What Goes Around, Chapter 1: Imperative
Title: What Goes Around
Status: IN PROGRESS
Rating: T/PG-13, with a couple of chapters of R. (This chapter would be one of the "R" ones, for plug and play smex.)
Warnings: Crack. AU. Genderbending...sort of. Non-canon-ness. Total mucking around with Cybertronian history, culture, biology, social structure, and...yeah, just about everything, really. Reading the notes and the prologue is highly encouraged. If you can swallow the stuff that's in there, you'll probably be all right with this story. If not...Well, then you need read no farther than that.
Main Characters: Swoop, Starscream, Ratchet, Mirage, Wheeljack. With a touch of Prowl, Megatron, Optimus Prime, Soundwave, and Thundercracker.
Genre: Crack, but with a (hopefully) coherent plot!
Chapter Summary: Smex! That's all you need to know. ;)
24 years later…
Swoop was precariously perched on the lip of a mist-shrouded gorge that was a thousand meters deep, carved over long eons by the river that wended its way through the bottom of it. He…She was staring single-mindedly into the gorge's depths. Her knees were drawn tightly into her chest, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her bent legs, hands clasped over her shins and fingers determinedly interlaced, as if she was struggling to keep herself from flying apart. Despite the sweltering equatorial heat and its dripping humidity, she was shivering, violent tremors wracking her small body in cyclical waves. Occasionally, I heard sounds coming out of her, little sighs and gasps and whimpers and hitches in her breath that had whiffs of pain and deep distress about them.
I almost expected her to fly off at my approach, like a panicked bird flushed from its roost. I was prepared to fly after her if necessary, to pursue her until we both had not enough energy to fly and so would have no real fight left in us; it might have made things easier that way. But Swoop didn't move. Her senses on full and perhaps overly defensive alert, she had stilled and lifted her head the moment that she had detected my approach, her posture instantly stiff and wary, but other than the involuntary tremors and twitches, that was the only move that she'd made. When I was a mere five meters from her, she turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were wide and feral, glowing an unnaturally bright blue-white against the gathering purples of encroaching twilight. The glowing intensity of her eyes, coupled with the watchful and vaguely threatening expression on her face, gave me pause. I took a step backward, all unwillingly.
I had had some ideas of what I'd be facing with Swoop, but even under normal circumstances she was potentially lethal and always unpredictable. Now, she was giving me a wild-eyed look that clearly communicated a serious intention to eat me alive but not in a good way. She was also panting, her body fighting to cool itself. The combination was enough to make something within me lurch as I stared at her. It strongly compelled me to move toward her, but I checked myself, held my ground, deciding that I needed to be in some semblance of control here for as long as I could be in control. I watched Swoop, willing myself not to move, not even to twitch, waiting for her to make the next move. But she didn't move, either. Instead, she spoke; I hadn't expected much in the way of conversation.
"If you know what's good for you, Starscream, you'll turn around and leave," Swoop growled after a long moment spent staring heatedly at me. Her voice was low and growling, her gaze burning wherever it touched me. "Before I'm forced to do something we'll both regret," she added.
She was far gone. I could tell by the look on her face and the sound of her low, guttural voice. It was changing just as much as practically everything else about her was changing, at least internally; she was undergoing a transformation the likes of which I didn't want to imagine. On the other hand, if she still felt a need to warn me against being here, then she was apparently not quite so far gone that she was beyond trying, with typical Dinobot single-minded tenacity, to fight what was happening to her, to fight what she was becoming, even though she had to know that it was a fight that she was going to lose. Nor was she beyond fighting the fact that it would, inevitably, be me. But ultimately, she had no choice. Neither did I.
Not for the first time, I marveled at the fact that the Autobots had managed to create her in the first place. Now I was forced to marvel anew that somehow, in a way that was beyond my ability to comprehend, she was a queen. It made no sense. Queens came from queens. The queen had been dead for thousands of years - I'd watched her die, even - and Swoop had been created a mere twenty-four years ago. It was puzzling, indeed. A miracle, perhaps.
I didn't believe in miracles. Yet, I could not deny Swoop's status. I felt the pull toward her, strong and threatening now toward overwhelming. I had known, instantly and from thousands of kilometers away, exactly where she was even before I had left Decepticon Headquarters. I knew, deep down on an instinctive level that I hadn't even known that I possessed, that she was exactly what the Autobots claimed that she was. And I knew that, very soon now, she and I would be…Well, best not to think on that, at the moment.
The Decepticons had been "lucky" enough to have captured Swoop, making her our guest for ten days or so. During that time, I had been determined to analyze, replicate, and determine the weaknesses of the extremely light but excessively strong armor that Wheeljack had created specifically for Swoop, which granted her the ability to hover and to glide for extended periods of time, greatly reducing her energy consumption without sacrificing strength, structural integrity, or defensive capability. I had been planning to figure out how Wheeljack had managed this feat even if I had to rip off every last bit of Swoop's armor and then melt it down in order to analyze it down to its constituent elements. This had kept me in very close proximity to Swoop for the better part of a week, and during that time, unbeknownst to anyone, she had imprinted on me.
But then we'd exchanged Swoop for Soundwave, whom the Autobots had captured during the course of the same battle during which I'd managed to shoot down and disable Swoop. I'd argued vociferously against the exchange, wanting, so I'd thought, to continue my work; now I suspected that my extreme unwillingness to let Swoop go had been something else entirely. Still, in the end, my protests overridden as usual, Swoop had gone back to the Autobots with her armor more or less intact. Once returned to the Autobots, her "condition" had apparently progressed quickly, and they had eventually figured out what was "wrong" with her.
Hence, Ratchet's call only yesterday, informing me that my "services" would be required. I'd immediately and scathingly refused, insisting that the Autobot medic was lying for some reason. Ratchet, in response, had given me a pityingly amused look and had sardonically predicted that I'd be changing my tune in about ten hours.
Ratchet had almost been right. In the end, it had only taken a little less than seven hours before I was basically climbing the walls, filled with desperate excess energy and barely refraining from howling to be let out of Decepticon Headquarters so that I could go find Swoop. Hence, I now found myself somewhere in the wilds of the Bolivian rain forest, the place that she had chosen for this rendezvous. The hot, dripping environment seemed appropriate for the occasion, and it was neutral ground. It was very remote, completely unpopulated, and near neither her headquarters nor mine. And as I watched another wave of powerful tremors wrack Swoop's small frame, I found myself confirming the decision I'd made as I'd journeyed from Decepticon Headquarters to Bolivia.
Megatron had ordered me to terminate Swoop. It was an understandable order, really; the revelation of her status had made her a powerful and immediate threat to him. His position had been more or less secure for a very long time now, rebellious Autobots notwithstanding, but he knew that a perhaps significant number of those currently loyal to him would desert him, perhaps even violently turn on him, in favor of a new queen should one somehow arise. This was particularly so now, now that many Decepticons - myself included - were growing increasingly disgruntled with Megatron as the conflict with the Autobots dragged on with no end in sight, as his myriad promises made thousands of years ago somehow never managed to materialize, and as he rather ironically became more and more like the hated queen that he had deposed. So now, Megatron wanted Swoop gone, and he wanted her gone yesterday, before it could become widely known what, exactly, she was.
But I had decided that Swoop wasn't going to die. I had realized halfway to Bolivia that it wasn't in my best interests to kill her at all. It was only in Megatron's best interests to do so. Over the years, and particularly so of late, I'd developed a general habit of only doing what was in Megatron's best interests if doing so also benefited me in some way. In this case, Swoop's death was of no benefit to me. Indeed, in some ways I realized that her continued survival was potentially far more to my advantage than was her death.
