TF:A Fanfic: Belonging 4/6 (Megatron/Optimus Prime)
Title: Belonging 4/6
Rating: M/NC-17, Slash
Universe: Transformers: Animated
Pairing: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Author's Note: Spoilers for A Bridge Too Close, follows an alternate ending into a new continuity. Finally, the next part! I don't dare to mention how long I've just been sitting on this while it waited for editing. The rough drafts of the last two parts are complete, so things should move along more quickly now.
Another fuzzy cuddle to lady_oneiros, who continues to force my improvement by use of the motivation stick ow ow.
Part IV
“His Excellency Lord Megatron commands your presence.”
Optimus kept his back to Shockwave, watching the communication officer's dim reflection in the transparashield of the window. He kept silent for a full cycle by his internal chronometer to test Shockwave's patience and his own ability to be irritating. “Do you think I can't tell when he wants me?” Optimus said at last. He felt the longing like a spur of steadily searing heat at the center of his spark. For the moment, he could resist it, and he and Megatron had developed a habit of avoiding each other until resistance became more unbearable than surrender. Perhaps because their bond was so new, their limit wasn't long-several orns at most.
Reflected in the window, Shockwave's single optic thinned. Though subtle by nature, Megatron's favorite officer had his own variety of facial expressions, and Optimus recognized the sullen irritability of this one. “Then refrain from making me into your messenger,” Shockwave said.
“Is that what you said to him?” Optimus couldn't help quirking his lip components.
That slitted optic narrowed horizontally as well, and Shockwave turned away from Optimus and made for the door. He had plainly decided that this duty was complete.
“We've changed course,” Optimus observed. His voice stayed soft, but the words alone were still enough to bring Shockwave to a halt. The door panel hissed open in front of him, then hissed shut before he turned to Optimus again.
“Our navigation is none of your concern, Autobot.”
Optimus whirled to face him fully, narrowing his own optics. Shockwave was not large, for a Decepticon at least, and he and Optimus were of a height. Staring him down always proved easier than challenging any of Megatron's other lackeys. “Tell me where we're going.” Optimus already knew-if he'd worked out his calculations correctly-but he would appreciate confirmation.
Unmoved, Shockwave stared back at him. “Ask Lord Megatron, if you cannot bear your own curiosity.”
“We're going toward Cybertron,” Optimus said, fisting both hands at his sides and wondering if he could blame Megatron's influence for the growing desire to wrap both hands around Shockwave's neck cabling and squeeze. “And since the Elite Guard is massed there, I can only imagine that Megatron's abandoned his plans of using the space bridge system to invade.” Megatron had given him leeway enough to examine more of the ship, and Optimus had counted enough Decepticon warriors to make him unpleasantly nervous but not enough to mass a full-scale attack on the Autobot stronghold of Iacon.
“I am under no obligation to tell you anything at all,” said Shockwave. He turned again toward the door.
Optimus lowered his head, vents gusting out a silent sigh. “Where is he?”
“The throne room.” Shockwave apparently couldn't resist a parting shot, even when giving it in a thoroughly neutral tone. “But of course, you knew that yourself.” The door hissed open and then shut again behind him.
Optimus stalled for a cycle or two. Resistance wasn't particularly useful, but both he and Megatron found a certain bitter satisfaction in it-for as long as it lasted. Finally, Optimus gathered the splintering bits of his resolve and left the string of rooms that still served as his usual cage, his servos tensing measurably when he crossed the boundaries created for his own protection. Walking alone through Decepticon territory still unnerved him. In general, the other sentient creatures of this ship stayed to the edges of Optimus' path and left him alone, though a good number of them muttered slippery insults when Megatron's presence couldn't protect him.
In the corridors, he kept his battlemask raised, and he only lowered it after the double doors to the throne room opened under his vocal command.
Megatron lounged on the throne like something feral and feline, all capability and claws.
