The Space Cowboy and the Doctor of Love?

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW
Jetfire/Sixshot, Rung
for tf_rare_pairing June challenge and semi cracky

Sixshot didn’t dream.  At least, he had never remembered any before now. 

The first one had caught him entirely off guard, such an alien, foreign experience to him that he’d bolted awake, one hand already clutching a pistol—aiming at nothing. He frowned, behind his mask, swiping a hand over his helm, forcing his ventilation to cycle down.   

His orange optics flicked around the darkened room, audio straining. Nothing. Not a sound, not a movement: just the normal running hum of the Devil King’s crystal drive. 

The second one was tinged, greybrown and sepia, the ugly colors of familiarity and desperation. He knew he’d been here before, had had this thing happen before, but had no choice but to watch it spool out before him again.

The helplessness was….novel. He couldn’t say that he liked it.

The third time, he’d actively tried to force himself awake, to snap the loop. 

The fourth time, he’d tried to stay in the dream, to ride it to the end, to at least find out what happened but it flung him awake just as he saw a barrel jump, plasma belching from its bore.

He began to avoid recharging, finding himself slouching in one of the ready rooms, listlessly flicking through holovids. 

“Trying to be social?” Black Shadow’s unctuous voice, behind him.

Sixshot didn’t move. “Watching this.” This…whatever it was.  Looked like a bunch of mechs yelling at each other. He’d been waiting for one of them to pull a gun, or at least throw a punch to make things interesting.

“This.” He could hear Black Shadow’s smirk. “Big drama buff, are you?” Onscreen one of the mechs burst into tears. 

“No.” He changed the channel, hastily.  History: Battle of Sherma Bridge.  Better. 

“Right.” Black Shadow swung a leg over the couch’s back, sliding next to him. “You look bored, Sixshot.”

“Always bored.” True statement. Just add ‘overtired’ to it now. 

“Not when you’re killing things.”   A sharp smile, vulpine.

“So?”  Black Shadow didn’t talk to you unless he was trying to run some angle. Most of his angles were pretty lame.  “Get to the point.”

“So you can get back to your weepievid, sure.”  Black Shadow grinned. “Rumor is, there’s a shuttle—civ type—leaving Kimia.”

Sixshot masked the flicker of interest, thumbing the volume controls louder.  “Shuttle.”

“Buzz is it’s Brainstorm.” A shrug, bordering on insolent. “Might be nice to take him out of the picture, don’t you think?”

“Trying to foist your mission on me?”  It would not surprise him. 

“Not an official mission. But it could be something useful to relieve, you know, tedium.”

There was that.  A pass right by Kimia.  Danger, if nothing else.  The opportunity to take out one of the more unethical of Autobot weapons inventors. Maybe find something useful in his memory files. “Keep it in mind.” 

Black Shadow smirked, reaching out to pat Sixshot’s shoulder. Sixshot glowered at the touch.  “You know me,” he said, “Just trying to keep an optic out for my friends.”

Right.

[***]

Rung settled into his seat, fastening the safety belt across his narrow hips before tugging the brochure from his storage. He always recommended to his patients that they get away from the war every now and again: see the worlds of the universe, the variety of life, geography, lifestyles. See that life could be managed without being centered around missions, briefings, after-action reviews.

What kind of counselor would he be if he didn’t take his own advice?

The shuttle undocked, quiet and without incident. A good omen, right?  For once, something going smoothly.

 He was the only passenger—a small shuttle chartered just for him. He felt a tiny bit guilty for it but it was his prerogative as a civilian attaché, and one he rarely exercised.  There just wasn’t a military authorization ship leaving in the next decacycle and to be honest, he didn’t fancy starting his first vacation in megacycles being crowded and bumped around in the back of a troopship.

The brochure was slick, glossy, and made Gillinan-5 look like a paradise of white sands and azure oceans. And, it promised, ‘for the more adventure-minded’, ziplines and safaris through the rainforests, expeditions into the crystal caves.

He was not adventure-minded.  He wanted to see some of their holovids, go to museums, and solar recharge on those white sands. Restful, restorative.  Carrying the burden of the Wreckers’ ugliest secrets, all the closed-door discussions from Room 113, was heavy: he needed some light and lightness. He needed to not think about the war, or ethics, or, well, anything, really, for a few days.

Rung looked at the picture of the sun-drenched beach, cycling a deep vent of air. He could almost feel it already—the soft, warm wind, the sun on his components, perhaps a bit of high grade in his tank, one of those drinks that came with little umbrellas….

FWHAM!

The lights on the ship sparked and blew, sinking the cabin into a darkness that smelled of scorched gas.  Splinters of fine glass showered down, as metal creaked and groaned under another assault.

