Ep 0.5 - Shameless - Closed

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It was an affliction. Downforce knew that. A glitch, some errant factory error numerical string, a misplaced glyph structure, somewhere deep in his core coding. Somewhere in his most basic makeup something was supposed to solve for geddra and solved for araeph instead and it wasn't critical, thank the first Primes, wasn't the sort of thing that locked him up and had him drooling coolant like some poor slaggers, but it was there and it made him ITCH with a quiet, passive glitch of an obsession.

It was an affliction and he knew it, but sometimes that wasn't such a bad thing. Take the current air of the Nemesis, for instance - the darker than usual shadows, the hushed comm channels, and clustered bunches of Eradicons that crept around the corridors like frightened sparklings. It was dismal. It was depressing. It was dank and dark and positively dull and other alliterations of the same, and Downforce hated all of it. So when it became too oppressive, the answer was obvious - he was glitched and everyone knew that a mech's glitch occasionally just needed to be tended to and no mech could really be held responsible for what he did while glitched. That was, after all, the entire definition of a glitch.

Downforce was glitched, and he knew it, and he reveled in it.

Of course, the off hand of a glorious day spent indulging his own personal glitch was that several days later he was still limping from the misalignment of his backstruts and whatever had shaken loose in his undercarriage, to say nothing of the aching grind of hydraulic pressure pads that had given up the ghost somewhere around hour two of glitching out. Autorepair could do a lot of things, but it wasn't going to untorque his struts or replace his hydraulic pads any time soon, and the limping was starting to scare the poor Eradicons, who seemed to expect him to keel over gray and cold any klik now. With a heavy sigh, Downforce had concluded that there was nothing else for it but to pay a visit to his very most favorite part of the Nemesis.

He entered the repair bay hands first, because the hands were carrying a brand new container of the finest premium wax and chamois cloths that the human automotive industry could supply, a token offering of his greatest devotion, and the rest of him only followed when nothing immediately took his hands off at the wrists. "Knock Out? Sweetspark, are you busy?"

[Deleted]

"You'd better have more than that to offer if half the stories I've heard are true."

Knock Out was much too classy to resort to what medics referred to as the fine art of wrenchthrowing, but if there was any mech who tempted him to practice his aim, it was the mech currently attempting to look innocent on his doorstep.

Knock Out knew better. If Downforce hadn't shown himself to be both genuinely amusing and possessed of excellent taste in gifts, Knock Out would have by now "accidentally" driven a laser scalpel through the grounder's processor just to save himself the hassle the idiot brought. Knock Out was fairly certain that Downforce spent more time in his medbay than any other individual mech. Usually through his own stupidity.

"How many pads am I replacing this time? And what did you DO to your alignment? Honestly, one of these days I'm going to just scrap you and--ooh, is that Collinite?" Knock Out snagged Downforce's offerings to the Medic God on his way past. "Well. I suppose I can fix your sorry aft once more, at least."

Knock Out smirked at Downforce over his shoulder. "On the berth, sweetspark."

[Deleted]

"Music to my audios," Downforce purred. Grinning, he sauntered (alright, limped, but if he rolled into each step it looked more like sauntering) over to the medbay berth, hooked a hip onto the edge and, with a push that came primarily out of his arm hydraulics, slid up onto it. Something in his pelvis made an alarming sort of 'crunch' noise. Downforce kept his smile in place, and if a bit of strain showed around the edges of his optics... well. A mech didn't come to the repair bay just to oggle the sway of the good doctor's trimlined shiny aft.

(Alright, SOME of them did, but it was considered poor form and Knock Out didn't, as a general rule, encourage it.)

Knock Out was also giving him a look that boded ill news for Downforce's backstruts when the medic got his hands on them. His smile slipped up another notch as he lay back, wiggling a little (and thankfully, that time, nothing crunched). "How would you like me? Back? Front? Stretched out, bent over, tied down? You know I aim to please." ::Four main primary pads, strut alignment, and, ah... whatever just came loose. Pretty pretty please, sir.::

[Deleted]

"On your back, and don't tempt me," Knock Out growled. "Or I'll break out that pair of cuffs with your designation on them."

He vented a sigh, scanners already washing over The Glitch. He laughed mirthlessly. ::Four primaries, two secondaries, full alignment, and that was your left femoral pelvic joint popping out of alignment. The right's not much better, and congratulations, you get to have both of your legs taken off so I can repair the microdamage to your joint cups. As well as new tension cables, as you've managed to stretch the ones you have to the Pit and back.::

Knock Out stalked around the berth. "I hope you weren't expecting to do anything for the rest of the day, because your aft--" He leaned down to purr in The Glitch's ear. "--is mine."

