Kick in the Head - Jumping Puddles
Title: Kick in the Head - Jumping Puddles
Fandom: Transformers
Characters/pairings: Mild Optimus Prime/Ironhide
Rating: PG
Summary: 'But I never liked the rain/ until I walked through it with you' ~ Clint Black, 'Like the Rain'
Warnings: n/a
Notes: Old writing, in it's mostly original format (very minor corrections may have been made) I consider the entire Kick in the Head series to be in the same 'verse as Glances into a Spark.
Table of Contents
o o o
Optimus Prime was standing in the rain.
Ironhide stood at the open door of their temporary housing and glowered at his commander. They were at the Bangor base in Washington, to speak with a few Navy officers about the capabilities of the few amphibious Decepticons. But since Bangor was a little too close to settled areas, they had been allotted a Quonset hut near the edge of a heavily wooded nature reserve, to give them a place to stand up and relax. Ironhide would have loved to go explore the woods, if it would just stop raining.
"Don't know how you can enjoy that," he groused, leaning against a metal roof support, which creaked alarmingly but held the weight he put on it. He glared at the rain that fell in gray sheets a mere foot away, silently daring it to enter the hut.
Optimus gave a rolling shrug. "It's peaceful," he said simply.
Peaceful. Right. Ironhide toyed with the wiring in one arm, clicking out and retracting the tools he used to maintain his weapons. He was bored, and no amount of 'peaceful' rain was going to settle his restless nerves. He whuffed air through his intakes in an approximation of a sigh, and Optimus looked back at him. "You have not explored this forest yet, have you?" he asked.
"No," Ironhide replied shortly. "Too wet." he stepped back when a gust of wind threatened to wet his feet, and when he looked back at Optimus, he recycled his optics in shock. "What are you doing?"
"Our terrene alt-forms are a little too bulky and unwieldy for this," Optimus said calmly. He had shifted his primary form. Not to the powerful, commanding form he wore as the Autobot general, nor the dramatic, awe-inspiring one he used when addressing his people as their Prime, but to what he jokingly called his 'Orion Pax' form, the one he wore when he wanted to be Optimus instead of Prime and the one Ironhide knew best and hadn't seen in vorns. There was no way he'd ever be mistaken for a commoner, not with those alloys, but Ironhide knew that it gave Optimus a sort of mental freedom, to act as he pleased without fear of political repercussions.
As if he hadn't been the one to warn all of them to stay in their earthen forms unless necessary. Optimus breaking his own rules was a rare enough occurrence that Ironhide gave the younger mech a suspicious look. "Unwieldy for what?"
Another shrug, casual and dismissive, but Ironhide could see the amusement in the others optics. "I thought we'd start with a race. There's an abandoned ranger tower some five miles north of here, and we can continue on from there."
"In the rain?" Ironhide asked, distaste coloring his voice.
There was a definite challenge in those optics now. "Don't tell me that a little water is enough to keep you indoors," Optimus said softly.
Ironhide stiffened at that, and resolutely marched out into the downpour and he most certainly did not flinch back from the first cold drops against his armor. He transformed as well, rolling his shoulders as they slid back into their most natural configuration, and gave Optimus a long look. "Feeling cooped up?" he asked. "Or just as bored as I am?"
Optimus smiled and didn't answer, kneeling to touch all of his tires to the ground, so few changes between standing and rolling when they were like this. And despite the cold, Ironhide found himself eager for this, a race against his friend without fear of Decepticon discovery, and it had been so very long since their last.
Ironhide knelt as well, and their engines thrummed, nothing remotely similar to an earth vehicle in that sound. Optimus revved a wordless challenge, and a map came across Ironhide's comm lines, their goal clearly marked. Ironhide roared back a response and as one, they took off towards the trees.
Optimus was usually the faster, but he was also more cautious, more loathe to run over small saplings to gain a lead. Ironhide had no such reservations and his bulk smashed a young tree to splinters as he swerved to come ahead of Optimus. Then they were under the trees, and their only path was that of least resistance and still in the right direction. The trees were too close to allow Optimus to pass Ironhide so he crowded close behind instead, and Ironhide snarled a curse when he felt the Prime's shields fluctuate, interfering with his own sensor net. He flared and collapsed his own shields, a stupid move at these high of speeds and so little room to maneuver, but it was worth the static in his own sensors to hear Optimus surprised into saying something impolite and dropping back.
