Work Text:
"Hey there, pretty little medibot," Brawl sing-songs from behind First Aid. Two strong arms loop around his waist and lift him straight off the ladder with a rattle. "Guess who's back?"
"Hands, Brawl! Let me put down the glass," he yelps, holding the tray of sample vials aloft so Brawl doesn't jostle them into shattering. Brawl swings him down onto his feet with more care than he usually handles anything else and nothing breaks. First Aid counts it as a small victory. "These are important."
Brawl only waits long enough for First Aid to deposit the breakables on the nearest surface before he gets grabby again. First Aid doesn't resist, bending forward over the mostly empty lab table and sliding his array panel open. Brawl's fingers slide down his aft and dip roughly into his valve, spreading mesh and smearing around lubricant. He's straight back from whatever ruin they sent him to, grimy and heady with the scent of ozone-laden arousal.
First Aid presses his cheek to the table and draws a shuddering ventilation, passing cool air over all of his components. He immediately feels hot and the only thing inside him is one of Brawl's thick fingers.
He wouldn't exactly call what's being done to him some kind of hard use; it's pretty easy, actually. First Aid's valve clutches around the knuckle of Brawl's finger as he crooks it and Brawl chuckles. "Missed me that much, sweetspark?"
Brawl’s straightforward. He likes to finger First Aid a little, frag him pleasantly hard while toying with First Aid's anterior node, and then dump a shocking amount of transfluid into First Aid's tanks. If he wasn't a Decepticon and technically First Aid’s prison guard, he’d be an incredible full time fragbuddy.
First Aid is still holding onto the fantasy, somewhat pleasantly, when Brawl pushes his legs apart and lines himself up.
Brawl's spike slides home, a solid, heavy, curved length of metal that opens First Aid wide. First Aid doesn't bother faking a protest at the rough handling, because of all the objections he has about his captivity here, being spiked until his processor blanks out doesn't even make the list. He even reaches back and encourages Brawl into a better angle, so his spike is running hard along the line of First Aid’s favorite internal nodes.
First Aid's had all the shame fragged right out of him tenfold. He flattens himself out against the lab table and braces his legs while Brawl works himself up to a rolling rhythm, steady and dependable. First Aid spreads his arms wide, head hanging between his shoulders, and pants even as he's rocking his hips back onto the brutally thick intrusion, valve stretched wide and burning for it.
It feels incredible and First Aid gets the added benefit of turning off all his higher thought processes until they both overload, which happens only after an immense amount of thrusting. Brawl's hands are all over him, petting his plating, murmuring something sweet-sounding First Aid hears but doesn't process.
Brawl spreads kisses across his shoulders and even gets a cleaning sham from a storage bin to help him tidy up. His big hands are gentler now the frantic edge of his charge is gone. When First Aid turns in his arms, he bumps his brow against First Aid's.
A moment later, First Aid finds himself wrapped in an enveloping embrace, Brawl burying his face against First Aid's chest. First Aid rubs the top of his head with only a twinge of guilt, the feeling rapidly eclipsed by fondness.
First Aid can hear Brawl's engine rumbling, deep and content, and wonders at all the trouble they've gotten themselves into indulging in this.
Not much, maybe. First Aid is marked Killed in Action last he heard, no hope of retrieval. He can't write off some enterprising Decepticon soldier leaking his presence to the Autobots, but someone would probably have to ask after intel first, and the lines of contested territory have shifted further and further away from where he was originally taken prisoner.
"You miss me?" Brawl asks when First Aid leans against him.
"Yeah," First Aid says, and there's no lie left in his answer. He spreads his hands across Brawl's chest, half an inspection for damage, half appreciative. Brawl's in good repair, which is more than he could say when First Aid first arrived. "You're all in one piece this time."
It’s difficult not to like Brawl when he's not actively slagging other mechs First Aid cares about, and the thing about war is there's a lot of time spent not slagging each other. Most of it, actually. It's given First Aid a new perspective on things — some of it recently acquired face down.
"Good luck for both of us. You wanna come down to the mess to fuel with me and Tex?" Brawl asks, palming First Aid's hip, his affections as easy as his temper, a big mech with big emotions.
He only has an hour or so left in his shift and it isn't as if he has anywhere else to be. The thought of skipping work to spend time with Brawl feels almost normal.
"The Stunticons won’t be there?" First Aid asks, looking over his samples critically to be sure Brawl’s enthusiasm didn’t damage anything.
