===
Ratchet fought for a moment in total raster black-out, before his topical sensors were aware of the seal of his interface console creasing open, fresher ship air and dim light filtering in. He looked up. Seeing Wheeljack wasn't much a relief; if anything, it only put him off."I was in the middle of something," he told Wheeljack unceremoniously. "Couldn't you have pinged?"
"Your silent channel transistor must be shot," Wheeljack returned in just the same tone. "The checkpoint reports dropped off before you even reached the house."
Ratchet pulled the biosign cables out of his forearms and neck and began climbing out of the console. "That's a long time for you to sit around and then suddenly decide to abort the mission."
"You might say I was indisposed."
"Might I," Ratchet deadpanned.
"The mission's accomplished," Wheeljack said curtly. "You didn't have to be there anymore."
"Is that so. And how exactly is that, when I still hadn't broached the issue with him?"
"Because I did."
"Say again?"
"I was at the house till just a bit ago. Just bounced back."
"Oh, Vector Sigma, Wheeljack!" Ratchet cried. "You were on-site when that was going on? All of it? I needed you back here!" He stammered, trying to explain about the multitasking he had had to do, and Stark's evaluation, but it fell on deaf audio receptors.
"Like I was saying, the deed's done," Wheeljack told him, unimpressed. "Botched job or not, it seemed to suffice for our purposes."
"That's how you're preferring to think of it? That it 'sufficed'?"
"You knew what this mission was about, Ratchet."
What it had been and what it turned into were two very different things, Ratchet felt. And the worst part was knowing that Wheeljack had identified Ratchet's curiosity from the word go, and happily exploited it to propel him into this, which wasn't really about his own feelings, and wasn't about Sunstreaker either. And Wheeljack had the audacity to look at him like he was some sort of open-access receptor model now? What had he been doing during all his time spent 'incapacitated'?
Ratchet stripped the last of the cables off his casing and paced towards the door. Wheeljack's workshop was the last place he wanted to be right then. "I'm going to go fix my transistor before my shift's up," he muttered.
"I still expect a full report," Wheeljack said to his retreating back.
The medic stopped. He turned. He pulled open part of his chest panelling and disengaged the peripheral disk that had the holomatter's raw logs saved.
He tossed it onto the nearest work tray, in amongst the rest of Wheeljack's junk. Whatever. Wheeljack was obsessive enough to go and find it.
"Have fun," Ratchet said, and left.
===
Two days later, Ark-19 received a transmission from a human origin frequency. It was not coded with the Avengers' standard encrypted signature, but rather with Stark's own ident. The contents of the message were spare: satellite co-ordinates and an aerial map of the location, and a recommended time of arrival. Stark's notes described the pass-off as a summary declassification and discharge, meaning simply that the Machination, by their own hand or by someone forcing it, had deemed Sunstreaker no longer integral to their research. The human delivery convoy would have one centicycle to drop off their payload and disperse, after which the Autobots were to go in, quietly, and pick Sunstreaker up, ostensibly in one piece."It's a set-up," Wheeljack said when Prowl finished reading the transmission.
"No surprises there," said Prowl, closing the file. He set some access restrictions on it. "We guessed he'd show this side eventually. A human at spark after all. But why protect the Machination?"
"That's something I'm still working on. I got interrupted before I could scan enough of his files. Chances are I can't get back in quite so easily now, but I've got a few options."
"How did you come by this little sleight of hand of his? I hope you weren't trying to broker your own deal."
"Classified, Major, sorry." Wheeljack's designation often allowed him to restrict his research even from officers of higher rank. That wasn't the case here, of course, but Prowl didn't have to know that. Hearing what Ratchet had done to 'broker a deal' was going to cast neither him nor Wheeljack in a flattering light. "The salient thing at the moment is how best to rattle his cage. I say we go to the drop zone as recommended, with twice the claws he thinks we should have."
"A cute suggestion, but infeasible," Prowl told him. "First, in all likelihood he's coordinated with the Machination to launch an ambush. If he does have access to the real Sunstreaker, he'll be at the site, or we'll have a very good clone to contend with. We've seen the Headmasters draw upon Sunstreaker's ability specs so closely you could almost mistake one for the real thing, and we don't know how many of those they've produced."
"Then I need to get in under his skin again," Wheeljack said decidedly. "There's another way to undermine this, but we need him sufficiently distracted."
"I take it he's the type to oversee this operation personally?"
"If it was me, I would."
"I'll assemble a team. But you need to tell me what this theory of yours is."
Wheeljack made sure they were looking optic to optic. "All right," he said. "But this doesn't reach Ratchet."
Prowl wasn't too accustomed to receiving orders from a subordinate, science division or not. He didn't take it too well. "Why?" he demanded.
"Classified, Major."
"Dross, classified. If this is a mission priority, I should know why a mech of equal rank to you shouldn't have the same information."
Wheeljack relented. Realistically, Prowl should know at least a modicum of what was going on, now that the game had changed so drastically.
"...This doesn't leave this room, Prowl."
-Tell me,- Prowl said over the limited two-way.
