Xeno
New Years
****
Jennifer finally got home a little after one in the morning. Her ‘friends’ (really, other grad students who’d felt bad when they heard she had no plans for New Years Eve and felt obliged to invite her) wouldn’t let her leave until the ball dropped in Times Square, but she’d finally freed herself. Left to herself she’d’ve been in bed by ten pm. 2009 hadn’t been such an awesome year for her but, even so, she was in no big rush to start another one. Another year after her life had collapsed: her project taken from her, her future…? She didn’t have a future other than seeing the life she was leading now stretch in an endless row of similar days. She hadn’t wanted to teach: she was a research person. But every semester she stayed, every semester she took another teaching contract, it was another link in a chain binding her to precisely that ‘future.’
Obviously, the champagne hadn’t helped. She didn’t realize she was a depressive drunk—not that one plastic flute of grocery store champagne was enough to make even a lightweight like her drunk. She just wanted to go to bed and NOT think about either auld lang syne or the tedium that 2010 promised. Just bed, she thought, unlocking the outer door to the dorm.
Having the dorm all to herself had been a little creepy at first, but she’d gotten so used to it that the noise and bustle of returning students (another two weeks) was going to bug her. Well, when you’re not very good company, she thought, you learn to like silence. She climbed the stairwell to the third floor, where her room was, and popped out onto the veranda that ran around the inside of the building’s U shape. And that’s when she saw him.
“Jennifer human,” Starscream said, straightening up from where he had crouched in the courtyard. There was something almost like relief in his voice. In the amber security lights of the courtyard, his metal skin glowed like gold. “You have returned.”
“Yeah. I was out at a party.” Suddenly she felt guilty. She hadn’t told him. Not that it was any big deal—in fact she hadn’t told him because it was such a no big deal. Days would go by without him contacting her—what were the odds he’d show up?
“I admit to being worried when you did not answer comm,” he said. Standing with her on the third floor, they were almost at eye level. “It was worrisome because Barricade had told me that tonight is special to you humans.”
“Not that special. Just flipping a calendar,” she said, shrugging. “Some people make a big deal out of it.”
“Why do you not?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. I do it wrong I guess. Everyone gets all excited about the new year, and I just think back to all the things I didn’t do or that didn’t happen or that I honestly just screwed up in the last year and…it’s hard to scrape up any real enthusiasm to do it all over again, you know?”
A pause. His eyes spiraled in and out. “Yes,” he said, softly. “We do not have a similar celebration of astronomical changeover, but I am familiar with that line of feeling.”
Shit. Great, start of the new year by upsetting your giant alien robot boyfriend. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring you down, too.”
“You did not ‘bring me down’, Jennifer human. I am merely empathizing.” His eyes narrowed in what she’d come to recognize as a playful slyness. “But surely something good did happen this past year?”
He was so obvious, but it was strangely endearing. “Yeah, I guess so,” she teased. “Maybe.”
His taloned hands curved around the wrought iron railings on either side of her, their barbs glittering in the security light, casting long sharp shadows against her. “I am not a maybe something good,” he admonished. “Perhaps you have forgotten.”
“Perhaps I have,” she said, leaning forward, her red coat pressing against the railing, feeling a little bold from the champagne. He tipped his head closer and she could smell the cold tang of metal in the now-January air. His mouth plates were cool against hers, and his glossa, darting between her lips, seemed to suck the heat right out of her. She shivered, only partly from desire.
“You are cold,” he murmured. Her breath frosted the air between them.
“I’m fine,” she said, but her mind started thinking—how do we have sex in 20 degree weather?
His hand stroked her back—well, the thick coat, anyway. Frowned, dissatisfied. “You have hurt my feelings by not being with me for this important changeover—Barricade said that you humans find it very important and that he fully intended to be with his xeno at the appropriate moment. You must make amends, of course.”
“But it’s after midnight,” she said, weakly.
“Simple, then. We shall fly to where it is not yet solar-cycle-changeover and you shall be with me then.” He didn’t give her much choice. One of his hands wrapped around her, pulling her off the railing as he fired his jets.