“Megatron,” Optimus said. He started toward him and paused only when something moved at the edges of his sensory perception. They weren't alone, and that was singular. Optimus faltered over another step and came to a shaken halt, tempted to go for the ax. He curled his hands into fists and kept them at his sides through will alone. In the interwoven skeins of their bond, Megatron remained calm, but that unexplained serenity couldn't quite force Optimus to relax in return.
The leader of all Decepticons regarded him with a slow and steadily chilling smile. “Come here,” he said with the faintest prickle of teeth below the command.
“I would really rather not.” Optimus studied the other figure cast in the dim lighting by the throne, and his optics flickered after a moment in recognition. Thunderblast. She stood sullenly, her arms crossed over her chest, but she curved her delicate lip components when their optics met. Optimus shook his head and looked to Megatron again before saying, “Not until you tell me what's going on.”
Megatron's smile faintly widened. He beckoned with one finger, radiating dark amusement through his posture and his expression, but Optimus felt a wave of distracting uneasiness pass through their bond before fading again. Whatever this was, it meant more than Megatron's penchant for humiliating his bondmate, and Optimus let his anxiety meet Megatron's unusual lack of confidence somewhere in their center. Megatron withdrew predictably in response as the pathways between them went icy.
“I have spent an inordinate excess of time in training you,” Megatron said when Optimus only shook his head again. “In order to reduce the liability you represent. Perhaps you would do me the honor of demonstrating an improvement.”
Optimus tried to reconcile his previous notions of “training” with the unadulterated violence to which he and Megatron often resorted before surrendering to the inevitability of merging sparks. Sparring, yes. Training...involved a certain expectation of performance, or so he had believed, and he had grown used to Megatron indulging his attacks for a certain number of cycles before knocking him summarily on his aft. Often more than once. But then again, perhaps those cycles of successful defense had grown longer in the last several orns, and perhaps he had developed a little ingenuity to compensate for his relatively diminutive size.
“Against whom?” he asked, optics narrowing. He turned a glance on Thunderblast. “On her?” His Autobot pride protested, not only based on her model frame and her former purpose, but also on her unapologetic identity as a Decepticon. He was in no particular danger, and honor didn't demand any sort of duel. Sparring with Decepticons-outside of Megatron-seemed a step too close to the fine edge of fraternization, friendly or not.
That smile twisted along Megatron's mouth again. “Why, yes. Unless you fancy a larger opponent.”
“I'll understand if you'd rather not risk your shiny plating,” Thunderblast interjected. Her voice and her smile spoke of self-confident disdain. “Little Autobot.”
That stung, even if she was shorter than him by a head and less than a fourth his mass. Optimus was accustomed to insults-but no longer to the opportunity to defend himself against them. He was vastly outnumbered here, just one among so, so many, and while he didn't intend to risk underestimating her... He couldn't deny an impulse to fight that wasn't just Megatron's lingering presence in the bond.
Optimus cast a sideways glance at the lord of all Decepticons before raising his battlemask again and unfurling the ax. He tested his grip with both hands against the handle. “Worry about your own,” he said to Thunderblast, annoyed that the words sounded more like genuine concern than pre-battle taunting.
Parting her lip components, Thunderblast grinned with a permeating hiss. The vibroblades that Optimus had glimpsed her using in the demonstration hall fanned out across her shoulders, giving her a delicately bristling appearance that disappeared when she shifted into a defensive stance. “Come on, little Prime,” she said, beckoning him with a hand full of blades. “I don't bite, but I do sting.”
Behind the mask, Optimus set his jaw. He was always weaker on the offensive. He hated that his willingness to be manipulated had landed him in the position.
Raising the ax above his head, he made a perfunctory charge at her: the same technique he had tried on Megatron back in Lockdown's ship. She had the advantage of readiness, of course, and the lithe wiring of all femme models, so her abbreviated dodge and return thrust were no surprise. Edging sideways, Optimus avoided the simultaneous strike of three vibroblades in one hand and raised his ax to block the swipe from the other three.
