28 October 2018

OR: One and Five-Halves Bots
OR: Are You There, Primus? It's Me, Swerve
OR: Please, Don't Go Into Labor In The Vents

OR: On The Values Of Birth Control On Spacefaring Missions

OR: Skids And Swerve Don't Regret A Thing

1. The Introduction

"Hey, so, I have news," Skids says, and it makes Swerve put down the cloth he was using to wipe down the bar's counter.

"You used to stand on the ground when you talked to people, right?" Swerve asks, neck craned far back in order to see Skids from underneath the hood that wraps over Swerve's head. Skids stares back at him from the open vent in the ceiling. "Seriously. That's a thing that happened, isn't it? Or was that, like, a mass hallucination? A fever dream? A fantasy I entertained one too many times?"

"That's not important right now," Skids tells him. It's a late hour, but that always seems to be when Skids is most awake, at least in action; his eyes are always sunk down in sleepy darkness, but now he's perky and, of course, upside-down. His eyes glow bright in the dim lighting of the bar, two shining-star points of blue. "Come on, we gotta go."

Now Swerve's setting the cleaning spray down. "Go -- into the vent? Up into the vent? You know you can walk anywhere you like in this ship? You can even drive, if it's urgent. People won't mind. Well, Ultra Magnus might, but he minds just about everything."

There's a sigh out of Skids, this purposeful, put-upon mechanical sound of breath, a noise that Swerve knows he picked up mostly from watching hours and hours of movies with him. "It's important," Skids says, and then he reaches down and catches Swerve by the hood and swings him up, dragging him into the vent with him, tucking him under an arm. Surprisingly, there's plenty of room in the vents for the both of them together, so long as they're pressed plate-to-plate like they are. Unsurprisingly, Swerve yells the whole way up.

"You remember when Drift was on this ship?" Swerve says. "He used to do this, too. Not the vent thing, the under-the-arm thing. I hated it. You ever wonder why he's not on the ship anymore?" He means it to sound threatening, intimidating. It's hard to do when Skids has you held up against his middle.

"I thought it was because Rodimus kicked him out," Skids answers. The vents clank under his knees and his palm. The whole small metal space is lit up in soft colors from his lighting a hazy pale yellow, pure clean blue.

"Well, yeah, it is, but if it hadn't been, I'm telling you, it would've been because I'd had it with the under-the-arm thing." He's resigned, though, and not struggling, and privately he thrills in the contented hum of his spark that comes from being held close to Skids. Privately, he holds onto Skids' arm and lets his fingers sprawl over the transformation seams.

Skids huffs a laugh that suggests that those things aren't private at all, and he shifts Swerve up tighter against his chest in a way that isn't just to make him more secure.

When Skids twists around suddenly and drops Swerve flailing down through another open vent, the room's clean white and red and Skids catches Swerve by the arm before he hits the ground, lowers him gentler the rest of the way to the floor. There's that same smell of cleaning solution that he just left, but it looks a lot cleaner, here, where there aren't any questionable stains or scuff marks. Skids drops down to the floor just behind him with a kind of grace Swerve knows he'll never have access to.

"Got him," Skids says cheerily when he straightens up, ruffling a hand over Swerve's hood. That's another thing he picked up from Earth movies. Swerve's realizing by now that he has a few regrets regarding those.

"Great," Ratchet says in a tone of voice which hints that it might not be all that great. "Do you have any control over him? I told him to sit down and he started climbing into the ceiling."

"We're in the medical bay," Swerve says, and then feels foolish immediately for it. Skids gives him one of those sickeningly fond looks when he moves past to sit himself up on a bed, prim and proper, smiling despite the way that Ratchet is glaring at him. Everything is coming together very slowly for Swerve, like a bolt of fabric being strung together thread by thread. His gaze is dragged over to Skids because, usually, that's the person who helps it all make sense, except today Skids is busily snipping each string at the other end of the cloth. He's fraying the weave with a smile.

"You can do the honors," Skids says to Ratchet, brushing dust off his legs. The vents aren't exactly clean. Swerve's joked before that Skids should take a vacuum up there if he's gonna keep disappearing into them. Skids looks thoughtful every time Swerve says that.

"Thrilling, thank you," Ratchet mumbles, rolling his optics and moving around Swerve to push Skids down flat to the berth. There are scanners and screens set up around this bed, Swerve realizes, not even deactivated from when Skids apparently got up and left the place earlier. There's pulses of light and sound coming off of them and they start to match up with Swerve's confusion and nerves.

"Um," he says, "why -- why are we in the medbay, exactly?" Important news, Skids said. "Skids? Are you, uh, are you okay?"