If her destiny was to challenge and perhaps be the instrument of Megatron's eventual defeat and destruction, then her destiny was in alignment with my own goals. If her destiny was to avenge her predecessor's assassination in some grand, karmic kind of way, then forging a link to her, giving her a reason to refrain from destroying me as well when the time came, was not a bad idea at all. And if all of that wasn't her destiny at all…Well, there was no strong downside that I could see to creating such a link and allowing her to live, anyway. At the very least, when her status was undeniably revealed to everyone, it would cause even more unrest amongst the Decepticons, which would also be to my advantage. Naturally, when Megatron inevitably found out that Swoop was still alive, when he found out that I had failed to carry out my assigned mission, there would be repercussions for me. Personal ones. Very unpleasant ones. But even those seemed to pale in comparison to the possible future benefits.
So Swoop would live. Long live the queen, indeed.
I ended the uneasy stalemate that had quickly developed between Swoop and me by decisively closing the distance between us and boldly sitting down next to her, my legs hanging over the rim of the gorge. I leaned far forward, contemplating the wide, placid, green-brown stretch of the river at the bottom for a beat. Dizzying heights, of course, did not bother me, just as they did not bother Swoop. For me, they were comforting, and I wondered if the same might be true for her and if that was why she had chosen this particular spot for this event.
Swoop gave me a heated, askance look as I sat down next to her, even though I was careful not to touch her…yet. I was certainly close enough to feel the excess heat that was radiating from her body, though; it made me shiver. The rate of her panting sped up as she gazed at me, somewhat more eye-to-eye now that I wasn't standing and therefore looming over her, and as our gazes met, it was all I could do to refrain from pulling her to me. I tucked my hands firmly under my legs to help stave off the impulse, even though I knew it was only delaying the inevitable.
"That was…" Swoop was informing me haltingly, between pants, meanwhile, "really not good…for you."
"Fortunately for you, I'm not known for doing what's good for me," I replied with a cavalier shrug. Which was true more than she knew, given my decision to disobey Megatron's orders. By the time we parted, she would not only have begun to fulfill her purpose in life, but she would live to tell the tale.
Swoop scowled at me for my flippancy, meanwhile, and the human saying about looks killing flitted through my mind. Her gaze was a mixture of scorching desire and deep revulsion. It was an odd but somehow enticing combination, and after a moment or two spent staring at each other, her nearness became overwhelming. As if in some mutual hypnotic trance, I leaned toward her at the very same time that she leaned toward me.
The first kiss between us was chaste, but it was electric, nevertheless, like nothing I had ever experienced. Energy and heightened sensation lanced like liquid fire through my entire body and at breathtaking speed, starting at the very moment of contact. It was like a lightning-induced power surge that merrily fried circuit pathways as it progressed through me. Unlike a power surge, the sensation wasn't doing any damage other than to my self-control, but like a lightning bolt, the contact was very short-lived.
Something must have clicked in Swoop's rational mind that was still somehow managing to cling to control. She seemed to realize what was happening between us at about the same time that she apparently decided that she didn't like it at all. She abruptly broke the kiss, jerking away from me with a noise of disgust and then scuttled backward, crab style, ending up a dozen meters away. On the plus side, at least she hadn't taken off and flown. Not that I couldn't catch her if she'd chosen to do that; a little game of chase might have been stimulating, even. But it would also have wasted time and energy, as the conclusion was foregone. The imprint was such that I'd be able to find her, and vice versa, no matter where she ran. And eventually, neither of us would want to hide or run from the other.
Swoop wasn't the only one who was panting now. Instinct had kicked in for me as well, greatly fueled and suddenly jolted into a very high gear by the brief physical contact between us. Desire suffused my body with heat and forced aside little things like opposing factions and long-standing rivalry and even mutual hatred. If anything, those were likely fanning the flames higher and hotter. I'd gotten an all-too-brief taste of her. I wanted more. Lots more. And I would have it.
Right now.
I twisted away from the edge of the gorge with a growl that, had I been more in my right mind, I wouldn't have believed had come from me and then crawled on hands and knees toward Swoop. She held her position, having backed herself up against a large, moss-covered tree. She was staring at me half in wariness and half in challenge as I moved toward her, her chin raised defiantly. And then she was suddenly moving, too, shifting fluidly forward to her own hands and knees and then crawling to meet me. Her movements were uncertain, but they also possessed a predatory sleekness that I found myself appreciating. Her expression was still that odd combination of desire, timidity, and hatefulness, but she was moving toward me. Willingly. I reached out to her once she was within arm's reach again, slid my hand around to firmly cup the back of her neck, and then insistently drew her in for another kiss.
This one was as stimulating as the previous one had been, and it lasted a lot longer as well. It wasn't long before I felt as if parts of my insides were melting, and a moment or two after that, I felt Swoop relax under my hand as well, the tension that had held her entire body stiff suddenly leaving her…until I began to encourage her to open her mouth, tracing along her lips with my tongue as I kissed her. She abruptly broke the kiss then, jerking away from me again, but at least this time she held her ground. It was an improvement. She opened her mouth to say something, but I wasn't in the mood for conversation.
"Just…let it happen," I hissed at her impatiently, heading off whatever she had been about to say. "It'll be easier for both of us." And then I leaned into her again.
Swoop met me enthusiastically this time, which I hadn't expected; I had thought that a lot more coaxing and perhaps some force would be in order. But apparently the last remaining sliver of rational Swoop had decided to stop fighting, squeeze her eyes shut, and take a nice little vacation. And this time she didn't hesitate to open her mouth under mine when I silently asked for entrance. I slammed my tongue boldly into the virgin territory of her mouth, and this, like a key unlocking a door, seemed to ignite something within her. She growled and pressed aggressively into kiss, moaning softly and sweetly into my mouth. Her tongue stroked against mine in an exploratory, uncertain, but sensuous way, and without breaking the kiss, she moved into me, molding her body closely against mine. We fit surprisingly well together, and the heat that she was radiating was…delicious.
Taking all of this as something of a hint, I bit lightly and experimentally down on her tongue to see how she would react. In response, she dug her fingers into my back, and the digging quickly turned into curious, exploratory probing. When I groaned in response to her attentions, she suddenly stopped what she was doing, pulling her hands away from me as if they'd been burned, but I was having none of that. Reaching behind myself, I grabbed her hovering, uncertain hands and slammed them right back where they had been. At the same time, I broke the kiss between us, connected my gaze with her suddenly confused one, and growled, "Don't you dare stop!"
For a moment, Swoop just stared at me, wide-eyed and startled, before a slow and wicked little smile of dawning and then growing comprehension spread over her face. Warm little fingers started poking me in all the right places again and then started moving, exploring boldly outwards from where they'd originally landed. One hand went down, the other slid slowly, languidly around to my flank, stroking and tracing contours and armor seams, probing hesitantly at first and then with increasing confidence and aggression as she watched my reactions to what she was doing to me.
She was a delightfully quick study, bless her little spark.
"Mmmmm," I murmured appreciatively, my head drifting forward and down until my forehead rested on the top of her shoulder as I greedily drank in the sensations that she was wrenching from my body. I bit down on my lower lip to stop myself from shrieking when she happened upon that one exquisitely sensitive little armor seam on my left flank, but her attentions to it alone soon had me shuddering in her arms. This, she was exploiting mercilessly. If her curious and dexterous little fingers found their way inside there, found that one particular sensor node that lurked under there, then I would be a goner, indeed.
Not that that would be a bad thing…
"Atta girl," I encouraged her quietly, my voice shaking in a way that should have been embarrassing but somehow wasn't, and then I turned my head to nuzzle and nip at the side of her neck.
In response, she growled a deep, throaty, alien-animal growl. The sound of it alone was stimulating enough, sending shivers racing through me, but the vibrations of it also passed from her body to mine, since they were so closely entwined now. This took yet another bite out of my rapidly-dwindling self-control. I began exploring the side of her neck in earnest, certain that there were riches to be discovered on just that one small part of her body. Nuzzling kisses and licks soon devolved into sharp little nips and then full-on bites as she did indeed find that sensor node. Judging by the rapturous sounds she made in response to the rather deep bite I'd inflicted on her, she appreciated my rougher attentions well enough, as I most certainly appreciated hers.
