10Working Title: Ghosts of the Past
Rating: T-M
Pairing: Arcee/Wheeljack
Notes: This was a second attempt at a sequel to What Little Femmes are Made Of. Arcee was going to find out about Airachnid still being around when she's captured and Wheeljack plays into Airachnid's trap when he comes to the rescue and gets zombified. But, Knockout's been researching the monster he created and ends up proving he's not a Decepticon anymore by saving both of them instead of letting the two bots that refuse to accept him conveniently disappear.
I wrote the bulk of this around Halloween and wanted to try my hand at writing something scary.
Despite the particularly bleak setting, the day had been clear and bright. From the top of a building that had once housed an entire self contained community – homes, shops, schools, offices – but now stood eerily silent, a blue femme watched dust devils spin back and forth far out in the Sea of Rust. For several moments, she stood mesmerized by the dancing wind, but the chime of an alert on her datapad snapped her back to Cybertron, galaxies away from the wind and dust of Jasper, Nevada.
She looked over the readout and recorded Hilux Tower as partially operational. Since the Allspark had been returned, Arcee had been working to reestablish part of the data grid. When – or if – the others returned home, the more optics and audios they had hooked up, the better. And, if she could get these buildings' self repair and maintenance systems back up and running, it would be less work for someone else later on.
Arcee checked the mainframe's server links and restarted the still-functioning drivers. One hundred thirty-five out of eight hundred service drones appeared to be operational. One hundred twenty-eight were able to make it out of their dusty charging closets. Good enough. The others' priority would be liberating their fellow drones from the rubble or rusty closets first, then they would begin repairing or rebuilding the others. After they were an army of eight hundred again, they would set about repairing Hilux Tower as they waited for new residents.
She opened the hatch again and started back down the dark access ladder tunnel to transit level.
It was busywork, true, but she was glad to be occupied. At least this let her get out and drive. She was the only one small enough to get through a lot of the damaged buildings and light enough to not bring any unstable structures down on her helm. If she'd been stuck monitoring a silent commlink like Smokescreen or supervising vehicons like Bulkhead, she would have fried her processor long ago.
A few levels above the shelled-out lobby, she emerged from the shaft and picked her way through the overturned furniture and the maze of broken doors. There weren't many rusting bodies in the upper levels of the buildings, thank Primus. Everyone had been evacuated for the most part, but the levels that were close to the transit way had been used for cover – often times unsuccessfully. She was always bound to find a few. The main transits were choked with them, Autobots, Decepticons and neutrals.
She glanced up at the setting sun. There was just enough time for one more if she hurried, so the femme checked her datapad for another system lock signal. A large, promising complex on the other side of the bridge from her showed signs of server activity.
Arcee looked up at the once-sleek edifice. This one, Theta Center, was much taller than Hilux. It would take a while to get to the top via the access ladders. Maybe even a little longer than she had. That was assuming she didn't have to negotiate any damaged areas or go around locked doors. She was about to look for a smaller building on the route back to base when something caught her optic in the reflections of the surrounding structures.
A large hole, several levels high, marred one side of Theta a little more than halfway up. Too big for most fliers, she decided, and even the bigger framed Cons were too light to do that much damage. That left the very good possibility it was an Autobot cruiser that had made it – a small one … maybe with an intact power converter.
Wheeljack would absolutely flip if she brought one back. Granted, it would all but finish his ship, but Pit, it was the least she owed him.
What she could make out of the interior of Theta from street level was a mess. From the looks of things, some sort of last stand had taken place here. Furniture had been shoved into bulwarks at the main entrances, so she climbed up to a hole made by a mortar on the fourth level.
Once inside, she realized what had happened. The bottom levels looked to have been a neutral hospital. The Cons must have arrived ahead of schedule and the staff had been scrambling to evacuate the patients. There wasn't any point looking for supplies. Anything the neutrals hadn't been able to carry, the warring factions would have taken after they got in.
Plus, she didn't want to risk finding things she wasn't looking for – like another teacher bot with her helm crushed in by a support beam and a dozen younglings starved in stasis lock around her, unable to get out of the rubble. It made her tanks churn to think about.
Arcee found a mechanical chase and several dormant drones in good condition. Maybe it would be worth it to make it to the main server tonight. What was she worried about in the dark anyway? Rusty tumbleweeds?
The chase lead her to a narrow corridor meant for the service drones, and as always, at the end was the access ladder that went all the way up the structural core of the building. It was a good thing she wasn't claustrophobic. A mech even Bumblebee's size might have gotten bound up in it. There was always the elevator shafts, but the access ladder always came out in the server room, and it was the most stable. It was the fastest way ninety percent of the time.
