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shadow_vector2012-06-15 01:12 pm
Salva Me
IDW pre-war
Perceptor/Deadlock
hurt/comfort, description of physical assault and aftermath.
for
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hc_bingo prompt 'assault' also a continuation, sort of, of this. “What else you got?” The voice was harsh in Perceptor’s audio, the hand on the back of his helm grinding his cheek into the concrete.
“N-nothing!” he stammered, the words muffled against the ground.
“Liar!” Another voice, and a kick in his midsection. Perceptor felt the metal of his chassis dent, the pain lancing over the start terror. He just wanted to get out of here alive. They had a credit chit, they had taken his datapad, the bundles of energon an anti-corrosives he’d packed to toss into various abandoned areas. He’d started coming down here, into the gutters beneath the city, after Deadlock had taken him, shown him this whole world of suffering he’d never noticed, he’d walked above every day without knowing.
“It’s all I have!” he cried out. He wasn’t struggling: why were they still hitting him? Fear knotted over his spark chamber, like a tight net, choking him. “Please! You have it all!”
A hand under his throat, hauling up. “Maybe we’ll strip some of your armor. Probably have some good mods under there.” The optics, mismatched and misillumed, were tight with laughter.
“Maybe,” a voice, cold, behind them, “I’ll give you a chance to apologize before I kill you.”
Muffled curses, scuffling feet, then one voice, full of bravado. “Five of us. One of you.”
A laugh, that sounded strangely, achingly familiar. “Unfair odds. You poor glitches.” A pause. “Last chance. Let him go.”
Deadlock. It was Deadlock’s voice. He was here, behind Perceptor, and could see…everything—Perceptor sprawled on the pavement, beaten, battered, humiliated.
A rush of movement, the weight suddenly leaving Perceptor’s back and shoulders. He turned, wheezing and wincing, onto his side, hand curling over his dented rib struts, in time to see the five descend on Deadlock. He wanted to shout a warning, but there was no need: Deadlock swung low, letting one blow sail over where he’d been standing, coming up in time to drive the back of his elbow into the attacker’s helm, toppling him forward.
Another threw himself at Deadlock’s back: Deadlock crouched and dove forward, driving the mech on his back into the pavement, Deadlock’s deep spaulder in his solar plexus. Deadlock rolled free, in time to angle a kick into a third’s midsection.
Perceptor struggled to his knees, determined to stand, to help.
An arm across his throat, a hot bar of metal, and the hiss of a small plasma knife, the blue blaze dulling his optical feed. “Stop.”
Deadlock swung one last time, his pistol’s hard metal a bludgeon across the fourth mech’s helm. The mech went down, optics blank. Deadlock turned his attention to the attacker holding Perceptor, smirking.
It did not seem like a time for overconfidence to Perceptor, who shrank against his attacker, trying to get away from the hissing menace of the blade.
Deadlock raised one pistol, the bore staring back. And waited.
The attacker snarled, but there was a note of desperation in his tone. “You wouldn’t dare. I’ll kill him, I swear it. “
Deadlock gave a wry shake of his head, that seemed to say ,’oh please’. “If you’d intended to kill him, you’d’ve fraggin’ done it. Not stood here turning it into a show.” He took a step closer.
“I swear. I’ll do it! It’ll be your fault!”
Perceptor squeaked, the other mech’s fear contagious.
The gunshot was quick, clean, Perceptor flinching from the burst of heat and light near his face.
The captor fell, his weight sliding lax and loose from Perceptor’s back. Perceptor stood, trembling, pressing his knees together to manage to stand upright.
Deadlock snorted at the fallen form. “Don’t tell me what I won’t do.” After another look, he holstered his pistol, optics raking Perceptor. “Can you move?”
“Yes. I…I think so.”
A nod. “Good. Security will register the gunshot. Be here soon.” He looked around the circle of downed mechs, the last one unmistakably dead. “Not up for a night in jail, myself.”
Perceptor wanted to argue: he’d been a victim. He was assaulted, beaten, robbed. Why wouldn’t he want to stay until Security showed? It was a citizen’s duty. “I-is he dead?”
Deadlock shot him a look. “He was going to kill you.”
“But….” Perceptor looked down at the crumpled mech, the optics wide and dark, slightly crosseyed, staring up at the hole bored in the middle of his forehead. Dead. This suddenly got a lot more real and terrifying. That could have been him.
But Deadlock wasn’t a citizen. Not really. He nodded, and didn’t protest when Deadlock grabbed his wrist, pulling him down a corridor and deeper into the maze of tunnels and hallways and corridors that was his home.He didn't ask where they were going, where Deadlock was taking him. All that mattered was that it was away from here.
