Title: Attitude Adjustment
Warnings: The aftermath.
Rating: PG-13
Continuity: G1/IDW/WTF AU (post-script of "Deconstruction" round-robin)
Characters: Hook/Kup
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): Continuation prompts on Tumblr.

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Epilogue

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His hands hurt. The sensors burned. The joints ached as he bent his fingers, and wires seared lines of fire underneath the thin plating. Agony knotted into magnesium-bright lumps where the delicate sensors pulsed their punishment into the center of his cortex. Every nerve receptor in his body screamed in sympathetic pain, shrieking at him that his hands, his talented surgeon's hands, were in danger, get away, get away.

At a certain point, however, the stinging whiplash across his hands had ceased registering in his mind as a punishment. It felt like fire, absolute pure pain across his body, but his head interpreted it as the opposite of dangerous. It felt safe. It freed him. Getting away was the last thing on his mind.

The lash landed in a hard crack, he jerked, and the pain sang through him. It washed through him, emptied him out, and the hollowness it left behind was a strut-melting relief after the crushing fear and anxiety. The pain cut down his worries, sharp as a knife. His thoughts fell before it. Anxiety pared away. The pain whittled down his pride, his shame, his fears, until all that remained was an emptiness that almost felt like total relaxation.

He tensed as the lash came down, and it was a hard, shuddering tension that strained cables. He slumped as the pain passed, releasing him, and the sudden pain-exertion flushed warmth through the rest of his body as it let him go. It left him the same tired exhausted well-being he felt after a tough project, working to the limits of his capacity until completion let his perfectionist glitch go and he was left basking in the glow of accomplishment. The pain itself paled before that. It came in quick strikes and took away everything unimportant, and he reveled in the aftermath.

Hook whimpered softly, uncaring if he sounded weak. That didn't matter. All that mattered was the soft, dull heat building around his spark and mind one whiplash at a time. He wanted to sink into it forever, comforted by the plush space emptied out by the pain.

By the time Kup stopped beating him, Hook had stopped flinching away from the antenna as it whipped across his hands. He cried out as it fell, but each cry was followed by a moan. Those moans wavered, growing louder and stronger, and Kup stopped when the hands offered to him rose into the lash.

He dimly registered when his Master knelt beside him. A hand on the side of Hook's helm turned the Constructicon to look directly at him. Hook didn't know what he looked like, but Kup seemed to like what he saw if the quiet snort was anything to go by. He couldn't see the rosy hue of his visor, but he was so far gone he probably wouldn't have cared.

Hook couldn't really see the old Autobot as more than a vague shape through the haze of snowy static fizzing across his visual field. It didn't bother him. He blinked, unfocused and almost drowsy in complete relaxation. His mind floated in the beyond-pain headspace Kup's beatings often put him in. This…this was good. It'd been a good beating.

He whined a questioning noise from behind the bit still lodged in his mouth. Why had Kup stopped?

"I think you've been punished enough," Kup said in a low, rough voice. Hook didn't understand the words, but the rumble of his tone sent a shiver down the surgeon's crane arm. "Alright. Time to fix this." A hand ran over his pet's helm, and Hook moaned, visor dimming as he pushed into it. No shame, not right now. Just pure sensation, and the slow ticking a heavy-duty construction vehicle engine cooled.

Fingers curled, flexing. Kup's free hand caught those fingers, rolling them back and forth. Slow care kept the cables from stiffening, the gears turning. They'd hurt like the Pit later, once Hook was back in his right mind. For now, Hook's engine sputtered. It accelerated before downshifting into a purr, and the surgeon's moan softened to a sigh. He leaned into the petting, fingers spreading to welcome the cool touch on his burning hands.

Kup kept petting, bringing his masochist back.

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"Look at me."

Hook clenched his aching hands into fists and tried to obey. He did. Shame had begun its creep back into his spark, however, and he ended up staring at his Master's feet. He'd failed. Even after punishment, even after forgiveness, that stuck with him. His perfectionism glitch sank its claws into him, and frustration boiled nearly as hot as the abused sensory network in his hands.

"Don't make me repeat myself!" A smart slap, and Hook snapped his gaze to Kup. "Good. Now, I'm taking you back to my quarters. I don't want you outta my sight." Age-pale optics narrowed as Kup frowned, and the surgeon controlled the immediate urge to retreat from the old codger's disapproval. "You either walk by my side or - "

"No."

It was a breathless interruption. Normally that would earn him another slap for the impudence, but Kup merely raised a brow ridge. He seemed strangely satisfied by Hook's immediate denial. "No?"

"I…" Hook wanted to look away, but he didn't dare. He'd pushed his owner's temper far enough tonight. "Please."

"Please what?"

