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The lab door locks with a click behind him, and the easy familiarity of his nighttime routine is a relief after the chaos of the past two days. Although the physical damage from Wheeljack’s visit has been mostly repaired, the damage done to Shockwave’s mental state has not been so easy to fix. Shockwave flexes his left hand, troubled by the sharp discomfort he feels in remembering losing control of it. Determinedly ignoring the warnings from his emotional processor at the motion, he disconnects his left hand and sends it ahead of him to run the security protocols on his room. That part of his routine is new: Shockwave reasons he has far more to fear from one of the other Decepticon lieutenants than any Autobot infiltrator.
Ever since Starscream was forcefully expelled from second-in-command, competition between Megatron’s lieutenants has risen to an explosive peak. Soundwave had already attempted to sabotage his lab, and Shockwave had no misconceptions that Soundwave would consider anything a step too far when it came to feud. Even though the two of them are no longer directly at odds, there has always been something there. Some tension, some push and pull that he can’t quite put a finger on. Shockwave sighs. He’ll figure it out, he’s sure, once he can devote a single processing core to anything beyond simply keeping the Decepticon cause alive.
When he reaches his room, his hand pings his notifications center with the all clear before settling down into its self-contained charge hub. Shockwave absently turns the lights off before sinking heavily down onto his own recharge slab. Even while recharging, his left hand drone is still attempting to triangulate Starscream’s locations based on the trace elements generated by his groundbridges. The experiment is probably not necessary, considering Shockwave’s new plan to use the drone controller that Wheeljack let slip into his hands. Forced into his hands. Forced onto his hand.
Shockwave forcibly expels exhaust and lays down. He has to stop fixating on the problem and the loss of his control. Logic dictates that he fixate on finding a solution. Determinedly severing his awareness of his left hand’s quiet data processing, Shockwave offlines his optic. He’ll fixate on solutions in the morning.
He activates the recharge bed, and calms at the familiar sound of it powering up and the first tingles of current relaxing his tired servos. After a few seconds, though, he hears the distinct whirr of three other devices booting up, and his body feels, suddenly and horribly, an order of magnitude heavier. Startled, he tries to sit up and finds that he can’t: his heavy durasteel shoulder armor and boots have been magnetized to the recharge bed.
His shoulder and knee joints are austenitic stainless steel to minimize corrosion of those joints, so the rest of his body is free to twist and arch, but he is otherwise bound to the recharge slab. His short term memory card queries inform him, with an unhelpful chime, that Bludgeon and the magnetic field generator that had been used to subdue him had been recovered earlier that day. Somehow, knowing the source of his entrapment doesn’t make it any easier to handle. After attempting to brute force his way out of the magnetic field but unable to get any leverage, Shockwave lays back flat, glaring at the ceiling.
“Well?” he says, attempting to reboot his mental connection to his left hand, and feels a mix of fear and resigned certainty when his control signal can’t find the drone’s system. He regulates his air intake, clenches the one hand he does have, and settles in to wait. Somehow, he isn't surprised when he sees his left hand fly into his field of vision and wave.
Had Wheeljack left downloaded some sort of virus into the hand's hardware? Shockwave had wiped the software and rebooted from the previous back-up once things had settled down on the Nemesis, but—
No. This isn't Wheeljack's style. It's stylish, for one; and it's devious, for another.
"Soundwave," he concludes, and a dark chuckle echoes from a speaker hidden somewhere in the dark expanse of the ceiling.
"Got it in one, Shocks. Now for the harder one: what do I want?"
Shockwave doesn't give him the satisfaction of squirming, but he does set one of his cores towards hacking into whatever remote signal Soundwave is using to control his hand. Above him, the hand waggles a finger with palpable condescension.
"Oh, please. Megatron didn't make me Chief Communications Officer for my pretty face," Soundwave says. "You're not breaking my signal encryption. Now, no guesses? What does your precious logic tell you?"
Shockwave rolls his optic in its housing. Nothing is unbreakable; he just needs time. "The most logical reason would be to remove a potential competitor for Megatron's regard."
"Mmm. And how logical do you think I'm being?" Shockwave’s left hand drifts closer to his face, and Shockwave has to focus on not flinching as the hand draws a finger around the side of his face. He can see glimpses of it as it trails down his chest, but beyond that—he can only track its progress via the tickling, tingling signals sent by the nerve sensors on his body armor. His back arches involuntarily when it fingers the vents over his spark chamber, and he only barely manages not to slam himself back onto the recharge bed when the questing fingers finally move away. The magnetic fields pinning his shoulders and feet to the recharge bed hold strong, and Shockwave can’t help but feel the smallest frisson of fear in the midst of his determination.