This continued on for some time, this mutual and not-at-all-gentle exploration of each other, teasing, tracing, licking, and biting. There were soft murmurs, appreciative whispers, and cries of pleasure and mutual encouragement that were slowly increasing in volume and urgency. As Swoop slowly lost control, there was deep animal snarling, too, which I decided then and there was quite possibly the most erotic sound in the universe. We were wrapped around each other, such that it was difficult to tell where I ended and she began. Energy was slowly building in me, spreading throughout my body, a tingling and not-unpleasant pressure building up within my spark just as it should, just as it needed to do for our official purpose here. We were both still on our knees, and she was squirming against me, scratching roughly at me, and making soft, sweet noises indicative of a need that I wasn't sure that she understood on anything more than a clinical level.
But she would fully understand soon enough, though. Oh, yes, indeed.
I nudged at Swoop, leaning my much heavier weight insistently into her until she glommed on to what I wanted. She shifted around so that she could lie back, and she pulled my unresisting body down with her as she went, smiling a smile at me that was partly shy and uncertain but mostly feral and needy. Once she was down, I had access to all of her, and I took full advantage of that, exploring the parts of her body that I hadn't been able to reach while we'd been upright, and she squirmed and moaned and occasionally cried out in response to what I was doing to her. With a building sense of urgency, I began to search for an interface port. She would have several of them in various places on her body, as they were used for various purposes other than the one I intended; none of them would be blatantly advertised.
Swoop, perhaps not quite as clueless about these things as I'd thought she was, realized rather quickly what I was looking for. She grabbed one of my hands and wordlessly guided it down so that it rested half way up the inside of her right thigh. She even helpfully opened the protective panel for me while she was down there. Fortunately, the location of that port was quite compatible with one of mine, on the outside of my hip. As a medic, she had probably known this, and so she had guided me accordingly.
Grinning wickedly, I kissed her quickly and then brightly said, "Thanks for the assist, ma'am."
"Anytime," she responded breathlessly, squirming impatiently.
And then she cried out as I jacked into her and immediately sent her a long and high-frequency energy pulse that left her writhing and whimpering in need when I eventually let it ebb. She went still for a moment after that, panting and absorbing the experience. Then, wild-eyed and moving quickly, leaving me no chance to resist or even to react, she pulled me fully on top of her, jacked into me blindly andwith medical precision, and then reciprocated the energy pulse, clenching her jaw and mewling softly as she weathered the echoes of my pleasure so hard on the heels of having experienced her own.
This went on for some time as well, exchanging energy pulses, caresses, and kisses. It was all new for Swoop, so I pulled us back a little, allowing us to take our time, passion and urgency slowly building between us. It wasn't as if we had a deadline here, and I was rather enjoying her responsiveness, surprisingly enough. Eventually, though, the energy pulses we shared slowly became more powerful and less controlled. Kisses became more frantic and needy, to the point of bruising violence. Gentle, teasing nibbles became brutal bites that dented and eventually penetrated armor, small rivers of energon flowing freely from numerous small wounds that neither of us really felt, any pain sensations completely subsumed in overwhelming and counteracting pleasure. Caresses became scratches and desperate, pleading, armor-denting clutches. Swoop's legs wrapped themselves around me as if of their own volition, crushing me to her as closely as possible, bodies grating and scraping against each other, stressed metal squealing in protest but neither of us caring. Neither of us even heard it, as completely lost in each other as we were becoming, drowning in the sensations that our bodies were experiencing. They were amplified and transmitted back and forth to each other by the interface connections, first to the point that I couldn't tell whose sensation was whose and then to the point that I didn't much care who was feeling what so long as the sensations didn't stop.
Swoop was very close to overload, writhing and shuddering and crying out desperately under me, her legs squeezing me mercilessly as energy pulsed into her and sensation cycled between us in an endless feedback loop. She was keening and wailing and snarling, all control lost. All that was left was her animal self. Wild. Demanding. Violent. I found that I very much liked this side of her when it was being used for this purpose rather than to try to kill me. The sounds she made and the things she did to me in this state were inflaming and completely different than anything I'd ever experienced. She tore with abandon, both with fingers and with razor-sharp little teeth, into my armor to get at what lay underneath it, which received only slightly gentler treatment. It should have hurt. It did hurt, but I didn't care; the pleasure and the pain commingled nicely. I wanted it to go on forever, and I did everything that I could to encourage her, whispering naughty things at her, concentrating focused attention on various parts of her body that I'd discovered were very sensitive, keeping her mindless with passion and desire but not quite at overload for as long as possible.
Still, occasional coherent pleading did escape her, begging me for something that, for the moment, she didn't know quite how to ask for. Very soon, it was too much, all too much for her and for me. She was balanced precariously on a tightrope, and I was well aware that all it would take to send her spiraling into a blinding overload, her very first one, was one judicious little push. Which I was suddenly all too happy to provide: one precisely-controlled push of energy and sensation across the interface connection, guaranteed to shatter her mind.
Which it did. I could feel the shattering, the tearing, the overwhelming pleasure that exploded within her, translated and muted only slightly across the interface connection. She cried out, shuddering violently, energy arcing through her and off of her, scorching me in tiny pinpricks wherever it touched. She arched helplessly up into me, and her legs tightened spasmodically around me with crushing strength. Her mouth was frozen open in silent ecstasy for a moment, but then she wailed like the animal that, for the moment, she was. The sounds that she was making, the sheer amount of energy coursing through her, and the bright, powerful echoes of her ecstasy crashing across the interface connection dragged me right along with her into a wash of white heat and light that obliterated all conscious thought and that very nearly knocked me completely offline.
Seconds, minutes, or hours later, once my processors could function again, I found that my forehead had come to rest against the front of Swoop's shoulder as aftershocks rolled lazily through both of us, making both of us twitch randomly. It faintly registered that Swoop was quite literally cooing like a happy dove. I found the sound alone, alien as it was, very pleasing, not to mention the fact that the sonic vibrations transferred quite soothingly to me, as well, as closely pressed against her as I was. Had we not had other pressing and important matters to attend to, I could have easily allowed the soft, soothing sound to lull me to sleep. But eventually, I somehow managed to summon the strength required to lift my head, and I gazed down at Swoop's face. She was smiling a soft and deeply contented smile up at me, the fingers of one hand gently tickling up and down the back of my head, the others stroking soothingly along the trailing edge of one of my wings.
"You're very good," Swoop murmured appreciatively at me as our gazes met, voice low and trilling. She was sated for the moment, completely relaxed. One of her legs was still wrapped loosely around me, dead weight resting heavily on the small of my back.
"I know," I said aiming an insufferable grin at her before inching slightly down her body, careful not to break the interface connections between us, kissing and nibbling my way soothingly around her chest.
"Very humble, too!" she asserted, none-too-gently whacking a shoulder vent with one hand while encouraging my efforts with the other, fingers digging into the back of my head as I nibbled and licked at her.
I tore my mouth away from her body, and glanced in haughty amusement up at her face for a second before returning my attention to her body.
"Humility is for lesser beings," I murmured against her.
She snorted at that, but she didn't have a chance to offer more of a rebuttal because I had zeroed in on that one certain spot on her side that I'd discovered, one that seemed to freeze her processors completely in their tracks when manipulated just…so…
Long moments later, when I'd let up on my assault, slowly moving on to other targets, Swoop breathlessly announced, "All right, all right, I agree. You have no need of humility. Ohhhhhhh…Don't stop. Please, please, please don't stop…Please…" And then her voice devolved into moaning, gasping, and animal keening punctuated here and there with occasional needful whimpers as I worked. I grinned wickedly against her.
This was nice. Delightful, even. A begging Autobot - a begging queen, no less - was shuddering and squirming and whimpering beneath me. The interface connections between us were transmitting strong echoes of all the sensations that she was experiencing to me, and energy was building up in me again, nice and steady.