Rung saw pink energy blasts, like lightning, through his viewing window, and shrank back. The shuttle was under attack!

Suddenly he wished he’d waited for a troopship.  Other mechs, huge and capable, would be a tremendous comfort right now. 

The Gillinan copilot came over the PA. “We’ll be charging this to your account,” he said, blandly.

Rung squeaked. Right now, money was the last thing he was worried about. “Just…are we going to die?”

“We’re not,” the copilot said. “Because we’ve surrendered.”

“Surrendered?” Rung blinked, clutching his brochure. 

“Come to terms. Turns out all they want is…you.”

“ME?!”  Why would the Decepticons want him? He was no threat. He was useless. All he did was…know every guilty dirty secret the Wreckers ever knew, every nasty invention that had come out of Kimia, and a handful that had never made it out of 113. Oh frag. 

[***]

“You.”  The teal and white mech towered over him.  Rung shrank back against the deck plating of the Decepticon ship. He could feel the difference—instead of Kimia’s gyroscopic gravity, he could feel the activated pull of grav generators, and the thrum of an alien engine.

“Me?” 

“You’re not Brainstorm.”

“N-no. I’m Rung.”

“Rung.”  The mech bent over, orange gaze scraping over Rung’s huddled form.  “Unarmed.”

“Yes. I-I don’t carry weapons.”  He held his palms up, showing how empty—and small—they were. 

“Design weapons.”

Rung shook his head, frantically.

“The frag do you do?”

“I…listen.”

“Listen.  A spy.”  The larger mech’s voice seemed dripping with disgust. He straightened as if to get away.

“Not a spy! I listen to what people tell me. Things they want to tell me!”  Whether or not they actually wanted to be ordered for a psych screen Rung hoped was immaterial.

The huge mech narrowed his optics. Rung’s on the other hand, flared wide as he watched one hand drift to one of the huge guns-excessively huge, really—on his hip. 

“W-what’s your name?” he blurted, just trying to keep words coming. As long as the mech was talking, maybe he wouldn’t shoot.

Maybe.

A laugh. “Never heard of me?  Almost disappointed.”  He shrugged. “Sixshot.”

“Six…sho—oh.”  Oh. Oh frag. 

The gaze changed, head tilting. “Guess you have heard of me.”  He seemed…pleased.

“By, uh, by reputation.”

A snort of what might have been laughter. “Reputation.” The hand lifted away from the holster.  Rung gave what he hoped was an imperceptible sigh of relief.  “What do you do when you’re done ‘listening’?”

Good, Rung thought.  Conversation. Sixshot’s even initiating the conversation.  That meant he was engaged, and mechs were just slightly less likely to kill someone they were engaged with. 

Most mechs.  The picture he’d gotten from his interviews indicated Sixshot was likely a psychopath, and that kind’s mercurial moods were impossible to predict. Still, a glimmer of hope.  “We talk about it together. Analyze things. Figure out what they mean.”

“Mean.  What what means?”

“Their memories or emotions or nightmares or whatever’s bothering them.”

A grunt, and Sixshot turned away, staring at the walls of the cargo hold for a long moment. “Nightmares.”

He seemed to be balancing something, or weighing it, Rung thought.  He said, as quietly as he could, “Yes.”

“Nightmares mean something.”

He nodded, before catching himself: Sixshot wasn’t looking at him. He was looking just about everywhere else. Did that mean he no longer considered Rung a threat? Or that he did? “Oftentimes they do, yes.”

“What do they mean?”

“I-it depends. I…really have to know the dream to be able to analyze it.  Some of them are literally true, insights into deeper issues. Some are symbolic.  Some…,” he thought of Flattop and the Shimmer and shook his head. He still blamed himself for that. “Some are harder to explain.”

Sixshot moved, faster than anything his size had a right to, dropping down in front of Rung. “Make you a deal.  You tell me what a dream means, I’ll let you go.”

“Let me go?”

A glint in the optics. “Alive, even.”

Oh, well that was a relief.  Maybe. “I can certainly try.”  Was this a game? He wished he had files on the Decepticons, at least the Phase Sixers.  It was hard to tell if this was a joke or not.

A cant of the helm. “Your life depends on it. Better do more than ‘try’.” 

[***]

“This necessary?”  Sixshot lay on the spartan berth in his quarters on the Devil King, Rung perched on a table nearby, clutching a borrowed datapad.

“Not entirely, but it oftentimes puts a mech at ease to recline. He feels less like he’s being studied.”

“Feel dead.”

“Uh, if you’d rather sit up…?”  Anything that made the Phase Sixer less inclined to be, well, irritable was a good thing.

A snort. “No. Fine. I can handle it.”  Sixshot folded his hands over his chassis.  He’d look relaxed, maybe, if his frame wasn’t tinging with tension.

