#hotlockweek

When is Hotlock Week?

Hotlock Week is being held from December 13th through 19th, 2021. The schedule is as follows:

December 13th, Monday - Gunshow December 14th, Tuesday - Infamous December 15th, Wednesday - Change December 16th, Thursday - Hush December 17th, Friday - Impulse December 18th,  Saturday -Yearning December 19th, Sunday - Care December 20th, Monday - Bonus Day- Driftrod Day

How do I sign up?

No sign-up needed, you can simply post your work!

Do I have to stick to the prompts?

You don’t have to make stuff according to these prompts! They’re here to help you get started if you need them, that’s all.

Where can I submit my work?

You can post your work to your tumblr or twitter, and tag it #HotlockWeek, which is the tag the DriftRodWeek accounts will be tracking.

Are Not Safe For Work submissions allowed?

The DriftRodWeek accounts will not be accepting any Not SFW submissions. However we are providing the tag #DriftOnThatRod so that you may track all Not SFW pieces created during and inspired by the event.

Please do not tag your Not Safe For Work pieces with the #DriftRodWeek tag.

(This includes links to AO3 collections that contain NotSFW works, make separate posts for the SFW ones if you’d like to see them featured.)

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, we can’t wait to see what you’ll all come up with! 💞💞

See you on December 13th!👁️👁️

Not every battle smells like Nyon. 

Some of them are hand-fought, with gushes of MTOs hacking at each other and both sides depleted of heavy artillery. Those battles smell like curdled energon and the other essences of quick deaths. Other battles are fought in space, or on planets with no atmosphere. 

Every other battle smells like Nyon.

This one has smelled like Nyon for weeks and it’s been nearly unbearable the whole time. The particular scents of bombs and burned-out internals from too much strain on too little energon must cover half the planet by now. When the Autobots’ forces are bolstered and suddenly they’re winning the battle, it’s barely a relief. 

Hot Rod is scouting territory that the Decepticons have just retreated from when he sees Deadlock. More accurately, he almost trips over him. Normally, upon seeing what looks like the corpse of a Decepticon that dangerous, he would sound an alarm and summon a team to make sure of his corpse-hood and take him into custody if there’s still life in his spark. 

But he doesn’t, because there’s a familiar scent coming from Deadlock. He smells like Nyon. 

**

There had always been some disagreement, in Nyon, over whether or not the empties were dead. That their sparks had stopped once was irrefutable; the question was whether what powered their frames after was a spark at all. It was difficult to kill them again, which would have been an advantage if it wasn’t paired with a severe vulnerability: empties could no longer activate energon on their own, making regular energon useless to them, and forcing them to depend on energon that had already cycled through a frame with a living spark to survive. They’d been common in Nyon - an empty became an empty when their frame was depleted of energon so quickly that their spark shorted out, rather than gradually cycling the frame’s energy levels down until the frame went into forced stasis. All the empties Hot Rod had known in Nyon had died there, and he hasn’t noticed any since - they’re indistinguishable from other Cybertronians most of the time, except when they’ve used up all the energy in the energon they’ve been transferred and fall into their own version of stasis. They go very still, in a way more reminiscent of stasis than death, but the deactivated energon sitting in their lines has a unique scent, one that somehow reminds Hot Rod of both life and death.

He knows that not all the empties who have ever existed were in Nyon; the Autobot medical corps have a section of handbook about them, and it stands to reason that energon thieves or a particular kind of injury could have essentially the same effect as Zeta’s experiments. But Hot Rod hasn’t, to his knowledge, encountered one since Nyon. Until Deadlock. 

All at once, he decides that he’s sick of this. He’s sick of this planet and this battle and this war and everything, everything that led him here. He isn’t going to call a team. 

He uses his foot to flip Deadlock over so that he can see his face and whether or not he’s holding a gun. From the scent, he can tell that Deadlock doesn’t have enough energy to do anything like walk, but there’s a strong chance he’s perfectly capable of pulling a trigger. 

He’s unarmed, though, and instead of a gun, Hot Rod finds himself staring into barely-lit but perfectly conscious optics. 

He secures his own weapon to his side and kneels next to Deadlock. Deadlock follows the motion with his optics, moving his neck just enough to track Hot Rod. He doesn’t speak, and more interestingly, doesn’t snarl at him. His frame is littered with dents and scrapes and cracks, but it’s clean of energon; Deadlock had probably made it this far in a battle like this one by licking the energon splattered onto his frame from the Autobots he cut down. 

Hot Rod takes a careful look around, knowing full well that if anyone sees what’s about to happen he’ll be rightfully accused of treason. But even Deadlock doesn’t deserve to be left like this, helpless and paralyzed in enemy territory. Maybe it’s Deadlock’s fault for becoming a Decepticon in the first place - most of Hot Rod’s teammates would say so, at least. But Hot Rod’s teammates aren’t here right now, and Hot Rod remembers seeing lines of empties on the street, crowds of them at the Acroplex, and not having enough energon running through his own frame to help even one of them. But now, he has enough. It’s more for those long-dead than for Deadlock that Hot Rod positions his wrist over Deadlock’s intake and says, “Drink.” 

“I’m not joining the Autobots.” Deadlock’s voice is a raspy whisper barely loud enough for Hot Rod to hear. 

“I don’t expect you to join the Autobots.” 

“Then why?” 

“Because you need energon, and I have plenty.”

Hot Rod can’t tell if Deadlock has run out of arguments or if he’s used up too much energy to be able to speak anymore. Deadlock’s motions are slow as he takes Hot Rod’s wrist between his teeth and uses his fangs to make two small punctures in the energon vein that runs through it. 

“Plenty is big talk for someone with this kind of fuel pressure,” Deadlock says, his voice already sounding better, after a few seconds. 

“You complaining?” Hot Rod asks. As he says it he realizes with a pang that that’s exactly what he said to empties in Nyon, all the dozens of times they said something similar to him. 

Hot Rod glances around again to make sure no Autobots are nearby and then lets himself relax a little at having successfully gotten Deadlock to accept his help. Relaxing is a horrible idea, as it turns out, because the next motion from Deadlock is a startled twitch that Hot Rod feels both in his opened wrist, and in the hand that he’s placed on Deadlock’s finial. 

He yanks that hand away as if Deadlock’s finial had been on fire. “Sorry!” 

“You don’t have to stop,” Deadlock says, not looking anywhere near Hot Rod.

It probably can’t make things worse, Hot Rod reasons, and it feels good to stroke along Deadlock’s finial, one of the only parts of him unmarred by the battle. He keeps up the motion until Deadlock stops drinking, licking at the wounds in the vein to seal them. 

Then it’s Hot Rod’s turn to startle, because the next thing Deadlock does is kiss the inside of his wrist. It’s less intimate than drinking his energon, obviously, but it doesn’t feel that way, and Hot Rod’s spark whirs in a way that distracts him almost enough to forget where he is for a moment. It’s the best gift Deadlock could have given him. 

Deadlock steps away from Hot Rod as they both stand up.

“I hope we see each other again someday,” Hot Rod says, keeping his promise.

“You shouldn’t,” says Deadlock. He looks away, toward where the Decepticons have retreated.