-Ratchet is a sleeper agent,- Wheeljack told him. -He wasn't originally, and he doesn't know that's what he is now. And it needs to stay that way, do you get my meaning?-
Prowl's end fell silent for a moment. -...You mean... The rumour...-
-It's more complicated than even that,- Wheeljack confessed, without elaborating. -All we hafta be clear on is that it's an option that needs to be kept open. I wouldn't ask unless it was critical.-
The Major, damn him, was too sharp for his own good. "There's another level to this," he said, speaking normally, "that you won't tell me about. And I'm not going to try and get it out of you. Nevertheless, you can't expect me to overlook the fact that you and Ratchet have been barely civil to each other in the past two cycles."
"That's a dispute between him and me," Wheeljack said flatly. "It's got no bearing on this operation."
"That remains to be seen. But I want you both acting like full-frames, if only for Sunstreaker's sake. This mess with Stark just got a great deal messier."
"Prowl, if I'm right --and I hope I'm not-- then you have no idea how messy this is about to get. I gotta warn you: keep hold on your objectivity."
It was possibly the most absurd thing anyone had ever told a mech like Prowl, who was so unflappable and so unerringly direct that he made Prime look emotional and wilful by comparison. But there was more than one rumour lurking amongst the crew of Ark-19. And the last thing anyone wanted was Major Prowl out to spill some human blood.
"...Duly noted, Lieutenant."
===
"I don't understand. I need to be there," Ratchet insisted, as the away team continued to gear up. "If Sunstreaker is damaged or unfit to travel--""Then you'll be contacted instantly," answered Prowl, securing the second of his shoulder mount weapons. "We've got Ark-32 on stand-by and ready to bounce you to us at a moment's notice. Right now I need you here with an optic on the monitors. We have reports of some Decepticon rumblings in Oregon and you need to be on hand to tell us to divert mechpower if need be."
"Anyone could do that, damn it! You need a medic on the ground in Florida, or else--"
"Your recommendations are appreciated, Lieutenant, but largely beside the point," Prowl told him firmly. Beside him, he noticed Wheeljack charging his forearm rifle and studiously avoiding Ratchet's gaze. "You're not barging your way into this one no matter what your angle is. Just stay put and watch the screens."
-He's not buying this,- Prowl added to Wheeljack over the two-way.
-That's the point,- said Wheeljack.
Prowl was getting substantial mixed signals from this situation, and they didn't all have to do with communication frequencies. He strongly suspected much of this bore out of real standard-grade antagonism rather than Wheeljack's abstractly-stated mission priorities, the latter of which being a horrifically uncharacteristic stunt for the scientist to pull. There seemed very little that could be gained from deliberately cutting Ratchet off like this, unless it was to be vindictive. But without sending word higher up to get support for an inquiry, Prowl had little recourse in finding out what was really going on.
If he had to guess, he'd say that Wheeljack and Ratchet's exclusivity contract was on its way to being dissolved. Which meant he'd have to replace one of them soon, to prevent the Ark from, who knows, being blown up or something. Contractual disputes were never pretty.
Primus, he should have seen this one coming. The two weren't exactly a model of compatibility. It was anyone's guess how it even started, but once it had, he really should have stepped in first thing and seen to it that, if it did plan to grow, it could develop long-distance. Hell, even many Earthbound militaries prevented linked entities from serving on the same crews, didn't they? Just because it was rare amongst Cybertronians didn't mean there shouldn't be a regulation. It was a startlingly effective deterrent on a case-by-case basis: why, if Sideswipe had been permitted to serve on the same ship as his brother...
...Then, admittedly, it probably wouldn't take them this long to get Sunstreaker back.
Ratchet was giving Prowl a stare that could probably incinerate a lesser mech's resolve, but Prowl had dealt with the medic's insubordination before. "With respect--" he began.
"That'll be all, Ratchet. Argue with me again and I'll suspend your topside privileges altogether."
The medic seethed, but said no more. His optics darted to Wheeljack, who, of course, was straight-faced as always.
Of all the ways Prowl could have imagined Tony Stark creating discord amongst his crew, this was not one of them. Theft of technology, learning things about Cybertronians that he wasn't supposed to know, covertly undermining them to support the Decepticons-- all of these seemed like reasonable and fair things for one or all of the Avengers to try to pull. But not this. This seemed rather... petty. And human. And damned if Prowl's own mechs weren't playing right into it.
He'd deal with this soon. For now, they had a trap to walk into. "What's our time, Ironhide?" Prowl said, turning to the rest of the team.
"'Bout twenty millicycles 'head a' schedule," Ironhide answered, after checking local settings.
"To be early is to be on time," Prowl said briskly. "Let's bounce."
===
Clones. Well, they could have expected that.Arriving early seemed to jilt the master of operations. A decoy had been laid well in advance but the phony processor reading was a paltry offering at best, and Stark, wherever he happened to be at the moment, seemed to know it. No sooner had Prowl's team done a sweep scan for cameras (none) and landmines (plenty) than some new playmates had turned up, in the form of the Sunstreaker clones the Autobots had all come to know and love. There were about twelve, more than twice what the Ark away team could offer, and they were very fast.