“Do you—and this is just a curiosity question, really—do you ever take the guns off?” A mech reclining on a berth fully armed was a bit…strange.  By any measure.

A glint from the corner of one orange-red optic. “To recharge them.”   Like it was the most obvious answer in the world.

“Oh.”  Well, ask a silly question…, Rung thought.

“Something wrong with that?”  Sixshot turned, half up on one shoulder. The movement was enormous, but graceful, quick.  For all his size, Sixshot moved faster than he had any right to.

“No! No. I was just…wondering, that’s all.”   He held the datapad up between them, like a reminder—he was asking for a reason. 

Another measuring look before Sixshot subsided back onto the berth. “Start.”

Maybe it would have been a pleasant change to have a mech who actually wanted therapy, but, well…Sixshot.   Still, Rung grabbed the best of his professional demeanor. “All right. Well, first, you should tell me about this nightmare.”

A hiss of air and a long pause.  Rung scooted sideways, as if that might get him out of Sixshot’s reach.  “You want to know what goes on.”

“Yes.”

“In the dream.”

“Yes. It…would be helpful to analyzing something to actually have a something to analyze, don’t you think?” He tried a smile. It felt tinny and weak.

A grunt.  “Fine.” Like this was a concession. “I’m with…someone.  You know. That way.”

“Intimately.”

Another grunt. “That way. Yes.”

“Can I ask who?”

“Does it matter?”  Sixshot’s head turned, optic boring holes in Rung’s face.

“It’s just a dream,” Rung said. “The imagination often uses things symbolically. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you would, in life.”   That had to be what Sixshot was referring to, right?

“Hnn.  Jetfire.”

Rung dropped his stylus. “Jetfire? You mean…Jetfire?”

“Why? What’s that mean?”

“I….uh, nothing. I mean. I don’t know.  We need all the pieces of the puzzle first.”  Still. Jetfire? The softspoken scientist?  He was glad he had the excuse of scrabbling after the stylus.

He grabbed it, and when he looked up, Sixshot was watching him intently. “What.”

“I was…I was just wondering how you knew him. That’s all.”

Another measuring pause. “Held him hostage a while back.”

“Oh.” Well, that did explain it, Rung supposed.  In a way.  “So, you’re intimate with him.” A growl. “In your dream!” he added, hastily.

A grunt.  Then nothing.  Rung jotted notes for a few kliks, then looked up. “I-is that the nightmare?  Is intimacy a…problem for you?”  Things he didn’t want to think about, much less when he was supposed to be on vacation.

“NO!” The huge fists balled into black knots. “Not a problem.”

Um. Okay.  He’ll take Sixshot’s word for it.  And hope, honestly, it wasn’t relevant. Interfacing could mean many things in dream interpretation, after all. “All right. So, you’re interfacing. Then what?”

“Interrupted.”

“Before you can—“

Another growl. 

“All right. Just…trying to get the picture here. Who interrupts you?”

“Hnh. Bunch of Autobots. With guns.”

Well, that would certainly put a damper on things, yes. “How do you feel about this dream?”

“Feel.”  He said the word like he’d never heard it before.

“I mean, what emotions do you have when you think of this dream?”

“Emotions.” That word inflected like it was profane.  He was worse than Impactor. Impactor just tried to mindgame Rung.  He was beginning to think Sixshot honestly had no clue.

“You must have some thoughts about this dream. Some response.”

“I don’t like it.”

Rung sighed. “That’s an opinion. We need to get below that to the emotions that drive the opinion.”

Sixshot visibly flinched at the word ‘emotions’.  “Betrayal.  Set me up.”

“Who? Jetfire?” Jetfire wouldn’t set anyone up.  And those still weren’t emotions.  But closer.  It was strange: Sixshot was at least trying.

“Who else.”  An irritated grunt.

Good point. “And then what happens?”

“Wake up. As they’re ready to shoot me.”

 “Well, so. What do you think it means?”

The hands scraped into fists on the berth. “What I’m asking you.”

“Yes, but, perhaps you have some insight.” Though…insight seemed not to be in Sixshot’s skills set, or really any sort of introspection.

“Think it means Jetfire’s going to betray me.” A hint of ‘duh, obviously’ in his tone.

“How would he betray you?”

Sixshot rolled over, his optics nearly white.

Rung shrunk back. “Oh. OHHHH.” Oh frag.  Oh frag.  “You…and Jetfire.  Actually. Like…for real.” 

“That a problem?”

“Uh. For him, yes, most likely.”

The growl escalated to a snarl. “How.”

“I mean. It could cause complications for him.”

A steady glower.  “Names.”  One hand rested on a pistol’s grip.