"So what if they are? If Drag Strip bothers you again, I’ll bash his face in," Brawl says, plating flaring and flexing with bravado. "Motormaster’s already slagged off at him for making trouble with us the last time. He wouldn’t even stop me."
"All right," First Aid says, palming off his filtration mask to smile up at Brawl. He rarely leaves Combaticons' designated section of the base. A change of scenery will be nice, even if he needs to be escorted. "I could leave early. Let me cover the samples so they don't get contaminated."
First Aid still has a lot of work left to do on the energon refinement testing Knock Out has him running. He stopped trying to sabotage it after the first attempt, when he realized no one gave a slag if he saved copies of developing Decepticon tech to memory.
In fact, he's got his own medical service, mostly unsupervised, and if Knock Out is annoyingly vain, he’s also not faint with praise when he gives it. Mostly he sees MTOs, mechs he can't influence because they probably won't be alive in a month. He's not trusted, but he's tolerated by the medical command chain, which is more than some of the Decepticon's own infantry get.
He's not sure he'd recommend Decepticon capture as a method of treatment for most mechs, but First Aid's vitals have been trending steadily upwards for the last few months with no signs of stopping. Being passed around as berthwarmer for an entire gestalt is actively clearing up centuries of calcified self-worth issues, which is such an unconventionally therapeutic solution he can only ever reflect on it with faint bemusement.
With a last look over his workstation, he punches in his lock code to secure his workstation and joins Brawl. For a mech flagged as a prisoner in the Decepticon databanks, he feels very little like he's being held captive.
Brawl gestures for First Aid to go first and then trots down the corridor beside him once they're out of the medical labs, cheerfully recounting his latest adventure in cracking open some secure storage vault full of parts manufacturing equipment in the ruins of Iacon. First Aid nods along indulgently.
All told, Brawl's pretty good at storytelling, if you don't mind long, opinionated interludes about the virtues of plastic explosives versus incendiary devices.
First Aid keeps his head down, tilted towards Brawl attentively, but avoids the optics of the Decepticons that pass them in the corridor. His feigned incuriosity about the goings on of the Decepticon base have kept him safe where the Combaticons' protection doesn't quite reach.
No one is stupid enough to say anything about it to the Combaticons unless they're trying to pick a fight and First Aid isn't stupid enough to be caught somewhere outside medbay without one of the gestalt around. None of the Decepticon gestalts don't seem to particularly enjoy having their territory encroached upon, and even Decepticon Command seems content to ignore the favoritism as a method of appeasement.
First Aid loops his arm through Brawl's, standing close. Brawl trails off mid-sentence and smiles at him. An unexpected, diffuse warmth scatters through First Aid. He looks away.
Brawl slows when they reach the mess hall. He pulls First Aid around in front of him and shoves his wide face into the crook of First Aid's neck. First Aid doesn't resist even though the display of affection draws attention from a cluster of MTOs, who snicker amongst themselves.
First Aid doesn't extract himself from Brawl's grip. Before the Combaticons made it clear exactly what services First Aid was providing them, some of the freshly minted MTOs used to try to bait him into sneaking off into a storage closet with them or shock him by flashing a peek of their closed spike housings.
Decepticons. He'd be annoyed if he didn't pity them so much. Most MTOs never make it past their first combat action, Autobot and Decepticon alike.
First Aid scratches at the tracking chip embedded at the base of his neck, more out of habit than anything.
"Come on," First Aid says, placing a hand on Brawl's shoulder.
Vortex is waiting for them at the Combaticons’ usual spot in the far corner of the mess, a few cubes of energon already set out in anticipation of their arrival. His optics are a burning coal glow behind the acrylic curve of his tac visor, fixed to First Aid the second he enters the room.
There's Brawl, who's easy to like, and then there's Vortex — with his wireviper-quick humor, his unlikely charm, his sharp appetites — whose attention now seems impossible to deny. Heat pools in First Aid's array, chased by a flicker of anticipatory wanting. First Aid’s learned, especially where Vortex is concerned, his wires are definitely crossed.
First Aid sits down across from him and Vortex pushes a cube out onto the table between them, still far enough away First Aid has to lean forward to reach it. He snags First Aid’s wrist when First Aid closes his hand around it, not so much holding it as sinking his claws possessively into the gaps in First Aid’s joint.
