Personnel Duty

Starfire201:

Prime/Sideswipe - plug'n'play.

"Prime, go. There's nothing I can do for him."

That had been Ratchet's clipped and serious instruction before continuing with the rest of the convoy back to the Base. The fight to neutralise the most recent Decepticon to land on this planet had been savage, underlined with the need to destroy it before it had a chance to get to Megatron and find strength in numbers. It was a miracle that no one had been killed as the mech had tried to hide in a textiles factory, quickly resorting to throwing massive pieces of machinery and vats of chemicals as weapons. Ironhide had made the killing blow in the end by forcing its head into a rapier machine, loosing two fingers in the process but ending the fight before NEST could take any more of a battering.

Confrontations with Decepticons did not ever end with the end of the actual fight, and it took an hour for Cybertronian parts to be collected and damage indicative of non-terrestrial weaponry concealed. However, when the small group of Autobots was finally ready to leave with the NEST personnel, Sideswipe was still as armour-flared and cannon-warmed as he had been whilst fighting.

Though uncommon, this manner of being stuck in a combat state was not unheard of, but for a hardened warrior such as Sideswipe the fallout was potentially devastating. He knew his strength and ferocity, and had made the rational decision that if he stayed amongst the Autbots in this state that someone was going to get slagged. Thus, he'd followed at a distance from the convoy before ultimately returning to the battle site to calm down. Ratchet had Optimus privately when the Lamborghini had made an abrupt U-turn and torn off into the night, not needing to tell Ironhide to take the lead of the convoy.

Optimus had pulled over to allow the others to pass and made a far more legal U-turn in the narrow road to follow, sending Lennox a short communiqué about needing to speak to and retrieve his soldier. He'd grimaced internally at the human's obvious irritation at Sideswipe's behaviour but hadn't tried to explain. Sam and Mikaela didn't seem to be entirely comfortable with the cleansing merges given the way they'd been acting with him, and he wasn't keen to instigate a similar situation with Lennox when he didn't need to be told anything.

Returning to the battle site, Optimus found that it had been cordoned off as he'd predicted by NEST personnel involved in clean-up operations. As Sideswipe doubtless had, the Peterbuild was waved through and left alone to transform and enter the trashed factory. The humans had not yet entered the site from the perimeter, awaiting instruction as to what to disguise the aftermath of the fight as. Knowing that this window of time when they would not be interrupted was short, Optimus scanned the multi-levelled factory and closed in on the farthest corner behind a particularly misshapen machine.

He found Sideswipe as he'd expected him to be: wound up, filled with directionless energy and indefinable emotion, and very lost with himself. The mech was sat hunched and staring at the floor, his fists hanging over his knees and trembling. Optimus suspected that much of the damage to this device hadn't occurred during the fight but had come from Sideswipe's fists.

Before the Prime could speak, the smaller mech met his optics and tipped his head back. "Didn't need to come back for me, Sir. I'm alright. Just a bit fragged off, is all."

"I can see," Optimus replied softly though with a thread of amusement, optics bright over the sharp prow of the battle mask. Between the two brothers, Sideswipe was the gentler spark and easier to approach in these matters, though just as straightforward as Sunstreaker. "Can I help?"

Despite himself, Sideswipe smiled. He didn't 'believe' in cleansing merges. He knew their therapeutic and medicinal use, even their outright necessity at times, but these mystic gifts bestowed by Primes were not something he craved or actively sought out. He did, however, believe in the positive effects of a long, hard overload of which cleansing was an after-effect. Smirking, he cocked a brow at the Prime. "Doctor's orders?"

A low sound rumbled softly from Optimus's chassis as Sideswipe stood and came to him. He knelt, equalising their heights, and splayed his hands a little in acceptance. "It can be."

Sideswipe grunted a laugh and stepped into the warm field of air and energy around the bigger mech, his fingers following his optics as he refamiliarized himself with the interlocking parts and armour plates. "Nah, I'd rather not. Don't want to picture Ratchet telling you that you have to come back here and frag me."

It had been more than a few years since he'd done this with the Prime, but he'd have approached just as tentatively if it had been yesterday. Optimus was not just a berth-mate, and likely couldn't ever be for anyone. This wasn't the first time that that depressing thought had occurred to him, but like every other time he had to skirt it away for now. As unlikely as it was that he could see it himself, Prime had made a choiceless sacrifice to do this for them, and the least they could do was make it mutually enjoyable.

Optimus frowned at the brightly coloured mech's remark, chasing the hand that was easing aside parts leading down to his interface panel and covering it with his own. They stilled and met one another's gazes. "Sideswipe, it's not-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Sideswipe replied quickly, optics dropping to the bold panels and guiding them apart with more urgency. He put on a smirk, optics half-shuttering in an expression he'd picked up from the humans' television as he played his fingers over the waiting ports he'd found. "Just let me enjoy myself, alright?"

