You are Astrotrain, Starscream, Optimus Prime, Star Saber, and Brainstorm.

Title: Candy From Strangers, Pt. 13

Warnings: Sex and burning alive, Academy functions, a sulking Seeker, the gentlest domination possible, gambling to lose, falling in love despite everything, and reveling in voyeurism.

Rating: R?

Continuity: IDW and G1

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

Motivation (Prompt): A prompt challenge on Tumblr. Bring it on.

Note: the Nautilator/D.J.D. ficlet once in this chapter has been moved to 'Gone Fishing.'

[* * * * *]

Sunstorm/Astrotrain - 'hot, dirty, smut anon'

[* * * * *]

It's hot.

Not so hot it hurts, but it hurts nonetheless because that heat splits in two and clamps down on your lower lip. Brushed across the surface in brief touches wouldn't have been bad, but this? This is metal burning on either side of your lower lip, and your metal responds faster than your systems do. It's softer already than healthy from the sheer output tempering your plating into a purer form of desire.

You're armored for space travel, but your face hasn't the protection your shuttlemode does. There are no ceramic tiles or heat shields against the stress of re-entry. And yet you let him close enough to do this, knowing he'd strike for the vulnerable point.

Stupid.

Clever, in a base way. You congratulate yourself and scream in the same second, because lust is its own torture. You're clever in a way that results in fingers raking scorching heat up either side of your jaw and dragging the black, charring marks down your neck. It could have been a punch. It could have been the full blast of his radiation, the starbright flames of his God and glory, but instead it's molten metal dripping down the inside of your lower lip. Can you taste yourself? Can you taste his breath?

He breathes in space. Not like you, never like you, not even in something you two should hold in similar. You are both Cybertronian, but right now you are something very different. What pulls in and out of his vents shimmers yellow and deadly, generated by a spark and a weapon that you invited closer. You practically pull it into your arms, and it clings to your armor. For a moment, it feels good. It's warm when the vastness of space is bitter cold. It's substance out in the void.

But like the unnatural softness turning your mouth to slick metal and burns, this warmth also becomes too much. The radiation sinks into the joints, to the gaps, into you. It is warm, but then it is hot, and it's too late to recoil. It singes whatever it touches. You are covered in it. The Light of Primus will burn you alive, he will take you and consume you in his fire, and stupid you, you held out your arms.

Where are your survival instincts, idiot? Didn't anyone ever teach you not to put everything you find in your mouth? Stop picking up the shiny objects and run away, you fool!

Maybe it's too late. If you flee, he'll pursue, and the orange optics simmering so close to you will be those of a hungry predator instead of a sated one. He's feeding from you. Don't make him kill you first.

You open yourself to him like the stupid drunkard you are, and when you gasp, you taste suns and light across your tongue before the extreme heat crackles over it like liquid lightning. Undiluted energy pools at the back of your mouth. When you swallow, you swallow him, and it ignites the fumes of high grade in your tank. Just a flash, a bang that causes you to hiccup in surprise, and you jerk as emergency intakes shoot closed before anything else catches fire.

For a second, you both breathe licking flickers of flame in space.

Luminous orange optics light when your own optics click back on, shock or self-preservation kicking you in the back of the cortex. When did you take your optics offline? Why did you decide it was a good idea to wrap the pretty herald of godly wrath in your arms? How, with lips sticky as the surface metal melts to his, can you mold your mouth to the shape of his kiss? Do you deliberately go out of your way to embrace destruction?

Apparently. Call it stupidity, foolishness, perhaps a death wish - but you're not dead. He kisses you like he will strip away your body and free your spark to twine with his, and the pulse of chained power vibrates every sensor in your body until you make small sounds of helpless need. They die in the airless void, but he smiles as if he heard you moan. Pooling low in your tanks is a heat that has nothing to do with temperature. The edges of your armor turn cherry-red, but the slick feel of his mouth over yours drives you crazy even as the pain drives you mad. His tongue sweeps in and chars pleading words to ash before they are more than thoughts mouthed against his lips, and he hums satisfaction as he tastes them.

He pushes down on your shoulders with his hands, pulling himself up your body, but he pushes down with his mouth as his wings rise above you like the sun dawning around a planet. He is a rogue star, and you are caught in his gravitational pull. You cannot help but give way beneath the pressure of his hand, turn your face up into his kiss.

You are fluid. You are freed. You are molten and melting, and your hands pull brilliant yellow danger further into the open wound you have become. He damages you by existing, and you throw yourself open to whatever he wants to inflict upon you. He will kill you, and you will die screaming his name in praise.

