Prickly Conscience

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

G1
Vortex/Onslaught
PG
no warnings
for lady_katana4544 prompt! :D  They're not *quite* destroying all in their path...just the only thing that matters.

 

 

Onslaught tapped the input rod impatiently on the console’s surface. Not impatient with Vortex—well, not more than usual. Mostly at himself. He knew how Vortex was. He should have foreseen this. He should have taken precautions. 

Vortex gave a shrug he probably thought was charming. It wasn’t. “Awww, come on, Onslaught. He deserved it.”

“Immaterial,” Onslaught said. He stopped tapping, visor glaring up at Vortex, who was suddenly trying his hardest to stand at attention. Onslaught waited a beat, making sure he had Vortex’s full attention. “Breakdown,” he said, slowly, shaping each word into a hard explosive round, “of military discipline.” 

Vortex tried, and failed, to stifle a snicker.

“What.” Onslaught bored holes into Vortex’s head with his gaze.

Vortex was struggling to master himself. “Wasn—wasn’t Breakdown.” Another hard snort of laughter. Right team; wrong mech. Breakdown didn’t come within five mechanometers of Vortex. Not after, well, last time.

“Not funny!” Onslaught slammed his hands down onto the console, shoving himself to his feet. The chair scraped back behind him. There was a long moment as the sound died. Vortex stood, rigid, rotors stiff in alarm. “Maybe,” Onslaught hissed, “If you spent a demibreem thinking of something other than your…amusement,” he spat the word as though it were something vile, “you’d consider how this reflects on the rest of your team?”

Vortex decided, for once, to say nothing. Onslaught was starting on the whole ‘team’ thing. This was not where Vortex wanted to go.

“Now,” Onslaught enumerated, ticking the points off on his fingers, just to drive the point inextricably home, “we have to worry about retaliation. Sabotage. Here. On our own base.” 

Vortex stayed rigid, silent, the only sign of tension the way his thumbs rubbed over his curled hands. This was almost the point he wanted, the surge of tension that he could ride like a wild updraft, exhilarating in the danger.

Onslaught ticked his chin to one side. “You don’t think they would?” he challenged, demanding a response.

“We can handle it,” Vortex said, unconcerned. Well, he could handle it. And it would sure liven things up.

“Can we? Every moment? Every ration we take? Every joor?” Onslaught stepped closer, letting his optics rake down Vortex’s new dents. “You think they’d stop at double-teaming you again?”

Vortex shrugged. “Part of the fun.” It had been fun. Especially the part where he’d put the ‘drag’ in Drag Strip. And, well, the ‘strip’, too. A smile flickered to life behind his mask.

“Fun.” Onslaught’s voice sucked the heat out of the room. “Did you stop to think that not all of us wanted to be invited in on this ‘fun’?”

“Then don’t play, if you’re scared,” Vortex shot back.   Another part of the fun, of course, was spinning up Onslaught. He was a lot like an old, cold engine, slow to warm, slow to grip gears. And he was just beginning to get traction.

“We,” Onslaught hissed, stepping closer, chassis bumping against Vortex’s, “don’t have a choice. We’re in this no matter what.”

Oh frag. Detour, detour. Onslaught was lurching into ‘teamwork’ territory. Diversion tactic: Insolence. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re…afraid of Motormaster?” he drawled.

Onslaught’s optics narrowed, almost imperceptibly, behind the visor. No one other than Vortex would have noticed it, but Vortex had spent vorns studying Onslaught. He could play Onslaught exquisitely well. “Not going to fall for that, Vortex,” Onslaught said. 

“Fall for what?” Wide-opticked innocence. For the first time, Vortex let some of the tension seep from his too rigid rotors. Oh, Onslaught: you’re the best part of this whole thing.

Onslaught shook his head.   “I don’t have time for this, Vortex. That’s the whole point.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, and for the first time Vortex noted signs of exhaustion, the slight wheeze in the ventilation, the way microrust dulled the gleam on armor that had gone way too long without a refit.

Vortex faltered, the fun fizzing out of the game like a leaking seal. “Primus, it’s not a big deal.” He cocked his head, winningly. “I mean, come on. A little prank. Combiner humor. No one got hurt…well, seriously hurt,” he emended.

