly) no extra shifts.

So by the time Skywarp skipped out of the harem, Brawl was sitting at the desk again having a memo-war with the morons currently on-shift in building maintenance. It should not have been so difficult to just get the rusted form! What did they mean, he didn't have request clearance?! He'd been cleared to access the whole slagging building! If there was another guard up here right now, he could storm down to storage and get the replacement table himself!

"See you later!" Skywarp chirped in passing.

Brawl didn't lift his forehelm off the desk. He just gave the fragging Seeker a rude hand gesture and fired off another angry memo over the in-building 'net. The reply came back immediately, and it used words he had to access a dictionary to understand. Oh, come on, did they think he was that stupid? Just because his programming prioritized combat-related information didn't mean he didn't know how to tell when somebody was talking down to him. He worked with Onslaught and Blast Off, for Primus' sake. Now he knew they were doing this on purpose! Forget getting the table - he wanted to go down there to pound these idiots into bitty pieces.

The desk cronked over the floor as he shoved his chair back and stomped toward the harem door. "Gonna stick an acquisition form up their table-lovin' afts is what I'm gonna do," he muttered, keying in the code. "Give it a good twist and see how many fancy words they know then." A quick glance in showed Optimus still relaxing on the berth. One happy ex-Prime harem slave, check. Megatron glared back at him from the end of the berth; he must have interrupted another discussion. Like he hadn't heard it all before? One disgruntled ex-tyrant harem slave, check.

Brawl was about to duck back out, but something struck him as off. Optimus was lying on a sea of multicolored pillows, but that was normal. Not so normal was the fact that his pristine paintjob was scuffed and marked with black and purple transfers. The tank looked around and found Soundwave carefully stacking the empty cubes on the tray instead of polishing up the ex-Prime. The eunuch shrank down slightly when Brawl gave him the evil optic. Visor. Whatever. A not-happy harem guard look.

"You got work to do!" He pointed with a wax on, wax off gesture added, and Soundwave turned toward the berth helplessly.

Optimus lifted a hand and waved him away. "Not right now, Soundwave," he said, but the words were directed toward Brawl. "I told him to give me some time," he reassured the tank.

Oh. That was different than the boxy blue mech slacking off. "Must have been one Pit of an overload." The Autobot gave him an indifferent look and rolled over, choosing not to respond one way or another. Megatron continued to glare. Soundwave looked back and forth between Optimus and Brawl nervously.

And Brawl got an idea. A wonderful, terrible idea. The kind of idea grunts weren't supposed to get, because grunts weren't supposed to think independently. Which meant the twits down in maintenance wouldn't see it coming.

"C'mere, you." He beckoned, and Soundwave's nervous look ramped up. "I got something for you t' do."

The back of his head was cackling and rubbing its hands together like Swindle after a sale, overriding the more sensible parts of him already skimming through the regulations for how many different kinds of trouble this was going to get him into. Okay, really, if Blast Off could get away with ditching his shift on Brawl every other orn, then Brawl could get away with ignoring one little rule. Although there had to be a way to make it less ignoring a rule and more just finding a loophole. Maybe if he didn't allow Soundwave on the chair - wasn't precisely a rule, but anything that wasn't the floor was too good for the eunuch - and watched every single thing he did…but how could he do that? Brawl knew he wasn't the best at keeping his attention on things. Blast Off always made a point of -

Frag Blast Off. Blast Off wasn't here, now was he? Which meant that Brawl got stuck with an extra shift, and Brawl had to put up with paranoid Stunticons and Skywarp and mouthy maintenance mechs, and Brawl was fed up with this slag. Frag 'em all. Brawl was gonna do something he wanted to do, and he wasn't going to let his own stupid gestaltmate get in his way.

He hadn't been a Combaticon for a long while. Might be time to start acting like it.

…starting with finishing something that'd been interrupted. Because if Soundwave couldn't sit in the desk chair, then he could sit on Brawl's lap while Brawl sat in the chair watching his every move, and that was a position that sounded more appealing by the second. This wasn't precisely business anymore, and after business came time for some pleasure. It probably wouldn't take much to see if Soundwave was interested in picking up where they'd left off. A couple engine revs, and maybe Brawl would get to see the boxy blue mech squirm and beg again.

Mm. Yeah. Forget Blast off. Brawl had more important things to do this shift.

He snapped his fingers and turned to go back out the door. "C'mon!"

When he glanced back, the ex-officer was staring after him. Soundwave hastily looked down. Megatron's glare had turned suspicious, but he wouldn't say scrap and they all knew it. It might expose Soundwave as a weak spot in the ex-tyrant's determined insolence. Optimus peered over his shoulder, a vague flicker of concern crossing his face, but apathy won out long enough for Soundwave to pick up the tray. Neither Autobot nor Decepticon objected as he obediently followed Brawl out the door.

Because, in the end, they were just slaves.

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[ A/N: Next up: Optimus is curious, Starscream is confused, Brawl is clumsy, and Soundwave just can't.]