“You? Logical?” he says, trying to regain his bearings. He wrestles control back from the servos fighting the magnetic pull, the nerve sensors lighting up where his hand is drifting lower, and his emotional processors—under-used and over-handled—are ringing alarm bells. “Hardly. I—”
Shockwave’s hand reaches the seam of his panel, two fingers splitting to glide up and around the locking mechanism in symmetrical half moons. His hips jerk into the touch, and his cooling fans kick up a couple notches as the sensors send him a hundred conflicting sensations. Shockwave drops his head back into the recharge slab, fury and understanding coursing through his spark. “Ah. You wish to humiliate me.”
A low, thoughtful hum reverberates through the speaker. “You know, Shockwave, this drone of yours was able to single-handedly take on Megatron. It wasn’t even being directly controlled; it was using its own native processing to follow an external order.” The hand in question presses down lightly on the seams of Shockwave’s panels, stroking the gap between the welds. “The native processing you designed in a body you built.”
Shockwave can barely think through the strain of rejecting the panel access permission requests flooding his central processing. “What are you saying? You wish to punish me for my competence?”
“And then you arrive on the bridge, cool as anything, armored in that precious logic of yours,” Soundwave says, ignoring him. The hand rubbing smooth, firm circle across his locking mechanism picks up speed, and Shockwave can feel his valve start to lubricate even as he rejects the access permission request again. “You easily disarm the drone that Megatron couldn’t fight off, and you provide us with a plan to run down Starscream once and for all. Competition? This isn’t about competition for Megatron’s favor. I’m proposing an alliance.”
Shockwave’s processor lags with the struggle to incorporate Soundwave’s words into his existing logic tree. “What?”
“You showed your hand, literally,” Soundwave says, smug. “Let me show you what I can do.”
The hand at his panel pulls away, leaving only the ghost of feather light sensations where Shockwave is desperate for pressure. Shockwave’s air intake valves open wider to provide for the added draw required by his cooling fans. “That can’t be the only thing you want from this.”
Soundwave’s dark chuckle echoes around the room, and if Shockwave offlines his optic, it almost feels as though Soundwave is right there, next time him, teasing him. “You’re right. What I really want right now, Shockwave, is to see you undone. Are you going to let me?"
His processor starts running serialized simulations of possible scenario outcomes, but each output such wildly different and conflicting answers that Shockwave can’t trust any of them.
“Tick, tock,” Soundwave sing-songs, and Shockwave feels two knuckles tap gently against the top of his panel, the muted metallic clangs vibrating up his core. “Knock, knock.”
Shockwave pops his panel open, and he’s rewarded by the immediate feeling of one thick finger nudging at the rim of his valve, drawing lines of lubricant around the opening. His processor is jarred by the familiarity of the feeling—it’s his finger, his left hand—and the unfamiliar ways in which it’s moving, disconnected from him entirely. He forgets himself for a second and strains up against the magnetic fields, wanting to see what’s happening, wanting to watch his hand slide in and out of his lubricated valve with a slow and curious rhythm. His shoulder servos creak with tension as his body arches up, red warnings flashing in the periphery of his display, before he thuds against the recharge slab in defeat. The finger playing with his valve doesn’t alter its pattern, following the movements of Shockwave’s body as necessary to maintain its idle, easy slide into and out of him.
“Just like that,” Soundwave purrs, and Shockwave’s cooling fans kick up a few notches. It should feel horrible, to be helpless on his bed, pinned down and used like he’s part of—of—some sort of simulator, a game that Soundwave is playing from a distance, detached and unaffected. “What do you think, Shockwave? Your logic, my creativity?”
Shockwave offlines his optic at the feeling of a second finger beginning to trace the rim of his valve, starting to push in, just a little, alongside the first. “You want to do this now?”
“When else? It’s not like you’ll be able to use a recording of this conversation against me,” Soundwave says, punctuating his statement by pressing the two fingers into Shockwave, hard and fast, and Shockwave can’t stop his vocal synthesizer from emitting a high-pitched whine. His hips come off the bed again, struggling to push against the fingers and take them deeper, but he can’t get the leverage. “Too much external, hm. Interference.”
When Shockwave finally settles back down against his recharge slab, alight with the feeling of two fingers curling methodically against the sensor nodes lining his valve, he has to admit that Soundwave is right. “What do you seek to gain?”
“Besides getting to watch you squirm? Well, how about finally crushing those damn Autobots? This war has gone on long enough. It’s time someone competent took charge.”