The medic sauntered toward the storage shelves as he marked Downforce in the mainframe as off-duty until further notice due to medical treatment. "Though I like it when you call me 'sir'. You can keep doing that."

[Deleted]

Femoral pelvic joint - oh, was THAT the sound he'd heard? Scrap. And both legs. Double scrap. Downforce kept his smile in place with both long practice of not displaying more weakness than necessary and a top class degree in how to appease medical professionals, Knock Out in particular.

Knock Out was a mech of discerning tastes. Knock Out appreciated fast cars, powerful engines, shiny finishes, and while he did NOT appreciate extra work he did seem to appreciate some relief from the general monotony of surly or flinching reactions to the medical profession.

Downforce aimed to please, and if he couldn't always keep from doing the first then he could at least supply the second. Stretching out, he vented softly as the motion eased something that was kinked around his hip joint, and, smile in place, raised his arms above his head, back strut arching just a touch (which actually... huh. Popped a linkage that felt good.) "Yes, sir," he purred. "Anything you say, sir. One aft - and all the rest of me - at your disposal."

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Knock Out rolled his optics. "You bet your sweet--stop that! You'll distort the joint. Just...lie there and not make anything worse for five kliks, if you will?" He gathered a few materials off the shelf. A few parts, a few of the less-used attachments for his own multitool assembly, and a few things that he didn't need but which always elicited a satisfyingly intimidated reaction. Not that Downforce needed the theater. He was smart enough and in the medbay enough to know how to behave. But still...it was all part of the game.

Knock Out turned back with hands full of medical implements and an evil smirk in place. He laid them out with meticulous care on the instrument tray by the berth, running a loving, considerate claw along the shaft of one particularly wicked-looking cutter-grinder. "Hmm...you are one of my favorite patients. Always getting yourself injured...always letting me pull out the FUN toys...."

He followed his trailing finger to lean over Downforce's chest, long hand splayed over the mech's chestplates as the medic's cable slid out to run teasingly over a dataport cover. "Going to let me in, sweetspark? I promise to make it good for you. Or at the least not horribly painful."

[Deleted]

A lightning quick search through files he had already queued up netted him one that he synched and filtered through his own vocalizer, producing a vented purr of a moan that could have come from any downclass street-grade entertainment vids - understandable, as that was precisely where Downforce had recorded the soundbyte from. He was reasonably certain he had never actually made any such sound, ever, in his entire existence. Another filter scrubbed a light trace of static through his vocalizer, giving it a huskier sound. "And I'm supposed to resist that? Oh Doctor, sir, you always make it so goo-gkk!"

The last bit came out a little scrambled on a gurgle of static that he hadn't intended to voice. Downforce had opened the dataport obediently, braced and expectant for the snap influx of the medic's cable, but the first rush of medical codes against his firewalls made his engine choke for a moment all the same. Recovering, Downforce let his walls drop, forced himself not to flinch from the first deeper intrusion into his codes, and manually booted up his fans into a stuttered humm. "Oh Primus, so good..."

And then Knock Out triggered medical codes deep in Downforce's neural net and it really WAS that slagging good, better than high grade, better than overloading, almost as good as flying, the instant when everything that he'd been forcing himself to not be aware of or trying to ignore suddenly stopped hurting. He couldn't feel a slagging thing through half his struts and it was beautiful. Downforce's next moan wasn't faked in the slightest, a tank deep vent of pleasure at the sudden cessation. "Primus..."

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"Mmmyes, you like that, don't you?" Knock Out massaged Downforce's shoulder linkages, fingers sliding down to test the tension in cables (pathetic) and the spring left in hydraulic padding (even more pathetic). "You must...you're always getting yourself fragged up so you can come and bare it all for me."

Speaking of....

Knock Out went over Downforce's medscan again. It wasn't LIKELY that he'd managed to slam himself into the ground hard enough to crack his spark casing, but it wasn't completely out of the question, either. And Downforce was one of the few mechs in existence who, if he HAD, might not know.

Knock Out had been shocked when he'd first seen Downforce's medical specs. He thought that surely he'd read them wrong, or there'd been some mistake. Surely "spark casing: autonomic and manual override commands locked. medical access only" and the list of removed (not just malfunctioning or deactivated or even problematic, but REMOVED) spark case sensors didn't mean what they said.

