Title: Candy From Strangers, Pt. 15
Warnings: Dreams, groping, torture, hugs, and fanfiction.
Rating: R?
Continuity: Beast Wars, IDW, Shattered Glass, and G1
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): Prompts from Tumblr.
Note: the Nautilator/D.J.D. ficlet once in this chapter has been moved to 'Gone Fishing.'
You are Dinobot, Chromedome, Soundwave, Ultra Magnus, Starscream, Silverbolt, Whirl, Skids, and Tailgate.
[* * * * *]
Dinobot - "Nightmare"
[* * * * *]
You dream.
The Transmetal technology stripped the flesh off your beastmode, leaving bare metal where bones should be, and the dinosaur has been stamped out by the change. Where the skin should be, you wear loyalty. Where blood should course, veins of advanced technology push you beyond what the initial explosion did to Maximal and Predacon. Muscle has been replaced by alien strength. The pulse of a spark crackles where a heartbeat should be, and although you wield its power, it tastes foreign in your mind. It is not your spark. This is not your body.
Something of the animal remains. The cloning process has remade you, yet you dream. Inorganic as Megatron has remade you, corrupted you, something lingers in the recesses of your body. The animal instincts meld to your metal and control the twitching of your claws. When you walk, your killing claw taps the ground in a pattern no Predacon programming created. When your head ducks and whips around to confront the other half of your spark, your entire spine curves into a sinister threat more sinuous than angled. It is instinct, and it is part of you.
Rampage stares you down, but he cannot intimidate you. In your optics, he is a menacing threat contained by your spark. In your mind, however, he is seafood.
You do not fear him, and that baffles him.
"I cannot feel fear," he says slowly. One hand still on the floor where he fell, downed by spark-torture, he squints up at you. "But you, Dinobot. You fear. Not me, but I've smelled it on you." That puzzles him, you can tell. That you can fear, but not fear him - then what do you fear? "If you were a part of me, you would not, either."
He senses you, as you sense him. You are not his clone. You are half his spark, but Megatron cloned your body from someone else. Twisted you, tamed you, but this body is still a clone.
The crab's other hand reaches out toward you, and you eye it in confusion. It's not a threat. When he touches the tip of your serrated snout, it is a gentle exploration as if he could discover your secrets through his fingers. "Who are you, Dinobot? Are you someone under what he's created?"
Your head snaps back, neck coiling into a wary 'S' ready to strike. "I am Dinobot," you inform him coldly. "I am what the traitor could have been, had he not betrayed Megatron."
Flesh cannot regrow. Bones have gilded, strengthened, and been bound to service. You are a skeleton of what you once were, and the dead cannot rise. Not even here, or now, or under alien technology.
Rampage stares at you through hard emerald optics, unfeeling as the gems they resemble. "You were Dinobot. You are Dinobot." He rises to tower above you, but you are not afraid. The scent filling your mouth and nose is rich and vulnerable: metal, mechfluid, and seafood. You and he both know you could tear him down, but he is not afraid. He reaches out to touch your head between your eyes. "What will you be?"
The dead cannot be anything. There is no future, for the dead.
Then again, the dead cannot dream. So what does that make you, if not alive?
You hiss and turn to leave, bladed tail cracking against his arm and throwing it aside. "Fool."
He laughs as you leave.
That night, you have your first nightmare.
[* * * * *]
"I Kind Of..." - Chromedome
[* * * * *]
You don't know what to think. This is - well. This is the last thing you ever expected him to say to you. To anyone, really.
He's the worst narcissistic, self-absorbed, intellectually vain scientist with a superiority complex you've ever heard of, much less met. Describing him turns into a litany of redundant terms all pointing to a mech who puts himself first and can't think of the world in terms of other people on equal footing with him. You can't stand him.
But you hang out with him, anyway. You've never seen him around anyone else outside of work, and you pity him a bit for that. His attitude drives everyone away, and then he doesn't get why nobody acknowledges him.
