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Just like any other Decepticon attack, it started with an emergency alert interrupting the latest episode of ‘As The Kitchen Sinks’, right as a primary character was about to reveal an affair.
“No!” Jazz cried, shaking Teletraan I by the monitor screen when the soap opera disappeared to make room for security footage of Decepticons rushing a power station.
“Grow up, Jazz!” Prowl snapped, shoving him away from Teletraan so he could assess the emergency
Mirage, who had been roped into enjoyed the fine art of the human soap opera after one too many accusations that he was an out of touch reclusive who never knew how to enjoy himself, breathed a sigh of relief at the distraction. He, personally, didn’t see the enjoyment in feigning interest in the imaginary relationships of fictional humans.
“They’ve already taken the power station,” Prowl growled, flicking through the security cameras as they were gradually lost, one by one, by Decepticons shooting them out. “And taken a number of human hostages. Comm Prime. He’ll want us to move out.”
Jazz leaned around Prowl, reaching for Teletraan’s controls, “Yeah, lemme just get that episode recorded-“
“Now, Jazz!”
Mirage took his superior by the arm before Prowl did lost his temper and did something drastic, like disconnected Teletraan from the human broadcasts entirely.
“It’s the same storyline every week, Jazz.” Mirage reminded him quietly.
“Yeah,” Jazz agreed solemnly, dragging his pedes as they joined the other Autobots in gathering for the counterattack brief. “Just like our lives, huh?”
Mirage didn’t like how accurate that comparison was.
There was always a kind of energy in the air, a buzz of excitement that came with the possibility of seeing action in battle.
Standing just outside the perimeter of the power station -and the Decepticon guns- Mirage found couldn’t relate to that eagerness. He disliked the violence that came with battle. It was boorish and uncivilised, the way mechs threw themselves at each other. The grappling in the mud always reminded Mirage of the tar-pit fights the low caste would have in Kaon.
Ironhide was barking orders at his frontliners. And it was the most basic, uncomplicated stuff that was really down to common sense; watch out for the hostages, and don't engage unless absolutely necessary. Mirage could already tell, from the keen, intense expression’s on Sideswipe and Sunstreaker’s faces, it was going in one audial and straight out the other.
It was going to be the same chaotic bloody mess it always was.
“Mirage?” Prime’s low but gentle voice stole his attention from Ironhide’s rundown.
Optimus was waiting off to the side with Jazz, his optics low and resigned. Mirage moved away from the other Autobots to join them, already knowing what this would be about.
“I will do it.” He agreed.
Optimus’s optics creased around the corners, like he was smiling under his battle-mask. “You don’t know what I’m about to ask.”
“You want me to infiltrate the power station and remove the hostages,” Mirage guessed. “So the frontliners can move in and take care of the Cons.”
From Jazz’s wry look, Mirage could guess he was correct.
“You know I dislike the thought of sending you alone,” Prime began. “You’ll be outnumbered.”
“Con’s can’t shoot what they can’t see.” Jazz joked, slapping Mirage on the shoulder comradely. “Let’s get to it.”
“Nevertheless, if you even feel you are about to be discovered, you must retreat immediately.” Prime told him sternly. “I do not need Megatron adding another hostage to his count.”
Mirage had no plans of becoming a Decepticon hostage. He engaged his illusion technology and rendered himself invisible, balancing his speed with what he knew his cloaking projectors could cover of the dust being kicked up by his tires.
He idled into the power station, checking the coast was clear before risking a transformation, the whir of his cog had given him away in the past.
It didn’t take him long to locate the human hostages. He followed the sound of echoing laughter through the station- it was a low, brutish Decepticon voice. He poked his helm around a corner, and found himself moving into one of the main buildings of the power station. Large machines hummed and buzzed along the walls, and in the centre of the room sat dozens of huddled humans, wearing high-vis jackets and hard hats.
They were being guarded by Skywarp.
Sort of.
The seeker had his back to his charges as he watched something on a data-pad. It only took Mirage a moment to recognise the upbeat soundtrack and tinny voices emerging from the speakers.
Skywarp was watching ‘As The Kitchen Sinks’.
