A Different Kind of Mercy

To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasure imaginary. --Charles Caleb Colton

---

It was an addiction of his. A dark, twisted need that compelled him to ignore all sanity and command structure to satisfy. No one outside of their gestalt knew about their addiction because such a relationship would be viewed as a weakness in the Decepticon cause. Their gestalt-mates knew of course. But that was only because it was impossible to keep secrets between them.

In a gestalt, they might not become one merged being but their collective minds and personalities meant any secrets were promptly ferreted out and worried at until the meat of the secret was revealed. It was a pain in the aft for the most part but sometimes, there were advantages to having four other watchmechs willing to rough up anyone who tried to enter medbay at an inopportune time.

"You can't go in there."

"But I need Hook to look at my arm," Starscream screeched unpleasantly.

"You ain't bleeding. It's not an emergency so leave before we make you bleed." Mixmaster's unmistakable cackle could be heard even through the locked door.

"Megatron shall hear about this!"

"We're so~ scared, aren't we, Bonecrusher?" Scavenger sneered.

Scrapper hissed as pain mingled with pleasure ran up his torso and he squirmed uncomfortably beneath Hook's ministrations. "Hurry up," He grumbled.

"You can't rush perfection." The surgeon growled right back at him. "And stop moving or I'll weld you down to the berth."

"Just hurry up," He loved and hated these moments when Hook had his hands buried up to the wrists inside the delicate circuitry of his torso. The crane knew each and every one of Scrapper's weaknesses. He knew which cables could make him shout and squirm, knew which ones would drive him to logic-frying overload and which ones could reduce him to a puddle of whimpering pain.

The surgeon knew most of the Decepticon's forms inside and out since he'd taken on the unwilling role of medic but he knew Scrapper's body most intimately. It was something he relished and exploited mercilessly. "I will finish when I finish. You were the one who was foolish enough to tear out this servo so now you'll wait until I'm through."

"You're deliberately dragging this out." Scrapper's groan came out more like an involuntary moan. With his optic visor and facemask, it was impossible for the Constructicon to really form facial expressions but he manage to convey his desperation all the same through inarticulate gasps and stifled moans.

"Of course I am. It's a rare occasion to have you at my mercy so I intend on enjoying every single astroclick." Dark satisfaction filled Hook's voice as he smirked up at his commander. The faulty servo had been removed almost two breems ago and all he really had to do was solder a few things together, reconnect the energon and tension lines back up and he'd be through. But as promised, Hook was going to drag this out as long as he could.

He took great pleasure in milking each sound and gasp from his Captain because it gave him a heady sense of power to have Scrapper at his mercy. This was the purest form of their mutual addiction, this need for power and dominance. It blended with Decepticon thirst for pleasure and pain seamlessly until it was one dark coil of need and desire.

"Hook…" Scrapper growled out a warning.

"Yes, Scrapper?" Undaunted by his Captain's growl, the surgeon smirked at Scrapper up the length of the prone Decepticon's body.

"Hurry up, we're going to run out of time and that slagger Starscream is going to go whine at Megatron and he's going to bring him down on our heads."

"I'm not afraid of Megatron."

"That's because you don't have an ounce of common sense!" The last part came out as more of a gasp as Hook fiddled around with an energon line.

"And you're cursed with an overabundance, apparently." Hook grumbled back at him.

Time for a change of tactics. Grimacing mentally, Scrapper swallowed his sense of pride and let some of the desperation he felt color his voice. "Please, Hook. I need it." He hated having to utter such weak and pathetic sounding phrases but the way Hook's optic visor flared was worth it.

"You need it?" The crane purred and scraped at the coupling of Scrapper's primary motor cable. "What do you need?" It was cheesy and formulaic sounding but by now they'd almost gotten this down to a fine art.

"Yes, you slagger." Scrapper hissed and raised his one functioning arm to grasp onto Hook's shoulder assembly. "So Hurry. Up "

"Testy, testy." Hook shook his head but the satisfied smirk on his face betrayed his pleasure. Having his Captain this side of begging just made the experience all the sweeter. He considered trying to push Scrapper just a little bit more. His leader was fairly laid-back by Decepticon standards but he could turn around and be monstrously cruel at the drop of a hat if sufficiently provoked. Deciding he'd played enough, Hook concentrated on finishing his repairs.

