Cradle

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

NC-17
IDW
Perceptor/Drift
sticky, suspension bondage, fisting, vague consent issues that may be disturbing but aren't really dubcon

 

 

It was not unknown for Perceptor to lose track of time, peering through his scope, reducing the whole world, it seemed, to a target, running both optics independently, the one actively scanning for threats in wide lens, the other, tight, focused through its reticle. But eventually, the passage of time crept into even his distracted notice, and when it did, normally, the first thing he thought was that it had been too long. 

And this time, it was too long to go without Drift reporting in.  Perceptor boosted his awareness, on the sector Drift had gone to investigate, straining his senses for any sign.  Drift was, he considered, unlikely to go down quietly.   

No, he remembered. This was just a drill, just an exercise Springer had arranged, in a bombed out district. There were no enemies other than the Wreckers’ own lack of coordination.

But it was quiet. 

He waited, edgily.  Finally, he couldn’t stand it.  He called up the private comm channel. If he kept an exchange to a short burst, and moved immediately anyway, he could get away with the signal untracked.

“Drift, location.”

A long hesitation. “I’m fine.”

Perceptor pushed back from the gunsights. Something was wrong.  “That…wasn’t what I asked.” 

A muffled curse.  “Be back in a klik.” 

Perceptor cocked his head. That was…not right. But he didn’t have any solid evidence to confront Drift. And confront him with what?  You are not fine?  He let the channel close, wordlessly.  He hunched to his knees, then feet.  Time to move. 

[***]

Drift still hadn’t returned, hadn’t checked in.  Perceptor writhed with what to do, finally breaking down, knowing he was, in his way, being weak, but needing to hear Drift’s voice, even just to be shut down on.

“Drift?”

“What?!” Exasperation, entirely uncalled for, in the voice.

“I am…concerned for you.”

“Don’t be.” 

“Location. Please.” 

He could almost hear the struggle in Drift’s cortex.  But Drift did not often refuse Perceptor’s courtesies.  Drift rattled off a string of coordinates, sounding almost angry.  “And,” he said, and the anger seemed to melt into something like a plea, “Come alone.”

Perceptor crept to the bombed-out door of the building, stooping under it, the smaller blaster ready in his hands, center mass, pointed ahead, just as he had been trained.  The heavy sniper rifle was slung over his back, no good, he knew, in a confined space like a building.  He edged in, wary, ready, finger already on the trigger, scanning from side to side in quick sweeps.  Nothing.  Maybe this was part of Springer’s drill: a hostage rescue. He would prove his mettle. He would do it right.

He moved to the next room, placing his feet carefully, avoiding anything that could snap or pop and give away his position. Silence seemed to swallow him as he edged forward. 

And then, a nearby sound.  He couldn’t identify it. It wasn’t a rodent sound, didn’t seem particularly furtive.  It had some rhythm to it but it was faltering, unsteady. 

Drift, Perceptor thought.  Perhaps he’s injured, needs help. 

He picked up his stride, skating over the floor toward the sound, pausing for a moment, back against the wall, before he swung around into the doorframe.

A swinging, heaving mass of chain and cable and wire, chunks of plascrete and strips of wire, took up the middle of the room, dangling down from the ceiling.  And in that mass, twisting, shifting, thrashing to free himself…was Drift. One hand was pinioned up behind his head, fingertips just brushing the haft of his Great Sword, the other pulled out to the side, his feet dangling far above the debris-littered ground.

“Drift,” Perceptor murmured.  He saw the blue eyes flatten, mortified.  Drift, embarrassed to be seen like this.  By him.  Perceptor tilted his head up, ranging through the hole in the ceiling, and the one above that.  He looked back at Drift.  It was…impressive that the only injury Drift had was his pride. 

“Get me down,” Drift snapped, tugging frantically at his trapped wrist.

Perceptor studied the lines. Drift’s desperate thrashing was tangling the cables even more, sending one or two filaments of live current whipping. “You’re making it worse.”

Drift stilled, with extreme effort, his chassis heaving with frustration.  “Do something,” he said, and Perceptor could hear the plea under the sharp tone. 