It's not a bad way to go.

His hands sear prints of black and buckled metal into you, leaving a road map of greed and giving in their wake. His mouth ravages yours, turning and taking and never still. The metal softens, hardens, and softens again. You taste a runnel of the outer layer on your tongue when passion flares and he lingers too long in one liplock. He licks your metal off you and pulls back to smile with you stained across his mouth. His body invades you, permeates you, and even as his radiation sends vital systems shrieking, you scream for more because of what it does to your sensor network. That is a different burning, and it feels the way you deliriously wish it always would.

You held out your arms, and he came to you. His lips bear down like he'll conquer you, suck on your tongue a last time as if in goodbye, and then he's gone, a shooting star of violent sunbright destruction.

He leaves you on the edge, throbbing and whimpering, biting your abused lower lip in a vain attempt at recapturing what he abandoned you to deal with on your own. Was that an attack or a tease? Does it matter? You retain just enough common sense not to chase him, either way.

While you're still trying to bend pained, tender finger joints into position to ease the near-pain he inflicted on you, there's a fiery blast of radiation as the distant yellow light goes nova. And suddenly you understand why he left you crying out for more.

He left you alive. Had he overloaded in your arms, however...

[* * * * *]

"Hunt with me" - Mirage/Starscream

[* * * * *]

He sure won't be winning any awards for pick-up lines. You've seen more subtle blunt object projectiles.

To be fair, you won't be winning any awards yourself, especially for your voice. The Science Academy's made it very clear you won't be getting any for your accomplishments. What's a pick-up line, really, but a statement of interest? It's more than you get on a regular basis from anyone but Skyfire, and he's certainly never made a pass at you. A pick-up line is almost an accomplishment. It's more than you should expect to get from sneaking into an Academy function tonight.

You shouldn't be here. Skyfire told you not to try and get in, but you couldn't resist. Not after your grant proposals were turned down three times in a row in favor of the inane, fawning idiots here tonight. Those gearheads are lining up to buff the skidplates of the rich, and you have to be here to witness. It could have been you. It should be you, but it's not, so you're at least going to see what you're missing.

You disarmed the security measures on the top floor of the Micean Tower - it is only another type of science, the sort where information technology can be used in practical terms - and breezed into the room like you belonged. For all that the noblemechs looked twice at your build and your public credentials ID, your attitude never made them question that you belonged. You have the degree and the snooty, haughty, better-than-thou expression to squash the idea of actually checking your name against the invitation list. You lurk on the edges of the crowd, however, because the professors and Board members holding court at the feet of their patrons would blow circuits if they spotted you.

You, the disgrace. You, the warbuild who dared defy his function and, worst of all, be good at it. They wish you'd be content to stay in a lab, tucked away from public view, until you die from an unfortunate lab accident.

"There are better proposals," they tell you every time they deny you grants, but you've read the winning numbers up in the aft-buffing lotto going on tonight. He who can kiss the most skidplate will be chosen to fund, not he whose proposal will push the most boundaries, discover new materials, or explore different worlds.

"You don't belong," one of the more honest of your professors bluntly informed you. "It's about charming money into the Academy. We need to persuade our benefactors that our laboratories will enhance their images and return in profit what they risk on us in face-time."

The honesty stung, but it was appreciated. So you came here tonight, although you shouldn't have. Not because you're bitter enough to ruin the whole Academy's chances through a spoiled tantrum - it's tempting, but you do have a career ahead of you - but because you desperately need to see what's beaten you out. Every scientist in the Academy is part of a competition, and you lost the game before you started, just by being who you are. Some feverish desire has to know what traits you lack. You castigate yourself, but you need to know.

You came. You saw. You still see.

This slip of a noblemech saw you, in return.

In his optics you see the truth of what the Academy lost in its stolid refusal to gamble on one warbuild and his proposals. Every experiment runs through a calculation of acceptable risk, but the Academy blinded itself to the odds, here. There will always be the Towers nobles who look for someone more exotic and wild, and those are the ones willing to throw everything into supporting that outside chance.

"Hunt with me," Mirage commands as if you would perch on his arm and soar when he launches you into the air. It's a demeaning image, but no less so than the clipped-wing cage the Academy keeps you in. At least you'll get to fly, and if he's anything of a hunter, he'll know to follow where you fly but protect you when you land.

From the subtle gleam in his optic, he might just ask whereabouts you nest.

Depending on how he asks, you might make room for two.