Onslaught just stared at him, optics hard. Onslaught’s gaze rested on him a beat longer, before the commander turned away. Vortex felt a skirl of something like actual concern. Which he did not like at all. 

Onslaught waved a hand, dismissing him. Vortex didn’t move. Onslaught shook his head minutely. “Go,” he said. “We’re done here.”

Vortex stayed immobile, his rotors slowly rising tense again. Half-excited—this was new and different, and outside Onslaught’s usual repertoire, but half-alarmed. Onslaught wasn’t allowed to go off-script.

“Go,” Onslaught said, more loudly. “Not going to waste my time with you.”

Vortex felt as though something had punctured the armor below his laser core. Go? A waste of time? His feet grated on the floor, shifting uneasily. “So…I’m confined to quarters, right?” That was the start of the usual punishment, when Vortex could rail and rage at the impossible injustice of it all, proclaim loudly (so loudly that even Blast Off would groan) about how bored he was, simmering in frustration. 

Onslaught gave an exhausted snort. “No point. Just…go.” 

Go? Just go? The puncture wound Vortex had imagined started feeling like it was leaking hot fluid. Vortex considered. “I’ll…aauuuuhhh, I’ll apologize to him if you want?” He felt a bitter twist in his tank at the thought, but, well, it would be a new experience. And new, even a bad kind of new, was better than dull, old, tedious nothing. And apologizing would be less disturbing than the flatness in Onslaught’s optics. Not that Onslaught was impatient with him, or upset with him, but…shut down. Closed off. This was a wild, desperate gambit, a blatant call for recognition. And he knew it, and didn’t care.

He stepped forward. “Ons…?”

“GO!” Onslaught roared, and the white fury that only came out on the battlefield blazed from his optics, his EM field almost crackling. “I’m done with you!” He snatched up a datapad, throwing it hard enough that it shattered into a shower of sparks against the far wall. Vortex flinched. Not at the noise, not at the destruction, but at the burning optics glaring at him. He was torn between retreating and stepping forward. 

It was just a joke. Just a scuffle. Something to relieve the boredom of being stuck in a base in the bottom of the ocean. Just another episode of Vortex being Vortex. After all this time, Onslaught should have known that.

No. Onslaught did know. He knew exactly what it was. He knew Vortex as well as Vortex knew him; studied Vortex like an assemblage of tactical factors. He could play Vortex, too; but he was sick of playing.

“Onslaught, really. I…I’ll fix i—“ He had no idea what he was saying, other than he wanted to fill the distance that was yawning between them, made of something heavier than empty air.

“Not now,” Onslaught’s voice was tight, and Vortex realized at the point of breaking down. “Go.”

Vortex squelched the flow of words, retreating a few steps toward the door. The sound of his feet on the deck plating seemed immense. One foot crunched against the broken glass of the shattered datapad. No. He couldn’t. He’d always thought he thrived on uncertainty, instability. But…he needed this settled. Without Onslaught, without that constant, he had the sudden notion that he would fly apart, just like if someone cut his collective controls. Just like flying—every now and again, you needed some solid place to land. 

“No,” he said, the word scraping raw over his vocalizer, echoing the grating sound of his foot turning in the shards of glass. He faltered at what to say next. That he wouldn’t do it again? He probably would. That he was sorry he did it in the first place? Not really—only sorry it was leading to this. That he’d make it better? Chances are he’d make it worse in all honesty. “This isn’t what I wanted,” he said. Something he could say with full, bald honesty. 

“I know,” Onslaught said. His voice was drained of hostility. Drained of everything. Just…empty. 

And for the first time in Vortex’s remembrance, he really, truly, deeply wanted to apologize.

 

Comments

[albinocthulhu.livejournal.com]

Vortex Vortex Vortex, when ever will you learn?

[chibirisuchan.livejournal.com]

I couldn't help snickering at Vortex's attempt to use platitudes: “Primus, it’s not a big deal.” He cocked his head, winningly. “I mean, come on. A little prank. Combiner humor. No one got hurt…well, seriously hurt.”

Of course he's got to stick the qualifier in there. Because it just doesn't happen any other way...

[shanfiction73.livejournal.com]

Poor Vortex and poor Onslaught. One needs the mech equivalent of SP-117 truth serum, and the other needs a hug and a vacation from idiots.