Clicking in an oddly adolescent sort of frustration, Thunderblast tried to dart through his defenses again, but Optimus had learned during his Academy days the many methods of keeping smaller bots from using his own size against him.
In recent orns-given the lethal motivation of Megatron's usual sparring method-he had learned far more than the simple enhancement of his Academy repertoire. Optimus dropped to the floor and skidded across the metal plating, ax swinging in close and nearly taking off both Thunderblast's legs at the knee joints. The femme flipped away, hand over hand for a graceless landing, but the attack had sheared two or three wires at the back of one calf. Sparks skittered across the floor. Optimus glimpsed Thunderblast snapping her pointed dental plates together before she flew at him again.
She was all blades and edges, liquid mercury sliding into and out of his focus. Optimus registered the pain almost before he registered her movement, and he belatedly cried out at the sharp slice of one of her vibroblades through his dermal plating. The blade carried an electric charge that briefly disrupted his systems, making him stumble badly enough that she nearly succeeded in striking him again.
Megatron snarled; he felt the pain as well in such close proximity.
Ducking narrowly beneath Thunderblast's swipe, Optimus pivoted to meet two more blades with a blow from his ax. One blade shattered, and Thunderblast snarled something incomprehensible in a low-caste dialect as the disrupted charge sizzled through her arm, leaving it temporarily useless. Despite the blow, she was still lethal, and Optimus blocked strike after strike in a series of tightly orchestrated turns. He knew his form was good enough, but he didn't expect the strange ripple of highly physical appreciation that started in his spark and spread outward through his systems. The emotion was so intimate that Optimus took a graceless moment to realize that it originated with Megatron. Optimus trembled with brief but lingering wonder at the slow ignition of desire, the unspeakable interest in all the nuances of his frame as he moved in all the ways he had ever been taught.
Distraction was probably inevitable under the circumstances. Knowing that provided no satisfaction once Thunderblast had succeeded in thrusting a blade between the plating of his chest and his shoulder, only barely missing the joint. Optimus stumbled backwards, groaning as he pulled the blade free. He transferred the ax to one hand and heard Megatron's vents activate in agonized gasps.
Both arms functional again, Thunderblast slipped around behind Optimus with a swift backward flip. A needle of pain cut through his systems as another of her vibroblades entered through a gap in his back plating. Optimus shouted a curse as he twisted to wrap a hand around the base and rip it back out. A scatter of sparks and mech fluid followed it, and Optimus registered Megatron's low-frequency growl and flinch. The Decepticon Lord bared his teeth and raised his hand. Thunderblast slowed, interpreting a call for a halt.
Optimus growled in return and aimed such a venomous glare in Megatron's direction that the Decepticon leader actually paused and arched both optic ridges. His doubt filtered through the bond, and Optimus made an effort to push it back with a determination greater than the balance of Megatron's distrust.
Megatron considered in silence, and then he lowered his hand.
“Keep it up,” Thunderblast laughed, her optics focused on Optimus again. “I'll cut you in pieces.”
Optimus heard something fierce and not quite frightened shadowing each word. Her attacks had a focus-a wild frenzy of movement followed by evasion-and this time he watched for it, blocking the the strikes of her remaining blades with the handle of the ax until functionality returned to all his disrupted servos. She had quicker reflexes but slower recoil than he, and while she could strike again and again, her proximity to her target would make avoiding a direct blow difficult.
He braced himself on one foot and spun below her strike, slicing the same path along the backs of her knee joints to make her sway and overbalance. She hit the floor and barely caught herself on both hands. With a heave and a groan of straining joints, Optimus spun again and brought the ax in a clean downward stroke. He wrenched to a halt just as the blade touched the fine seams of Thunderblast's chest. She stopped her backwards scrambling and went utterly still. For an instant, Optimus saw real fear in the widening lenses of her optics, and his fuel tanks churned in a disastrous prelude to nausea.
