[Fic] Seven Days -- Part 2/7: (Tuesday) Iron Ride
Title: Seven Days -- Part 2/7: (Tuesday) Iron Ride
Author: Lyricality (lyricality)
Rating: M/NC-17 for graphic sparksex
Pairings: Eventual Bee/everyone. In this part, Ironhide/Bee with mention of Sam/Bee.
Disclaimer: No, Transformers still doesn't belong to me. It's a travesty. All characters are of legal age.
Note/Summary: Only one day late, this time. =P Again, blame nemi_chan and her marvelous prompt o' doom, in which Bumblebee is the resident pleasurebot of the Autobots. The title is still meant to be as porntastically cheesy as possible. I desperately need suggestions for part three, ack. Thank you so much to everyone for your supportive reviews of part one. ♥ I am glad I won't be alone in the Special Hell.
Part 1/7: (Monday) Prime Time can be found here.
After a bit of reflection, Bumblebee had determined that the solution to his problem was ignoring it. At least on a temporary basis.
He had no means of changing his circumstances, no way of explaining to Sam a concept entirely foreign to not just his experience, but his culture. Instead, he would embrace the status quo. And in the spirit of returning willingly to his full position on the Autobot team, he would enjoy embracing Ironhide, as well. Sometimes he appreciated his duties as much for their distraction as for their benefits to his partners.
Ironhide had less predictability in his habits than did Optimus. He also privately delighted in startling the slag out of Bee at every appropriate opportunity, and today proved to be no exception, when Bee had only a moment’s system warning before two massive hands caught him from the back and yanked him bodily into a broad, low-ceilinged equipment room. The door snapped shut behind him. Bee gave a shriek like grating metal and fired two solar blasts that dented the wall, before Ironhide spoke low against the top of his head.
“Watch your back, little one.”
His voice always carried that rough undercurrent, and his arms loosened around Bee while his hands tightened their grip, fingertips pressing in against chest plating. He was all vicious tenderness. Letting his head tip back, Bee gave him a softly whistling gasp and sigh, his weaponry folding in on itself, snapping back into place beneath his exoskeletal armor. “I didn’t think I needed to watch out against my own team.”
“Should always watch for me,” Ironhide rumbled. “Especially when it’s been such a long time coming.” His fingers delved beneath the bumper edges, massaging circuitry with merciless disregard for its delicacy. Bee couldn’t help himself; he strained forward against each seeking touch with an electrical moan.
The door slid open. Optimus Prime stood solitary in the doorway, his optics blazing and his posture ready for battle, and even Ironhide froze.
Bee did his level best to look endearingly innocent.
Eyeing the two of them, and then the dents in the wall, Optimus sighed. “Watch the infrastructure,” he ordered, with a pointed glance at Ironhide, then turned and let the door slide shut behind him.
Ironhide managed to look more affronted than ashamed, and he immediately returned to tweaking the wires just below Bee’s chest plate, making him squirm. The teasing went on for a full two hundred and twenty-three seconds, sensation rendering him too weak to escape or make more than token sounds of protest. Finally he gathered the buildup of electricity in his neural components and flung it back through Ironhide’s hands, the metal of his fingertips conducting it as easily as pure spark energy.
With a grunt, Ironhide went still behind him, his grip loosening when tremors briefly wracked his far stronger form. “Primus.”
Bee took the reprieve to turn in his arms, making soft sonic pulses that touched him as physically as fingertips.
Ironhide shuddered again in response. “Can’t pretend he didn’t train you well,” he muttered, but pressed them close together, his hands curling around the wing-like projections of doors on Bee’s back, a pumping stroke that left Bee quivering against his chest and arching into the pressure.
When he could speak again, Bee summoned up a shaky reply. “I won’t tell him you said so. He’s already got a complex.”
“Don’t I know it.” Ironhide growled just under the auditory range of any organic being, and the vibration slid through Bee in a sudden pulse. The other bot tried to repeat the motion on his back, but Bee drew away despite his own quiet moan, pulling back toward the center of the room. Perching at the edge of a discarded bit of drilling equipment, he braced himself on both arms, regarding Ironhide with slightly shuttered optics. Bee didn’t mind simply surrendering, but Ironhide liked to work for what he wanted, and Bee considered himself professionally obligated to put pure indulgence above all other concerns.
