[G1] Apple a Day 09 - Special Delivery
a/n: To combat all the gloom and doom I've posted lately, here's another installment from my romantic comedy Apple a Day. Enjoy!
Title: Special Delivery
Universe: Apple a Day
Characters: Sunstreaker, Ratchet, Sideswipe, Tracks, Bluestreak, Trailbreaker, Smokescreen
Rating: T
Warnings: None
Description: Only Ratchet can silence a room by simply walking into it.
“So then I said, that's not my spoiler!”
Laughter rises up from around the table in a raucous round of hilarious approval. Even Sunstreaker manages a snicker or two, though he heard this joke probably a few thousand times over the eons.
Sideswipe grins, snagging his energon and knocking back half of it in one gulp. He's in his element right now, surrounded by friends and relaxing with none of the confusion about Ratchet to so much as rattle him.
Nope. Right now Ratchet and his strange gift and equally strange behavior are far, far from Sideswipe's processor.
Mostly.
“Sideswipe, my mech, you are one screwy bot,” Smokescreen says, clapping him on the shoulder in obvious encouragement.
Sideswipe chuckles. “Anything else would be boring,” he points out and leans closer to the tactician, voice lowering conspiratorially. “Did I ever tell you about the time I got stuck behind enemy lines?”
He waits for more laughter, for his friends to eagerly prod him for details. Instead, the lingering amusement from before trickles off into quiet. In fact, the whole rec room has gone disturbingly silent.
Sideswipe's backstrut tingles. His superior-officer-sense is acting up.
“No,” says a very familiar voice from behind Sideswipe. “Care to share it?”
Only Ratchet can walk into a room and make everybot clamp their mouthplates shut. Oh, he can be the life of the party when he wants, but when Ratchet has that look in his optics, mechs clam up faster than Starscream faced with a fusion cannon.
Not even Prowl has managed this feat of fear yet.
“Uhh. Hi, Ratchet,” Sideswipe says as the medic circles around the table so that they are now face to face.
Sideswipe feels not unlike a feral turbofox being tracked by an eager Towers mech.
Ratchet grunts a semi-greeting, nothing in his faceplate reflecting charm or so much as a drop of cheerfulness. In other words, classic Ratchet. “I'm not here to chat.”
Uh oh.
Sunstreaker takes this moment to elbow Sideswipe in the side, pinching a coolant line in the process. He also starts hammering at their link but Sideswipe needs every kernel of his processing power right now if he hopes to come out of this alive. Whatever this is.
“Refueling then?” he asks hopefully, optics wide and bright and full of innocence.
“Not quite,” Ratchet replies, optics skittering over the crew gathered at the table, all of whom are looking everywhere but at Ratchet as if imagining how to sink through the floor and the volcano and out to freedom on the other side.
Bluestreak hasn't stopped twitching yet. Poor mech's gonna make himself crash if he doesn't relax.
Sideswipe feels a twitch of his own coming on. “Whatever it was, I didn't do it.”
Sunstreaker scoffs beside him. “Way to sound innocent, bro.”
“Sideswipe hasn't been innocent since the orn he was sparked,” Ratchet retorts in a dry tone.
Uneasy chuckling echoes around the table.
Still, Ratchet doesn't offer an explanation. Not that he really needs one to come to the rec room, but seriously, he's freaking everyone out.
Just standing there. Looming. His paint all bright and shiny, gleaming. Making Sideswipe's fingers twitch with the urge to touch. To shove him down to a berth and drag his glossa over every nook and cranny until Ratchet overloads screaming....
Oh yeah. He's not been thinking about Ratchet at all.
“So you're not here to chat,” Sideswipe ventures when Smokescreen finally nudges him with a knee. “Or refuel...”
“Then no offense Ratchet, but why are you here?” Tracks asks, clearly the bravest of the bunch. But then, he doesn't spend nearly as much time in the medbay as Sideswipe and Sunstreaker.
Six pairs of optics focus on the irascible medic.
Ratchet invents loudly and raises his chin. “I came to deliver this,” he says and produces a wrapped package from his subspace, the cheerful ribbon curled around it the same shade as the present Sideswipe had opened earlier this week.
He puts it on the table, leaning between Trailbreaker and Bluestreak (who not-so-subtly edge away from the temperamental medic), and pushes it across the table toward the twins. It comes to a stop between them, looking innocuous and enticing in its brown paper wrapping.
“And also, to say that I expect an answer by the end of my shift,” Ratchet adds while everyone stares at the box. “Have a good day.”
Ratchet turns with enormous dignity and flees the scene.
Sideswipe gapes, jaw dropped and everything, like some bad comedy parody or something.
“What is it?” Bluestreak asks eagerly, one hand smoothing down his armor where it had fluffed up out of pure self-defense. “C'mon. Open it! I wanna know. C'mon, Sideswipe! Please.”