Swoop wasn't completely passive, though. Her mouth was busy on the tip of a conveniently-close shoulder vent of mine, nibbling and licking and nuzzling away at it, biting down hard on occasion in response to something that I did to her as I worked my way ever so slowly around her body. Her bites shot pain/pleasure impulses through me, encouraging my efforts. Meanwhile, her talented, medically-trained fingers were scrabbling and scratching along my wings, stroking what she could reach of the flats of them, teasing and tweaking roughly along their edges, and digging mercilessly into particularly sensitive spots when the mood struck her. In very short order, she wasn't the only one who was emitting uncontrolled hisses and cries of pleasure.
Pressure was building in my spark again. Overload had temporarily eased it, but now it was back with a vengeance, much stronger than it had been before and demanding release in a way that, this time, would not be denied or even delayed for very much longer. I slowly inched myself back up Swoop's body so that I could kiss her. She returned the kiss with manic fervor, clinging to me, managing to wrap all four limbs around me, but then she abruptly broke away.
"Starscream," she ground out around desperate, cooling gasps for air, "I want…need…need you to…need…Ah!"
"Shhh," I shushed her since it seemed that she wasn't quite coherent at the moment. "I know, Swoop. So do I," I soothingly assured her.
And it was the truth. It was time.
While nibbling and licking my way along Swoop's neck, I fumbled with one hand around and along the sides of the stylized pteranodon head that was cradled along the center of her torso, blindly searching for a catch of some sort, figuring that her spark had to be under there somewhere. Eventually, impatiently, Swoop batted my hand away and unlatched it herself, then made a few further adjustments after that that I didn't see, busy as I was. Once her movements had stilled, I tore my mouth from her throat and stared down at what she'd revealed.
Her spark chamber, indeed. It was radiating a feverishly over-bright golden glow, pulsing fast enough that it almost seemed as if it wasn't pulsing at all, humming at a high fever pitch that was almost a whine, needy and desperate. This, more than anything else, made real for me exactly what was happening here. Royal sparks were golden and, once she was fully mature, her transformation completed, Swoop's eyes would be as well. No one could deny what she was, now, as the harsh golden light seeped from between the arms of the protective casing that embraced her spark; it was bright enough to illuminate our surroundings. The enormity of what I was about to do - creating new lives with her - suddenly weighed heavily on me. Tearing my gaze away from her spark, I looked back up at Swoop's face. She was smiling at me patiently, her eyes bright, and she raised a hand to stroke my face almost gently, almost comfortingly.
She must have surmised the thoughts fueling my sudden apprehension, because she whispered softly, reassuringly, "It's all right, Starscream."
Then, still smiling and her gaze burning into mine, her hand moved away from my face, trailed lightly down my throat, and then slowly, teasingly skipped down along my canopy. She blindly but expertly found the catch there, popped it open, and then, digging around a bit, she slid aside a few thick, protective internal armor plates after that. All of this was done with infinite gentleness and with practiced, confident ease - She was a medic, after all - until my own spark chamber was revealed, glowing a brighter-than-usual and fast-pulsing red. Tracing around the protective casing - again blindly because by that point she'd levered herself up so that she could kiss me - she found the connector that would link my spark chamber to hers, yanked on it gently, and then carefully uncoiled the thick but somewhat short cable that was attached to the connector as she pulled back slightly from the kiss.
"Just let it happen," she murmured playfully against my lips, echoing my own impatient words to her. I could feel her smiling, amused at my expense.
Smirking against her in response, I took possession of the cable she'd unwound and then re-deepened the kiss that she'd started, pushing her roughly down to the ground again and holding her there, pinning her by her shoulder. My other hand traveled down to her exposed spark casing and busied itself with tracing around it for a moment or two. In response, Swoop emitted a rather cute little squeak, and her spark flared brighter, which I wouldn't have thought possible. She shifted restlessly under me, making increasingly urgent and impatient noises.
I had to break the kiss in order to make the actual connection, though; I wasn't a medic, so I couldn't do it blindly. After inching slightly down her body so that I could see what I was doing and then squinting into the harsh glare of the light from her greedy, needful spark, I located the port on the casing and made the connection between us before inching back up her body, careful not to break the now-multiple connections between us. Since I didn't have much wiggle room now, I laid myself alongside but still partially on top of her.
"I'm sorry," I murmured sincerely against her audio once I settled myself. "This is going to hurt quite a bit," I warned her, just in case she wasn't aware.
"I know," she replied stoically. And then she reached down and nonchalantly disconnected the interface connections between us. "I don't know about you," she said almost regretfully, "but I don't particularly want this cycling back and forth between us." And then, half a second later, she screamed a piercing scream as energy from my spark rushed to infuse hers in a cascade of frightening power, white-hot sparks leaping between us. It was all I could do not to reflexively jerk away from her.
Swoop writhed, crying out in blinding, spark-rending pain. Her spark was absorbing an enormous amount of energy from mine, all of the extra energy, and then some, that had been building up in mine since she'd imprinted on me and that had increased exponentially since the beginning of this encounter. The infusion would trigger her spark's division into new ones, entirely new lives. This was what her spark, and hers alone amongst our species, was specialized to do, but that didn't mean that it was at all pleasant for her.
I found that it was unexpectedly difficult to watch Swoop struggle with excruciating pain for what seemed hours, although I knew it was only a minute or two, at most. As she writhed and thrashed and cried out to the heavens, fingers scrabbling at and digging into the dirt and leaf litter underneath her, her body arching helplessly off the ground, I reflected that the line between agony and ecstasy was a very thin one, the physical reactions to both of them very similar. And I resolved that, when the pain was done, when we had both done our duty, I was going to do my damndest to make Swoop forget the agony by giving her an overbalancing amount of ecstasy. It was, I knew, almost-tenderness toward her, and it was unaccustomed, greatly disquieting, and entirely the effect of the imprint…but at the moment, I didn't care.
By the time that the energy transfer was complete, Swoop was reduced to whimpering softly, helplessly in pain. Her entire body was shuddering violently, near to convulsing, and excess energy was fitfully arcing off of her. Her face was scrunched up in agony, and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her breath gasping and labored. Her spark flared a deep, fiery orange for a moment, as it greedily absorbed the last bit of energy from me before slowly returning to placid soft gold, pulsing more slowly and regularly now. The light that seeped from around its casing muted almost instantly from harsh, feverish brilliance to mellow, liquid glow, sublimely beautiful to behold.
I terminated the connection between my spark chamber and Swoop's then, whimsically laid a gentle kiss on her spark casing, gently slid thick, protective internal armor plates back into place, and then carefully restored the pteranodon head to its rightful position down the centerline of Swoop's torso. Then, pushing myself up to lean on one hip alongside her, propped up on one arm, I stroked my other hand soothingly up and down the length her torso, murmuring mostly-wordless comforting sounds at her. I kept doing that until the tension left her body. It took a while to do so, but eventually she relaxed, opening her eyes and looking up at me. Her gaze searched mine questioningly.
"I'm sorry," I murmured to her again, still stroking her, before she could say anything to me.
Swoop gave me an odd look at that, squinting up at me as if trying to determine my intentions, frowning deeply.
"There's no reason to be," she eventually replied, her voice roughened with the pain she'd just experienced. "It's just how it is. I knew that, going into this."
"That doesn't mean that I can't be sorry," I answered softly. "Or," I added pointedly, "that I can't make it up to you."
Leaning down, not giving her a chance to respond or protest, I kissed her. I started with her lips, kissing and nibbling on them softly and gently at first; with increasing passion, I eventually moved on to…everywhere. Swoop seemed surprised. Perhaps she had figured that, now that the necessary deed was done, I would simply leave her. Or kill her, perhaps. It was what I would have expected of me, in her place. Indeed, it was what I'd planned and what I'd been ordered to do.
But this night was full of surprises - for both of us, no doubt - and, once I re-established the mutual interface connections between us, we were quick to completely lose ourselves in each other again. Swoop managed to reverse our positions so that she was straddling me, giving her fuller access to me than she'd had when she'd been pinned under me. She made excellent use of that advantage, and I was soon gone, drowning in her and not even entertaining the thought of rescue.