“Let me show you what else I’ve learned.”
Ironhide crossed both arms over his chest--a surprisingly human pose--but he did take a few steps. “Better be worth the effort.”
With a little twist, Bee jumped off the drilling apparatus, putting it between them.
“Come here,” Ironhide growled.
“Catch me,” Bee said, then gave a squeak when Ironhide took two threatening steps forward, optics burning, a primal energy already crackling through his circuits. Bee could feel it as a low hum, an aura around Ironhide’s armor, and after only a minute or two of quick dodges he let himself be caught against the wall, his arms immediately stretched and pinned. With a gasp, he pressed back when Ironhide dragged them together, chest to chest. That fundamental vibration moved through his body in a rolling, breaking wave.
Ironhide spoke against his neck. “You let me catch you.” Accusatory.
“I know.” Writhing, fingers curling as sensation spread outward from everywhere they touched, Bee trembled. “I wanted it too much.”
Ironhide made a guttural, grinding sound and crushed them together.
His expression was violence, enough to send a hundred lesser Decepticons racing for cover, enough to shoot a tremor of anxiety straight from Bee’s head down to his feet. But he was gentle, so gentle, and as careful in passion as he never was in battle. He dragged Bee down to the floor, where they tangled together with his hands running firm strokes over Bee’s outer armor, paint so smooth and wires catching, metal edges sheering together with sharp friction. A whir and shift, just the slightest touch of transformation, just enough to bring the wheels of Ironhide’s alternate form to bear, and Bee let out a squealing moan when grooved rubber caressed the inner joints of his legs and pushed upward over the center of his chest.
“So responsive,” Ironhide chuckled, but a growl of pained need underscored every word. Bee whimpered in return, his hands catching at Ironhide’s waist, scratching upward to push beneath his chest plating and rub along the join of metal to metal.
Straining his head back, Ironhide roared like a gunned engine. He flung his hands to either side of Bee’s shoulders, his fingers clawing into the floor with a shriek that left wide grooves in the metal. Optimus would scold them, but Bee couldn’t care, not when Ironhide’s control had buckled and his huge frame was rocking with pleasure.
Bee kept one hand moving over the spark casing, little shocks of electricity already leaping between the metal and his fingers. He flung his other arm around Ironhide’s shoulders, tugging him down.
“Be with me.” Overheated circuitry drove his voice out of its usual register, an octave higher. “I want more of you.”
Rumbling an agreement, Ironhide retreated enough to push Bee’s armor to either side, his haste sending hydraulics systems into disarray, but that was minor damage, and the flash of discomfort hardly prevented Bee from making a softly sobbing sound when his spark was exposed and immediately assaulted. He returned the favor by laying bare Ironhide’s spark in a few deft touches, and then jerking the other bot down to bring them crashing back together.
Sparks touched and released, touching again and holding for a few moments of shuddering physical connection before Ironhide edged back. Another harsh moment of temporary union and Bee moaned out his pleasure, loving the interplay of spark against spark, the flashes of emotion they shared.
The usual stillness of spark connection was never enough; Ironhide needed action. He wanted tension, motion, friction, and Bee gave as much as he could, writhing in those big arms, bringing their sparks together again, again, again. So fast but so sweet. Metal groaned under pressure, wires hissed against each other, heat and light sparked where they rubbed together in an act that resembled battle but meant healing, devotion. Ironhide shuddered above him, groaning when Bee reached out with thoughts instead of fingers, caressing spark to spark. He caught the deeper strands of desire that he knew he would find--always present, stronger and stronger over the last decades, so strong now that they lit the warrior’s surface thoughts like blazing pathways to a single target.
Let me give you what you really want.
He gave up his memories to influence Ironhide’s perceptions, surrendering the sensation of stronger, nimbler fingers caressing wires into snapping electrical bliss, nobler features intent with passion, contorted with release, and a voice so much more tantalizing than his own gasping instructions with strangely surgical precision.
Bee overlaid those memories over his own touches, his own emotions, and fed them to Ironhide’s spark in a series of shuddering bursts, holding onto the last tendrils of his own control.