You do like to hunt.

[* * * * *]

Thundercracker - "Jealousy"

[* * * * *]

It was the last thing either of you expected. Although, well, don't look at you, because this isn't your fault. You didn't know the mech before last night and don't have a clue how he is normally.

"He's not usually like this," Skywarp says, optics wide as he stands on the balcony and stares thirteen stories straight down. You suppose he would know, but then again, this is Skywarp. "I don't know…I mean, I do know why - he said why - but it doesn't make any sense!"

Thirteen stories down, the movers have transformed and taken off with their meager load. Not that Thundercracker didn't meticulously label everything he owns for the movers to find and take out, but Skywarp owns the apartment and most of the major furnishings. Thundercracker apparently doesn't collect material belongings, that's all.

The telling part is that a flyer hired a ground-based moving team to do the moving. That's the part neither of you expected. Skywarp's ventilation system glitched this morning when the complex's door chime sounded instead of the balcony. You and he spent the whole night planning to ambush Skywarp's wingmate with reason and soothing nonsense the second he came through the balcony door, and the blue Seeker neatly avoided the trap. The mech knows Skywarp, no lie.

You admire that, in a way. You thought you knew the idiot, and look how that had turned out. You don't know Skywarp at all!

Bonus points to Thundercracker for outmaneuvering you both. It makes you feel like a graceless fool, but you can give the mech a begrudging nod for style.

"This was a bad idea," you mutter, and Skywarp whirls to give you a hurt look. You sigh and meet it head-on with a pissy glare of your own. "It was," you insist. "I knew the second I met you that you're trouble, and if I'd known you were this stupid, I would have never gone to the registry office in the first place!"

Hurt skids rapidly toward betrayal, but you're already striding for the balcony door. Hope lights his optics for a moment - what, does he seriously think you're going to comfort his idiot aft? - but then you brush past him and take a running step onto the steps, the launch rail, and out into the open sky. He yells something after you. You ignore it. You also ignore the increasingly urgent pings hammering your personal commlink. A clean break is best here. Maybe he'll learn something from your parting words, but you doubt it.

He can teleport to catch up to you, the original thing that caught your optic in your first meeting. He zipped up into the sky to introduce himself rather persistently while you tried to get away that day, and he kept warping to keep up with you. He probably didn't realize in the subsequent chase you led him on that you were sounding out the extent of his abilities. He can catch you, but only if he knows where you are.

You figured that out as soon as you realized he intended to get you on his wing. Call it justifiable pessimism, but you predicted even then that you'd need to be able to evade him. So you punch on your afterburners and use the speed that he claims to love to get the frag out of scanning range before he can lock up the apartment and attempt chasing you.

As soon as the immediate danger of being spotted is over, you drop back to normal speeds and merge into morning air traffic. If you stay in the mid-building smog, your colors won't stand out to any Seeker searching from above. Trying to hide is when having a bright color scheme puts you at a disadvantage, but you're confident there's enough haze to cloud Skywarp's optics. Mid-building's not the fastest strata of traffic, but it'll keep you hidden and get you where you need to go today. Which is, in order: 1. away from Skywarp, and 2. to the registry office.

You brood while you fly. It's become a familiar thing since returning to Cybertron without Skyfire. Getting exiled from your chosen career field will do that to a mech, you've found.

All right, Skywarp is an unmitigated disaster. Time to backpedal so fast you leave a sonic boom. That does leave you right back where you started, however.

Entrance into the War Academy requires a full wing. As annoying as Skywarp is, you'd thought he was the answer to your entrance woes when he popped into your flight path and wouldn't leave you be. But, no, turns out that he already has a wingmate. He never bothered to inform said wingmate when you entered the equation. What a shining example of stupidity.

That doesn't exclude you, basking in the rays of stupid as you were. You have your own set of communication issues, mostly of the mind-to-mouth filter variety. Your initial thought after the shock of walking into the apartment was, "Can you even keep up with a formation weighted down under all that armor?"

Thundercracker's built, you must admit. A hefty chunk of armor protects him from both the sonic weaponry he uses and slower speeds that result from using it. Something you'd have known if you kept your mouth shut and accessed the registry during that vital first minute. Instead, you insulted him.

Not your finest moment, you admit.

He was suitably miffed. Your first impression of 'not very impressed' changed to 'could be interesting' during the resulting blow-out between him and Skywarp. The mech, politely enough, asked you to stay out in the common room while he dragged a suddenly apprehensive Skywarp into the next room for an argument. You demurely kept yourself on the couch as requested, but even straining your audios didn't let you eavesdrop on anything more than a dark, plating-rattling rumble of anger underneath Skywarp's steadily more strident protests.

