Fic - sequel to Twister, Chapter 1 of 14
Title: Something to Live For
Chapter 1: Interface
Continuity: G1, Dysfunction AU
Rating: R, due to themes
Content advice: references to rape. Non-erotic consensual interfacing.
Disclaimer: Just playing in the sandbox, characters not mine.
Characters and/or pairings: Protectobots with Vortex, Ironhide and Hoist in the background, and some random human staffage. Implied Blades/First Aid, implied recent Vortex/Blades non-con.
Beta: naboru_narluin.
Summary: Blades and Vortex got stuck together in a tornado, this happened ('Twister', Vortex/Blades, NC-17, non-con, plug ‘n’ play). Vortex has been taken captive by the Autobots. Blades is reunited with his team, but they don’t know exactly what happened.
Notes: At the end(ish) of season 2, the Protectobots came out of a parking garage in a human city somewhere. This made cthulouis decide that they had a pimp pad. And from there, Protectobot HQ was born. In all my fics where there are Protectobots, they have a base like this. It just appeals to me :)
Chapter 1: Interface
“What happened?” First Aid asked. "Are you all right?"
Blades stood with his back to a wooden outbuilding. His broken arm dangled, and he still had his finger on the trigger of his useless gun. He shook his head. “Just don’t, OK?”
In the background, Hot Spot and Ironhide were chaining Vortex to a truck. Blades recognised Hoist’s distinctive green and orange, covered over now with pink-streaked grey. An uncomfortable sensation rippled through his tanks; he still had the fragger’s rotor assembly stuck to his back.
First Aid reached out to touch his arm. Blades flinched, and felt the ricochet of hurt and confusion coming back at him down the gestalt bond.
“Hey,” he said, to break the mood. “Help get this off me, yeah?” He turned and knelt, trying not to shudder as First Aid ran his hands lightly over the tangled metal. His optical input fragmented, one of the blessings of the bond, as he saw what First Aid saw.
It was hideous.
“I don’t have the tools for that here,” First Aid said. “We’re going to have to wait until we get back to the Ark. I’m sorry.”
Blades stood, his vision returning to normal. “No,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I said no. They’re taking him to the Ark, I’m not going there. You’ve got the tools back at our base.” He watched as Hoist drove off, Ironhide close behind. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
Blades lay face down on the repair table. His team mates stood around him, chatting, their energy fields tinged with concern and more than a touch of amusement. It wasn't their fault, they didn't know what had happened. They were just pleased that he'd bagged a 'con, and got out of it in one piece.
Only First Aid needed to be with him; why couldn’t the others just go away?
Their concern was stifling. Blades tried to hide his indignation, but it seeped along the bond regardless and manifested as a jittery restlessness. It even got to First Aid, whose fingers trembled as he isolated the affected part of Blades’ sensor net. It was unnerving, First Aid usually had such steady hands, even during battle.
But this wasn’t battle, and Blades had no idea how to tell the others that what he actually needed right now was for them to be somewhere else.
“This is going to take a while,” First Aid announced. That sounded like a hint, perhaps he understood? Or perhaps he was just fed up with the others laughing and fidgeting while he was trying to work.
Whichever, they either missed the hint or ignored it.
Blades pressed his face into the plastic covering. At least he couldn’t feel that pit-spawned fragger’s rotor assembly clinging to his back any more. The weight was still there, and a numb pressure where First Aid worked to separate the twisted metal; but there was no proper sensation, and he was glad.
“Someone pass me that wrench,” First Aid said. “If you’re going to stand around like a bunch of lampposts, you might as well make yourselves useful.”
“You’re turning into Ratchet,” Groove teased. Streetwise laughed.
“Yeah, well,” First Aid said. “Hot Spot, come press on this please.” Blades offlined his optics, he didn’t want to know what they were doing. The sooner this was over with, the better.
There was a loud clank, and the clatter of small objects hitting the floor.
“One down,” First Aid commented.
Blades gripped the edge of the berth with his good hand, and tried not to shake.
* * *
Eventually, he was free.
"Wanna go for a spin?" Groove suggested. Blades shook his head, and slid off the berth before First Aid could reconnect his rotor array to his sensor net. He didn't need that right now.
"He's not going anywhere until I see to that arm," First Aid stated.
"You can do it tomorrow," Blades replied. He tried to inject a bit of levity into his voice, but it just came out hollow. "It's not so bad."
First Aid looked him in the eye. "Guys," he said. "Can you give us five?"
Hot Spot nodded. "C'mon, you two, you heard the medic."
"Grouchy medic," Streetwise teased. "He'll start throwing things next."
"That's just a myth," First Aid sighed. "Ratchet doesn't lob things at his patients, and neither do I. Now get your afts out of my medbay and go do something fun."
