FIC: Sheer Dumb Luck 11
Sheer Dumb Luck
Part Eleven
By Dreaming of Everything AKA dream_it_all AKA dreams_of_all, betaed by mmouse15!
Series: Transformers 2007, NOT compliant with Revenge of the Fallen!
Ratings/Warnings: M for sex and possible language, plus sexual themes. Warnings for multiple partner scenes and themes, plug-and-play, slash. Updated G1 characters.
Characters/Pairings: Ratchet, Constructicons, Ratchet/Constructicons. (Yes, all of them.)
Summary: The Constructicons found Ratchet and asked him to repair their sixth gestalt member. He couldn't say no, although he knew he needed to. Forced into an uneasy truce, he's almost starting to get attached...
Sheer Dumb Luck chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Sheer Dumb Luck @ FFnet
Sheer Dumb Luck 11
The past three weeks had been boring. Ratchet hadn’t expected that. He’d known that he’d... adapted to the Constructicon presence, but he hadn’t realized to what extent it had changed his life.
He hadn’t always been riveted to his life and work, before, but now he very rarely found himself feeling at peace, fully. He wasn’t unhappy-exactly-it was just...
He wondered how things had worked out. He hadn’t heard from them, which was probably good. Definitely for the best, in the long run and in the short-
So it was likely that Bonecrusher hadn’t suffered any lasting damage, that there weren’t any problems with the repairs-they’d probably already left. After all, Starscream had attacked them nearby-he was likely to recheck the area, looking for them.
And Ratchet knew where their base was. And Ratchet was an Autobot.
This was the way things were supposed to be. Unbreakable, indivisible factions, perfect opposites and as unmixable as oil and water-
Oil and water not mixed with soap, or any other form of cleanser, to break down the polarity-
His metaphor had gotten away from him, but it really was better like this. He didn’t have to think about who he was betraying (just who he had betrayed) and who he could trust (he shouldn’t have needed to think about that) and what had gone on between him and Scavenger, then Scrapper and Hook, because it was a moment’s insanity and it would pass, along with his memories of what had taken place and if-when-other Autobots arrived, maybe he’d find a partner, and that would help. More Autobots would certainly help with the isolation-even though it was necessary, logical, for them to be spread out it was lonely; but it was lonely either way-and maybe that would help him forget the Decepticons that he'd, he'd...
He should probably tell Optimus Prime what had happened. Confess. It wouldn’t make up for what he’d done, but it would help. …He’d wait until he was certain that the Constructicons were gone, even though he didn’t owe them anything, not a thing-so it made no sense that he felt like he did.
Very little about any of this had been logical. Ratchet could live with that. It wouldn’t help him explain everything that had taken place to his teammates, but...
He could live with that.
And he still wasn’t sorry he’d helped them.
The next day, Ratchet recognized Mixmaster in town. The first chance he got, he headed out into the desert. He’d thought this was over...
The Decepticon followed him, of course. Ratchet waited for him to transform, then followed suit.
“Hello,” he said quietly. “What are you doing here?”
Mixmaster shrugged defensively, remaining silent, his body half twisted to the side.
“Fine,” Ratchet said, hiding a brief flicker of nerves-Mixmaster could be unsettling-and sitting down, stubborn.
A second later, his sulking was interrupted. “Fa-a-ce me.”
Ratchet did, turning to see the mech holding out an interface cable leading back to his neck, looking patient and defiant.
Ratchet’s mind went blank. “...Was that a pun?”
“Yesss.”
“Oh, Primus.” He’d never been propositioned like that before. Of course, he hadn’t had as many partners in the past ten thousand years as he’d had in the past month…
“Please?”
Ratchet buried his face in his hands, no idea what to do. “I… Mixmaster, I don’t think this is a good ide-”
“Hmph. You- do no-t-t think it i-is a g-good id-e-a because you think-k I am a glit-ching lunatic-c-ic. I am not sane but-t-ut-but-t-t-” He paused, clearly recollecting himself. “But I a-am in con-trol of my proc-ess-ors. In the-ese matters.”
Well, that stung. “I never said that! You’re a Decepticon. That’s reason enough for it to be a bad idea.”
“Scavenger, Hook, Scrapper,” he said simply in reply.
“They were a bad idea too,” Ratchet growled, looking down. A bad idea that he didn't regret, exactly. He regretted the complications, but the act itself-
“One more? Ple-ase.”