What was it with that soap opera? The writing was terrible, the acting worse-
Mirage shook his helm, and still invisible, picked up a nearby tool box and tossed it down one of the long hallways. It banged loudly, bursting open to spill tools that clattered everywhere.
Skywarp’s helm snapped up, his soap opera forgotten. Within the blink of an optic he had vanished in a flash of purple.
Mirage moved quickly, deactivating his illusions.
The humans jumped and cried out.
“I’m here to help you.” Mirage told them gently, gesturing to the corridor he had come down, the opposite direction to where he had sent Skywarp. “Quickly, this way is clear, it will lead you outside-“
The humans flinched again, as if Mirage had said something to frighten them. His confusion was short-lived. He sensed a presence behind him.
“Neat trick, Autobot.” Skywarp grunted, right by Mirage’s shoulder. “Wanna see mine?”
Mirage whirled around with a punch, but his fist flew through a haze of purple as Skywarp teleported. He overbalanced, stumbling forward, but managed to activate another illusion before Skywarp reappeared, creating two of himself.
The humans shouted and began to scatter, running in all directions, some deeper into the power station. Mirage didn’t have time to worry about them. Skywarp teleported on top of his double, dissipating it, and before Mirage could make another, warped again, right into him.
“Ahh!” Mirage shouted as twenty tonnes of Decepticon seeker knocked him to the ground, batting him effortlessly off his pedes.
“You’re fast,” Skywarp grinned, advancing on him. “But not fast enough for m-“
Mirage transformed, wheels squealing across the floor as he drifted his backend around and swiped Skywarp off his pedes. The Decepticon seeker went down with a heavy crash and a loud, vulgar curse.
Mirage transformed back, reactivating his cloaking tech, but Skywarp threw himself forward and caught him around the pedes, knocking him to the floor. The impact glitched the projector and he fizzed back into sight, squirming and kicking to get out of Skywarp’s grip.
“Stop wriggling!” Skywarp shouted, growing frustrated, his servos skimming across Mirage’s armour as he tried to get a grip on him.
“Unhand me!” Mirage snarled.
“‘Unhand you’?” Skywarp panted, his optics flashing with keen amusement. “Wow, you sound rich.”
“And you sound like a low-caste dayworker,” Mirage growled through his denta.
“A what?” Skywarp squinted.
Mirage rolled, twisting Skywarp’s arm where he tried to hold onto his leg. “Ah, ow!”
His grip loosened, and Mirage saw his chance for escape, dragging himself across the floor to-
Skywarp’s grip disappeared entirely, and Mirage had one second to try and get to his pedes and run, before purple flashed and a weight was pinning him flat to the floor again, bearing down on his armour and squeezing the air from his vents.
Skywarp’s breath huffed against the back of his neck. “Didn’t know rich bots like you could wrestle like that.”
Mirage squirmed, his cheek squashed to the floor and his wrists pinned. Skywarp was sitting on the small of his back, his weight, made unbearable with the additional of heavy wings, meant it was impossible to buck him off.
“…Not rich.” He huffed.
“Huh?” Skywarp bent close to him, tilting his audial to listen.
“I wasn’t rich.” Mirage repeated impatiently, turning his helm away. Skywarp smelt like any Decepticon would- blaster discharge and stale sea water. “Upper-middle class.”
Skywarp laughed, “That’s rich.”
Maybe to someone who had been onlined in a trash-disposal unit.
“Are you taking me prisoner?”
“Huh? Oh,” Skywarp sat up, looking around the room, seemingly only just realising he had lost all of his human hostages. “Uh, kinda have to, now.”
“Prime will be storming the power plant soon, now that you have no leverage.” Mirage pointed out. “Maybe you should use this time wisely. Retreat-“
“I don’t need to worry about timing, fancy bot.” Skywarp mocked. “I’m a teleporter-“
Right at that moment, the power plant shook with an explosion, dust sprinkling down from the ceiling. Mirage grunted when Skywarp bent closer to him, covering his frame with his own. It was a strange instinct to witness in a Decepticon, the inclination to protect someone.
In the distance there was shouting. Someone started screaming about being set on fire, and they didn’t sound like an Autobot.