It's pretty fragging hard to say no to Bluestreak when he looks at you like that. All bright optics and eager grin and fluttering doorwings and perfect pitch of his vocalizer that gets right to your spark...
Sidewipe laughs. “Calm down, Bluestreak.” He reaches out, touches the box with one finger and nudges it toward his twin. “Your turn, bro.”
“Throw me under the bus why don't you?” Sunstreaker mutters but he takes the box anyway. He doesn't manage to hide the eager trill in his energy field either.
Sideswipe smirks behind his hand. Oh, Sunny. You are so predictable.
He - and everyone else at their table plus a few curious bots in the tables surrounding them - watch as Sunstreaker carefully unties the ribbon, and peels back the brown wrapping paper. Sunstreaker is cautious, as Sideswipe had been last week, as though expecting the box to suddenly explode.
Sideswipe's on bolts and brackets, waiting with even his vents stilled, as Sunstreaker reaches into the box...
“Yeargh!” his twin hollers, loud enough that every bot at their table and the next one over startle in surprise.
Sideswipe leaps to his feet. “Sunny!” His spark's hammering his chamber as he reaches and--
That fragger.
Sunstreaker is grinning up at him and Sideswipe just wants to strangle him right now. Sunny's half his spark so would that be a crime? Really?
“Gotcha.”
Sideswipe doesn't hold back, just slugs his brother on the shoulder as hard as he can, leaving a dent behind that Sunstreaker is sure to bitch about later.
“You glitch!”
“And I thought Sideswipe was the prank master,” Tracks murmurs, sharing a snicker with Bluestreak.
Sunstreaker chuckles, resting his hand on the lip of the box. “Did you really think Ratchet would hurt us?”
Well, to be honest...
“Come on!” Trailbreaker insists, leaning over the table. “Just tell us what's in the box!”
Sunstreaker obeys, drawing out a handful of small silver objects and dumping them on the table with a noisy clatter. Several skitter onto the floor.
“What are those?” Smokescreen asks, picking up one of the tiny items and bringing it closer to his optics, which cycle down to examine it.
“I think they're called thimbles,” Trailbreaker replies, flicking one across the table with a finger. “I saw Carly use one once.”
“Why would Ratchet give you thimbles?” Tracks asks.
A very good question.
Sideswipe leans over. “Is there anything else in the box?”
He reaches in, pulling out a datapad, some kind of engine part, an image frame, and a cube of high grade in a rich, magenta hue.
Sideswipe ignores the rest, examining the engine part closely. Recognition dawns and his optics light up. “I know what this is! It's an upgrade for my jetpack.”
He'd been begging Prowl for months to allow him to get the upgrade, and nagging Ratchet to install it and whining to Prime about needing it.
“What did you get?” Bluestreak asks Sunstreaker.
Sunstreaker tilts his helm thoughtfully. “Pictures.” And not just any pictures either. The frame in his hands keeps cycling through over a dozen of images that represent some of the greatest artistic minds on Cybertron.
“What about the datapad?” Trailbreaker asks.
Sideswipe tucks the upgrade into his subspace and grabs the datapad, powering it on. There's nothing on it but a single document which he scans quickly.
His optics widen.
“It's an invitation.”
“For what?” Smokescreen pokes him in the side, right between two armor plates that make Sideswipe squirm.
“To install the upgrade and then go for a drive.” Sideswipe's too shocked to even think about keeping this private. It's a little difficult to believe.
What the frag is Ratchet thinking?
Sunstreaker snatches the datapad from Sideswipe's hand, reading the note for himself. “In the presence of a guardian? What the frag does that mean?”
Tracks starts guffawing loud enough to attract the attention of every bot in the rec room.
Sunstreaker frowns. “What's so funny?”
He's starting to get annoyed. Sideswipe can feel it. Not good.
Tracks is practically shaking with mirth. “Oh. You'll find out soon enough. I guess this answers the question of how old the doc-bot is.”
Sideswipe arches an orbital ridge. “I don't get it.”
“You will.” Tracks points at the datapad. “Are you going to accept?”
Sideswipe trades a glance with his brother.
--You want to?-- Sunstreaker asks over a private, narrow-band comm.
--I want that upgrade,-- Sideswipe replies in kind, and pauses to consider. --And I'm curious as all Pit.--
--Same here.--
--So we agree?--
Sunstreaker picks up the high grade, admiring the delicate hue of it. “Yeah, let's do it.”
***
a/n: So yep, I'm still working on this series. In fits and bursts. It's on my long to-do list. lol
The move went well. For the most part. I've started my new job so now I begin apartment hunting. Updates are still gonna be a trickle. I'll let you know when the next Flash Fiction Friday is as soon as I know my new schedule and things settle.
Feedback is welcome!
