Everything For You, another from Astrotrain & Cobweb

[lstarrunner]

Universe: loosely G1 cartoon. Sequel to Anything You Like and Something About You, contains foreshadowing for the episode Triple Takeover.

Rated: R for physical intimacy between mechanical beings, including plug-n-play.

Pairing: Astrotrain/Cobweb.

Author's Notes: Only Cobweb (nicknamed 'Enny') is mine, all else belong to corporations. Astrotrain thought the March challenge at Mecha_Erotica, The Mile High Club, was written for him, but Cobweb's presence would give away the author. The goal was NC-17 and Plot? What Plot?!?, yet it didn't happen that way: there's too much going on in their world. 4100 words.

Astrotrain found himself wanting to do everything for Enny. It dawned on him during Soundwave's daily tag-up a few days after she finally opened up to him that he had even offered, only half-jokingly, to process Enny's energon for her. He did not allow himself to follow that train of thought, wrenching his processor away from the memory of energy transfer via hard-line. I am lost, he thought. But he would have smiled to himself had he not been surrounded by the other officers at the time, and supposed to be listening to Scrapper's report.

Even knowing and being reassured that Enny counted herself his partner, even his friend, his energon pumps skipped a cycle when she fell in beside him as he left the meeting. Outwardly, it was as if nothing had changed, as if that meeting were not the only time in the day they were not together. As far as he knew, only three were aware of the change in living conditions: Enny, Astrotrain himself, and Blitzwing. Astrotrain's surprisingly cooperative roommate said he did not care if all the Casseticons themselves took up residence in their space, as long as they each sat an equal share of the watch so he got more recharge, and of course kept their pilfering hands off him.

"And if you want me to never mention it to anyone," he had added, obviously thinking himself very shrewd to have thought of the further stipulation, "I get first watch, every time." Knowing Blitzwing as well as he did, Astrotrain made it look like a hardship, made Blitzwing argue for it, so he could feel like he won it. In fact, that was as Astrotrain and Enny also wanted: Blitzwing in recharge was guaranteed oblivious for at least half a groon - about three hours - so they were assured true privacy for that long every day. He looked down at her askance as they walked in their companionable silence to the shop to get to work. She smoothly kept up with him, two measured steps to each of his, so he knew the replacement part he had made was working out well.

As they rode the lift down to the shop, Astrotrain made an impulsive decision for the day: "As soon as liberty commences," he said, "we'll go flying."

Enny looked up at him, clearly pleased with the idea.

"Have you been out of the base since we arrived from Cybertron?"

Enny made a negating gesture, and allowed a slightly wistful look on her scant faceplates. It seemed she was not unaffected by the sense of confinement.

The lift opened on the level of the workshops and they went on to the mechanical shop. "Is it that you can't fly at all, or that you can't fly far?"

Of course, Enny did not answer such a complex question, speaking as little as she was wont, knowing he would come to the answer on his own or at least say things she could answer by body language if she let him talk. Enny's habitual silence did not bother Astrotrain. He would happily carry the conversation for her, and include her as a matter of course, trusting now that if there were a matter of true importance to him, Enny would speak.

Astrotrain keyed open the shop door. "I've seen some Autobots with ground-bound alt-modes take to the air briefly in their primary modes. I thought Shockwave might have based your design on them."

Enny looked at him sharply as she stepped through the portal ahead of him, not angrily or reprovingly just negatingly - he knew the subtlety of the difference between them - so that was not Shockwave's intent. "Efficiency," he could almost hear her remind him of her creator's only motive.

He followed her, letting the door cycle shut behind him, "That dim-spark!" he said, "Did he leave you completely flightless?" Astrotrain had not believed Starscream when he referred to Enny as "the little flightless one" when they first arrived, thinking the arrogant Seeker was merely showing disdain of Enny, as he was disdainful of everything and everyone not a Seeker.