The trees abruptly ended in a steep, grassy hill and they went airborne. Ironhide transformed in mid air, heard Optimus do the same, and a hand clenched around his ankle. They hit the slope and rolled together, wrestling like sparklings on the slick grass. Ironhide felt a hand against his back and tried to squirm away, a short protest dropping from his vocalizer. Optimus was relentless, however, and Ironhide shuddered when powerful fingers wiggled between his shoulder blades to press against a main neural cable. Shaking away the pleasant sensation, Ironhide scrambled after Optimus, who was already transforming again.
"Low blow."
"And who taught me?"
"Exactly. That's my trick!"
Ironhide caught back up to Optimus, who was obviously laughing at him and not trying very hard to conceal it. In retaliation, Ironhide swerved towards Optimus, who let out an indignant yell when their armor collided but pushed back anyway. They roared through a shallow creek at the foot of the hill like that, shoulder to shoulder and each trying to shove the other off-balance as water flew up in glimmering wings to either side.
Optimus had more mass, and more tires, which meant he had better traction on the mud-slick creek bank, and he gave Ironhide one final shove that sent the weapon specialist skidding. Ironhide righted himself with a wretch that made his hydraulics scream and he tore up the hill after Optimus.
They went through another stand of trees, no longer nose-to-tail but side by side, separated by underbrush and tree trunks. They cut back and forth, weaving across each other's paths and throwing up mud to dampen sensors and clog servos. The trees thinned, the spaces between the trunks widened and then they were in a field grown high with grass, and at the other end sat the rangers tower.
Ironhide knew he was no match for Optimus on a straight stretch like this. As the tower crept closer and Optimus crept ahead, he wracked his memory banks for a way to win.
Slag it. Stupid maneuvers had worked often enough in the past.
Ironhide charged his cannons without moving his arms, letting the pressure build until his frame started to shake. As they came up the last, low hill before the rangers tower, he bounced on his suspension, catching just enough air to get his arms beneath him and blast the ground.
The force of the twin cannons, combined with his own inertia, launched him up and forward and he completed his transformation in the air above Optimus. Optimus twisted to meet him and they collided heavily, rolling across the ground again. Ironhide reached out and kicked the tower as they tumbled past it, crowing his victory over their comm lines and earning an annoyed growl and an attempted headlock in return.
Their tussle ended some distance away from the tower, which was leaning rather crazily on three legs, the fourth lying in pieces. Ironhide was spread-eagle, Optimus just out of reach on his left, his optic shutters blinking furiously to sweep away the still-falling rain, and his intakes protesting mightily as they tried to cycle air and found mud instead.
"I have mud in my intakes."
Optimus chuckled. "Do you still hate the rain?"
"I have mud in my slagging intakes."
"I knew you'd enjoy yourself." Optimus sat up, a brilliant splash of grime-splattered red and blue against the gray-green-brown of the forest. "We can explore, and let the rain rinse out the mud."
Ironhide huffed sharply, clearing a few of his intakes, and sat up as well, picking at what felt like a branch wedged between two plates on his thigh. "You're determined to get me to enjoy water from the sky, aren't you?"
"Of course not," Optimus replied, too innocent. "Well?"
Ironhide hesitated, using the pause to dig out the branch. "It's better than sitting indoors," he conceded, rolling over to transform again. "You know, not a single Spark'd believe me if I told them you like to off-road in the rain."
Optimus laughed. "My reputation is unshakable," he said dryly, and they rolled off together at a much more sedate pace than when they'd arrived.
o o o
Ironhide was constantly amazed that, despite being the youngest of their group, as well as the one with the least experience at life outside of the political arenas, Ratchet had the uncanny ability to make even him feel like a troublesome youngling standing before an ancient and extremely annoyed mech. And though Ratchet was still in Nevada, the sensation carried perfectly well over the Officer comm lines.
"My Prime," Ratchet said politely, formally, coldly, and Ironhide knew they were both in for it. "Bumblebee awoke me from recharge with a most interesting internet find."
A link came over the line, a human's blog, and the first thing visible was a grainy cell-phone image of the two of them lying in the grass. From the angle, it seemed the ranger tower wasn't as abandoned as they had thought, and how they'd missed a human taking pictures of them, Ironhide had no idea.
There were more pictures, one of them driving away, a closer, clearer picture of their tire treads, a wide angle shot of the divot Ironhide had blasted into the ground with the human's hat in the middle for scale. Between the pictures were lines of text describing the 'huge mutant ATV's in the woods'.
"The website's images have all been replaced with badly digitally edited pictures," Ratchet continued. "And Bumblebee hacked the man's phone to do the same there. Already, people are calling him out on them. However, S7 is furious and I want to know what the slag you were thinking!"
As Optimus set to placating the irate medic, Ironhide glanced outside. It was raining again, but he couldn't find it in him to be anywhere near as annoyed by the rain as he had been the day before.