He infuriates you, too, but he's also funny. He goes out of his way to be unexpected. He has insecurities that make his insufferably smug knowledge of his own genius kind of a pathetic sham. He's so awkward around standard social structures that you know he thinks himself above them. Yet from the way he keeps trying to fit in, you know he knows better. He believes his own propaganda but he doesn't quite trust it. He turns to you for validation more often than not.
Sometimes, you think he tries to make you laugh. You know you've startled him with your own dry humor.
He seeks you out, then tries to make it look like it was your idea.
This, however, can't be foisted off on you.
"I don't know what to say," you say at last.
Brainstorm fidgets. His hands open and close, searching for tools as if he could hide behind inventions and forget he said anything. "Is this going to change anything?"
Unspoken, he's asking, 'Are you going to walk away?'
You wonder who abandoned him in the past to wedge that thick slice of vulnerability into his voice. "No!" The automatic denial is irritated, and his wings relax a fraction at your indignant glare. "That's stupid. Why would it..?" You shake your head to dismiss the though. "It's just, um, you surprised me. Most mechs don't just walk up and drop that on someone."
His optics brighten nervously at the confirmation that'd he's screwed this up. "But I do kind of love you!" he protests anyway, because Brainstorm doesn't know how to back down once he's decided to go ahead.
And you laugh, because what else can you do? "And I kind of love you back."
He relaxes again, but tension still has his wings up. He still thinks you're going to drop him. "Okay. So. Friends?"
You clasp the hand he holds out to you, because you won't do that to him. "Friends."
[* * * * *]
"Dominate me" - Vortex & Soundwave
[* * * * *]
The whip falls, and you flinch. It slices into your armor, tears into your wires and tubing, and draws away amidst a splash of liquid pink. One more lengthy gash opens among the wounds already clustered in the small of your back. This one tears through three other welts, however, searing into the raw nerve circuitry network between abused individual sensors.
The gasp that bursts from you is involuntary and loud, and Vortex's visor gleams when he hears it.
"Mm. Let's hear that again, Soundwave." The lash comes down, crossing over the fresh gash, and you make a muted noise he savors right in front of you. "Ohhh, I like that. That's nice."
His pleasure in your pain oozes over you like a living thing, lapping up every small sound that escapes with intense relish. It curls around you and gnaws at the base of your spark, biting in time with the whip. You shudder again and turn your helm away from the unsatisfied desire in that red gaze. It pierces your armor as if it weren't there, and he will take what he wants from you just as easily.
As he's chosen to for the last half hour, he faces you while standing an arm length away. Not that your arms could reach him, as he's bound your wrists above your head. The statis cuffs are just a little too tight, just enough to dig into your wrist joints and stress your shoulders. You have to pull yourself up, hands straining to wrap around the chains and take some of the weight off your feet. Red-hot pokers of pain prickle no matter how you stand, but it's worse if you give up and let your feet take all your weight. He laughs every time you shift your balance from the inside or outside of your feet, trying to ease the pain even a little. The crackling whine of your vocalizer breaking lock-down amuses him immensely.
You lost control of your ventilation system and vocalizer when he was working over your feet. He's good at his job, you'll give him that. An interrogator knows how to find a weak spot and exploit it, and he's gone for purely physical torture to crack you. He took his time turning your feet into useless wrecks, slicing into the bottoms one precisely-timed whiplash at a time until you howled. Primus, that hurt! When he forced you to stand, to put your weight on the fresh cracks, your fans began to sputter. When he chained you like this, your vents panted.
Your situation hasn't improved since. A prisoner in Vortex's hands is a prisoner slowly lowered, inch by screaming inch, into a smelting pit. Every second that passes accumulates more pain. Your vents take in great gulps of air and release it in dread-laden stutters as you try to hold your breath. The mounting tide of pain will drown you soon, no matter how you try to hold out. You're too weak to hold your head up anymore. Your helm rests on your elbow between lashes, of which there have been plenty.
