Chapter Text
They’re mercs and Ironhide doesn’t like mercs, ‘specially Kaon mechs, ‘specially gladiators which (of course) the new recruits are both. They’re ostensibly twins or they like to say so and for sheer force of personality no one will argue the point, the point being that spark-split twins are a statistical impossibility, a medical miracle that ranks a whopping .2345% of the rapidly declining Cybertronian population so they’re just liars and Ironhide aint real fond of those either. This probably explains why the red and black plated glitch-wit pisses him off so much. That mech’s got a mouth on him like a grounder’s got wheels: it never stops running, running, running.
Sideswipe.
Ironhide would throw him out an airlock if Optimus didn’t need him for sheer muscle. The fragger’s a hardened commando, built in a pair with his brother, Sunstreaker, who’s less annoying in the same way serial killers are less annoying than a stick in the optic. They’re built combat frames, Iacon-bred, tall and dense-mass and mean as the Pit in a scrap. And they are always in a scrap – with the Cons, with each other, with their friends and their enemies on base. Sideswipe’s always first out the gate to the frontlines. Hide’s never seen a bot more restless or eager for a fight (short of Warpath maybe) and it pisses him off.
Which is why he’s currently thinking about strangling Prowl.
“No.” Prowl’s plates have an aggressive configuration just now. “After the last attack, there aren’t any class 2 gunners available and Sideswipe is cleared for heavy artillery and fire support. You and him, Alpha outpost, five cycles until Bluestreak is back up and running to take the position.” Then, detecting that Ironhide is about argue with him some more, the lieutenant turns on him, EMF crackling cold. “You think I want to send one of our frakking commandos up a Primus-slotting roost with you? Don’t you dare try to question my logi-tech on that. Get out of here.”
Jazz is in medical, as are a lot of Prowl’s other apparent friends; Hide isn’t keen on testing the Praxan specialist so he takes his foul electromagnetics with him to the armory. Upon entry, he finds Sideswipe seated, back to the door, bent over a high caliber class-1 proton rifle. Serious armament: modded for long range, plate-penetrating hot-rounds, short-burst kill-fire settings. It’s a sleek piece of hardware and Ironhide catches Sideswipe as he slaps a fusion mag into the battery mount, snaps the locks back and swings the weapon to his shoulder with mass-memory smoothness that’s almost liquid.
Ironhide is stopped dead by the sudden, code-deep kilk of interest, not at Sideswipe himself (who’s a bit too Iacon-built compact for his tastes) but rather for that split second where Sideswipe and that hardware seem to be a single gestalt mechanism and the urge to posses that weapon (mech and rifle all) jumps through him. He wants Sideswipe. But fast as he thinks that, the mech hears him and turns then to look at him. That fraggin’ slag-eating smirk. He wants to throw him out an airlock again.
“Hey boss, we got watch?” Sideswipe’s accent is Kaonese and subtle, that low-fidelity whirr in his sub-sonics. His smile: crooked, the smooth silver seams of his facial plates shifting easy. “Woo, buckets of fun you’ll be crammed in a hot-box with, wide-load. Don’t dent me or Streaker’ll be up your aft for it.”
“Yur slag-head brother ain’t a concern of mahn. Get up an’ roll out. We’re late already.”
Sideswipe’s salutes always look like an obscene gesture. “Was just waiting on you, boss.”
“Call me ‘boss’ again, mech, an’ Ah’ll put more’n a few dents in ya. Scan me?”
“Yes, sir, lieutenant tight-plates, sir.”
Ironhide glares at the commando, his EMF transcribing in empathic detail that he will beat Sideswipe to death against a wall, smelt the body, and feed it to scraplets if Sideswipe repeats that line of address again. For his part, the mercenary twitches slightly and doesn’t make any more smart remarks. It’s a long drive to Alpha Outpost.
- - -
“This sucks.” Sideswipe is staring boredly down his rifle sight. He’s only been lying, set up at the edge of the sniper-ridge for five kilks. Ironhide, seated behind him, hates the mech anew.
