whirl wants a sexy checkup (whirl ambulon)
04 December 2018
He’s been to those movie nights once or twice, the ones that Swerve and Rewind hold, a handful of mechs packed into a dark room while Rewind projects strange human films onto a bare wall. He’d always stayed near the back, but he’d seen enough to catch on to some of the concepts they have on Earth. Like one night, they’d just spent hours watching episodes of this show consisting of nothing but an excited human wrangling animals with far too many teeth and calling them sweet little names the whole time through, and what Ambulon had come away from it with was the concept that if you show weakness, something a little wild will latch onto it. Something will slip in through the cracks and take hold and refuse to let go.And he must have shown something, because he’s pretty sure that’s what’s happened with Whirl.
“I don’t know, doctor,” Whirl croons, voice pitched high and breathy as he lounges across one of the medibay beds. One of his long legs is bent up at what Ambulon assumes is intended to be a seductive angle. It’s hard to tell, with the odd and curving path his legs take to begin with. “Something just feels… off. I think you should take a look-see.”
Whirl does this at least once a week. He comes into the medibay with light and bouncing steps, claws tapping together at the tips in some kind of cheery rhythm, and he sets himself to annoying Ambulon to the very best of his ability. He asks a thousand questions about topics he doesn’t care about, topics he then proceeds to state that he doesn’t care about; he picks things up and examines them and puts them down where they don’t belong; he pushes three of the beds together with space between them so he can lay on his stomach with his cockpit hanging down through the gaps. He talks constantly.
And he always tries, without fail, to try to get Ambulon to engage in sexy doctor roleplay with him. Because he thinks his tactile sensors glitched out during the last fight. Or because he has an itch he simply can’t scratch. Or because he’s sure there’s a bullet embedded right in his hip joint, if you just reach in he’s sure you can…
“I’m certain you think that,” Ambulon says flatly as he moves through the medibay. He’s checking inventory, which is tedious and which becomes a much longer process when it keeps being interrupted by Whirl’s antics. He kneels in front of a low cabinet and opens it. Rows and rows of materials. He pulls in air through his weak fans and sighs it out.
“I can’t see it myself, y’know,” Whirl goes on. There’s a clank and scrape of metal on metal. Ambulon figures he’s squirming around on the berth, trying to find the angle at which he looks the prettiest. “I need someone with more practiced eyes. And hands.”
“Well, seeing as I’m busy, I’ll comm Ratchet for you.” Are these kits organized primarily by color? He needs to talk to First Aid. Whirl groans a disgusted noise behind him.
“Not him,” he snaps. “Guy’s got it out for me. I swear. It’s the hands, I think. He gets new hands and he thinks he’s sooo much better than me. Little does he know, I’ve been replacing the grease he used for his joints with gun lube for months. Ha!”
“It’ll do about the same thing.” Usually, he’d think there was no need to have this number of emergency transfusion kits on a non-wartime ship. But then, this is the Lost Light.
“It’s the principle of the thing.” A screech, a clunk, and heavy steps; Whirl stops close behind Ambulon and Ambulon can feel him crouch down behind him. “You talk to all your patients this way, doc? Or am I just your special boy?”
It’s easy, forgetting Whirl’s size. He’s all spindly limbs and clicking claws, and he spends a lot of time coiled down like he’s ready to pounce. But this close together, Ambulon can sense the height difference between them, even with them both down on the ground. He feels crowded in close to the cabinets.
If you show weakness… yeah.
“Maybe I treat you like this because I like you,” Ambulon suggests. “Could be I care about you and I think you deserve a little better than some rushed meeting when I’m on shift. Maybe I want to talk to you like a person, not a thing that needs to be fixed. Not a disease that needs to be cured. Sort of like how you bug me because you like me and trust me not to treat you the way everyone else does, like you’re two seconds away from going off.”
Whirl bothers him, he gives Whirl blunt answers. They berate each other. No one is called decepticon. No one is called freak. It’s a safe kind of frustration.
Whirl is still behind him, and while Ambulon knows he hasn’t won – if there’s even winning to this game – it’s a satisfying minor victory to get a moment of silence out of Whirl. He takes the opportunity to count the rest of the contents of the cabinet. When he closes it, it seems to knock Whirl back into motion.
“Mmmnope,” Whirl says, curling a little more over Ambulon. His head peers upside-down at Ambulon’s face. “Sounds like bullshit to me. Maybe you’re just a shitty doctor.”
“Probably,” Ambulon agrees, moving to stand. Whirl doesn’t give him the room to do it, but he fits up in the space between Whirl’s shoulder and the counter. There’s space enough to turn, too, even if it leaves him with Whirl nearly leaning against his hip. “Guess you won’t find out unless you get up and let me take a look at you.”
Whirl’s optic flickers into a slim arc and his claws tap together. “Oh, good,” he says in a dangerous sort of tone, “because I’ve been having the strangest feeling down there, doc…”
Whirl does this every week without fail, and more often than not, Ambulon falls for it. He shows weakness and Whirl reaches in and clamps down. So be it.