Then he reeled with a wave of unexpected and ravenous triumph-a vicarious bloodlust blended seamlessly into sensual lust that ricocheted off all of Optimus' emotional touchstones and sent his vents gasping.
Megatron appeared serene, but his fingers gripped hard enough at the arms of the throne to strain his servos, and Optimus panted with the increasingly erratic rhythm of their shared sparks. “Finish her if you wish,” Megatron said, his optics narrowing. “You have earned the right.”
Thoughts and feelings muddied, Optimus couldn't determine whether that would please Megatron or not. “Thank you, but no,” Optimus muttered. With deliberate care, he folded the ax away, and then, in spite of his practical judgment, he offered Thunderblast his hand.
Optics narrowed into slits, she hesitated far longer than was polite. Optimus had no idea what a Decepticon would make of the gesture-deference for an opponent, weakness displayed as concern, insult toward a defeated rival? Previous to bonding, he would have imagined her data tracks corrupted by cruelty and her emotions nonexistent. When she finally curled her fingers over his, she curled her lip components into a sneer as well. She neither needed nor wanted his assistance, but she took it, and the instant she was steady on her feet they both withdrew.
She was lean and lovely and as full of molten steel as Elita had ever been, and despite what he probably should have desired, Optimus wanted nothing of her. Something in that should have been devastating.
Instead, he shuttered his optics for a moment against the agitated heat and irritated power of Megatron through their bond. Only recently had Optimus really begun to appreciate Prowl's endless quest for tranquility. Sometimes serenity was a worthwhile goal in itself.
Megatron tilted his head toward Thunderblast and spoke with silky disdain. “You are dismissed. Remember what bested you. And how.” His optics narrowed. “And most of all...who.”
With a hiss that wasn't quite defiant, Thunderblast bowed low and lethally smooth, and then she fled the room like a shadow in disgrace. Optimus watched the door panels close behind her before he lowered the plates of his battlemask. “Don't ask me to do that again,” he said after a cycle or so of silence. He cast a long and level look at Megatron, who was watching him with the corners of his lip components pulled downward into a frown.
“You are yet a fool,” the Decepticon said. “No one will ask the privilege of ripping off your head. Or mine.”
“I did what you wanted.” But not what Megatron had expected. Optimus still felt the dizzying rush of that exultation-the way Megatron's spark had flared in a silent starburst of vicious satisfaction: a pleasure as keen as the involuntary throb of sudden overload. The rhythm continued to beat strong behind Optimus' own chest plates.
Megatron rose and descended the dais; he was a predator denied some fundamental aspect of necessary violence. “Not without suffering an irritating amount of damage.” He picked up one of the goblets on a nearby table, only to put it down again with restless dissatisfaction. He turned his back on Optimus and paced from one end of the room to the other, crossing back and then forth a pace or two shy of brushing against Optimus' frame. So much unnecessary activity made Optimus more than wary, and he wondered what worse violence might result when Megatron abandoned his usual sparsity of movement.
“Offering more field repairs?” Optimus arched an optic ridge.
Discord roiled between them and formed a cresting wave. They knew the unsettled direction, if not the actual structure, of each other's thoughts.
Optimus crossed his arms over his chest and shuttered his optics for a moment. He activated them again to stare hard at the broad angles of Megatron's back. “If I asked you,” he sighed at length, “would you just tell me what you're planning?”
All those angles stiffened with subtly dangerous tension.
“I don't want to look,” Optimus said. “But I will.” Behind his chest plates, his spark gave an almost audible thrum-a leap and pulse that made him shift from foot to foot to better support the pressure.
Megatron glared at Optimus over one shoulder for an interminable moment, and then his dental plates flashed faintly as he chuckled. His amusement was, as always, brief. This time he followed it swiftly with authority. “Shut up. And follow me.”