An engine moan and Optimus offlined his optics, forcing his chassis to remain closed as much as instinct was driving at him to expose his spark and initiate the merge. Sideswipe had never been able to welcome the merges without a lot of pleasurable preamble, obfuscating the act within a traditional kind of casual interfacing. Optimus was leery to allow the cleansing to be made secondary in these meetings as it could create a false impression of intimacy and affection, but with some bots there was simply no other way to go about it. Sideswipe knew and understood as well as he did that this did not make them lovers, nor the merges with anyone else. It still seemed a dangerous complication to tempt, though.

"I'll never understand your opinion of this."

"Good frag with medicinal perks. What's not to understand?" Sideswipe grinned, grasping a fistful of neural lines to keep Optimus close whilst he drew out the first connective lines and placed them to his ports. Broad fingers on his back and arms indicated that this was not going to be a one-way affair, and he rapidly found himself needing his grip on the Prime as much as to keep upright as to keep them together. When he spoke again, his voice was underline with a husky thrum. "'sides, why do you care? Not exactly like this is the worst duty of a Prime."

"Not a duty," Optimus murmured softly, closing his hand around the back of the mech's neck and squeezing hard enough to almost hurt. Sideswipe almost fell into his lap, chest plates finally cracking apart as their interface lines wove together into a lattice of pulsing, mounting energy.

The first shunt of sensory data, stimulated neural lines sharing and bouncing how good this felt, caused Sideswipe to seize the mech's shoulder in turn and arch into him. "Right, it's an honour and a privilege to get at my ports."

Despite himself, Optimus chuckled into the mech's neck. "Now you're sounding like Sunstreaker."

"Slag, Prime, gonna lose my charge if you talk like that," came the groused reply, though it lacked conviction as Sideswipe tightened his legs around slim hips and eradicated any measurable distance between them.

"I don't favour those odds," Optimus rumbled in a timbre that his voice only fell to on the cusp of merges, cradling the mech's helm with one hand whilst the other caressed the side of his chassis.

The hot play of energy across their interface lines was as good as Sideswipe remembered it being, but as always the warm pressure of the powerful spark behind it surprised him. He forgot the comfort, safety and love that just this proximity brought, feeling as though he and Optimus had been mates and lovers for centuries, they were so in-tune. It was transient and false, he knew, and he welcomed the escalation as the Prime's chassis opened fully and overwhelmed his spark. A reminder that they were not equals here, but a powerful entity tending to a weaker one. "Primus, you're good at this."

Optimus bit his glossa at the groan in those words, his spark bared and pulsing with mounting desperation for a merge. This far along he was as dependent as his partner on the merge, perhaps more so. Sideswipe could overload and walk away without a merge, but he had to cleanse. "Let me." He felt a flicker of relief that it hadn't come out begging. This had to be Sideswipe's choice. He had to open his spark willingly to his.

The smaller mech rocked to pull their interface lines taught, teasing disconnection and an end to the incredible feelings before stabilizing the connections and letting the feelings flood back into him. His vocaliser growled a hybrid sound of his voice and engine, fingers tightening as the pleasure built and the urge to open his chassis grew, though he fought it. "Just want to keep this one fun, Prime. Don't need you to do anything more."

Optimus felt a cold stab through his spark at that, a momentary disruption that worked to refocus his processor even as his body moved in unison and the data packets flooding between them increased in speed and intensity. It was not his place to force a cleansing merge, only to be available and to offer. Sideswipe was well within his rights to get up and walk away now, regardless of how uncomfortable it would leave the Prime as he was left forced to reabsorbed the extra energy battering about his spark.

"You know that's not why I'm here," he began at last, drawing back a little to meet Sideswipe's optics and gauge him. "But, if you're declining-"

"No!" Sideswipe barked before he could stop it, jerking his hips roughly to instigate another billowing wave of sensation that encouraged his spark to flare in its casing. He'd always hated how naked his soul was to the Prime in these merges – every facet of himself exposed for inspection if Optimus wished. The Autobot Commander never pried more than he had to, though, and there was an unspoken rule that whatever came up in these merges stayed there.

"No, do your mystic cleansing thing," he went on, though he had to bring his hands to his chassis to guide the plates apart and expose his spark. One day this would be easy, he hoped, and whenever he needed this spiritual debugging he could have it without needing to talk his spark into it with interfacing first. This was nice though, he reflected, rolling his hips demonstrably. "Just keep doing this as well."

Head bowed and smiling, Optimus brought the peripheral eddies of Sideswipe's spark into his own as he withdrew his ports into their housings, stretching the mech's connective lines. "This?" he asked in response to the other's spasm, using the opportunity to delve deeper into the tangled web of pride, frustration and anger that were barbing the aching spark.

Sideswipe felt the Prime breaching his core, swelling with clean warmth that brought easy peace in its wake and made him pity the humans for not being able to know it. Not a spark merge: better than that. He couldn't remember why he resisted these when they felt so good, had him filled with the Prime's steadiness and assurance, his peace and wisdom forcing aside the niggling anxieties and tensions that had built into a storm in his soul. Giving endlessly and taking nothing but a temporary place in his open spark.

"Yeah, that's the one."

Pretty damn pleased with how this one turned out in the end. It took on a lot more depth than I expected, but in a good way, I hope.

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Thanks for reading! ^_^