Once he'd welded the last cable in place and reconnected the energon and coolant lines, Hook paused with his hands still buried in Scrapper's chassis. "So many possibilities." He murmured to himself.

"What?" Scrapper asked in a wary tone of voice.

"Nothing." Smirking up at his captain, Hook stroked one hand along the line feeding into Scrapper's primary energon pump.

"What are you doing, Hook?" Scrapper tensed, gears and servos tightening all around Hook’s hands. "There's nothing wrong—hungh!" Scrapper tried to stifle his groan and failed miserably. "You absolute slagger! " He cursed.

"Tsk. Aren't we in a pissy mood. Is that any way to say 'thank you’, Scrapper?" Hook leaned over and nipped at one of the wires running between the plating at the junction of hip and leg. When he received another quiet groan, Hook withdrew the hand fiddling with Scrapper's energon pump. The other hand withdrew as well as Hook started to concentrate on a particular panel on Scrapper's torso.

When Hook disengaged himself from his captain's chassis, Scrapper exploded into motion and tackled the crane. "Slagging scrapheap!" The two mechs went crashing onto the ground and nearly flattened another surgical table as they wrestled for control. No punches were thrown and they made no overt attempts to hurt one another, this was about dominance and pinning the other to the ground.

Outside of the Decepticon, this sort of behavior would have been thought to be violent and unstable. But within the Decepticon ranks, it was just another form of foreplay. Their frantic attempts to top one another was the only way they could show affection. Scrapper eventually ended up pinning Hook down by virtue of being more solidly built and more motivated.

Hook had already had his fun and it was now Scrapper's turn. His optic visor glowed brightly, betraying his arousal and excitement where his faceplates could not. His second squirmed and shifted beneath him but didn't really put up that much of a fight now.

"I should have rebuilt into a lawn ornament for that." Scrapper hissed.

"We don't have a lawn, you idiot." Hook snapped testily. "We're three-hundred feet beneath the surface." Derision dripped from his voice as he glared up at his Captain. For one tense moment, the air crackled between them and it looked as if they might have come to blows but then frantic hands and over-eager limbs pressed together in a hurried need for overload.

Scrapper all but shoved his data-cable into Hook's port, causing the crane to hiss in pain. His Lieutenant connected his own cable and both mechs gasped as the feedback loop was complete. Artificial synapses fired as pleasure sensors reacted to the shared data. Two individual psyches merged and overlapped one another in an experience similar to their gestalt mindset yet wholly different at the same time.

When the Constructicons merged into Devastator, they formed an almost hive-like mind. Each individual part had to agree just to go in a particular direction. That was why Devastator's intelligence plunged so much and he was so slow to compute things.

But this was different. Scrapper got echoes of Hook's sensory input and emotions. Scrapper could feel his own fingers grabbing for purchase in Hook's shoulder assembly as if it were happening to himself. But he also felt Hook's reaction to the feedback of the surgeon’s own hands exploring the sensitive wiring of Scrapper's torso.

They kept sharing echoes of their own pleasure with each other until Scrapper couldn't tell where he ended and where Hook began. Scrapper could feel what Hook was feeling but he also caught the echo of Hook's reaction to feeling his own action mirrors back at him through Scrapper. Like throwing multiple pebbles into a pond, the ripples of spark-wrenching pleasure coalesced and bounced off one another in a myriad of caresses and pleasure that was growing and reinforcing one another until it had pushed the Constructicon pair close and closer to overload.

Finally, their CPUs could not handle it anymore and in that one brief moment, every firewall and barrier came down. Even amidst the violence and aggressive Decepticon brand of interfacing, in that fleeting instant, Hook and Scrapper were granted total access to one another's thoughts, sensations and memories. It was the kind of bond that came from long-practice and the greatest of intimacy and trust. Shocking though it would have been to outsiders the two querulous leaders of the Constructicons trusted each other down to the spark.

They just didn't let anyone but their gestalt-mates know that.

Scrapper's optic band flickered rapidly before dying as his systems crashed. Hook uttered one last shuddering cry before following his Captain into temporary stasis as his systems rebooted.