The words are an uncomfortable echo of the exact thoughts Shockwave had voiced in his lab to Wheeljack not a day before; could Soundwave have heard them, and is trying to use Shockwave’s own sentiments to incite him to treason? Or are the two of them actually that much more similar than he would have guessed? He struggles to calculate the probabilities, but the power draw from his panel and valve is starting to overwhelm is mental capacities. He’s hyperaware, suddenly, of the multifaceted vulnerability of his own tactical position: not just physically immobile, but increasingly mentally limited as well. His processors feels like it’s under siege by the thrills of sensory information and conflicting desires. He has to level the playing field.
“If this is your display of competence and creativity,” Shockwave says, focusing every scrap of his energy on the words. “I’ll admit to having expected more from an interface partner.”
Soundwave laughs. “Interfacing? Don’t worry, Shocks. This is technically self-service.”
“Then, clearly, I—ah—still have to do everything myself—”
“What are you saying?” Soundwave interrupts, demanding.
“That it’s clear you think my own left hand can fuck me better than you can.”
The only answer Shockwave gets is silence, dark and deep, and Shockwave can still hear a fuming anger coming through the speaker. Shockwave’s hacked left hand stills, two fingers fully seated and unmoving in his valve. Shoulders straining against the magnetic field, Shockwave unconsciously shifts his hips, desperate for friction. Slowly, thoughtfully, his left hand starts moving again, pressing down against the walls of his valve through the lubricant pooling around them, forcing Shockwave’s hips flat against the recharge slab.
“Shockwave,” Soundwave says, voice uncharacteristically staticky. The hand in Shockwave’s valve runs a thumb around the rim of the port, slow and steady and not nearly enough. “Shockwave, if I come to your door. Would you let me in?”
Shockwave fights an automatic answer, even as the fingers inside him curl, inexorable and unbearably gentle. He can’t help but imagine it in more detail: Soundwave at his door, broad-shouldered and focused; his speakers emitting subconscious bits of static; his lean thighs shifting to straddle Shockwave’s, careful to avoid the reach of the magnetic fields; his spike already pressurized and charged, sliding quick and easy into the valve readied by Shockwave’s own hand; he—
“Shockwave,” Soundwave repeats, deep and jagged and almost as desperate, and Shockwave revels in the realization that Soundwave hadn’t been so unaffected as he’d pretended to be.
“Yes,” Shockwave says, vocal processor almost shorting out with the strain. “Yes,” he says again, and he’s barely finished rattling off the access codes for his room when he hears the whisper of his door sliding open. His shoulder armor block his view of the door even as he twists his head, and he curses, again, the magnetic fields holding his shoulders to the recharge slab. He hears Soundwave’s tread approach, careful and methodical, and he feels a surge of anticipation twined with fear shoot through his spark.
“Well?” he says, on edge, too-aware of how vulnerable he is. How exposed.
“Some things have to be savored, Shocks,” Soundwave says, and it’s meant to be a taunt, low and sure, but Shockwave can hear the need spinning through it. The door slides in another whisper, relocking, and Shockwave can feel every pulse of his spark. Shockwave’s left hand is still seated deep in his valve, but it’s gone motionless in the presence of its new master.
Soundwave’s footsteps move closer to the recharge slab, and Shockwave can feel the recharge slab flex under a new weight as Soundwave puts one knee on the metal slab. As Soundwave swings his other leg up and over Shockwave’s hips, seating himself broad and powerful just above Shockwave’s aching panel, Shockwave cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of Soundwave’s face, his cannon, anything at all. He hears the pneumatic hiss of a panel popping, and he would burn the Nemesis and every planet in this galaxy to cinders for the chance to see Soundwave’s spike on display before him. In his valve, he feels his left hand’s thumb start to gently stroke his rim.
“Soundwave,” Shockwave grinds out, impatient and hot, the sound almost drowned out by the roar of his cooling fans. “What. Are you. Waiting for.”
He feels the weight settled across his pelvis tip forward until Soundwave’s face appears above him, his red visor bright and sinister in the dark. It pulses in time with Soundwave’s words when he says, "I’m waiting to hear you beg."
Shockwave strains his shoulders against the magnetic fields holding him down, arching his neck up to get as close to Soundwave’s brightening visor as he can. There’s a low anticipatory hum coming from Soundwave’s speakers that seems to get louder with every second Shockwave struggles against his bonds. Soundwave tilts his head, expectant.
His voice filled with static and impatience, Shockwave finally grits out a single, desperate, “Please.”
“Please what,” Soundwave says, leaning in closer.