Enny made a dull, affirmative gesture as she climbed up to the workbench. She settled on it, legs folded beneath her, and reached for the processor she had begun programming the day before. She met his gaze, consciously lightening her expression and dimming her optics slowly at him once, inclining her head and indicating with one delicate hand the ladder-like additions Astrotrain had made to the workbench for her, changing the topic of conversation with that silent Thank you. It not only gave the little Decepticon an added level of autonomy in the room scaled for the Triple-changer's height but removed logical excuses for him to be lifting her about.

He smiled at her. "You are welcome," he answered, then added, "I would have done it sooner if you told me I was touching your spark casing when I picked you up to look at something."

Astrotrain was not really pricking at her silence, and she knew it. She mimed dismissal of his comment, and made a show of going diligently to work on her programming task.

"Local twilight in three-point-two-one-seven hours," he said, settling to work, too, "so we will leave in three-point-three."

-X-X-X-

Cobweb wanted a chance to access the natives' so-called world-wide web. If only I could have gone outside sooner, she thought as she worked, programming a core processor not requiring her full capacity. I could be in contact with Starrunner. That was not quite true. Except for being confined to the base. She would not let the opportunity pass if Astrotrain created one, nor would she leave out either of her new allies, even if Blitzwing were tentative at best. Astrotrain is closer to me than Starrunner, she realized. At least, he knows more about me now, and cares anyway.

She knew Astrotrain was looking at her: the sounds of his activity had ceased. Our leadership is not good enough to him, she thought, turning to catch him staring, yet another reason to overthrow Soundwave and Megatron.

-X-X-X-

Those hours passed in companionable silence, each mostly engrossed in the task at hand. As sunset approached, Astrotrain found himself more attentive to his internal chronometer than his work. After measuring the same bit of potential endostructure at least four times, he set it down on the work bench and looked at the subject of his thoughts.

Enny might have heard him stop measuring, or might have had a sense of being observed closely: either way, she caught him staring. She smiled knowingly, the slightest movement of her lip components, the brightening of a lightly-tinted optic.

The structure of the base carried the sounds of the tower rising, signaling the commencement of liberty and most significant activity.

Astrotrain watched Enny disconnect from her work and unfurl from her seated position. He found her movement pleasing, if not precisely graceful. She displayed an efficiency of motion that was unique in his experience, the product of Shockwave's obsessive efforts. He may be an unfeeling drone, Astrotrain thought, keeping it to himself since he knew Enny did not want to think about her maker any more, but you are fascinating. He decided part of that thought was worth sharing, as Enny looked at him questioningly.

"You're fascinating," he vocalized at a decibel calculated to draw her closer to try to hear more clearly.

Astrotrain got his wish: Enny stepped toward him on the bench. He had to look up at her: the bench was the perfect height for interfacing if she sat on the edge of it and he stood. The present angle of view was interesting. He feigned coyness, to see what she would do if he displayed hesitance. Enny's smile broadened. She stopped within her arms reach of him and called his bluff: "Do we fly for supplies? Or for pleasure?" she asked slowly, nearly purring the last word at him.

He let the systems he had been carefully modulating speed up as they wanted, reaching for her. "Pleasure, my friend," he said, holding her against his chestplate and looking straight up into her face, "purely for the pleasure of your company. We might procure a few things along the way."

She inclined her head and crouched a bit in his grasp, bringing her motor housing in contact with his wrists on purpose. Lips brushing his as she vocalized, she asked suggestively, "Just company?"

Capturing her teasing lip components with his required only a tiny movement of his much larger head. He kissed her hungrily, thinking to let that stand for his answer. Then he thought better of it and broke the kiss to say, "Let's go out before we forget to go out."

Enny laughed - she genuinely laughed, with no bitterness or tinge of regret, the tinkly sound a blessing to Astrotrain - and caressed the hinges of his airfoil promisingly.

Astrotrain thought he would do whatever it took, to hear laughter from Enny as often as possible.