"What if one of them is real?" despaired Bumblebee, when the last of the things popped out of the ground. Bumblebee was the first to dispense with subtlety and transform, preferring a rifle to mobility at the moment.
Prowl and the rest were close behind him."Like we rehearsed, Private," Prowl said over the battle frequency. He took aim at one of the clones barrelling in his direction. "Enter Sunstreaker's resonance signature into your targeting system exceptions. We can pretty well bet these things don't have sparks."
He fired.
===
A bit before this, on the bridge, Ratchet received a hailing query from Stark on his comm line. The entire message consisted entirely of the following:"Hey baby."
Ratchet scowled at it. He opened up a communication line that could interface with a compatible telecommunication satellite and linked with the query origin number.
"Do human females actually enjoy being addressed in a diminutive way?" he asked, when the line picked up.
"Whoa, I can call you on my phone too?" Stark sounded enthused, like he'd been given yet another new toy to fiddle with. "And here I thought we were gonna be stuck text-flirting like teenagers."
Ratchet traced the call to the drop zone where Sunstreaker was supposed to be deposited. A pity their satellite tracking in that area didn't offer an up-to-the-microcycle feed; he couldn't see what was supposed to be down there right now.
"I wasn't told you'd be part of the recovery operation," he said, as mildly as he could. He wondered if Wheeljack had kept this from him deliberately.
"I see things through when I can manage." That indecipherable tone again. "You guys aren't due in for another fifteen minutes, though, right?"
"Your insiders are withdrawing right now?"
"They did a good job. I'm glad I could help get this resolved peacefully."
A strangely diplomatic way to put things. Was Stark trying to impress him again? "We're happy for the help," Ratchet said, trying to adopt the same voice. "I was wrong-- sometimes it is better to involve humans."
"So, am I going to see you again?"
Not even half a millicycle. Even by human standards, this male was impatient.
Ratchet sighed. "In your terms, Tony, I don't imagine it will have much replay value." Plus, his relationship with Wheeljack was strained enough already. Ratchet would prefer to salvage what he could.
"What, are you kidding?" said Stark. "There are at least eighty-seven things left for us to try. And you can't tell me Wheeljack hasn't upgraded it since I last saw you."
Well, of course he had updated it. Ratchet failed to imagine a world where Wheeljack wouldn't see the least bit of criticism as a challenge to his professional integrity. And for it to come from a human, even one as savvy as Stark-- actually, especially Stark-- turned it into a matter of honour. The first thing Wheeljack had said to Ratchet in almost four cycles was when he handed him a disk containing the bug fixes and told him how to install it. Not that Ratchet had. That would imply intention. He could do without any more of that.
Except Ratchet could always count on that niggling, malfunctioning part of his central processor to wonder which 87 things, exactly, Stark was talking about.
"...Well..." Ratchet began, and then silenced himself. No, damn it. This had gone on long enough. He had to consider his position here. There was nothing further to gain; this had just become another form of recreation, and did they really have time to bother with it? "Look, Tony," he said instead. "I'm very flattered, but you have to understand we're just not--" There was a sharp rattle from Stark's end of the line. "--Was that gunfire?"
"What? Oh, yes. That was just their signal. Uh, to say that they were leaving."
Ratchet manually refreshed the satellite feed. There was Prowl's team, and something yellow that lacked an ident. He couldn't find Stark at all, though his signal was still coming from the area.
"I'm seeing activity."
"...You're watching this?"
There was another volley of gunfire, and something that sounded like a mine going off. Ratchet caught the sound of a spray of dirt raining down very close to Stark's position, and Stark cursing hastily.
"Look, I better call you back. We're having a bit of a misunderstanding down here."
Right, that was it. The situation was officially hot. "I'm going in. See you in a refresh," Ratchet said, rising.
"Ah, er, better not!" Stark cried. There was a rush of air, suggesting he was in flight. "Hang tight, we're just wrapping things up. How about Friday?"
"What?"
"And bring the rest of you this time."
On that flustering final note, Stark's transmission vanished-- and so did the satellite feed. Ratchet dropped his end of the connection and slapped a hand onto the recall button. The satellite failed to reestablish. He got on the party comm line.
"Away team, this is Ark-19. What's your status? Over."
The tone with which Prowl responded was one of annoyance, and seemed to be backgrounded with more gunfire. "Ratchet, get off the line, situation is normal."
"Normal, hell! I just lost visual, and you're under fire!"
"That's why we brought guns, Lieutenant," Prowl quipped. "Now keep the line clear until we need you. Prowl out."
Ratchet slammed his fist on the edge of the console. Just what the slag was going on down there? What about Stark? What about Sunstreaker? Why was he being shut out of this?!
He reestablished connection with Stark's cellular signature. Largely in excess of Ratchet's expectations, Stark actually picked up.
"Yes, no, and not on the second date," Stark said when the line connected.
Ratchet stared blankly at the darkened monitor. The firefight on Stark's side continued to punctuate the silence. "What are the questions?" Ratchet asked finally, at a loss for what else to say.