The wreck, she estimated, was about one hundred forty levels up, so her processor had time to wander as she climbed. How was Ratchet doing? Had the kids graduated yet? Did Jack join the army? Did June and Fowler get together? Poor June. At least the human femme wasn't in Arcee's situation. She was still stuck with a bunch of mechs until more ships arrived. Who knew when that would be.
She paused. Were her vents always so loud? She listened, but didn't hear anything. Looking up and down, her single headlamp only illuminated a dozen levels of the tunnel in either direction. It was nothing, but she still waited, holding her fans off as long as she could.
Nothing. Maybe the wind.
Even if it was just the wind, she was relieved when she climbed out of the ladder tunnel at the level of the wreck. It had been the wind. The wreck had opened several floors to the elements, and she could feel the air moving and could smell old, oily smoke very faintly.
Still, the scout was on edge now, and an act of Primus couldn't make her relax.
A few hallways out from the central shafts toward the east side of the building, she found the first evidence of smoke damage, then blistered paint, blackened metal, and finally structural damage. The wind was howling this high up, and anything not bolted down had been blown loose long ago by storms.
It was a cruiser, much like the Jackhammer. Small – maybe for recon or quick extractions. Despite the char and smoke residue, she could still make out 'Sassy Brass' on one of the tail fins and the image of a femme suggestively straddling the bars of a captain's rank. Definitely military then.
She dropped down to the top of it. It looked like the pilots had ejected, leaving a convenient access point for her and, thankfully, an empty cockpit. On a whim, she tried connecting her datapad, but the hardware was fried. Luckily for Wheeljack, the power converter was heavily insulated against engine fire and hadn't been crushed in the collision.
She jimmied it out of it's frame and was cutting it from the tangle of wire harnesses when she heard something glass shatter outside of the cruiser and froze. Arcee was about to dismiss it as the wind, but would she have been able to hear it if the wind hadn't died down?
Quietly, she packed away her prize into her subspace and crept back to the cockpit. The interior of the tower was dark beyond the broken window. Suddenly, it felt much later than she'd estimated from the safety of the transitway – and there weren't just rusty tumbleweeds in the dark.
Something crunched or fell out of her range of vision, and Arcee felt like someone had dumped coolant down her back.
Just the building settling. It was probably unstable around the wreckage, and her weight had disturbed something.
So, why was she hesitating to go back to the access ladder she'd come from?
"Oh, for Primus' sake …" she chided herself.
She stepped out gingerly onto the exposed beam and tight-roped her way back onto the stable decking. If she could get out of the elements, her imagination would come down out of overdrive. Just for good measure, she forced a door closed between her and the wreck so the wind wouldn't keep her on edge.
Her chronometer told her she had a little over an hour of daylight left. By the time she got back to the transitway, there wouldn't be enough time to get back to base before dark. So, that was a definite 'no' on going the rest of the way up to the servers.
This level was a different layout from the one above the wreck where she'd come out. Fewer doors, more open spaces, but now the air felt stiff and suffocating. She couldn't win for losing tonight.
A tumbling thumping sound sent her receptors whizzing, and her blasters were out in a sparkbeat. Her headlamp swept the room frantically. Her fans roared in her audio receptors.
Nothing.
It was quiet again, not even the wind. Was that even possible?
She had to get out of here. Frag this place.
She swept the room beyond an open door reflexively, but was it just an empty domicile like countless millions of others.
Nothing.
Two steps from the door, something shattered in the apartment and she managed to stifle a yelp. Against every natural impulse, Arcee stepped back and glanced around the common room again. Lockers, cabinets, a chair and desk with a holovid player on it. Nothing was broken.
Regretfully, the door to the berth rooms was open or she might have been able to talk herself into moving on. The washroom was empty at the end of the hall. The first berth room was empty – just a disorganized closet and a couple dusty footlockers. Again, nothing broken.
The last room held a wide berth in the corner and scattered holovids and empty energon cubes littered the floor. Only one holovid was broken, but there wasn't anywhere it could have fallen from and it looked to have been stepped on instead of dropped. It offered little comfort.
She looked into the tiny washroom to be sure and was relieved to find a shattered bottle of polish on the wash rack floor and a shelf it might have been too big for. Arcee didn't let herself wonder why it had sat there thousands of years and decided to fall just now, and vented a sigh.
She turned back to the main hall. If the air had felt stale before, now it felt alive with staticy sensations. Every sensor in her back told her something was behind her, following her, just beyond her headlight's pool of visibility every time she turned around.
