crux_fleet | Hangar-ing out.

Entry tags:

Hangar-ing out.

"Oh, FRAG no."

Such is Deadlock's reaction, loud enough to be heard in the corridor outside through the open door, as he steps into the hangar, divided in half by a stripe of paint, one half with a helpful label 'Deadlock', the other 'Flashpoint.

Everyone else got their very own nice little rooms with berths and maintenance facilities and scrap like that, and Deadlock gets a half a hangar. 'Cause that's totally fair.

Not that it was news to him that life wasn't fair. And he'd slept in worse places, in the gutters, where you had to hide so the syphoners didn't get you or you weren't dragged off for a little dubiously consenting donation to the local Relinquishment Clinic.

But still, even Rodion hadn't expected him to recharge next to an...Autobot.

No fraggin' way he was going to transform with her watching.

Maybe she'll be smart enough to not show up. Or maybe, being an Autobot, she was so dumb she hit the airlock instead. That was a cheerful thought: Flashpoint floating clueless and alone in the vastness of space. So he's almost smiling (what are you nuts? A real smile would break this face) as he moves to stow his most valuable possessions: his guns, with a grenade with an Autobot logo on it proudly in the middle.

Who says he doesn't have an optic for style?

((OOC: Open to anyone wandering by/exploring!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"No that's just me. I like to classify my levels of boredom because it gives me something to do while being bored out of my mind." DUH. Clearly this is obvious and therefore superior logic. "Who the frag says all Autobots are rich and privileged? They must be gettin' a paycheck I don't."

At least Flashpoint's not asking for trust. She's not even asking him to be nice. Just offering because she's been there before. And yeah, it's not a fun ride. "I won't. I'm no Knight of Cybertron or some slag but I don't pullin' that kind of scrap. Dealt with my own share of that and fraggit I'm not doin' the same to somebody else."

She makes a show of stepping around all the weaponry and bringing only the diagnostic pad with her; theoretically she'd have an easier time eliminating him with her bare hands then using any of those munitions, but hey, he doesn't know that.

Flashpoint stops at the line drawn on the floor though, separating their two living spaces. "Knock, knock. May I come in?" Whoa are those manners? Naw, they sound too scripted for that.

"...you get paid?" Well that settles it right there. Rich privileged paid Autobots.

Hnf. Yeah don't share your sad and traumatic backstory with him. He doesn't care. Except, yeah, more like he doesn't want to care. So stop saying stuff he can care about, you blue meanie.

He rolls his optics at her little charade. "Yeah, fine, but wipe your Autobot feet on the mat." If they're going to play house, he can be a jerk about that, too. He's ~multifaceted~.

"No." This is her facepalming for the umpteenth time, fingers scraping down her face. "Does sarcasm always fly over your head?" Oops, short joke. Unintended yet still accurate!

And Flashpoint's not sharing her history because he'll probably just trash that too. Besides, she's not looking to buy any favors. She doesn't want pity, just a little respect. ... And maybe to strangle him once or twice for associating her with things she's not. Is that too much to ask?

Time to play house then, hmm? Who's kinky now? The 'mat' just so happens to be his name on his side of the line--oops--and she certainly does give both footplates a tap before ambling over. She crouches near him, uncertain about getting too close, and holds a hand out. "Data cable?"

This is clearly a strategy Deadlock should adopt. If she facepalms enough maybe she'll knock herself unconscious.

What? A mech can dream, can't he? "Only stupid sarcasm."

So, yeah, in other words.

Bigger mechs than you have tried strangling Deadlock. Guess how well that went for them.

Fine, he doesn't care about her messing up the gross organic writing anyway. He's frowning, holding his arm out, trying to look as lazy and 'whatever' about it as possible. "Don't fraggin' break it."

But then he'd have to do something about her prone body.

Okay no wait, do nothing at all with said prone body. She's better off being left to the mercy of public hoodlums and miscreants than whatever Deadlock might do.

The sarcasm comment gets an eyeroll; are there a lotta those going on in here or is it just her?