“Anything else obvious,” he grits, “that you’d like ta state, genius?”
“This sucks Decepticon after-parts in a Kaon jolt-joint.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Sideswipe whirrs triumphantly, not looking up from his surveillance of the valley. “But you know what a jolt-joint is. Ha.” He shifts his shoulders a little, rolling his right rotor cuff, the plates down the long curl of his back arching slightly in the half-light off the far ridge. It colors the red mechanism dark, the undergloss and nanite layer sparking black crimson down his backstrut. “You out of South Kaon?”
“Keep watchin’ th’ valley an’ shut up.”
Sideswipe shuts up for exactly one klik, then reaches into his sub-space and pulls four frag-grenades, Decepticon-contraband, nasty-alloy-shredding blast-zone – shock and awe plate-shredders that Prime has ordered his own soldiers never to use. Cons use them to damage Autobots then shoot the support mechs that try to save them. Mean artillery. He’s checking them for charge and the fact he thinks Ironhide’s not going to react says more about what Sideswipe thinks of him than anything and that pisses him off too.
“I could have ya brigged,” he rumbles, “for even havin’ those.”
“Why?”
“Prime banned those on the battle field. They’re Decepticon weapons. Bots don’t use them, mech.”
“Whatever,” says Sideswipe and sets the grenades at his elbow for use, a move so lazily insubordinate Hide is moving before he’s fully decided to retaliate. His knee slams into the dirt at Sideswipe’s left hip before the bot can react and his fist closes on the nape of his neck.
“Not ‘whatever’,” growls Ironhide, when Sideswipe snarls at him. “Your CO’s banned that ordinance and yur breakin’ direct orders so no, mech, it’s not ‘whatever’ it’s you in the brig and your brother going glitched and then him brigged up with yur stupid aft and I know how much he likes being in the Hole. You don’t disobey Prime. Saavy?”
“Right,” chuffs Sideswipe, sulking instantly at the recrimination. Blue optics flare, nephrite irises spinning and focusing on Hide. “Because letting the Cons bomb us because we’re too polite to bomb ‘em back is real tactical thinking.”
“Orders, mech. You don’t break rank.”
“Fine. Take ‘em. You want my rifle too? How about my ion cannon? Or missile launchers?” He bares his dental plate, gears whirring in his chest, EMF spiking hot. “Hell, why down you strip out my hydraulic mods and make it a real fair fight, since the fraggin’ Decepticons are so hard up, like that last bomber run that near slagged Jazz an’ Blue an’ near every other Bot in the Neut aid outpost. Real military target – a giant nurse-bot station. Screamer’s Seekers weren’t pullin’ punches when they put us down fifteen mechs.” He curses briefly in a gritty, static drop-caste dialect. “Fragging stupid glitch-humping Primus-damned smelt-sucking Autobot honor killing us all cold. How about you let me do my job? The one Prime hired me to do?”
“Enlighten me.” Hide is hot with temper. “What job are you here to do?”
“I’m here to kill to Decepticons,” snaps Sideswipe, elbowing Ironhide off him and rolling onto his back. He sits up on his elbows, plates gone hot with aggression, engines humming with intent and the look he gives Ironhide is cold as a targeting algorithm calculating a killshot. “You think Prime hailed me’n Streaker out of the fringe divisions so we could be snuggly and lie around getting off on how moral and honorable we fraggin’ are?” He laughs. “Wake up. I’m here to do Prime’s dirty work and from the look of you, you are too.”
The transformation is too fast to follow. Hide’s right arm bursts apart and snaps back together as his main ion cannon. Hide slams Sideswipe to the ground by the shoulder and jams mouth of the blaster hot against the black and red fore of Sideswipe’s helm. Firing algorithms whirl up, hang on a hairtrigger and for that astro-kilk that Hide considers pulling the trigger a dark flare of arousal rushes the neural-lines beneath his armor, heat spreading through his chest and spiking his sensor grid.
“Get off of me,” grits Sideswipe, not moving an inch.