"'Should you dress formal', 'should you wear panties' and 'what are my feelings on handcuffs?'" Stark supplied instantly.
Ratchet sat speechless for a long time. Then he severed the connection.
===
In the end, there was no Sunstreaker, and Wheeljack was injured."Ow, ow, ow, ow."
"Hold still, please."
Ratchet had the distinct impression he had done this before, on a significantly smaller patient.
A mine had riddled Wheeljack's entire body with shrapnel. He couldn't go into CR until Ratchet could isolate and remove all of them, which was turning into an ordeal. One he wasn't really prepared to stand, in light of recent events.
"I'm interested to know just what happened out there," Ratchet said quietly, gently drawing out another hunk of human-made metal from the remains of Wheeljack's shoulder linkage. He put it aside in a tray with the others, habit compelling him to honour the tinkerer's long-standing request to salvage anything that tried to kill him.
"Classified," Wheeljack wheezed. "Also, something of an embarrassment."
"Was it a set-up? Did Stark lead you into a trap?"
"No... nothing like that..."
"The Machination decided not to play along," Ratchet deduced, resolving himself to this line of thinking. He extracted another shard of metal into the side tray.
Wheeljack said nothing either for or against to this theory, still being rather distracted by pain. This was, unfortunately, about as hard for a 'bot to shut off himself as it was for a human.
Finally, Ratchet couldn't take it anymore. He put down his tools and went to grab a length of cable.
What Stark was probably never going to get was that for Cybertronians, the same action, in different circumstances, meant a very different thing. It came down to the way in which their two species had set up means of contact. There was no way to mistake most forms of human coupling for anything but what they were, however for Transformers, unless they were being particularly enthusiastic, looked no different coupling than in the midst of other, more mundane interface. As the ship doctor, Ratchet was expected to talk to any given bot's components, without hesitation and without getting shy, and to be as natural with it with a partner as with a complete stranger.
In that case, Ratchet was a slag doctor, because the sensation that washed over him when he jacked in was nothing a surgeon should feel with a patient. He wondered if the melancholy made up for it.
Ratchet only kept connected long enough to isolate Wheeljack's pain receptors and deactivate them, making sure to set a timer to switch them back on after Wheeljack would be due out of the CR chamber. Then Ratchet cleared any flags he had set up, withdrew the signal, and disengaged. He moved to place the cable back in its drawer, but Wheeljack caught his arm by the wrist.
The medic looked down at him in surprise, but didn't expect to meet so strong a gaze. For an instant, brief as it was, it was like none of their recent trouble existed. He saw the same pathetic, maladjusted, probably patently insane mech he had initially found himself drawn to. But then things returned to the present, with all the same damn conflicts as before.
It could hardly escape Ratchet that he had been shut out of this operation deliberately, and he could make a very good guess who had seen to that. He didn't know on what authority Wheeljack could just make his opinions known to Prowl and the Major would just accept them without an inquiry or even so much as a one-on-one in a dark corner somewhere-- surely Ratchet was due that much, even if he was far from Prowl's favourite member of the crew. But here Wheeljack was speaking of 'classified' for something that wasn't even a mission. Maybe he had gone so far as to 'classify' his own antagonism, while he was at it.
They didn't hate each other, damn it, they couldn't. They had way too much history for this kind of slag. They couldn't ruin it because of one precocious sparkling who dreamed himself a full-frame.
And yet, Ratchet could not entirely help the other side of what he felt, either.
This was killing him. Ratchet had to hope, however vainly. "We're going to be okay, right?" he asked quietly.
If it ran its course-- if he saw it through and then settled it--
"Sure," Wheeljack said, voice sounding as though it came from a long way off.
Ratchet nodded. He didn't mention Friday.
===
Stark looked up from his plate to find Ratchet still staring at his face."Is there a problem?" he asked innocently.
He supposed it had been a little bit self-indulgent, bringing the holomatter to a restaurant. It'd been a long time since he felt the impulse to show a girl off like this, but, after all, there was no shinier piece of technology on the planet than Ratchet. And the upgrades Wheeljack had installed were obviously meant for a bit of display. The fact that she didn't eat or drink anything was not altogether out of place: they were in Hollywood, after all.
Ratchet's mouth twitched. "Your face," she began.
Pepper was a whiz with make-up, but there was only so much you could do with a bunch of scratches and a black eye. Dodging a bunch of furious giant alien robots in only his normal-sized suit had worked out about as well this time as it had every time in the past. Who would have thought?
"Just the usual hero work," Stark said casually. He ate another bite of seasoned artichoke.
She was still giving him a hard look. Crud. Maybe the satellite blocker really had been too much, just to preserve the good image she knew all too well he didn't have. And he bet she'd heard everything from her teammates anyway. It was only slightly more fortunate than if she had been there herself, because while he had devised a plan for that occasion, the 'bot with the door-wings had smashed everything to pieces in under a minute. Whatever her comrades told her, it couldn't be any more humiliating than what had really happened.
He bet he knew who it was, too, who had needed to make such a point of upstaging him. Well, if Wheeljack wanted to turn this into balls-out male rivalry, so be it. References to particular anatomy notwithstanding.