Now, she wished she could run back and open the rusty door again instead of leaving herself shut up in the dark.
The door to the ladder room was locked, but she made an exception to her rule of not disturbing the structures and blasted through the mechanism. If it brought the place down on her helm, so be it. Fortunately, it did not.
Arcee climbed into the tunnel and shut the access hatch behind her for the first time ever. This level of this place could go another thousand vorns without anyone setting a ped in it for all she cared.
The climb down felt like it went on forever. She checked again and again for the bottom platform, but only ever saw the end of the light and the darkness beyond.
The rungs she stood on shook, and she looked up. A little rust rained down on her from the darkness, but nothing moved or made a sound. It didn't matter. She was sure something was watching her.
Cautiously, she started down again. The walls felt like they were closing in around her. An access hatch squeaked, groaned on its hinges, and clunked shut somewhere far above her. Terror iced through her fuel lines as more rust cascaded down on her, then suddenly she was all but falling down the ladder. She had to be close to the bottom – had to be!
A rung snapped under the weight of her ped abruptly. Her leg slipped into the space behind it, and she cried out when her winglets ground into the wall as she fell backwards and the strut in her leg bent under her weight and momentum. Before she could catch herself, the leg wrenched free and she was falling, upside down, the last half a dozen levels to the platform.
When her optics onlined again a moment later, Arcee found herself contorted in a painful tangle of limbs and debris. Thank Primus the platform had still been there, or she might have fallen all the way down to Pit-knows-where.
A searing pain in her thigh turned out to be a twisted piece of metal that had lanced the thin armor and protoskin and several several fuel lines in her already damaged leg. Resolutely, she grit her dente and pulled it out.
No one would find her if she stayed here. They wouldn't even start looking until morning.
Pulling herself up on the ladder, she thought she heard something above her, closer than ever. She climbed out of the tunnel and shut and locked the wheel with a metal bar, then closed and barricaded the door to the room just to make herself feel better.
But, when her processor slowed down, she realized she wasn't where she'd come in. This was the ground floor of the neutral hospital, and a rusting body lay in her headlight further down the corridor.
Frag. Limping heavily on her broken and bleeding leg, she skirted around the mech and the energon stain.
Just as she had feared when she decided to go in through a higher level, the bottom of Theta Center was a tomb. Rusting frames were everywhere, and even all this time later, there was the faint, acrid smell of old energon. The Cons had gunned them down wherever they lay in their berths or sat at their desks or tried to hide. An appropriate surge of chills ran through her. She just wanted to be home RIGHT NOW.
Again and again, she shot through locks and climbed through dangerous looking rubble. She tripped over the deteriorating frame of a mech slumped against a wall with the smaller frame of a youngling clutched to his chest. Pit. Who had they shot first?
She cut through a bulwark of desks and couches that the Cons had plowed through and found herself in the lobby, optics adjusting painfully to the comparatively brilliant rays of waning twilight outside.
Something slammed a door in the hall she'd come from, and she vaulted out a shattered part of the wall and onto the transitway sidewalk. Transforming was excruciating, but she didn't care. She tried hard not to wobble as she sped away from the gory scene.
The cityscape rushed past her in a blur. Energon was leaking out fast, but she could make it back. She would make it back.
Then, it was behind her. The lights of the base came into sight, but an engine was right on her tail. She could hear it. She could feel it. She wasn't crazy!
It grabbed her back wheel, and she screamed. Her blades and blasters came out, and she lashed out wildly at her captor. But, he caught her servos and struggled to pin her.
"Primus, femme! Shut up and calm down!" a familiar voice shouted. "You're leaking everywhere!"
Knockout.
"You?!" she gasped.
"Me? Of course it's me!"
"You were following me?!" she demanded, wishing he was a monster instead.
"What?! No! I was following a river of energon I found when …"
Another engine roared up, and in half an instant, Knockout was on his aft several paces away and Wheeljack was standing between her and the red mech.
"Keep your twisted servos off her, Con!"
"I didn't do anything!" he quickly defended when the Wrecker's fist shifted to his ion cannon. "She's injured! I just …"
"How do I know you didn't do it?"
"I was only coming out for a drive! I found her energon trail and saw her driving like scraplets were on her tailpipe. I was trying to help!"
"He didn't do it," Arcee reluctantly spoke up.
Wheeljack looked back at her, and finally retracted his cannon back into his gauntlet.
"See?" Knockout insisted.
The white mech literally growled at him. To Knockout's credit, he managed not to flinch back.
"She don't need help from you."
"Fine."