Ironhide’s groan made his words almost unintelligible, but Bee recognized the name. Letting his hands soothe along Ironhide’s back, he whispered between them. “I want you--I want you.” The surge between their sparks took him by surprise, so fast and so hard that he screamed, a tinny sound muffled by Ironhide’s echoing roar. Enormous hands caught him in a crushing grip and fingers dragged down his body like a painful aftershock of ecstasy.
Writhing together, they quaked with the ferocity of shared release, light blazing between them until they both went lax.
Bee slid calming fingers along the intricate plates of Ironhide’s back, listening as the hum of circuitry faded in pulses, as a fan switched on deep in the warrior’s chassis. A slow stinging ignited along both his sides and his back, and sensors informed him that his outer armor and some of his secondary circuitry had been badly scratched. He didn’t mind. He had gotten what he deserved, after all, offering up secondhand the remembered impressions of the one Ironhide truly wanted.
Plainly, Ironhide agreed. “Unfair,” he muttered at length.
Bee felt a swell of sympathy so strong that it gushed between the two of them, even without the full connection of their sparks. He knew what it was to want something so close, but so far out of reach. “You should tell him.”
With a grunt, Ironhide flicked his optics on, their light glowing dim. “Mm.”
“Ironhide.” Bee tightened both arms around him, and their weapons specialist was so large, so intimidating, but a surge of protectiveness moved through him nevertheless. “The worst he can say is no.”
Ironhide rumbled in disrupted comfort, gathering Bee easily up in both arms and rolling them to one side, pulling the smaller bot close against his chest. His body shuddered in a humorless chuckle. “The worst he could do is say no. And then needle me about it for the rest of our lives. I’m not taking the chance.”
Curling into him, Bee shook his head. “Imitation isn’t what you want.”
“This is a workable solution.” The tone invited no further argument, and Bee went sullenly silent. For the first time, Ironhide took a closer look at him, and gave out a low hiss, tracing the scratches along Bee’s sides with the very tips of his fingers. “Sorry. I didn’t mean these, little one.”
Bee shook his head again. “War wounds,” he said with wry amusement, but he caught one of Ironhide’s far larger hands, letting his worry show plainly in his expression when they met each other’s gaze. “It’s affecting you, whether you want it to or not. It’s written all over you.” His advice wouldn’t be welcome, but this certainly counted as his professional opinion, and Ironhide was listening, albeit reluctantly. Bee brought one hand to cover Ironhide’s exposed spark, but didn’t touch, and they both shivered at the near contact. "Here,” he said, “and here.” He tapped his finger at Ironhide’s forehead. “In battle, in Mission City. You stayed close to him. Too close, I think. He’s going to know.”
For a moment, Ironhide watched him in silence, then turned his head away and swore.
Aching for him, Bee touched his face with both hands, stroking features usually so strong and unyielding. “I’m not enough for this.” He didn’t mind admitting the truth.
“You’re what I need.” Ironhide turned his face into the touch, and his hand slid between them, permission implied when his fingers brushed simply enough against Bee’s spark, making it flare in hypersensitive reaction. “I need you, and I have you.” He hesitated then, and surely this was the only act that could ever make him pause. “Will you have me?”
“I want you,” Bee moaned in shaken reassurance. It had been a long, long time. He let his hands slide to Ironhide’s shoulders, and pulled them together again, chest firmly to chest.
*****
“Holy sweet Jesus,” Sam wailed, hands in his hair. “What happened to you?!”
This time Bee had rushed from headquarters, and he’d left the speed limit in tatters on the desert highway back to Tranquility. Sam’s shouting wasn’t entirely welcome, but given the state of his paint--admittedly forgotten until the moment his boy emerged from the school--it was probably warranted. At the moment, other students were eyeing Sam with expressions ranging from curious to unnerved, so Bee swung the door open in obvious invitation.
Sam made a faint sobbing sound that almost undid him, but flopped into the driver’s seat and let Bee shut the door behind him.
“Sam--it’s nothing but surface damage--”
“Did Trent take a key to you again? I swear to God, I’ll kill that fucker...”
Sam looked more than a little capable of carrying out the threat. In fact, he looked eager, and Bee decided to disabuse him of his notions as quickly as possible. “Sam, it happened during training. Ironhide was...I was careless. I’ll see Ratchet tomorrow, and he will repair it.”
Only half-listening, Sam was leaning out the window, and Bee jumped a bit when those small fingers brushed along a scratch from his rear window to his side mirror.
