Controlled Burn

A/N Haven't written xeno in a while and a friend asked me for a fic where Ironhide finally discovers the frabjous joy of xeno. With a sassy tomboy. Ahhhh it felt good to write xeno again. Silly sticky robotsmut, eatin' my brain.

Enjoy! Ummmm, that is, if you enjoy this sort of thing.

***


Ironhide decided he hid his mood better—at least from these humans—in his vehicle mode. So he’d gotten used to, when he had to deal with them, alone, for long periods, hunching into his vehicle mode. Though then he got to resent them walking by him like he didn’t exist. He’d become just another vehicle for them. Frag he really disliked being around them. Not that he disliked…them…precisely. Just wasn’t very good at being diplomatic. And not fond of being treated as a lump of metal. The NEST team were all right—they’d won him over by not being idiots. But they’d had an uphill climb.

These…whatever, though. Different story. USASOC? Whatever that was. Some Special Operations group that threw a glitchfit when they heard that there’d been a party going on and they weren’t invited. So Optimus had decided to open up to them as well. The Autobot team were all supposed to rally here tonight, but, as usual, everyone else had blown the deadline, and Ironhide was here, alone. Sideswipe had probably gotten distracted by a shiny object, Prowl was probably STILL going the speed limit, and Optimus was probably helping some kitten out of a tree. Primus. It’s like they’d all taken complete leave of their military priorities, just because the ‘cons had been laying low, lately.

Laying low, or, more likely, too busy poking their stuff in squishy females to bother. While it might seem like good news, this complete collapse of military discipline among the Autobots disturbed Ironhide. And a disturbed Ironhide was not an Ironhide in a mood to be nice to squishies.

Especially squishy females.

“Get your hands off me!” he growled, as one female, in a military uniform, red baseball cap hanging out of her side pocket, lowered herself by use of his front bumper.

“In a sec,” the squishy muttered, scraping something along the pavement under him.

“What,” he huffed, “do you think you’re doing?”

“Drip pan,” she muttered, pushing (rather deliberately, he thought) off his bumper to her feet. The open door of the motor pool cast late-afternoon light behind her. She was…short, olive skinned, with bristly short hair. The uniform probably didn’t help, but she looked…tiny.

“Drip pan? I don’t drip!”

“Take it up with the Base Commander, okay? I’m in enough trouble as it is. He says every vehicle on post’s gotta have a drip pan overnight, bingo, drip pan.”

He kicked his engines on, rolling back ten feet. A battered black plastic basin lay on the pavement in front of him.

The female rolled her eyes, and deftly kicked the drip pan forward between his tires. “Nice try, but I’ve got a kid at home who’s smarter than that.”

“A kid? You’ve…replicated?”

“Oh yeah, but I’m only half the genetic pool. The other half is much, much worse,” she snapped. “Now, you gonna behave or am I going to have to get creative with 550 cord?”

“Behave: you mean sit here with this humiliating pan under my chassis?”

She gestured around the open bay. “Humiliated? In front of who? Not exactly Madison Square Garden here, dude.”

“You’re here.”

“Oh yeah. I’d really fucking worry about looking bad in front of me. Get over yourself, truckbot.”

He bridled. “I’m not a truck!”

“Whatever. God, you get hung up on the stupidest crap. Are all of you like this?” She settled herself behind a battered OD metal desk, chair squeaking under her.

“I don’t know: are all humans as annoying as you?”

“Ha! No way. I’m special.”

“Aren’t I lucky,” Ironhide grumbled. He debated rolling forward, but he didn’t want to lower himself to acting that petty. Then again…. His usual ploy of vehicle mode being less likely to get him irritated was failing so why not? He pushed out of his vehicle mode. She looked up, made some gesture with her face he couldn’t read, and casually kicked her feet onto the desk.

“Am I supposed to be impressed? Gotta tell ya, chunks, lotta guys taller than me.”

“Where I’m from, the small, weak ones know to show a little respect.”

“Well, you ain’t from Newark, or you’d know it’s the small ones you gotta watch out for, chunks.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“What? Chunks? You don’t like it? I hear you call us ‘squooshies’ or something, so….”

“I do have a name.”

“Goody for you.” She reached down into a rucksack and rustled in a paper bag. She popped a crunchy something in her mouth, sitting back. “I got one too. Now we’re both special. Which means, I guess, special ain’t that special.” She crunched another chip.

