Chapter Text
When Ratchet slipped back into their shared habsuite, he expected the crystals and the candles and even the incense. The particular choice of music, however, took things a bit deeper than he was prepared for. It floated through the air in a fashion he supposed sought to be soft and soothing, but kept hitting a note that rang discordant in his audials.
Dropping his stack of datapads on the desk beside the door, he wandered toward one of the smaller rooms their multi-room suite held. He peered around the open door frame and opened his mouth to complain, but his vocalizer glitched in a quick spray of static as he took in the sight that awaited him.
Aglow in the candlelight and the glitter set off by the crystals, Drift shifted slow and practiced through the incense haze. He paced his stances with the gentle flow of the music, swords staying close and weaving what would be a deadly dance around him at full speed. Ratchet figured the exercise was built specifically for a small space, forcing him to avoid anything remotely near full extensions.
Over the rise and fall of the music, vibrating strings and percussive beats and synthetic billows of sound, Ratchet's fine-tuned audials picked up the steady hum of Drift's cooling fans. It was enough to completely wipe the miscreant note in the music from his processor. Were Drift organic, a sheen of perspiration would limn his frame. Perhaps, if the temperature were turned chill, condensation might mimic the visual. Ratchet's spark stuttered at the thought, his optics full of the vision that was his conjunx floating so gracefully through his own world.
Then Drift came through a full spin, stopping with his swords slicing down one last close-to-the-frame X to rest with points toward the floor. He opened his optical shutters, dim light brightening to that familiar hue that set Ratchet's spark aflutter. A welcoming smile stretched across Drift's face, sending Ratchet into a sap-filled slouched against the door frame with ankles and arms crossed. "Practice or fancy meditation?"
Drift's smile turned into a grin and he tilted his helm a bit as, with a showy flick, he sheathed his twin blades. "Does it matter?"
"Not particularly," Ratchet said with a gruff purr, "but it sure is nice to watch, whatever it is." He pushed off the door frame and made his way into the room with a swagger, catching Drift at the hips to tug him close.
Just before he could touch his lips against Drift's, however, Drift snickered and said, "You were totally going to yell at me when you first walked into the hab, weren't you? Was it the music?" His hands came up to rest on Ratchet's chest, fingertips tapping on the translucent sheet that made up his alt mode windshield.
Ratchet frowned and scoffed. "Never."
One red-painted orbital ridge lifted as Drift eyed him skeptically. "Uh huh." He made another, pointed tap with his forefinger. "Try again."
Heaving a blustery sigh, Ratchet relented. "Not the music as a whole so much as one note it keeps hitting." He cleared his vocalizer in a moment of contrition, giving a little shrug. "It's a bit sharp on my audials right now. Long day, you know?"
Drift's face softened and he curled a hand around the side of Ratchet's face, stroking along the raised edge of his helmet. "Let me turn it off, then. I'm done, anyway."
When he moved to pull away, though, Ratchet didn't let him go. "No, leave it. I'm good now."
"Are you sure?" Drift asked, looking a little concerned. "Don't want to give you a helmache or anything."
"I'm fine, Drift," Ratchet assured him, slipping his hands around his conjunx's hips and resting them in the small of his back. He slowly eased Drift backward toward the room's entertainment control panel. As they bumped up against the wall, he lifted a hand and pressed a button, switching the music to something a little more… inspiring. "How about a change of mood, though?"
The bass thumped low, inviting like the slow smirk that spread across Drift's face at the new music. "If you wanted behind my panels," he murmured, hands sliding up over Ratchet's shoulders and slinging around his neck, "you only had to ask. Not that this is a bad way to accomplish it either, of course."
"Of course," Ratchet echoed, smug. Then, he leaned in and slid his mouth over Drift's as if intent on devouring him.