"Fine! Now, scram before I straighten your crankshaft for kicks."
Knockout cast her leg one more glance, frowned, then transformed and sped away, back toward the main part of the base to cry to Ultra Magnus and Bumblebee.
Wheeljack vented heavily as he watched him disappear. Then, he turned his attention back to her.
"I might've jumped the gun a smidge," he confessed.
Arcee took his offered servo and let him pull her up onto her good ped. She managed to smile at him.
"Just … I'll deal with it in the morning," she surrendered. "I just want a shower and my berth and for this day to be over."
She turned toward their hangar, but Wheeljack scooped her up before she could take a step. Arcee convinced herself she was too tired and bleeding too badly to protest.
"What happened?"
Arcee sighed, glancing back toward the skyline backlit in an appropriate haunting red by the last of the setting sun's rays.
"Nothing," she decided. "My … my imagination got the best of me is all."
"That's a Pit of an imagination." A servo patted the injured thigh that proved his point, and she bit back a sharp remark.
"I got a little spooked." Arcee shook her helm at herself. "Fell down a ladder and almost snapped my whole leg off. It seems even stupider now than it did at the time."
The hangar door opened a crack with a signal from Wheeljack, and he sidestepped through and let it shut behind them. Safe in the bright shop lights and smell of grease and energon jet fuel, it was all feeling more and more like a bad dream.
The mech swept a workbench clear with one arm and sat her down. Arcee fingered the laceration gingerly. The leaking was slowing down, but it still looked like scrap.
"Okay then," he announced, returning with a magnifying visor, soldering iron, and his smallest spot welder, "let's see how much worse I can make this."
He pulled up a stool, sat, and waited expectantly. Arcee felt her faceplate heat but spread her legs. It beat bleeding out or getting a rust infection – if only barely. He smirked, pulling the visor down, but bent to inspect the wound without comment.
She grit her dente as he parted the black protoskin with a retractor and poked and prodded around. Without warning, he took a stab at the tip of her ped with some tweezers.
"Ow! What the …?!"
"No damage to your receptor circuits," he noted aloud.
He dug a finger in behind her knee's armor, and Arcee ground out a hiss as her leg unwillingly flexed.
"Good enough," he declared. "Just a few bleeders to mend, straighten out that strut, tack you back together, and you'll be good as new."
Arcee didn't feel even as good as a salvage yard reject – especially after a surprise injection of three times too much Corro-stop. But, when she kept reminding herself her other option was having Knockout's servos all over her, she found the willpower not to club him with a torque wrench.
"Alright," the Wrecker resigned. "I'll bang this plating back into shape and tack it on tomorrow. For now, Dr. Wheeljack prescribes taking it easy. VERY easy. No transforming, plenty of energon, and lots of recharge so your nanites can do their thing. "
She vented a sigh, looking at the open gear works of her lower leg and nodded.
"How's it feel?"
Arcee tried flexing it and felt the joint grate unpleasantly. No medic also meant no pain meds, so there wasn't any point complaining, but that didn't stop her.
"Feels like some back-alley mechanic fixed it."
He chuckled, helping her off the bench to her peds. At least it supported her weight.
"Wait til you see my bill," he grinned.
She rolled her optics but returned it. "The whole reason I got in this mess was for your stupid power converter, so that better make us even."
Wheeljack's brow rose. Arcee pulled the sooty box out of her subspace.
"Frag! You really found one!"
He took it, inspecting the box eagerly. She smiled, watching him unwrap it from its charred fire blanket like a sparkday present.
"Oh, yes!" he laughed. "Everything's here. The core is pristine. It's perfect!"
She yelped when he snatched her up in a crushing hug.
"You're the best, Arcee! I'll get this thing rebuilt and …"
"You're welcome!" she gasped, unable to squirm free. "My wings! They're scratched up though!"
"Oh." He quickly sat her down. "Need me to look at them?"
The femme gave and undignified squeak when he caught one in his fingers, and the other wing quivered sympathetically. Even being gentle, they were hyper sensitive, and she hadn't been ready for the touch.
"Sorry." He let her go.
"I … I can handle them. A soak and some medicated wax will take the sting out."
Wheeljack smiled with a nod and held up the box again. "Well, this thing's worth more than a few spot welds."
She waved it off.
"Something will come up," she promised, beginning to walk away stiff-legged. "It always does."
"Better be soon," he shrugged, turning to go back to the main part of the hangar.
Her smile sobered behind his back, but she didn't reply and tried not to limp back through his side of the hangar.