There's an over-long moment of utter quiet in which Swerve's fans stutter and Skids stares with his mouth open and Ratchet looks, frankly, like he wants to have no part in this exchange at all. Skids' optics are wide, and they dilate and click with realization.

"Oh my god," he says. "No, I totally forgot what people go to doctors for. Oh my god, Swerve, I'm so sorry." Which is not enough on its own to soothe Swerve's budding panic, and even Ratchet is murmuring "you forgot what doctors are for" under his breath, and then Skids is sitting up again and Ratchet can only throw up his hands a little with frustration. Skids reaches for Swerve until he has a hand on Swerve's shoulder and can pull him in close again, a hug made awkward because Swerve has to bend over the edge of the hospital bed and Skids has to lean down to Swerve's height.

"I am 100% not dying," Skids tells him. "Promise."

"I need to retire," Ratchet says to no one in particular.

Skids lays back down, and Ratchet moves in close again, and Swerve still has basically no idea of what's happening but at least now the bubble of fear is deflating, simmering down into near-nothing. It's still strange.

Especially so when Ratchet leans in and raps his knuckles against Skids' chest, sharp and neat, saying, "All right, open up." Obediently, Skids' chest transforms back and open, showing the intricate silver of his spark chamber and the bright, glowing, gaseous blue of his spark itself. Of course Swerve has seen it before, known it intimately, but seeing it out in the light like this has him not quite looking at it. He looks away, up at Ratchet instead.

Ratchet is searching through the foggy edge of Skids' spark, turning it carefully on its axis until he sees something that makes him give off a little 'aha.' "There," he says, pointing at Skids' spark. "You see that?"

Ratchet's finger is brushing just off the very limit of Skids' spark where the light of it fades into nothing. At first, when Swerve's optics focus on the spot, he can't quite make anything out; then the light changes a little, and Skids' spark shifts just so, and Swerve can see it, the tiniest pinprick of light, a little ball of it hovering tangential to Skids' spark, making the most unbalanced snowman Swerve's ever seen. As the spark turns its slow revolution, the little ball nudges up against Ratchet's finger and wobbles, readjusts.

"What," Swerve says, voice low with surprise and confusion and awe. He blinks once, twice behind his visor, then slides it back to get a clearer look.

"That," Ratchet answers, pinning the little thing carefully under one fingertip, "is the beginning of a new spark."

To which Swerve, despite his enormous double-world vocabulary of exclamations and swears and surprise, has nothing to say at all. He tracks the tiny shape and gapes, only the barest hints of sound coming out of his throat. The new spark glints, and as Ratchet lets it free it bounces up a bit, drifts sideways.

"Oh," Swerve finally settles on saying, glancing up to look at Skids properly. Skids is beaming wider than he's ever done before. He nods, confirmation of Swerve's unspoken question, and gestures at his spark like to say look what we've done! Look what we made!

Which is all really very a lot. Swerve pulls himself up to sit on the berth because he can already sense that his knees are going to drop out under him. And at the very least, Ratchet waits until he's up there to say, "So that's the first one -- there's three more of them wandering around in there somewhere," which is polite seeing as the force of that makes Swerve wheeze and tip forward until his face is pressed against Skids' middle.

After, when Ratchet's given them room and Skids has closed his chest and drawn Swerve up to sprawl over top of him, Swerve finds the strength to croak out, "Kids."

"Mmhm," Skids hums, rubbing his face down catlike against the top of Swerve's head. "Four of 'em."

"Four of them!"

"Four whole sparklings."

"Four! Four at once!"

"Ours," Skids adds, and it's the way he's so warm and soft in that one word that makes Swerve pick his head up to see the broad and loving smile that Skids is wearing, the full force of this private sun shining down on Swerve. Skids on a regular day is kind of brisk and intense and strong and independent, but he's got this well-tended side of him that's all full of adoration and caring and that's what Swerve sees now. It makes Swerve's spark seem to flutter.

"I'm gonna have to get more back-up bartenders," Swerve says, and Skids' smile opens up into full-on beaming.

2. The Beginning (explicit)

It's late by the time the last straggler wanders out, or maybe very early; time is hard to track reliably while they're out in space, even if their chronometers work just fine. All they have is the numbers and the way that the lights dim every night in an effort to encourage a curfew that only Ultra Magnus obeys. But the halls are nearly empty, so it looks from the glimpse Swerve catches before he closes the doors to his bar, and that means either something big is happening or everyone's finally down for recharge, and he absolutely would have known if it was the first thing. It's been a long night. Not like especially spectacularly bad or anything, just long, dragging on as some days are prone to doing. When the doors click shut, Swerve drops his head forward until his forehead clunks against the metal.

He doesn't even have time enough to let out a dramatic, well-deserved 'uuugh' before Skids is scooping him up into his arms and carrying him back to the bar counter.