His introduction to being fragged by Vortex was a slow, deliciously agonizing discovery Vortex’s hunger for any kind of stimulation is only eclipsed by the fact he eats valve like it's his sole purpose in life. The revelation was nearly a religious experience. First Aid’s never been a believer, but he’s pretty sure he saw a vision of Primus that night after he blew out three coolant coils.
Knock Out had only given him a bemused look when he'd shamefacedly had to submit the order for replacements. Vortex evidently has a bit of a reputation for either being the worst thing that's ever happened to a mech in the berth or the best, never anywhere in between.
First Aid's apparently the only mech other than his gestalt that's stuck around for more than a few weeks.
"You smell good," Vortex says, a smirk curving his mouth, and what he means is First Aid smells fragged. He curls the tip of his tongue suggestively and winks. "I’m going to clean you up later."
First Aid flushes with heat, his valve clenching down on nothing, tender and achy after Brawl's very thorough attention. He drops his gaze and then glances up, playing coy. "If that’s what you want."
Their games continue to get more elaborate. Vortex's grin broadens, a slice of silver against his dark face. Brawl rolls his optics.
First Aid drinks quickly, aware of the rest of the mess hall at his back. His plating prickles. Vortex likes to try to unbalance him, just to see what First Aid will do. First Aid finds he enjoys outfoxing Vortex almost as much as he likes it when Vortex succeeds in flustering him.
He’s so distracted by Vortex toying with a sensitive cable in his wrist he only notices the plodding footsteps when it becomes obvious there's someone behind him.
"Finally letting your pet Autobot out of his kennel?" a gravelly voice asks. "Bringing your jumped up fragsleeve to fuel in public is a new level of depravity, even for you two."
Vortex's expression doesn’t change. Brawl’s face goes slightly stormy, but he doesn't reply.
"You should drink the rest of mine, too," Vortex says to First Aid. "I’m starting to think I might want to suck it out of your fuel lines later while I frag you."
First Aid suppresses his ventilations, averting his optics. He presses his tongue hard to the roof of his mouth, lines hot, and then drinks as hastily as he can manage without spilling. Vortex’s smirk grows into a grin, fangs bared, not a pleasant expression.
The mech looming behind First Aid asks, "That the kind of dumb slag you're using him for?"
"Frag off, Lockdown," Brawl says. "He’s ours. We’ll mind him however we like."
"How about I borrow your little medic for some fun instead?" Lockdown places his good hand flat on the table beside First Aid’s freshly emptied cube of energon. "And as a bonus, I don't tip the DJD off that you’re violating prisoner conduct standards by fraternizing."
First Aid thinks, with an almost clinical objectivity, about the laser scalpel still tucked into the quick access subspace compartment in his thigh. He could have Lockdown’s entire hand amputated in under four seconds if he skips the usual steps of trying to preserve the ability to easily reattach it. The thought beats back some of the very real fear winging through his chassis.
"How about you swallow a blaster round and save me the trouble?" Vortex asks in a tone that suggests he's acutely bored by Lockdown's interruption.
"Don't be so greedy." First Aid doesn’t flinch when Lockdown leans over him and inhales. "Smells like somebody’s already used him today. I wouldn’t even have to break him in."
"Twice, actually," First Aid says mildly, even though he's brimming with fury and a wire-thin thread of terror. "I doubt you’d be able to add anything notable."
"Primus, I love you," Vortex declares and has a weapon trained on Lockdown’s head before First Aid even sees him move. His optics finally flick up to Lockdown, his lips peeling back in a snarl that bares his fangs. "You really don't want to try touching him, or I’ll make sure your other hand ends in a stump when you pull it back."
"Drawing a weapon on me over an Autobot?" Lockdown growls back, all engine.
"Like I said, he’s our medic, even if he is an Autobot," Brawl says, hand creeping toward the subspace compartment at his hip, where First Aid knows he keeps a spare blaster. "Medical assigns the medics. You wanna take this all the way up to Hook?"
"Sure. Maybe I let him on to your traitorous colluding," Lockdown suggests and the mess goes even quieter. Decepticons who weren't interested before turn and watch. First Aid’s spark leaps into his throat. "Maybe I tell him I think you’re feeding critical intel to the Autobots through your little chew toy and that’s why he’s so well-behaved."
"That’s where you’re wrong," Vortex says, leaning back in his seat, blaster unwavering. "First Aid here just knows his place among his betters."