"...if I break something it won't be this gently," Flashpoint mutters, trying to be on her best behavior anyway because even if she talks petty she tries not to act it, not in the ways that really matter. So she's all business now, optics on his wrist and conveniently avoiding eye contact. She'll make a guess on the panel location, querying her database of schematics for comparisons, popping the catch and pulling the cable with surprising delicacy given how rough those hands are.

"How much of you is custom?" she asks as readies to mate the cable to the pad's port, because she's pretty sure she knows mods when she sees them, even if they aren't models she recognizes.

Oh he could come up with something with her prone body. Especially if she's posable. Wanna do yoga poses, Flashpoint?

Keep rolling those optics. She's gonna decalibrate her balance systems if she keeps it up.

Deadlock is a stealthy critter.

"Fraggin' comforting. You sure you're an Autobot medic?" He'd figured they had medics who gave like, foot massages or something.

"Depends. A lot's been replaced, but," he shrugs. He tends to get shot up a lot, so a lot of replacements, not so much anything out of regular stores.

Just go ahead and try it, Deadlock might be surprised at how flexible she is. Though the decalibration of her balance systems might make the yoga a little difficult. She might just fall over on him!

What, is Deadlock saying she has a horrible bedside manner? What a shocker!

"I'm not the one that said I was a medic, that was you." If he wants to have seconds thoughts it might be a little too late, because in goes the cable and she queues up all the relevant scans to run with a few pokes at the pad.

"But?" Yes she's prying, but at least it's relevant. "I know my frames and upgrades. Pre-war at least, most common or mass produced models. I should be able to tell our tech from their's even if it fools the scans but--" she looks up at him then, "--it'd be good to know for sure."

But just think of his hands all over her, shifting her into position....

Wait. No. Don't think about that unless it grosses you out or something.

"You're not a medic?" G-great timing, Autobot, letting that little bomb drop when you're already hooked up to him. Fortunately, Deadlock thinks fast on his feet, even when he's sitting on his aft. He reaches with his other hand, aiming for her throat. "You some kind of fraggin' assassin?" Because if so, he's gonna assassin you, too.

That's both heinously disgusting and hot in horribly forbidden kind of way. And forbidden things just taunt her with their...forbiddenness. DAMMIT stop that.

Flashpoint's crouched here just outside his EM field for a reason, keeping hands and all other limbs and thoughts perfectly caste and to herself okay? Except when he suddenly decides to change that.

She sees the shift in his weight, his hands kept in her peripheral view, but she makes no move to stop him. She rocks a bit on her toeplates with the force of the grab, his hand closing around her throat, but beyond that she makes no other move. She feels the bump of his field, but hers is smooth, like ice, devoid of fear, only a tense, cold anticipation and latent kinetic energy waiting to be released.

Flashpoint holds his gaze with cool, steady yellow-amber optics for a long moment before giving one answer, "I can be."

If you're going to do something Deadlock, best do it now. Here's your chance.

Edited 2014-02-22 18:24 (UTC)

He'll stop if you stop being all curvy and shiny and nearby and touching him. So, you have only yourself to blame.

If she's smooth ice, his EM is rocky fire, flickering and intense and a little out of control. His optics meet hers, red against gold, his fingers flexing against her throat cabling, feeling the vibration of her voice against his palmplates.

His ventilation hitches, and for a long moment they're frozen there, neither making a move, until he sits back, releasing his grip, face settling into a confused frown. "Only letting you go because I don't wanna waste my time hiding your body."

Sounds plausible, right?

Sorry Deadlock, not likely to happen. Unless you scuff her up and add some dents but that requires more of that being nearby and touching stuff unfortunately.

Flashpoint can almost feel the air thicken between them as the moment stretches on, the potential for violence hanging in the palpable space between them. Their systems make a discordant chorus of sounds, poised and uncertain, the moment stretching just past awkward before he releases her.

He seems to pass some kind of test though, because she relaxes and her optics flick back down to the datapad, systems making a shivery ex-vent that's not exactly born of relief. The tension is of a different sort now: she's resisting the sudden urge to follow the draw of that wild EM field as he pulls away, to crush herself against it and be burned by his fire, to feel alive again in that sweet pain.