Hide jams the muzzle of the cannon up against Sideswipe’s chin forcing his head back, the back sweeping horns on his helm digging deep into the dirt. There’s a low clicking sound from deep inside the commando’s chest, beneath the armor and Ironhide stops a moment, audials pulling and isolating that sound. It’s a distinct sound but easy to mistake. He eyes the younger mech slowly. Sideswipe is frozen, vents cycling rapidly, optics fixed on his CO as the bigger mechanism keeps his weapon fully cycled, ion heat glowing deep in the barrel, warming the clean sliver of the commando’s Iacon-bred face. The long lines of Sideswipe’s frame are tensed, arched slightly, dust light sliding down the gloss of his abdominal plates to his pelvic guard.
“Why do ya look like a Towerling?” say Ironhide.
Sideswipe stares. “Huh?”
“Ya talk like a gutter-bot but you look like Elite Guard shareware.” Sideswipe flares his plates at the insult, revving. “Tell me why ya look like ya look.”
“Decommissioned shock-trooper frames,” says Sideswipe, still carefully making no sudden moves. His optics refract the ion light in sparks of gold off glass. “Single model run. Prototypes. Power-levels too high for legal sanction. Stole em and spark-swapped from our original frames.”
“Why those frames?” When Sideswipe wont answer Hide drags the heavy lip of the cannon down the mech’s throat cabling, directly along the invisible line of his center seam (Sideswipe’s optics widen and flicker wildly away then back) and stop at the flat of the mech’s abdominal plating. “Answer me.”
“Weapons,” says Sideswipe, low and staticky. His optics keep flickering. “Soldier frames got the hardware and software to take all weapons. This frame is a weapon. You can strip me for every gun I got and I’m still a weapon. Can’t make me anything but and Prime knew that when he hired Sunny and me for this outfit. Let me up.”
Hide leans on him, presses the barrel hard against the other mech’s belly and Sideswipe jerks, making a reactive sound that Ironhide can’t quite make out to be crystal clear terror or something else entirely. The commando is already in overdrive, fight or flight algorithms kicking his systems into high gear, his combat frame burning fuel in what must be one of the hottest burns Hide’s seen off a mech – the commando radiates heat where he lies, the high humidity in this planet’s atmo making his edges steam slightly. The hum off his engines is low. Sides jerks again, quick-twitch and reactive when the weight of the ion cannon scrapes lower, down his abdominals, the flat of his pelvic guard – “What the frak are you doing?!” – until the barrel is pressed hard into the splayed join of the mech’s legs.
Ironhide’s other hand closes around Sideswipe’s throat when he jerks up, pins him back down as he shoves the massive weapon harder and harder against the overlapping plates at Sideswipe’s groin. Blue optics stare, stunned, up at him.
“Spread your legs, mech.”
“You’re fragging crazy.” Sideswipe is speaking 100% South Kaon slang dialect. The pitch of his shortwave EMF is ragged with shock. “You’re an Autobot. You can’t…”
“Spread your legs, Sideswipe or I’ll do it for you.”
The red warrior hedges, optics wide, then slowly shifts his pedes in the dirt, widening the space between them and opening his knees until the overlapping panels of armor between his legs begin to gape. Hide’s scans reveal a mess of neural lines and hydraulic nodes set into the young mech’s lower body, five times the nerve clusters any non-solider frame might have. Wired for battle, never meant to be exposed… and Hide knew perfectly well that if Sideswipe didn’t want to be on the ground right now, he wouldn’t be.
“If you fragging cripple me,” Sideswipe breathes, addressing the threat to the motor relays in his lower body. “If you do it, your Prime will – ah!”