Vortex slips the tip of the whip under your chin, and you tremble violently as you force your chin up before the point of contact burns. He's content to turn you this way and that, the whip directing you, but you don't have the strength to play his games. He chuckles darkly when your neck wobbles and the hot, sparking tip of the whip singes your throat.
"No? I thought maybe you were done with this, but sure. I can keep going. I've got all day. All day. Just for you, I cleared my busy schedule. Busy busy." His visor gleams again. "I was going to sharpen that saw, but if you're so eager to get on with things, we can skip that break I was going to give you while I worked on it. You're sure you want a dull saw?"
Your vocalizer spouts a tiny, pathetic noise, and you twist desperately as if the rest of your body could somehow lend your neck strength. Metal warps in your wrists, your shoulders strain, and Vortex sighs contentedly as your chin still drops against the whip.
Failure means punishment. Success means punishment. There is no way you can win. It's only a matter of whether he chooses what to do next, or if he graciously allows you to pick. The anticipation is half the pleasure, for him.
"Well. If you insist, Soundwave. I wouldn't dream of disappointing you."
You try to brace yourself for the next hit. You fail.
The whip falls, and it wrings a cry from your vocalizer. Your throat closes around it, your visor sees static, but the high-pitched sound still comes out. Vortex's rotors turn eagerly, and he tilts his head toward you. You manage a feeble head-shake at the predatory look, but the denial's on reflex. .
His voice is cordial, the most genteel of concern as he responds to your wail like you are capable of anything coherent at this point. "What was that? More? Why, but of course. I live to serve."
His wrist flicks, and fire rips down your back in a long line that blazes like nothing you've ever felt. You arch forward wildly, survival instinct screaming at you to flee, but you go nowhere. You're trapped here, and all struggling does is jam your damaged feet into the floor just that much harder until your vocalizer shrieks feedback in a yell that ends in a soft whimper. Your helm meets your elbow, and your vents sob as the fans suck in cooling air that does nothing to help.
The room is saturated in fear, oily satisfaction, and Vortex's power. You choke on the reek of your own burnt fuel. Visor offline and hidden in the crook of your arm, you stand and shake. You keep thinking that you can't take any more of this, and then Vortex proves you wrong. You can take so much more pain than you believed you could bear.
The whip falls. Your throat intakes seize up, and you convulse under the power of a sweeping cascade of blinding agony that floods you and immediately drains away, taking your sad remnants of strength with it.
"You make the loveliest noises," Vortex tells you over the sound you make. You can't even manage a proper plea. Your back rages in a constant acid burn, consuming and vicious, and you're too eaten by pain to unclog your vocalizer enough for actual words. What gets out is a muffled wail, all vowels and white noise.
You're done. You're finished. You surrender. Please, please, let this be over!
"Luscious," whispers against your audio, and Vortex slaps the whip against the criss-crossed stripes marring your back. Small snaps, not enough to break the metal again, but enough to blister your paint and send you writhing in panic. "I could listen to you forever."
He steps away again, and the aching fear he leaves behind blots out the agony he inflicts on you. No! No, this can't continue! He can't keep going!
You can't go on. You can't, you can't, you can't.
He lets you thrash until you're exhausted and hang limp. You're not going anywhere until he releases you, and if you're still able to protest, then you're not ready to be released.
"I'll want a copy of this recording," he says, and you scrape up enough strength to nod.
Professional or not, right then you hate the interrogator for knowing you better than you know yourself. He's knows the difference between finding a breaking point and actually breaking someone, and he's ruthless enough take you to that edge. You can hold out further. You don't want to, but he's not going to let you back down until he's pushed you to the brink of shattering, just to test how long you'll last.
You're hiding in the inside of your elbow again, shuddering as you try to pull yourself together. Your plating clatters, shivering in dread.
A hands pets the back of your helm in a mockery of gentleness. "Good. I'll look forward to listening to this again." The whip falls. "Eventually. When I'm done with you today."
The floating, thin cry of a mech driven to his limit answers him.