Flashpoint swallows roughly, her own EM disrupted now, the husky hitch in voice hopefully explained by the still tingling press of his palmplates that's a hot memory on her throat.

"I was a mod technician. Did upgrades and rebuilds. ... Never made the grade for medic." It's a little piece of her history, offered like a strange sort of gift, left out there for him to take or leave. "That was a long time ago though."

Yeah. Okay. Fine. So she'll just continue to be big and shiny and pretty and goodsmelling and all that in his general vicinity. He'll find a way to cope. She won't win at this weird sexy torture thing she's trying on him.

He's going to stare straight ahead for a moment, not looking at her at all, trying to master himself, flexing his hand as though trying to dispel the memory of her warm throat against it, to bring the solar-flares of his EM field under some kind of control.

"Least you did something useful," he says, thickly, grudgingly. Only chance he got was after his world had fallen apart. And even then, he probably provided her with a few spare parts, if she did black market work. "Hngh. A lot was a long time ago." And still, he felt like he wasn't far enough away.

Hey now, it's not like she's doing it on purpose. Well okay she was, before, but this is something totally different and not nearly joking enough for her comfort. Where's that nice shield she puts up between herself and others? It's around here somewhere, why can't she find it...

Yes, good, with the lack of eye contact thing. That's a suitable substitue and makes this a little easier. She might be able to shutdown her emotions in those critical moments, distancing herself from everything, but that's not helping her now. There's always the fear that she won't snap back into herself again, that she'll remain cold forever like Shockwave, and Deadlock's undeniable intensity is far to convienient a remedy right now.

"Until they took it all away," she mumbles, the words dead like a long rotten and desecrated thing, her weariness showing through the old shroud of anger. "War changes everyone."

Deadlock would probably punch himself if he heard anything he did was helping a disgusting Autobot, and it's on the queue of his vocalizer to point out that, you know, the war was all the Autobots' fault. One day she'll learn fraggin' history. Right now, he's not in the mood to play Professor Deadlock.

"Least you had something worth taking," he mutters. He didn't have anything till Megatron gave him his name, his guns, his purpose.

One day, maybe, she'll be more and just an Autobot to him.

Aw frag, that sounds all gross and sentimental. It's not because she cares what he thinks or anything, she just hates labels! (And maybe the shape of the hate he has behind it okay?)

The comment makes Flashpoint look up slightly, just enough to peek past the edge of her own crest to study him. And there's a moment where, with the shape of the face, the turn of the mouth, and ignoring the optics...she can see Drift. And suddenly she sees one in the other now, two sides of the same coin.

Her gaze slides back to the datapad as she compiles the results. "I'm sorry. That it had to be that way for you."

Yeah, one day maybe a dead Autobot. Hrf hrf.

And he realizes it sounds more sappy than snarky as he'd intended. Frag. He'll just knot his hands and stare at them until they burst into flames. Which won't happen, but he's clearly hoping for a miraculous distraction to break the mood.

"Hnf. That way for a lot of us. All we wanted was a fraggin' chance." Right that's not helping the mood, either. Frag.

Miraculous distractions only happen to people with stellar luck. Which is probably neither of them.

Flashpoint would never admit it but she doesn't mind the mood all that much. It's better than fighting at least, something she's growing tired of more and more often these days. And right now? It's been a long and stressful day; there's no way she can relax, but an opportunity to not huddle in a paranoid ball would be welcome.

"...or to be treated like normal citizens worthy of actually living," she adds quietly, "Not thrown away like trash or bled like cattle." She doesn't entirely realize what she's saying, that she's muttering the bitter old words aloud, until the diagnostics pad pings at her.

She coughs roughly and pulls up the diagram and accompanying readout, looking for potential anomalies. There's plenty she doesn't recognize in Deadlock's structure, but it all looks like Cybertronian tech. "Looks clean" she says, offering him the pad if he wants to have a look.

....Maybe if he rubs his hands together, you know, friction, spark, explosion?

Apparently not. Frag. And she might be okay with this weird tank-swimmy emotion stuff, but Deadlock would almost rather to back to mutual threats. It felt familiar, at least.