Admitting what he wanted woke a nasty tangle of humiliation in the bottom of his tanks, but it was part of the game. Hook winced back. His visor darted away, then obediently returned to Kup. He stammered. He reset his vocalizer and mumbled a poor attempt at skipping an actual explanation. Kup tapped his fingers impatiently, and Hook's non-words cut off in an uncomfortable cough. Evading his Master never got him anywhere, but cornering him apparently never got old. Kup would stand there all joor waiting for Hook to surrender.

Eventually, his expectant smirk forced the surgeon to say the words out loud. "I-I belong to you. I should," Hook squirmed uncomfortably, "be. Seen. As yours."

Everyone already knew, he meant. The scandal-chasing reporters waited outside to stalk him like vultures shadowing a dying beast. His neighbors would fill his audios with delighted whispers as gossip spread like fire, and standing at Kup's side wouldn't protect him. No, the only place he was protected from Autobots and neutrals and random interfering busybody gawping tourists was under his Master's hand. The idea filled him to overflowing with embarrassment, and yet -

He bit his lip and met Kup's optics, visor unconsciously pleading. It would be a professional and personal humiliation to walk at Kup's heels as something even less than a prisoner on parole, but he'd been left undefended all day, without instruction or guidance. He didn't want to be seen as an ex-Decepticon under escort, or even an unknown element somehow involved with the Autobot beside him. He didn't want anyone to question what was between them. It was obvious and already out there.

Please, please don't abandon him to the cold distance of uncertainty. Claim him as publically as he'd been humbled, and tell him what a good pet should do.

Kup's smirk eased into a smile. "Yeah. Yeah, y'should. Think that might-a been where I lost you on this, pet." He reached up to take Hook's chin in hand, thumb pressing into the sensitized plating at the corner of his mouth. Hook's visor flickered. "You need a lesson now, or should we wait 'til things settle some?"

Hook thought that meant after they returned to Kup's quarters, a place more familiar and lived-in than the blank cookie-cutter parolee room they were in now. He was assigned this habsuite, but it didn't feel like his. It didn't feel right. The walls seemed paper-thin, as if he could feel the reporters and his snooping neighbors peering through the walls, and the lack of privacy crawled unease under his armor. The security of being where he belonged as one of Kup's belongings just wasn't here.

But the idea of waiting didn't sit right with him. He was impatient. The compulsion for perfection that made him Cybertron's best surgical engineer drove him to finish what it considered incomplete.

He pushed into the thumb massaging slow circles at the corner of his mouth. His visor dimmed. Stressed sensors throbbed in rhythmic waves he could feel in the tender palms of his hands, and his engine betrayed him. It turned over. There was no disguising its needy rumble.

He nearly cringed, humiliated all over again. Kup chuckled, and Hook did cringe. His Master found cruel amusement at his expense, and it embarrassed him worse.

It also lit a tiny, incandescent pleasure in his spark.

Despite that pleasure, Hook had to force himself to kneel, folding to his knees on the floor at his owner's feet. His chin stayed tipped up on Kup's hand. He gazed up at the old Autobot and swallowed the panic clenching inside his chest at the thought of facing what waited outside the door.

Kup let his finger dig into the corner of Hook's mouth, passing the border between pleasure and pain. "Well?"

The Constructicon laid aching hands flat on the floor and made himself say the words. "I'm an ignorant fool and not worthy to be your pet." He was. He was, but Kup would teach him if he asked, and he had. He was broken enough to know he needed guidance.

It came in small pains, this time. That was fine. After the beating his hands had taken, it didn't take much to ramp him back up to whimpering, and he was tired. All he really wanted to do was curl up on the floor in Kup's quarters and recharge. The rules of conduct Kup expected of him while they were in public stuck in his throat when he had to repeat them back to his Master, but they were a step toward the safety and sleep he wanted. A painful step, since Kup ground a heel into one of his hands if he hesitated over a particularly embarrassing order, but at least now he knew what to do.

Whatever else might happen, however low he was brought, at least Kup would tell him what to do. When Kup allowed him to stand, his hands shot sharp pain through him as a reminder of that. A reminder of whom he belonged to, and how much control he didn't have.

It was a very good pain. He shut off his visor and savored it.

Kup tapped a finger on the side of his visor. "Hey. You look at me." Hook hastily brought his visor back online, and Kup nodded. "There. You look at me and only me. No one else matters, pet. Just me. You look at me, and you remember who you belong to. Got it?"

His spark whirled in his chest. "Yes, Master," he near-whispered.

"Who you belong to, pet?"

"You, Master."

"Anyone else?"

He hesitated a bare second, wondering if it was a trick question. "No?" Kup gave him a slight nod, and Hook stood straighter. "No, Master."

"Good. You remember that."

When they left his room, Hook walked at the end of a makeshift leash. He held his head high, visor steely, and he looked right through the crowd waiting to gawk at him. He didn't belong to them. They didn't matter. They could stare and laugh, and his Master would deal with it. All Hook had to do was be an obedient pet.

Kup tore a verbal hole through the lot of them. Hook had never felt so vindicated in his life.

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