Fandom: Transformers
Characters/pairings: Mild Optimus Prime/Ironhide
Rating: PG
Summary: 'But I never liked the rain/ until I walked through it with you' ~ Clint Black, 'Like the Rain'
Warnings: n/a
Notes: Old writing, in it's mostly original format (very minor corrections may have been made) I consider the entire Kick in the Head series to be in the same 'verse as Glances into a Spark.
Table of Contents
o o o
Optimus Prime was standing in the rain.
Ironhide stood at the open door of their temporary housing and glowered at his commander. They were at the Bangor base in Washington, to speak with a few Navy officers about the capabilities of the few amphibious Decepticons. But since Bangor was a little too close to settled areas, they had been allotted a Quonset hut near the edge of a heavily wooded nature reserve, to give them a place to stand up and relax. Ironhide would have loved to go explore the woods, if it would just stop raining.
"Don't know how you can enjoy that," he groused, leaning against a metal roof support, which creaked alarmingly but held the weight he put on it. He glared at the rain that fell in gray sheets a mere foot away, silently daring it to enter the hut.
Optimus gave a rolling shrug. "It's peaceful," he said simply.
Peaceful. Right. Ironhide toyed with the wiring in one arm, clicking out and retracting the tools he used to maintain his weapons. He was bored, and no amount of 'peaceful' rain was going to settle his restless nerves. He whuffed air through his intakes in an approximation of a sigh, and Optimus looked back at him. "You have not explored this forest yet, have you?" he asked.
"No," Ironhide replied shortly. "Too wet." he stepped back when a gust of wind threatened to wet his feet, and when he looked back at Optimus, he recycled his optics in shock. "What are you doing?"
"Our terrene alt-forms are a little too bulky and unwieldy for this," Optimus said calmly. He had shifted his primary form. Not to the powerful, commanding form he wore as the Autobot general, nor the dramatic, awe-inspiring one he used when addressing his people as their Prime, but to what he jokingly called his 'Orion Pax' form, the one he wore when he wanted to be Optimus instead of Prime and the one Ironhide knew best and hadn't seen in vorns. There was no way he'd ever be mistaken for a commoner, not with those alloys, but Ironhide knew that it gave Optimus a sort of mental freedom, to act as he pleased without fear of political repercussions.
As if he hadn't been the one to warn all of them to stay in their earthen forms unless necessary. Optimus breaking his own rules was a rare enough occurrence that Ironhide gave the younger mech a suspicious look. "Unwieldy for what?"
Another shrug, casual and dismissive, but Ironhide could see the amusement in the others optics. "I thought we'd start with a race. There's an abandoned ranger tower some five miles north of here, and we can continue on from there."
"In the rain?" Ironhide asked, distaste coloring his voice.
There was a definite challenge in those optics now. "Don't tell me that a little water is enough to keep you indoors," Optimus said softly.
Ironhide stiffened at that, and resolutely marched out into the downpour and he most certainly did not flinch back from the first cold drops against his armor. He transformed as well, rolling his shoulders as they slid back into their most natural configuration, and gave Optimus a long look. "Feeling cooped up?" he asked. "Or just as bored as I am?"
Optimus smiled and didn't answer, kneeling to touch all of his tires to the ground, so few changes between standing and rolling when they were like this. And despite the cold, Ironhide found himself eager for this, a race against his friend without fear of Decepticon discovery, and it had been so very long since their last.
Ironhide knelt as well, and their engines thrummed, nothing remotely similar to an earth vehicle in that sound. Optimus revved a wordless challenge, and a map came across Ironhide's comm lines, their goal clearly marked. Ironhide roared back a response and as one, they took off towards the trees.
Optimus was usually the faster, but he was also more cautious, more loathe to run over small saplings to gain a lead. Ironhide had no such reservations and his bulk smashed a young tree to splinters as he swerved to come ahead of Optimus. Then they were under the trees, and their only path was that of least resistance and still in the right direction. The trees were too close to allow Optimus to pass Ironhide so he crowded close behind instead, and Ironhide snarled a curse when he felt the Prime's shields fluctuate, interfering with his own sensor net. He flared and collapsed his own shields, a stupid move at these high of speeds and so little room to maneuver, but it was worth the static in his own sensors to hear Optimus surprised into saying something impolite and dropping back.
The trees abruptly ended in a steep, grassy hill and they went airborne. Ironhide transformed in mid air, heard Optimus do the same, and a hand clenched around his ankle. They hit the slope and rolled together, wrestling like sparklings on the slick grass. Ironhide felt a hand against his back and tried to squirm away, a short protest dropping from his vocalizer. Optimus was relentless, however, and Ironhide shuddered when powerful fingers wiggled between his shoulder blades to press against a main neural cable. Shaking away the pleasant sensation, Ironhide scrambled after Optimus, who was already transforming again.