Refusing to acknowledge the danger of that phrase, Optimus did as asked and followed Megatron across the throne room and to a door panel concealed in shadow at the back of the chamber. The door slipped shut behind them and left them in darkness. Uneasy, Optimus lifted a hand, contacting the living metal of Megatron's back plates and jerking his fingers away again. The lights in the throne room reacted to movement, but these reacted only to Megatron's vocal command, and they flickered on to reveal a high-ceilinged corridor that led to an electrically bolted door. The door would just barely accept Megatron's massive frame.
Megatron fussed with the locking mechanisms for a quarter-cycle, entering codes until a security light flashed yellow and the door opened in two separate panels. One was a blast door for protection against explosive agents of all registered intensities. The other was a frequency barrier-designed to disrupt and disperse any transmitted attack.
Paranoia, indeed.
Never before had Optimus glimpsed Megatron's private rooms, except in moments of shared memory, but such glances barely counted as more than incidental intimacy. Always before, Megatron had come to him, and they had performed their usual complicated dance of resistance before tearing into each other and merging hard and hot and frequently on or against the sturdiest available surface.
Under the circumstances, Optimus hesitated on the threshold until Megatron lost patience and yanked him inside by one wrist. The Decepticon spent another cycle or so in resetting the door locks, and Optimus took the opportunity to examine the front room-or rather, the only room, since he couldn't imagine the narrow panel beyond the berth leading to anything but a sanitation chamber. Though vaulted and vast, the room contained no apparent personal belongings at all. Even so, Optimus found a certain dark beauty in the high quality of the furnishings and the brushed chrome of the walls. The berth was wide and covered in black memory foam. It was a vast improvement over the metal military singles that Optimus had suffered on since his activation, and he could imagine too-easily losing track of himself in it.
He wondered what other sort of respect or consideration he had earned by besting a minor Decepticon warrior.
He knew why they were here; he wasted no more time on hesitation. Walking to the berth, he pressed his hands against the covering, needing the leverage to hop up and sit on the surface. It was really too tall for him; his feet dangled off the floor and made him feel more like an undersized protoform than ever.
“How presumptuous you are.” Megatron had finished with the door and had turned back to face Optimus, only to find him making himself as comfortable as he could.
Optimus gave the Decepticon an insouciant little shrug. “We're not really here to talk, are we?”
“So you assume.” Megatron stalked toward him, and the liquid grace of each movement made Optimus tense in an uneasy combination of anticipation and suspicion. Pausing at the side of the berth, the Decepticon ran the fingers of his left hand over the gun on his right arm, setting off a series of whirring clicks and grinding hums that ended with the abrupt detachment of the firing barrel.
Optimus watched in silence, strangely moved by so domestic a gesture. Though never fully at ease, Megatron radiated a certain security behind these double-paneled doors, and when Megatron pressed a hand against Optimus' chest, pushing him flat against the berth, Optimus couldn't summon the will to resist. Megatron loomed over him, kissed him like the rough afterthought of a deeper passion. The detached gun barrel went onto the floor beside the berth with a clank. A heavy hand curled over Optimus' forearm, and fingers slipped into the seams at his elbow joint to stroke with a proprietary caress.
Turning his face aside, Optimus shuddered with the quickening rhythm of his spark. “Answer my question,” he said, vents panting.
Megatron bit at the tender cabling of Optimus' throat before pulling back with a smirk. “No. We are not here to talk.”
Restlessly trembling, Optimus nevertheless found a handhold in the gaps of Megatron's back plating and clenched his fingers around superficial but sensitive wiring. They both hissed. “We're going to Cybertron,” Optimus muttered. “I want you to tell me why.”
Megatron buzzed a snort. “My plans for revolution did not end with the space bridge, youngling.”
“You can't attack Cybertron directly.” Megatron's weight pressed heavily against Optimus' chest, his mass combining with his presence to make an almost unbearable burden. “You don't have the soldiers. You could only consider it before by pulling the majority of the Autobot forces away to the outposts.” The smug confidence seeping its way through their bond suggested that Megatron had a far different, far less predictable plan for this assault.
