Part Two – The Discussion
Sunstreaker fell into recharge long before Ratchet and Sideswipe, partially because he actually had the earliest shift the next day, and partially because Ratchet and Sideswipe planned it that way. All the better to plot and discuss without Sunstreaker listening in. Sometimes, if one didn’t chose their words carefully, it would be too easy to offend Sunstreaker.
He had a terrible affliction. Sometimes, he only heard half of what you said and never what you meant. Rather than deal with a potential hissy fit, Ratchet decided to cut out the drama and have this conversation incognito.
So. Sunstreaker was conked out in the berth, fully sated, freshly polished, and free to start his shift in the morning in a good mood. Meanwhile, Ratchet and Sideswipe were clustered in the main room, their voices hushed, and one optic focused on the door to the berthroom. Sideswipe promised he was watching out over the bond, too.
“All right, brat. What’s on your brother’s processor this time?” Ratchet asked as he tried to lean back in his chair. He was missing out on some good recharge right now.
Sideswipe’s face lost a touch of color. “Well,” he said, and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s kind of the last thing I expected.”
Great. Now Sideswipe was being vague.
Ratchet rubbed his chevron. “How about you not play the mystery and just tell me, Sideswipe? Trust me, there’s nothing you or your brother could look at that I’ve never seen before.”
“You say that but I guarantee someday, we’ll shock you,” Sideswipe muttered, but he crossed his arms over his chestplate and rallied. “It’s wasteplay.”
Ratchet blinked. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but that certainly wasn’t it. “Huh,” he said. He rolled the revelation around in his processor, poked at it from all angles, until he decided that, well, he wasn’t surprised.
“Huh? Is that all you have to say?” Sideswipe demanded. Clearly, he was the one using up all the surprise for this disclosure.
“Yes. For now.” Ratchet sat back in his chair. “I suppose it makes sense in a way. Though it depends which aspect of it interests him the most.” Like most kinks, there were many different ways to indulge in wasteplay. It was impossible to guess which of them Sunstreaker was drawn to.
Sideswipe rocked back and forth on the chair and stared at Ratchet as though he’d never seen him before. “Why aren’t you bothered by this?”
Ratchet cycled a ventilation. “Because nothing involving the two of you surprises me anymore,” he said. “What kind of videos was he watching?”
Sideswipe made a face. “All of them,” he said, and squirmed in his chair. “People getting eliminated on or in them. Stuff where people soaked their clothes. And stuff where they, um, you know…” He trailed off, color stealing into his faceplate.
Ratchet arched an orbital ridge. “No, I don’t know.” He was careful to keep his tone neutral, though a part of him was intensely amused. So this, of all things, was what would make Sideswipe squirm. It was kind of adorable, actually.
“Augh, you’re torturing me like this on purpose,” Sideswipe moaned dramatically and sank down further in his seat, as though he could hide from the truth. “They were licking it and drinking it and–” He broke off with a shudder. “Ewww.”
“Ewww,” Ratchet repeated flatly. “After everything we’ve done together, all of the weird kinks you both have asked for, this is the one that makes you cringe.”
“Yeah. Because it’s gross,” Sideswipe retorted.
Ratchet narrowed his optics. “You’ve licked my transfluid out of Sunstreaker’s valve before.”
Sideswipe blinked. “So?”
“Just last week, you licked your own transfluid off the floor,” Ratchet pointed out with an audible huff. While that scene had been particularly hot because Primus did Sideswipe know how to put on a show, it did present a bit of a flaw in Sideswipe’s logic.
Sideswipe squirmed in his chair. “Yeah, but that’s different.”
“It’s not, really.”
“Of course it is!” Sideswipe threw out his arms, making wild gestures that pointed to nothing and everything all at once. His field surged out, a tangled morass of emotions. “Transfluid is… transfluid. And that is… waste stuff.”
All at once, Ratchet remembered the Twins had no formal education or training. That they had learned from the “school of hard knocks” as the humans would say, and that it should come as no surprise Sideswipe should have this sort of reaction.