-X-X-X-

Both transformed as they walked out on the platform above the waves. Astrotrain, obviously, was going to fly from there, but Enny chose to leave the Nemesis in her boxy alt-mode. He found it ironic that she seemed even smaller in that form. You're being ironic, aren't you? he thought, as she rolled up his boarding ramp and he registered that pleasurable feeling of tires across his usually desensitized deck plating. My mass comes out of subspace in this mode, so I'm a lot bigger. Really bigger. You don't even have subspace, you just fold inward and look a lot smaller. It's an appearance only. A visual deception. He launched from the platform and headed north and east, thinking an aurora would be a pleasant thing for Enny to observe, a phenomenon never seen on Cybertron, its atmosphere being completely constructed and well-contained, magnetic field induced specifically to prevent cosmic particle damage to it. She transformed and rested her hands against the nearest bulkhead, seeming deep in thought, optics off. They reached the Bering Strait, at an altitude that let them see the curvature of the planet before them.

"There it is," he said with some wonder, "come, look out from the cockpit." The green glow washed over him and into his forward windows. "Aurora Borealis they call it. Northern Lights." Enny sat in the pilot's seat; Astrotrain decided that was validation of the seemingly purposeless sensor fibers built into that normally useless internal appendage. Hands elsewhere and in another form, he could still touch her, still feel the warmth and revolutions of her engine through its housing, the slight firm curve of her back, the teasing touch of her fingers on the seldom-used armrests.

"It is beautiful," Enny said softly. She rested her hands gently on his console, and idly traced the edges of some of his vestigial instrument faces. Her motor vibrated softly, just an idle sort of speed that carried perfectly through the seat and into his primary structure.

"It would have done any number of artists proud," he agreed. "Perhaps when we get home, we can redesign Cybertron's magnetic bottle, allow the interstellar wind to play like this with our atmosphere."

He was rewarded with that light laugh and further exploration of his console. She settled more completely into her perch.

"Keep doing that," he said appreciatively, "and I'll have to orbit or crash."

"Orbit, please."

Astrotrain achieved it easily, whipping through the rarefied atmosphere, plating energized to deflect debris until they cleared the altitudes the natives used. "Humans are messy," he opined absently, attention focused inward now that his altitude and speed would take care of themselves.

"You are near a port and plug," he said at his lowest decibel, as if there were anyone else to hear him. "I-," he hesitated, suddenly shy.

Enny had wrapped her lower extremities around the base of the seat to hold herself in place in micro-gravity; she was doing something distracting to his yoke with her hands. She paused when he did, and looked at the console with a listening attitude. His nearest internal optical sensors were behind her, but she had no way to know that.

Astrotrain was nervous. He did not know why. "I," he began again, at that same conspiratorial volume he used with Enny the first time they spoke, "I would like to be plugged into you. If-," he paused again unreasonably uncertain, "if you don't mind."

Then it felt as if he could not afford silence. He did not vocalize rapidly, just steadily: "It is not as if I can move to plug into you, in this form. You don't have to do it, it will be all right with me if you don't, if you don't want to. It's- I- You- You might never plug into me, it's kind of fearsome, to know someone else has access to all your processors and data banks. Not-," he paused, feeling Enny shift position in the seat but unable to observe exactly what she was doing with her hands from that angle. Only one of them still rested on his yoke. She found his interface port and caressed it delicately.

"Not that it scares me, to be plugged into you, Enny." He opened the port. She touched but did not uncoil his cable. "I trust you. You're-"

Something clicked into place. Astrotrain felt the physical connection; it was followed in rapid succession by an electrical and then a data transferal link. Enny had plugged into him! He felt his consciousness spread into her form, as if the little mechanoid were an extension of his nominal body, her processors peripheral to his.

Hello you, she held in her CPU long enough for him to read clearly. Astrotrain felt her ingrained fear of submission as if it were his own, felt her trust in him, felt her anticipation of closeness. Gently, never having driven such a small form, he directed her right hand to grasp his own interface cable. It gave him a strange but pleasant sense of displacement, of juxtaposition: he saw Enny move, felt her mass shift against him, felt the pressure of his body against her back and legs and spark housing, felt the sensations of movement and registered the strangeness of watching her own hand move without her directing it. Enny's wonder at him filled him with the same and nearly distracted him from the unaccustomed motion.

You made it feel easy, he said in her processor with awe, when you directed my movements. Her hand drew his cable from its housing, of his will reinforced by hers.