"Whoa, whoa, hey!" Swerve yelps, and he wiggles and writhes until Skids sets him down on the countertop, but they both know he wasn't actually fighting the hold. It's a token thing. Skids pulls him right off the ground and Swerve smacks against his arms and chest like he hates it even though, by now, it's a bit of a ritual, being swept up off his feet at the end of a day. Not every day, not every night, but enough, and especially these long ones. "What do you think you're doing? I have to clean. This place looks like a bomb exploded -- actually, one might have, I know I saw Brainstorm come in at some point --"

"I'm showing my bartender the appreciation he deserves, that's all." Skids has a certain skill in interrupting Swerve when his mouth is starting to get away from him. He just turns on the smile, that big broad it's-an-ungodly-hour-but-here-we-are smile of his and Swerve can't hope to keep up. Skids shifts so that he can lean forward against the bar, hands framing Swerve's hips. "I mean, it's not every day you get a bartender who's kind and funny and handsome..."

"Oh my God," Swerve says bluntly, but he reaches out and up to rest his hands on Skids' shoulders because it's really impossible to say yeah, no thanks, Skids, I don't want affection from you after all. His self esteem is low enough for him to immediately recognize that Skids is worth about 200 of him and is that many times as interesting, but Skids still looks at him like he hung up all the stars and Swerve's got enough of his brain in the right places to appreciate that.

Skids smiles somehow wider and leans down until his nose and his mouth brush up against Swerve's face. "And who's really good at kissing."

"Now I know you're not talking about me," Swerve shoots back, just before Skids angles his head the right way to get their mouths pressed together.

Skids is the one who's good at kissing -- God, is he ever. It's the superlearner thing, probably, giving him an edge on how to do even this thing perfectly, something in him tracking how Swerve reacts and how he shifts and whines and how his fans spin up. Swerve gives any hint that there's something he likes and Skids just picks up on it straightaway, and yeah, that's what's going on now, even if their mouths are closed still, the kiss gentle and sweet. Skids makes a noise that's half hum, half mechanical whir.

"Of course I'm talking about you," Skids says when he pulls back, like, a micrometer, close enough that Swerve can just barely feel the shape of his smile. "You're the best. My favorite. My one and only." He steals another quick kiss.

"I think you might be drunk," Swerve counters, and Skids just laughs. His big hands slide over Swerve's middle, the blocky shapes of him, one trailing all the way up to his face to thumb at his jawline. The other slips behind Swerve's back. He's big and he's broad and he's solid, the whole of him, or at least in comparison to Swerve but probably in comparison to everyone else, too, because sometimes Swerve sees other folks eyeing Skids in a certain way and he can't even be jealous about it, he just catches their optic and nods like yeah, I get you.

"Drunk on you," Skids croons. It's so late at night and sometimes Skids just gets in these moods, mushy and sugary and nuzzling. And handsy. He's moving in close so their plating brushes together.

Swerve tries to clamp down on the reactionary urge to let his fans turn on high power just from Skids being this near. "I don't even know how to answer that," he says. "You have a clear advantage here, Mr. Super Learner, with all your -- super flirting skills. It's not fair to a regular bot like me. All I have is weird pet names from Earth stuff, and most of those don't even make sense --"

"Pumpkin," Skids interrupts him.

"Cupcake."

"Lovebug."

"Sweetpea."

"Sugarpie," Skids says, and he's laughing through the word by now, grinning up against Swerve's mouth. And he's won there, yeah, Swerve's laughing too, head leaning forward down on Skids' shoulder, and the angle gives Skids a rare opportunity to turn and kiss against Swerve's neck, the sensitive cables that usually hide beneath the hood around Swerve's head. It means that the gentle kisses, the ones Skids start with, sort of tickle, but the firmer ones get him a shiver down his spinal strut. Skids sucks on a cord and his mouth curves around a smile.

You're in a mood, Swerve wants to say, but his voice catches and twists because Skids scrapes his teeth over Swerve's neck and makes that hum again, the vibration right up against his metal. A hand on Swerve's face and one that's dropped down to his hip, thumb rubbing over the gap of the joint promisingly. His fingertip dips just into the open space.

"Sweetspark," Skids murmurs, and this one isn't pulled out of human movies and human shows, this one's all Skids. Swerve can feel his processor fall apart in his head.

"W-wait," he says before his brain can totally disconnect from the rest of him. "We can't do it on the counter. I have to clean up, it'll make a mess."

"There's already a mess," Skids points out, still nuzzling up against Swerve's throat.

"That's not exactly reassuring, actually? Primus knows what all's on this countertop, and I'd have to clean more after."