“Waste stuff,” Ratchet echoed and sighed. He pinched his nasal ridge, expecting a headache shortly. “Just what do you think transfluid is, Sideswipe?”
His red lover blinked at him. “Robot jizz?”
Ratchet silently mouthed the phrase, but couldn’t bring himself to repeat it aloud. He stared at Sideswipe and sighed again. Heavier this time. He wondered if he could sigh his exasperation right out of him.
“In a crude, inaccurate manner, yes,” Ratchet finally said when Sideswipe continued to blink at him innocently. “But also, transfluid is a slurry of extraneous materials that your frame may need at some point, but isn’t willing to expel immediately.”
Sideswipe rocked back in his chair. “Huh?”
Oh, Primus. Ratchet really was going to have to start at the beginning, wasn’t he?
“Different mechs need different materials, but we all drink the same energon, yes?” Ratchet pointed out, hoping he could lead Sideswipe to the proper understanding.
“Yes,” Sideswipe said, dragging out the syllables. He sounded like a child who was being scolded by his parents.
Ratchet rubbed his chevron. “Ever wonder why our transfluids taste different? Why mine is bitter and yours and Sunstreaker’s aren’t?”
“No…?”
Ratchet worked his jaw and gestured to the chair. “Get comfortable. This is going to take a while.”
Sideswipe made a face. “Awww. Are you about to lecture me?”
“Yes. Because your education is lacking.” Ratchet held up a hand to forestall the coming argument. “Yes, I know, you would have learned if you had the chance. So here’s your chance. Sit.”
Sideswipe sat, dropping back into the chair with a graceless flop. “Fine.” He couldn’t have looked more petulant if he tried.
“Good.” Ratchet sat back and rubbed at his faceplate. “If you don’t want to indulge Sunstreaker, that’s fine. But I’m not letting you walk out of here with a huge misconception of what your frame does on a daily basis, understand?”
“I’d do anything for Sunstreaker!” Sideswipe argued, indignant. His optics widened, his entire frame going stiff.
“I know you would.” And sometimes, that was precisely what got them into trouble. Ratchet dropped his hand, giving Sideswipe a level look. “But something tells me he’s been hiding this for months. It was hard enough to come to me about the fisting, and about the sounding, and now this? How do you think he’d react if you wrinkled your ridge and said ‘ew’ to his face?”
Sideswipe’s mouth opened and then shut, visibly chastened. “It was just a surprise is all. I’d never tease him about it!” One foot kicked out, heel scuffing the floor.
“I know.” Ratchet gentled his tone. Sideswipe, like his brother, often fought back if he felt cornered. “It may be that this is just one of those kinks for your brother that looks good in theory, but you’d never actually want to try in real life. Until we know either way, however, I need you to not… well, not be you.”
Sideswipe blinked and tilted his head. “Ratchet, would you… I mean, are you interested in this?”
Ratchet couldn’t decide if Sideswipe sounded surprised or appalled. He settled for shrugging dismissively. “I’ve done it before,” he admitted.
Sideswipe stared at him. There was judgment in the look, though he didn’t have any room to talk.
“It doesn’t interest me like that!” Ratchet snapped and huffed a ventilation. “But I had a partner who did, and watching how he reacted to it, that was enough for me. That made it worth it. You don’t really think your brother and I enjoyed pretending to rape you, do you?”
Sideswipe flinched. “You could have said ‘no’.”
“We didn’t because it was something we wanted to do for you. Because you asked.” Ratchet crouched in front of him, resting his hands on Sideswipe’s knees. “I love you. Sunstreaker loves you. Because we love you, we decided together that we would try because you asked. That was enough.”
Sideswipe’s gaze fell. “Oh.”
“I’m not saying that this is that,” Ratchet continued, his fingers pattering a rhythm on Sideswipe’s armor. “If you don’t want to do this, that’s fine. I’m not going to make you or guilt trip you into it. I want us all to have a good time, and I know Sunstreaker wouldn’t want you to feel obligated.”