“You aren’t going to leave, are you.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Mixmaster shrugged, looking slightly frustrated, but stayed mostly quiet. “I-wa-ant -to.”
There was a long pause as Ratchet thought, even though he shouldn't need to. “...Alright.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.” Ratchet half-expected to be jumped, pinned, but the mech simply took a step forward, knelt, holding his cord out to him once more, and waited.
“Alright,” he repeated, reaching out to accept. The other’s engine purred as he clipped it into place and handed him his own, the bond settling down in his mind as a lightning-fast blur of information in his subconscious mind, warm and subtle: there was nothing strong enough to leap out at him, yet.
Mixmaster slowly leaned back until he was flat along the ground, the attachments between them forcing Ratchet to edge closer, until he was alongside him.
Hesitantly, Ratchet ran his hands over a stretch of armor, or tried to, but the myriad of blade-like extensions made it hard. Still, Mixmaster had been designed as a scientist, and there were a higher-than-average number of tactical sensors: not enough to match the chemical ones, but enough to make a difference. Ratchet could feel the subtle shift in the current of energy between them.
He tried again, purposefully grinding hard against one of the sensitive little nodes, and it made Mixmaster twitch, vocalizer making some faint, strangled, babbled noise, and Ratchet shuddered hard as the feedback swept through him. He slid his fingers down one of the bladed struts, slipped his fingers inside the narrow opening in Mixmaster’s armor it was protecting and pulled briefly on one of the wires inside it, forcing his arm to hold still as Mixmaster thrashed again, the Constructicon beneath him trembling.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” he whispered once he recovered, vocalizer still crackling with feedback.
“Wh-at?”
Ratchet was surprised by the surge of fear that followed the words, not accompanying them, not related to them, but still there, triggered by something else, and unnerving. He pushed it aside. The mech had come to him, after all...
Maybe it had been a misunderstanding. “'What?'” he repeated. “You’re just lying there, letting me-poke at you. I feel the feedback, but are you going to do anything?”
“O-oh.” Hesitantly, he touched one of Ratchet’s arms, slowly investigating the hand, touch careful, delicate, light-teasing. It would have been tempting, but that fear hadn’t gone away, and it was bothering Ratchet. It was the opposite of arousing, to start with.
His irritation surged as the mech carefully withdrew his hand, and he knew Mixmaster felt it, suddenly leaping back: Ratchet screamed as the line connecting them was almost disconnected, ripped out without proper termination. He missed Mixmaster’s own pain as it mixed with his own until his faded, and he was suddenly being flooded with the Decepticon’s thoughts and fears. Shaking, Ratchet unplugged his end of the line, then helped Mixmaster with his: his fingers were scrabbling desperately to disengage the connection, but he was shaking too badly to manage it.
Ratchet lay back once he was able to pull apart, trying to sort through the overwhelming welter of emotions and distant memories that had flooded him, pulled to the surface.
So none of Mixmaster’s gestalt members were afraid of him: he’d been wrong, when he’d gotten the memories. Mostly, he was afraid of himself: of losing control. Because he was glitchy, and just as badly as Ratchet’s darkest suspicions had been. Possibly worse.
“Oh,” he said carefully, out loud, because he needed to say something. Mixmaster was still a silent, unmoving form next to him. It took him a minute to speak.
“'Oh'-you stu-pid Aut-”
“Stick it up your exhaust pipe. Look, you want to interface,-fine, I can... deal with that. But if you don’t actually want to, look for it somewhere else. Most of your team members are downright horny little bastards, you can go bother them-”
“I... d-do.”
“Alright, then. I don’t want to plug into you if I end up getting fear out of it. That’s not...”
“Not-t you-u. It is n-ot you.”
“But I’m still feeling your fear! That is not arousing! It’s not like you’re even going to be a danger, especially here and now-especially now you have a full gestalt again. They ground you, and you know it.”
Mixmaster was silent, the bladed extensions covering his body unusually upright-a defensive position, Ratchet realized.
“...I don’t care, you realize. It’s not really impacting you right now, so it’s... Not an issue. It’s not like you’re infectious.”
“Re-eally.” Mixmaster’s tone was almost sarcastic, but also almost hopeful.
“Do I have to prove it by plugging into you again?”
Mixmaster eyed him carefully, calculating. “Yes.”