Hide smirks as Sideswipe’s hips buck up hard against the gun pressed against him, mouth opening on a series of filthy Kaon curses. “Sorry. What were ya sayin’?” He pulses another ion charge to the cannon, emitting a high-frequency EM burst directly into the brat’s exposed nerve relays. The signal is pure, intensive pleasure data, jolting up the base of his back strut to his neural net and the hardened frontliner is arching and gasping like a new-spark overloading. “Ya say yur a weapon. Well, that’s unfortunate.” Hide puts another pulse into the other mechanism’s body and he screams this time, optics rolling back as the jolt of sensation paralyzes him from pede to helm. “Ah’m the weapons specialist ya see. So Ah know how weapons work.”
“P-please…”
“Please what?” When Sideswipe moans incoherently Hide pulses him again and he cries out. “Please what?”
“Keep going!” Sideswipe lifts his hips, knees spreading again. His EMF’s gone dark and needy, his expression fractured with arousal. “Please. Just… no one else ever…”
“No one else,” Hide murmurs, making the mech look at him, “would ever put a high-powered weapon to ya, give ya the EM jolt ya need to get off like this.” Sideswipe’s optics fix on him, terrified now but only at the idea that the bigger mechanism might not keep going. Hide can smell the alkali odor of conductive fluids from charged nerve lines under his touch, feel the slick of it. “Dangerous kink to have, Siders… one hell of a tweak in you.”
Sideswipe groans in frustration. “Please. I know. Just finish it.”
“Not until ya fall in line,” says Ironhide, tightening his grip on Sideswipe’s neck. “Ya may be right about Prime bringin’ ya on because of what ya are and what ya can do but when he tells you not ta do something ya don’t do it.” He changes the ion pulse frequency slightly, tuning it up slow, watching Sideswipe’s expression slowly collapse into a hapless twist of reluctant pleasure, his whole body arching as Ironhide leans down the speaks fiercely into the bot’s right audio. “Weapons are tools.” Sideswipe whimpers, writhing and nodding frantically. “They serve the objective of their handler an’ that means so long as yur under Prime under me ya don’t break rank.”
“I won’t. I won’t, I promise.”
“Then yur gonna follow orders?”
“Yes, Primus, whatever you want!”
“Sit up.”
Sideswipe obeys, fingers digging into the dig as Ironhide reaches up and tugs his head down, accessing the interface panel at the back of the mech’s helm. He doesn’t offer up a protest when Hide jacks in a sensor line, too lost in how good Ironhide is making him feel to offer even token resistance when the older mech taps his sensor grid and siphons the pleasure data through the uplink. Hide feels what Sideswipe feels, the cannon between his thighs, the scrape of the metal, heat and dizzying pleasure throbbing up from his groin, into his spine, up into the network of his processors where he can’t focus on anything but the pleasure and pressure. Hide frowns slightly, hearing that clicking, whirring sound again from the mech’s chest and finally ID’ing it as a failed plate split.
“Why’re yur spark-plates locked?”
“Don’t do merges,” Sideswipe hisses, a low vibration in his voice now. His fingers fist in the dirt as another swell of sensation crests through him, making him twitch and groan, vents cycling too-fast and desperate. “Sunstreaker… I can’t… not for both of us…”
“You still sellin’ that spark-split slag?”
“Get smelted. I’m not selling – Primus frag!” Sideswipe’s backstrut arches obscenely back, a ragged cry jolting from his throat. “Unh… what are you doing to me?”
“Tuning you up, mech. You new sparks ain’t got a clue how to cable up anymore.”
He smirks, rerouting Sideswipe’s auxiliary sensors straight to his pelvic neural relay and spiking his grid hard with another burst of ionic charge, three times fast, which makes the mech come apart at the seams. Almost literally. Sideswipe’s parts heat, plates sliding into a looser, more vulnerable configuration. The silver gleam of proto-metal and neural lines flash between the mech’s armor, bare hardline ports sparking with erotic charge that conducts off his exo-plating up Ironhide’s hands, igniting every interface plate across the weapon specialist’s heavy frame.
“Gods… oh slag… slag…” Sideswipe’s whole body is shaking now, his optics blitzed with overclocking, hyper-sensitized systems making him twitch and clench with every pulse and he’s moaning, conductive fluid slicking the metal between his thighs and sparking static and live current across his whole lower body. There’s electricity sparking across his whole frame, flashing that the back of his throat, across his glossa. “I can’t… please again just… one more time…”
“Open your chest.”