You've argued with Skywarp a few times. The way he whines tries the patience of the very air he vents, you swear. The fact that Thundercracker didn't resort even once to raising his voice elects him for sainthood in your personal pantheon of flyers. That kind of control is an excellent plus toward a potential wingmate, in your mind.

Too bad he has as much interest in joining your wing as he has in making up with the troublemaking Seeker you both hold in common. Thundercracker could have frozen lubricant when he stalked out of the room and began labeling his belongings. He refused to so much as look at you.

You could easily get angry at him for that, but you're more intrigued. There aren't many mechs with the presence of mind to set all the blame squarely where it belongs, and where it belongs is on Skywarp. You're guilty of not making a good first impression, nothing more. Thundercracker recognized that. You like that.

Ah, well. There could have been something there, but the whole deal is off. You're going to cancel the wingmate registry now.

Maybe Skywarp can salvage Thundercracker from the ruins of that relationship, but it's not your problem anymore. Fortunately for your peace of mind, your emotional commitment to that nutjob is negligible. You'll miss the praise and play and the beginnings of a decent working wing. You were on the verge of committing to a wing, but Skywarp himself? Meh, who cares. You truly cannot see why Thundercracker got his cockpit stuck over someone else infringing on his wingmate's time. Or Skywarp flitting about looking at other wings. You're really not sure how that relationship worked.

You should look up open wings while you're at the registry. You've been rather set on the idea of finding another free flyer and seeking your third together, but perhaps if you start with a stable duo actively looking for their third already, things will unfold smoother. Especially if you insist on meeting as a trine. No more secret wingmates in a closet somewhere. It'd avoid these kind of complications, you're sure.

A thrum warns you from above, and you roll out of the way just as someone a shade larger and far heavier slides down into your space. Speaking of complications. "He's all yours," you transmit, trying to keep your exasperation out of your voice for the sake of Skywarp's evident inability to communicate clearly. You don't envy this mech having to deal with that. "I'm on my way to handle the official business, now."

Blue wings slide closer to your own. Crowding you, much? Yeah, you don't take well to the silent treatment, nor to unspoken threats. This mech can just fly back to wherever he came from.

You slip into the next lane and flare your flaps to break speed, bringing your target lock up on his thrusters as a quick barrell roll lines you up behind him. His running lights flare in surprise, but you are the fastest flyer Vos ever built. It's not your fault if he didn't do his homework before trying to intimidate you. Test you. Whatever the frag he thinks he's doing right now. You have no idea, and you don't care.

Your voice sharpens. "Back off."

He hesitates, likely weighing the pros and cons of you pushing you further, but he eventually leaves. Not without a parting shot: your canopy rattles under a solid boom as he whirls away into the opposite lane and takes off.

Hint hint. Stay away from his Skywarp. Also: speed isn't everything.

In his opinion, anyway. You'll let him keep it, since you're on your way out of his life. You do like that the quiet dignity hides someone that feisty.

You're chuckling when you land at the registry office.

You fill out the forms to cancel your prior registration. When the attendant informs you there's been an error and the cancellation will be delayed until further notice, you're not worried. You just move on to browse the registry for duos while you wait.

While you're there, you make the decision to put out a single's notice. It's common enough for a sole flyer to advertise his availability, and this allows you to attach your full resume. That's something you've deliberately kept off your public ID ping here in Vos. You wanted a chance to settle back into normal life and look for a potential wing without the baggage of your past, despite the resounding accolades that same past would earn you. The War Academy's next entrance examination is relatively soon, however. You want to start training with a wing before the deadline hits.

It's been a lousy morning, but an accomplished afternoon. When you leave the registry office, you've sent in the cancellation form, filled out a single's notice, and are confident you'll start getting interested replies by nightfall.

Which you do. By the cargo load. Mostly from one duo in particular, signed by one mech in the duo. Some of them are invitations. Some of them could have been nice to accept if they didn't make you slightly suspicious as to why Thundercracker is so certain you'll get near him after your non-confrontation earlier.

You send an inquiry. The registry office sends you an explanation of the error. No wonder your cancellation still hasn't gone through. Thundercracker sent in his own wingmate registration at the same time. There's a conflict. All clarification requests to Thundercracker are coming back with stubborn affirmations attached. The cancellation can't go through until he stops insisting, "He's mine."

