Impromptu

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

 

PG-13
IDW
Kup, Drift
spoilers for Spotlight Drift?  
for tf_rare_pairing  weekly request response Kup, Drift 'you don't know what I've seen'
 

 

Kup straddled the end of the bench, dropping a cube in front of Drift.  Exactly where he thought he’d be—as far away from everyone as he could manage on the Trion.  

Drift looked up, startled, optics hooding. “Thank you,” he said, the words still just a little awkward, signs that even now he was still unaccustomed to basic courtesy.  Little things like that told Kup a lot more than he let on about how Drift had been.  And how far the mech had come.  He maybe stumbled over the words, but he didn’t forget them. Kid might not get everything right, but he tried. 

“Want to talk about it?”

A faint smile. “Not really?”  Guessing it wasn’t really a question as much as a request, and not knowing the right response. 

Kup took a sip from his own cube. “Yeah, not really an option.”

“Thought not.”  Drift matched the sip, feeling out the protocols. 

“Not kidding when I said I wanted you on my team,” Kup said.

“Wanted.”  Stressing the tense.

Kup cocked his head.  Sharp one.  “Want.  Still do. Seen you in combat.”  He gave an approving nod.  “Turmoil’s no slouch and you took him one-on-one.”

“Former commander.”  Drift’s optics floated to his hands, studying the white plates.  “Springer’s right. That one was personal.  The next one….” He gave a shrug. 

“You doubting, or you just piggybacking on Springer?” He felt the blue eyes jab up at him. Oh yeah, kid, been at this longer’n you been alive.

“I don’t doubt,” Drift murmured.  “Done a lot wrong. Not going back.” His mouth twisted, which he tried to bury in another sip from his cube.

That what Springer’d said?  No wonder the white mech had spent the whole day glowering in the CR room, where Perceptor hung in the blue effervescent nutrient bath. All Kup had heard was the start of the argument, through the office door—Springer yelling, Drift yelling back, and then Springer yelling to Drift’s responses, short, quiet, petering out as though his will to fight had broken. It was that Kup had come to find out.  If a dressingdown by Springer broke a mech, he wasn’t any good to the Wreckers. But Kup had a feeling something more was going on.  For one thing, Drift didn’t seem the kind that was easily intimidatable.  Otherwise Turmoil’d’ve scared the grease out of him.

“Rather die,” Drift added, optics dark and strange.

“Yeah? Kinda rather you didn’t.” Kup had no patience for angsty histrionics and stuff. Half the slag he’d been through? Pit, that’d be the day when mechs caught him angsting around with his handplate stapled to his helm.  “Look. I’ll level with you.”  He couldn’t help the wry grin: he always said that when he was about to only go halfsies on the truth. “Word is, Megatron himself hired the heavy hitter to come after you.”

“Lockdown.” Drift gave a derisive snort. “Not a heavy hitter. Coward. Skulker.  Mercenary.” He spat the last word as though it were poison.

Good to know.  Kup filed that piece of information away, along with Drift’s opinion. Drift was still half-Decepticon, and his sharp assessments could come in pretty handy.  “Point is that Ol’ Megs himself’s heard of you. Kinda makes you a big deal.” 

“Not a ‘big deal’,” Drift murmured. “Traitor.  Loose end.”

Kup just shook his head.  “More reason to come after you, ain’t it?” 

Drift’s mouth thinned, optics sliding aside, knowing Kup was right.  Yeah? Didn’t get this old and this handsome bein’ stupid, kid.   

“Look. We just want to know what we’re up against. What kind of extra security we need to set around you.” 

“None,” Drift said. “Anyone comes after me, just get out of the way. Can handle it myself.”

Kup laughed. “Cute, kid, really. But we don’t work that way, here.”  He took a long sip, studying Drift over the cube’s rim.   He reached forward, tapping the Autobot insignias stamped on Drift’s spaulders, still glossy and new, not like his own, battered, faded, layered from a hundred repairs and touchups.  “This means something, don’t it?”

Drift’s gaze grew sharp. “Yes,” he said, warily, expecting some challenge. 

“Look, I ain’t gonna ask what it means to you.  That’s for you to figure out on your own. But to us?  It means you’re one of us.”  He let his optics float over to Perceptor’s regen tank. “I think you get it.”

“I was the only one left,” Drift said.  “You don’t know what they’d do to him.” His hands curled almost protectively around the un-drunk cube. 

“Have a pretty good idea.”  Didn’t fall off the conveyor belt yesterday, kid. 

“Then you wouldn’t have left him.”  Drift’s gaze, sharper than one of his blades. 

“Wasn’t my choice,” Kup countered. Kid argued like he fought--sharp, short, blunt.

“Could have done more.”

This.  Kup had figured already this would be Drift’s big issue.  Nobody could ever do enough to satisfy him.  Least of all himself, which had the marginal benefit of making Drift not a hypocrite.  Kup rolled his optics.  Yeah that was some consolation, huh?  “Going to burn yourself out mighty quick with that attitude, Drift.”

Drift shrugged. “Not about me. Doesn’t matter.” 

Kup let the irritated sigh out. Frag.  Drift’s comment about leaving Perceptor struck a little too deep.  “It does matter. You’re one of us now.” 

“Springer doesn’t seem to think so.”

“Springer ain’t Primus.” Springer might think he’s that damn important, but he’d never think he was that fraggin’ virtuous.  Kup could hear the edge in his own  voice.  He reached in his storage. 

“Maybe he’s right not to trust me.”  Drift frowned, looking from the regen tank, studying the jagged hole in the chassis, his face a blank, expressionless mask. As if trying to prove he were brutal by looking on horror without blinking. 

Kup…wasn’t impressed.  He took the cy-gar from his storage. This would help. This would settle him.  “And that’d make me, what? A fool?”  Might as well bring this to a head. Say it to my face—if you really believe it.  Which Kup didn’t buy for an astroklik.

“You don’t know what I’ve seen, what I’ve done.”  The optics trailed down Perceptor’s legs, lingering for a moment on the readouts and their steady, rhythmic lines. 

“You don’t know what I’ve seen, either,” Kup countered, taking a pull at the cy-gar, feeling the tingling, cold rush.  Better, much better. “Know what I see, kid?”  He knew better than to wait for an answer, now that the irritation was fading.  “I see a mech who's afraid of being a hero.”

Drift blinked, gaped, shook his head.  “You’ve got it all wrong.”

Kup gestured with the cy-gar to the tank. “Do I?”

Comments

[onetruesikorsky.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh Kup I love you so much. Good fic - the only recommendation I'd offer is a possible italicizing of Kup's internal thoughts or comments, but that's it. Even without the italicizing I can still hear Kup in the words, so it's not really a big deal.

I'd write more but I'm about to run off to work - but I liked it! Drift has so much angst lol.

[ravynfyre.livejournal.com]

oooooo!

I like the internal comments about how Kup's been at this for longer than Drift has been alive. It's so very Kup!

And Drift makes me want to cuddle him. I love him so.

[kamiraptor.livejournal.com]

Wow, you've got Kup perfect!!!

This was wonderful lunchtime reading! All of Kup's comments to himself about his age and experience, seeing Drift's reactions through that lens... Very cool interactioning there. :D

[tainry.livejournal.com]

Oh, Kup. <3

[ladyofdragons.livejournal.com]

Oooh, Kup. Can I just love him to pieces? I always wondered what Drift's adjustment period would have been like after joining them. This is a lovely way to do it.