"Your hair looks nice," he added, when Ratchet's questioning look failed to vanish.
Ratchet's holomatter shook her head slightly. "It's just a preset."
"It's a good dress too."
"As I understand it, the design was only displayed in Italy eight days ago. Wheeljack copied it after seeing it on television."
"In our world, that's called infringement. On the other hand, it does make you the envy of the room."
Ratchet tsked, completely failing to notice the attention she had been drawing throughout the dinner. Stark had noticed some B-list actor a few tables over do nothing but stare at her since she'd sat down. He loved how unsubtle this town was sometimes.
The maitre d' returned to their table to ingratiate himself further. Stark observed this was getting progressively harder for restaurant staff to do these days, considering that he didn't have a wine glass for them to fill.
"How is everything, it is good?" The man's affected French accent was a little less cloying than most. "Is there anything I can bring you, Mister Stark?"
"No, thank you," he answered distractedly.
And then, of course, the maitre d' looked over at Ratchet, and pretended to be smoothly surprised by what had been terrifying the kitchen staff for the past thirty minutes. "Madame, you are not pleased with your meal?"
To Stark's surprise, Ratchet offered up a flawless, cultivated, polite smile. "No, it's fine, thank you," she said sweetly.
"Would madame care to have the staff prepare something you might take home?"
"That won't be necessary. Thank you."
"A different wine? We have an excellent Clairmonte, a fine vintage--"
"No, that's all right. But thank you."
Stark watched the maitre d' bow and excuse himself, then scrape back to the kitchen. Ratchet would probably never know how many people she had just gotten fired, but she had done it in an admirably proper way.
"So you do have some social graces," Stark observed, taking a sip of his water.
"We did have high society once, you know. Before the war."
"Were you a member of that caste?"
"No, I was... I don't know what a good equivalent would be. Wealth is a funny thing without a concept of inheritance. Our station mostly depended on who our manufacturer was and what our skill sets were. I was just out of medical training when the war broke out. I had a private practise in the student quarter by my old university. Practically a chop shop. I guess that makes me lower-class."
"You had schools?" Stark asked, marvelling.
"It's the same concept as here, isn't it? Raw data means nothing. Guided instruction helps you interpret information. Of course," she added, smiling faintly, "we induct information faster than humans. The biggest deal at university was how to expand your memory storage on the cheap."
"At my school, it was how to steal someone else's research." He thought for a moment. "And how to get a police car onto the roof of the library," he appended.
"Wheeljack has more stories like that than I do. The biggest prank I ever pulled was animating a cadaver and scaring the living headlights out of my professor."
This was surreal. Not the part where he was comparing school days with an alien older than the human race, but the part where they weren't trying to kill each other. Even when he had invited her, Stark half expected to only get halfway through his salad before Ratchet lunged across their table and tore out his lungs or something. He had, after all, only survived the other day because he'd detonated a claymore mine half a foot from Wheeljack's face. And he was only here right now because both the Autobots and Avengers were swearing up and down that the incident had been a figment of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s imagination.
Given how things had ended up, retaliation naturally seemed in order. Stark was braced for it, prepared to ruin half a city block defending hapless citizens from yet another villainess scorned, before Ratchet and he dissolved into angry, violent sex and a pessimistic morning-after. But it didn't seem like it was going to happen. If anything, Ratchet was so peaceful she seemed bored.
Stark wondered vaguely if she could just possibly not know what had happened in Florida. Social acumen was a nice thing to have, but all this friendly, disengaged banter was more than a little irrelevant. Stark found he was losing his taste for his food.
As if on cue, Ratchet changed the subject to the most unfortunate topic possible. "I'm sorry for how things turned out the other day," she said. "But what happens now?"
"Now?" Stark repeated. He sought for something acceptable to say. "It... depends on several things."
"Is he okay?"
"Of course he is," Stark assured her. "I just need more time."
Actually, he had no idea. He had hoped he didn't need to really look into that. Now, obviously, he did.
Well, in the morning. For now it was a Friday night, and he was intent to make it fun, no matter what their circumstances.
Stark dabbed at his mouth with his napkin and set it next to his plate. "How do you feel about role-play?" he asked abruptly.
Ratchet appeared puzzled. "Huh?"
"On three, I start pretending to choke," he told her. "Then you start screaming for help, and I pretend to pass out. The waiter calls 911, and then you show up at the door with your lights on."
He had to give her credit: like Pepper, she was a tough girl to decentre. Instead of locking up and stuttering some vague objection, she merely smiled patronisingly.
"And who's rolling in the stretcher if I'm here with you?" she asked coolly.
"Oh." That hadn't occurred to him. "Good point."
"Just looking out for you," Ratchet said helpfully.
How disappointing. Though, Stark supposed the effect of an ambulance for a girlfriend would be largely lost on this crowd anyway, and what would a scene really accomplish if no-one else was in on the joke? But there had to be some way to show off, and still get his free ambulance ride at the end of it.