Status: IN PROGRESS
Rating: T/PG-13, with a couple of chapters of R. (This chapter would be one of the "R" ones, for plug and play smex.)
Warnings: Crack. AU. Genderbending...sort of. Non-canon-ness. Total mucking around with Cybertronian history, culture, biology, social structure, and...yeah, just about everything, really. Reading the notes and the prologue is highly encouraged. If you can swallow the stuff that's in there, you'll probably be all right with this story. If not...Well, then you need read no farther than that.
Main Characters: Swoop, Starscream, Ratchet, Mirage, Wheeljack. With a touch of Prowl, Megatron, Optimus Prime, Soundwave, and Thundercracker.
Genre: Crack, but with a (hopefully) coherent plot!
Chapter Summary: Smex! That's all you need to know. ;)
24 years later…
Swoop was precariously perched on the lip of a mist-shrouded gorge that was a thousand meters deep, carved over long eons by the river that wended its way through the bottom of it. He…She was staring single-mindedly into the gorge's depths. Her knees were drawn tightly into her chest, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her bent legs, hands clasped over her shins and fingers determinedly interlaced, as if she was struggling to keep herself from flying apart. Despite the sweltering equatorial heat and its dripping humidity, she was shivering, violent tremors wracking her small body in cyclical waves. Occasionally, I heard sounds coming out of her, little sighs and gasps and whimpers and hitches in her breath that had whiffs of pain and deep distress about them.
I almost expected her to fly off at my approach, like a panicked bird flushed from its roost. I was prepared to fly after her if necessary, to pursue her until we both had not enough energy to fly and so would have no real fight left in us; it might have made things easier that way. But Swoop didn't move. Her senses on full and perhaps overly defensive alert, she had stilled and lifted her head the moment that she had detected my approach, her posture instantly stiff and wary, but other than the involuntary tremors and twitches, that was the only move that she'd made. When I was a mere five meters from her, she turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were wide and feral, glowing an unnaturally bright blue-white against the gathering purples of encroaching twilight. The glowing intensity of her eyes, coupled with the watchful and vaguely threatening expression on her face, gave me pause. I took a step backward, all unwillingly.
I had had some ideas of what I'd be facing with Swoop, but even under normal circumstances she was potentially lethal and always unpredictable. Now, she was giving me a wild-eyed look that clearly communicated a serious intention to eat me alive but not in a good way. She was also panting, her body fighting to cool itself. The combination was enough to make something within me lurch as I stared at her. It strongly compelled me to move toward her, but I checked myself, held my ground, deciding that I needed to be in some semblance of control here for as long as I could be in control. I watched Swoop, willing myself not to move, not even to twitch, waiting for her to make the next move. But she didn't move, either. Instead, she spoke; I hadn't expected much in the way of conversation.
"If you know what's good for you, Starscream, you'll turn around and leave," Swoop growled after a long moment spent staring heatedly at me. Her voice was low and growling, her gaze burning wherever it touched me. "Before I'm forced to do something we'll both regret," she added.
She was far gone. I could tell by the look on her face and the sound of her low, guttural voice. It was changing just as much as practically everything else about her was changing, at least internally; she was undergoing a transformation the likes of which I didn't want to imagine. On the other hand, if she still felt a need to warn me against being here, then she was apparently not quite so far gone that she was beyond trying, with typical Dinobot single-minded tenacity, to fight what was happening to her, to fight what she was becoming, even though she had to know that it was a fight that she was going to lose. Nor was she beyond fighting the fact that it would, inevitably, be me. But ultimately, she had no choice. Neither did I.
Not for the first time, I marveled at the fact that the Autobots had managed to create her in the first place. Now I was forced to marvel anew that somehow, in a way that was beyond my ability to comprehend, she was a queen. It made no sense. Queens came from queens. The queen had been dead for thousands of years - I'd watched her die, even - and Swoop had been created a mere twenty-four years ago. It was puzzling, indeed. A miracle, perhaps.
I didn't believe in miracles. Yet, I could not deny Swoop's status. I felt the pull toward her, strong and threatening now toward overwhelming. I had known, instantly and from thousands of kilometers away, exactly where she was even before I had left Decepticon Headquarters. I knew, deep down on an instinctive level that I hadn't even known that I possessed, that she was exactly what the Autobots claimed that she was. And I knew that, very soon now, she and I would be…Well, best not to think on that, at the moment.
The Decepticons had been "lucky" enough to have captured Swoop, making her our guest for ten days or so. During that time, I had been determined to analyze, replicate, and determine the weaknesses of the extremely light but excessively strong armor that Wheeljack had created specifically for Swoop, which granted her the ability to hover and to glide for extended periods of time, greatly reducing her energy consumption without sacrificing strength, structural integrity, or defensive capability. I had been planning to figure out how Wheeljack had managed this feat even if I had to rip off every last bit of Swoop's armor and then melt it down in order to analyze it down to its constituent elements. This had kept me in very close proximity to Swoop for the better part of a week, and during that time, unbeknownst to anyone, she had imprinted on me.
But then we'd exchanged Swoop for Soundwave, whom the Autobots had captured during the course of the same battle during which I'd managed to shoot down and disable Swoop. I'd argued vociferously against the exchange, wanting, so I'd thought, to continue my work; now I suspected that my extreme unwillingness to let Swoop go had been something else entirely. Still, in the end, my protests overridden as usual, Swoop had gone back to the Autobots with her armor more or less intact. Once returned to the Autobots, her "condition" had apparently progressed quickly, and they had eventually figured out what was "wrong" with her.
Hence, Ratchet's call only yesterday, informing me that my "services" would be required. I'd immediately and scathingly refused, insisting that the Autobot medic was lying for some reason. Ratchet, in response, had given me a pityingly amused look and had sardonically predicted that I'd be changing my tune in about ten hours.
Ratchet had almost been right. In the end, it had only taken a little less than seven hours before I was basically climbing the walls, filled with desperate excess energy and barely refraining from howling to be let out of Decepticon Headquarters so that I could go find Swoop. Hence, I now found myself somewhere in the wilds of the Bolivian rain forest, the place that she had chosen for this rendezvous. The hot, dripping environment seemed appropriate for the occasion, and it was neutral ground. It was very remote, completely unpopulated, and near neither her headquarters nor mine. And as I watched another wave of powerful tremors wrack Swoop's small frame, I found myself confirming the decision I'd made as I'd journeyed from Decepticon Headquarters to Bolivia.
Megatron had ordered me to terminate Swoop. It was an understandable order, really; the revelation of her status had made her a powerful and immediate threat to him. His position had been more or less secure for a very long time now, rebellious Autobots notwithstanding, but he knew that a perhaps significant number of those currently loyal to him would desert him, perhaps even violently turn on him, in favor of a new queen should one somehow arise. This was particularly so now, now that many Decepticons - myself included - were growing increasingly disgruntled with Megatron as the conflict with the Autobots dragged on with no end in sight, as his myriad promises made thousands of years ago somehow never managed to materialize, and as he rather ironically became more and more like the hated queen that he had deposed. So now, Megatron wanted Swoop gone, and he wanted her gone yesterday, before it could become widely known what, exactly, she was.
But I had decided that Swoop wasn't going to die. I had realized halfway to Bolivia that it wasn't in my best interests to kill her at all. It was only in Megatron's best interests to do so. Over the years, and particularly so of late, I'd developed a general habit of only doing what was in Megatron's best interests if doing so also benefited me in some way. In this case, Swoop's death was of no benefit to me. Indeed, in some ways I realized that her continued survival was potentially far more to my advantage than was her death.
