All in the Hands
Jun. 11th, 2012 05:03 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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shadow_vectorIDW MTMTE
Ratchet/Drift
spoilers for MTMTE through current issue
for
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tf_rare_pairing weekly request: Ratchet/Drift - surrendering to impulseDrift ducked under the low door of the lift shuttle, one hand on the lintel. “Everyone settled in?”
“As best they can be.” Ratchet dropped his hands onto his lap, trying to pretend he hadn’t been studying them: Pharma’s hands. What had they done? He hated to think. “Pipes is still in regen, First Aid and Ambulon are recharging.” After five days of continual duty, they had more than earned it. First Aid had practically been trembling on the last of his charge when he’d finished the graft of Pharma’s hands.
He squinted up at Drift. “What are you doing up?” He curled the hands into balls, stiffening his face against the wince. New circuits, new connections. They felt foreign and cold and painfully tight.
“Checking on you.” A flicker of a smile.
“Checking on me for what?”
“To see how you’re doing.” Drift stepped into the room, swinging his hips to clear the narrow aisle. He dropped down in the seat opposite Ratchet, the white armor of his greaves bumping Ratchet’s knees.
“I’m fine.”
“I know,” Drift said, as if he'd expected that answer. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his red thighs. “I also wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
Drift’s knees, the heavy white armor, still scuffed from the rooftop where he'd fallen after slicing off Pharma's hands--Ratchet's new hands--bumped against his.
A soft laugh. “Do I have to tell you? For what you did back there. For figuring it out. For confronting Pharma. You saved…all of us.”
“I didn’t save everyone.” He glowered down at the dark hands. How many had died because of Pharma’s desperate bargain? How many hadn’t he saved? First Aid had brought a copy of the records: he’d have to look through them at some point. Just not now. He wasn’t ready.
“Anyone who could be saved.” Drift’s blue optics tilted, sadly. “Pharma chose for himself.”
“Well, he made stupid choices.”
“We all do. And we have to suffer the consequences of our actions.”
Ratchet frowned. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Spouting that ridiculous false-gnomic wisdom.”
Drift twitched back, stung. “It’s what I’ve learned.”
Ratchet snorted, looking aside. “At least you’ve learned something other than how to cut mechs into metal slaw.”
If he expected that blow to strike deeper, he was disappointed. Drift grinned, the smile softened by memory. “Wing would tell you, I am not the fastest learner.” He tipped forward again, reaching by his hip, where he’d tucked a microsprayer against his scabbard, his other hand reaching for one of Ratchet’s.
“What--?” Ratchet tried to pull away, but Drift, unsurprisingly, had strong hands.
One of the red spaulders shifted in a shrug. “First Aid said your hands might be tight and that I should see to them.”
“See to them.”
Drift looked up, amused. “He told me exactly what to do. Don’t worry.”
“Who said I was worried?” Please. Not like a medic’s hands were fragile or a new graft was easily damaged or anything. Or that Drift’s hands were strong and battered and the last time he'd seen them they were wrapped around a sword, oozing with Red Rust, and having mutilated another mech. He gasped, feeling a sudden jet of cold—oil from the microsprayer, angled under the plates.
“The look on your face?” Drift bent down over the hand, cradling it in his, before beginning to work the oil into Ratchet’s hand, bending and flexing the palmar plates, tracing seamlines with his thumbs.
It felt…good. Better, even, as the oil warmed under the friction, loosening the tight plates, soothing the new circuit connections. The hands, a swordsmech’s hands, were strong, but gentle, capable of delicate control.
He watched Drift’s helm, bent over his hands, the white finials pointed nearly at his chestplate, and over, to the powerful pistons and servomotors of Drift’s neck and shoulders. Bent forward like this, they were bare, exposed, grimed by battle, one piston housing dented, the piston itself caked black. Ratchet started cataloging the fixes he’d need—replace that bit of fuel hose, caulk that piston casing, re-insulate that line of wire. It was idle, a distraction from the strange tingles Drift’s touches were sending over his sensor net.
Drift moved, sitting back, flexing and flattening Ratchet’s hand in his, rolling the thumb in its socket. “Helping?”
Ratchet gave a noncommittal grunt, but didn’t protest as Drift moved to his other hand—the same shock of cold oil, the same gentle pressure across the plates, working the oil deep into the mechanisms of his hand.