Shockwave’s neural net whites out with a heady mix of rage and desire, his emotional processing core spinning out of control. He steels himself and has to reboot his vocal synthesizer before he can even begin to process the words he needs.
“Please fuck me,” he finally manages to say, staring down the gleaming red visor, and Soundwave does.
Shockwave’s left hand withdraws its fingers, and Shockwave barely has time to mourn their loss before he feels the tip of Soundwave’s spike nudging insistently at his entrance.
“Do you need me to provide you with written instruct—” Shockwave’s vocal synthesizer loses power as his router diverts every spare scrape of energy to the sensor nodes in his valve, sparking a cascade of pleasure signals directly through his central processor. He can feel his lower body subconsciously shifting his configuration to better seat Soundwave’s spike, partially transforming his hip joints to give Soundwave better access even as his valve dispenses more lubricant with a series of clicks. He rides the waves of sensation crashing over him, again and again, and Soundwave pounds into him.
“Much better,” Soundwave says, voice smug but tinged with static, and Shockwave can’t help but tilt his hips to take him deeper. Soundwave chuckles and shifts to hold Shockwave’s thighs wider open still, his spike slide faster and harder into Shockwave. “Primus, you’re gorgeous like this, pinned down and pretty, none of your logic to hide behind.”
Shockwave can’t find the words to answer; at this angle, he can’t see Soundwave at all. He offlines his optic to conserve whatever energy he can, but it leaves him awash in darkness and the flood of sensations he still hasn’t figured out how to process. His fans whine even as his shoulders strain against the magnetic pull, his chest lifting a scant inch off the slab before slamming back down.
“I thought you might be, you know,” Soundwave is saying, and Shockwave tries desperately to focus on the words. “All that careful propriety and elitism… I knew you had to be hiding something beneath that armor. Something beautiful.” Shockwave feels a hand trace the panels over his chest, right above his spark chamber. “Something debauched.”
Shockwave shudders at the words. He can feel his overload building in his valve casing, sending white-hot lances of increasingly powerful currents through his spark and processor. He gathers what’s left of his focus and asks, “Soundwave, are you—will you—”
“Yes,” Soundwave says, voice starting to short out. His thrusts grow more erratic, varying between slow and strong and fast and shallow. “So let me in.”
Shockwave unlocks neural access as the overload starts to crash over him, and Soundwave connects at the bottom of his next thrust. They fall headfirst into a feedback loop of pleasure, the feelings and electricity spiralling between them until Shockwave doesn’t know who originates which thought, which joy, which shuddering sensation. There is nothing; there is everything; they are awash in new colors, redefined.
Eventually, they start to come back to themselves. Shockwave checks his chronometer to find that fifteen minutes have passed, and his hip servos have already started sending warning messages from being half-transformed for so long. Soundwave’s spike is still seated in his aching valve, and they both wince as Soundwave pulls out through the trails of slick lubricant. Shockwave realigns his hips and shutters his panel, creating an item in his task queue to clean that thoroughly. He startles when he says Soundwave’s visor appear in his field of vision, feels Soundwave’s hands press against his chest.
“Now what?” Soundwave asks, and Shockwave has to bite back a laugh at the idea that Soundwave might be shy, after.
The room around them is dark; the door locked; the air filled only with the gentle hum of the recharge bed and their slowly calming cooling fans. In the morning, they have a coup to plan. But for now?
“You could stay,” Shockwave says, spreading his right arm to extend the offer in a more physical sense. “After all, it is the most expedient option for timely communication.”
Soundwave scoffs, even as he moves to slide down the recharge slab and curl into the space on Shockwave’s right side, his engines humming low and content. “And spoken conversation is the most difficult to intercept. Sure, Shocks; you’re all business.”
In contrast to his words, a gentle Camien lute sings out of Soundwave’s speakers, soft and sweet in the darkness, and Shockwave can’t help but tug him a little closer.
---
Soundwave sits up, red visor flashing with indignation. “Wait a second,” he growls. “You turned the magnetic field generators off.”
Shockwave huffs air through his exhaust vents, pulling Soundwave back down against his chest. “They’re my design,” he says, stroking the rim of Soundwave’s helm with smug propriety. “It was only logical to build them with a personal killswitch.”
The peaceful music spinning out of Soundwave’s shoulders drops to a more threatening tone. “Hmm. I’ll account for that, next time,” Soundwave says, and the undercurrent of danger in his voice still makes Shockwave’s spark pulse just a little harder.
Shockwave offlines his optic and prepares to sink back into recharge, satisfied. “You’re more than welcome to try.”