This entry was originally posted at http://dracoqueen22.dreamwidth.org/199297.html. Feel free to comment wherever you find most convenient.
Title: Special Delivery
Universe: Apple a Day
Characters: Sunstreaker, Ratchet, Sideswipe, Tracks, Bluestreak, Trailbreaker, Smokescreen
Rating: T
Warnings: None
Description: Only Ratchet can silence a room by simply walking into it.
“So then I said, that's not my spoiler!”
Laughter rises up from around the table in a raucous round of hilarious approval. Even Sunstreaker manages a snicker or two, though he heard this joke probably a few thousand times over the eons.
Sideswipe grins, snagging his energon and knocking back half of it in one gulp. He's in his element right now, surrounded by friends and relaxing with none of the confusion about Ratchet to so much as rattle him.
Nope. Right now Ratchet and his strange gift and equally strange behavior are far, far from Sideswipe's processor.
Mostly.
“Sideswipe, my mech, you are one screwy bot,” Smokescreen says, clapping him on the shoulder in obvious encouragement.
Sideswipe chuckles. “Anything else would be boring,” he points out and leans closer to the tactician, voice lowering conspiratorially. “Did I ever tell you about the time I got stuck behind enemy lines?”
He waits for more laughter, for his friends to eagerly prod him for details. Instead, the lingering amusement from before trickles off into quiet. In fact, the whole rec room has gone disturbingly silent.
Sideswipe's backstrut tingles. His superior-officer-sense is acting up.
“No,” says a very familiar voice from behind Sideswipe. “Care to share it?”
Only Ratchet can walk into a room and make everybot clamp their mouthplates shut. Oh, he can be the life of the party when he wants, but when Ratchet has that look in his optics, mechs clam up faster than Starscream faced with a fusion cannon.
Not even Prowl has managed this feat of fear yet.
“Uhh. Hi, Ratchet,” Sideswipe says as the medic circles around the table so that they are now face to face.
Sideswipe feels not unlike a feral turbofox being tracked by an eager Towers mech.
Ratchet grunts a semi-greeting, nothing in his faceplate reflecting charm or so much as a drop of cheerfulness. In other words, classic Ratchet. “I'm not here to chat.”
Uh oh.
Sunstreaker takes this moment to elbow Sideswipe in the side, pinching a coolant line in the process. He also starts hammering at their link but Sideswipe needs every kernel of his processing power right now if he hopes to come out of this alive. Whatever this is.
“Refueling then?” he asks hopefully, optics wide and bright and full of innocence.
“Not quite,” Ratchet replies, optics skittering over the crew gathered at the table, all of whom are looking everywhere but at Ratchet as if imagining how to sink through the floor and the volcano and out to freedom on the other side.
Bluestreak hasn't stopped twitching yet. Poor mech's gonna make himself crash if he doesn't relax.
Sideswipe feels a twitch of his own coming on. “Whatever it was, I didn't do it.”
Sunstreaker scoffs beside him. “Way to sound innocent, bro.”
“Sideswipe hasn't been innocent since the orn he was sparked,” Ratchet retorts in a dry tone.
Uneasy chuckling echoes around the table.
Still, Ratchet doesn't offer an explanation. Not that he really needs one to come to the rec room, but seriously, he's freaking everyone out.
Just standing there. Looming. His paint all bright and shiny, gleaming. Making Sideswipe's fingers twitch with the urge to touch. To shove him down to a berth and drag his glossa over every nook and cranny until Ratchet overloads screaming....
Oh yeah. He's not been thinking about Ratchet at all.
“So you're not here to chat,” Sideswipe ventures when Smokescreen finally nudges him with a knee. “Or refuel...”
“Then no offense Ratchet, but why are you here?” Tracks asks, clearly the bravest of the bunch. But then, he doesn't spend nearly as much time in the medbay as Sideswipe and Sunstreaker.
Six pairs of optics focus on the irascible medic.
Ratchet invents loudly and raises his chin. “I came to deliver this,” he says and produces a wrapped package from his subspace, the cheerful ribbon curled around it the same shade as the present Sideswipe had opened earlier this week.
He puts it on the table, leaning between Trailbreaker and Bluestreak (who not-so-subtly edge away from the temperamental medic), and pushes it across the table toward the twins. It comes to a stop between them, looking innocuous and enticing in its brown paper wrapping.
“And also, to say that I expect an answer by the end of my shift,” Ratchet adds while everyone stares at the box. “Have a good day.”
Ratchet turns with enormous dignity and flees the scene.
Sideswipe gapes, jaw dropped and everything, like some bad comedy parody or something.
“What is it?” Bluestreak asks eagerly, one hand smoothing down his armor where it had fluffed up out of pure self-defense. “C'mon. Open it! I wanna know. C'mon, Sideswipe! Please.”