“You are certainly the most unpleasant human I’ve ever met.”

“Well, I’d say the same about you and robot, but since you’re also like the only one I’ve ever met, it also means you’re the nicest robot I’ve ever met.”

Ironhide blinked, feeling flatfooted. She wasn’t the only human he’d ever met, or even the only female. But she was way different from Mikaela. Almost like a different species. And he became aware that he wasn’t really representing his kind all that well. Optimus was always going on about ‘representing Cybertron’. Start again. “I-uh, my name’s Ironhide,” he said, in an attempt at reconciliation. “You know. Not ‘chunks’.”

“Elina. Sergeant Elina Vasquez, if you want to get all military about it.” She held out the paper bag. “Chips? Vinegar flavor: proof there is a God and he is good.”

“Uhhhh, no thanks.” Well, this seemed a little better. He wished Optimus were here to smooth things over: he was terrible with any negotiations. And humans, particularly human females, disturbed him. Especially after some of the things he had seen. Barricade and his xeno gave him shivering nightmares. “More for you that way,” he added, clumsily.

“Sure are.” She grinned up at him. “So, are you considered cute? You know, for your kind?”

Ironhide blinked. He had no idea. “Uhhhh, probably not.” He did think he was better looking than Barricade, though. “Are you?”

She made that weird face again. “Honestly? Not so much anymore. Not compared to the Fayette-Nam finest. I can’t compete with all that makeup and pilates and clothes and shit. Not that I want any of these idiots.”

“What idiots?”

“Idiots you’re here to work with. These Special Forces guys? Shuh!” she made a derisive face. “No one will ever love them as much as they love themselves. For real. They’ll fuck you if you’re cute enough or there’s some cachet in it, but anything like a relationship? No way.”
Ironhide wasn’t stupid. “So, that’s why you’re so fraggin’ bitter—that how you spawned?”

He expected her to explode in anger. Instead, she burst out laughing. “Got it in one! And where’s he? Don’t even know. But he looks cooler’n shit with his Raybans and Suunto, clinking rings with his greenie beanie buddies.”

“Your hat is red.” Ironhide blinked. That had to be the stupidest thing he had ever said. Thank you Mech Master of the Obvious. He knew from the NEST team that humans put a strange amount of stock in wearing hats the same color, but he hadn’t quite cracked the code yet.

“Yeah.” She dug the hat out of her pocket and slapped it on the table. “Rigger. Least glorious job in the Army.”

“What the slag is that? Other than,” he cut her off, “the least glorious job in the Army.” He settled himself down on his aft. If we were talking military, he could get comfortable.

She grinned—it reminded him a bit of Sideswipe in a weird way. A VERY weird way. “Riggers. We rig stuff for air drop. You know. People. Pallets of junk. VEHICLES.” She leered. “I can tie you up so well you won’t even rattle a gasket from 1500 feet.”

Uhhhh, that didn’t sound inviting. “Not into that, thanks.”

“Yeah?” She turned, dug in the rucksack again and pulled out a bottle of some vile looking red liquid. “What are you into?”

“Into?” He watched her suck down several gulps from the bottle. “Not squishies, that’s for sure.”

“How do you know?”

“I know!” Yuck. All that weird warmth and the pushy give to their bodies? He wasn’t too keen on their backsides when they rode in his vehicle mode. Not proper hard-chassis’d at all.

“So, like is it just the boys you don’t like, or the girls, too? Cause you know, we’re like built different.”

“I know that,” he said, tartly. “I’m not stupid.”

“So, just bigoted.”

“Bigoted?” He seethed. “I am not. It just…doesn’t interest me.”

“Okay, cool, whatever. Not trying to move on you or anything, seriously. Just trying to make conversation.”

“Weird kind of conversation,” he grumbled.

“Oh it’ll get weirder. You’re stuck with me alllllllll night.”

“How’d I get so lucky?” He pushed himself to his feet. Dark had fallen, except for a rim of red to the north.

“You got lucky by getting here on my first day of extra duty. The real question is how did *I* piss God off so much.”

“Extra duty? Like punishment?” Great. He was stuck all night, with a disgrace of a soldier. He was distracted. That line of red wasn’t the fading sunlight.

“You got it. Article 15, non-judicial punishment.”

She didn’t seem upset about it. Did the females not have any shame? The NEST team were all male, and he certainly didn’t see them seem…almost proud of their failures. He looked over his shoulder at her. “Punishment for what?” She didn’t seem shy about it.