As they left, Blades sat back down. "Can't refuse the medbot," he said.
First Aid perched on the berth beside him. "What's wrong?" he asked. "You're wound up tighter than Red Alert in a fire drill. What happened out there?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Blades said. It was humiliating, disgusting. How could he impose that on his team? It was better that they never found out.
"All right." First Aid still radiated concern, clear as day in the subtle pulse of his energy field. But there was something else there too, a growing fear and frustration that he was obviously trying to hide. He stood, and began to examine Blades' injured arm. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked.
Erase my memory? Blades thought. Stop touching me? "I just want to forget about it."
First Aid caressed his shoulder, feeling out the damage. Blades cringed without meaning to, and the medic's energy field wavered, uncertain.
After a long pause, broken only by the shuffle of fingers against fractured metal, First Aid spoke. “Link with me?"
Blades tensed, wincing at the crackle of revulsion which raced, unwanted, through his own EM field. First Aid stepped back.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to push you... I just, I thought it might help you relax."
"Maybe later," Blades suggested, although he couldn't imagine a time when it would be possible for him to relax, let alone a time when he might want to interface again. Vortex was poison, his gift of shame and regret snarling in Blades’ processor, cutting through logic pathways and redirecting subroutines. Blades wanted to look up, to meet his team mate's concern with reassurance, to take back the defensiveness, the hurtful reactions. Instead, he just stared at the floor.
"OK," First Aid said, as though refusing to link was somehow normal and Blades' rejection hadn't cut him. "If you could lay on your side..."
* * *
“You need to tell me,” Hot Spot stated. He stood on the edge of the roof, a bright orange sunset blazing across his armour. Blades leant on the railing, looking down at the busy streets. Every so often light glinted from a lens as someone paused to take their photo.
“There was a tornado,” Blades said. "We crashed, it got messy. There's no more to tell."
“I think there is,” Hot Spot said. “You don’t need to push us away. We can help.”
Blades didn’t respond. Usually he'd play up for the tourists, a few circuits above the skyscrapers, a long, slow transformation sequence. But his rotors were a dead weight, the sensors still disconnected. As it was, the thought of flying just left him numb.
Blades logged the positions of his other team mates. Streetwise and Groove were out on patrol, probably attracting more cameras. First Aid was still in medbay; he hadn't come out since fixing Blades' arm. Blades reached along the gestalt bond, but stopped short of forging a link. What if First Aid accessed his memories? What if they poisoned him too? He drew back into himself, frustrated and ashamed.
"I need to go make my report," he said, pushing away from the railing.
Hot Spot blocked his path. "Prowl can wait," he said. "This is more important."
"I'm fine," Blades said.
"No," Hot Spot sighed. "You're not. And don't give me any of that 'it's none of your business' rust. We're a team, best damned team there is. If we can't help one of our own, then we can't help anyone."
"Don't need help," Blades muttered.
"I don't think the others caught this," Hot Spot said. "But, when you were out there, just before we found you, I got an echo of something... unpleasant."
Unpleasant, what a word for it. Blades bowed his head; all of a sudden his armour felt too heavy to lift, his hydraulics too weak to move the weight of his limbs.
"We tried to get through to you,” Hot Spot said. "But nothing worked. We couldn't find you.” He took a step closer. “We don't want to lose you again."
“I’m not going anywhere,” Blades said, but he knew what Hot Spot meant. It had already begun, an incremental peeling away from the rest of the team, and he hated it. “I said no to First Aid,” Blades whispered, hoping that the breeze would steal the words away before they reached Hot Spot’s audials. “I don’t want this to hurt you, any of you.”
“He’ll understand,” Hot Spot said. “And it won’t, I promise.”
Blades wondered if Hot Spot was lying to himself, but he couldn’t ask, not standing here face to face like ordinary mechs, isolated from the bond by a bubble of fear.
Without quite meaning to, Blades let Hot Spot lead him back indoors.
* * *
There could have been something erotic about it, but there wasn’t, and Blades was glad.
Past the revulsion and the white hot anger, the indignity and the shame, was relief. All he had to do was sit back, his awful weight supported by the soft human-style furnishings, while Hot Spot unspooled his interface cable and initiated the download.
There were no energy pulses, no teasing sparks or tactile contact. Nothing to make his fuel pump race and his fists clench. There were no surprises, just the gentle flow of data as Hot Spot accessed his memory banks.
Blades wasn’t relaxed, far from it, but the interface was clinical, matter-of-fact. Hot Spot offered only calm silence; he extracted the requisite files quickly and cleanly, and expected nothing in return. It was all right to just let this happen.
It was over in minutes, his cable rolled neatly away, his panel closed. His head lolled, supported by the cushions.
“Please,” he said, the words crackling as his systems powered down. “Tell First Aid I’m sorry.”
Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chaper 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14
Chapter 1: Interface
Continuity: G1, Dysfunction AU
Rating: R, due to themes
Content advice: references to rape. Non-erotic consensual interfacing.
Disclaimer: Just playing in the sandbox, characters not mine.
Characters and/or pairings: Protectobots with Vortex, Ironhide and Hoist in the background, and some random human staffage. Implied Blades/First Aid, implied recent Vortex/Blades non-con.
Beta: naboru_narluin.
Summary: Blades and Vortex got stuck together in a tornado, this happened ('Twister', Vortex/Blades, NC-17, non-con, plug ‘n’ play). Vortex has been taken captive by the Autobots. Blades is reunited with his team, but they don’t know exactly what happened.
Notes: At the end(ish) of season 2, the Protectobots came out of a parking garage in a human city somewhere. This made cthulouis decide that they had a pimp pad. And from there, Protectobot HQ was born. In all my fics where there are Protectobots, they have a base like this. It just appeals to me :)
Chapter 1: Interface
“What happened?” First Aid asked. "Are you all right?"
Blades stood with his back to a wooden outbuilding. His broken arm dangled, and he still had his finger on the trigger of his useless gun. He shook his head. “Just don’t, OK?”
In the background, Hot Spot and Ironhide were chaining Vortex to a truck. Blades recognised Hoist’s distinctive green and orange, covered over now with pink-streaked grey. An uncomfortable sensation rippled through his tanks; he still had the fragger’s rotor assembly stuck to his back.
First Aid reached out to touch his arm. Blades flinched, and felt the ricochet of hurt and confusion coming back at him down the gestalt bond.
“Hey,” he said, to break the mood. “Help get this off me, yeah?” He turned and knelt, trying not to shudder as First Aid ran his hands lightly over the tangled metal. His optical input fragmented, one of the blessings of the bond, as he saw what First Aid saw.
It was hideous.
“I don’t have the tools for that here,” First Aid said. “We’re going to have to wait until we get back to the Ark. I’m sorry.”
Blades stood, his vision returning to normal. “No,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I said no. They’re taking him to the Ark, I’m not going there. You’ve got the tools back at our base.” He watched as Hoist drove off, Ironhide close behind. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
Blades lay face down on the repair table. His team mates stood around him, chatting, their energy fields tinged with concern and more than a touch of amusement. It wasn't their fault, they didn't know what had happened. They were just pleased that he'd bagged a 'con, and got out of it in one piece.
Only First Aid needed to be with him; why couldn’t the others just go away?
Their concern was stifling. Blades tried to hide his indignation, but it seeped along the bond regardless and manifested as a jittery restlessness. It even got to First Aid, whose fingers trembled as he isolated the affected part of Blades’ sensor net. It was unnerving, First Aid usually had such steady hands, even during battle.
But this wasn’t battle, and Blades had no idea how to tell the others that what he actually needed right now was for them to be somewhere else.
“This is going to take a while,” First Aid announced. That sounded like a hint, perhaps he understood? Or perhaps he was just fed up with the others laughing and fidgeting while he was trying to work.
Whichever, they either missed the hint or ignored it.
Blades pressed his face into the plastic covering. At least he couldn’t feel that pit-spawned fragger’s rotor assembly clinging to his back any more. The weight was still there, and a numb pressure where First Aid worked to separate the twisted metal; but there was no proper sensation, and he was glad.
“Someone pass me that wrench,” First Aid said. “If you’re going to stand around like a bunch of lampposts, you might as well make yourselves useful.”
“You’re turning into Ratchet,” Groove teased. Streetwise laughed.
“Yeah, well,” First Aid said. “Hot Spot, come press on this please.” Blades offlined his optics, he didn’t want to know what they were doing. The sooner this was over with, the better.
There was a loud clank, and the clatter of small objects hitting the floor.
“One down,” First Aid commented.
Blades gripped the edge of the berth with his good hand, and tried not to shake.
* * *
Eventually, he was free.
"Wanna go for a spin?" Groove suggested. Blades shook his head, and slid off the berth before First Aid could reconnect his rotor array to his sensor net. He didn't need that right now.
"He's not going anywhere until I see to that arm," First Aid stated.
"You can do it tomorrow," Blades replied. He tried to inject a bit of levity into his voice, but it just came out hollow. "It's not so bad."
First Aid looked him in the eye. "Guys," he said. "Can you give us five?"
Hot Spot nodded. "C'mon, you two, you heard the medic."
"Grouchy medic," Streetwise teased. "He'll start throwing things next."
"That's just a myth," First Aid sighed. "Ratchet doesn't lob things at his patients, and neither do I. Now get your afts out of my medbay and go do something fun."
As they left, Blades sat back down. "Can't refuse the medbot," he said.