“...Fine,” Ratchet said, and he pulled himself upright, moving closer, back towards the other mech. Mixmaster's hand moved, the movements jerky, uncoordinated, in an abortive movement towards his interface cable, but Ratchet caught his hand, held it in his own, stroked it with firm fingers. There was a squeal of metal, but they were far enough away from the tiny town that there was no one there to hear, and Mixmaster seemed to like it-it was harder, guessing like this, but it wasn't like Ratchet was totally unfamiliar with purely tactile stimulation.
Mixmaster eyed him.
“I don't want that happening again,” Ratchet muttered, eyes downcast. He belied the words by pulling himself even closer, and pressed, delicately, at an armor seam, teasing more than actually seeking entrance. Mixmaster shuddered, the movement just as delicate, fragile-it would have been almost ludicrous, on a big mech like him, with such a Decepticon design, but somehow it-fit. Ratchet could feel his engine start to work a little harder.
Encouraged, he found a bigger gap and pressed his fingers in a little deeper, teasing at the wires hidden underneath, letting little shocks fall from his fingers, making the Decepticon-who was now almost underneath him-make incoherent whimpering noises, needy ones.
When Ratchet pulled out his fingers, Mixmaster reached up to pull him closer again.
“This is better,” Ratchet said, and the Decepticon stilled. “-It's not your fault, relax. You're not the first mech I've 'faced without a bond-” He stopped, maybe because he felt Mixmaster tense a little, but also because it was tacky to talk about past conquests-or times as the conquered-when you were with another mech.
“I want to feel you,” Mixmaster whispered.
“Wait a little,” Ratchet said, fingers feeling for another armor panel, and then he had to stifle his own moan as the combination of one hand scrabbling against sensor nodes and the other pressing into the wires exposed by armor gaps made Mixmaster's vocalizer buzz with static. He thrashed underneath Ratchet, pressing up against him in a wordless plea for more, more, and it was doing almost as much for the medic's internal temperature as actually being tied to the mech and feeling the feedback had been.
He pressed in harder, and Mixmaster ground up against him, his own hands finally moving. He pushed against Ratchet's armor, looking for sensors that weren't there, for the most part-he was a medic, not a scientist, and he'd been altered for war-before he found that brushing the edges of the lights mounted on his chest made him moan, and it was Ratchet's turn to push into the gesture, looking wordlessly for more pressure, more contact. Mixmaster's hands were still light, hesitant, not-quite-teasing in the way they moved with Ratchet's movements. It took the Autobot a moment to get his vocalizer to work-he wasn't used to talking during interface, but they weren't exchanging any data, he needed to-and Mixmaster-
“Harder,” he half-whispered, demonstrating by grasping at a strut-careful to choose one strong enough to stand up to some pressure-and just barely scraping his fingers against the delicate metal, dragging the very fingertips along it, before he pushed against it more heavily. Mixmaster bucked and thrashed again, and when he was once more still (except for how he was trembling from aftershocks, Ratchet noticed, with some pride) he pushed against Ratchet's lights more firmly, pushed his fingers in deeper around them and pulled on a wire that made Ratchet twitch, flooding his systems with pleasure...
It was so good. But-
Ratchet distracted himself by stroking down Mixmaster's chassis, and was about to speak when the Decepticon moved his fingers to probe curiously at sensors he could reach at the join where Ratchet's head met his neck. This time even his optics were momentarily lost, sparking with the feedback, and he knew he'd made a sound that was utterly undignified but Mixmaster looked so pleased, at least momentarily, that he was the one making those sounds-
“Mixmaster,” he whispered, and even his name was enough to make the Decepticon underneath him vocalize wordlessly and push up against him again. “I-” he paused, momentarily unsure. “I want to feel you too. If you want this, if you're not afraid-”
“I won't be,” Mixmaster said, and it was as much a decision as it was a promise when he said it. But he still curled his head away from Ratchet as he held out an interface cable, and Ratchet could taste his hesitation-but no fear, thank Primus-when he slotted the connection into place.
It took him a full half minute to recover from the new feelings, and Mixmaster seemed just as stunned. His systems were running hot, he was so close to overload, and so he drew it out, wanting to make this last-partly, at least, another part of him just wanted more contact, more touch, more.
Ratchet pushed his fingers into Mixmaster again, and tugged at another bladed extension, and pushed against him. Mixmaster was having trouble moving, overwhelmed and just as close to the edge of overload, more so, but he ran his hands over Ratchet, what he could reach of him, desperate and that was enough, with the feelings and the feedback running through Ratchet's processor.