A ship made of salvaged and fabricated mismatched parts sat on a lift, a testament to the Wrecker's surprising mechanical aptitude. The ship was his ticket out – away from the waiting game, away from Ultra Magnus, away from Knockout.
Of course, she'd get along fine when he left. This was home. This was were she'd fought to be and where she belonged. But, it was just so much … easier … the way things were now – with Wheeljack.
Arcee wasn't exactly sure what her standing was with the Wrecker according to the others, but from her point of view she was in some sort of landlocked gray area. Not part of his territory in the traditional sense, but still 'with Wheeljack' if anyone asked.
The Wrecker had established early on that he would only barely tolerate Knockout under strict orders and direct supervision. So, none of the others had had any qualms letting him isolate himself on the far end of base. And, from the start, the mech had quickly established the hangar to be his domain, and Knockout knew better than to come within blaster range.
Arcee had been getting fed up with the chore of avoiding the medic so she wouldn't say something that would earn her a lecture from the others about what it meant to be an Autobot and giving him a second chance. Easy for them to say. He hadn't almost killed them for spare parts and violated their most sensitive hardware.
She'd just naturally drifted into the relative safe haven of Wheeljack's cluttered and chaotic workshop. Staying there to heal and relax after he would repair her had eventually evolved into her never going back to her berthroom in the main part of the base.
The mech didn't mind her company. The fact that it was grinding the other mechs' gears that she wasn't staying with them probably made for some great entertainment by his standards.
Even the living quarters he'd cleaned out and fixed up for her reflected their unique symbiosis. It was part of his workshop, but he respected her privacy and rarely came in, preferring to recharge in the unfinished berthroom on his ship or passed out, slumped over a workbench.
Early on, she'd insisted he could use all of the other amenities too, but that treaty had been quickly amended after she'd caught him preparing jet fuel formulations in her galley in the only clean energon warmer he could find. Arcee knew she kept her hot oil tub dangerously clean too, but so far he'd kept the greasy parts and carb cleaner out in favor of keeping his wash rack privileges.
She filled the metal basin with hot mineral oil and sank into it with a sigh. Everything else in the universe melted away. Nothing else mattered. She was home and safe right now, and this horrible day was finally over.
Outside, the hanger's old PA system was turned up for the chorus of 'Take Me Home Tonight,' making the oil in the tub ripple slightly. She opened her optics and frowned at the ceiling. At least Miko hadn't drilled Slash Monkey into his processor like Bulkhead, but Wheeljack's fascination with Earth 80s music wasn't much better in her opinion.
Over the music, she heard the mech start belting out the chorus – terribly – and couldn't help but snicker, shaking her helm at the image of the Wrecker bopping to the music as he worked on his new toy. Primus, how was there no Cybertronian translation for the word 'dork?' But, he was her favorite dork.
At least he was until she heard the opening for 'I Need a Hero.' Arcee groaned. Now he was just tormenting her, knowing she was listening. She closed off the last of her vents and sank all the way under the oil into the blissfully silent heat. It would've been easy to slip into recharge like this, but it would make her joints sticky and gross feeling. The femme relaxed until she'd soaked up most of the heat from the oil, then resurfaced to a quiet hangar and wiped the oil away from her optics.
"Feel better?"
She jerked back, too startled to even scream at the mech knelt at the edge of the tub. If she'd had two good legs, she might have succeeded in leaping out of it.
Wheeljack chuckled over the amused rumbled in his engine. "Scare ya?"
"No!" she snarled. "Just slagged me off. Fragger!" she added for good measure, splashing him.
It did little to dampen his mood, and now he wouldn't stop laughing. The femme scowled as menacingly as one could while covered in oil and pulled herself up.
"Come on, you don't have to get out. I'm just messing with ya."
She tried to resist him pulling her back into her bath, but it unintentionally resulted in her slipping back onto her aft with an ungraceful splash. Now, the Wrecker couldn't even ventilate right he was laughing so hard.
"Can I help you?!" she demanded. "Please!"
Wheeljack stifled his snickers – barely – wiping some oil off his faceplate, but he lost control again when he tried to meet her optics. Arcee tried hard to stay angry, but she was losing.
"Aft," she grumbled, the corner of her mouth fighting the smirk.
"Aww, you don't mean that," he grinned.
"Don't I?!" she scoffed.
"You'll get bored without me around."
Arcee got up and shivered the excess oil off with a birdlike flourish.
"Do you actually need something, or did you just feel like creeping?" she sighed, turning on the hot solvent in the wash rack.
"I was wondering where you found that converter," he said, getting back to his peds.
Arcee paused in her preening.