But they had. Knock Out had seen it with his own optics the first time Downforce had taken a shot to the chest and Knock Out had needed to dig shrapnel out of his internals.

Knock Out hadn't quite known what to make of it when Downforce had responded to his own snark with the most outrageous flirting the medic had seen since the Academy. Downforce's records didn't note how the damage had happened, though Knock Out had a few educated guesses.

Downforce had joined long before Cybertron had gone dark. If he'd joined when the Decepticons were still fighting the Senate, well...Enforcer interrogators could be just as cruel as any Decepticon. Knock Out could think of several tortures that could burn out spark case sensors...and make a mech not want to replace them. How Downforce had gone from that to being such an amiable flirt, Knock Out couldn't fathom but didn't complain about.

What he COULD complain about was the lack of spark case feedback into the medical logs. Those sensors weren't just there to give a mecha a good time, after all.

Luckily, a more detailed scanpulse revealed nothing amiss with Downforce's core, and Knock Out went back to groping his joints.

He waited until he had all the proper inhibitory medtech in place, then smiled down into Downforce's relieved expression. "There we go. Now, just lie back and relax. Don't worry. I'll be gentle."

::Joint cups first. And because you brought a proper offering, I'll make it quick.::

[Deleted]

"See?" Downforce sighed, the blissful note only half feigned because it really did feel good, everything he hadn't been aware of being tight relaxing. "I knew you loved me. It's alright, sir, you don't have to say anything, I can tell by the way yougkkzt~!"

It wasn't, strictly speaking, pain - Knock Out was good and knew his business and there were med blocks in place. It was just vibration and pressure and a slagging weird feeling as the medic's sharp fingers dug in, coupled with a code breach that released frame locks, and twisted Downforce's entire left hip free of the joint cup. Error messages flooded his HUD and were just as quickly dismissed, fading into numb blackness. Downforce drew in a deep ventilation just to prove that he could, to soothe his systems with the correct status checks of doing so, and then exvented it on a long, low moan. "Yes," he hissed, optics half shuttered. "Yes, just like that, sir, that's perfect."

[Deleted]

Knock Out's lips quirked as he set the leg aside and transformed out his grinder. ::You are ridiculous.::

Amusing, but ridiculous.

"Mmmhmm," he said as he adjusted the lighting to get where he needed it. "Mmm, SO glad you're enjoying yourself."

He dragged a finger along the joint's interior, to tease and to get a sense of just how much work he had ahead of him. Plenty, by the feel of it. "Mmm, someone's been a bad mech. Look at all that damage. I hope you like it rough, sweetspark." He set the grinder against the first of the burrs in the joint cup, and sparks flew as he worked his way across, smoothing.

::What DID you do to get in this state? Or do I want to know?::

[Deleted]

The buzz of the grinder threw static into Downforce's voice- not the good, tantilizing kind, but a sort of hiccup in his intakes that he couldn't force down, the deep vibrations of metal against metal sinking straight into his primary struts and carrying through his entire frame. It pushed a sort of squeak out of his vocalizer and despite the best of intentions it would have been impossible to remain still without the aid of the medical blocks, not when his struts were buzzing like the center of an angry Insecticon nest.

Voice glitched, he switched to comms, letting glyph and field speak for him in an honest burst of sheer joy that the memory of his illicitly spent hours called up. ::Only ridiculous for you, sir. And oh, oh sir, you should have SEEN it. It was BEAUTIFUL. This long, empty stretch in the middle of nowhere, flat and straight and clean, and the way the human asphalt grips your wheels when you're going at speed... and then, right at the end, there's a BUMP, one little short rise - I hit it going 287 revolutions to the klik and oh, Primus, I must have gone sixteen framelengths before I hit pavement. It was AMAZING.::

[Deleted]

Mmmm, that did make a nice picture, though of course the medic would never admit it.

Knock Out rolled a glyph of exasperation The Glitch's way, followed by deadpan markers ::I'm sure. And HOW many times did you take that little joyride?::

He gave a particularly damaged area a hard swipe of the grinder, vented air at it to clear the dust, and then went about repairing the damaged couplings that were causing the femoral joint to pop out of alignment. That took some heating and shaping, followed by a quick-cooler and a scrub with cleanser. The medic picked dark granules of asphalt out of a few flanking seams, then ran a teasing hand up over a side plate, where Downforce's finish was scratched and scraped away by obvious and repeated contact with concrete and blacktop. "Darling, darling, as much as I appreciate the call of the road, one must protect one's finish! How will you ever find a nice mech if you don't look your best?"