[* * * * *]
"Defend" - Prowl & "Busted" - Ultra Magnus
[* * * * *]
The secrets of a wise and learned Second-in-Command are passed down from Second to Second in a ceremony consisting of lots of high-grade and a hands-on demonstration. It would be solemn and sedate but for the copious amount of drinking to loosen everyone up. You've never seen Prowl so relaxed.
You're too nervous to relax. This really isn't what you expected when Prowl asked you to join him for a training session. You were expecting to go over preventative measures in case of attack and tragedy, true, but - this doesn't quite fall into a category you can easily define. A duty, certainly, but not one you believe yourself equipped to handle.
You make sure to pay close attention. Duty is duty, even if you don't quite think you're the appropriate mech for the job.
"Are you sure this is necessary?" you ask when Prowl shows you and Jazz what to do. You're still not sure why you've been included in this odd ceremony. You can't picture yourself as Optimus Prime's Second. You're sure Jazz will be promoted to the position, since he's logically the next in line. "It seems very…" Your chair shifts as you straighten in it. "Intimate."
Prowl nods firmly. "Completely necessary. You'll understand when you're in my place that there are times the Prime needs to relax, and you may very well be the only one he can trust." Jazz covers a smile, and the dignified tactician glares at him. "Despite underhanded rumors implying there is more to it than that."
What rumors? You haven't heard any rumors. Clearly, Kup needs to pass on some of the more interesting tidbits he hears, if you're missing rumors about what the Prime's Second is up to behind closed doors.
You give Prowl an interested look that attests to the amount of high-grade you yourself have consumed.
Jazz's grin breaks free. "Mehinks the Second doth protest too much," he says in an aside to you that isn't very aside.
Prowl sputters.
Years later, and you understand why he got so defensive. You're feeling pretty defensive about the necessity of this rite, too.
There are no antenna to lick, but that's easy enough to compensate for. Prowl did emphasize improvising with what you have on hand. Rodimus Prime has that wide spoiler on his back that used to be nothing but a sign of Hot Rod's vanity. Now your fingers move over it, touching and caressing, and it's useful. It's a tool you can use to turn him around in the chair, away from the desk of work that he's attempted to tackle all day. You ease him to the floor with nothing but the pressure of fingers carefully sliding to the tips, and rubbing your thumbs along the bottom edge encourages him to slump over your lap to give you better access. You debate moving to the floor, too, but he seems so comfortable kneeling like this that you're loath to disturb him.
His engine idles, and you listen as the strained whine that's built throughout the day finally subsides. Your shoulders slowly ease down. You would have never guessed how much stress on your Prime affects you before you found yourself soothing that stress away. You feel so much better, knowing he's relaxing.
That's the secret of a true Second. This is why Prowl trained you.
The systems humming against your legs are turning over deep and steady, almost cycled into recharge. That's enough for duty, but your hands keep moving. They pet your Prime, and he breathes slow and peaceful under their touch.
Prowl instructed you to move on and pretend it never happened, encouraging the Prime to see it as simply something that happens. The leader of the Autobots can't break, but neither can he be dependent. No emotional ties, no physical investment, no encouragement or disapproval implied. Your duty is to allow a moment of controlled weakness.
You can't let go of him, however. You stay.
When Rodimus looks up at you, optics tired, you return his smile. "Why?" he asks you softly, and you betray the secret of every Second for the trust he shows you.
"Because I care."
[* * * * *]
"Torture Me" - Shattered Glass Prime & G1 Starscream
[* * * * *]
He hurts you, and he expects that to be enough. It's laughable, in a way, and your breathless scorn enrages him. He hurts you, he makes you scream, and you give him the noise he wants. Why not? You know how to play your role, here, bound and tortured. You shriek under his hands, you break under his whips, you shatter beneath his implements of pain, and he doesn't understand in the slightest how superficial pain has become.
"Such a pity," he mocks in that scratching baritone. He could be someone else if you offline your optics and think of the endurance test that is war.