"A wreck?" she said carefully. She could feel him studying her.
"Yeah? Where at?"
"Just … some building. I forgot to record the coords in my hurry to get back," she quickly added.
"Could you find it again?"
"I don't know. It's all a blur."
"Did anything else look salvageable?" he pressed.
"It was pretty much twisted scrap."
"Really? Those converters are pretty fragile. Could you tell what class …?"
"It was totaled, Wheeljack!" she interrupted firmly, facing him.
The mech's brow rose, and she felt her plating heat under his scrutiny. For a tense moment she tried to go about cleaning, but her circuits felt fried, and all the tension had come back tenfold. She turned off the solvent, but a scarred black servo caught her shoulder, and a worried energy field nudged at her.
Arcee opened up to it without her usual reluctance and let the mech soothe her. She felt his surprise, but Wheeljack took the invitation and pulled her to him, enveloping her in the secure warmth of his field.
"You said that converter was the last thing you needed," she reminded.
"Spare parts are never a bad idea in deep space," he tried to joke.
Arcee vented softly.
"It's just … it's in a bad place."
"So? I'll hot wire Mags' boat and haul it out."
"Not that kind of bad," she clarified. "It's over an old infirmary – one of those places that … shouldn't be bothered."
"Oh." His optimism sagged slightly. "You're not scared of ghosts, are you?"
Arcee huffed. "If you'd asked me before I was ran out of that building with a busted leg, I would've laughed at you."
"And now?"
"I know I'm not going back there."
"Fair enough." He sighed. "If it can't make it to Junk, I didn't have any business building it anyway."
Arcee untangled her energy field from his and withdrew, reigning it back in completely. Wheeljack reluctantly let her go and watched her back as she dug through a cabinet for wax to fix her winglets.
"Need help?"
She shook her helm and smiled for him.
"I got it. You've got a ship to finish. Remember?"
"It can wait, Arcee."
Her smile sobered as she hit the button to the sanctuary of her berthroom.
"Goodnight, Wheeljack."
She recharged fitfully – well, more so than usual. It was crazy how on Earth, on a slapped-together berth, in a berthroom the size of a storage closet, always fearing the next fight might be her last, she'd recharged like a sparkling. But now, she couldn't make herself sprawl out into the proper mattress from her corner, and the heated pressure gel offered no comfort. In fact, she thought her nightmares were worse on cold nights when she had to turn the heat on.
Arcee tossed and turned for the obligatory number of mega-cycles before letting herself out on parole with the promise to catch a nap later.
She worked the stiffness out of her leg as much as she could. It felt like there was a second (or was it third?) round of a Corro-stop processor ache waiting for her day to get going. It would probably get up to full strength about the time she got to base to talk to Ultra Magnus and Bumblebee.
The femme emerged into the bright sunlight pouring in though the high windows of the hanger and glared at the day for not matching her mood.
"Mornin' Crotch Rocket. Feeling better?"
The mech had to recharge sometime, but she rarely caught him at it.
"Sure. Fragging fantastic."
He climbed down from his scaffolding under the left thruster.
"If you're heading to base, you better let me check you out so they don't find any surprises," he said. "Wouldn't want to have my medical license revoked."
Another exam was the second to last thing she wanted to face this morning, but she limped over to his work bench.
"Looks pretty good, considering," he said, inspecting the latticework of silver welds on her black protoskin.
Arcee felt him prodding at her energy field again. Ratchet had used to do it for honest feedback, but the Wrecker had never bothered. He knew it hurt like slag and took her word for it if she told him otherwise. But, she meshed a part of her field with his again, in case she was missing something.
"This still stiff?" he asked, probing behind her knee.
She winced, but it flexed without much protest this time. "It's better."
"Good."
He wiggled her ped in different directions, watching the hydraulics respond. Satisfied, he picked up her missing armor plate from the floor at his peds and began reattaching it.
"So, what are you gonna tell Mags?"
"Nothing, if he doesn't bring it up."
"I doubt that's gonna happen," he muttered.
"I can hope, can't I?" she vented. "Until proven guilty, I'm just going for our energon rations. Ow! Hey!" She jerked when a bolt dug in a little too deep. "I need that leg."
"Sorry." Apology seeped into her field, soothing and warm, and she relaxed a little.
"I'm just tired," she surrendered, returning the emotion to him.
The mech meshed his field into hers further, forgiving and playful, and smiled when she looked at him.
"All back together," he announced. "Still got to take it easy though."
He helped her up, but hadn't broke their fields yet.
"Hey, before you take off, could you help me with something?" he asked. "It won't take a cycle."