“I just told you I don’t merge.”
“I stop now you’ll be half-charged and begging for it before this cycles ends. Ya think ya kin take it? Open up or I’ll let yur charge die slow and if you’ve ever had it happen before I promise you an ion charge is fifteen times worse, kid.”
“Please… c’mon, Hide I can’t. I don’t…”
Ironhide taps one heavy finger against the center seam of Sideswipe’s chest plate and with a moan, Sideswipe clenches his eyes shut and the seam down the middle of his chest splits open, spreading until the sheath of proto-alloy beneath clicks, de-segmenting and folding slowly back from the cavity of his spark chamber. Sideswipe has an opaque sparkcasing, the dark black core of his engines, hot and dark in the centre of his chest. Thick neural support systems and when Ironhide reaches into the mech’s chest he twitches, arcs of raw spark energy sparking of Hide’s scarred fingers. No dampeners. First timer then.
Ironhide scrapes one knuckle up the dark curve of Sideswipe’s casing, sending jolts of raw sensation through the spark beneath and Sideswipe screams, pleasure data spitting through his core and overloading him so hard his whole frame is shaking. And when the crush of sensation doesn’t abide, leaving him paralyzed and racked by how good it is, he bucks up against Ironhide’s touch, EMF sliding into his with wanton depth and frequency.
“Please,” he says, shaky, feverish. He grabs the bigger mech at the back of the neck, pulling him down to press his mouth – charged with static, sparking blue – against the underside of his jaw. “Please, I’ll do anything... just don’t stop. I’ll do what you want…”
“Ah don’t fire a gun until Ah want to.” Hide runs electrified fingers into Sideswipe’s chest, directly against bare nerve and he arches and forgets how to scream. “And you don’t ‘load again until I tell ya.” Sideswipe moans and it’s as much despair as it is lust, Ironhide burning this experience into the mech’s carnal core. “When Ah’m done with ya,” says Ironhide, enjoying the way Sideswipe jerks and slides against him, every lethal line and weaponized system twitching expertly under his touch. “Won’t be a mech in the ‘verse kin make ya spark off like Ah do.”
Prime’s new frontliner just moans, panting, cycling his vents, engine humming with a level of lust that is profane. “Do whatever, whatever you want to me. Please. I’m begging you.”
“What you are is dangerous,” Hide says, rumbling sub-sonically, EM field gone dark. His hand closes around the bot’s spark casing, ignoring the burn of heat and raw energy burning up his servo. Sideswipe’s vents jam hard, his optics flaring, expression a cross of pain and ecstasy at what is probably the most obscene sexual act anybot’s ever done to him and . “You’re a weapon. You do what I say or Ah swear to Primus I’ll break ya, get me?”
“Yes! I’ll do what you say. Please just –!”
Ironhide grabs Sideswipe at the hip and yanks, flips the younger mech onto his belly. Sideswipe, too glitched with aftershocks and pleasure to fight back, lets Ironhide splay his thighs like a shareware bot. Conductive fluids are dripping from his over-charged neural lines and he moans knee’s spreading in the dirt as the muzzle of Hide’s ion cannon presses against him. Another ion pulse. This one comes so hard and deep and total that Sideswipe screams until his vocalizer shorts, collapsing forward, burying his face in his arms while pleasure so intense it’s agony racks him from helm to pedes and ruins him for any other partner. When it’s over, Sides doesn’t move, half unconscious in a slick of his own transfluid, the stink of ozone and overload in the air.
Ironhide reformats his gun arm to its root as he lets go of the mercenary, pushing off his shoulder and standing up. Sideswipe struggles to lever himself upright, hydraulics shaking and trembling. Ironhide, not so much as a plate tweaked, returns to his original seat behind the other mech, sitting back and rumbling at him.
“Get back to work.”
It’s much quieter for the next four cycles.