Content notices for: smut, kink scene, under-negotiated kink, sadism, cyborg disassembly
X-Mech rigs are like nothing else; half velodrome streamlining, half hockey goalie stance. They barely ton more than a beach buggy, they handle like a blender full of jelly, and the tracks' mixture of off-road dirt rally and extreme sports ramps, loops and obstacle course brings in the crowds, the cameras, the sponsorships.
Frankly, you couldn't pay Gaffer enough to drive one, but back here in the workshop, this is Gaf's happy place. The machines come in one end, they get pressure washed and airhosed and buffed, they come through to the bodywork station and the scissor lift and the diagnostic rigs, Gaf works on them in her clean, gleaming palace, and they trundle out the other end to go get wrecked again.
In the workshop, everything has a place, and everything is in its place, and that makes Gaf happy.
The trouble started when they got the Pink Fish energy drink sponsorship and expanded to a second tech team. The second workshop is fine, the crew is fine, and the second lead tech, Veronika, she'd be fine, too. Gaf is chill. Gaf has a lot of practice at being chill. (Gaf is chill because she needed to earn it. When Gaf is not chill Gaf is extremely not chill. It's not a good time.)
But Veronika keeps touching things.
Gaf can be chill about her tools. She can. She just needs a heads-up: somebody's going to touch her stuff, she can mentally mark the workshop as not the way she left it, and tidy up later. She's tried talking to Veronika about it, so Veronika knows, but she. Won't. Stop coming in and borrowing things. Moving them. Touching them. And then Gaf discovers it by surprise and it's a lit fuse in her head that she has to manage so nothing blows up or burns down and she doesn't like being like this.
She just needs. Veronika. To stop.
So when she walks up on the other tech casually picking an M10 spanner out of Gaf's wall mounted set — a fucking M10! Like there aren't dozens of them around the shops! — Gaf looms at her.
Veronika shouldn't be susceptible to Gaf's looming, really; she had her cyberware done in the Marines, and the closest Gaf's been to scary was a long-ago cash-under-the-table gig as a bouncer. Gaf is a couple inches shorter than Veronika, if Veronika stopped slouching. But she holds herself around Gaf like Gaf is a well-trained but deadly guard dog, like Gaf will let her walk right up to the line but they both know it's purely on sufferance, and like the moment she crosses it Gaf will bite her leg off.
Gaf shows her the impact driver in her hand. "That's an eight-mil seven-lobe centre-pin security bit in the chuck," she says. "You know how many there are of those on one of our mechs?"
"None," Veronika says, eyes locked somewhere around Gaf's knees, lashes fluttering.
"There's one on the master retaining bolt on each of your shoulders," Gaf says. "If you keep touching my things without asking, I will confiscate your arms while you're in my shop, Veronika."
Veronika blinks a lot, rapidly, and doesn't say anything.
Gaf takes the spanner out of her hand, hangs it back on the wall, and gets back to work.
Veronika avoids her workshop for a week.
"Don't do it, Nika," Gaffer hears Veronika whisper to herself.
It's late and Gaf's finished for the day, really; there's a knee assembly that needs stripping down and rebuilding, but that's for tomorrow. And it's supposed to be Veronika's day off.
Instead — Gaf keeps sweeping, leans cautiously past the shelving racks of spare parts, and peers at Veronika. She's standing in front of Gaf's pristine wall of hand tools, staring like it's holy. Her hand, at her side, twitches.
Gaffer sweeps, contemplatively, all the way across the shop, leans the broom against the wall, and very quietly takes the impact driver out of its charging cradle. She plucks the 7LP secbit out of the rack, slips it into the chuck and locks it down tight in painstaking silence, then prowls back over and leans on the shelf, watching Veronika stare at her tools.
Nika quietly tells herself off a couple more times before she eventually reaches out, grip-textured fingers brushing over drop-forged chrome vanadium, and Gaf walks up behind her silently to gently rest the nose of the driver on her shoulder.
Veronika freezes.
Taking someone's arms away is a pretty horrific thing to do. Gaf lets her thinks about it for maybe ten seconds, then carefully neutral, she says, "I can't get to those bolts with your shirt on."
Veronika breathes out like someone punched her in the diaphragm. And then, not turning, not looking, she takes her shirt off, the servos in her hands whining with the rapid push-pull of the nervous tremble that's at the edge of their response spec.
Gaf curls a hand round the nape of her neck and steers her to the engine-block hoist; guides Veronika's left arm to lay relaxed in the slings, unpins it at the shoulder assembly, and slides woman and machine gently apart.
"Tell me how you're doing," Gaf says, rubbing gentle circles on Nika's lower back, and Nika jerkily nods. "Words, Veronika."
"Good," Nika whispers, staring at her detached arm.
"Enough?" Gaffer says, neutrally, as if she's not clutching the driver's handle hard enough to hurt, poised millimetres from slotting it into the head of the other bolt.
"More," Nika whispers, so Gaf takes away her other arm, and lets her stand and look at them in the hoist's slings for a while, trembling, them gently turns her around. Nika's eyes are huge and scared and pretty.
Gaf walks her across the shop, puts down one of the foam knee mats, and tells her to kneel; and then she strips the mech joint assembly.
"Hold this," she says occasionally, holding out a tool for Nika to fumble her mouth around it. Nika kneels and squirms and does as she's told, and Gaf deliberately doesn't look, deliberately keeps her attention on the work, until Nika's knees must be screaming.
Nika's holding Gaf's M10 spanner between her teeth.
"Go and put that away," Gaf says carelessly, and pretends she's working, pretends she's not just watching — oh, she's fucking watching — as Nika struggles to her feet, hobbles across the shop, and visibly pauses to try to think through how the hell to manage it. She experimentally tries out how to place her feet, whether to brace a hip or knee against the wall, curves her spine and cranes her neck, tries to slot the tool into the rack—
The clang and clatter of metal hitting the floor is as loud as the end of the world. Nika gasps audibly, cringes, quickly looks over at Gaf, who simply keeps pretending to work, like she hasn't even noticed, like she's not desperately holding her breath.
Nika follows the fallen tool, shakily gets down on her knees, bends her face to the workshop floor, and shakily starts trying to mouth the tool up.
Gaf isn't doing a good job of pretending to work any more, white-knuckled around the screwdriver she's holding in the vague vicinity of the half-stripped assembly, muscles straining against themselves as she makes herself sit still through every setback, every muffled sob, until Nika painfully hauls herself back upright, breathing hard, spanner clenched in her teeth.
She gets it into the rack this time, askew and dripping with drool. Staggers back like she's run a marathon, face wet with tears, while the parts of Gaf's brain that aren't hot misfiring soup stutter a list for later — bath, massage, rearrange the rota to take Nika off tomorrow — and Gaf reaches out to steady her, to ground her, letting Nika lean on her as she gamely, without a second's question or hesitation, goes back to her knees.
"Good girl," Gaf says, cupping Nika's face in her hands. "Good girl," and lets Nika nuzzle desperately into her palm for long seconds before gently pressing her back into place, allowing herself one gentle stroke over Nika's hair, and turning her attention back to the workpiece.
She methodically removes a dozen screws, pacing herself; then lays down the screwdriver in her work tray alongside them, and turns her face down to look right into Nika's raw, shining, worshipful gaze.
"Damn," she says, as if she only just realised. "Need you to fetch that M10 back, sweetheart."