You light your optics, and it's not him. The colors are wrong, the gestures utterly mad. He is violence and insanity personified. Every move he makes advertises that this mech lost his processor somewhere on the battlefield. He is Optimus Prime, but he is not. He is the Prime as he should be, re-imagined by the war that destroyed Cybertron and the deaths on his hands. He is powerful and terrible, glorious and profane.
You rather like him like this, to be honest. You're not just running hot from damage and pain.
He frustrates you at the same time. How can he look at you and be blind to your similarities?
He touches you with the gentlest stroke of his forefinger down your cheek, and he totally misinterprets your look of bemusement. "You chose wrong, little Seeker," he tells you, arrogant and sure. "You chose to join the Decepticons, and what has that brought you?" One hand pulls on the ragged stump of a wing, and the other clamps onto your chin, preventing you from turning your head away as the backlash hits. "Nothing but pain."
You grit your teeth, and surprise flashes through that mad optics as he realizes that it's not a rictus grin of agony you bare your teeth in. "Pain is a gateway to victory," you snarl through a broken jaw and lacerated tongue. Your words are unintelligible, but you grind them through his gloating like a dull knife. They come out in sheer, undiluted defiance of bodily harm. "I am a Decepticon. If Megatron's words couldn't break me, what can your paltry fists do to me?!"
Anger lights him incandescent, but your split lips twist into a sneer a second before, still quicker than any Autobot no matter how strange, you lunge against the chains and pain to bite. Your jaw grates painfully, but you clamp down as hard as you can. Fists batter you, but you wrench and pull, buck and fight. It is pain, nothing more.
He hurts you. You bend, you come apart, and you suffer. He thinks he wins, but now he knows it's not enough.
When they tear you off, you take a memento to remind him that hurting you had not changed you. Tossing your head back, you swallow his finger whole. Then you laugh in his masked face for daring to touch you with anything approaching tenderness.
"I choose pain," you say through a spill of vital fluids.
"You chose wrong," he repeats, but there is a fixated look you recognize in that gaze. You laugh again, piercing and hysterical.
Like Megatron before him, Optimus Prime looks upon the smoking ruin you've become and sees that you are truly beautiful.
[* * * * *]
"Heal" - Silverbolt
[* * * * *]
"There's something wrong with you," Slingshot says. The tone is kind of odd, coming from him. He's trying to convince you, and it's working better in this voice than the yelling he usually employs. "You're a flyer. A jet. You were made to fly. Of all the stuff we face in the air, you get scared about the ground?" He shakes his head and crosses his arms, a disgruntled look coming and going across his face as he ponders that. "Decepticons, I could get. Guns? Frag, we're all scared of guns. Guns can bring us down, and there's enough people aiming them at us every time we go up. I could even," he admits somewhat reluctantly, "get it if you were afraid for us. I mean, if you got in the air and started fussing about us going too fast or pulling stunts - sure, yeah. Okay. It's kinda your job to worry about us."
You look away as he squints at you. "But heights?"
"I do worry about all of that," you protest quietly, but your spark's not in it. "And you're very important to me."
"But not important enough to save," he says, and that's the accusation he's been building up to. The fact that you'll break off a dogfight if it goes too high, because you just can't take looking down and seeing the world spin so far below.
Decepticons and guns and concern for the trouble your wingmates get into are fleeting risks that come and go according to the shift of battle. The ground is always a threat. You can't take it, you break off, and you leave your gestaltmate fighting alone above you.
Slingshot glares at you, and your guilt seeps in through the holes his anger tears into your spark. "There is something," he enunciates precisely, dropping every word like he knows how badly they burn, "wrong with you."
He gives you one more nasty look for good measure, losing the reasonable voice for his normal caustic yell. "Get Ratchet to fix you!"
What can you say to that? He's right.
You hang your head and say nothing as he stomps away.
"It's a phobia," Ratchet tells you, but you know it's deeper than a simple mental skip. He wouldn't be speaking this gently to you if it were a physical problem, so there really is something wrong in your mind. "I can't fix that."
"I can…face it?" you ask, and you hate how your voice shakes at the idea. "Confronting phobias is a thing, right? It'll help?"
