Chapter 102

-0-Wheeljack's lab

Ratchet came in and sat watching down in a desk chair as Wheeljack did some esoteric math for a 'refractory device' for Autobot City, whatever that was. Ratchet watched him, the excitement in his audials, the sweetness of his delight and smiled. Then he put on his yenta hat and went to work.

"So, 'Jack, when was the last time you 'faced?"

Subtle, thy name isn't Ratchet.

Wheeljack looking up with audial wings flashing stared at Ratchet with surprise. "Ratchet?"

"I was just checking as your doctor and as your friend."

"What brings this up?" Wheeljack's optics narrowed. "This isn't some tactic in your prank war with Ironhide is it?"

"No," Ratchet said, grinning at the wariness before him. They never learned. He was an unstoppable force of nature. "It's been over a while."

"What?" Wheeljack looked at him with surprise, then frowned. "He told me that it was still going. He hangs out in here, Ratchet, hiding from you and frankly it's beginning to bug me. He's not small and this space isn't big."

"Ah," Ratchet said. "I'll speak with him."

"Good," Wheeljack said relaxing a smidge. He returned to his work.

"So when?" Ratchet asked.

"I refuse to answer."

"You can't remember," Ratchet posed.

"What? RATCHET! You need to go somewhere and be useful."

"Wheeljack, if you could face anyone in the garrison here and on Mars who would it be? Bond and not, it doesn't matter," Ratchet said opening a page in his processor for details. A mech couldn't complete their mission without intel.

Wheeljack looked at Ratchet, studying him closely. "What's up?"

"What's up? … I was just thinking about you, 'Jack, what a great mech you were and how you need someone to be on your side."

"You are," Wheeljack said obliviously.

"Not on your side, 'Jack. On. Your. Side." Ratchet looked at him pointedly. "You know, someone to be with you, to talk to you in the middle of the night, someone to 'face with when you want to climb the walls. Like me. Right now."

Wheeljack looked shocked. "I don't want to 'face you, Ratchet. You're bonded."

Ratchet stared at Wheeljack, considered his sheltered life, timed it by the amount of times he probably did 'face in his whole life with anything but his own hand or a light socket and found that his total was in the negative numbers. It made him want to go 'awwwww'. "Wheeljack, I mean someone else. Don't you want to be with someone and have all the joy and happiness that Ironhide and I have?"

It was silent as they stared at each other.

"Okay, let me rephrase that. Don't you wanna frag when ya want to? Don't you want to know that there's someone out there who'll love you as you are, put out and put up with you and be there no matter what?"

"Sure I do," Wheeljack said.

"So ..." Ratchet prodded.

"I … I have my work and there's friends and the like."

"Wheeljack, I'm going to do you a solid. I'm going to find you a partner." With that, Ratchet got up and walked out the door with his freak flag flying high.

Wheeljack who was sitting on his chair with his spark wilting under the sheer tonnage of his fright wondered how his life made it so much farther down in the Pit than it usually was.

He also wondered what a state of matter had to do with getting laid.

-0-Ironhide

He shot up the firing range, chatted up the soldiers, wandered through Ops Center, peeked into Med Bay before running like a gazelle out the door once more, hung out on the beach until red messaging told him that his solar capacity had been met and exceeded, walked back to Ops Center, shot the breeze, walked to the beach and back, then hid out with the soldiers until mid afternoon.

T-minus 19 and counting, he thought. Nineteen more Earth days until he got his sparkling and Ratchet got his marbles back. Would he make it, he wasn't sure but he knew no little sparkling was ever desired more than his and the sooner the better.

-0-Ratchet

He sat in the rec room with a data pad in his servos. He was inputting names then going over his impressions about what they would be like with His Wheeljack. As he did, impressions of stories on his favorite fan fiction site filled his mind, stories that he had shamelessly searched out and read for the hoot of it.

The twins were a great pairing, he thought. Ironhide was a healthy mech who liked to 'face and often. Ratchet was born to throw down with the big mountainous wonder and they had a healthy humorous rambunctious 'face life. In the stories, he was either getting or giving it with the twins, with Wheeljack or with Starscream.

Apparently, the personality types of him and Starscream were compatible, those that were developed by writers that could only guess about them and make their own conclusions. Of course, he and Ironhide along with Sideswipe and Hound had been in public view.

That had helped some but it was terribly amusing to read the rest anyway. Few of them wrote him with Ironhide. Apparently, 'old people' didn't 'face or if they did it was sort of 'growly Ironhide' and 'snide curmudgeon Ratchet' mercy 'facing.

Sort of pegged us, Ratchet said to himself, snickering as he crossed off the mini-cons.

Hmmm. Wheeljack and Bumblebee. That would be a great story. He scanned the website and found none with a cursory search. So he decided to write one.

