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He left the article out on purpose, of course. Artfully set so it looked casually left, yet sure to command Perceptor’s insatiable curiosity.
(He wished other things of Perceptor’s were equally insatiable.)
It worked. Perceptor walked past it once with a glance, twice with a Look, and then finally slowed and picked it up. The taps of his digits against the glass of the datapad were like death knells.
There was a sudden, sharp invent. Brainstorm tensed.
“This should never have been published.”
Brainstorm looked up as casually as possible, which was not very considering his optics snapped to Perceptor’s frame the millisecond it was in optic range and his HUD immediately started labeling various portions of it with superlatives. Perceptor’s scope in particular was just labeled “NICE.” He very carefully extended his EM field, delicately teeking the usually neutral blank of Perceptor’s across the lab. A tight heat coiled in his lower tanks as he detected actual anger, laced with contempt, superiority, and a tingle of disbelief. His glossa flexed behind his mask, rolling the syllable around for a long moment before he managed a nonchalant, “Oh?”
“I said,” Perceptor announced, much more loudly and clearly, “that this should never have been published. It’s terrible.”
Oh. Oh. Brainstorm bit back his needy whine. That big, beautiful scope was bobbing with agitation and his optics were bobbing with it. “H-how so?”
“These lab procedures are so vague as to be garbage. Utterly unreplicable,” Perceptor pronounced, followed shortly by, “I don’t even want to see the margin of error on these charts.”
Brainstorm pressed his thighs tight and leaned against his lab table, cockpit squeaking on the cool surface, trying to keep assorted things where they belonged. Perceptor’s righteous scientific indignation was so hot. It was like having….having a brain-boner, except it was also giving him an actual boner and shooting his charge straight up the meter from “Dangerously Sexy” to “Gun That Shoots Overloads.” His panels were throbbing, valve clenching and spike pushing firmly against the hard metal of his codpiece. Somehow, he salvaged enough processor power to run his vocalizer. “And?”
“And? Their sample size is small, their standard of deviation is high, and to top it off...” Brainstorm bit down harder on his lower lipplates behind his mask, even as Perceptor’s armor fluffed in pique, releasing the cool, mineral-oil smell of well-maintained adjustment knobs and magnifier fluid. The microscope let out a small blat of static, well-suppressed emotions overwhelming his vocalizer. Brainstorm, claws slowly peeling spiralling channels of non-reactive coating from the lab table, nodded at the most beautiful scientist in the entire universe (and Iacon).
“And to top it off, their p-value is astronomical! Even with all of the blatant number massaging, none of their findings are significant! This is NOT SCIENCE!” Perceptor cried, voice cracking from pure rage. Brainstorm tensed for the briefest moment and then his overload hit him like a plank of titanium across the aft, sending him sprawling against the lab table. He moaned involuntarily, a sound more suited to a pleasurebot than a totally-a-genius scientist sneaking out around his mask. He could hear Perceptor turning; his plates slipping smoothly against each other as he moved. He could also hear the faint pat, pat, pat of his valve lubricant dripping out from behind his panel and splatting on the non-reactive ergonomic foam below.
He clenched his fists, wanting to give Perceptor his patented Finger Guns™ and pretend he was totally chill and normal about all of this. Instead, he made a tiny, defeated noise and wriggled his hips and wings. Unexpectedly, a finely-tuned servo landed on his aft, stroking gently.
“Percy…” Brainstorm managed to croak, barely cycling vents. The hand on his aft was so slender and smooth and stroking slowly closer to his leaking panel. He was just about to pop open.
That endlessly patient, infernally calm voice came at last. “Yes, Brainstorm?”
“...Keep talking dirty to me.”