“…Guess that’s my queue to leave.” Skywarp grumbled, peering down at the back of Mirage’s helm. “Catch you next time?”
“In your dreams.” Mirage hissed.
Skywarp just laughed again, “I like a mech with a sense of humour.”
“Good luck finding one.”
Skywarp smiled, mouth asymmetrical and sly. It reminded Mirage of the covers on those trashy human romance novels Hound liked to read, with the meek women and the scandalous men.
He kicked, his pede clunking Skywarp in the back. The Decepticon huffed another laugh, and just as the voices could be heard shouting in the corridors leading up to the room, teleported off his back.
Mirage was left sprawled across the floor of the main power room, just as Prowl, Prime, and Jazz came bursting in.
He lifted his helm off the floor, disheveled and flushed and indignant, wishing he’d had the foresight to activate his cloaking illusion. Wishing he could do it now without seeming rude.
Jazz rubbed the back of his helm, looking as awkward as Mirage felt, “Uh, you okay there?”
“Fine.” Mirage said stiffly, pushing himself to his pedes. His frame ached from bearing Skywarp’s weight. Who knew seekers were so heavy…
“Interesting paint transfers.” Prowl commented casually, striding past him.
Mirage glanced down, and realised Skywarp had managed to leave scuffs of purple and black over his wrists, and legs, and lower back.
“Sometimes it’s polite not to point that kinda thing out, Prowler,” Jazz was muttering to Prowl, striding after him.
Prime cleared his vocaliser and offered Mirage a curt nod, before following the others in silence, on the hunt for the missing humans.
Wonderful, Mirage thought, rubbing at the transfer on his wrist. This wasn’t going to start rumours at all.
Mirage put it from his mind. Over the course of the war he had had close up encounters with more Decepticons than he could count. Skywarp was nothing remarkable.
Until he was.
A routine spy operation had Mirage suffering the indignity hiding on a roof, listening in on a Decepticon meet at some warehouse outside of the city. Starscream was collaborating with some human crooks for a plot that involved smuggling hypnotising-drones disguised as Care Bears into toy stores. Standard Decepticon plan, really.
Starscream was in the process of blowing the arrangement all by himself by shouting at the humans and threatening to stuff them into a nearby packing machine, when the throom of thrusters sounded, distracting Mirage.
He bent close to the roof, checking and double checking the illusion keeping him invisible, as a dark seeker landed on the roof across from him. Skywarp.
Mirage rolled his optics, but kept still and silent.
Purple flashed as the seeker suddenly teleported.
Then blinded Mirage as he reappeared right in front of him.
He gasped, veering back, his cloaking tech glitching with his surprise. In the moment he was visible, Skywarp reached out and snagged his wrist, catching him with a grin.
“How-?“
“Remembered your polish.” Skywarp explained, his grip unrelenting. “Smells expensive. I like it, but maybe don’t wear so much of it-“
Mirage tugged on his arm, getting ready to transform and throw himself into another undignified brawl with the seeker-
“Hey, wait, maybe I just wanna talk.” Skywarp braced himself against Mirage’s struggles, stepping back. He was right near the edge.
Mirage glanced at the drop, “So talk.”
Skywarp opened his mouth, “I know you’re an Autobot, but-“
Mirage shoved. Skywarp’s pede slipped off the edge of the roof. His optics widened as he started to tip back, the grip he had on Mirage’s wrist threatening to take him with him. But at the last second Skywarp released him, falling over the edge.
He hit the ground below with a loud clang, but Mirage was already fleeing in the other direction.
“What the pit are you doing out there?!” Starscream’s voice roared from inside the warehouse.
Mirage breathed a sigh of relief. At least Skywarp would be too occupied with his trine-leader give chase.
Mirage started to wonder about Skywarp. He was obviously a lot cleverer than anyone gave him credit for. More perceptive too. As a spy, Mirage could spend hours in a room, invisible, with his targets none the wiser.
But Skywarp had made him in seconds.
The Decepticons were doing their usual mid-week thing of trying to ruin a public event when Mirage had his next run in with Skywarp. Megatron had barged into some sort of parade and was trying to repurpose it into a celebration of all things Decepticon.