Stark's eyes slid over to the actor at the other table, still watching Ratchet as if he recognised her from somewhere. Maybe he did. Who knew where Ratchet had scanned this body?
Didn't matter. That guy would do nicely. It was a simple solution, but simplicity offered room for nuance.
"Appreciated," Stark told the holomatter softly. He leaned across their table and lightly touched her cheek. She proved willing for a kiss.
Stark didn't make an extended affair of it, but it seemed the second their lips met, he heard a camera shutter go off somewhere. Cool: he was going to be in tabloids again. It had only been a week.
Ha-ha, Stark used the kiss to tell the actor a few tables over. I'm getting more tail and more publicity than you tonight. How's that feel?
===
Ratchet asked the head waiter for some ice in a napkin before they left. He had the holomatter press it to Stark's cheek as he drove them back up the highway toward Malibu."I don't think we should have dinner in Hollywood anymore," Stark muttered. "Buncha savages in this town."
The whole thing had been rather inexplicable. The social context that Stark and he had set up in the restaurant had clearly delineated some reasonable-to-assume relationship dynamics, and while kissing in public had, admittedly, been uncomfortable, research indicated that they had stayed within acceptable boundaries. And he'd never heard of another male just wantonly coming up and punching someone for such an act, minus extenuating circumstances.
Then the other human had started shouting, specifically at Ratchet's avatar. There was obviously some grievous misunderstanding, but Ratchet couldn't guess what it might be. The waitstaff had removed the man in short order, and then Stark, picking himself up off the floor, had suggested they leave. So they had.
And now Ratchet was driving the both of them up the coast, still as AWOL as he had been before. He still wasn't completely sure why he was doing it. He didn't know why he had installed Wheeljack's upgrades, didn't know why he had fabricated orders to bounce here, didn't know why no-one had come to collect him. Sure, he had shut his comm systems off, but he wasn't exactly invisible. He was fully prepared to be hauled off at gunpoint at any moment, but nothing was coming.
"If we keep icing it, the swelling will be minimal," Ratchet offered helpfully, letting Stark hold the bundled-up cloth. He guided the avatar off his stretcher and sought out the compartment in his inward panelling that contained his human repair kit. A couple light painkillers seemed in order right then. A happy Stark would at least take Ratchet's mind off things more efficiently.
Stark accepted the pills Ratchet's holomatter offered. He swallowed them dry and massaged his jaw. "Pepper's going to love doing damage control on this," he remarked wryly.
"Pepper is your doctor as well?"
He lowered his hand. "Now and then. Generally she fixes the other messes. Actually--" Stark looked at his watch. "--If she was asleep before, she won't be now. The first photos probably just hit Defamer."
"Her job function is to take care of these things, isn't it?"
"As far as I know. She wrote her own contract."
Ratchet turned his avatar around to put the repair kit away. Satellite positioning told him they were about seven millicycles from Stark's compound now. "Then she doesn't have much to complain about," he decided. "If it were me--"
His swerved suddenly on the road, tires squealing. Stark had snuck up behind his avatar and wrapped his arms around her, causing her and Ratchet to jump at the same time. Ratchet tried to spin the avatar around, but she only managed a futile squirm.
"What are you--"
"Checking."
Because of his injuries, his skin felt hotter than usual against the holomatter's neck. Even with the adjusted tactile settings, the readings foisted more data on Ratchet's processors than he was prepared to handle just then.
"What could you possibly have to ch--"
One of Stark's hands, previously wrapped around her arm, slid down to the avatar's waist and rested on her hip, feeling along the skin beneath her dress. The avatar shifted; Ratchet murmured, confused, struggling to keep a handle on his own steering.
"Aw, you remembered!" Stark said happily. He squeezed her left buttock so firmly it was nearly pain-- then gave it a small spank. The avatar's instinct protocols made her tense and squeak; the rest of Ratchet swung sharp to the right. Stark and the avatar nearly lost their footing. "Hahh-- Easy there," he teased.
"Why are you doing this now?" Ratchet hissed, coolant pressure rising. Whatever else could be said about the experience last time, he at least hadn't had to keep control over two bodies at once. "At least wait until we're to your place--"
"Compound's in lockdown since your boyfriend let himself in last week," Stark explained, nibbling the holomatter's ear. "Nothing in or out that J.A.R.V.I.S. can't get DNA or a purchase history off of."
Even with the avatar's eyes closed and most of her body leaning onto Stark for support, Ratchet didn't have the resources free to catch much after the word 'boyfriend'. "He's not--" he began.
Somewhere in there, Stark's hand had bunched up the material of the avatar's skirt and slipped beneath. He stroked along her inner thigh, and then, almost too suddenly to register, his fingers were brushing a sensitive area between her buttocks.
Sensory panic hit at once. The holomatter might have only gasped, but Ratchet's front axle slipped once again and he swerved dangerously. He hit his brakes hard.
The inertia knocked Stark clear off his feet and the avatar after him, tumbled together on the floor of Ratchet's back compartment. Ratchet came to a full stop along the shoulder of the road and engaged his vehicle mode's park brake. This done, he switched into embedded mode.