A swooping feeling dips through First Aid's spark, his fuel pump leaping. He meets Vortex's optics; Vortex winks at him, flashing his biolights in open flirtation. The sinking feeling evaporates, buoyed by Vortex's openly savage mischief.
"You think you’ve somehow got him trained to sit at your feet like some kind of pet?" Lockdown sneers, not in on the game. "Once an Autobot, always an Autobot. He’ll turn on you eventually."
"Sounds like a problem with your technique. He’d let me frag him right here on this table," Vortex says. "He knows who he belongs to."
"That right?" Lockdown says, still too close for comfort. He sounds like he's on the edge of violence and First Aid’s still the closest thing in his path.
First Aid can't help but flinch. He's afraid of Lockdown, but fear and anger are like an alloy in him; he shoves aside his empty cube and hauls himself up onto the table, inserting himself between Vortex and Lockdown. He crawls forward and kneels in front of Vortex, leaning in until the barrel of Vortex's blaster is pressed up against his plating, angled up towards his spark chamber.
It's a dramatic move, but critically it takes him out of Lockdown's reach. Let Lockdown think whatever he wants. First Aid knows better. The way Vortex looks at him now — he thinks he could ask for almost anything.
Vortex face tilts up, his optics obviously on First Aid’s face even behind his visor. His mouth falls open like he forgets he should keep it closed. First Aid drapes his forearms over Vortex's shoulders and leans into him, fixated on the strangely rapturous look at creeps over Vortex’s sharp features. It occurs to him almost belatedly Vortex’s I love you might not have been a joke.
Brawl is staring at them, his grin all teeth.
Vortex stands slowly, settling the blaster square below First Aid’s lower lip, forcing his head back with the barrel. First Aid keeps his optics fixed on Vortex.
Everything else falls away, leaving behind a shocking certainty. He's not afraid, even though he should be. Not of Vortex. Not of any of them. "What’s this look like to you, Brawl?"
"Looks a lot like you got him trained real good," Brawl says laconically.
"Be a good Autobot," Vortex purrs, the rustle of his blades telltale. First Aid shivers. He can feel the heat Vortex is giving off, the palm of his hand molten where it presses against First Aid's abdominal plating and, slowly, begins to slide southerly. "Tell Lockdown. You'd let me do anything, wouldn't you?"
First Aid swallows reflexively, optics wide behind his visor. He imagines what Vortex is capable of right there, the heat-soaked, consuming static pleasure of all Vortex's devouring attention turned solely on First Aid, a spotlight held on every strange desire he's unearthed in First Aid's processor.
And — unthinkably, damningly — some kind of love. A tenderness unasked for, unexpected, impossible for First Aid to resist forever when he's looked for even the most subtle flicker of recognition for so long.
A kind of desperate madness grips First Aid. He opens his mouth, the hard edge of the blaster's muzzle crushing his lower lip, and licks the tip, dipping his tongue into the barrel. Vortex’s blades twitch, his own tongue sliding across his fangs, a hiss of air escaping him.
Lockdown disappears from First Aid's processor. The whole mess hall disappears. It's just the two of them, the blaster, Vortex's hands on him, and a certainty that First Aid didn't think was possible.
His entire frame clenches, actuators flexing, fuel surging in his lines like thunder. Vortex drags the tip of a claw across the edge of his array panel, out of sight, and suddenly First Aid feels like he's going to combust with the effort of keeping it closed.
"You’re such a freak, Tex," Brawl laughs, slamming his empty cube down on the table so hard that First Aid flinches. Brawl surges to his feet, nearly forty tons of war machine leaning over the table, and snarls his engine at Lockdown menacingly. "Maybe you should watch the words coming out of your sloppy fraghole before it finally runs up a bill your aft can’t pay."
First Aid hears Lockdown backpedaling with a hardware whine, cursing, spitting. Brawl is saying something low and threatening. He doesn't need to look; he can easily imagine the flinching, pathetic expression on Lockdown’s face as he retreats. Vortex lowers his hand, optics overbright with charge, and First Aid draws in a sharp vent, letting the reality of the situation filter back in.
"Come on, Brawl," Vortex says, spacing his blaster and scooping First Aid off the table. He hefts First Aid in his arms, setting him on the floor with immense care, and turns them both away from prying optics and the murmur of the rumor mill starting back up. "Slagger ain’t worth the ammunition."