"Hnnngh. Syphoners were the worst." His lips twitch at the memory. Fraggin' parasites.

He's glad for the scan, and he snatches the readout out of her hands to stare at it, but it's probably obvious he has...no idea what he's looking at.

Only if he nicks a line first, but that's not likely to get him less attention. In fact it might just get him more, after said explosion. Hard to say if it'd be the good or the bad kind though.

The only thing that's not making this ten million times more awkward for Flashpoint is that she knows a decent side to this mech is in there somewhere, and any little peek at it makes her curious. Which is...exceedingly dangerous most likely, and bound to just make things MORE awkward eventually.

"We had our share of syphoners and leakers, but...they weren't the worst of it." Now she's the one with empty hands, and suddenly talking is so much harder. Her fingers fidget in front of her and she only makes partial eye contact. "You uh...want me to go over the readout?"

Frag. He gives up, hands on his lap, frowning at them and the datapad he couldn't read, like their failure to be distracting was a personal affront

And she's looking at him....weird. He glances over, then back at the datapad, armor twitching. "You talk like that, and you're an Autobot." Something off about that, Flashpoint.

He scowls at the pad some more, mouth working like he's biting something. "....yeah. I mean. Just to test if you know what you're doing."

"Yeah? Well. Maybe there's a story behind that." She offers dryly, no malice just a tired sort of frustration, stating the obvious.

But she's a little confused now. The way he keeps frowning at the datapad seems disconcertingly Not Good, like he doesn't like what he sees. Did she miss something? He's gonna test her!?

Flashpoint leans forward over his body, trying not to bump spaulders, in order to look at the datapad between his hands. "W-what do you see? It's, uh, pretty normal stuff right? Except these upgrades here..."

She's going to feel like an idiot if he knows this stuff better than she does.

"Hnf. I don't have time to listen to your stories," he says, with a whole long pile of nothing stretching in front of him for the night's agenda.

He's penciling in 'scowl practice', though, because he's clearly losing his touch.

Ha! She's totally buying this. Excellent. "Yeah? Well, then what's....this line mean?" He points, totally at random. Dr Deadlock has a pop quiz, naughty pupil Flashpoint.

"Because your schedule is so packed." How did Deadlock get a social calendar so quickly, they've barely been here a day. "Who says I'd tell you, anyway?"

She's just going to be contrary...because. Just because. Besides, she'd tell him and he'd find some way to call it all stupid, anyway. Probably think she deserved it something.

Wouldn't he?

And dammit, why is Deadlock making this part difficult? She looks closer at where he's pointing, doing her damnedest not to put her hands on him to steady herself in the process. She's also keeping as tight a reign on her EM field as possible.

Until she sees what he's pointing at. And nearly chokes, her EM flaring at the same time. There's a wobble too, as she tries not to lose her balance and end up in his lap, making her answer a little more demonstrative than she intended.

Have an awkward cough. "Uh. If you don't know what that is, then...uh...I'm really sorry."

"Just because nobody likes you, doesn't mean they don't like me." HA. So there. He's got so many social demands on his time it's ridiculous. As he sits here, grumpily....in the hangar bay with you and his noodlebot.

She's clearly trying to make him look bad. Too bad, Flashpoint. ~~Deadlock doesn't need your help looking bad~~ .

"Course I know what it is. Fraggin' checking up on what you know."

Bluffity bluff fluff.

"If you say so." She's gonna be jealous if that's actually true. "If you wanna party in here with all your buddies and you need me to clear out, just ya know, say the word."

Flashpoint's not trying to make him look bad, not intentionally anyway, if she were this would be so much worse. FOR HIM. And maybe easier for her too. Because it's not like she has the medic-born professionalism where they get all clinical and straight-faced about stuff.

She's just gonna sit back on her heels, cough and pretend that wasn't his EM field pressed against hers. "..._{that's your interface array}," another cough; wow the far side of the hangar is suddenly super interesting. "_{and assorted details}."

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Oops this almost turned into fic

beautiful fic?

:D

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