****
She had no idea where they were and only his word that it was not yet local time midnight. But she wasn’t in the mood to complain. It was bizarre and wrong and she was pretty sure her entire family would disapprove and then try to get her committed, but right now, they could all go to hell and stay there.
Her red coat, and her scarf and her mittens, and oh, what the hell, her boots for good measure, lay tossed on the sand. Wherever they were was a little too warm for them. And, to be honest, they were barriers. She hated to admit how desperately she wanted to feel him against her.
Starscream lay on his belly in the soft sand on this tiny patch that could barely be called an ‘island’, sighing with contentment as Jennifer slithered over his back, her hands exploring the armor, the gaps between. She’d forgotten how BIG he was before—his body alone was more than twice as tall as she was. She’d had him in her lab for days, but somehow, in her memory, he’d contracted. “Remember,” she said, her fingers tracing the sweep of a piece of armor that wrapped around his throat, “that night Max and I got you out of the harness?”
A moment’s thought. “Yes. That night was very painful.”
She winced. Right. Max had just reattached his leg, and he was in agony. “Sorry,” she whispered. Dammit, Jennifer, you manage to screw everything up.
“It was…unusual to have someone try to comfort me.”
“Didn’t do a very good job of it,” she muttered.
“I cannot evaluate the quality,” he said, seriously. “as I have no basis for comparison. But I remember that incident well.”
She ran her hands along one of his thrusters. He gave a contented sigh. They were still warm from flight, the metal smooth like satin under her fingertips. “I think every human,” she said, “wishes they could fly.”
“We do,” the jet admitted, “feel ourselves superior among our own kind. But that is, perhaps, unfair. There are tradeoffs.”
“To flying?”
“Yes. You have seen the vulnerability of our fuel lines. To keep our weight within parameters, we cannot armor as heavily as some of the ground frames. And by extension, our dermal sensors are more sensitive. It allows us to assess damage before it becomes threatening.” It made a weird kind of sense.
“So you feel pain faster and more acutely than others.”
“Precisely.”
She shifted her weight. “Am-am I hurting you?”
He half turned, so that she had to grab for an engine to keep herself from tumbling off into the sand. “You could never hurt me, Jennifer human.” He swung an arm back, a huge shadow over her, and plucked her off his back, laying her in the sand next to him. “Now.” His red optics spiraled wide and red. One talon traced a line along her cheek, down her body. He lifted the loose hem of her shirt, the cool metal raising goosebumps on the pale skin of her belly. “Shall we test the sensitivity of your dermal plating as well?” Without waiting for an answer, he lifted her shirt, laying his cool talons against her skin. She shivered.
He traced a series of lines with increasingly light touches, making a strange contented clicking sound as she breathed a moan. He shifted—a mass of metal moving above her—and he lowered his head to her belly, his glossa silky and cool and probing. She squirmed, pulling the shirt up over her head, and before he could ask or make his usual snide remark about her never listening to his preferences in undergarments, unclasped her bra.
“You are finally learning,” he observed, dryly. He licked his way up the length of her torso, his glossa running in the channel between her breasts, along her sternum, before ducking in for a kiss. Jennifer raised her arms around his head, stroking at the chevrons of his jaw, curling around the mandible into the cables and hoses underneath. Her mouth opened under his, welcoming the presence of his cool glossa, letting his exploration become more earnest, more confident.
She felt her body warm to him. It wasn’t the strangeness or the novelty anymore that aroused her, it was the sure knowledge of his touch—that she could recognize exactly how he would kiss her, how he would respond to her.
One of his hands squeezed around her thigh through her jeans. She could hear the barbs in the backs of his fingers slice into the sand, and was amazed all over again at how he’d managed never once to cut her with them.
“It is,” he murmured, breaking the kiss, running his eyes down her body pale against the white sand, “nearly local time midnight. And,” he added in the kind of non sequitur she’d learned how to interpret, “you are still wearing clothes.”