Stark looked genuinely surprised as Ratchet's avatar climbed fully on top of him and set immediately to work tearing off his shirt. The human didn't exactly raise protest: he laughed, confused, and then tried to escape, and failing that tried to help, but Ratchet swatted his hand away.
"H'okay," Stark managed, as Ratchet started on his belt. "This is different. But good."
The holomatter's fingers tugged at the belt. How come Ratchet could never remember how these things came off? He gave it up and had the avatar start on the zipper of Stark's pants instead.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa--"
Too bad, Ratchet retorted silently. You didn't wait for me last time.
The avatar's fingers were, at least, nimble enough to draw out Stark's penis, already starting to swell with the early stages of arousal. Stark tried to sit up, maybe to climb away. Ratchet splayed a hand over his bare stomach and held him down.
"If you're getting up, it better be to get your ice pack," Ratchet warned.
Stark stared blankly at the holomatter. "...Sure," he volunteered.
The human, surprisingly, obeyed, and quickly lay back down, almost docilely. After Ratchet ensured that Stark was pressing the cloth of ice cubes on the right area of his cheek, he had the avatar wet her lips and lower herself down.
Research had indicated the greatest deterrents to oral contact between humans was the taste, so Wheeljack hadn't included taste sensors in this model of the avatar. She still detected heat and texture and a bit of smell, the last of these not being much fun, but nothing humans smelled like was very pleasant. Even before taking the organ into her mouth, Ratchet decided to engage the pre-programmed animation sets to assist him, at least until he got the hang of the rhythm.
The avatar's lips slid up and down the length of the shaft, her tongue caressing the hardening flesh as she sucked gently. Ratchet hazarded he was doing this right, because Stark, although auditory and bodily reactions registered in the positive range, was offering little actual advice. Ratchet made a guess and had the avatar take Stark in deeper and intensify suction by the slightest percent. Stark's reaction was instantaneous, and very emphatic.
"--Nhhnn! You-- don't have a gag reflex, do you?" he said, breathing laboured. Ratchet decided that Stark was strangely entertaining in this state. The sudden bursts of jargon came out like spasms, little shudders jolting his brain into activity.
"I shut it off," Ratchet said, separating the voice emitter from remote mode boundaries.
Stark jolted again, understandable given he had just heard the holomatter speak clearly despite her mouth being preoccupied. He shifted, cleared his throat, and said, "Okay, that's a minus ten points--"
"You're not rating me this time," Ratchet told him unequivocally. "I'm not a beta for you to test. I'm not your 'honey'. And you're going to keep your hands to yourself until I give you permission."
The human's lower body was struggling to keep still. Stark seemed to be caught between pleasure and an urge to flee at all possible speed, but the former was winning out. "H-hey, that's fine by me--"
"Say it. What are you going to do?"
"--Keep my--"
"Keep your slagging primate hands to yourself."
"Keep my... 'Slagging'? Really? That's clever..."
He didn't seem to be reaching his peak as quickly as expected. Apparently, he had a better handle on how to pace himself than Ratchet did. The medic had his avatar withdraw, licking the ridge of the underside of the shaft and paying particular attention to the head. He introduced a hand as well, rubbing along the penis's length in firm, squeezing strokes. Stark seemed to like that quite a bit, even lurching half off Ratchet's floor plating and banging his arm unfortunately against the legs of the stretcher.
Stark breathed heavily and cringed, shuddering. "Shit-- come on-- just let me--"
Ratchet noticed the human's fingers edging towards his pants, and then saw for the first time that the metal zipper of Stark's pants was scraping a very sensitive area. It hadn't broken the skin, but it couldn't be comfortable.
Nothing like a reminder how ultimately ill-suited metal and organics were for each other. Ratchet's sensibilities won out over other concerns and he had the avatar climb back up, accepting Stark's help this time to unbuckle the belt and undo the rest of the pants' fastenings.
Ratchet's holomatter had only managed to tug Stark's pants down as far as mid-thigh before Stark began cursing again, this time seeming to notice something past the avatar's shoulder. Ratchet turned her head, to see that the rectangles of light stretched across the ceiling shifted, brightening and swaying cannily as though projected from a sentient source.
He switched view to the rear camera. A human police vehicle had stopped about ten metres from where Ratchet had hastily parked himself. The headlights were bearing down on him, and the car's driver had stepped out with a flashlight, currently scanning around the windows to see within. The officer stepped around along Ratchet's side toward the driving compartment, inquiring loudly for a driver he was very shortly not going to find.
"...Slag."
Ratchet wasted no time. He had the avatar pull herself up onto her feet and dropped her reasonable-give protocols, affording her the strength Wheeljack's holomatter designs were originally programmed with. She stooped down and stuck her arms beneath Stark's back and knees, unceremoniously hauling him up and dumping him on the low stretcher. Stark only had time to offer up the smallest confused yelp before Ratchet engaged a noise dampening field and cast an optical cloak over his body.
"Stay," Ratchet ordered, opening his rear door.
