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Whirl is close acquaintances with pain. The masochism was a later development; you get beaten to near death enough that some wires are going to get permanently mangled, and while Whirl can't pinpoint when the pain started twisting into pleasure, he knows that it wasn't always like this. At one point, in some history now foreign to him, in a body that is not longer his own, pain was pain. He avoided it when he could, and certainly never enjoyed it. You know, like a sensible bot.
Maybe it was a result of the Wreckers lifestyle. You learn to get used to the hurting because it's all you ever feel most days, and finding pleasure in it becomes more of a necessity than an actual kink. Or maybe it's always been a kink, just took a specific setting to coax it out of Whirl. Maybe it's both. His processor is all fucked up and backwards like that.
Today, it just hurts. Whirl's body is an exposed nerve that hates him, too sensitive without the bulky Wreckers gear, and even after all these years he still isn't totally used to it. Whirl tried to turn his pain sensors off once, but the explosive lecture he received from Ratchet deterred Whirl from trying it again.
( "Do you WANT to die?" Ratchet's vocoder was crackling from the strain shouting had put on it. Whirl wisely didn't answer him 'cuz he just wasn’t in the mood for the mandated chat with Rung that would follow. )
The fight wasn't even that bad. Hell, it was barely a fight. A skirmish, maybe. A spat. Whirl didn't even kill anybody (unfortunately). But it's one of those "Whirl's body remembers it's largely unprotected, delicate protoform that hurts like pit when you bruise or cut it 'cuz it's a wimp" days. He slinks into his hab without fanfare the moment he's dismissed. He intends to lie on his berth and wallow, y'know, as he usually does on days like this, but Cyclonus is hot on his heels like the purple fucking gargoyle he is.
"Cyclonus you know how I adore your company," Whirl says, voice dripping with venomous sarcasm, "but perhaps, just today, kindly fuck off?"
Cyclonus doesn't bother to deign that with a response. Just stares at Whirl from the side of his berth. Whirl squirms, then immediately regrets it, as it makes his already too-sensitive, wounded protoform plating flare with pain.
Unbidden, a small, helpless, fucking pathetic sound scrapes traitorously from Whirl's faulty vocoder. Whirl goes stiff. He doesn't look at Cyclonus.
Cyclonus says nothing--a relief--but instead slowly raises a hand to Whirl's dented plating, slow enough that Whirl could reject him if he wanted. But Whirl doesn't--he refuses to analyze that, fuck you--just lies very still and lets Cyclonus place a hand against the cracked glass of his cockpit.
"I am going to move you," Cyclonus warns, and Whirl's voice just-- it's given up, it's refused to make any sound at all, and his traitorous body seizes in preparation before relaxing automatically when he's swiftly, seamlessly lifted up and then laid gently back down against Cyclonus's chest as he slides under Whirl.
Whirl doesn't speak; his vocoder clicks and stutters uselessly with uncontrolled little noises as Cyclonus's hands carefully smooth over his tense and flexing cables. Cyclonus's fingers are deft, considerate; Whirl's body withers initially before the strain is quickly bled from him, coaxed out by Cyclonus's talented touch. Whirl tucks his head into the crook of Cyclonus's neck, and his sighs raggedly. Slowly but surely he starts to hurt a little less, and in place of pain is an overwhelming, suffocating emotion he's terrified to name. When Cyclonus places a sweet, lingering kiss against a shallow gash on Whirl's neck cabling, the sigh that's wrenched from Whirl is one of both pleasure and pain.