She ran a hand over her cropped dark hair. “This, believe it or not. Haircut.”

“It looks...it looks exactly like the NEST soldiers’ hair.” He actually kind of liked it. Much more sensible than that tangly mess Mikaela was always fretting about. Roll up the windows, Ironhide, my hair’s getting tangled! Stop here, Ironhide, I bet they have that hair serum I need. He’d never been so thankful to see Bumblebee as when he could hand the female back over and stop being her Ride Around Town.

“Yeah, well, that’s what I thought. Be all hard core and hooah and shit like that. Easy to take care of, right? Practical.” These he liked. These things made sense. “Yeah, not so much. Girls have to have like…hair.”

“That seems…stupid.”

“Yup.” She took another swig from her bottle. “Hey, don’t you guys like eat or drink or anything?”

“I’m fine.” He had a full tank of energon still. “So…they punish you for your personal modification.”

“I guess that would be how you guys’d see it.”

“That is ridiculous. But that does explain why so many of the NEST
team look similar.”

“Either that or inbreeding.”

Ironhide blinked. “They do that?” He tried to picture Lennox. Or Epps. Or any of them. It caused a cramp in his processor.

Vasquez burst out laughing. “No! They don’t actually do that!” Her eyebrows contracted. “I don’t think.” She winked.

“That’s unfair they should judge you for following the same modification, then.”

She batted her eyelids. “Why, suh, I do believe that is just the prettiest compliment I evah dun heard.”

Ironhide could tell he was being made fun of. “Shut it, human. Was trying to be nice.”

Her smile faded. “Yeah, I know. Sorry. Kind of gets to be a habit after a while.”

“The attitude?” he shot back.

“Yeah, actually.”

He shifted, uncomfortable, turning back to the open door. The last
thing he needed was some emotional female squishy on his hands. Mikaela was bad enough, and she was pretty clear in her emotional malfunction. Sam, Sam, and more Sam. Ironhide didn’t think this one cared about Sam. “So, uhhh, what’s that?” He pointed.

Vasquez pushed out of the chair to look. “Oh, that? Controlled burn.” To his blank look she added, “Big brushfires come summer if we don’t burn out the undergrowth now.”

“Why not burn down all the trees and be done with it?”

“Because that’s not the Army way, stupid.” She came around the desk, reflexively picking up her cap and sliding it on her head as she joined him in the doorway. “Besides. Trees are good.”

“Not when they’re on fire.”

She laughed. “I like how you think, Ironhide.” She swatted him in the shin, playfully, giving him that Sideswipean smile again.

“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” he said, stiffly.

“I know. That’s the best part.” She grinned up at him: all he could see was her smile below the bill of her red cap. Definitely like Sideswipe. A little too much. He needed to stop thinking about her like she was his unrequited crush. She was a human. An obnoxious one.
He cleared his throat, inching away. “Yeah, well.”

“Awww, come on. You get shy on me all of a sudden?”

“No. Just…you’re kind of weirding me out.” Weirding myself out, more like it.

“I am? Hey, get down here.”

“No.”

“Okay, plan b.” She reached up and found grips for her hands, hauling herself up his legs nimbly. “Riggers. We get really good at climbing.” She settled herself across one half of his tilted grille. “Now then. Weirding you out, yes?”

“Weird and rude. Don’t you humans have like spatial boundaries or something?” He debated plucking her off him and putting her back on the floor, but chances were she might just scramble back up again.

“Yeah. And violating them is fun.” She sat up, stuffing her cap into her pocket. “Come on, not that bad is it? Be different if I were a guy?”

Yeah, yeah it would be different. He didn’t know how. But somehow with her Sideswipe smile and her squishy curvy xeno body (that he could feel the heat of right through her beigy cube-splotched uniform), it wasn’t the same. Not like Lennox or Epps or any of the NEST team. Even her attitude: she was like Sideswipe AND Sunstreaker shoved into a small squishy body.

She leaned over rubbing a loose end of her sleeve against his chrome. He shivered. “Look,” he said. “You need to get off.”

Vasquez looked up. “Just polishing your chrome, baby.” She giggled.

“Yeah, well, stop.” He heard the weakness in his voice. She did too.

“Stop or what?”

“Or….”

“Can you feel this?” She rubbed the chrome again. He shivered, again.

“Of course. Which is why I want you to stop.”

