Commentary Meme: GrappleandHoist
GrappleandHoist for __wilderness__ My comments are in bold.
Title: GrappleandHoist
Author: Sister_Dear
Rating: PG
Warnings: oblivious Hoist, no actual kink (sorry!)
Prompt: Transformers G1, Grapple/Hoist: Partnership - When it was just Blurr referring to them as ‘GrappleandHoist’, Hoist didn’t think much of it. When Perceptor started doing it, he began to suspect he’d missed something, somewhere along the way.
Summary: Hoist gets a clue.
Hee. Okay, with this story, pretty much the entire point of writing it was just to play. I always thought of these characters as exactly what the title implies; two names slurred together, never apart, like that couple in the comic Zits, RichandAmy. It amused me greatly to think that was how the Autobots themselves thought of those two. At the point I wrote this, they were still pretty new characters to me; I knew that Hoist helped Grapple build things, but wasn't aware of Hoist's position as Autobot family doctor. So their relationship in this fic is based entirely around the former, with them being long-time friends and working partners.
When Blurr’s distinct rapid-fire speech carried mention of “GrappleandHoist” across the rec room, Hoist glanced up long enough to share an amused glace with Grapple before returning to the blueprints spread out between them.
Started out with Blurr because he, being the fastest speaker among the Autobots, is bound to run their names together like he does with all his other speech. Nothing worth noting. Then I worked backwards, to people less and less likely to slurr their speech, so that to Hoist it would seem stranger and stranger.
When “GrappleandHoist,” filtered through the dull roar a second time and this voice didn’t belong to Blurr, Hoist looked up again, startled. Grapple hadn’t seemed to notice. Hoist hesitated, deliberating. Grapple shuffled one of the datapads to the side, catching Hoist’s attention with a question about the coolant systems, and the incident passed out of Hoist’s processor, momentarily dismissed as unimportant.
Ah, Hoist. He is in that happy, oblivious place of being wonderfully content to have a friend he is as familiar with as Grapple. The possibility that things could go further has not truly occurred to him. On the rare occasion it does, he dismisses the idea; he's not entirely sure Grapple even has a sex drive.
-0-
“Grapple and Hoist,” Prowl called as he gave out work assignments, and Hoist wondered if his audios had begun to malfunction, or had the normally steady tones actually slurred those three words together, just slightly?
Kind of got Prowl out of order in the "less and less likely to slurr speech" order, but I needed someone that would actually make Hoist sit up and pay attention. XD
That was when Hoist actually started listening, and he began to hear it everywhere.
“Hey, Grapplen’Hoist!” Jazz greeted them one morning.
“Hi, Grapple Hoist, sorry I can’t talk but I told Mirage I’d meet him to go shooting and I’m late so sorry bye, Grapple Hoist,” Bluestreak babbled at them a few afternoons later, not once stopping from his hurried rush down the hallway.
But it was Perceptor’s call that finally convinced him.
Hello, Hoist. Now that you're paying attention, Mr. Cluebat here is going to be whacking you upside the head until you get it.
-0-
“GrappleandHoist? I require your assistance.”
A beat of silence spread through the room as the two mechs in question pulled their processors out of the table-full of blueprints in their shared quarters.
“We’ll be right there, Perceptor,” Hoist replied, recovering himself. He turned to see Grapple leaning reluctantly away, only just then realizing that their forearms had been touching. In fact, now that he thought about it, they brushed up against each other quite frequently when working on one of their projects.
“My dear Grapple,” Hoist said carefully, “have you noticed, ah…”
Grapple tilted his head expectantly, that particular slant that said he already knew both the rest of the question and the answer but was waiting politely for Hoist to finish anyway. But Hoist, to his chagrin, found he could not actually voice his thought aloud.
I'm not actually sure I would have written Grapple as waiting politely, now that I've got their personalities settled more distinctly. Perhaps waiting because Hoist gets peeved when Grapple answers a question he hasn't even finished asking, and it wastes more time to placate him once he's been put off than it does to just wait for him to finish speaking.
“We mustn’t keep Perceptor waiting,” he finally managed. The moment he said the words, he felt dissatisfied with them. It was time to confirm his suspicions, he decided, just as soon as Perceptor was done with them.
I was -so- uncertain about how to write their voices because I wasn't sure how far to take the accents. Finally decided, heck to it, this is halfway to crack anyway, I'll let their speech patterns be as blatantly British as I know how. Which may not actually be all that British. ^^;
-0-
When, later that evening as they once again leaned side by side over a spread of schematics, Hoist let his forearm brush briefly against Grapple’s, Grapple’s vocalizer faltered ever so briefly. When Hoist did it again a few minutes later, bracing one hand on the table by Grapple’s elbow and leaning forward as if to double-check measurements near the top of the page, Grapple seemed to hesitate before leaning forward and sideways into the touch. Their shoulder components brushed.
Ohhh, you two are such flirts!
Hoist lifted his head, peering at Grapple out of the corner of his optic only to find Grapple staring straight at him. Hoist reset his vocalizer, beginning to speak even before the slight static settled. “If we… adjust quadrant B to utilize the support structure already in place in quadrant C…we…”
Grapple’s optics were dark, and so very close. Hoist leaned in until their foreheads were touching.
“It would solve the weight issue,” Grapple finished. Hoist could feel the slight vibration of his speech through their touching helms.
“Hm,” Hoist agreed, feeling blindly for Grapple’s hand on the table until he found it, or Grapple found his. Hoist daringly ran the tips of his fingers along Grapple’s, shifted them up until they ran along the back of his hand before feeling gently at his wrist components. “And, with the weight, mm, taken care of, we…hm.” For the second time that day, his sentence trailed off into nothing.
Wrists are sexy, baby.
I had to tweak the details of this scene a few times because I kept forgetting who only had one hand and which side it was on.
“My dear Hoist,” Grapple said, reaching up with his free hand to run a finger along the edge of Hoist’s windshield, “I did wonder when you were going to stop teasing.”
And here Hoist has been unknowingly leading Grapple on for eons. Tsk tsk, Hoist.