If her destiny was to challenge and perhaps be the instrument of Megatron's eventual defeat and destruction, then her destiny was in alignment with my own goals. If her destiny was to avenge her predecessor's assassination in some grand, karmic kind of way, then forging a link to her, giving her a reason to refrain from destroying me as well when the time came, was not a bad idea at all. And if all of that wasn't her destiny at all…Well, there was no strong downside that I could see to creating such a link and allowing her to live, anyway. At the very least, when her status was undeniably revealed to everyone, it would cause even more unrest amongst the Decepticons, which would also be to my advantage. Naturally, when Megatron inevitably found out that Swoop was still alive, when he found out that I had failed to carry out my assigned mission, there would be repercussions for me. Personal ones. Very unpleasant ones. But even those seemed to pale in comparison to the possible future benefits.
So Swoop would live. Long live the queen, indeed.
I ended the uneasy stalemate that had quickly developed between Swoop and me by decisively closing the distance between us and boldly sitting down next to her, my legs hanging over the rim of the gorge. I leaned far forward, contemplating the wide, placid, green-brown stretch of the river at the bottom for a beat. Dizzying heights, of course, did not bother me, just as they did not bother Swoop. For me, they were comforting, and I wondered if the same might be true for her and if that was why she had chosen this particular spot for this event.
Swoop gave me a heated, askance look as I sat down next to her, even though I was careful not to touch her…yet. I was certainly close enough to feel the excess heat that was radiating from her body, though; it made me shiver. The rate of her panting sped up as she gazed at me, somewhat more eye-to-eye now that I wasn't standing and therefore looming over her, and as our gazes met, it was all I could do to refrain from pulling her to me. I tucked my hands firmly under my legs to help stave off the impulse, even though I knew it was only delaying the inevitable.
"That was…" Swoop was informing me haltingly, between pants, meanwhile, "really not good…for you."
"Fortunately for you, I'm not known for doing what's good for me," I replied with a cavalier shrug. Which was true more than she knew, given my decision to disobey Megatron's orders. By the time we parted, she would not only have begun to fulfill her purpose in life, but she would live to tell the tale.
Swoop scowled at me for my flippancy, meanwhile, and the human saying about looks killing flitted through my mind. Her gaze was a mixture of scorching desire and deep revulsion. It was an odd but somehow enticing combination, and after a moment or two spent staring at each other, her nearness became overwhelming. As if in some mutual hypnotic trance, I leaned toward her at the very same time that she leaned toward me.
The first kiss between us was chaste, but it was electric, nevertheless, like nothing I had ever experienced. Energy and heightened sensation lanced like liquid fire through my entire body and at breathtaking speed, starting at the very moment of contact. It was like a lightning-induced power surge that merrily fried circuit pathways as it progressed through me. Unlike a power surge, the sensation wasn't doing any damage other than to my self-control, but like a lightning bolt, the contact was very short-lived.
Something must have clicked in Swoop's rational mind that was still somehow managing to cling to control. She seemed to realize what was happening between us at about the same time that she apparently decided that she didn't like it at all. She abruptly broke the kiss, jerking away from me with a noise of disgust and then scuttled backward, crab style, ending up a dozen meters away. On the plus side, at least she hadn't taken off and flown. Not that I couldn't catch her if she'd chosen to do that; a little game of chase might have been stimulating, even. But it would also have wasted time and energy, as the conclusion was foregone. The imprint was such that I'd be able to find her, and vice versa, no matter where she ran. And eventually, neither of us would want to hide or run from the other.
Swoop wasn't the only one who was panting now. Instinct had kicked in for me as well, greatly fueled and suddenly jolted into a very high gear by the brief physical contact between us. Desire suffused my body with heat and forced aside little things like opposing factions and long-standing rivalry and even mutual hatred. If anything, those were likely fanning the flames higher and hotter. I'd gotten an all-too-brief taste of her. I wanted more. Lots more. And I would have it.
Right now.
I twisted away from the edge of the gorge with a growl that, had I been more in my right mind, I wouldn't have believed had come from me and then crawled on hands and knees toward Swoop. She held her position, having backed herself up against a large, moss-covered tree. She was staring at me half in wariness and half in challenge as I moved toward her, her chin raised defiantly. And then she was suddenly moving, too, shifting fluidly forward to her own hands and knees and then crawling to meet me. Her movements were uncertain, but they also possessed a predatory sleekness that I found myself appreciating. Her expression was still that odd combination of desire, timidity, and hatefulness, but she was moving toward me. Willingly. I reached out to her once she was within arm's reach again, slid my hand around to firmly cup the back of her neck, and then insistently drew her in for another kiss.
This one was as stimulating as the previous one had been, and it lasted a lot longer as well. It wasn't long before I felt as if parts of my insides were melting, and a moment or two after that, I felt Swoop relax under my hand as well, the tension that had held her entire body stiff suddenly leaving her…until I began to encourage her to open her mouth, tracing along her lips with my tongue as I kissed her. She abruptly broke the kiss then, jerking away from me again, but at least this time she held her ground. It was an improvement. She opened her mouth to say something, but I wasn't in the mood for conversation.
"Just…let it happen," I hissed at her impatiently, heading off whatever she had been about to say. "It'll be easier for both of us." And then I leaned into her again.
Swoop met me enthusiastically this time, which I hadn't expected; I had thought that a lot more coaxing and perhaps some force would be in order. But apparently the last remaining sliver of rational Swoop had decided to stop fighting, squeeze her eyes shut, and take a nice little vacation. And this time she didn't hesitate to open her mouth under mine when I silently asked for entrance. I slammed my tongue boldly into the virgin territory of her mouth, and this, like a key unlocking a door, seemed to ignite something within her. She growled and pressed aggressively into kiss, moaning softly and sweetly into my mouth. Her tongue stroked against mine in an exploratory, uncertain, but sensuous way, and without breaking the kiss, she moved into me, molding her body closely against mine. We fit surprisingly well together, and the heat that she was radiating was…delicious.
Taking all of this as something of a hint, I bit lightly and experimentally down on her tongue to see how she would react. In response, she dug her fingers into my back, and the digging quickly turned into curious, exploratory probing. When I groaned in response to her attentions, she suddenly stopped what she was doing, pulling her hands away from me as if they'd been burned, but I was having none of that. Reaching behind myself, I grabbed her hovering, uncertain hands and slammed them right back where they had been. At the same time, I broke the kiss between us, connected my gaze with her suddenly confused one, and growled, "Don't you dare stop!"
For a moment, Swoop just stared at me, wide-eyed and startled, before a slow and wicked little smile of dawning and then growing comprehension spread over her face. Warm little fingers started poking me in all the right places again and then started moving, exploring boldly outwards from where they'd originally landed. One hand went down, the other slid slowly, languidly around to my flank, stroking and tracing contours and armor seams, probing hesitantly at first and then with increasing confidence and aggression as she watched my reactions to what she was doing to me.
She was a delightfully quick study, bless her little spark.
"Mmmmm," I murmured appreciatively, my head drifting forward and down until my forehead rested on the top of her shoulder as I greedily drank in the sensations that she was wrenching from my body. I bit down on my lower lip to stop myself from shrieking when she happened upon that one exquisitely sensitive little armor seam on my left flank, but her attentions to it alone soon had me shuddering in her arms. This, she was exploiting mercilessly. If her curious and dexterous little fingers found their way inside there, found that one particular sensor node that lurked under there, then I would be a goner, indeed.
Not that that would be a bad thing…
"Atta girl," I encouraged her quietly, my voice shaking in a way that should have been embarrassing but somehow wasn't, and then I turned my head to nuzzle and nip at the side of her neck.
In response, she growled a deep, throaty, alien-animal growl. The sound of it alone was stimulating enough, sending shivers racing through me, but the vibrations of it also passed from her body to mine, since they were so closely entwined now. This took yet another bite out of my rapidly-dwindling self-control. I began exploring the side of her neck in earnest, certain that there were riches to be discovered on just that one small part of her body. Nuzzling kisses and licks soon devolved into sharp little nips and then full-on bites as she did indeed find that sensor node. Judging by the rapturous sounds she made in response to the rather deep bite I'd inflicted on her, she appreciated my rougher attentions well enough, as I most certainly appreciated hers.