When Mixmaster found a knot of sensory wires and tangled his fingers up in it, tugging delicately in a way that was agonizingly sensuous, Ratchet couldn't resist sending his happiness, his desire, over their link, and-and maybe he was excessively involved in who it was, not just what they were doing, what was being done to him, but he couldn't bring himself to care, it wasn't like he hadn't broken every bond of propriety already, and it was enough to make Mixmaster cry out underneath him and shudder as his overload hit him, almost incapacitated, and the sensation of that echoed, tipped Ratchet over the same edge, and he had just enough presence of mind to roll mostly off of Mixmaster-as far as their physical ties permitted, their cables still attached-before he collapsed completely, systems overworked and still tense with fading pleasure.
After a minute, he unsnapped their cables, hand shaking slightly. He shook his head at that-he should have better control.
“Thank-k you,” Mixmaster said, after a while.
“Don't bother thanking me,” Ratchet said, but his voice was warm enough to keep the sentence from being harsh.
“Al-lri-ight-t-t,” Mixmaster said, voice happy, and Ratchet understood that, just like he'd been understood-he hadn't meant to insult Mixmaster, he just hadn't thought that thanks were due. And Mixmaster was accepting that-because he felt the same, or for whatever reason.
After a while, he left. And Ratchet picked himself up and returned to town, trying not to feel sad and diminished. He knew what had to happen, what he needed to do.
At the very least, he needed to accept that his world was going back to normal. That these incidents needed to stop.
Ratchet was less surprised when Long Haul reappeared, five days after his run-in with Mixmaster. It hadn’t been hard to come to the realization that things weren’t over, really. He didn’t want them to be, even if it complicated things even more.
“What is it?” Ratchet asked as Long Haul pulled up next to him.
“What the slag sort of greeting is that?”
“Fine-hello, Long Haul. Fancy meeting you here! What a nice surprise-”
“Shut up,” muttered the Decepticon, before he continued, and he sounded angry, but Ratchet could hear that he wasn't, knew him well enough to know better than to take it seriously. “Hook wants you to check up on the repairs you made. He thinks something’s gone wrong.”
“Really.” Personally, Ratchet was of the opinion that Hook had his energon processor poisoning his ’facing port, but he wasn’t going to say that out loud. Not in so many words, at least. “You’ll need to transform.”
“Sure.”
Ratchet carefully poked and prodded at the mech, examining him, but he couldn’t find anything wrong, no matter what, not even any hints that something might be broken, or regressed-He said as much. “I think Hook’s being paranoid-excuse me, overly cautious-again. I can run a scan if you don’t mind me jacking into your system, but I don’t think I’ll find anything else.”
“Go for it. Hook’ll just send me back if he thinks you weren’t pit-slagged thorough enough-you know.”
And Ratchet did know. That was thing.
“Alright, I’ll set it up. Let’s hope this works just as well as it did last time-I’m pretty sure the energon loss was relaxing you.”
“Really? The last time I lost a lot of energon, I ended up offlining a medic and then jumping Bonecrusher before I passed out. I don’t think it’s ever made me calm before.”
“It can hit differently in different situations,” Ratchet replied, an undercurrent of polite disbelief in his voice-mostly he was just distracted, but he couldn't imagine that any medic with even an inch of talent would have had significant problems getting into Long Haul's processor, considering what an easy time he'd had. “Now, hold still-and try not to fight me.”
He shouldn’t have worried. The connection formed just as smoothly, easily and naturally as it had before, Long Haul relaxing, opening up as Ratchet’s consciousness filtered through his, searching for anything wrong. He didn’t find a thing-he hadn’t been expecting to-and he slipped back to his own body almost surreptitiously. Long Haul didn’t move as he unclipped the cable he’d used, apparently still luxuriating in the comfort of a fitting connection-although it couldn’t be any different from what he experienced as a gestalt. Ratchet could see his own attraction to the feeling, but presumably it wasn’t a novelty for Long Haul the way it was for him.
He looked down at the still form and felt a twinge of interest. But- He shouldn’t be interfacing Decepticons at all, let alone initiating it in an ever-wider group of partners…
He knew that.
...Oh, scrap. Ratchet ran fingers over the small, no-doubt-sensitive antennae on Long Haul’s head, pressing firmly but not quite hard-the Decepticon’s optics flashed back online immediately, and he made a grab for Ratchet’s wrist, grasping it tight enough that it was just short of painful.
