Title: Foreman

Warning: Coercion via forcible gestalt bonding and power dynamics. Manipulation. Vague references to rape. Donuts. Spoilers for RiD, MTMTE, and Dark Cybertron. If you can't take it, don't read it.

Rating: PG-13

Continuity: IDW, Robots in Disguise

Characters: Prowl, Constructicons

Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

Motivation (Prompt): I actually pulled this out of Candy from Strangers. It was written for this fic, but at the time I didn't like it as an ending point. Now I do. Prompt: "When your opponent slips up, you press the advantage as hard as it can go, and far as it can go. And when you're done…you leave them devastated." - Prowl, RiD #29

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Part Ten

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To their credit, they didn't flinch.

The Constructicons leapt after him in a group, moving as one unit, and that unit fully trusted him. They were ready to follow wherever he led them. As they fell, they transformed to combine with him without hesitation. They trusted what they'd seen in his mind, no matter that he didn't trust them back.

He would use them despite that lack of trust. "When your opponent slips up," he said, and the words stabbed into the raw space between them, "you press the advantage as hard as it can go, and far as it can go. And when you're done…you leave them devastated." What he said had a double meaning. Their systems jolted in unpleasant recollection because even now - even now - he turned his words into a weapon.

His mind was his greatest weapon, the part of that completed them. Their bodies were their weapon. It came up short against him. They had hurt him physically, maimed and forced him to become one of them, then done even worse. Even while combining into one being, minds and bodies becoming Devastator in order to fight Galvatron, his acid lash of disapproval burnt through them, and he hurt them with it.

Scavenger's mouth had been scraped to bare metal. His awareness of it sank under the merge, but the component named Scavenger didn't attempt to hide his shame from Prowl when the gestalt links clicked home. Scavenger's lips were freshly painted, the scuffs around his wrists polished away to barely noticeable marks, but his mouth still hurt. His spark cringed back from the merge for a split second, afraid of feeling hatred in the link, but the Constructicons had fought in the war a long time. Battle was place for personal drama. If they survived, the Constructicons would separate and deal with the taste of ashes and solder left in Scavenger's mouth, the shame filling his spark.

They'd deal with the shared memory of Prowl backed into the corner, optics wild and one hand still holding one leg of the desk they'd built him. It was Scavenger's memory, one he wished he could hide but knew he couldn't. The Constructicons winced from it. They didn't want to share this memory, but they had to. That was the price of merging into one.

Scavenger couldn't remember the events leading up to the memory. He'd obviously cornered their Autobot somehow.

Prowl remembered. Oh, did he remember. He flung the memory at them hard enough to sting, feeding his indignant fear into their heads and hammering it into their sparks. He forced them to feel his helplessness and rage as a larger, stronger opponent backed him into the corner of his own quarters. His own quarters! What should have been a sanctuary had become a trap.

What should have been a teammate, a part of himself, had become a threat.

It sliced into the Constructicons deep enough to bleed innermost energon, but Prowl didn't even acknowledge it: the fragile shell of trust they'd managed to build in their sixth had shattered. They'd managed to coax him along, courting and persuading and promising..

It hurt to feel him now. Bitter vindication poured through Prowl, and his broken edges stabbed their sparks like weapons as they lived his perspective.

He'd cracked the desk over Scavenger's head. Scavenger, whose mouth still hurt, whose wrist joints ached from the hard twist of improvised cuffs. Scavenger, who couldn't remember what he'd done to scare their Autobot. He remembered the look in Prowl's optics as black-and-white doors went back. The smaller mech had taken the desk leg in both hands, wound up, and slammed it into the side of his helm.

Scavenger remembered that. It'd been a good hit. He didn't remember why Prowl had knocked him out, but he remembered the feisty mech taking him out. Up until Prowl supplied the other half of the memory, Scavenger had admired the Prowl in his memories. There weren't many mechs able to overpower a Constructicon using nothing but a desk and pure rage.

Shame drowned that admiration. He had Prowl's memories to fill in the gap now. What he did remember was bad enough, in that context.

"You were drunk," murmured through his spark during the endless seconds of falling and merging into one. The other Constructicons knew each other so well.

"I didn't mean to."

"You never mean to when you're drunk."

"I didn't mean to!"

"Too late for that," one of the others sighed.

Regret tore through them, but Prowl blocked their apologies out. He focused hard, sharp and narrow. It choked their access to him into a cold corridor lined by nothing but the mission.