She looked puzzled. “Why? Not hurting, am I? I mean, you don’t strike me as that sensitive….”

“No, it’s just….” As she glossed a hand over his throat armor, her small fingers teasing at his servos and cables, his voice faded. This was not…right. He didn’t like squishies.

“Didja ever kiss a girl?” she blurted.

“I, erm. Well.”

“Did you ever kiss, you know, another robot? You guys do that?”

“I, well. It’s really not any of your business.” Her fingers were still maddening on his throat.

“I’m just curious. I mean, you went right for the throat with that ‘spawning’ thing, didn’t you? That was pretty blunt, so…my turn.”

Yeah, well. He felt kind of bad…and vulnerable…about that now. “Sorry. And yeah, we do. Kiss. And…you know.”

“Cool. Is it good?”

“Well, yeah. Of course.”

“When’s the last time you did it?” Her eyes, which he saw now, so close to his, were so dark brown her entire eye looked like one big pupil, were curious.

He knew that harrumphing at her again would get another challenge. He should learn to watch his tactlessness for reasons just like this. “A while ago. Can’t remember.”

She sighed, draping along his chassis. “Me neither.” She trailed a hand idly into his shoulder assembly. He shivered. “Want to?”

He recoiled. “Want to what?” he blurted.

“Kiss? I mean, I’ve got to see what this is like. Is it possible?”
Ironhide’s cortex flashed him Barricade and his red-haired xeno. Oh, it was possible. And right now the image that had disturbed him before was…not disturbing him quite the same way. “It’s possible. But I’m not doing it with you.”

She rose up on her knees. “Ha! Just like a man. Chicken! Coward!”

“I’m not a coward because I don’t want to do it!”

“Yes you are.” She sat back, whispered, “Chickeeeeeen!”

“Just not interested.”

“You sure you’re not? I mean, been a long time for you, been a long
time for me. We’re stuck here all night with each other. Why not? What the hell, right? Only live once and all that.”

“You seem to take a…remarkably laid back attitude toward it.”

“Part of the game, you do this Army thing long enough. Relationships? They never work out. Even if you both want ‘em to.” Something sad darkened her eyes, and Ironhide found himself leaning in, suddenly, not even really sure himself why he was doing it. His lower lip plate bumped her chin. “Oh!” she said, startled, and then her hands came up—small and warm and strangely agile—stroking his cheeks, and he felt a soft pliable pressure-her own mouth plates he guessed, against his own.

She made a soft laugh in the back of her throat, and he felt a warm wetness—her glossa?—across the separation in his mouth plates. He parted his own, probing just the tip of his gloss between his plates. She paused, looking up at him with that cheeky smile he found himself actually thinking he was beginning to like, and ducked her head, her mouth closing around the glossa, exploring it with her own, enveloping it with her wet warmth. He found one of his hands had come up, supporting her back—feeling the warmth seeping through the uniform. Her own hands encircled his helm, stroking his audio, his chemsensor array.

She sat back on her knees, that damn smile already back on her face. “Well, that was pretty fucking weird, wasn’t it?” His chem sensors were still sorting through the rush of new data from contact with her hand. And were sending…signals straight to his interface module. What? This must be some kind of glitch. He thought frantically for Ratchet, but didn’t want to explain the, erm, problem over the comm.

“Yeah,” he croaked.

“So,” she sat back against his hood, kicking her legs over the central rise in his chassis. “How do you folks get it on?”

“Get what on?”

“You know, get freaky. I mean, if you kiss, you do other stuff,
right?” She looked back at the desk. “Think one of the other CQs might have left a porn vid if you want to see how we do it.”

Shudder. “No thanks.” What little he’d seen was plenty. “We, umm, we connect with each other, if that’s what you mean.” He found himself wondering how the hell Barricade had managed to leap this particular hurdle. And then got mad about thinking about Barricade.

Damn pervert had started everything. Ironhide suspected that the only reason Optimus hadn’t made his own move on Mikaela—well, beyond his ridiculous morals to Sam—was because he was a little too shy to go over the basic facts of mech life with her.

“Any of you guys ever, you know, with a human?” She probed her fingers in between the joints of his hand, still raised up to prevent her from falling off.

Slag. He couldn’t say no. He’d seen a bit too much. “I don’t.” He snatched his hand away.

“So it is possible!”

Suddenly, he desperately wanted her off him. “Ummm, yeah. But I don’t do that stuff!”