Perceptor nodded, stowing his sidearm, stepping around Drift, examining the tangled mass.  “A moment,” he said, softly.  There.  There was one of the cable’s ends.  He pushed it back finding where it bulged out farther up the mess, and moved, tugging on that. 

The cable slid over Drift’s armor, and the white mech jolted as the live end brushed against him, gasping. 

An apology formed on Perceptor’s vocalizer, but Drift shook it off. “Just…do it,” he hissed.

Perceptor nodded, moving around Drift’s frame. The cable snaked over the hip here over Perceptor’s head, and a full spiral around the thigh, and then…. He found himself tracing the cable with his fingertips, crouching down, following it where his optics could not follow.

Drift shuddered, his hip jerking under the touch.  That…did not hurt, Perceptor thought.  There was no way that the brush of his fingers over Drift’s thigh…oh.  He looked up: Drift’s head was tilted back, optics lidded.  A faint smile flicked over his mouth, disappearing as soon as it arrived.  No time for that, he chided himself.  But he didn’t stop himself from drawing the next loop loose slowly, letting it slide over Drift’s thigh, pitching it up at the end so that it slid into the join of his pelvic frame. Drift shuddered, twisting in his bonds.

Perceptor bent back to his work, forcing himself to concentrate on untangling Drift, pulling at the cable, untwisting it from around a piece of rebar.  He could feel Drift’s struggle to remain still, feel the confused buzz of the EM field against him.

He pulled the rebar away, the sudden slack dropping Drift’s mass down a few feet, jarring hard against the cables.  Drift gave a muffled yelp. “Sorry,” Perceptor murmured, ducking his head. He should have realized that would happen, should have warned Drift to brace for it. “I’m doing my best to free you.”

“I know,” Drift managed.  “Just…please.”  He tugged at the hand pinned overhead. 

Perceptor nodded, ducking back to work.  The next bit of the cable was caught under a projection of Drift’s knee armor, jammed in the joint. He tugged, which had no real effect other than to cause Drift’s body to start swaying in its suspension. Without thinking, Perceptor wrapped one arm around the dangling leg, bracing the swinging body against him for leverage.  He felt a twitch against his cheek, only then realizing that the position had placed his cheek…on Drift’s interface hatch. His own ventilation caught, and he couldn’t resist, as he freed the trapped cable, a surreptitious rub of his cheek along the white span. 

Drift choked on a whimper, squirming against his bonds, rolling his legs into Perceptor’s touch, optics lidded and drowsy. Perceptor felt an odd rush.  Drift was fighting, and not very well, arousal.  It couldn’t just be Perceptor, or the bare touches of cable. Was it…the restraint?

A hypothesis.  Which required some corroboration.  Perceptor followed the snarled cable behind Drift.  Drift’s body shifted as he whipped his head side to side, trying to spot Perceptor. Perceptor felt a rare, unaccustomed grin spread over his face, a little new, a little lopsided. He traced a cable around Drift’s chassis, letting his fingers skim the white armor.  Drift flinched as though Perceptor’s fingers scalded him.

The Great Sword was hopelessly tangled, and Perceptor ran his hands along it, over his head, up to its attachment point on Drift’s shoulders.  “I may need to take this off?” he murmured, asking permission.  He had almost never seen Drift without his sword. Drift shuddered at what Perceptor was asking.  He swallowed.

“Yes.”  Drift pushed back, curving his upper spinal struts, jutting the attachment points into Perceptor’s grip.  His ventilations were sharp and shallow.

“I will not mistreat it,” Perceptor said.  He couldn’t hope to understand the Great Sword’s meaning to Drift: he’d asked to examine it, his scientist nature fascinated by the ancient artifact, but Drift had refused.  But he knew about his own weapon, and how he’d feel if someone treated it carelessly. 

“I know,” Drift whispered, shuddering with the force of confession, as though admitting he trusted Perceptor was a great secret.

Perceptor lifted, the sheath detaching from Drift’s back, and he tilted the blade, the wound cables slipping off the end.