"You can sit in my lap," Skids says. "And I'll clean the whole bar. Unless you really don't wanna do it, which is fine, and I'm sorry --"

"I 100% absolutely wanna do it!" Swerve interrupts him maybe too fast. He can feel Skids' wicked grin. "And your offers are sounding pretty satisfactory, actually. So --"

And of course, Skids pulls him up off the counter in less than a spark pulse, and the dizzying lack of solid ground underneath him makes him shiver a little bit, marvel at how easy Skids can lift him, up until Skids sits them both down. He fits in Skids' lap just... really, really well.

"Better?" Skids asks, and somehow he hasn't moved away from Swerve's neck at all. His voice is murmured and low and buzzing.

"Yeah," Swerve says. "Uh, yes. Definitely." And then his mind completely takes leave of him.

This happens with maybe a worrying frequence. His head going all blank around Skids, not the sex in the bar. But that too.

Sometimes one of them asks for the other, the push in, the gasp of fullness, the rush of movement. Tonight, sitting in a chair in the bar, they just keep each other held tight and shift against each other fitfully. Swerve finds himself with his forehead tipped down against Skid's chest, Skids' mouth brushing over the side of his head. They've got their panels shifted out of the way to make things slick and sensitive and intense. And hot, heated. The bar seems too-warm around them.

Skids' hands brace around Swerve's hips and it pulls out a keening kind of noise. Swerve's vocal synthesizer trips over the words: "shit, love you, I love you." It's far from the first time he's said it, far from the first time Skids has heard it from him, but the act of saying it can be an obstacle too high to climb, sometimes. Skids gets it. Skids sees the I love yous in Swerve's rambling monologues and his specially-made drinks.

Underneath him, Skids' hips rock upward and their spikes rub against each other. "I shoulda waited until we got back to our room," Skids groans low. "Kinda really want you in me." On the next upward motion, Swerve's valve slids over the base of Skids' spike and it's tantalizing, far away. Skids shudders.

"Your fault," Swerve tells him, "your fault, you were the impatient one, scrap, open up, gotta, have to."

Not his panels, which are already open, of course, but the thicker plates over Skids' chest which transform back and away at the desperate push of Swerve's hand, folding out of the way to show off the bright blue-white spark nestled in intricate weaves of wiring. His spark shudders and glows under Swerve's wanting gaze. Skids arches his back with the exposure of it and Swerve makes the gentlest of moans, something low and thin and needing. His chest opens up, too.

Their sparks are the same size, the same brightness. Skids had marvelled once that Swerve was so much smaller than him in size but his spark was just the same circumfrence. He hadn't had time for philosophizing, much, because he was too distracted by the soft light of it. It's the same, now.

Swerve has to say "hold up, hold still, just a second" to get Skids to stop wriggling, moving his hips in helpless arcs. Soon as he's even a little bit still, Swerve's fingers skate in over the bare expanse of his wiring to find the set of cables buried safe inside. They drag out long, hungry, the clamps at the ends opening slow but easy when Swerve rolls his thumbs over them. Two to each side of the spark, input and output, and Swerve's own to match. They click and lock together with jumps in energy, a new burst for each one.

By the time the fourth set of cables snaps together, they're both quaking against one another, hips jerking and sparks shimmering.

"Love you, I love you," Swerve keeps saying, his voice going high and messy and unclear with static and glitches. Skids is inclined to agree, wholeheartedly. He drags Swerve up against him with hands flat on Swerve's hips and feels the dripping of lubrication from his own valve, from Swerve's as it spatters over their thighs. The link between their sparks means they feel each other and feed each other and the energy's an endless boundless loop, spiraling higher and higher with each push of their hips. They can't even swear anymore; they can't find the words for it.

At the end of it, Skids loops an arm around Swerve's back and pulls him in so their chests are flat to one another, their sparks' energies licking into each other and the terrible wonderful flare of it knocks them both over that teetering edge. Swerve's voicebox quits entirely in a dramatic drag of static. Skids curls over him and shakes. Something indescribable snaps between them like electricity arcing between wires.

"Love you too," Skids says in the ringing quiet after, the only noise aside from their cooling fans. Swerve shifts and laughs noiselessly.

It takes a few minutes for their systems to recalibrate, especially for Swerve's vocal synthesizer. "We still made a mess," he says when he can, and yeah, there's fluids on the chair and on their middles. "So much for that."

"I told you I'd clean it." Not right now, of course. They're still finding the programming to even move their limbs. And when one of them does manage to locate that bit of code, the first they do is pick up their heads for a long and luxuriating kiss.

Skids does stay and clean up, but Swerve insists on helping, even if his legs are kind of wobbly at first. They get the place shining in record time, surprisingly. And then a handful of days later, Skids starts getting these strange jolts in his spark, like he's touching a live wire for milliseconds at a time.

Best go see Ratchet, he decides. Maybe he'll know what's up.