When you open your balcony door in the morning, there's a small pile of belongings on the landing ledge. Guess who's sitting on it? He must have gotten your address from Skywarp.

You're not even surprised.

[* * * * *]

Optimus Prime - "Dominate Me"

[* * * * *]

So this is defeat. Sprawled out on your front, humiliated and seething over the betrayal that rendered you helpless. Of all your numerous enemies who could have sent you to this personalized Pit, it's your closest confidant's quick thinking that pulled the tarmac out from under you. You fell, and now you're down, crushed under the feet of your foe.

Ratchet's laughter echoes, still. He laughed, when you looked at him with betrayed optics. You trusted him. Why? Why would he did this to you?

"Turn over!"

You obediently turn over, because there's no point in resistance. You're a broken mech. You know it. The hands that approvingly pat your windshield control you, and you surrendered to them. They are gentle but firm in their careless confidence, assuming that they have total power, and you're not about to disprove that power today.

Not today, not tomorrow, probably not ever. Ratchet made sure you knew your place, and your place is under the hands tracing intricate patterns across the armor-grade glass on your chest. The light contact tickles, and you squirm until you're ordered to stay still.

It comes in the form of a slap to the glass. "Stop it!"

You stop.

The hands could be pushed aside. They are weak compared to yours, but most are. You're used to knowing you are strong enough to defeat any Autobot or Decepticon you fight, but this isn't a fight. This is a rigged battle. Ratchet softened you up, and the smile turned on you now exterminates all willpower left over. Inside you, the spark of defiance suffers a fatal chill and snuffs out. The urge to fight dies.

Much as your pride will when Daniel finishes scribbling on you with that bar of soap. He is illustrating his own personal vision of your many battles against Megatron. There are stick figures, and your stick-self seems to be strangling a suspiciously bucket-helmed stick-mech. When he moves on to your other windshield, he starts drawing you standing atop a pile of Decepticon stick-figures like some sort of glowing hero.

You can only imagine how many pictures the other Autobots will take.

[* * * * *]

Star Saber/Jazz - Busted

[* * * * *]

You will likely be executed if Tyrest finds out about this. You do it anyway. You are a purist, but you have your small sins. No one can be perfect. Compared to the good you have done, this infraction barely registers. You will be forgiven for succumbing to base desires this once.

You're aware you're justifying something that's inexcusable. You're not sure why you bother. Perhaps it soothes your conscious if you convince yourself the weakness is a tiny lapse in judgment instead of a repeated, growing problem.

"Fold," the short black-and-white mech crows. You don't know why he's so happy to give up until you get a look at your own cards.

Such slag as you have never held. "I fold as well."

The next round is somehow worse. You have the feeling you should not be a betting mech, as you could have sworn nothing could be worse than your last hand. Jazz grins at you, however, and you gamble that his hand is just as bad. Nothing risked, nothing gained.

"Ante up," he says cheerfully, and you do.

He glances at his cards, and his visor glows that fascinating blue you should not find so interesting. He throws another three shanix on the table, and you follow his lead despite not having a leg to stand on. Anything to kick that vivid blue up another notch. It is the color of an oxygen-rich world, a world full of water, and the exact shade of the crystals that spear a mech through the spark and yet let him live. You have seen it. You have seen where crystal and spark flickered together, and they were that color. It is a beautiful color. The color of life.

It looks back at you for a good half a minute before you realize you've been caught staring, cards hanging slack from your hands. The urchin grin under the blue glow widens, and you can't look away.

When he slithers onto the table and crawls across it toward you, you drown in the light. He is everything you should lash out against. He works his way into your mind, widening the crack in your conviction.

"Star Saber," he whispers against your mask, and your hands press to the table because you shouldn't be doing this. Tyrest will make an example of you to all criminals, and you will confess your sins at your trial because know you are wrong. Yet you can't turn away when Jazz looks at you from so near.

"Star Saber," he repeats, and you make a muted noise indicating you're not a completely functionless lump of metal. It's followed by a squeak when one hand walks down your chest and under the table's edge. "I call."

You really shouldn't bet. It just doesn't work out for you.

[* * * * *]

"Love" - Brainstorm

[* * * * *]

You love. More than you should, in a war. More than most mechs think you can.

Love happens. Chromedome is a living testament to that fact. You want to scream and hit him with something every time he shows up wearing that same dopey look, because love happens to him the same way a train wreck does. You see it coming a mile away, but you can't put the brakes on because you're not in control. You can only be there to pick up the pieces afterward, put him back on track, and give him the same warnings you did last time. And then off he trundles while you claw the air at his back because, Primus spare his spark, it's only going to happen again.