She grinned, lifting her hips to shimmy her way out of her jeans. He did not exactly help, though he was trying too. He slid his hand down her belly, onto the freshly exposed bare skin, his talons curving over the rise of her pelvis. She wriggled, finally managing to kick the damn things off her feet. His hand between her legs squeezed appreciatively. “Your anatomy is fascinating,” he murmured. Well, it wasn’t ‘you are so beautiful’ but it probably meant the same in robot. His hand trailed up, two of the talons running lines up her inner thighs, both curling under as they got to the top, sliding between the warm folds of her body. She squirmed, then gasped, as one of his talons pushed into her. She felt a rush of heat run through her body, and a surge of hot wetness against his cool metal.
“Jennifer,” he said, almost too casually, “do you wish to interface with anyone else? Other than me?” He twisted his wrist, the talon rotating inside her. Her hips lifted off the ground, back arching in response.
Honestly? No. Strangely somehow the thought of another human touching her was…vaguely unsettling. Squishy and pink and hairy and smelly, and no. “Maybe Barricade,” she teased. Just to be perverse. She knew what he wanted to hear.
His hand froze. “Barri—Jennifer, do you?” His optics spiraled small.
“No,” she said. “I was just teasing. You’re too obvious in what you want to hear.”
He huffed, a vent of air tickling her bare breasts. “I cannot imagine being plainspoken about one’s desires to be a flaw.” He ducked his head between her legs, his gloss probing along with his talon. “And I do not think this teasing is a very nice thing. To punish you,” another lick, causing her to gasp, “I may very well make you follow through on that.”
“What?” She tried to sit up. He flattened her easily to the ground with his other hand.
“Well, why not? Barricade is a skilled interface partner. I certainly have no complaints.” To her shocked look, he made his mechanical laugh. “See? Teasing is not very nice, is it?”
She slapped his helm, stinging her fingers. “Don’t you ever do that again!”
“Do what?” he ducked down, rubbing his glossa between the slick folds of her body until she shuddered. “Is this what I should not do again?”
“I mean,” she gasped, “Joke about Barricade.” Of course she’d started it. Served her right.
“You could,” he paused, turning his optics to her, “if you like. Though I fear you might find him preferable as an interface partner, I would not hold you back.”
Wow. So much there she didn’t know where to start. “Why do you think I’d like him better?”
“He is more experienced and creative. I fear that I may bore you some day.”
Never, she thought. She couldn’t help but feel a little hurt. “What happened to all of that protective talk?” Uh yeah, the protective talk that you flipped out about, Jennifer? What? Now you miss that? Hypocrite much?
He considered, idly running his talons down her legs. “If his advances are unwanted, I shall protect you. But if they are not unwanted, then…,” he shrugged, lamely, “I shall not stand in the way of what makes you happy, Jennifer Silver. You know that.”
She did. The last time they’d done that spark thing she could feel him. Not just physically, though that too. She’d felt suddenly what it was like to feel the roar of engines from her back, propelling her through the sky. She’d felt what it was like to fire a weapon that drew its ammunition from a well in her upper arm. But more than that, she’d felt…him. Not just his emotions, though she’d fallen through them on her way some place else. She’d felt the war, and what it had done to him, how it had contracted him down, tearing away anything and anyone he might care about. Until there was only her.
She reached for him, and he met her halfway, mouth importunate on hers, secretly begging she understood and wouldn’t put him to his own pledge. He would do it: he would force himself to stand by and let her go, but he would hate every minute of it.
“I wouldn’t,” she breathed, her mouth inches from his. He tilted his head down, leveling his eyes to hers. “You’re who I want.” She watched as the red eyes spiraled wide in gratification.
“And you shall have me,” he said, softly. She felt his talon slip from inside her as he reached for his module. She felt the cool weight of the connector cables drop against her legs. She arched her hips up as he pushed the module in. They both gasped as the first of the pulses swept through them. He tilted his head up, exposing his under jaw and throat. She felt an engine thrum, the vibrations carrying through the mechanisms she brushed with her fingertips.