He switched to his male default avatar the instant before a foot hit the gravel. Side sensors indicated the police officer had whipped around, flashlight shaking in the direction of the sound. Ratchet's male paramedic holomatter stepped out into view, shielding his eyes with a hand for the look of it.
"Can I help you, officer?" he said amiably.
The policeman lowered the flashlight. He had a stern look to him, like another former cop Ratchet knew. "There a problem with your vehicle, sir?"
"No, sir, just parked momentarily."
"The shoulder in this part is for emergencies only. What's the emergency?"
"Tough time reading the map," Ratchet said, having the avatar smile warmly. He used this model so infrequently lately, he hadn't realised how rigid it was compared to the female design. "Not a lot of light to see by this time of night, just figured I'd play it safe."
"You're not on an emergency call, I hope? They could be dead by the time you got your map open."
"No, sir, no call. Actually, we're decommissioning this baby from UCLA Medical Centre and reassigning her to a hospital in Kern County." He had the avatar pat the siding of his vehicle form. "She's getting a wash at dawn so she can look presentable for the Mayor at 7, which means driving her up early. I live in the AV myself, so I said I'd take her up personally tonight, save someone else a needless commute in the morning."
The police officer studied the avatar carefully. "Then you should be taking the 405 up to the 5, shouldn't you?"
The 405? Scrap. Ratchet frantically uplinked with the nearest wireless signal --the nearest that wasn't J.A.R.V.I.S., anyway-- and referred to some California roadmaps. He was much more accustomed to faking his way across the Midwest.
"Oh, I'm not on the 405? Hah, no wonder none of this looks familiar." The sheepish laugh he had the avatar bark out was fairly genuine. "I knew I must have taken the wrong exit. Serves me right for not just backtracking and working it out from there."
What a wirebare excuse. Ratchet was ashamed of himself. Anyone could look at the LA County freeway system and see how impossible it was to just randomly mistake the Pacific Coast Highway for the 405. First of all, there was an ocean there.
The human's gaze didn't so much as twitch. There was something enervating about that stare that even Prowl couldn't match.
However, the policeman merely replied: "Well, what I'd suggest doing is getting back onto Malibu Canyon Road and taking it up to the 101. You remember passing that on the way over?"
Relief washed over Ratchet's circuitry. "Yes! Yeah, I remember that now. Thank you, I'll do that."
The policeman nodded briskly. He walked past Ratchet's avatar back toward his vehicle. "Sorry to hear you got off-track, there, sir. You have a good night and drive safe."
"Thank you, officer."
As a corroborating detail, Ratchet let the policeman get a clear look at the ambulance's apparently empty back compartment as he stepped back into the squad car. Knowing, however, that the officer wouldn't leave until Ratchet was rolling away, Ratchet had the avatar shut the back door, beamed a final low-poly-res smile, and guided him to the driver's seat.
Once safely back on the road, going in the exact opposite direction of Stark Compound but, at least, out of sight of local law enforcement, Ratchet reprojected the avatar from the driving compartment to the back.
The sudden appearance made Stark jump. He had climbed off the stretcher and tugged his pants and the remains of his shirt back on, seeming to have been preoccupied trying to figure out the material of the optical cloak at the moment Ratchet's avatar materialised. Ratchet quickly dismissed the cloak projection.
Stark clearly wanted to ask about the tech, but it seemed Ratchet's appearance was of greater interest. The medic felt self-conscious all over again. He also noticed, with a hint of resentment, that the human's erection was gone; so much for all his hard work.
"Hold on," Ratchet said quickly. "I'll switch back."
"Uh, yeah, sure. Uh, actually--"
Ratchet couldn't imagine he could feel so awkward in his default body, but the uncertain way in which Stark regarded him was definitely having that effect.
"--no hurry, if you know what I mean."
Ratchet paused in the midst of cancelling the projection and gave Stark a curious look in remote mode.
Then the medic scoffed. All the research they had done on American male heterosexuality had been quite clear on this point. "Come on. You don't have any interest in this," he said, having the male avatar gesture to itself.
"No, just an interest in you, crazy as that sounds."
"It's not equipped," Ratchet said flatly. "This is just the old version. Straight mesh, no reception function." This, at least, seemed to dissuade Stark... but not entirely. What was wrong with this human? "And you're not interested in that," Ratchet reiterated. He hesitated. "Are you?"
It probably spoke to the human race's credit that in the space of a single look, Stark managed to convey that, no, not usually, until a few millicycles ago when Ratchet had pushed him down and meant business.
A hot flush of current coursed through Ratchet's body. He felt like some of his panelling seams might jut open. He wanted his avatar to grab Stark right there and see the extent to which the human really meant that. But he really, honestly couldn't do anything worthwhile with this body. It wasn't even meant for a realistic handshake, let alone anything having to do with fluids. Well, unless a hand was going to suffice.
Ratchet suggested this to Stark, who, far from recoiling from the idea, appeared to give it due consideration.
"Will you have to stop again?" Stark asked eventually.
Ratchet's holomatter broke into a grin. It might have had a low polycount, but it communicated well enough. "No," Ratchet said confidently, "I can do this while I'm driving."
=== Back to Fanfiction > Transformers
===