This continued on for some time, this mutual and not-at-all-gentle exploration of each other, teasing, tracing, licking, and biting. There were soft murmurs, appreciative whispers, and cries of pleasure and mutual encouragement that were slowly increasing in volume and urgency. As Swoop slowly lost control, there was deep animal snarling, too, which I decided then and there was quite possibly the most erotic sound in the universe. We were wrapped around each other, such that it was difficult to tell where I ended and she began. Energy was slowly building in me, spreading throughout my body, a tingling and not-unpleasant pressure building up within my spark just as it should, just as it needed to do for our official purpose here. We were both still on our knees, and she was squirming against me, scratching roughly at me, and making soft, sweet noises indicative of a need that I wasn't sure that she understood on anything more than a clinical level.
But she would fully understand soon enough, though. Oh, yes, indeed.
I nudged at Swoop, leaning my much heavier weight insistently into her until she glommed on to what I wanted. She shifted around so that she could lie back, and she pulled my unresisting body down with her as she went, smiling a smile at me that was partly shy and uncertain but mostly feral and needy. Once she was down, I had access to all of her, and I took full advantage of that, exploring the parts of her body that I hadn't been able to reach while we'd been upright, and she squirmed and moaned and occasionally cried out in response to what I was doing to her. With a building sense of urgency, I began to search for an interface port. She would have several of them in various places on her body, as they were used for various purposes other than the one I intended; none of them would be blatantly advertised.
Swoop, perhaps not quite as clueless about these things as I'd thought she was, realized rather quickly what I was looking for. She grabbed one of my hands and wordlessly guided it down so that it rested half way up the inside of her right thigh. She even helpfully opened the protective panel for me while she was down there. Fortunately, the location of that port was quite compatible with one of mine, on the outside of my hip. As a medic, she had probably known this, and so she had guided me accordingly.
Grinning wickedly, I kissed her quickly and then brightly said, "Thanks for the assist, ma'am."
"Anytime," she responded breathlessly, squirming impatiently.
And then she cried out as I jacked into her and immediately sent her a long and high-frequency energy pulse that left her writhing and whimpering in need when I eventually let it ebb. She went still for a moment after that, panting and absorbing the experience. Then, wild-eyed and moving quickly, leaving me no chance to resist or even to react, she pulled me fully on top of her, jacked into me blindly andwith medical precision, and then reciprocated the energy pulse, clenching her jaw and mewling softly as she weathered the echoes of my pleasure so hard on the heels of having experienced her own.
This went on for some time as well, exchanging energy pulses, caresses, and kisses. It was all new for Swoop, so I pulled us back a little, allowing us to take our time, passion and urgency slowly building between us. It wasn't as if we had a deadline here, and I was rather enjoying her responsiveness, surprisingly enough. Eventually, though, the energy pulses we shared slowly became more powerful and less controlled. Kisses became more frantic and needy, to the point of bruising violence. Gentle, teasing nibbles became brutal bites that dented and eventually penetrated armor, small rivers of energon flowing freely from numerous small wounds that neither of us really felt, any pain sensations completely subsumed in overwhelming and counteracting pleasure. Caresses became scratches and desperate, pleading, armor-denting clutches. Swoop's legs wrapped themselves around me as if of their own volition, crushing me to her as closely as possible, bodies grating and scraping against each other, stressed metal squealing in protest but neither of us caring. Neither of us even heard it, as completely lost in each other as we were becoming, drowning in the sensations that our bodies were experiencing. They were amplified and transmitted back and forth to each other by the interface connections, first to the point that I couldn't tell whose sensation was whose and then to the point that I didn't much care who was feeling what so long as the sensations didn't stop.
Swoop was very close to overload, writhing and shuddering and crying out desperately under me, her legs squeezing me mercilessly as energy pulsed into her and sensation cycled between us in an endless feedback loop. She was keening and wailing and snarling, all control lost. All that was left was her animal self. Wild. Demanding. Violent. I found that I very much liked this side of her when it was being used for this purpose rather than to try to kill me. The sounds she made and the things she did to me in this state were inflaming and completely different than anything I'd ever experienced. She tore with abandon, both with fingers and with razor-sharp little teeth, into my armor to get at what lay underneath it, which received only slightly gentler treatment. It should have hurt. It did hurt, but I didn't care; the pleasure and the pain commingled nicely. I wanted it to go on forever, and I did everything that I could to encourage her, whispering naughty things at her, concentrating focused attention on various parts of her body that I'd discovered were very sensitive, keeping her mindless with passion and desire but not quite at overload for as long as possible.
Still, occasional coherent pleading did escape her, begging me for something that, for the moment, she didn't know quite how to ask for. Very soon, it was too much, all too much for her and for me. She was balanced precariously on a tightrope, and I was well aware that all it would take to send her spiraling into a blinding overload, her very first one, was one judicious little push. Which I was suddenly all too happy to provide: one precisely-controlled push of energy and sensation across the interface connection, guaranteed to shatter her mind.
Which it did. I could feel the shattering, the tearing, the overwhelming pleasure that exploded within her, translated and muted only slightly across the interface connection. She cried out, shuddering violently, energy arcing through her and off of her, scorching me in tiny pinpricks wherever it touched. She arched helplessly up into me, and her legs tightened spasmodically around me with crushing strength. Her mouth was frozen open in silent ecstasy for a moment, but then she wailed like the animal that, for the moment, she was. The sounds that she was making, the sheer amount of energy coursing through her, and the bright, powerful echoes of her ecstasy crashing across the interface connection dragged me right along with her into a wash of white heat and light that obliterated all conscious thought and that very nearly knocked me completely offline.
Seconds, minutes, or hours later, once my processors could function again, I found that my forehead had come to rest against the front of Swoop's shoulder as aftershocks rolled lazily through both of us, making both of us twitch randomly. It faintly registered that Swoop was quite literally cooing like a happy dove. I found the sound alone, alien as it was, very pleasing, not to mention the fact that the sonic vibrations transferred quite soothingly to me, as well, as closely pressed against her as I was. Had we not had other pressing and important matters to attend to, I could have easily allowed the soft, soothing sound to lull me to sleep. But eventually, I somehow managed to summon the strength required to lift my head, and I gazed down at Swoop's face. She was smiling a soft and deeply contented smile up at me, the fingers of one hand gently tickling up and down the back of my head, the others stroking soothingly along the trailing edge of one of my wings.
"You're very good," Swoop murmured appreciatively at me as our gazes met, voice low and trilling. She was sated for the moment, completely relaxed. One of her legs was still wrapped loosely around me, dead weight resting heavily on the small of my back.
"I know," I said aiming an insufferable grin at her before inching slightly down her body, careful not to break the interface connections between us, kissing and nibbling my way soothingly around her chest.
"Very humble, too!" she asserted, none-too-gently whacking a shoulder vent with one hand while encouraging my efforts with the other, fingers digging into the back of my head as I nibbled and licked at her.
I tore my mouth away from her body, and glanced in haughty amusement up at her face for a second before returning my attention to her body.
"Humility is for lesser beings," I murmured against her.
She snorted at that, but she didn't have a chance to offer more of a rebuttal because I had zeroed in on that one certain spot on her side that I'd discovered, one that seemed to freeze her processors completely in their tracks when manipulated just…so…
Long moments later, when I'd let up on my assault, slowly moving on to other targets, Swoop breathlessly announced, "All right, all right, I agree. You have no need of humility. Ohhhhhhh…Don't stop. Please, please, please don't stop…Please…" And then her voice devolved into moaning, gasping, and animal keening punctuated here and there with occasional needful whimpers as I worked. I grinned wickedly against her.
This was nice. Delightful, even. A begging Autobot - a begging queen, no less - was shuddering and squirming and whimpering beneath me. The interface connections between us were transmitting strong echoes of all the sensations that she was experiencing to me, and energy was building up in me again, nice and steady.