"Sometimes it does. Not always. And Silverbolt," he puts a hand on your wing as if to support you, "it's not a good idea to try during combat. I don't want you freezing up in the air."
The older officers treat you like glass. You hate that, no matter how much you appreciate it. There's something wrong with you, and it fell on Slingshot to tell you how everyone knows and wants you to start pulling your weight on the team. War is a life or death struggle. You can't put your gestalt at risk.
So you gather your courage and talk to Optimus Prime about separating you out from the other Aerialbots, to keep you from endangering them. Not during combat, of course, because Superior is needed, but other times. You have to stamp this phobia out.
While the other Aerialbots train with Ironhide, filling the gestalt bond with frustration and flashes of excitement, you spiral up from the mountain again and again. Each time, you convince yourself you're higher than before, no matter what the numbers say. Skydive tells you afterward that he had to sit out of practice because he couldn't concentrate.
When Air Raid finds a movie, you encourage the others to join him in watching it in the common room while you take a patrol. You fly high, higher than ever before, and you are terrified the entire time. Fireflight goes to the medbay complaining of headaches while you're gone.
You ask Skyfire for a favor and step blindfolded out of his hold at the maximum altitude your engines can function at. Fireflight collapses, Skydive walks into a wall, and both Slingshot and Air Raid tear aft out of the Ark looking for you, blind with your terror and horrified that they've driven you to what they see as suicidal idiocy.
"Skyfire was right there," you assure them, confused by their behavior. "I was scared, but I knew he'd catch me if I fell."
You don't understand the look they give you. "Idiot!" Slingshot hisses, and he turns toward the door as if Skyfire were right outside. "Idiot!" he yells.
"You never said anything," Skydive says. Air Raid burrows into your side as Fireflight tucks into the other. "Why didn't you come to us?"
Slingshot's hands curl into fists that shake, but he doesn't turn from glaring daggers at the door. You look from him to Skydive, then down at the other two. "There's nothing wrong with you," you explain the obvious. "It's just me."
When you stand up, you have to disengage your hands from the three sets suddenly holding on to them. You don't understand why they're reacting this way, and it fills you with warmth that they care. But you persist, because there's something wrong with you, and for their sakes, you have to fix it. You can't expect them to follow someone who can't fly where they go. That's like expecting Fireflight to call down the lightning. It's just backward logic, expecting jets to do what they weren't made to do.
"I'll be okay." You pat Slingshot's shoulder in passing, and he flinches. "I'll get better, you'll see."
You turn at the door to give them a smile you hope doesn't falter around the edges. "You're very important to me."
Slingshot's stricken look is the last thing you see as the door closes. It makes you all the more determined to conquer this fear. A good leader gives his mechs no cause to doubt how much he values them.
[* * * * *]
"Treat" - Rewind
[* * * * *]
You're being chased.
It's not the most epic chase of all time - well, maybe. You are involved, after all - but nobody can say you aren't giving it your all.
You zip through the bridge with a quick, "Is that aft up to code? The subject merits close inspection!" at Rodimus' behind when nobody is looking. Normally your impressions are pretty good, but you gave that one everything. You're under a console and out the other door before anyone can make the connection between fugitive 'copter on the lamb and the words that made Rodimus' jaw drop. Ultra Magnus is standing stock still in a spreading pool of laughter. Hopefully nobody'll figure out who actually said it in the next minute, because your pursuer's a curious little glitch. He'll stop and investigate why Rodders is staring stupidly up at the Duly Appointed Enforcer, who is looking absolutely everywhere but at the captain.
Meh, Ultra Fragnus will recover soon enough and start spouting rules and regs left and right. He'll probably try and arrest you later. The write-up will be a fun read. Impersonating an officer? Disrespect for architectural code? Improper timing of honest appreciation?
Woo! Cuffs! What everyone needs to look forward to in their evenings.
