Alexis wasn't beautiful, wasn't impressively intelligent, or perfectly made, didn't devote long amounts of time to her appearance, wasn't attentive or flattering to Sideswipe's well-maintained ego, wasn't even a soldier, or an experienced seductress. She was everything he didn't need and never sought out.

But the attraction began even before he met her, grew when she first spoke to him and kindled into undeniable desire even as she avoided his gaze. Yes, Sides got pleasure in her responses to his directness, pleased when she reacted with that heat of emotion that only rivaled the warmth of her touch.

He hadn't been able to think of her though. To linger in how she made him feel would have alerted his brother. He wasn't prepared to deal with that. Sideswipe could only block so much from his twin though and the illusion of detached regard slipped and fell away the moment that he found her in the medical bay keeping watch over Sunstreaker.

"So you are going to have this female without my consent?"

His brother sat down on his berth. Shoving some data pads away, he eased comfortably back. Even in the shadows and the depths of their link, Sideswipe could feel the attentiveness of his twin.

"Yes, I am."

"A human... you know."

"Yes."

"A lower species."

"I guess."

"And you still want her..." Sunstreaker leaned further back and let his hand draw a provocative line down his resting area. "...here?"

"That's the idea."

Sunstreaker huffed at that, his optics flashing bright with displeasure. "To do what? You don't even know how humans mingle. What do you think you are going to do with her?"

Sideswipe vented air. Why was it whenever he was trying to get some work done or write up a report that he had to be interrupted?

"Interrupt you!" Sunstreaker spat out loudly, taking Sideswipe's internal thoughts and using them against him. "And what do you call what I feel when you made lingering physical contact with the female? If that isn't an interruption, nothing is."

"You didn't mind as much as I thought you would," he voiced.

His twin sat up. A frown lined his symmetrically curved facial features.

Sunny spoke slowly as he watched his brother carefully. "You know that I can't help it. We have always desired the same things. Somewhere in me I must want her as well. And while I am against this entire affiliation with a human, I will not hold us back from this experimentation."

A nervous tingle went down Sideswipe's back panel. Finishing the report he had been working on, he sent it off and turned to his twin.

"Us?"

Sunstreaker smiled smugly, knowing he had his attention.

"Now that you are no longer blocking how you feel about the female..."

"Alexis," he interrupted.

The smile blew up and covered his face in a grin.

"Alexis, of course. What was I thinking? I understand your infatuation for the human. So, we will have her. And once we have, you will find her just like the rest of them. Or, you will come to your senses now, and we will go see one of our favorites. We haven't had a femme in a while. That's our problem and most certainly yours."

The nervous tingle grew into a twitch in his optic sensors. Sideswipe knew enough about Alexis to understand that she would never want to be shared by them. She didn't like Sunny. Sometimes, he didn't even think she liked him. But she allowed him to touch her and allowed him to move close with his mouth burning against her pliable lips... allowed him to share her space and breathe in her air.

His brother cringed slightly before covering it with a sly half-smile. "Yes, you have got it for this one. Should make things interesting," Sunstreaker said, pulling him out of his internal thoughts. "Tell the female what her new affiliation means and her change in status, or I will."

"Not this time," he told his brother firmly, wanting that to be the end of it while knowing it wouldn't be.

His brother moved closer, a darkness swimming in his dimmed optics. "But you will. You always do. As I do for you. We share everything... especially our diversions. And before I remind myself how repelled I am by the entire idea... go ahead. Go to her like you are thinking of, touch her, watch her, be with her, and know that as soon as I am ready, so will she be."

His brother was right. They did share everything. It was something he never really thought about until that moment for it was as natural as unwinding with a mug of high-grade. He would tell her. Alexis would have to understand. If she wanted him, she would want his brother as well. She would feel exceptionally unique because of their selection of her. Alexis wouldn't reject them.

"Can I touch you?"