*
He lets Vortex hold him the whole way, shuffling along with his face turned against Vortex's shoulder. By the time they get back to the hab, First Aid feels numb, like the whole thing happened in a dream. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He's so stupid.
Lockdown could have killed him and the Decepticons would've passed it off with nothing more than a reprimand for wasting resources. Lockdown could still get him taken away. Put back in the brig.
The prospect of being removed from the Combaticons upsets him more than he expects it to.
He turns inward, thinking. First Aid isn't supposed to have feelings for any of them. He was only ever supposed to make himself into a gently treated piece of property, a toy for them to pass around, and only interesting enough that they wouldn't get bored with him and ship him off somewhere worse.
Vortex coaxes him into a berth and leaves. Voices rise and fall outside the door. Vortex, Brawl, and Onslaught. Maybe the others. He sits quietly in the dark, trying to reconcile reality with the strange existence he’s carved out for himself.
There’s a rustling at the door and Vortex returns. He kneels in front of First Aid and tilts First Aid’s face this way and that with his claws, looking into his optics as if trying to divine something about First Aid’s present condition.
There's nothing physically wrong with First Aid. Lockdown didn’t actually hurt him. Being mocked and baited isn’t in any way notable and he’s done far more demeaning things to keep himself alive since the war started. First Aid reaches up and touches the back of Vortex’s hand. "I’m fine. Just give me a moment, please."
Vortex withdraws without complaint, sitting back on his heels. "I could always kill him for you," Vortex offers, his blades angled attentively. They shiver like he's excited for the prospect. "Make it look like an accident."
"You can’t kill every Decepticon that insults me." First Aid makes a choked noise. Laughter gets tangled up with something horrible and spills out of his vocal synthesizer. "You'd be through half the infantry inside a week. Onslaught would be so angry."
"Onslaught hates Lockdown," Vortex says with the kind of arch, playful confidence that First Aid can't help but appreciate in the face of all the slag the war has dumped at his feet. "He’d give me some boring as scrap punishment. I’d scrub the oil tanks for a year." He leans in and kisses First Aid’s throat, crowding him. "For a pretty thing like you? I’d do it with my tongue."
"That’s disgusting." First Aid’s face rumples, his mouth twitching as he fights a smile, and he puts a hand on Vortex’s chest. Something unwinds in his chassis, a tension that slips between his fingers, and with it the fear and shame and rage. "You can’t mean that. I'm an Autobot. I'm your prisoner."
Vortex slides his claws up First Aid’s neck and kisses him, open-mouthed and hungry, a slow exploration. First Aid shifts forward, slinging his arms around Vortex’s neck. He thinks of the mess hall, the way Vortex looked at him, the blaster in his mouth. Charge rises through him and he’s helpless to stop it, a craving he can’t shake.
"I know what you’re doing," Vortex says against his mouth, fangs grazing over First Aid’s lower lip. A bolt of alarm goes through First Aid, chased by lust. "I got all the standard psyops training and the rest of it, too. Psych packages. Counterintelligence."
First Aid pushes his thumb under Vortex’s chin, angling his head up, and dips the tip of his tongue brazenly past Vortex’s lips. Into Vortex's mouth he asks, "Is any of it working?"
"Yeah," Vortex says and pushes First Aid down flat onto the berth, crawling up to straddle his lap. "Open up. I want to ride your little Autobot spike."
That’s new, but First Aid has stopped being surprised by Vortex’s requests. Novelty seems just as equally weighted as pleasure, pain, or a number of other intriguing and unusual sensory experiences. No line yet has been too strange for Vortex to cross and First Aid hasn't found the place where he's not bold enough to follow.
"It only looks little because yours is so monstrous," First Aid says, rubbing his spike housing as it dilates open, the red tip already nudging out in a wet arc. He strokes it slowly, giving Vortex a show. "Brawl doesn't complain."
"Brawl likes to frag anything that moves," Vortex says, but his optics are fixed on the motion of First Aid’s palm as it swipes across the sensor-laden mesh. First Aid plays it up, giving it a squeeze so the hydraulic fluid flexes and flares, his fingertips skating over the line of white biolights he knows run up the underside. Vortex offers, with the sly tone of someone aiding and abetting something, "You know, Blast Off’s the one that really likes getting spiked."