The sword was heavier than he’d imagined it would be, a dead weight in his hands.  He laid it on the ground with as much care as he could, safely out of the way, returning to examine Drift’s plight.  Or, more precisely, Drift’s latest struggles.  He felt his own system core temp spike, somehow aroused by Drift’s helpless motion, the sight of the cables wound around him, pulling his limbs awry, the little twitches of Drift’s body trying to relieve the pressure of the narrow cables, the helpless soft grunts Drift made.  Drift, helpless. Something he’d never seen, something he thought he’d never see. 

Perceptor placed his hands on the back edges of the short sheaths, running his fingers up and down the edge of metal, letting his thumbs feather over the underside, the grey, light armor, through which Drift could feel…everything. 

“Perceptor…,” Drift began, his voice raw. 

“Yes?” Perceptor leaned in, nuzzling against the small of Drift’s back.  Drift stiffened, almost hissing, tugging at his wrists. 

“I--,” Drift cut himself short with a whine of lust, trying to arch his spine into Perceptor’s nuzzle. Perceptor slid one hand down the sleek black thigh, pushing the cables down toward the knee, feeling another heady rush at Drift’s shiver.  He drew the hand back up the inner thigh, fingers trailing along the seam.  Drift hissed, arching up, his rib struts bumping against Perceptor’s helm.  Perceptor risked a nip, closing his dentae around a plate, biting hard enough to send a shiver through the frame. 

The legs moved, and at first Perceptor thought it was just random movement, until the ankles locked behind his back, pulling him harder against Drift’s chassis. 

“Drift,” Perceptor said, his voice muffled against Drift’s sleek black armor. “I cannot untangle you like this.”

The hips squirmed against his chassis, inviting, demanding.   He heard the shoulder gyros fire, Drift trying to get one arm loose.  Perceptor felt his mouth curl against Drift’s back, as he wormed one of his own arms free and between Drift’s thighs.  There was no one here, he reminded himself.  A training exercise.  And Drift, helpless, aroused, was…too much for him to bear. 

He glossed a hand over the interface hatch.  Drift’s hips rolled, uncertain whether he wanted to avoid or push into the touch. 

Perceptor made the decision for him, cupping the hatch’s shape, reaching his thumb over to the manual release.  The legs, wrapped around him, squeezed harder, the thighs scraping over his upper arms. “Let me down,” Drift gasped. 

“In a moment,” Perceptor replied.  He skimmed his hand over the valve cover, feeling the heat seeping through the thin metal. Drift shuddered, his head tossing back.  Interesting.  He circled the valve cover, pulling Drift back against his chassis, feeling the tension through the abdominal plating.  The valve cover clicked open, Drift making a high, sharp sound.

An invitation, Perceptor thought. And a rare one.  Drift rarely ever opened up this way, let himself be vulnerable.  He thought of it as vulnerability, at any rate—something he must have picked up in those early days on Cybertron, that part of his life he never talked about.  Drift’s face would cloud over at the first mention, but here he was, squirming, opening himself to Perceptor, his body spread, immobilized by the wires and cables he had fallen through.

Perceptor circled the rim of the valve, then the rim’s interior: Drift’s pelvic span bucked against him, while above him, the immobilized hands clutched on empty air. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked, partly for permission, but partly to push the edge. 

Drift’s body undulated as one black digit pushed into the heat of his valve. 

Perceptor repeated the question.

“No!” Drift gasped, adding a guttersnipe’s curse.

Perceptor worked the finger in the valve, feeling it spiral down against him, Drift’s thighs squeezing urgently.  Perceptor pushed another finger, gritting his dentae in a fierce pleasure as Drift sucked in a hard vent.  A third finger, and Drift thrashed hard enough in the restraining cables that he managed to ensnare both hands over his head. He hung, helpless, panting, optics dimming, as if concentrating on Perceptor’s contact, behind him, inside him.

Perceptor let his pinky finger trace a half-circle around the valve’s rim, feeling the shudder. “Should I?” he asked, contemplating, offering. 

A long growl, a feral sound, the hips jerking against him. “Yes!” Drift snapped, finally.  He cried out as Perceptor pushed the last of his fingers in, rocking on the very blade’s edge of pain, his valve stretched, hot and slick, around Perceptor’s hand. 