“That felt- That was on purpose.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
--End Chapter 11--
Part Eleven
By Dreaming of Everything AKA dream_it_all AKA dreams_of_all, betaed by mmouse15!
Series: Transformers 2007, NOT compliant with Revenge of the Fallen!
Ratings/Warnings: M for sex and possible language, plus sexual themes. Warnings for multiple partner scenes and themes, plug-and-play, slash. Updated G1 characters.
Characters/Pairings: Ratchet, Constructicons, Ratchet/Constructicons. (Yes, all of them.)
Summary: The Constructicons found Ratchet and asked him to repair their sixth gestalt member. He couldn't say no, although he knew he needed to. Forced into an uneasy truce, he's almost starting to get attached...
Sheer Dumb Luck chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Sheer Dumb Luck @ FFnet
Sheer Dumb Luck 11
The past three weeks had been boring. Ratchet hadn’t expected that. He’d known that he’d... adapted to the Constructicon presence, but he hadn’t realized to what extent it had changed his life.
He hadn’t always been riveted to his life and work, before, but now he very rarely found himself feeling at peace, fully. He wasn’t unhappy-exactly-it was just...
He wondered how things had worked out. He hadn’t heard from them, which was probably good. Definitely for the best, in the long run and in the short-
So it was likely that Bonecrusher hadn’t suffered any lasting damage, that there weren’t any problems with the repairs-they’d probably already left. After all, Starscream had attacked them nearby-he was likely to recheck the area, looking for them.
And Ratchet knew where their base was. And Ratchet was an Autobot.
This was the way things were supposed to be. Unbreakable, indivisible factions, perfect opposites and as unmixable as oil and water-
Oil and water not mixed with soap, or any other form of cleanser, to break down the polarity-
His metaphor had gotten away from him, but it really was better like this. He didn’t have to think about who he was betraying (just who he had betrayed) and who he could trust (he shouldn’t have needed to think about that) and what had gone on between him and Scavenger, then Scrapper and Hook, because it was a moment’s insanity and it would pass, along with his memories of what had taken place and if-when-other Autobots arrived, maybe he’d find a partner, and that would help. More Autobots would certainly help with the isolation-even though it was necessary, logical, for them to be spread out it was lonely; but it was lonely either way-and maybe that would help him forget the Decepticons that he'd, he'd...
He should probably tell Optimus Prime what had happened. Confess. It wouldn’t make up for what he’d done, but it would help. …He’d wait until he was certain that the Constructicons were gone, even though he didn’t owe them anything, not a thing-so it made no sense that he felt like he did.
Very little about any of this had been logical. Ratchet could live with that. It wouldn’t help him explain everything that had taken place to his teammates, but...
He could live with that.
And he still wasn’t sorry he’d helped them.
The next day, Ratchet recognized Mixmaster in town. The first chance he got, he headed out into the desert. He’d thought this was over...
The Decepticon followed him, of course. Ratchet waited for him to transform, then followed suit.
“Hello,” he said quietly. “What are you doing here?”
Mixmaster shrugged defensively, remaining silent, his body half twisted to the side.
“Fine,” Ratchet said, hiding a brief flicker of nerves-Mixmaster could be unsettling-and sitting down, stubborn.
A second later, his sulking was interrupted. “Fa-a-ce me.”
Ratchet did, turning to see the mech holding out an interface cable leading back to his neck, looking patient and defiant.
Ratchet’s mind went blank. “...Was that a pun?”
“Yesss.”
“Oh, Primus.” He’d never been propositioned like that before. Of course, he hadn’t had as many partners in the past ten thousand years as he’d had in the past month…
“Please?”
Ratchet buried his face in his hands, no idea what to do. “I… Mixmaster, I don’t think this is a good ide-”
“Hmph. You- do no-t-t think it i-is a g-good id-e-a because you think-k I am a glit-ching lunatic-c-ic. I am not sane but-t-ut-but-t-t-” He paused, clearly recollecting himself. “But I a-am in con-trol of my proc-ess-ors. In the-ese matters.”
Well, that stung. “I never said that! You’re a Decepticon. That’s reason enough for it to be a bad idea.”
“Scavenger, Hook, Scrapper,” he said simply in reply.
“They were a bad idea too,” Ratchet growled, looking down. A bad idea that he didn't regret, exactly. He regretted the complications, but the act itself-
“One more? Ple-ase.”