It was the juvenile sort of thing that served no purpose that he usually did when he couldn’t come up with anything better to do.
Mirage was rescuing humans from the parade floats that had taken on a life of their own and were speeding up and down the street, trying to run over spectators and Autobots alike. He had just managed to clear one and leap from it, leaving it to crash itself into a nearby building, when he looked up and found himself staring down the end of Megatron’s glowing fusion cannon.
He would have moved, presumably, and avoided the worst of the blast, but the purple that then filled his vision wasn’t from fusion. It was the armour of a seeker, roughly tackling him to the floor.
Heat and brightness rushed overhead as Megatron’s fusion blast missed him and struck a building. Mirage stared past Skywarp’s shoulder, at the fiery hole in the brick.
“You owe me one, pretty bot.” Skywarp said warmly, deep voice rumbling through Mirage’s chassis.
He was warm and heavy on top of him, still smelling distinctly Decepticon, but with the added spice of ozone lingering on his armour. Skywarp shifted against him, his thigh falling between Mirage’s legs, and a spark of something lit between his hips.
Skywarp’s foolishly charming face hovered above Mirage’s.
Mirage did the only thing he could think to do, and punched him in the face.
He spent the rest of the battle invisible, hiding behind a dumpster.
He laid awake at night, staring at the ceiling of his room in the Ark, thinking of heavy Decepticon armour, broad, striking wings, and stupid smirking faces.
Decepticon creep, he thought to himself angrily. Overfamiliar and crass and far too touchy. The white of his paint had been marred with purple one too many times, and now First Aid was starting to give him funny looks.
No more. He told himself.
The next time Skywarp tried to get close to him, he would just shoot him. That would send the message, loud and clear. No more grabbing or wrestling or rubbing armour up against each other.
Skywarp probably didn’t even realise he was doing it, was probably following the lead of Megatron, recreating his leader’s inappropriate grappling sessions with Prime. Low-caste mechs weren’t taught boundaries like their better bred peers.
But he knew better, and he couldn’t let this get any further.
He would not.
But still, thoughts of agile, powerful seekers continued to bounce about his processor until he finally drifted into recharge.
There was another raid, on a nuclear power plant this time. Mirage hadn’t been on sight ten minutes before the throom of approaching thrusters sounded, a dark shadow following him from the sky.
He activated his cloaking technology, taking a tight corner around the cooling tower, away from the battle. His tires kicked up a cloud of dust and he accelerated as quick as he could, even though he knew it was impossible to outrun a jet, let alone a-
Purple flashed. Mirage slammed on the breaks, his illusions failing. He flickered into view just as he collided with Skywarp’s frame, the seeker digging his heels into the ground and bracing against the impact, stopping them both from toppling over.
“You can’t outrun me,” Skywarp teased, smiling that stupid asymmetrical smile. “I’m a tele-“
With a snarl, Mirage grabbed him by the helm-vent and yanked him down into a kiss. Skywarp made a noise of surprise, stiffening momentarily, before his larger frame started to fold forward, leaned into Mirage’s. His wings fanned forward to shield Mirage from view. He kiss deepened.
And deepened.
Mirage was pressed back against the cooling tower, Skywarp’s servos on his waist. He was pinned there, moaning like a Kaonite trollop as Skywarp began to rock his hips forward, the spark growing into a throb of want.
Underhanded Decepticon manipulation, no doubt.
Mirage yanked his mouth free, his mouth swollen and bitten, transfers all over his inner thighs.
“Yes, you’re a teleporter?” He snapped breathlessly. “Like I hadn’t noticed.”
Skywarp’s optics were bright with mischief. “Think you can use that cloaking tech on me?”
“Why should I?” Mirage stated huffily.
“I think you’re gonna wanna,” Skywarp leaned into him again, his nose brushing Mirage’s, his breath wafting over his lips.
Mirage shifted, looking between Skywarp’s mouth and the ongoing fight. He could hear it carrying on from the other side of the cooling tower, as seekers shot back and forth in the air. Anyone of them could look down and see-
Mirage activated the illusion, and Skywarp turned into a faint translucent outline. His smug smile, somehow, still distinct.
Mirage gave in, and kissed him again.