“Jesus, Bee,” he breathed. He dropped back into the seat with his hair wild from the wind; Bee had already pulled away from the school and out onto the road. “You’re okay? Seriously?” His hand traced back and forth along the dashboard, one thumb rubbing absently at the symbol at the center of the wheel. Bee felt himself trying to quiver, and quashed the impulse with all his will. He let the radio answer for him.
I’m all right, don’t nobody worry ’bout me...
Sam frowned. “A real answer, c’mon.”
“I’m fine, Sam. I promise you, all systems are functioning correctly.”
“They’d better be.” Sam bit into his lower lip, one of those unconsciously, painfully human habits of which Bee had grown surprisingly fond in the last several weeks. “Ratchet can fix this? You’re sure?”
“Ratchet put Jazz back together piece by piece, after the restoration of his spark. I won’t give him much trouble.” Bee paused, then admitted, “Though he probably won’t choose to see it that way.” Their medic did enjoy griping about their frequent repairs as much as he privately enjoyed making them. They each took a certain deeper satisfaction in their assigned duties; Optimus had chosen well to create his team.
With a snort, Sam leaned back against the seat. “He’d better be gentle.”
“He subscribes to the unpopular notion that a little pain only reinforces a lesson,” Bee said with a rumble of amusement.
A silence fell between them, familiar but not entirely comfortable, and Bee wondered uneasily why Sam wasn’t behaving as usual, soliloquizing about his school, his eating habits, his father’s obsession with yard work or even his car’s current choice of music, which had gone decidedly sappy again. Perhaps this wasn’t an entirely new pattern--he and the boy had spent many more quiet moments together of late, ever since Mikaela had relocated north to live nearer her father. His transfer to a minimum-security facility a month ago had been a bittersweet victory.
“Bee,” Sam said at last. His hands touched the seat, smoothed along the dashboard, came to rest against the wheel. “If something ever is wrong--really--you can tell me about it. No questions, I swear on my mother’s squashed roses.” He spoke more softly. “I swear, Bee. If there’s a problem for you, then it’s a problem for me, too.”
Bee only barely suppressed a very automotive groan of equal parts frustration and love.
*****
To be continued.
Author: Lyricality (lyricality)
Rating: M/NC-17 for graphic sparksex
Pairings: Eventual Bee/everyone. In this part, Ironhide/Bee with mention of Sam/Bee.
Disclaimer: No, Transformers still doesn't belong to me. It's a travesty. All characters are of legal age.
Note/Summary: Only one day late, this time. =P Again, blame nemi_chan and her marvelous prompt o' doom, in which Bumblebee is the resident pleasurebot of the Autobots. The title is still meant to be as porntastically cheesy as possible. I desperately need suggestions for part three, ack. Thank you so much to everyone for your supportive reviews of part one. ♥ I am glad I won't be alone in the Special Hell.
Part 1/7: (Monday) Prime Time can be found here.
After a bit of reflection, Bumblebee had determined that the solution to his problem was ignoring it. At least on a temporary basis.
He had no means of changing his circumstances, no way of explaining to Sam a concept entirely foreign to not just his experience, but his culture. Instead, he would embrace the status quo. And in the spirit of returning willingly to his full position on the Autobot team, he would enjoy embracing Ironhide, as well. Sometimes he appreciated his duties as much for their distraction as for their benefits to his partners.
Ironhide had less predictability in his habits than did Optimus. He also privately delighted in startling the slag out of Bee at every appropriate opportunity, and today proved to be no exception, when Bee had only a moment’s system warning before two massive hands caught him from the back and yanked him bodily into a broad, low-ceilinged equipment room. The door snapped shut behind him. Bee gave a shriek like grating metal and fired two solar blasts that dented the wall, before Ironhide spoke low against the top of his head.
“Watch your back, little one.”
His voice always carried that rough undercurrent, and his arms loosened around Bee while his hands tightened their grip, fingertips pressing in against chest plating. He was all vicious tenderness. Letting his head tip back, Bee gave him a softly whistling gasp and sigh, his weaponry folding in on itself, snapping back into place beneath his exoskeletal armor. “I didn’t think I needed to watch out against my own team.”