"What?"
He turned, waving for her to follow him around the back of his ship.
"I was wanting to get started on sealing and painting this thing and be out of your circuits by the end of the week."
She paused. That soon? Dread filled her, and Arcee fought off his energy field before her mood could give her away.
"Maybe when I get back."
"You in that much of a hurry to get chewed out?" he smiled. "It's just a quick test that takes two bots. It'll be painless."
"Seriously, Wheeljack …"
"Come on. Please?"
She huffed at his relentlessness.
"Please?"
She'd come home one day and he'd just be gone. Wouldn't he?
"Primus. What do you need?" she surrendered.
Wheeljack smirked triumphantly and opened the back hatch.
Arcee hadn't been in the ship recently. The inside looked much better than the outside. He was almost done with it.
The white mech led her up to the cockpit and took a seat in the pilot's chair.
"Sit down," he invited, motioning toward the other seat.
Arcee stepped around and plopped into the gel cushioning. Automatically, the back adjusted to her smaller size, and she thumbed a switch to move her closer to the copilot controls which glowed to life under her servos, awaiting command.
"How's it feel?"
She looked at him. "Fine?"
He grinned, nodding. "You like it?"
Arcee frowned slightly at him, puzzled. "What? Why?"
"Just making sure it works for you," he shrugged.
Arcee sat back from the controls cautiously.
"You could come with me, Arcee."
She froze.
"I'd like you to."
The femme sank back in the seat carefully. "I have to stay here," she finally found the voice to say.
"Why? Magnus is in command. Bumblebee took over SIC after his promotion. You can't stand Knockout."
"We have to rebuild Cybertron," she reminded.
"And, you're the only one small enough to climb the towers," he concluded for her.
"That's part of it."
"You're not going to do every tower on the planet, are you?"
"Well no, but …"
"Other small-frames will come," he said. "So will other femmes," he added, cutting to the chase. "That's the real reason they'll tell you you have to stay. Isn't it?"
"No, they don't need me now that the Allspark is up and running again," she defended. She frowned. "And what's your 'noble' reason for asking me to come with you?" she scoffed.
The mech chuckled, caressing her energy field again with a bold – almost vulgar – surge of lust and arousal.
"I'm not hiding any ulterior motives. Never did," he purred, making her plating tingle.
He wanted her – had for a while, but ironically, peace had interrupted, and he'd backed off – way off – to give her space and time to adjust.
"So, they don't need you to repopulate the Cybertronian race anymore," he continued, amused at her unease. "Even if they did, what's it matter if you're stuck here letting Dr. Frankenstein set you or off planet somewhere?"
"Wheeljack, I'm not going to debate with you." Because she'd lose every time.
"I want you to come," he repeated, leaning back in his seat to study the dark monitors around him. "I like your company, and … I don't want to have to miss you. Or feel guilty for you missing me."
Maybe he expected her to deny it, but she knew there wasn't any point now that he'd cornered her.
"Then why can't you stay here?" she countered. "You built a ship from scraps and junk in three months. How is that NOT beneficial to restoring Cybertron?"
"Because I'm happier off planet. Cybertron is just a big mausoleum. You've seen it yourself." He vented a tired sigh. "I WAS a mechanic and an inventor, but I've been a warrior way longer than I was anything else."
Arcee thought about it for a moment and looked at him.
"I can't … just STOP fighting and wait for the way things used to be to come back. It sounds crazy, but peace has just become this big, disappointing inconvenience."
"It's not crazy."
He looked up at her, and she smiled slightly.
"So, will you come?"
Arcee looked out the window at the back of the hangar.
"There aren't many Decepticons left to fight, even off planet," she pointed out.
"Maybe not, but there's always work for a mech that knows how to fight if he knows where to look."
"And a femme?"
His brow furrowed, deep in thought for a moment.
"I didn't think that far ahead," he confessed. "I was hoping you'd be content just looking sexy and keeping space barnacles off my ship.
She rolled her optics with a chuckle. "When you put it like that, how could a femme say no?"
"I know! Right?" He smiled, but it softened.
Arcee vented a quiet sigh. "I've heard the front in space was the most dangerous."
"Well, it's not boring," he concurred. "And, femmes tend to stick out a bit – especially unbonded ones."
She arched a brow at him suspiciously.
"But," he continued, "you're no rookie, AND you'll have your own, very-personal bodyguard."
Arcee smirked, her plating heating at the prospect.
"If you stayed, I could still use a body guard," she suggested. "I mean, as long as I'm sparking, no one could complain. And, no one said I had to give anyone else a turn."