"Too late," they agreed.

Too late to take back the threat of going too hard and too fast, something Decepticons understood as normal but Autobots just didn't get. Scavenger had put the pressure on, because why not? Why not take a grab at the hot little groundframe etched into their gestalt program files? He was needed, wanted, essential and innovative, a solution to a problem that'd crippled them for too long, and he was right there. Why not take what was already theirs?

Prowl had been there, and availability was half the reason. Scavenger had pushed him over and followed him down, because that's what Decepticons did. Why not? He'd been there, Scavenger had been there, and there hadn't been a reason not to. They were one. A hand couldn't take advantage of the other hand. They were one person, in the end, and it was just a handshake.

But that was the reasoning of a combiner team. Prowl had been an individual for too long, and not one of them for long enough. The Constructicons knew they weren't to take what they wanted, not this time, not without gradually working up to the point where he thought it was his idea, they were his to take, it was his choice to give. Their bodies were their main weapon, not their minds, but they could plan that much out.

Engex had erased their plan from Scavenger's mind.

"Why not?" Prowl had asked after the makeshift cuffs cut into his attacker's wrists. This was Prowl's memory, because Scavenger didn't remember this part. Scavenger had a trick memory when he drank, and usually the other Constructicons would have had him under control, but he'd gotten away. They'd been busy, and he'd wanted what was dangled just out of reach. He'd gotten away, gone too far, and discovered that one fendered Constructicon couldn't take on Prowl.

"Why not?" Prowl asked again, and they still didn't get it. "You have to provide reasons arguing against taking advantage of someone smaller and weaker than you?" In the memory, Prowl had stepped back as his face twisted in utter disgust. "I should be surprised. I'm not."

The cuffs had twisted tight enough to cut into Scavenger's wrist joints. It'd made Prowl feel safer. The memory had a tiny hint of satisfaction from knowing Scavenger was in pain from the cuffs and the blow to the head, and the Constructicons cautiously tested that train of thought. Hope tickled through the back of the merge. They could use sadism. If he wanted to tie them up, beat them, savage them - they'd let him. It wasn't a bad price to pay. They'd allow him to use them to his satisfaction if it would earn them forgiveness for what Scavenger had almost done.

Hope died. The hint of satisfaction had been from defending himself, not for actually causing Scavenger harm.

By then, the other Constructicons had felt their teammate's pain and Prowl's boiling anger. A tentative knock had come from the door, and Prowl had whirled around to face it, hands clenched into shaking fists when he realized who was on the other side. A searing snap of rage had whipped through their united sparks. Even now, it hurt. Falling, combining, becoming one, they cried out inside of Devastator for the sheer cutting hatred from their sixth self.

He hated them. He hated what Scavenger had tried to do. He hated their warped logic and the absent morals that had led to Scavenger's confused look as the Constructicon knelt on the floor, wrists bound. He and the Constructicons were not compatible. They desired him and he could use them, but they were not redeemable. It took a desk to the helm just to get through to the drunken sot who'd invaded his office that throwing him on the floor and slobbering on his neck was repulsive. Shouting refusals hadn't been enough. Kicking and yelling hadn't been enough. Screaming through the gestalt connection hadn't been enough.

Consent just did not process in the Constructicons' stunted ethical system.

This was what Scavenger didn't remember. This was what Prowl had done in response to their incomprehension.

He'd kissed the Constructicon: a full, deep kill of teeth and tongue, hard enough to chip paint and dent metal. He'd braced his hands on either side of Scavenger's face, tipped it back, and gave it his all. The memory of it flooded the gestalt bond, pushing its way into all their minds, and the Constructicons gasped under the assault. Scavenger had moaned as he'd surrendered, but he didn't remember it. This was Prowl's memory.

The memory of what they might have had, what could have been theirs, belonged to Prowl and Prowl only. What he said aloud to Optimus Prime as they combined sliced the Constructicons, because they understood how it was meant for them, too. They'd slipped up, and Prowl had grabbed the advantage. He'd pressed it as hard and far as he could, tongue in Scavenger's mouth, and now he pressed it further. The bond resonated with that kiss, and the Constructicons whimpered under the memory of his mouth.

Because it was his memory. When he was done, when Devastator uncoupled back into his separate components, the Constructicons would be left with nothing but the knowledge that they couldn't ever have him. The kiss, and his memory of it, was beyond their grasp. Even as his nose bled from the strain of separation, he kept it - and himself - out of their reach.

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