Outside in the hallway, the rest of the Constructicons grumbled and shifted uncomfortably. "Why do they always choose the worst fragging times to do this?" Longhaul bitched and grumbled more then all of them.

"Heh heh heh…" Mixmaster cackled senselessly for a moment before he could gain control of his vocalizer. 'They're too uptight to do it in our quarters. Heh heh heh heh."

"Who'd want to interface after looking at yer ugly mug anyway." Bonecrusher growled.

"Say that to my face!" Mixmaster snarled back at him.

"I just did, you slaghead."

"Come on, guys. Just calm down." Scavenger tried to play peacemaker like he always did. The immaturity of his gestalt-mates never ceased to amaze Scavenger but they ignored him. They always ignored Scavenger.

"Shut up, Scavenger." Longhaul and Bonecrusher snapped in unison.

Inside the lab, Hook and Scrapper came back online to the sound of bickering and arguing from beyond the locked doors of Hook's lab.

"Oh for frags sake." Scrapper groaned and laid his forehead against Hook's shoulder armor. "Don't those four ever give it a rest."

"Of course not, that would make life far too easy for the rest of us. And what our gestalt-mates excel most at is being a pain in the aft." Hook reminded him with a matching sour expression. He realized his fingers were still buried in the coil of wires and cables near Scrapper's waist and he extracted now thoroughly nicked and scratched digits gently. "I swear, I only injure myself like this when working on your aft, you useless scrapheap."

"Heh, you should know better than to put your fingers into a moving mechanism's body, especially when he's in the middle of interfacing." The Constructicon Captain reminded his Lieutenant smugly.

"Primus, you're always insufferable after overloading. How could I have forgotten." Hook lamented in fake mournful tones.

"You whine like a Sparkling." Scrapper grumbled in exasperation.

"A Sparkling!?" Outrage colored Hook's tone as red optics flashed dangerously.

An impatient rapping at the door as their gestalt-mates made their presence known interrupted their ‘pillow talk’. "Come on, you slagheads. Starscream's prolly already gone to complain to Megatron and we aren't going to be held responsible for your afts getting caught by Megatron himself." Long Haul's surly voice could be heard through the door, effectively ruining the mood.

Scrapper and Hook exchanged a look before snorting in amusement. "Ahh nothing like the lack of privacy to ruin things." Scrapper drawled. The two Constructicons were decidedly mellow however as they disconnected their data-cables and disengaged twinned limbs. "I'd forgotten how good that was." Scrapper admitted almost shyly. "Why don't we do that more often?"

Hook laughed softly and for once, it wasn't dripping with derision. "Because you hate to be at my tender mercies?" He asked ironically.

"Tender mercies my aft." Scrapper climbed to his feet and pulled Hook to his feet as well.

"Well, mercy at least." Shrugging, the crane fastidiously made certain his hoist rope and crane assembly was not tangled in their frantic activity. "Let's go face the plebs."

"Plebs? What is that?"

Hook unlocked the door and it swooshed open to reveal Bonecrusher and Long Haul snarling and rolling on the ground as they tried to beat the scrap out of one another. " Those are plebs." The surgeon sniffed and kicked the fighting duo in the sides sharply. "Stop fighting this instant because I am not repairing your useless chassis."

"Speaking of tender mercies." Scrapper murmured.

Hook shot him a look. "Keep that up and next time you can sit there and suffer as well." Shoving Scrapper through the doorway, Hook made a show of brushing his still nicked fingers in the universal gesture of washing his hands of the entire situation. "Now get lost, some of us have real work to do." Smirking to himself, Hook closed the door in the faces of his fellow gestalt-mates. The irascible crane locked the door once more and went off to repair himself.

When Starscream returned two breems later and banged on the door while demanding entry, Hook ignored him for a full breem before finally loosing his patience. "Go away! I'm busy!" Since he'd never particularly cared for the Seeker, Hook smirked nastily and returned his attention to revamping the plans Scrapper had brought him earlier. It always irked his Captain when he 'improved' upon his blueprints but Hook didn't pay Scrapper any mind. "Seriously, without me here, what on Cybertron would they do." Shaking his head in exasperation, Hook continued to ignore Starscream's screeches for attention and merrily went about re-writing more than half the plans Scrapper had presented him with.

He'd thank him in the end.