An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary:
Laserbeak, Soundwave calls through their bond.
Laserbeak freezes, but doesn’t actually respond, the little fragger.
Laserbeak what do you have in your intake.
She starts chewing faster.
LASERBEAK.
- Or: Soundwave, Laserbeak, and Shenanigans.
-
Laserbeak, Soundwave starts, over their bond, turning towards the condor. The order he was going to say is immediately thrown out the window by the observation that Laserbeak is being suspiciously casual.
And chewing something.
Laserbeak.
The bird sends a non-articulated signal of I’m-paying-attention, just slightly coated with everything’s-fine-don’t-pay-attention-to-me that she couldn’t hide from his notice.
Laserbeak.
Laserbeak freezes, but doesn’t actually respond, the little fragger.
Laserbeak what do you have in your intake.
She starts chewing faster.
LASERBEAK.
She flies up when he goes to grab her, because she’s a glitchhead like that, and proceeds to haphazardly fly around their habstitute as Soundwave tries to catch her, crashing into the walls and nearly knocking things over. She pivots when he lunges at her, tries to weave behind his speakers and her bird tree, and ignores his return commands, just as he ignores her petulant no-no-mine-nooooooo looping through their bond.
Neither of them are leading their two-mech flock at the moment.
Laserbeak eventually rushes into the singular vent on the ceiling, where Soundwave’s able to catch one of her legs before she’s able to escape into the ducts.
Not that it would have stopped Soundwave from chasing her, it would’ve just made this whole debacle a lot more complicated. And loud.
She squawks, affronted, and flails around in his servos as he pulls her down, securing her in his grasp. He kneels onto the floor right then and there as he firmly wraps one of his servos around her neck and helm, keeping it (mostly) still.
Laserbeak doesn’t screech like she usually does when she’s being an obstinate rascal, instead keeping her beak firmly shut to try and keep whatever she’s eating in her intake.
Laserbeeeeeak, Soundwave grumbles as he struggles to pry her beak open. It’s like trying to rip open a perfect weld, except more painful, cause it’s a sharpened mandible meant to kill cybermice. All of her flailing definitely doesn’t help either.
Laserbeak screeches and swears indignant nonsense (AKJFFHJKKFRAG-YOUAUFHJAFK-) through their bond, though absent of any actual pain when Soundwave takes the nanoklik to check, and he swears he goes momentarily deaf when her screeching reaches a peak because he’s finally able to shimmy a finger into her beak.
He levers his finger and is able to properly open her beak, to her great horror and anger. What he extracts from her intake is a tangle of wires and scrap that Soundwave could not, for the spark of him, comprehend why Laserbeak would ever eat. Part of it is still down her digestive tract that he has to steadily to pull out.
It’s horrifying.
He has to stretch out his entire arm out to pull the mix of wires out, the last bits being partly corroded by digestive acid.
Laserbeak stops flailing as much by the time it’s all out, only giving a token struggle for the principle of it.
Stubborn rascal.
Soundwave stares at the mess of wires and scrap, partially corroded and covered in salivant, then slowly turns to judge Laserbeak.
All he gets back is indignation and a prideful no-regrets.
You’re fragging defunct. He inspects the ball of wires and scrap and turns to Laserbeak again. Why?
Laserbeak does the mental equivalent of flipping him off.
Soundwave ex-vents and rolls his hidden optics hard enough to pull something.
Don’t complain to me when you purge later.
Laserbeak just squawks at him, unremorseful. Pfffffp.
Ugh, Soundwave sets aside the mess of wires to clean later, and twists, slow and heavy like it’s a great burden to move, tilting to lie onto the floor, dragging Laserbeak down with him, trapping her against his chest in a hug. Rascal.
Learned-from-the-best, Laserbeak sings.
Soundwave can’t argue with that. He ex-vents again, staring at the ceiling, acting more annoyed than he is and Laserbeak knows it.
You-love-meeeee. Laserbeak snickers
Soundwave lolls his helm to look at her with an unsure expression.
Yes-yes-yes! She pecks at his servos.
Pfffffp.
Laserbeak squawks, offended-but-not-actually at his not-admittance, and Soundwave can’t help but laugh. Evidently her mischief spreads over to him this time, and he starts to roll over to lay on his front, Laserbeak still held to his chest.
Hey-hey-heeyyyy- She flails without any real effort as his weight carefully presses onto her.
Soundwave plays a sad-trombone soundbite at her while he laughs.
Mean! Mean-flock! Laserbeak yells. Soundwave laughs harder. Jail-jail-jail-for-a-hundred-years!!!
Rrrascal flock, Soundwave shoots back. Jail for you, he leans just a bit more of his weight on her.
No!
Yyyyyes.
No-no-noooooo-meeeannn!
Yyyeeeeeessss-yes-yes-messy-rrrrascal.
Laserbeak eventually stops flailing, scoffing under Soundwave. …Pfffffp.
Pfffffp, he echoes back.
Whatever assignment he was going to give Laserbeak sits unattended for another joor. Neither of them can find it in themselves to care.
-
Notes:
The pfffffp is a raspberry, but I feel like cybertronians wouldn’t… call it that. So. On a side note, sometimes Laserbeak & Soundwave just repeat noises at each other. Its enrichment (it’s echolalia) for them.
Any “talking” done with dashes (basically how laserbeak “speaks”) is actually unarticulated sentiments that Soundwave/both of them understand. Soundwave could send sentiments instead of thoughts, if he wanted to, and vice verse for Laserbeak, but they have their preferences cause of how they usually communicate out-of-bond.
Fun fact, flocks have a fluid leadership. So there’s no particular name for a bird wading a flock, but they’re usually the lead, leader, or point bird.
Soundwave happens to take point most of the time for obvious reason, but he’ll defer to Laserbeak if needed. Originally I was gonna have Laserbeak refer to Soundwave as like. The “lead bird” or something but that sounded weird so they just refer to each other as “flock.” It is only them in said flock, after all.
Other than “flock,” they don’t exactly label their relationship. There’s some boss/owner & subordinate/pet elements, some family elements (both caregiver/child & sibling squabbling), bickering friends, partners in crime, et cetera, et cetera. They so goofy together I love em.
Also, the amount of willpower I had to have to not put the “oh no gravity is suddenly increasing on me” iykwim
think that’s all, thanks for reading, tell me what grammar I fucked up, have fun, don’t die!!! <3