They were alone on the observation deck. Ever since the physical contact in the human area only three short days ago, they had touched their mouths several more times. Each occasion had been marked by how much closer her body came to his. The last time had allowed him to feel her female curves slowly drifting up his suddenly noticeably flat chest as he slowly mouthed her name against the smoothness of her neck.

Alexis had also sat inside of him one evening until she nearly fell asleep as he soothed her with his energy, gentle enough not to intrude, but enough that his spark hummed and vibrated inside his chamber. Now, finding her on the observation deck and perhaps even waiting for him, certain things started to come into question. His decision to tell her was suddenly not so certain as it had been. But it wasn't really a conscious thought, just a manifested nervousness that made his servos jerk.

She was looking at him with her head tilted to the side. Even not trying to seduce him, her unexpected question was enough to send his Energon into a low boil. He bent down and carefully sat. She moved closer to him, leaned down and began to touch his nearby hand.

Alexis was just curious, but knowing that didn't stop the resulting pleasure. She moved toward his pediform, small hands moving between the multilayered junctures and trailing out along the very edge. She didn't speak. But now, thinking back on the last rather fast-moving days, she rarely did. And when he did, or tried to, Alexis would pull away and a strange unreadable expression would overtake her, forcing him to draw her in further, unwilling to let her succumb to whatever was trying to take her attention from him.

He knew of physical lust, of want, and had sometimes seen and read it in her eyes when he was close to her. The change was so sudden but not entirely unexpected. Yes, she would come to him and his brother. She would please them both, perhaps... he hitched and tilted back when she found a hidden panel underneath his pediform, a sensory relay that helped when traveling along unknown terrain. Her fingers splayed along it and then pressed down harder. Bold pleasure spread and shifted along his body. The relay had never been touched like that. Now he knew as Alexis shifted her contact and followed the path of a small bundle of wires underneath another panel that he had a new area of his body that was capable of inciting arousal.

She stopped too soon. Alexis sat down by him, but didn't touch him.

"Is... is that it?" he asked, disappointed and wired and enjoying the view of the female below him who was stretching her neck up to look at him. Yes, he wanted those green eyes on him, wanted them planted and firmly placed.

"I find that..."

There was something in her tone of voice. She paused, bit her lip and then decided to continue.

"I like it. I like touching you."

"What is wrong with that?"

She heaved out a heavy breath.

"But it's more than that... I... I..." she struggled, searched for words and failed.

"Want me?" Sideswipe filled in cheerfully.

Her brows furrowed and her skin tinted a delicate pink.

"I should go. I need to go," she corrected herself.

"Come to me later?"

She shook her head in the negative. "No. Not tonight... I... no."

Alexis stood, immediately looking confused when his optics dimmed and his servos went lax. He appeared behind her, his human arms lingering behind her own, his chest a mere half an inch from her back. His fingers tilted up and stretched, finding the edge of the flesh of her own hand before clasping her small fingers underneath his own.

Alexis shook her head and tried to move away. The Autobot pressed against her more firmly. That stilled her, and for a moment, she stayed like that with him. A short moment, for she turned and pushed him away, a subtle sadness tilting her mouth down.

He couldn't have that. Whatever she was thinking about was not of him. The more he touched her as a human, the more he enjoyed himself as one. And when his mouth found hers and when they became a tangle of arms and hands and slow stimulating movement of breath that was only overshadowed by the thin cold air between them, he knew and understood without a doubt that now, yes now, Alexis was thinking of him.

Sideswipe allowed Alexis to leave him, but he followed soon after. His brother was being relatively silent through their bond, a puzzle that he felt no need to understand. At the moment, the silence was preferable, even if he knew Sunstreaker was analyzing every thought, every movement, every impulse.

"I didn't think you would show," Josh said to him, looking encouraged. "You said you weren't interested." The door slid all the way open and Sideswipe eased inside. Josh was still speaking to him, but all the Autobot saw was Alexis, who was sitting next to Amanda. The two were talking about something and didn't bother stopping when he entered.