[***]
He’d stumbled after Deadlock for miles, it seemed, a wounded ankle casting sparks, the dent in his rib strut crimping off one fuel line. For a long time moving was his priority, not letting Deadlock out of his sight.
Deadlock stopped, suddenly, and turned on a heel, dipping into a small alcove. He tugged Perceptor against him, arms wrapping around his waist, ducking his face into Perceptor’s throat.
“What?” Perceptor wasn’t objecting, just confused. And if Deadlock wanted to nuzzle against him as some payment for rescuing him, well…he was welcome to go a lot further. He tilted his head, opening his throat, inviting more, his own hands shy and clumsy on the broad chassis.
“Security’s coming,” Deadlock whispered into his throat cables, his voice a gruff tickle. “Just play along.”
Play? Perceptor struggled to stifle the disappointment. He could feel Deadlock’s heat against him—systems hot from running, the armor gritty from the gutters, but still hard, solid and somehow comforting. He ached, sore from his beating, but grateful for the pause, the chance to catch his breath.
Deadlock hooked a leg around Perceptor’s hip, drawing him closer, grinding their pelvic frames together. It was hard to play along, there, too, but for the other reason—Perceptor’s systems fired on, his interface equipment pinging readiness. Oh, this was not the place for it, at all.
Footsteps behind him: Perceptor could see the sudden flashes of headlamps.
“Oh!” Deadlock gave a wanton moan, throwing his helm back, optics narrow orange slits, mouth parted in desire. It was an act—it had to be—but even Perceptor’s systems were fooled, desire surging through his circuitry, even as he realized that yes, the last thing Security would be expecting would be the notorious Decepticon being ravished by a smaller mech.
A blaze of light against them, and then gone, with a muttered comment about ‘rutting like animals’. Deadlock’s hands raked Perceptor’s backstruts, causing him to gasp, his body to writhe against Deadlock’s. His own hands roamed the motley armor, finding seams, clinging to hard edges.
Deadlock tipped his head down, and this time, the orange optics were bright and clear. “All clear. Time to move.”
Just like that the lust seemed to fall from him, his hands dropping from Perceptor’s body, businesslike and neutral.
“Deadlock, I…?” The arousal washed off of him, palpable. Deadlock had to feel it. Perceptor burned with mortification.
A flicker of a smile, before Deadlock turned away, pushing out of the alcove, gesturing Perceptor to follow.
Perceptor limped afterwards, more bruised than just in body.
[***]
Perceptor had never been so grateful to see his own apartment as he was right now, the door sliding aside. Deadlock stood behind him, quiet, and tense, but still somehow in charge. He’d been in control, Perceptor realized, from the klik he’d shown up.
Deadlock pushed him—one hand against the small of his back—toward the couch. He didn’t protest, moving to settle himself.
Exhaustion washed over him like a tidal wave, as he sat, like a backflow draining his energy. He felt his shoulders slump, his optics dimming. He just wanted to forget tonight ever happened.
Deadlock appeared in his vid field, pressing a cube of energon into his hand. “Drink.”
“I’m not hungry.” Eating seemed so…normal. So routine. And what had just happened? It was like part of a different world.
“Didn’t ask. Drink.” Deadlock tapped the cube meaningfully.
Perceptor felt ready to cry, but he made himself comply, taking both hands to lift the cube to his mouth. The energon was strong, bursting over his systems like fireworks. Deadlock gave a lopsided grin. “Cyberdrenaline crash. It happens.”
It happens. Sure. Never to Perceptor, before, and he had a sudden flash into Deadlock’s life, if he was used to this. Still, his fingers closed more surely around the cube, taking another sip. He was still exhausted, his limbs feeling embedded in concrete, but he felt…better, like the trembling knot of fear in his belly was finally loosening, the tears receding from his optics.
Deadlock moved, disappearing and returning with a small repair kit. Perceptor’s repair kit, the one he kept in the maintenance facility. Deadlock jerked his chin at Perceptor’s chassis. “Let’s see.”
“I’m fine.” He was anything but, and the lie sounded brassy and thin, even to him.
“Not really one to judge, are you?” Deadlock snorted, swatting the arm aside. “Saw how you were running. Fuel circulation problem.” He reached in with a dent puller. “Should fix it.”
Perceptor knew better than to argue: he lifted his arm out of the way, feeling the brush of Deadlock’s EM field against his as the Decepticon bent over, the strong, sure hands on his armor.
“The frag were you doing down there, anyway?”