“You aren’t going to leave, are you.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Mixmaster shrugged, looking slightly frustrated, but stayed mostly quiet. “I-wa-ant -to.”
There was a long pause as Ratchet thought, even though he shouldn't need to. “...Alright.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.” Ratchet half-expected to be jumped, pinned, but the mech simply took a step forward, knelt, holding his cord out to him once more, and waited.
“Alright,” he repeated, reaching out to accept. The other’s engine purred as he clipped it into place and handed him his own, the bond settling down in his mind as a lightning-fast blur of information in his subconscious mind, warm and subtle: there was nothing strong enough to leap out at him, yet.
Mixmaster slowly leaned back until he was flat along the ground, the attachments between them forcing Ratchet to edge closer, until he was alongside him.
Hesitantly, Ratchet ran his hands over a stretch of armor, or tried to, but the myriad of blade-like extensions made it hard. Still, Mixmaster had been designed as a scientist, and there were a higher-than-average number of tactical sensors: not enough to match the chemical ones, but enough to make a difference. Ratchet could feel the subtle shift in the current of energy between them.
He tried again, purposefully grinding hard against one of the sensitive little nodes, and it made Mixmaster twitch, vocalizer making some faint, strangled, babbled noise, and Ratchet shuddered hard as the feedback swept through him. He slid his fingers down one of the bladed struts, slipped his fingers inside the narrow opening in Mixmaster’s armor it was protecting and pulled briefly on one of the wires inside it, forcing his arm to hold still as Mixmaster thrashed again, the Constructicon beneath him trembling.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” he whispered once he recovered, vocalizer still crackling with feedback.
“Wh-at?”
Ratchet was surprised by the surge of fear that followed the words, not accompanying them, not related to them, but still there, triggered by something else, and unnerving. He pushed it aside. The mech had come to him, after all...
Maybe it had been a misunderstanding. “'What?'” he repeated. “You’re just lying there, letting me-poke at you. I feel the feedback, but are you going to do anything?”
“O-oh.” Hesitantly, he touched one of Ratchet’s arms, slowly investigating the hand, touch careful, delicate, light-teasing. It would have been tempting, but that fear hadn’t gone away, and it was bothering Ratchet. It was the opposite of arousing, to start with.
His irritation surged as the mech carefully withdrew his hand, and he knew Mixmaster felt it, suddenly leaping back: Ratchet screamed as the line connecting them was almost disconnected, ripped out without proper termination. He missed Mixmaster’s own pain as it mixed with his own until his faded, and he was suddenly being flooded with the Decepticon’s thoughts and fears. Shaking, Ratchet unplugged his end of the line, then helped Mixmaster with his: his fingers were scrabbling desperately to disengage the connection, but he was shaking too badly to manage it.
Ratchet lay back once he was able to pull apart, trying to sort through the overwhelming welter of emotions and distant memories that had flooded him, pulled to the surface.
So none of Mixmaster’s gestalt members were afraid of him: he’d been wrong, when he’d gotten the memories. Mostly, he was afraid of himself: of losing control. Because he was glitchy, and just as badly as Ratchet’s darkest suspicions had been. Possibly worse.
“Oh,” he said carefully, out loud, because he needed to say something. Mixmaster was still a silent, unmoving form next to him. It took him a minute to speak.
“'Oh'-you stu-pid Aut-”
“Stick it up your exhaust pipe. Look, you want to interface,-fine, I can... deal with that. But if you don’t actually want to, look for it somewhere else. Most of your team members are downright horny little bastards, you can go bother them-”
“I... d-do.”
“Alright, then. I don’t want to plug into you if I end up getting fear out of it. That’s not...”
“Not-t you-u. It is n-ot you.”
“But I’m still feeling your fear! That is not arousing! It’s not like you’re even going to be a danger, especially here and now-especially now you have a full gestalt again. They ground you, and you know it.”
Mixmaster was silent, the bladed extensions covering his body unusually upright-a defensive position, Ratchet realized.
“...I don’t care, you realize. It’s not really impacting you right now, so it’s... Not an issue. It’s not like you’re infectious.”
“Re-eally.” Mixmaster’s tone was almost sarcastic, but also almost hopeful.
“Do I have to prove it by plugging into you again?”
Mixmaster eyed him carefully, calculating. “Yes.”