Her eyes got a crafty glint. It surprised him how they could be so dark and yet…sparkle. “Don’t, or just not yet?”

“Don’t,” he said, firmly.

“So…you too uptight to even explain how it’s done? You do it with girls or what?”

“I—uh I’ve only seen it with girls.” Oh slag. Her smile grew broader. “You, well, not me, someone, puts the interface module into the female human’s access port and…I guess that’s it.”

Vasquez frowned. “That seems…awfully disappointing. I mean, do you—oh, not you, sorry,” she winked, “the robot in question get off or whatever?”

“Yeah.” The image, in his mind again, Barricade fading out, bent over his xeno at the park. It had seemed completely repulsive at the time, but now his sensor net, fueled by his chem analysis array, sent more stimulus to his module and the idea seemed…not as disgusting as it should.

“Double dog dare ya to show me the module thingie.” She sat up. The shifting weight of her body on his chassis made him quiver. Even more when she stroked a hand over his audio. Their hands were…really agile. And distracting. And he was beginning to see the attraction. And…. He pulled her into another kiss, not really sure why he was doing it, other than his glossa wanted the experience of her mouth around it again. His hand fumbled for his module. When she broke contact, he held it up, defiant.

“See?” he said. “Not ‘chicken.’ This is what a module looks like.”

She snatched it. He gasped: her hands were warm and somehow managed to poke places he didn’t think had feeling in them. Only the node at the tip was supposed to have any sort of real…oh Primus….

“Huh,” Vasquez said, turning the module over in her hands, poking the tip node repeatedly. “Kinda small for a big guy like you, isn’t it? And,” poke, poke, poke, “think it’s broken.”

He groaned. “NOT…BROKEN,” he choked.

She lowered it, teasing it between her thighs. He could feel the stiffness of her starched uniform, the heat leaking from her flesh. “Like does it go here?”

His whole frame jerked as a datapulse slipped his control. Vasquez twitched, too, as the pulse sent tingles across her thighs.

“Oh. My. God,” she said. “Tell me it gets better.”

“Uh, it does.” He felt a sudden surge of triumph at the expression on her face. Who had the upper hand now, xeno? His datastream sent another pulse through his module. They both twitched. Then
laughed.

Ironhide caught himself. He…laughed? His chem sensors kept feeding him pheromone readings, which were probably foxing his common sense.

He plucked Vasquez off his left chestgrille, dropping her onto the desk. “Want to see how good it gets?” Part of his processor was screaming at him that this was disgusting and wrong and she was an alien and oh god it was just like that disgusting Barricade…but part of his processor was thinking of Sideswipe and how this was the first time he’d laughed in…ages and oh how he wanted more. And how he wanted to do it before the first part of his processor got done screaming and actually did something to stop it.

“Seduced you to the dark side, have I?” Vasquez wriggled just enough out of her uniform trousers to push them down below her hips. “You do this or do I?”

Uhhhh, he hadn’t really seen the detail shot with Barricade. He handed his module back over. “You’d better. Then…,” he caught himself winking—WINKING—at her, “you’d better watch out.”

She took his module and all he felt for a moment was warmth and then downright heat and then wetness and pressure and then his datastream just overrode any further analysis of the situation. He dropped to his knees, around the desk, one hand awkwardly stroking her shoulder through the uniform.

His engine revved as the datastream pulses picked up in intensity. Without another rhythm to contend with, his pulses were just building in tempo and intensity on their own. This was so unlike with another mech. And on the desk, Vasquez was alternating between moaning and gasping, twisting on the metal surface.

His engines roared just as Vasquez’s spine arched off the table as his datastream sent one last pulse into an overload. It was the last sound he heard—his own engines racing—as he faded out.

The first sound he heard when he faded in was Vasquez’s far-too-Sideswipe-like laughter. Which somehow—he didn’t understand xeno anatomy at all—managed to pulse pressure on his module in a way that started the green ready lights staggering upward. “Holy Mary, mother of God!” she laughed. “Think you’ve about ruined me for mortal men.”

Inwardly he preened, but he only said, sternly, “Didn’t seem like they were working out much for you, anyway.”

“True enough. Oooof!” she flopped back contentedly onto the desk, in her own version, he guessed, of an overload fadeout. He stroked a clumsy hand down her side, her legs.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he said, his fingers coming up from between her thighs, coated with his blue energon. “Guess I was wrong about needing that drip pan.”