"Low blow."
"And who taught me?"
"Exactly. That's my trick!"
Ironhide caught back up to Optimus, who was obviously laughing at him and not trying very hard to conceal it. In retaliation, Ironhide swerved towards Optimus, who let out an indignant yell when their armor collided but pushed back anyway. They roared through a shallow creek at the foot of the hill like that, shoulder to shoulder and each trying to shove the other off-balance as water flew up in glimmering wings to either side.
Optimus had more mass, and more tires, which meant he had better traction on the mud-slick creek bank, and he gave Ironhide one final shove that sent the weapon specialist skidding. Ironhide righted himself with a wretch that made his hydraulics scream and he tore up the hill after Optimus.
They went through another stand of trees, no longer nose-to-tail but side by side, separated by underbrush and tree trunks. They cut back and forth, weaving across each other's paths and throwing up mud to dampen sensors and clog servos. The trees thinned, the spaces between the trunks widened and then they were in a field grown high with grass, and at the other end sat the rangers tower.
Ironhide knew he was no match for Optimus on a straight stretch like this. As the tower crept closer and Optimus crept ahead, he wracked his memory banks for a way to win.
Slag it. Stupid maneuvers had worked often enough in the past.
Ironhide charged his cannons without moving his arms, letting the pressure build until his frame started to shake. As they came up the last, low hill before the rangers tower, he bounced on his suspension, catching just enough air to get his arms beneath him and blast the ground.
The force of the twin cannons, combined with his own inertia, launched him up and forward and he completed his transformation in the air above Optimus. Optimus twisted to meet him and they collided heavily, rolling across the ground again. Ironhide reached out and kicked the tower as they tumbled past it, crowing his victory over their comm lines and earning an annoyed growl and an attempted headlock in return.
Their tussle ended some distance away from the tower, which was leaning rather crazily on three legs, the fourth lying in pieces. Ironhide was spread-eagle, Optimus just out of reach on his left, his optic shutters blinking furiously to sweep away the still-falling rain, and his intakes protesting mightily as they tried to cycle air and found mud instead.
"I have mud in my intakes."
Optimus chuckled. "Do you still hate the rain?"
"I have mud in my slagging intakes."
"I knew you'd enjoy yourself." Optimus sat up, a brilliant splash of grime-splattered red and blue against the gray-green-brown of the forest. "We can explore, and let the rain rinse out the mud."
Ironhide huffed sharply, clearing a few of his intakes, and sat up as well, picking at what felt like a branch wedged between two plates on his thigh. "You're determined to get me to enjoy water from the sky, aren't you?"
"Of course not," Optimus replied, too innocent. "Well?"
Ironhide hesitated, using the pause to dig out the branch. "It's better than sitting indoors," he conceded, rolling over to transform again. "You know, not a single Spark'd believe me if I told them you like to off-road in the rain."
Optimus laughed. "My reputation is unshakable," he said dryly, and they rolled off together at a much more sedate pace than when they'd arrived.
o o o
Ironhide was constantly amazed that, despite being the youngest of their group, as well as the one with the least experience at life outside of the political arenas, Ratchet had the uncanny ability to make even him feel like a troublesome youngling standing before an ancient and extremely annoyed mech. And though Ratchet was still in Nevada, the sensation carried perfectly well over the Officer comm lines.
"My Prime," Ratchet said politely, formally, coldly, and Ironhide knew they were both in for it. "Bumblebee awoke me from recharge with a most interesting internet find."
A link came over the line, a human's blog, and the first thing visible was a grainy cell-phone image of the two of them lying in the grass. From the angle, it seemed the ranger tower wasn't as abandoned as they had thought, and how they'd missed a human taking pictures of them, Ironhide had no idea.
There were more pictures, one of them driving away, a closer, clearer picture of their tire treads, a wide angle shot of the divot Ironhide had blasted into the ground with the human's hat in the middle for scale. Between the pictures were lines of text describing the 'huge mutant ATV's in the woods'.
"The website's images have all been replaced with badly digitally edited pictures," Ratchet continued. "And Bumblebee hacked the man's phone to do the same there. Already, people are calling him out on them. However, S7 is furious and I want to know what the slag you were thinking!"
As Optimus set to placating the irate medic, Ironhide glanced outside. It was raining again, but he couldn't find it in him to be anywhere near as annoyed by the rain as he had been the day before.