quidamling | Long overdue WIP

Response to SC's "Times; 1" fic. Which was sorta promised and never delivered. Till I have other things I should be doing, then the bunnies attack.

And for this, I blame:
1) the lines in SC's bit that seem like 'Hide is speaking from personal experience...
2) the fact that Ratch is too damn good at Judo throws.

So yeah, ends up sneaking before hers chronologically.
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Ratchet perched over his chest, having flipped the slightly larger black mech and plopped his aft smugly and triumphantly on Ironhide’s abdomen. Lesson of the day – don’t think he can sneak up behind the med student and steal a grope of his aft.

The medic-in-training had simply grabbed one of the black plated arms; hip twist, step, shift weight, pull and flipped the other mech in a very well executed hip throw. The young weapons specialist had been on his back before he knew what was happening. His processors spun, fighting gyros to realign. Only when a fair amount of chartreuse Ratchet landed on his fuel tanks did he manage a response: a choked warble and mentally cursing that this medic was the only fragging one that took so well to the basic training and hand-to-hand lessons required of all Academy members.

Somehow Ironhide felt he should have seen this coming.

Looking like the turbofox sitting atop a warren of trapped petro-rabbits, Ratchet chuckled down at his own personal captive. “’Hide, you’re such an idiot. You,” he removed one hand from where they still gripped an unfortunate forearm and prodded playfully at chest plating for emphasis, “might be able to be quiet, but did you honestly think I would miss the sound of my own door opening and closing?”

“Thought a chance.”

“I just came back to my quarters, and you’ve tracked me after my final lecture how many orns in a row?”

Ironhide scowled up at the mech. It was definitely Ratchet’s fault that ‘Hide had spent the past number of orns counting down the breems until he could see the young medic, systems and processors complaining about every moment away from the Primus forsakenly smug chartreuse spark-of-a-glitch.

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When contact was made, Ironhide threw his head back, jaw working in a cry that couldn’t make it out of his vocalizer. As pain signals arced through him, his frame trembled with the effort not to give in to the escape instinct. The young med student froze, at first a gut reaction, horror that he’d done something wrong to hurt the black mech below him. But then his processors caught up and he realized what had happened. He moved to pull his hand from the blue energy field, but Ironhide’s hand snapped up to stop him.

“Don’t-” ‘Hide choked. He shuttered his optics tightly and gasped a few times, willing the pain to subside. “Just a breem…”

“What the? You moronic hunk of scrap!” Ratchet’s voice pitched with tension, but he stilled the chartreuse fingers in Ironhide’s spark, swatting the black crested forehead with his other hand. “I thought you’d done this before.”

“Ah! In-interfaced… yeah.” His intakes slowly leveled off and he brought his optics back online. “Couple others… But…” the gray deathgrip at Ratchet’s wrist relaxed now that he had the sensations in his chest under some veneer of control. “Never my spark,” he rumbled from the back of his vocalizer, and then averted his optics.