It's pretty fragging hard to say no to Bluestreak when he looks at you like that. All bright optics and eager grin and fluttering doorwings and perfect pitch of his vocalizer that gets right to your spark...
Sidewipe laughs. “Calm down, Bluestreak.” He reaches out, touches the box with one finger and nudges it toward his twin. “Your turn, bro.”
“Throw me under the bus why don't you?” Sunstreaker mutters but he takes the box anyway. He doesn't manage to hide the eager trill in his energy field either.
Sideswipe smirks behind his hand. Oh, Sunny. You are so predictable.
He - and everyone else at their table plus a few curious bots in the tables surrounding them - watch as Sunstreaker carefully unties the ribbon, and peels back the brown wrapping paper. Sunstreaker is cautious, as Sideswipe had been last week, as though expecting the box to suddenly explode.
Sideswipe's on bolts and brackets, waiting with even his vents stilled, as Sunstreaker reaches into the box...
“Yeargh!” his twin hollers, loud enough that every bot at their table and the next one over startle in surprise.
Sideswipe leaps to his feet. “Sunny!” His spark's hammering his chamber as he reaches and--
That fragger.
Sunstreaker is grinning up at him and Sideswipe just wants to strangle him right now. Sunny's half his spark so would that be a crime? Really?
“Gotcha.”
Sideswipe doesn't hold back, just slugs his brother on the shoulder as hard as he can, leaving a dent behind that Sunstreaker is sure to bitch about later.
“You glitch!”
“And I thought Sideswipe was the prank master,” Tracks murmurs, sharing a snicker with Bluestreak.
Sunstreaker chuckles, resting his hand on the lip of the box. “Did you really think Ratchet would hurt us?”
Well, to be honest...
“Come on!” Trailbreaker insists, leaning over the table. “Just tell us what's in the box!”
Sunstreaker obeys, drawing out a handful of small silver objects and dumping them on the table with a noisy clatter. Several skitter onto the floor.
“What are those?” Smokescreen asks, picking up one of the tiny items and bringing it closer to his optics, which cycle down to examine it.
“I think they're called thimbles,” Trailbreaker replies, flicking one across the table with a finger. “I saw Carly use one once.”
“Why would Ratchet give you thimbles?” Tracks asks.
A very good question.
Sideswipe leans over. “Is there anything else in the box?”
He reaches in, pulling out a datapad, some kind of engine part, an image frame, and a cube of high grade in a rich, magenta hue.
Sideswipe ignores the rest, examining the engine part closely. Recognition dawns and his optics light up. “I know what this is! It's an upgrade for my jetpack.”
He'd been begging Prowl for months to allow him to get the upgrade, and nagging Ratchet to install it and whining to Prime about needing it.
“What did you get?” Bluestreak asks Sunstreaker.
Sunstreaker tilts his helm thoughtfully. “Pictures.” And not just any pictures either. The frame in his hands keeps cycling through over a dozen of images that represent some of the greatest artistic minds on Cybertron.
“What about the datapad?” Trailbreaker asks.
Sideswipe tucks the upgrade into his subspace and grabs the datapad, powering it on. There's nothing on it but a single document which he scans quickly.
His optics widen.
“It's an invitation.”
“For what?” Smokescreen pokes him in the side, right between two armor plates that make Sideswipe squirm.
“To install the upgrade and then go for a drive.” Sideswipe's too shocked to even think about keeping this private. It's a little difficult to believe.
What the frag is Ratchet thinking?
Sunstreaker snatches the datapad from Sideswipe's hand, reading the note for himself. “In the presence of a guardian? What the frag does that mean?”
Tracks starts guffawing loud enough to attract the attention of every bot in the rec room.
Sunstreaker frowns. “What's so funny?”
He's starting to get annoyed. Sideswipe can feel it. Not good.
Tracks is practically shaking with mirth. “Oh. You'll find out soon enough. I guess this answers the question of how old the doc-bot is.”
Sideswipe arches an orbital ridge. “I don't get it.”
“You will.” Tracks points at the datapad. “Are you going to accept?”
Sideswipe trades a glance with his brother.
--You want to?-- Sunstreaker asks over a private, narrow-band comm.
--I want that upgrade,-- Sideswipe replies in kind, and pauses to consider. --And I'm curious as all Pit.--
--Same here.--
--So we agree?--
Sunstreaker picks up the high grade, admiring the delicate hue of it. “Yeah, let's do it.”
***
a/n: So yep, I'm still working on this series. In fits and bursts. It's on my long to-do list. lol
The move went well. For the most part. I've started my new job so now I begin apartment hunting. Updates are still gonna be a trickle. I'll let you know when the next Flash Fiction Friday is as soon as I know my new schedule and things settle.
Feedback is welcome!
This entry was originally posted at http://dracoqueen22.dreamwidth.org/199297.html. Feel free to comment wherever you find most convenient.