Swoop wasn't completely passive, though. Her mouth was busy on the tip of a conveniently-close shoulder vent of mine, nibbling and licking and nuzzling away at it, biting down hard on occasion in response to something that I did to her as I worked my way ever so slowly around her body. Her bites shot pain/pleasure impulses through me, encouraging my efforts. Meanwhile, her talented, medically-trained fingers were scrabbling and scratching along my wings, stroking what she could reach of the flats of them, teasing and tweaking roughly along their edges, and digging mercilessly into particularly sensitive spots when the mood struck her. In very short order, she wasn't the only one who was emitting uncontrolled hisses and cries of pleasure.
Pressure was building in my spark again. Overload had temporarily eased it, but now it was back with a vengeance, much stronger than it had been before and demanding release in a way that, this time, would not be denied or even delayed for very much longer. I slowly inched myself back up Swoop's body so that I could kiss her. She returned the kiss with manic fervor, clinging to me, managing to wrap all four limbs around me, but then she abruptly broke away.
"Starscream," she ground out around desperate, cooling gasps for air, "I want…need…need you to…need…Ah!"
"Shhh," I shushed her since it seemed that she wasn't quite coherent at the moment. "I know, Swoop. So do I," I soothingly assured her.
And it was the truth. It was time.
While nibbling and licking my way along Swoop's neck, I fumbled with one hand around and along the sides of the stylized pteranodon head that was cradled along the center of her torso, blindly searching for a catch of some sort, figuring that her spark had to be under there somewhere. Eventually, impatiently, Swoop batted my hand away and unlatched it herself, then made a few further adjustments after that that I didn't see, busy as I was. Once her movements had stilled, I tore my mouth from her throat and stared down at what she'd revealed.
Her spark chamber, indeed. It was radiating a feverishly over-bright golden glow, pulsing fast enough that it almost seemed as if it wasn't pulsing at all, humming at a high fever pitch that was almost a whine, needy and desperate. This, more than anything else, made real for me exactly what was happening here. Royal sparks were golden and, once she was fully mature, her transformation completed, Swoop's eyes would be as well. No one could deny what she was, now, as the harsh golden light seeped from between the arms of the protective casing that embraced her spark; it was bright enough to illuminate our surroundings. The enormity of what I was about to do - creating new lives with her - suddenly weighed heavily on me. Tearing my gaze away from her spark, I looked back up at Swoop's face. She was smiling at me patiently, her eyes bright, and she raised a hand to stroke my face almost gently, almost comfortingly.
She must have surmised the thoughts fueling my sudden apprehension, because she whispered softly, reassuringly, "It's all right, Starscream."
Then, still smiling and her gaze burning into mine, her hand moved away from my face, trailed lightly down my throat, and then slowly, teasingly skipped down along my canopy. She blindly but expertly found the catch there, popped it open, and then, digging around a bit, she slid aside a few thick, protective internal armor plates after that. All of this was done with infinite gentleness and with practiced, confident ease - She was a medic, after all - until my own spark chamber was revealed, glowing a brighter-than-usual and fast-pulsing red. Tracing around the protective casing - again blindly because by that point she'd levered herself up so that she could kiss me - she found the connector that would link my spark chamber to hers, yanked on it gently, and then carefully uncoiled the thick but somewhat short cable that was attached to the connector as she pulled back slightly from the kiss.
"Just let it happen," she murmured playfully against my lips, echoing my own impatient words to her. I could feel her smiling, amused at my expense.
Smirking against her in response, I took possession of the cable she'd unwound and then re-deepened the kiss that she'd started, pushing her roughly down to the ground again and holding her there, pinning her by her shoulder. My other hand traveled down to her exposed spark casing and busied itself with tracing around it for a moment or two. In response, Swoop emitted a rather cute little squeak, and her spark flared brighter, which I wouldn't have thought possible. She shifted restlessly under me, making increasingly urgent and impatient noises.
I had to break the kiss in order to make the actual connection, though; I wasn't a medic, so I couldn't do it blindly. After inching slightly down her body so that I could see what I was doing and then squinting into the harsh glare of the light from her greedy, needful spark, I located the port on the casing and made the connection between us before inching back up her body, careful not to break the now-multiple connections between us. Since I didn't have much wiggle room now, I laid myself alongside but still partially on top of her.
"I'm sorry," I murmured sincerely against her audio once I settled myself. "This is going to hurt quite a bit," I warned her, just in case she wasn't aware.
"I know," she replied stoically. And then she reached down and nonchalantly disconnected the interface connections between us. "I don't know about you," she said almost regretfully, "but I don't particularly want this cycling back and forth between us." And then, half a second later, she screamed a piercing scream as energy from my spark rushed to infuse hers in a cascade of frightening power, white-hot sparks leaping between us. It was all I could do not to reflexively jerk away from her.
Swoop writhed, crying out in blinding, spark-rending pain. Her spark was absorbing an enormous amount of energy from mine, all of the extra energy, and then some, that had been building up in mine since she'd imprinted on me and that had increased exponentially since the beginning of this encounter. The infusion would trigger her spark's division into new ones, entirely new lives. This was what her spark, and hers alone amongst our species, was specialized to do, but that didn't mean that it was at all pleasant for her.
I found that it was unexpectedly difficult to watch Swoop struggle with excruciating pain for what seemed hours, although I knew it was only a minute or two, at most. As she writhed and thrashed and cried out to the heavens, fingers scrabbling at and digging into the dirt and leaf litter underneath her, her body arching helplessly off the ground, I reflected that the line between agony and ecstasy was a very thin one, the physical reactions to both of them very similar. And I resolved that, when the pain was done, when we had both done our duty, I was going to do my damndest to make Swoop forget the agony by giving her an overbalancing amount of ecstasy. It was, I knew, almost-tenderness toward her, and it was unaccustomed, greatly disquieting, and entirely the effect of the imprint…but at the moment, I didn't care.
By the time that the energy transfer was complete, Swoop was reduced to whimpering softly, helplessly in pain. Her entire body was shuddering violently, near to convulsing, and excess energy was fitfully arcing off of her. Her face was scrunched up in agony, and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her breath gasping and labored. Her spark flared a deep, fiery orange for a moment, as it greedily absorbed the last bit of energy from me before slowly returning to placid soft gold, pulsing more slowly and regularly now. The light that seeped from around its casing muted almost instantly from harsh, feverish brilliance to mellow, liquid glow, sublimely beautiful to behold.
I terminated the connection between my spark chamber and Swoop's then, whimsically laid a gentle kiss on her spark casing, gently slid thick, protective internal armor plates back into place, and then carefully restored the pteranodon head to its rightful position down the centerline of Swoop's torso. Then, pushing myself up to lean on one hip alongside her, propped up on one arm, I stroked my other hand soothingly up and down the length her torso, murmuring mostly-wordless comforting sounds at her. I kept doing that until the tension left her body. It took a while to do so, but eventually she relaxed, opening her eyes and looking up at me. Her gaze searched mine questioningly.
"I'm sorry," I murmured to her again, still stroking her, before she could say anything to me.
Swoop gave me an odd look at that, squinting up at me as if trying to determine my intentions, frowning deeply.
"There's no reason to be," she eventually replied, her voice roughened with the pain she'd just experienced. "It's just how it is. I knew that, going into this."
"That doesn't mean that I can't be sorry," I answered softly. "Or," I added pointedly, "that I can't make it up to you."
Leaning down, not giving her a chance to respond or protest, I kissed her. I started with her lips, kissing and nibbling on them softly and gently at first; with increasing passion, I eventually moved on to…everywhere. Swoop seemed surprised. Perhaps she had figured that, now that the necessary deed was done, I would simply leave her. Or kill her, perhaps. It was what I would have expected of me, in her place. Indeed, it was what I'd planned and what I'd been ordered to do.
But this night was full of surprises - for both of us, no doubt - and, once I re-established the mutual interface connections between us, we were quick to completely lose ourselves in each other again. Swoop managed to reverse our positions so that she was straddling me, giving her fuller access to me than she'd had when she'd been pinned under me. She made excellent use of that advantage, and I was soon gone, drowning in her and not even entertaining the thought of rescue.