“...Fine,” Ratchet said, and he pulled himself upright, moving closer, back towards the other mech. Mixmaster's hand moved, the movements jerky, uncoordinated, in an abortive movement towards his interface cable, but Ratchet caught his hand, held it in his own, stroked it with firm fingers. There was a squeal of metal, but they were far enough away from the tiny town that there was no one there to hear, and Mixmaster seemed to like it-it was harder, guessing like this, but it wasn't like Ratchet was totally unfamiliar with purely tactile stimulation.
Mixmaster eyed him.
“I don't want that happening again,” Ratchet muttered, eyes downcast. He belied the words by pulling himself even closer, and pressed, delicately, at an armor seam, teasing more than actually seeking entrance. Mixmaster shuddered, the movement just as delicate, fragile-it would have been almost ludicrous, on a big mech like him, with such a Decepticon design, but somehow it-fit. Ratchet could feel his engine start to work a little harder.
Encouraged, he found a bigger gap and pressed his fingers in a little deeper, teasing at the wires hidden underneath, letting little shocks fall from his fingers, making the Decepticon-who was now almost underneath him-make incoherent whimpering noises, needy ones.
When Ratchet pulled out his fingers, Mixmaster reached up to pull him closer again.
“This is better,” Ratchet said, and the Decepticon stilled. “-It's not your fault, relax. You're not the first mech I've 'faced without a bond-” He stopped, maybe because he felt Mixmaster tense a little, but also because it was tacky to talk about past conquests-or times as the conquered-when you were with another mech.
“I want to feel you,” Mixmaster whispered.
“Wait a little,” Ratchet said, fingers feeling for another armor panel, and then he had to stifle his own moan as the combination of one hand scrabbling against sensor nodes and the other pressing into the wires exposed by armor gaps made Mixmaster's vocalizer buzz with static. He thrashed underneath Ratchet, pressing up against him in a wordless plea for more, more, and it was doing almost as much for the medic's internal temperature as actually being tied to the mech and feeling the feedback had been.
He pressed in harder, and Mixmaster ground up against him, his own hands finally moving. He pushed against Ratchet's armor, looking for sensors that weren't there, for the most part-he was a medic, not a scientist, and he'd been altered for war-before he found that brushing the edges of the lights mounted on his chest made him moan, and it was Ratchet's turn to push into the gesture, looking wordlessly for more pressure, more contact. Mixmaster's hands were still light, hesitant, not-quite-teasing in the way they moved with Ratchet's movements. It took the Autobot a moment to get his vocalizer to work-he wasn't used to talking during interface, but they weren't exchanging any data, he needed to-and Mixmaster-
“Harder,” he half-whispered, demonstrating by grasping at a strut-careful to choose one strong enough to stand up to some pressure-and just barely scraping his fingers against the delicate metal, dragging the very fingertips along it, before he pushed against it more heavily. Mixmaster bucked and thrashed again, and when he was once more still (except for how he was trembling from aftershocks, Ratchet noticed, with some pride) he pushed against Ratchet's lights more firmly, pushed his fingers in deeper around them and pulled on a wire that made Ratchet twitch, flooding his systems with pleasure...
It was so good. But-
Ratchet distracted himself by stroking down Mixmaster's chassis, and was about to speak when the Decepticon moved his fingers to probe curiously at sensors he could reach at the join where Ratchet's head met his neck. This time even his optics were momentarily lost, sparking with the feedback, and he knew he'd made a sound that was utterly undignified but Mixmaster looked so pleased, at least momentarily, that he was the one making those sounds-
“Mixmaster,” he whispered, and even his name was enough to make the Decepticon underneath him vocalize wordlessly and push up against him again. “I-” he paused, momentarily unsure. “I want to feel you too. If you want this, if you're not afraid-”
“I won't be,” Mixmaster said, and it was as much a decision as it was a promise when he said it. But he still curled his head away from Ratchet as he held out an interface cable, and Ratchet could taste his hesitation-but no fear, thank Primus-when he slotted the connection into place.
It took him a full half minute to recover from the new feelings, and Mixmaster seemed just as stunned. His systems were running hot, he was so close to overload, and so he drew it out, wanting to make this last-partly, at least, another part of him just wanted more contact, more touch, more.
Ratchet pushed his fingers into Mixmaster again, and tugged at another bladed extension, and pushed against him. Mixmaster was having trouble moving, overwhelmed and just as close to the edge of overload, more so, but he ran his hands over Ratchet, what he could reach of him, desperate and that was enough, with the feelings and the feedback running through Ratchet's processor.