I had an advantage, she offered with amusement, regret fading so far into the back of her mind as to be soon forgotten, my original frame was at least as large as yours, in primary mode. Nearly as massive, she was explaining as he made the second connection, and as big. With wings pushed up, above my shoulders. She had a mental image of that lost form, not visual but a memory of the feeling of that body, of Comettracker's body. Astrotrain felt it, remembered it with her. Dual connection in place, they were as one entity, shared out across two forms.

He did not pry into her processor or data banks, as she had not and did not now pry into his. They shared each as they wanted, as they felt ready to do.

Enny's main energy level, Astrotrain found, was in a precarious balance with her spark-energy level. She was close to the tipping-point already, where the missing spark-energy would no longer be offset by the fields of her power system and the pain would return to the fore. Astrotrain could feel it, as if it were his own, hovering on the edge of awareness.

Your spark was not allowed to recover after being split.

No, she agreed dully, memory of being bound briefly to that other's spark, then sundered, vivid for both of them. My mate, she lamented, un-self-consciously, for only a moment. Passed as quickly.

You did not even know his name.

I did not even know his name.

They were filled with sadness for his loss.

They realized this was not how they wanted to spend their liberty.

I understand now, Astrotrain thought with certainty, filling them with acceptance and care and hope, I thought I understood before. Thank you for letting me know, for trusting me.

You love me. Enny's thought, in both their processors.

It was not in his personality to think that word himself, but he had no reason and no desire to deny or question her statement. He simply allowed energy to flow across their network, from their large power system to their smaller one, careful to balance the level against her spark-energy.

-X-X-X-

Overloading at orbital velocity, he thought after an impact with a small human satellite jarred him fully aware, should be undertaken at higher altitude.

"We must do this again," he said aloud as Enny stirred against his plating. He had disconnected his cable from Enny during a period of lucidity, directing the movements of her body smoothly enough that she was not roused from recharge. Enny was still plugged into him: she would have to manage that herself because he would not be able to properly stow her cable after that connection was broken.

I cannot do everything for you, my love, he tried out the word in his CPU, and the universe didn't cease, the matter of his being didn't convert immediately to energy, his orbital plane didn't even shift, but I will do all I am able, all you allow me.

"Rest," he said to her soothingly, aloud and in her processor, settling her small frame more comfortably across the pilot and co-pilot's seats. He made some adjustments to her power system, tricks he had learned over the eons, to help it process the energy he had passed her more effectively.

When he began his descent, carefully avoiding the line-of-sight of the human space station, Enny's processors spun up. She did not move right away, running a brief self-assessment and enjoying the comfort of her location.

This is better than sleeping on your wing, she thought at him, knowing he was reading her as a peripheral.

"It's too bad our chamber is too small to allow me to transform," he said, sending her an image of the damage he would to do the bulkheads if he succeeded in transforming there, "because I could stand watch over you this way and Blitzwing would never need to know you were with us. You could get the recharge you need, maybe even begin to recover your spark-energy."

She turned toward the optical sensor suite at the rear of the cockpit and smiled at him, at the image he sent her, amused. The smile remained, but changed, subtle as all her expressions were with her minimal plating. You do love me, she thought, not intended for his perception, but there nonetheless.

"I'm all right, Astrotrain," she said aloud, "you help more than you know." She sat up, careful of her interface cable. It was strange for her, he could read in her processor, to not have his actual face to look toward, but she was reasonable and able to keep in mind that the non-descript sensors behind the glass really were his optics just as much as the ones she normally met. He felt from her the same desire to protect him, the same need of their connection, and more wonder at those feelings than he himself felt because she had not believed herself capable of such personal investment, not even before her experience with Shockwave. Comettracker's only love had been of the professional, distant sort: intense and passionate, sure, but not romantic, never intimate. That she could feel intensely for him, and for Starrunner, and even for her lost mate, amazed her. It also made her look for ways to prevent losing contact with him. He understood.