“Oh!” she exclaimed at the burst of another datapulse. It was impossible to explain how it felt—a rush of tingling energy that somehow managed to sparkle across her entire body. It wasn’t like…sex, which she felt just…down there. It was all over, her fingers, her face, her skin. Her fingers tightened around a cable in his neck as another pulse raced through her. She wondered what it felt like for him, how he’d describe it, but the thought was swept away in another pulse.
His whole frame shuddered—he was above her, beside her, and stretched down far below her feet—as his system overloaded. One of the cables against her thigh gave a twitch and she felt the single hard rush of fluid inside her, cool against her heat. She cried out, muffling her mouth against a panel of his armor, her entire body spasming against him. One of his hands curled underneath her, holding her against him as he faded out. He was like her whole world right now—all around her. All she could see and feel and smell (the almost citrusy tang of the energon already blending with the slightly kerosene odor of his engines) was him.
It was weird and wrong, but she was tired of analyzing. Tired of figuring it out and making excuses. This was what mattered. This was who mattered.
She felt the joints unlock under her as he came back from his overload. He laid her gently on the sand, the barbs hissing through the sand as he withdrew his hand from underneath her. She caught it up, well, one talon at least, in her own hands. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything. I mean, not just tonight.” She kissed the metal barb. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean, you know, earlier, that you weren’t something good that happened this year.”
“Last year,” he corrected, softly. “It is ten minutes local into the new one.”
She smiled. “Last year. Didn’t think you’d want to interrupt all this praise, though.”
“Praise?” His eyelids shuttered and opened, coyly. “Please continue. I shall not interrupt again.”
She pushed his hand aside, leaning up to kiss him on the jaw. A teasing kiss, undemanding. “You are the best thing that has happened. Not just last year. It’s such a cliché, I know. But…I just get bogged down in stupid stuff. You know, the lost project, and my job and…I lost sight of that.” Another brief kiss. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“I shall have to remind you on a more regular basis,” he said, evenly, but his optics were swirling, wide and red. “But you have not lost your project. Have you not all of your research materials?”
“Yeah, I have them, but…what’s the point? I can’t publish them. Won’t get me anywhere.” She really didn’t want to be talking about this right now. Thinking about this: that box of CDs in her moving trunk, her pile of index cards, some still stained with her blood.
He frowned, or seemed too—the chevrons in his jaw grew more acute. “Why did you begin the project? For what you wanted to learn or for what it would do for your reputation?”
Whoa. Heavy. From anyone else it would have felt like an attack, or some sort of condescending argument. He honestly didn’t know.
“Guess I lost sight of that, too. For what I wanted to learn. But that doesn’t change that I’ve lost a lot.” Like, my entire future.
“I recall that it made you happy to work on it. And that since then, you have not been as happy.”
She felt tears prick her eyes. How did he manage to do this? Just say the simplest things and just reduce her to tears?
“Moreover,” he said, shifting, tracing a long line down the outer contours of her body, “I have learned about authority. One day they will want the information you can discover. Perhaps sooner than you think. Remember, they do not trust the Autobots either—you have heard that they are closing down your former base.”
She shook her head. She hadn’t heard. Why would she have? Max had mentioned something, cryptically, on her Facebook, but, well, Facebook wasn’t really the preferred venue for discussing alien robots.
He bent down, nipping at one of her breasts. Her breath grew ragged. “They will need your knowledge of our language, Jennifer human.”
“But…isn’t that like…betraying you to give them that?” A sudden image—of her research being used to kill him. Set up some kind of trap. It pulled her out of the rising warm flood of desire brought by his touches.
He smiled. “Have some faith in our cryptography, Jennifer human. We have not fought a war this long by being endangered by having our communications intercepted.”
“Sorry. Guess not.”
“You need not apologize. You have not ever had to run a war. But,” he leaned over this time to run his glossa down the length of one thigh, “when they come asking, you should be prepared. And you should demand a high price for it. Get back what you think has been lost to you.” His optics glittered.