Knock Out wiggled nanogel-laden fingers into the joint cup, spreading the nanite-laden lubricant around with a bit more relish than required before turning his attention to the detached leg. He magnaclamped it to the berth and investigated the joint. It was likewise bent and burred, and he brought out the grinder again.

[Deleted]

::Um...:: Never, but never, lie to a medic. It was bad form. Also, if they found out later, your aft was so much scrap metal. As the average (and even not so average) Decepticon's spark lay in the hands of the 'Con medics, having the medics fragged off at you was NEVER a good thing. Downforce winced and overlaid his comms with glyphs of apology and very sincere respect. ::Ah... eleven times. Twelfth time was when something went 'crack'.::

The grinder work was finished, thank Primus, and even numbed and sensor dead Downforce fancied he could feel some ghost remnant of Knock Out's strong, quick hands working over his joint. He certainly could feel the sharp tipped servos that flicked up his side and locked down several responses before he could commit the sin of moving before the medic allowed. "There's only one mech for me," he said aloud, a little honestly vented in the sharp need to remain motionless, "and you've left me spark broken, sir - if there's no hope then there's no point in polishing. I'll have to take what I can get from the road."

[Deleted]

::Glitch. Should I even bother yelling at you? Consider yourself yelled at.:: Knock Out's glyphs were saturated with resigned exasperation. Downforce was The Glitch like no other he'd ever known. No diagnostic he'd ever done (and he'd tried several times) had revealed what, exactly, shook loose in Downforce's processor when speed and being airborne came into play. Knock Out suspected that it was a sparktrait. It was like Primus had shoved a Seeker or racer spark into a too-slow grounder body.

Knock Out focused on repairing the leg for a bit, grinding what needed grinding and changing out parts too warped or worn to be fixed. New tension cables and pads, and Downforce was lucky: he hadn't cracked or warped the actual STRUT like he had the last time he'd pulled something this obsessively stupid. "Yes, well," he said as he examined his work critically, "there's only one of me. Not nearly enough to go around and all that."

He turned, Downforce's leg in his hand. "You're just going to have to get over me," he purred, as he slotted the leg back into place and sent the right codes to partially engage the frontliner's frame lock again. He scanned, tweaked, scanned again, tweaked even less, then, satisfied, fully engaged the frame lock in the new alignment.

The medic's hands trailed over to the right hip as he sighed. "Hopefully by not slagging yourself regularly. Honestly. You owe me a bit more than polish for this. You're so--" He got a grip, shuttled over more code, and pulled the right leg away. "--high-maintenance."

[Deleted]

"Sorry?" He wasn't, really, of course - well, he was and wasn't. He was sorry to cause extra work for the medic but he couldn't really be sorry about the activity that had caused it and really, despite Knock Out's rather fearsome reputation among the ranks, the medic was actually quite fun and Downforce couldn't bring himself to be sorry about spending time with the other mech, even if it was flat on his back on a medical berth. So it was a double edged blade that came out more on the side of not-sorry than genuinely sorry, but he put an extra bit of effort into the apologetic subordinate pulse and was rewarded with a glimpse of the medic's amused smirk.

Honestly, if he had even a smidgen of actual interest, he probably would be hopelessly chasing the medic. Knock Out was a truly sweet pair of rims on an immaculately smooth frame that looked like it was in motion even when it was standing still, with a sharp processor to match. Thankfully, however, Downforce didn't have any interest - which actually WAS his own glitch, no fault to Knock Out - which made their ongoing game harmless, amusing, and just plain fun without any of the messier entanglements.

"I'll have to suffer through it, sir," he said aloud. "I'm sure I'll get over it - well, no, I won't, there's no one like you - but I'll do my best. And you know I'm-" one sharp vent cycle as his leg came free and then the rest in a spilled rush because the grinder was coming into play again, "-always good for polish. Or more."

Tight comms, passed through frame metal from his plates to Knock Out's hands, were the best kind of privacy and all teasing aside, Downforce did believe in making fair payment, especially when he was causing unnecessary work. ::I don't suppose you heard the bit about the rogue, possibly canibalistic, femme lurking out in Earth's wilderness? Jeff's been going on about it for days.::