"Interested?" Sides echoed, not really listening to anything the male was saying.

A small group was inside the human dwelling, from the sixteen-year-old, Peter, who was noticeably without his younger siblings, to the Bobby one that seemed to enjoy monopolizing Josh's time.

Alexis looked up, not looking pleased at all to see him, but frustrated.

"You know, the Bible study I was talking about."

"Yes, well..." He looked over at Alexis. "I am now."

"Great, find somewhere to sit." Josh waved him forward and pointed toward the area where everyone was sitting. "We were just about to get started. I'd offer you something to drink, but I know you have no need."

Sideswipe's eyes flickered over to Amanda. She understood. She got up, but Alexis stopped her with low words that were indecipherable. Amanda sat back down. She shrugged her shoulders at the Autobot, an apologetic frown offered.

That wasn't enough to stop Sides though. He went to the other side of Alexis and stood above and looked down at Peter, knowing he had found a weak link. That was enough to get the sixteen-year-old boy to get the hint. The coveted space was quickly cleared. Proudly, and finally, the Autobot sat next to Alexis.

That was when he noticed he had drawn the attention of the entire group there. Alexis was frowning tightly beside him.

Interrupting the sudden silence, Josh spoke up, "How 'bout we get started." He looked at his sister across the short space of the room. "Alexis, you want to begin tonight?"

Alexis shook her head and looked down at the data pad in her hand. She turned on the device and began to read. At first, it was just the sound of her voice that grabbed the Autobot's attention along with the way her mouth moved and pressed together. Soon enough, Sideswipe found himself listening to the words.

"You don't have to be human with me, remember?" Alexis told him as soon as he had found her alone. She stood in the tiny hallway outside her room.

He stared at her. His voice curved along the decibel spectrum and landed on a husky utterance that smoothed his words and managed to heighten their nearness. "But you like this form. It pleases you. And when I am with you, it pleases me as well."

The discoloration on her face appeared again, a blush he now understood that spoke of some sort of embarrassment.

"Still, I..." she spoke up.

Sideswipe stopped her. He pounced on the female, pinning her against the door of the room with his well-placed arms and hands. The action startled her. She pulled away, her head moving along her shoulder and then away from him. His fingers found her neck, two of them pressing lightly against the echoing pulse of her life organ.

"How did we get here?" she asked suddenly, the words not directed at him but through him. She didn't want an answer. And she wasn't speaking of what he assumed. By the time the Autobot figured that out, he had already answered with little thought to what she had said or how.

"You left the room. I followed. I should let you know that I am not accustomed to tailing females. It is usually the other way around," he told her smugly.

She huffed at that, a dry sounding cough of a noise that even with its strangeness did not have him moving away.

"Must be terribly awkward for you," Alexis said back, actually teasing him. It was the first time she had done something like that, and her letting her guard down with him didn't go unnoticed. Yes, he did like her speaking to him. He did want to know her. But that was proving difficult when she preferred not to speak with him. Sideswipe thought he didn't mind. Now he knew differently.

"I... oh. I am so sorry. I didn't..." The voice of Amanda trailed off behind them. Immediately, Alexis maneuvered herself away from Sideswipe. "Don't mind me, leaving..."

Sideswipe turned back toward Alexis. Somehow, she had managed to open her bedroom door. Peering in, noticing the bunks and the darkened interior, he was eager to join her. She stopped him though with a firm shake of her head.

"This isn't just my room, and..." she frowned, caught his eyes and spoke firmly, "I don't want you in here."

"You do."

"No. I don't."

"Yes," he said, "You do."

She frowned, pried his hands off the door and shook her head. Alexis wasn't amused or excited like she should have been, but entirely contemplative. Unexpectedly, surprisingly, she closed the door in his face, shocking the Autobot into bewilderment. He stood there for a good three minutes to make sure she wasn't changing her mind, and left in a bout of frustration a couple more minutes later when he realized exactly what he had been doing.