The Virgin and The Other Virgin by 'Bend-Over-And-Cough'

It was dark when the explosion occurred blowing up the lab where Wheeljack worked. It rumbled through the Ark ..."

/... Ark? … how did they know that as a name for a space ship … Ark … well, I will bow to convention .../

"It rumbled through the Ark. Prime getting up off of Prowl called out, "Autobots! What the frag?!"

Ratchet snorted. /... good thing I have an alias … I'm going to post this .../

Prowl, his normally ice cold demeanor melting away under the heat of his Prime tugged at Prime's finials.

/... I wonder if Prowl can reach Prime's finials? … he's got eight feet on Prowl … I wonder how they face? … it's bad enough with Ironhide being nearly five feet taller than me … I can't imagine that remaining three feet … although Ironhide would have some slag to say about it … 'three more feet of mech, ba-bee … can you handle it? .../ He snorted. /...who was hiding in Wheeljack's equipment room, ba-bee? … where was I? Oh, right. Prime's pronging Prowl … /

"Snort!"

Prowl tugged at Prime's finials. "Don't go, Optimus. Red Alert is on duty and I'm horny."

So Prime lay back down crashing them into overload as Prowl's horn went off echoing through the now empty halls of the Ark.

"TOOT! TOOT! TOOT!"

Ratchet snorted and sighed. "Prowl, the little mech who could … little toot … I don't think I can look you in the face now, Prowler." Then he continued.

Ironhide was at the lab, standing outside afraid to enter. Behind him carrying a med kit, the valiant Doctor Ratchet risked life and limb to go into the inferno, shoving Inferno aside to pull Wheeljack out by his finial audials. /... probably would turn 'Jack on .../ He gave him laborious mouth-to-mouth. When he was clear on what a great kisser the scientist was, Ratchet began to doctor him back to health.

Ironhide who had a secret crush on the handsome, brave and clearly out of his league medico rushed over and knelt. "Need any help, Doc?" he asked clearly hoping it was in the kissing department and not because Ratchet had two arms to reattach and needed someone to hold one.

"No, Ironhide. I was born to do this," he said. "You might go and get Wheeljack's blushing bride, Bumblebee. He might take a shock to the sight of his bond laying in pieces on the ground even though you know I'll save him."

"I do know that, Ratchet, because you're the best doctor in the world. I'll go and tell Bumblebee." With that, the big mech turned … make that pirouetted away and disappeared back into the Ark.

He ran down the corridor passing Prime's quarters, the sounds of rising overload rising. Pausing to get an audial full of something he didn't get often, laid, that is, he rushed onward with great reluctance arriving at the quarters of Wheeljack and his blushing bride, the mini-con and all around smart aft, Bumblebee.

He knocked. "Bumblebee? Open the door. It's Ironhide, your adopted older brother who once knew your genitors but only 'faced one of them because the other one was way too short and I couldn't find them in the berth or they'd have gotten the doom of Unicron, too. Me."

The door opened as Bumblebee stepped out, his chassis nearly touching the floor from the sag. He was with sparkling(s) and his gut was distended to manage the fifteen little tumblers that he and Wheeljack had spawned on some dark night (of the soul). "What?" he asked barely staying upright.

"Wheeljack got blowed up."

Bee yawned. "Okay," he said.

"You better get there. Let me help you."

"Oh. Let me … I'll just transform and follow you out at eighty miles an hour like everyone apparently does in the Ark." At that, he transformed, turning himself inside out to accommodate their fifteen sparklings.

Ironhide, his face a mask of barely contained nausea winced as a yellow mom van finally crawled together from Bumblebee's parts.

The little mom van with a sparkling peering out of each of the windows drove off with a backfire as Ironhide watched the demonic little car with great loathing. Even though he'd been a mom van himself in another life, he at least had the decency to have tinted windows.

Then he transformed and drove off to watch the Nobel Prize winning sainted and much admired Doc Ratchet make it all better with Wheeljack.

TBC (Probably)

With that, Ratchet posted it to his account, Bend-Over-And-Cough and turned back to finding a fuck buddy for Wheeljack.

-0-Later that night

Just for fun, Ratchet checked his account at the fan fiction website and found that his story had 75 comments, all of them positive and all of them exclaiming for more of the story. Looking at it with a grin, Ratchet resolved to continue and hopefully at the end, he would actually be able to pair Wheeljack up with someone.

Truly.

"Ratchet!"

He looked over his shoulder smirking at his only one lying on the berth waiting for him.

"Get over here, mech. Don't make me come over there and get ya."

With a grin, he turned off his datapad then the lights, stumbling over to where the berth now stood to lie down in the arms of his great big wonder bunny. "Goodnight, mom van."

"Good night, ya yellow aft slagger."