“I know.” Sideswipe ex-vented loudly and squirmed in his chair. “It’s not that I don’t want to – okay, that’s a lie, I’m not at all interested. But more than that… isn’t it dangerous?”
“And that is where the education comes in,” Ratchet said, and patted Sideswipe’s knee. “Listen and then decide. Can you do that?”
Sideswipe nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.” Ratchet pushed back to his feet, ignoring the creak in his knees, and returned to his chair. “Right. So the beginning.” He rubbed at his chevron, feeling the edge of the headache. “We all drink energon. It’s the liquefied version of a raw ore that we all use to power our frames, and is kind of like a nutrient chunk all in one. We’re still not entirely sure what all is in energon, to be honest.”
“So it’s like a granola bar that’s been made into a smoothie?”
Ratchet cycled his optics. He worked his jaw. “Sure,” he said with a wince. “Something like that. Anyway. Frames are different. Altmodes are different. We all have different needs for our frames. Some of those materials are superfluous for us. Some of them are so necessary that we need to store it in between servings.”
Sideswipe leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “So we store it in our transfluid?”
“And in our waste tanks. Except it’s not really waste, more like excess materials that could potentially become useful, but if not, expelling them isn’t a waste,” Ratchet explained.
Sideswipe worked his jaw. He chewed on his bottom lip. “Then why do we call it waste?”
“Because it’s still extraneous, and it’s still wasted materials,” Ratchet said and held up a hand, forestalling the inevitable question. “Don’t get me wrong, waste fluid is still a slurry, a mix of energon stripped of its charge, processed materials and superfluous ones. But…” And here he shrugged. “One mech’s waste might contain valuable materials for a different frame-type.”
Sideswipe opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. He shifted in his chair, leaned back and then forward. “So you’re telling me,” he said, slowly and carefully. “You’re saying, probably, that theoretically, drinking someone else’s waste could be a benefit?”
“Depending on the frametype, yes.” Ratchet rubbed at his chevron. “It’s still better to drink freshly processed energon because it’s a drain to re-process and try to filter out what little use is left.” He waved a dismissing hand. “Where do you think the waste goes when you eliminate it?”
Sideswipe shrugged. “I dunno. I never thought about it.” He scratched at the side of his nasal ridge. “Why would I?”
“Recycle and reclamation. It’s sanitized, filtered, and stored, depending on what use there is. Anything left over is then disposed of.” Ratchet leaned back with a sardonic grin. “That’s the benefit of being metallic, I guess. We’re all re-usable.”
Sideswipe made a face. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s truth.” Ratchet shrugged. “Especially in the middle of a war. You can’t be too choosy about the things that save your spark.”
Sideswipe’s nasal ridge twitched. “Maybe not. But sometimes, you know, ignorance is bliss.”
“It can be,” Ratchet admitted and leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms over his chestplate. “So. Now you know.”
“Yeah. Still kinda wishing I didn’t.” Sideswipe scraped a hand down his face and audibly ex-vented. “I mean, Sunny doesn’t know this anymore than I did, and yet he’s still interested? What does that even mean?”
Ratchet shook his head. “I don’t know, Sideswipe. That’s something you’d have to ask him. But the real question here is whether or not you are willing to try.”
“Of course I’ll try!” Sideswipe’s tone was indignant, and he followed it up with a scowl. “I mean, it’s Sunny. I’d do anything for him. I just gotta wrap my head around it is all.” He looked away, one finger scratching at the side of his nasal ridge.
Ratchet unfolded his arms and leaned forward. “Be sure, Sideswipe. I have no problems indulging him on my own, and I don’t want you showing up and for a single second, making him believe he’s disgusting.”
Sideswipe visibly twitched. His mouth opened and closed. “I can do it,” he said, finally.
Ratchet gave him a long look. He wasn’t certain Sideswipe actually was sure, but they could at least set their plans in the future, to give Sideswipe more time to get used to it.
“All right,” Ratchet said, and threaded his fingers together. “Let’s talk plans.”
Pandora's Box 