The air grew heavy with the mech's arousal, and she snickered, letting her field go to tangle with his and share.
Arcee reset her seat, and he watched her get up. Wheeljack's engine purred when she stroked his brow and down his cheek, but he caught her wrist. Instead of easily tugging free, the femme slipped onto the chair with him, straddling the mech's lap and smiled at him.
"It wouldn't hurt to think about it – until you've finished, I mean," she purred, resting her chest plating against his casually but more than suggestive.
She felt his spark pulse and throb pleasantly, and his engine revved to counter the discomfort of it slowing down for what it thought was a willing female counterpart.
"We should consider all our … options," she added.
"Couldn't hurt," he rumbled, trying to catch her mouth without breaking the contact.
"Maybe recharge on it a few nights? I have to make sure I can power down on a strange ship, after all."
He grinned at the tormenting femme and arched his back to grind select plating into her hips. Arcee flushed with heat and her fans whirred faster, but she still dodged his kisses, feigning more interest in nuzzling at his neck and audio receptors and getting her fill of his strangely arousing scent of burnt metal and welding gasses.
Wheeljack shuddered when a servo slipped beneath his chest plating to pluck at intimately sensitive wires.
"Femme," he tried to growl, but with his servos around her waist and her spark so close to answering his, the best he could manage was a seductive purr. "You're playing with fire."
Arcee smiled again and finally sent a soft nudge of willingness and acceptance through her field that made the mech's safety vents open and his spark surge beneath her again.
"Arcee?" he rumbled.
She touched her fingertips to his lips, and he gladly kissed them.
"JUST exploring my options," she whispered, tracing his scar down to finger the accent of metal on his chin.
His servos slid to her thighs, careful of her tender injuries, and she let him heft her the short distance higher so she could draw his helm close and touch her lips to his. Wheeljack smiled into it drunkenly, sitting up with her against him.
"Explore … all you want," he purred.
Arcee pressed him to lay back again, and her kisses trailed down to the insignia on his chest. His spark pulsed to hers, and she couldn't have overridden the command to open her case if she'd wanted.
Wheeljack's armor clicked and retracted, offering his vulnerable life force to the femme. He was in sync with her now, but his spark beat was still stronger, pulsing a brilliant aquamarine.
She brushed her lips against the edge of his case, making him gasp and the light intensify.
"It's beautiful," she whispered.
He shivered beneath her. "Glad … glad you like it."
"I love it," she smiled and sat back to give her armor room to shift back.
Her smaller and more recessed spark chamber irised open, letting the radiant amethyst glow it housed spill out. She lay back against him to find his lips again, and their sparks' proximity was enough to fuse their energy fields.
Arcee gasped as Wheeljack made her panel open. He grinned at her, and her processor was overtaken for an instant, giving her the brief sensation of wanting to impale the blue femme on top of her. He snickered at her when she managed to separate her thoughts again.
She cast him a wicked smirk before dipping to his audio receptor.
"Two can play at that game," she whispered before sending him the rush of thick servos locking her to a growling mech's hips and the thrill of overload as scalding transfluid shorted out her cooling system.
"Arcee!" He bucked beneath her, and she heard the definite (and satisfying) click of his spike's cover retracting as well.
Anticipation and excitement saturated her field now. She could feel his dire hunger for her. He wanted her. He wanted to worship her. He loved her. Their 'practice' bond left little doubt. Primus. She was finally going to frag his reservoirs dry and not let him up for air until …
They froze at the sound of the hangar door opening.
"Hey, Jackie!" Bulkhead called. "You in here?"
Heat rushed to Arcee's faceplate and she sat up.
"No, wait …!" Wheeljack hissed, holding onto her waist desperately, but unable to stop her from closing herself and trying to thrash her field free of his.
"Arcee, wait! Please!" he begged.
"Arcee?" Bulk tried. "Anybody home?"
"I'm coming! Hang on!" she yelled.
Arcee broke loose easy enough from the mech's hold, but he was slow to recall how she was able. When Wheeljack tried to shove out of his chair to catch her, his peds were too slow to get the message, and he stumbled and fell on his face with an ungraceful clang.
"Slag it!" he snarled.
Arcee had to mute her vocalizer to keep from laughing her aft off, but she quickly knelt over him to see he was okay. Interrupted syncs were rough on mechs. His pump had slowed with his spark, and the energon probably felt like cold grease in his fuel lines.
"Get some recharge," she purred, kissing his cheek sweetly. "I'll be back before you wake up."
He groaned, disappointed, but she rushed to intercept Bulkhead.