Perceptor stilled for a moment, letting Drift recover from the initial shock, letting him feel the mass within him.  He pressed his face into the trembling backframe, nearly dizzy himself from the exhilaration of what he was doing.  “Beautiful,” he murmured, “so beautiful.”  Drift’s body convulsed, his net flooded with stimuli. 

Perceptor moved his hand, slowly, at first rotating it gently, feeling Drift’s body react against him, the thighs rubbing against his shoulders, the body twisting, Drift’s hands grabbing handfuls of cable, as if for strength or control. 

He curled his fingers, stroking them against the hypersensitive anterior node cluster.  A high keen from Drift, a rush of hot lubricant over his hand, the valve rippling, almost frantic.  His own equipment thrummed readiness, but this…this was something special—Drift almost…wanton with lust, open, receiving. 

Perceptor moved his hand slowly, curling it into a fist, then rotating to extend the fingers again. It was an experiment, but Drift’s frantic squeal took him over.  It took all of his composure to repeat the gesture slowly, languorously, feeling the lining stretch and slide over his knuckles, feeling Drift shiver and moan above him. He controlled himself by watching Drift’s abandon, the white arms thrashing in their bonds, the black body sinuous against his face. He didn’t ask any more questions—he didn’t trust Drift’s ability to answer. Drift was gone, wild, optics wide and almost white bright, his face a blank mask, somewhere hard and ugly and deep that he did not often go. 

The valve clamped on his hand, with force enough to bruise his fingers, Drift going rigid, roaring, shaking the bonds that held him, his systems pouring into a wild overload that drenched Perceptor’s hand and left Drift hanging, shaking, wrung out, as if impaled on Perceptor’s hand. 

The sound echoed away, and Drift hung, trembling, the only sound the soft plashes of fluid off Perceptor’s wrist, falling to the floor, and Drift’s raw heaving ventilation.

Perceptor moved his hand, gingerly, Drift nearly whimpering. “Yes?” Perceptor asked.  Drift nodded, his hips bucking and twitching as Perceptor slowly, carefully, withdrew his hand.  Drift’s ankles unlocked—finally—from behind Perceptor’s shoulders, the sudden extra weight pulling on cables that had been loosened by the thrashing.  Perceptor snatched at Drift as he dropped, just enough to stabilize him, just enough that Drift ended up pulled back against Perceptor’s chassis, Perceptor’s helm near his. 

Perceptor could feel the instant it hit Drift, could time to the second when it struck Drift that shivering in Perceptor’s embrace was…weak. That what he had just done, what he had just so plainly, obviously enjoyed, was weak.  Perceptor released his arms, reluctantly, moving to unwind the last of the cables trapping Drift’s wrist.  Drift stood, unsteadily, wobbling, his thighs slick with his own lubricant, still in some half-distant darkness, optics shuttered and dim, lowering his arms slowly back down to his sides. 

Perceptor came around to face him, took one of Drift’s hands, placing the Great Sword’s sheath in it.  The other hand curled automatically to take the rest of the weight, and Drift’s optics flared bright and online and regaining awareness.  As if, Perceptor thought, the sword grounded him somehow. 

He could feel Drift’s agonizing struggle with what had just happened, what he had allowed himself to enjoy, the vulnerability he had allowed himself to show.  What Drift thought of as weakness Perceptor took as the highest honor.  And even this struggle was a vulnerability, a sacred trust.  Perceptor would not fail him. 

Perceptor nodded, kicking aside a mass of tangled cable,  hefting his sidearm, his hand still glossed and slick from Drift's valve. “Let’s go,” he said, quietly. “We can still make the waypoint.”

And he turned his back to leave, but he could feel the strange gratitude in Drift’s optics on his back.

 

Comments

[ex-naggingf.livejournal.com]

I've read this four times today....

REALLY. HORNY. NOW.

THANKS.

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Lol, sorry? I wrote this just before I wrote the shibari one so...yeah, my brain was in a weeeeeeeird place. :D Glad you liked!