"Yeah? Could’ve fooled me." First Aid chuffs air out of his vents. Calling Blast Off standoffish about admitting his preferences is like calling solvent wet. First Aid is always fumbling in the dark when it comes to him.
"Should ask him if you can service him next time he’s off his transport shift," Vortex says, rubbing the pretty teal lips of his valve lazily, smearing around lubricant. "Blow his processor. He won’t ever ask for it."
"When have I ever said no to anything?" First Aid pushes Vortex’s impatient hand out of the way, feeling around for the compressed ring of his valve, First Aid's fingers slipping messily between the engorged, pillowy mesh.
"You never ask for it," Vortex says, leaning over him to grind his anterior node enterprisingly against the length of First Aid’s spike, a motion that makes First Aid grind his jaw and fight not to buck. "You’re so ashamed that you want it so bad from any of us, even though you started it. You aren't slagged off about Lockdown, you’re slagged off because you wanted me to throw you down on that table."
He wants to deny he started it, but he did. He thought he'd been getting ahead of some kind of inevitable rough treatment, engaging on his own terms, but now that he's in their berths, patching their injuries, listening to them confess their troubles, he's not so certain he was ever at risk of anything more than teasing at his expense.
This whole thing started one night with Vortex laughing, overcharged, slinging both arms over First Aid's shoulders from behind, pressing against his back, mischievous and bothersome, teasing, delightfully rough. First Aid turned into the embrace, kissing him, all the months of ratcheting tension and fear popping like a burst fuel main.
The rest of them had toppled into First Aid’s berth like the floors of a collapsing building, one by one, each one faster than the last. He'd welcomed them all, their peculiarities, their prickliness, their surprising solicitousness.
Vortex asks, taking First Aid's chin in his hand, "What are you thinking so hard about? Finally joining the Decepticons?"
He’s sliding down on First Aid’s spike the next second, stealing the objection out of First Aid’s mouth.
"I’m not a traitor." He could push Vortex off of him, put a stop to this whole farce, go back to the brig, do his duty, but he tugs Vortex down onto his spike, too fast to be good. Vortex only grinds his valve harder onto First Aid's spike, chasing the sensation. More for his own benefit, First Aid says aloud, "I'm not going to defect."
It should feel like an ultimatum. Vortex grins conspiratorially down at him and says, "Then it's a good thing we aren't really Decepticons," and he's ostentatiously beautiful in that moment, the angle of his rotor blades so sharp they look ready to cut.
"That's treason," First Aid says, struggling to hold Vortex still for just a moment, just to give himself time to speak, to object. He can't think, not when Vortex shifts his frame like his spinal strut is made of liquid, not when he's so hot and slick and squeezing First Aid's spike. First Aid swallows and resets his vocal synthesizer twice before he can manage, "Don't say things like that."
"Slag the Decepticons," Vortex says, fighting First Aid's grip on him to run his valve across First Aid's spike. A wave of thunderous charge rolls through First Aid's entire frame and he thrusts upward as Vortex adds, "Slag Megatron."
"You're going to get yourself killed," First Aid says, clutching at him. He doesn't want that to happen. Not anymore.
"Megatron can suck my spike if he doesn't like it." Vortex is vicious, reckless, laughing, delighted with his own spite. He gets his claws beneath First Aid's collar, pulling at him. "Hurry up and frag me before they drag me away. Is that what you're afraid of? Not the blaster I put in your mouth?"
"You wouldn't have done it," First Aid says, staring up at Vortex's face. He's certain about it beyond anything he's been certain of before. Vortex saying I love you with his hand already on the trigger, ready to kill to protect First Aid. It shouldn't feel as good as it does.
Vortex shoves his thumb past First Aid's teeth, pinning his tongue, and mimes the sound of a blaster firing. "I won't ever need to. You're mine and you know it."
First Aid braces his foot and shoves his spike hard into Vortex's valve in retaliation, biting down on the joint of Vortex's thumb hard enough to trap it.
Calipers ripple irregularly at his passing, so he reaches down and rubs his fingers over the bright, glowing knob of Vortex’s anterior node and the whole structure spasms, clenching and then slackening. A fizzing goes through them both, charge feedback so strong that the sensors in First Aid’s fingers go briefly staticky and numb up to his knuckles.
Vortex’s mouth falls open, a flicker of surprise passing over his face. He holds himself still, letting First Aid work into him until the head of First Aid’s spike is gliding through slick, giving mesh and kissing the sensors at the apex of his valve on each upward drive. His thumb slips wet from First Aid's mouth and trails lubricant down First Aid's chin.