“I was…looking for you.” Perceptor stared at the opposite wall, embarrassed. He felt Deadlock look up, and didn’t want to see the expression on his face. How could he explain what the other mech had meant to him? That strange visit when Deadlock had shown up, injured, needing to hide? It had opened a world to him, and he had helped. He had been important, and useful. And he’d wanted more of that.
It sounded so stupid now. It probably always had.
An awkward silence, broken by the pop of the dent-puller straightening Perceptor’s chassis plating. “Lucky I found you,” Deadlock said, his voice quiet and strange as he shifted his attention to the ankle, pulling it in his lap. “What’d they get?”
Perceptor shook his head, clinging to the change of topic. “Not much. A small chit card. Maybe 20 credit on it.” Barely a week’s worth of lunch, really.
He saw one of Deadlock’s supraorbital ridges quirk. “Lot of money. For down there.”
“I think they were disappointed I didn’t have more.”
“They always are,” Deadlock said.
“I’m glad you came.” Even to see him in his humiliation.
A snort. “Only showed up because it was interrupting a nap.”
“Wh-what would they have done if you hadn’t shown up?”
The orange-red optics caught his, serious. “Stripped you for mods. And any parts they thought they could sell.” The optics lowered. “That ever happens again, you tell them you are a medic.”
“A-again?”
“If they ever grab you. Medics are useful for installing stolen mods. They’d at least let you keep your arms.” The tone was so practical: this happened every day, Perceptor realized. This wasn’t a huge, special, world-shattering event. At least, not for Deadlock’s world. This was his reality. This was…normal.
Perceptor shuddered, as if the room had plummeted in temperature, his hands clutching at the couch. He tried to tell himself Deadlock was just telling him a story to scare him but…it rang all too true. A sharp sound, like a frantic cry, fluttered from his vocalizer, as he realized what could have happened, and that foundered against…what did happen.
He’d been attacked. He’d been walking down a corridor, intending to do good: scatter his little packets where others could find them, to ease their lives, at least a little bit. And he’d been hit from behind, beaten, threatened, his storage rifled, every inch of him scraped over, examined, measured for worth. The hard knot of fear had dissolved, and now ran like ice through his fuel lines. He couldn’t stop shaking.
The blank face of the last mech, the one Deadlock had killed, stared up at him, agape. Accusing, almost, blaming him for his own ignorance.
Deadlock put down the tools, closing the access hatch on Perceptor’s ankle. The repair wasn’t complete, but better than before—it didn’t spark as he moved. “Come on,” Deadlock said, standing, pulling Perceptor up with him. “Get you to your fancy berth. Feel better after some recharge.”
“You know this. This has happened to you.” A scientist, still and always, trying to impose sense and order on the world.
Deadlock shrugged, acknowledging and then dismissing. “Welcome to the gutters.” He moved to the doorway to the berthroom, remembering from last time. He’d remembered, Perceptor realized, everything from last time: how to work his small energon dispenser, where he kept his repair kit, where the berth was. All of it.
He let himself be led, pushed down onto the berth. He clung to Deadlock’s arm. “Please. Don’t leave? Not just yet.” He shivered again, still feeling icy and numb.
Another strange look, fast as a lightning bolt, on Deadlock’s face, before the other levered himself up onto the berth, stretching himself gingerly next to Perceptor. Perceptor turned, clinging to the other mech, burying his face in Deadlock’s chassis, one thigh over the other’s hips, as though holding on for dear life. He felt Deadlock’s arms around him, clumsy but strong.
It was something he’d try to figure out, later, how the only thing that made him feel safe was lying in the arms of a mech who had killed for him.
[***]
Deadlock was gone when he awoke—he half expected it. But still, he felt the sudden loss, like an ache. His legs still shook when he stood, and the day seemed almost offensively normal: a cycle before he had to go to work, curling around his science. Would that all look and feel different too? Would it be worse if it did? Would anyone notice anything different about him? Would anyone ask?
He moved to the front room, to the small maintenance facility, and froze.
There, on the table: a small stack of credit chits, one or two of them unmistakably stained with blood energon. He didn’t need to pick them up to know there were twenty credits, all told. Deadlock and his own attempt at rectifying things—literal and practical. And beside them, a small scrap of flimsy, and a scrawl of handwriting, barely literate. Deadlock’s.
It was a code, he realized. A comm freq. Deadlock’s.
Deadlock wasn’t one for words, and Perceptor didn’t need any to know what it meant. The tears Perceptor had been stifling all night burst forth, his hand clutching one of the credit chits so hard it dug into his knuckles. And he was alone in the dawn and half the world seemed horribly wrong but this one small fragment, stained and tattered and bruised and sore…seemed like the only thing that was real and right.
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