If you didn't care about him, it'd be easier. But, as you know full well, love happens.

Love sneaks up on you like an exquisitely-planned theft. You arrogantly sneer against the possibility, but you don't dare ignore the threat. Precautions must be taken. When it happens, you know, the thief will be so skilled that your defenses will be useless, but what other choice do you have? You can't just open your spark and invite it in. That's not your style.

You barricade every important part of yourself off from easy access, and still it gets through. It's never blatant. It picks the locks. disarms the blaster, pours base liquid into the acidic, climbs the spiked wall, glides across the fake flooring, finds the hidden latch in the ceiling, searches out the real entrance to the actual inner sanctum of your spark - and when it gets that far, you're done for. It's gotten past all your tricks and taken a tour of you on the way. You've got nothing left to fight it off with. It knows you inside-out by then.

It stays. It breaks through all your defenses and sees through every diversion, and it keeps on until it's you, just you, who's left. It seizes your spark as if that were the prize, but the real theft quietly happens while you're struggling in its hands. The thief stays. It sets up shop right there where you can't ignore it.

Your courage disappears without a trace, right when you need it the most.

You don't see love coming. You never see your courage go.

Yet here you are, left with one but not the other.

It hardly seems a fair trade.

[* * * * *]

"Lust" - Chromedome

[* * * * *]

You play.

There are hands on your shoulders, wide and pushing you flat. A knee nudges between your own. Your hips strain when it works up between your thighs, and your legs look small as they bend around it. He drenches you in energy, sparking hard and fast through you in a soft explosion that knocks your circuitry for a loop. It bursts from him and washes across you, spreading over your plating and crackling into the seams.

Tiny flashes of lightning crawl along the undersides until you arch up into the culmination, the electrocution of his overload, and a scream swells from your spark as it shocks him back.

You rewind.

He is beautiful in reverse, head bending back down toward you in slow motion. His visor furrows gradually, frame by frame, until the expression of utter release contracts into one of concentration. The bright flare of gold darkens down to a gorgeous somber yellow that focuses on you, only on you, but as the film goes back, you see him withdraw into himself. The energy eases down, down, and down, until it is barely visible. Flickers of charge dissipate until they flirt against your chest.

The curve of his neck curls down further, the perfect arch reversing and then bending as he returns to humming at your spark. That inward-turned focus on his rising charge leaves no attention to spare, and his mask shows the rest of the world what he really feels. To you, it's a look of naked adoration that makes him look bashful, as if he's revealing a secret desire, a torrid need to touch you that he will never say aloud anywhere else but here.

You play.

The hand cupped under your aft lifts your entire lower half as he pays homage to your chest like it's the center of his universe. He hums to your engorged spark, promising it every rich jolt of energy his larger frame can deliver it. Earnest words strive to convince you that he will keep his promises, he will make you feel good, he will love you until he's a burnt out husk, and even then, he will throw his body over you to protect you from the rest of the world.

The other hand is near your helm, close enough that the thumb idly plays with the side of your camera. It rubs tiny circles in time with his words. The tender gesture is small, seemingly insignificant, and you wouldn't pay any attention to it if didn't mean so much.

You rewind.

Fingers stroke up the small of your back and slide between your shoulders. They linger there for a moment, reveling in the vulnerability of the spinal strut you loosen your armor to let them at. Then they return to their path and retreat upward. They settle on your neck, where they began. The massage starts light, a gentle touch meant to seduce you. Do you want to go further tonight? Yes, you do.

In reverse, however, the fingers press down harder. They push into the ache you'd originally complained of, lifting their relief away until your helm throbs with pain and they are just starting their attempt to ease it. They leave your neck.

You play.

Knees on either side of your waist hem you in, and the hands come back. You feel incredibly safe despite the pain in your helm. Chromedome hovers over you. He's more than twice your size, and you idly plan to take advantage of that size momentarily, once the fingers slipping under your neck from either side work their magic. He has such sensitive hands. It won't be difficult to get him in the mood.

Really, he already is. All you have to do was roll your helm back and show your throat, show that you trust him to put those dangerous, wonderful fingers where they can do the most harm.

You rewind.

He stands up, an overwhelmed collapse in reverse.

You play.

"Are you recording this?"

"Yes."

You don't explain why.

He doesn't ask.

And you start at the beginning again.

[* * * * *]