First Aid perched on the berth beside him. "What's wrong?" he asked. "You're wound up tighter than Red Alert in a fire drill. What happened out there?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Blades said. It was humiliating, disgusting. How could he impose that on his team? It was better that they never found out.
"All right." First Aid still radiated concern, clear as day in the subtle pulse of his energy field. But there was something else there too, a growing fear and frustration that he was obviously trying to hide. He stood, and began to examine Blades' injured arm. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked.
Erase my memory? Blades thought. Stop touching me? "I just want to forget about it."
First Aid caressed his shoulder, feeling out the damage. Blades cringed without meaning to, and the medic's energy field wavered, uncertain.
After a long pause, broken only by the shuffle of fingers against fractured metal, First Aid spoke. “Link with me?"
Blades tensed, wincing at the crackle of revulsion which raced, unwanted, through his own EM field. First Aid stepped back.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to push you... I just, I thought it might help you relax."
"Maybe later," Blades suggested, although he couldn't imagine a time when it would be possible for him to relax, let alone a time when he might want to interface again. Vortex was poison, his gift of shame and regret snarling in Blades’ processor, cutting through logic pathways and redirecting subroutines. Blades wanted to look up, to meet his team mate's concern with reassurance, to take back the defensiveness, the hurtful reactions. Instead, he just stared at the floor.
"OK," First Aid said, as though refusing to link was somehow normal and Blades' rejection hadn't cut him. "If you could lay on your side..."
* * *
“You need to tell me,” Hot Spot stated. He stood on the edge of the roof, a bright orange sunset blazing across his armour. Blades leant on the railing, looking down at the busy streets. Every so often light glinted from a lens as someone paused to take their photo.
“There was a tornado,” Blades said. "We crashed, it got messy. There's no more to tell."
“I think there is,” Hot Spot said. “You don’t need to push us away. We can help.”
Blades didn’t respond. Usually he'd play up for the tourists, a few circuits above the skyscrapers, a long, slow transformation sequence. But his rotors were a dead weight, the sensors still disconnected. As it was, the thought of flying just left him numb.
Blades logged the positions of his other team mates. Streetwise and Groove were out on patrol, probably attracting more cameras. First Aid was still in medbay; he hadn't come out since fixing Blades' arm. Blades reached along the gestalt bond, but stopped short of forging a link. What if First Aid accessed his memories? What if they poisoned him too? He drew back into himself, frustrated and ashamed.
"I need to go make my report," he said, pushing away from the railing.
Hot Spot blocked his path. "Prowl can wait," he said. "This is more important."
"I'm fine," Blades said.
"No," Hot Spot sighed. "You're not. And don't give me any of that 'it's none of your business' rust. We're a team, best damned team there is. If we can't help one of our own, then we can't help anyone."
"Don't need help," Blades muttered.
"I don't think the others caught this," Hot Spot said. "But, when you were out there, just before we found you, I got an echo of something... unpleasant."
Unpleasant, what a word for it. Blades bowed his head; all of a sudden his armour felt too heavy to lift, his hydraulics too weak to move the weight of his limbs.
"We tried to get through to you,” Hot Spot said. "But nothing worked. We couldn't find you.” He took a step closer. “We don't want to lose you again."
“I’m not going anywhere,” Blades said, but he knew what Hot Spot meant. It had already begun, an incremental peeling away from the rest of the team, and he hated it. “I said no to First Aid,” Blades whispered, hoping that the breeze would steal the words away before they reached Hot Spot’s audials. “I don’t want this to hurt you, any of you.”
“He’ll understand,” Hot Spot said. “And it won’t, I promise.”
Blades wondered if Hot Spot was lying to himself, but he couldn’t ask, not standing here face to face like ordinary mechs, isolated from the bond by a bubble of fear.
Without quite meaning to, Blades let Hot Spot lead him back indoors.
* * *
There could have been something erotic about it, but there wasn’t, and Blades was glad.
Past the revulsion and the white hot anger, the indignity and the shame, was relief. All he had to do was sit back, his awful weight supported by the soft human-style furnishings, while Hot Spot unspooled his interface cable and initiated the download.
There were no energy pulses, no teasing sparks or tactile contact. Nothing to make his fuel pump race and his fists clench. There were no surprises, just the gentle flow of data as Hot Spot accessed his memory banks.
Blades wasn’t relaxed, far from it, but the interface was clinical, matter-of-fact. Hot Spot offered only calm silence; he extracted the requisite files quickly and cleanly, and expected nothing in return. It was all right to just let this happen.
It was over in minutes, his cable rolled neatly away, his panel closed. His head lolled, supported by the cushions.
“Please,” he said, the words crackling as his systems powered down. “Tell First Aid I’m sorry.”
Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chaper 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14