In case we're ever parted, she thought, certain he was there in her CPU with her, I have taken precautions. She indicated a packet of data and continued while he transferred it to his own processors, as long as we are on Earth and no one blocks our transmission to the human web, we can have contact. Not immediate. Not as we have when we are connected to each other. Enough to tell where we are, what happened, plan a way to reunite. Her processor was quiet a tick. Then, I won't lose you as I lost Starrunner, she thought. Again, not for his consumption.

He read the data and stored it away, encoded in case someone hacked his processors. It had happened before; the same war still raged, and he was allied now as then with Decepticons, so he had no reason to believe it could not happen again. It was a simplistic connection protocol, an address on a rudimentary bus, a set of email addresses, one of which was his and had a password associated with it.

"Primitive," he said, "but thank you. I understand."

Enny disengaged from him and hid her cable back under her plating. Astrotrain was amazed at the shyness of her body language in that moment. He felt he should turn away for her privacy, but could not offer her that physical gesture.

What he could do was make a show of his attention being elsewhere. "I think we're low enough now to make contact with the web," he said, "let me try to send you a message." He made the connection.

"Slow your transmission speed," she said, standing up to walk around the cockpit. "Don't transmit faster than a megabit per second."

"Right," he said, slowing down accordingly. "I'm logging in as A T Rockwell at graffiti dot net. Nice password. I'm not changing it, since you chose it for me." He would have leered had he been bipedal.

"So, send me a message, Space Cowboy," Enny said, using her transceiver to login to her own brand new account, joining the joke about the silly password. "You'd like the one I picked for Blitzwing."

"Really?" he said, sending his first message through the human network, to his lover inside his own shell. "This is ridiculous. You're right here-"

"We're verifying it works," she said, patting the bulkhead under the optical sensors as tenderly as if it were his face. "Best done while we're together."

"Aye."

-X-X-X-

• from: a_t_rockwell@graffiti.net
• to: c_w_cooper@graffiti.net
• subject: contact
• you know what id rather be doing right now

• from: c_w_cooper@graffiti.net
• to: a_t_rockwell@graffiti.net
• subject: RE:contact
• Do I?

• from: a_t_rockwell@graffiti.net
• to: c_w_cooper@graffiti.net
• subject: RE:contact
• remember that panel you first found

• from: c_w_cooper@graffiti.net
• to: a_t_rockwell@graffiti.net
• subject: RE:contact
• I do. Let's save that for later.

• from: a_t_rockwell@graffiti.net
• to: c_w_cooper@graffiti.net
• subject: RE:contact
• why not now

• from: c_w_cooper@graffiti.net
• to: a_t_rockwell@graffiti.net
• subject: RE:contact
• You will crash.

• from: a_t_rockwell@graffiti.net
• to: c_w_cooper@graffiti.net
• subject: RE:contact
• maybe but what a way to go

• from: c_w_cooper@graffiti.net
• to: a_t_rockwell@graffiti.net
• subject: RE:contact
• Speak for yourself!

Cobweb vocalized as she sent the last reply. "Starrunner was run off by other Seekers. Led by the one who ordered him built." She looked searchingly into the sensors before her, as if hoping for some level of expressiveness. "You and Blitzwing are useful to the garrison. Well-known, but not popular. The only reason anyone besides you and now Blitzwing knows I exist is because I show up in the ration roster. Either of us is likely to be driven away. Or worse, left behind. I am forgettable. You may be regrettable."

-X-X-X-

Astrotrain almost protested that last, that Thundercracker and Skywarp would not leave him behind after the help he'd given Thundercracker on their first mission together. He thought better of it: if Starscream could order them to drive another Seeker, one of their own, away from them, what might the Air Commander be able to order them to do to him? Worse, to Enny? Soundwave knew Astrotrain remembered his first specialty; that knowledge might be enough for Soundwave to want him disposed of, too.

Another reason they might want the Triple-changers out of the way presented itself to Astrotrain: "They would do that because we are too powerful, too likely to insert ourselves as Megatron's successors."

"You are more powerful than they are. Both of you." Enny strapped herself to a passenger bench for landing - they had a procurement run to make. "Together you could defeat Megatron himself."

Astrotrain triggered his auto-record function: that insight from Enny required thorough contemplation.