When Mixmaster found a knot of sensory wires and tangled his fingers up in it, tugging delicately in a way that was agonizingly sensuous, Ratchet couldn't resist sending his happiness, his desire, over their link, and-and maybe he was excessively involved in who it was, not just what they were doing, what was being done to him, but he couldn't bring himself to care, it wasn't like he hadn't broken every bond of propriety already, and it was enough to make Mixmaster cry out underneath him and shudder as his overload hit him, almost incapacitated, and the sensation of that echoed, tipped Ratchet over the same edge, and he had just enough presence of mind to roll mostly off of Mixmaster-as far as their physical ties permitted, their cables still attached-before he collapsed completely, systems overworked and still tense with fading pleasure.
After a minute, he unsnapped their cables, hand shaking slightly. He shook his head at that-he should have better control.
“Thank-k you,” Mixmaster said, after a while.
“Don't bother thanking me,” Ratchet said, but his voice was warm enough to keep the sentence from being harsh.
“Al-lri-ight-t-t,” Mixmaster said, voice happy, and Ratchet understood that, just like he'd been understood-he hadn't meant to insult Mixmaster, he just hadn't thought that thanks were due. And Mixmaster was accepting that-because he felt the same, or for whatever reason.
After a while, he left. And Ratchet picked himself up and returned to town, trying not to feel sad and diminished. He knew what had to happen, what he needed to do.
At the very least, he needed to accept that his world was going back to normal. That these incidents needed to stop.
Ratchet was less surprised when Long Haul reappeared, five days after his run-in with Mixmaster. It hadn’t been hard to come to the realization that things weren’t over, really. He didn’t want them to be, even if it complicated things even more.
“What is it?” Ratchet asked as Long Haul pulled up next to him.
“What the slag sort of greeting is that?”
“Fine-hello, Long Haul. Fancy meeting you here! What a nice surprise-”
“Shut up,” muttered the Decepticon, before he continued, and he sounded angry, but Ratchet could hear that he wasn't, knew him well enough to know better than to take it seriously. “Hook wants you to check up on the repairs you made. He thinks something’s gone wrong.”
“Really.” Personally, Ratchet was of the opinion that Hook had his energon processor poisoning his ’facing port, but he wasn’t going to say that out loud. Not in so many words, at least. “You’ll need to transform.”
“Sure.”
Ratchet carefully poked and prodded at the mech, examining him, but he couldn’t find anything wrong, no matter what, not even any hints that something might be broken, or regressed-He said as much. “I think Hook’s being paranoid-excuse me, overly cautious-again. I can run a scan if you don’t mind me jacking into your system, but I don’t think I’ll find anything else.”
“Go for it. Hook’ll just send me back if he thinks you weren’t pit-slagged thorough enough-you know.”
And Ratchet did know. That was thing.
“Alright, I’ll set it up. Let’s hope this works just as well as it did last time-I’m pretty sure the energon loss was relaxing you.”
“Really? The last time I lost a lot of energon, I ended up offlining a medic and then jumping Bonecrusher before I passed out. I don’t think it’s ever made me calm before.”
“It can hit differently in different situations,” Ratchet replied, an undercurrent of polite disbelief in his voice-mostly he was just distracted, but he couldn't imagine that any medic with even an inch of talent would have had significant problems getting into Long Haul's processor, considering what an easy time he'd had. “Now, hold still-and try not to fight me.”
He shouldn’t have worried. The connection formed just as smoothly, easily and naturally as it had before, Long Haul relaxing, opening up as Ratchet’s consciousness filtered through his, searching for anything wrong. He didn’t find a thing-he hadn’t been expecting to-and he slipped back to his own body almost surreptitiously. Long Haul didn’t move as he unclipped the cable he’d used, apparently still luxuriating in the comfort of a fitting connection-although it couldn’t be any different from what he experienced as a gestalt. Ratchet could see his own attraction to the feeling, but presumably it wasn’t a novelty for Long Haul the way it was for him.
He looked down at the still form and felt a twinge of interest. But- He shouldn’t be interfacing Decepticons at all, let alone initiating it in an ever-wider group of partners…
He knew that.
...Oh, scrap. Ratchet ran fingers over the small, no-doubt-sensitive antennae on Long Haul’s head, pressing firmly but not quite hard-the Decepticon’s optics flashed back online immediately, and he made a grab for Ratchet’s wrist, grasping it tight enough that it was just short of painful.
“That felt- That was on purpose.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
--End Chapter 11--