“Should always watch for me,” Ironhide rumbled. “Especially when it’s been such a long time coming.” His fingers delved beneath the bumper edges, massaging circuitry with merciless disregard for its delicacy. Bee couldn’t help himself; he strained forward against each seeking touch with an electrical moan.
The door slid open. Optimus Prime stood solitary in the doorway, his optics blazing and his posture ready for battle, and even Ironhide froze.
Bee did his level best to look endearingly innocent.
Eyeing the two of them, and then the dents in the wall, Optimus sighed. “Watch the infrastructure,” he ordered, with a pointed glance at Ironhide, then turned and let the door slide shut behind him.
Ironhide managed to look more affronted than ashamed, and he immediately returned to tweaking the wires just below Bee’s chest plate, making him squirm. The teasing went on for a full two hundred and twenty-three seconds, sensation rendering him too weak to escape or make more than token sounds of protest. Finally he gathered the buildup of electricity in his neural components and flung it back through Ironhide’s hands, the metal of his fingertips conducting it as easily as pure spark energy.
With a grunt, Ironhide went still behind him, his grip loosening when tremors briefly wracked his far stronger form. “Primus.”
Bee took the reprieve to turn in his arms, making soft sonic pulses that touched him as physically as fingertips.
Ironhide shuddered again in response. “Can’t pretend he didn’t train you well,” he muttered, but pressed them close together, his hands curling around the wing-like projections of doors on Bee’s back, a pumping stroke that left Bee quivering against his chest and arching into the pressure.
When he could speak again, Bee summoned up a shaky reply. “I won’t tell him you said so. He’s already got a complex.”
“Don’t I know it.” Ironhide growled just under the auditory range of any organic being, and the vibration slid through Bee in a sudden pulse. The other bot tried to repeat the motion on his back, but Bee drew away despite his own quiet moan, pulling back toward the center of the room. Perching at the edge of a discarded bit of drilling equipment, he braced himself on both arms, regarding Ironhide with slightly shuttered optics. Bee didn’t mind simply surrendering, but Ironhide liked to work for what he wanted, and Bee considered himself professionally obligated to put pure indulgence above all other concerns.
“Let me show you what else I’ve learned.”
Ironhide crossed both arms over his chest--a surprisingly human pose--but he did take a few steps. “Better be worth the effort.”
With a little twist, Bee jumped off the drilling apparatus, putting it between them.
“Come here,” Ironhide growled.
“Catch me,” Bee said, then gave a squeak when Ironhide took two threatening steps forward, optics burning, a primal energy already crackling through his circuits. Bee could feel it as a low hum, an aura around Ironhide’s armor, and after only a minute or two of quick dodges he let himself be caught against the wall, his arms immediately stretched and pinned. With a gasp, he pressed back when Ironhide dragged them together, chest to chest. That fundamental vibration moved through his body in a rolling, breaking wave.
Ironhide spoke against his neck. “You let me catch you.” Accusatory.
“I know.” Writhing, fingers curling as sensation spread outward from everywhere they touched, Bee trembled. “I wanted it too much.”
Ironhide made a guttural, grinding sound and crushed them together.
His expression was violence, enough to send a hundred lesser Decepticons racing for cover, enough to shoot a tremor of anxiety straight from Bee’s head down to his feet. But he was gentle, so gentle, and as careful in passion as he never was in battle. He dragged Bee down to the floor, where they tangled together with his hands running firm strokes over Bee’s outer armor, paint so smooth and wires catching, metal edges sheering together with sharp friction. A whir and shift, just the slightest touch of transformation, just enough to bring the wheels of Ironhide’s alternate form to bear, and Bee let out a squealing moan when grooved rubber caressed the inner joints of his legs and pushed upward over the center of his chest.
“So responsive,” Ironhide chuckled, but a growl of pained need underscored every word. Bee whimpered in return, his hands catching at Ironhide’s waist, scratching upward to push beneath his chest plating and rub along the join of metal to metal.
Straining his head back, Ironhide roared like a gunned engine. He flung his hands to either side of Bee’s shoulders, his fingers clawing into the floor with a shriek that left wide grooves in the metal. Optimus would scold them, but Bee couldn’t care, not when Ironhide’s control had buckled and his huge frame was rocking with pleasure.