"Promise me you won’t defect," Vortex says, gone quiet now, his hand closing gently around First Aid’s throat, claws pressed between the cabling. His optics are dim, his face shadowed and contorted with a kind of frenetic euphoria. "Promise. They’ll take you away from me."
"I promise," First Aid groans, straining upward. He can't get enough. He doesn't know if it makes him a traitor, craving this, but in the moment he can't deny it, this flashfire wanting. "I promise."
Vortex yanks at him, pulling insistently, and First Aid pushes himself up on one elbow, looping an arm around his waist. They collide in the middle, venting hot air between each other, and Vortex gets his claws beneath First Aid's plating, grinding down onto his spike. Vortex's mouth against his is panting, cycling atmosphere between each other, and they strain together in sync, dissolving into caressing, petting, kissing, Vortex murmuring encouragement that makes his plating feel too tight.
There's a crackle of static, charge arcing between their joined arrays, and First Aid overloads, dragging Vortex down with him into the spiraling brightness that follows.
In the dim, flickering aftermath, it's just the two of them. First Aid can pretend, as his plating cools and his ventilations smooth, he's somewhere else entirely. Somewhere that falling slowly, helplessly in love with mechs that are supposed to be his enemies isn't torture for all of them.
"What you said in the mess," First Aid begins and then doesn't know how to continue. He flexes his hands open and closed. There's too much grief behind the truth to face it for more than a moment.
"Which part?" Vortex mumbles. He turns his face to the side, looking at First Aid, and First Aid can see the moment Vortex realizes what he means. "You're surprised?"
"You don't want me to defect, but I can't stay here forever unless I do," First Aid says, putting it out into the open between them.
"Mmh," Vortex vocalized in an unconcerned tone. "Slag, ain't it? That's life."
Vortex laps placidly at First Aid's throat, his hand making lazy, sweeping passes down First Aid's side. First Aid's visual input is still slightly hazy, so he closes his optics and allows himself to relax under the attention.
Grimly, this little section of the Decepticon base is equally as much home for First Aid as anywhere else since the war began. He puts his hand on the back of Vortex's head, listening to Vortex cycle atmosphere through his cooling systems. First Aid's surprised to realize he's memorized the sound — it's a comforting, predictable susurrus.
Vortex's turbine rumbles, a muted sound, full of warmth. "If we stay here, you'll probably get cut loose as soon as the Autobots have something interesting to trade for you."
"Do you know something?" First Aid pushes himself up on his elbow, partially dislodging Vortex, who grumbles at being moved from his sprawl on top of First Aid. "I was told I was flagged KIA."
He gets a baleful look, but it dissipates rapidly. Vortex takes him by the chin and kisses his cheeks, one after the other, then murmurs conspiratorially against First Aid's audial, "I don't know slag about where we might be getting deployed next, especially not that it might be out of Decepticon controlled territory. If you know what's good for you, you'll keep not knowing slag, too."
Vortex releases First Aid and flattens out on top of him, that avenue of inquiry apparently exhausted from the way his plating clamps up and his blades angle almost sullenly downward. First Aid lies there for a moment, slightly dazed, a mote of hope blazing dangerously to life. He never thought to consider what might happen to him if he was moved out of reach of the main Decepticon force.
First Aid knows if the Combaticons are deployed into an active warzone by Megatron, it'll be to kill Autobots.
He also knows, through time and careful observation and their loose attitudes around operational security, Onslaught would prefer to have his team somewhere far outside the front lines, in direct conflict with how the Decepticon forces prefer to use their combiner teams. He knows about the Combaticons' ship. He knows the amount of supplies they're maintaining far exceed their needs under current Decepticon operational levels.
First Aid's not dense. He can do a mental inventory of supplies as easily as the next medic.
He knows Onslaught has connections that could take them elsewhere. Out of the war entirely, perhaps, out of Cybertronian territory.
First Aid swallows hard. He should want to give them the slip at the earliest opportunity and go back to his station. Deploy again. Help the Autobot wounded.
But maybe —
He puts his hand over the top of Vortex's head. Vortex sighs and relaxes, rubbing his cheek against First Aid's chest plate.
First Aid can worry about it later, when he's more certain of the terrain. For now, the first step is staying right where he is.