The distraction in the bridge won't last forever. You head for the bar. "Hey, Skids! Has Swerve told you about his idea for you shutting him up, yet?" you call through the door. "Here's a hint!" You make an obscene gesture only possible because pincers have two parts to them. It still takes both your claws to pull it off, but the mime gets the whole bar hooting.
Swerve starts talking, which only makes things worse. Everything according to plan. You like Swerve, but the mech can't bluff to save his life. He's been after Skids' skidplate for weeks. If you're lucky, causing a ruckus in the bar tonight will let him get lucky. That'd be cool. Swerve really should learn to shut up the fun way, and Skids is kind of awesome in an extreme sport referee sort of way: diplomatic but insane at the same time. He can keep up with you. There aren't many mechs who can.
One of whom is still chasing you. Slag, what does it take to ditch this guy?
Right. Onward to the labs. If Perceptor can't delay the pipsqueak through a flood of unnecessary wordage (it's a word, you swear), then you've only got one option left to you. It's not one you want to pull out for less than a threat of incarceration, but you'll do it if you have to.
Sneaking into the laboratories without being seen isn't exactly difficult. The science geeks are busy arguing. You could shake your guns while strutting up and down the lab tables, and they'd just tell you not to touch anything without breaking optic contact with each other. Can you spell sexual tension? Oh, yes you can. One sneaky pinch to Perceptor's aft right when Brainstorm turns to grab something off the counter, and the snarking commentary turns into a screaming fight complete with accusations of past molestation. Either you're not the first mech to pull this trick, or Brainstorm's a bit of a grab-aft in the lab.
Note to self: don't get locked in a lab with Brainstorm. He makes some fabulous guns, but you're not about to let him pull your trigger.
Unless it's a really big gun. Maybe for that. Call it being emotionally compromised, but you'd do a lot for a nice gun.
Anyway.
You duck out the other door and snicker to yourself at your cleverness for a while.
Only to nearly get caught when the door swooshes open after you. Scrap!
You haul rotors down the corridor while small feet patter determinedly after. Slaaaaag. Time to pull your ace out of the hole.
Down to Rung's office you skitter. Mechs forget how fast those lanky legs of yours can go until you're past them in a stream of verbal abuse. You leave half the ship confused, inexplicably turned on, yet irrationally angry with your passage. Normal day in the life, really.
When you hit Rung's door, you're expecting salvation. Rung is like the 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card in the Autobots.
"But why won't you let me in?" you're whining not a minute later. You know you're whining, but you can't stop yourself. Primus, you sound so nasal. Even Ratchet hasn't been able to explain how you can sound nasal without a nose. "I need help! Assistance! Succor me, doc!" See, you know big words, too.
*"I'm sorry, Whirl, but it's for your own good,"* Dr. Eyebrows says calmly through the intercom. *"Facing the results of your actions is a necessary part of personal development, and I feel it's time you stop trying to dodge consequences. You're not in the Wreckers any longer. There's no one and nothing here to shield you from the aftermath of what you've done."*
"That's right!" a bright voice says from about knee-height, and you fragging well try to climb the wall to escape, but it's too late. He's got you. "Now bend down here and take your hug like a mech," Rewind orders you. "You saved my life, and it's only right that I get to thank you."
Hemming and hawing, you eventually run out of excuses. He stands there and waits out the bluster until you bend down and, gingerly, pick him up so he can put his arms around your neck and hug you half to death.
You catch a glimpse of a little red light.
Gah! He's recording this!
[* * * * *]
"Candle" - Skids
[* * * * *]
You want to remember. You do.
Individual memories flicker, small flames amidst the darkness. One memory lights another, bursting out of the nothing into something, a spreading ocean of single moments that shimmer on the edge of a coherent whole. A thousand words per picture, every picture a second in time, all the time you've lost breaking apart into little tongues of fire in the back of your mind. There's something there.
You almost have it. You can almost see it. The light rises into a crackling wave about to break, about to sweep over and through you, and -
"Skids? Yo, Skids? You okay?"