Bee kept one hand moving over the spark casing, little shocks of electricity already leaping between the metal and his fingers. He flung his other arm around Ironhide’s shoulders, tugging him down.
“Be with me.” Overheated circuitry drove his voice out of its usual register, an octave higher. “I want more of you.”
Rumbling an agreement, Ironhide retreated enough to push Bee’s armor to either side, his haste sending hydraulics systems into disarray, but that was minor damage, and the flash of discomfort hardly prevented Bee from making a softly sobbing sound when his spark was exposed and immediately assaulted. He returned the favor by laying bare Ironhide’s spark in a few deft touches, and then jerking the other bot down to bring them crashing back together.
Sparks touched and released, touching again and holding for a few moments of shuddering physical connection before Ironhide edged back. Another harsh moment of temporary union and Bee moaned out his pleasure, loving the interplay of spark against spark, the flashes of emotion they shared.
The usual stillness of spark connection was never enough; Ironhide needed action. He wanted tension, motion, friction, and Bee gave as much as he could, writhing in those big arms, bringing their sparks together again, again, again. So fast but so sweet. Metal groaned under pressure, wires hissed against each other, heat and light sparked where they rubbed together in an act that resembled battle but meant healing, devotion. Ironhide shuddered above him, groaning when Bee reached out with thoughts instead of fingers, caressing spark to spark. He caught the deeper strands of desire that he knew he would find--always present, stronger and stronger over the last decades, so strong now that they lit the warrior’s surface thoughts like blazing pathways to a single target.
Let me give you what you really want.
He gave up his memories to influence Ironhide’s perceptions, surrendering the sensation of stronger, nimbler fingers caressing wires into snapping electrical bliss, nobler features intent with passion, contorted with release, and a voice so much more tantalizing than his own gasping instructions with strangely surgical precision.
Bee overlaid those memories over his own touches, his own emotions, and fed them to Ironhide’s spark in a series of shuddering bursts, holding onto the last tendrils of his own control.
Ironhide’s groan made his words almost unintelligible, but Bee recognized the name. Letting his hands soothe along Ironhide’s back, he whispered between them. “I want you--I want you.” The surge between their sparks took him by surprise, so fast and so hard that he screamed, a tinny sound muffled by Ironhide’s echoing roar. Enormous hands caught him in a crushing grip and fingers dragged down his body like a painful aftershock of ecstasy.
Writhing together, they quaked with the ferocity of shared release, light blazing between them until they both went lax.
Bee slid calming fingers along the intricate plates of Ironhide’s back, listening as the hum of circuitry faded in pulses, as a fan switched on deep in the warrior’s chassis. A slow stinging ignited along both his sides and his back, and sensors informed him that his outer armor and some of his secondary circuitry had been badly scratched. He didn’t mind. He had gotten what he deserved, after all, offering up secondhand the remembered impressions of the one Ironhide truly wanted.
Plainly, Ironhide agreed. “Unfair,” he muttered at length.
Bee felt a swell of sympathy so strong that it gushed between the two of them, even without the full connection of their sparks. He knew what it was to want something so close, but so far out of reach. “You should tell him.”
With a grunt, Ironhide flicked his optics on, their light glowing dim. “Mm.”
“Ironhide.” Bee tightened both arms around him, and their weapons specialist was so large, so intimidating, but a surge of protectiveness moved through him nevertheless. “The worst he can say is no.”
Ironhide rumbled in disrupted comfort, gathering Bee easily up in both arms and rolling them to one side, pulling the smaller bot close against his chest. His body shuddered in a humorless chuckle. “The worst he could do is say no. And then needle me about it for the rest of our lives. I’m not taking the chance.”
Curling into him, Bee shook his head. “Imitation isn’t what you want.”
“This is a workable solution.” The tone invited no further argument, and Bee went sullenly silent. For the first time, Ironhide took a closer look at him, and gave out a low hiss, tracing the scratches along Bee’s sides with the very tips of his fingers. “Sorry. I didn’t mean these, little one.”
Bee shook his head again. “War wounds,” he said with wry amusement, but he caught one of Ironhide’s far larger hands, letting his worry show plainly in his expression when they met each other’s gaze. “It’s affecting you, whether you want it to or not. It’s written all over you.” His advice wouldn’t be welcome, but this certainly counted as his professional opinion, and Ironhide was listening, albeit reluctantly. Bee brought one hand to cover Ironhide’s exposed spark, but didn’t touch, and they both shivered at the near contact. "Here,” he said, “and here.” He tapped his finger at Ironhide’s forehead. “In battle, in Mission City. You stayed close to him. Too close, I think. He’s going to know.”