“I-I don’t know any names! This is all just conjecture. If, uh, it were true and anyone found out about it.” Which…he hoped hadn’t happened yet.   “Look. It’s a dream. Let’s get back to that, shall we?”

Sixshot grunted, but rolled back down. Rung cycled a relieved vent of air. “All right. So, uh, when was the last time you….uh…spoke with Jetfire?”

“While.”  He did not seem inclined to elaborate.

“You miss him.”

Another hard look.  “Relevant.”

“Yes. Of course it’s relevant.” 

Sixshot moved, lunging off the berth, one hand slamming against Rung’s throat, pinning him to the wall. “’Of course’.”

“I, uh, I mean the dream is about your fears of the relationship.”  He tried to reach the table he’d been perched on with his foot. 

“That he’ll betray me.”

Rung shook his head, fingers clawing at the huge hand around his throat. “No! Dreams never mean the literal thing.”  Which was all Sixshot seemed to grasp: the literal. Well, and Rung’s throat. He was doing a fair job at that, too.

“What.”

 “I…could explain better if you put me down?”

Sixshot’s optics narrowed to two thin lines, but he lowered Rung to the floor.  “Everything in a dream is an aspect of the self. Archetypes,” Rung said, rubbing at this throat. “It’s all a projection of you. Just like you…disguised as other people.”

“Disguised as Autobots.”

“The enemy, yes.” He might actually be catching on. 

“Betrayal.”

“That’s what you are afraid—eek!” Rung squeaked as a fist crunched into the wall beside his head. “N-not afraid. I didn’t mean afraid. Not like that. Let’s say, uh, the thing you don’t want to happen.” He gave a nervous titter.

“Better.”

“All right.” Rung nodded. “The thing you don’t want to happen to you is that you betray yourself. Getting too deeply involved. It’s why you’re having these dreams now.”

“Now.”

“Well, yes.  Because you likely thought it would be easy to sever things. End it, never speak again. And…it’s not that easy.”  Rung frowned, and then risked laying one of his small hands on the massive wrist next to his shoulder. “It never is.”

A rumbling growl that turned into a roar, and Sixshot whirled, fists clenched, as though looking for something to hit. Rung tried to look as small and unhittable as possible.

“How do I fix it?” He spun back, pinning Rung with his optics.

“Fix it?”

“With Jetfire.”

Oh.  Rung realized he was having problems grasping the reality of the situation because it was just so…very odd. “You talk to him.”

“Talk. To him.” Like he thought this was an impossible task. 

That was…definitely odd.  But getting harder and harder to disbelieve, as much as Rung might want to.  “Talk to him. About your relationship and what you want from it.”   This whole thing was taking on a surreal air, Rung thought.  Things he never thought he’d do on vacation: talk a Phase Sixer through relationship issues.  With…someone Rung knew. 

He was actively trying to suppress that part. But the harder he tried, the more persistent the image of Jetfire and Sixshot, like that, was.

“What good does talking do?”

And now he was right back to sounding like Impactor.  Rung had a flash of thought:  Sixshot and Impactor. In another world, they would probably be friends. In…however they did friendship. Probably a way that caused a lot of property damage.

“What good does silence do?” he countered.

Sixshot’s hand closed over one pistol grip, menacingly.

Rung knew when he had to up his game. “Unless,” he said, “you’re afraid.”

[***]

The sandy beaches of Gillinan-4 were everything the brochure had promised, and more.  Rung could feel the sweet high grade tingling pleasurably through his circuits, the sun practically effervescing on his solar recharge panels. One did so miss a sun on a space station.  The waves washed against the shore, soothing, almost drowsily themselves and above him, the blue blades of a frondy tree seemed to bob merrily against the golden sky. 

Rung caught the gaze of a passing waitron, raising one finger.  The waitron bleeped acknowledgment, its treads rolling it up the soft, chalky sand to the cantina.  Another round, and on Sixshot’s tab. And if you asked Rung? He had earned this.

Comments

[silaphet.livejournal.com]

is it wrong to say, i love your crack? yeah probly... but truth, <3

[toyzintheattik.livejournal.com]

This was fun! Oh, how I love it when tough guys own up to their feelings. XD And you write Rung amazingly!

[eerian_sadow]

this was brilliant! for all the cracky overtones, it's got a lot of depth. poor Rung, though;he had no idea what he was getting into.

[nan00kwrites.livejournal.com]

Anything and everything with your Sixshot/Jetfire, as you know, makes me fangirl so very obnoxiously. AHHH this was adorable and hilarious! XD Poor, poor Rung! I absolutely loved the dialogue and his inner thoughts. Great job!

[okkkkay.livejournal.com]

Rung being Rung is so brilliant addition here. Awesomesauce!