- and you're shaking so hard your drink has spilled, so hard your plating clatters and your teeth rattle together. You set the glass down slowly, trying to control your movements, and blink at the hand on your other arm. "Swerve?"
The smile he gives you is worried but game. "Lost you for a second there, buddy. Where'd you go?"
You can only look at him and repeat what you already say too often: "I don't know."
[* * * * *]
"Trick" - Tailgate & "Song" - Rewind
[* * * * *]
Optics rest on you. Dark, heavy optics.
Normally, you'd cringe under the weight of them and stop whatever it is that you're doing. Now, however, you duck your head and giggle. Rewind brushes his mask against yours, and you whisper in his audio. He resets his vocalizer and sings the words. It comes out as a weird warble that sounds even funnier than when you try.
You bury your face into his neck and laugh so hard your wheels shake. He cracks up as well and nuzzles into your shoulder. "What? Did I pronounce it wrong?"
"Yes," you manage through the heaves of air. Oh, you needed that. "The 'aaah' is a 'aaoh' sound. You have to," a snort-giggle interrupts you, and that sets off Rewind again. You both shake, visors squinting in amusement. "Right! Yes! Gotta clench your vocal tubes on the second half of the word." It's something Cyclonus didn't know how to explain, since he has an actual mouth. You're much more confident explaining how to pronounce the old tongue to someone else with a full mask.
"Ohh, like the 'ow' in 'now'?" Your teaching efforts gain you a playful hug.
You hug him back. "Not quite. Kind of more like the 'o' in 'no.'"
He hums against you, mask to mask, and you can feel the minute vibrations of him flexing the tubes leading from his vocalizer. Mechs with mouths have full throats, but you and he have vocal tubes separate from your fuel intake tube. Lacking a mouth limits you in some ways, but this isn't bad.
"Again?" Rewind nods, and you whisper the phrase again.
He croons it back to you totally off-key, sounding like a lousy bar singer, but his pronunciation is spot-on. You celebrate by handing the flashdrive his drink while you take a deep swallow from your own. Your visors meet over the engex, and suddenly you both just lose it, sputtering and giggling at the total ridiculousness of what you're doing. Because, seriously, who gives singing lessons with your student sitting in your lap, legs wrapped around your waist? Can anyone be taking this seriously? Really?
"Is he still watching?" you ask breathlessly, just barely whispering in Rewind's audio.
He peeks and nods vigorously. "Yep! Swerve's down to sending the serving drone. There's some kind of," his hand waves in illustration, "black cloud of doom over his head."
Oh, wow, you can't believe it. "What about Chromedome?" You don't dare peek. That'd give the game away.
Rewind wriggles against you and positively beams. "Don't worry about him. He thinks it's hot."
You look at each other and collapse laughing a moment later.
"So," he says when you recover, "what's the next line?"
[* * * * *]
"Join Me" - IDW cop Orion Pax
[* * * * *]
"Join me, stalwart citizen!" Orion Pax boomed grandly. "Fight against the rising Decepticon menace! Fight the fearsome Megatron! Defeat our foes and solve mysterious crimes! Jump from impossibly tall objects and look dashingly heroic at the same time! With you at my side," he said, putting a hand on his much shorter but conversely brave companion's shoulder, "Cybertron will be restored to its former glory. Your courage and intellect will be a shining beacon of what a true Cybertronian can be when given the opportunity - "
"Are you writing Orion Pax fanfiction again?" Swerve asks from behind you.
You scramble to cover your datapad. "N-no! Why would I do that?!"
He turns from cleaning the table to give you a Look. It's halfway between bored out of his helm and highly entertained. "Because that's what you did that last time I let you stay past closing."
You tried to blot that night from your memory. Your greatest literary work ever? Nope, but Swerve still insisted you read it aloud before he unlocked the door to let you out.
You have the sinking feeling he's going to insist again.
"Is there porn in this one, too?"
You hiss in embarrassment. "No!"
"Just sayin'. I'll help you do the voices if there is. Y'know. If your story goes that way."
Oh. Well…oh.
Alright, then.
[* * * * *]