Drift turned the hand over, palm up, placing his own, palm to palm, against it. He tipped his head up, optics soft and blue and far too close to Ratchet for his comfort. “I can’t imagine, what it was like for you. Up there. You trusted Pharma. And he…,” Drift shook his head. “He betrayed everything we say we stand for.”
“You’ve never been betrayed.”
Drift tilted his head, a wobbly smile on his mouthplates. “I was the one that did the betraying.”
“Is that what this is about?” Some sort of misplaced apology? Nothing could fix that Pharma had betrayed them—betrayed him.
But the problem here was Ratchet’s. At this point, he should know not to take things personally . It was his failing and all the hand-petting in the galaxy wasn’t going to change that. He shouldn’t let it bother him.
Drift shrugged. “Maybe. I just want to say—it’s not your fault. And sometimes…we do regret what we did.” He squeezed Ratchet’s hand. “No act of kindness goes unremembered.”
And there he was with what Verity would have called his ‘fortune cookie bullshit’ again. “Could have fooled me.” Ratchet tugged his hand free, the sensors tingling from the memory of contact.
That radiant smile: Drift had far too much experience to have a smile that innocent. But there it was, open and warm. “Not much can, I imagine.” He tucked the microsprayer away.
The smile was still far too close to him, the optics still too open and blue.
“Something else you need, Drift?” The clinical voice, the medibay question: what do you want? But he heard the quiver in his own voice, felt himself at once pressing hard against the shuttle’s seat and leaning forward, to those bright blue pools.
The mouthplates twitched, quick and active like a bird on the wing, and Drift seemed to follow it forward, the lipplates brushing Ratchet’s. The metal was firm and silky against his, and he could feel the warmth of the optics on his cheek plating, the gentle brush of those swordsmech’s fingers over his chevron. Drift gave a soft sound, deep in his throat, meek and wanting, before pulling away. “I told you. I wanted to thank you. For all of us.”
“Just doing my—“
“—my job,” Drift said, and his mouth gave another of those strange, expressive quirks of memory. As though he’d heard it before, from someone else, and that it hurt to hear it again.
“Stop finishing my sentences,” Ratchet groused.
Drift’s knuckles, still smelling of the tang of the lubricating oil, brushed his audio. “Make me.” His voice lilted a challenge.
Ratchet narrowed his optics. “Make you. Do you really think I’m going to fall for tha--!” Drift cut him off, tugging him by that audio receptor in a fiercer kiss, pushing into Ratchet’s mouth, and Ratchet felt his hands—stranger’s hands—curl over the red shoulders, the fingers tucking almost knowingly into the damaged areas on the neck--rubbing that dented piston, stroking the uninsulated wire.
Drift twisted his shoulders, dropping his weight, pulling them both down into the narrow crevice between the seats, and Ratchet found himself straddling the white pelvic armor, heels tangling with the scabbards, his sensornet racing with unfamiliar arousal. He pulled away, his lips leaving last, almost reluctantly, buoyed on top of Drift’s laugh.
“You did.”
And the cutting retort Ratchet should have planned, and Drift definitely deserved, got lost under his hands, searching over the armor with a desperate ardor that surprised him.
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Date: 2012-06-11 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-11 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-11 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-12 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-12 09:41 am (UTC)It's been interesting to see his character grow and change from the pensive and bitter mech Drift was in his own comic into this chipper and almost goofy character, although I admit not having really read anything else from IDW with Drift. Only one or two MTMTEs, his TFwiki bio and loads of fanfiction & speculation from the internet. Anyway, you're the only one who hasn't made him completely over-optimistic, there's a hint of something dark still there. Personally, I like your Drift much better than the official one.
Back to the fiction, though. This was first Ratchet/Drift fic I've seen and I'm been waiting for one to pop up at some point. I enjoyed reading it, since you had managed to catch Ratchet's doubts and thoughts, creating an intimate situation with something as simple as oiling the new - Pharma's - hands.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
- Senna-chan
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Date: 2012-06-12 06:50 pm (UTC)I am so behind on the IDW comics.I did have one of the Spotlight books but sold it Half-Price Books.I am just going to have to wait for the release of the comics collections on Amazon.
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Date: 2012-06-19 08:05 am (UTC)<3
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Date: 2012-07-02 11:05 pm (UTC)