For a moment, Ironhide watched him in silence, then turned his head away and swore.
Aching for him, Bee touched his face with both hands, stroking features usually so strong and unyielding. “I’m not enough for this.” He didn’t mind admitting the truth.
“You’re what I need.” Ironhide turned his face into the touch, and his hand slid between them, permission implied when his fingers brushed simply enough against Bee’s spark, making it flare in hypersensitive reaction. “I need you, and I have you.” He hesitated then, and surely this was the only act that could ever make him pause. “Will you have me?”
“I want you,” Bee moaned in shaken reassurance. It had been a long, long time. He let his hands slide to Ironhide’s shoulders, and pulled them together again, chest firmly to chest.
*****
“Holy sweet Jesus,” Sam wailed, hands in his hair. “What happened to you?!”
This time Bee had rushed from headquarters, and he’d left the speed limit in tatters on the desert highway back to Tranquility. Sam’s shouting wasn’t entirely welcome, but given the state of his paint--admittedly forgotten until the moment his boy emerged from the school--it was probably warranted. At the moment, other students were eyeing Sam with expressions ranging from curious to unnerved, so Bee swung the door open in obvious invitation.
Sam made a faint sobbing sound that almost undid him, but flopped into the driver’s seat and let Bee shut the door behind him.
“Sam--it’s nothing but surface damage--”
“Did Trent take a key to you again? I swear to God, I’ll kill that fucker...”
Sam looked more than a little capable of carrying out the threat. In fact, he looked eager, and Bee decided to disabuse him of his notions as quickly as possible. “Sam, it happened during training. Ironhide was...I was careless. I’ll see Ratchet tomorrow, and he will repair it.”
Only half-listening, Sam was leaning out the window, and Bee jumped a bit when those small fingers brushed along a scratch from his rear window to his side mirror.
“Jesus, Bee,” he breathed. He dropped back into the seat with his hair wild from the wind; Bee had already pulled away from the school and out onto the road. “You’re okay? Seriously?” His hand traced back and forth along the dashboard, one thumb rubbing absently at the symbol at the center of the wheel. Bee felt himself trying to quiver, and quashed the impulse with all his will. He let the radio answer for him.
I’m all right, don’t nobody worry ’bout me...
Sam frowned. “A real answer, c’mon.”
“I’m fine, Sam. I promise you, all systems are functioning correctly.”
“They’d better be.” Sam bit into his lower lip, one of those unconsciously, painfully human habits of which Bee had grown surprisingly fond in the last several weeks. “Ratchet can fix this? You’re sure?”
“Ratchet put Jazz back together piece by piece, after the restoration of his spark. I won’t give him much trouble.” Bee paused, then admitted, “Though he probably won’t choose to see it that way.” Their medic did enjoy griping about their frequent repairs as much as he privately enjoyed making them. They each took a certain deeper satisfaction in their assigned duties; Optimus had chosen well to create his team.
With a snort, Sam leaned back against the seat. “He’d better be gentle.”
“He subscribes to the unpopular notion that a little pain only reinforces a lesson,” Bee said with a rumble of amusement.
A silence fell between them, familiar but not entirely comfortable, and Bee wondered uneasily why Sam wasn’t behaving as usual, soliloquizing about his school, his eating habits, his father’s obsession with yard work or even his car’s current choice of music, which had gone decidedly sappy again. Perhaps this wasn’t an entirely new pattern--he and the boy had spent many more quiet moments together of late, ever since Mikaela had relocated north to live nearer her father. His transfer to a minimum-security facility a month ago had been a bittersweet victory.
“Bee,” Sam said at last. His hands touched the seat, smoothed along the dashboard, came to rest against the wheel. “If something ever is wrong--really--you can tell me about it. No questions, I swear on my mother’s squashed roses.” He spoke more softly. “I swear, Bee. If there’s a problem for you, then it’s a problem for me, too.”
Bee only barely suppressed a very automotive groan of equal parts frustration and love.
*****
To be continued.