Megatron rested both elbow joints against the berth, redistributing his weight as he spoke. “You knew something of the Allspark, if only enough to identify it.” His fingers pulled at the tips of Optimus' antennae with just enough force to make Optimus shift and twitch. “Tell me, then, what you know of the Matrix.”
Tightening both his arms around Megatron's torso, Optimus dug his fingers deep into the neural wiring of the Decepticon's back, fighting sensitivity with the exploitation of equal sensitivity. Megatron flexed hydraulics in his arms and growled. “It's the reliquary of Primus. It's in Iacon, in the Temple, under guard.” Optimus pushed his own growing discomfort through the bond until Megatron relented and adjusted his weight yet again. “Ultra Magnus placed it under protection after the assassination of Prime Nova.”
“Ultra Magnus placed it under protection after discovering he could not access it himself,” Megatron said with the rippling edge of a snarl beneath the words.
Optimus stilled for a moment, uneasiness tightening and then loosening his grip on Megatron's wiring. “No one can access it. No one could use it, even during the Great Wars.”
“That hardly means that carrying it is not a possibility. Only that the proper bearer has not been found.”
“You're insane,” Optimus replied. “Malfunctioning. No bot has actually carried the Matrix since Prime Nova. No model is built for it.”
Megatron smirked. “The model adjusts to suit the artifact.”
Joints stiffened by dawning horror, Optimus shook his head in wordless denial. “You mean to put it into yourself,” he whispered. “Like the Allspark.” The idea filled him with a primal dread-it was sacrilege taken to the greatest possible extreme. Nothing touched the Matrix. Purity was its absolute requirement. “It will reject you,” he said, his jaw locked, his voice interrupted by tremors of shocked static. “The Autobot Matrix of Leadership would never accept a Decepticon.”
With a low sound of amusement and disdain, Megatron shifted against him, leaning over him and pressing him into the berth. This time, Optimus struggled against his weight. “The Matrix existed long before factions, Prime. It cares nothing for affiliation. Only for capability.”
“You aren't capable.” Optimus stilled and held Megatron's narrowed gaze. “I know what you are.”
Megatron growled, a subharmonic sound. He traced his fingertips over the cabling of Optimus' neck, letting his full weight rest against Optimus' chest, and the growl turned oddly gentle as Optimus' windshields creaked in protest. Optimus cursed himself for welcoming the pressure. “You are an adolescent protoform,” Megatron said against Optimus' audio receptor. “Worse yet, you are an unforgivable optimist. Everything you think you know is distorted by your ridiculous preconceptions of balance and fairness.” He bit into a fragile fuel cable, hard enough to start a thin trickle of oil. “The world is not so simple as you are. Do not attempt to insult me.”
“You're a monster,” Optimus said, his body responding far more profoundly than he could hope to control.
Megatron chuckled. His chest plates parted in a grinding slide due to the pressure between them. His exposed spark was strangely cool, impossibly sweet, irresistible, and Optimus thrashed his head back and forth against the berth and felt his chest plates straining in return. “Almost certainly so,” Megatron agreed. “And yet we are fully compatible. Think on that.”
Optimus wanted to refuse, but he was the other half of this equation, and his chest plates parted with a shuddering squeal. Spark met spark and flickered with tactile joy. With a cry of protest, Optimus arched as Megatron filled him with the dark sweetness of a self-satisfaction almost as intense as overload. Honeyed and hot, the sensation pushed them tighter together, twisting Megatron's pleasure into Optimus' pain. The pace slowed as they tempered each other, emotions blending and blurring at all their edges. Desire-and the raw purity of their resonance-deepened the link.
Megatron didn't so much kiss him as taste him, sharp dental plates sliding along the malleable curve of Optimus' lower lip component. Fascination and a bittersweet thread of desire reached for Optimus through the bond, and he experienced secondhand the powerfully emotional undercurrents of Megatron's appreciation for aesthetics. Willingly or not, Megatron found something in Optimus beautiful-if only in a physical sense.
Their intimacy forged deeper paths into each other. Optimus tasted the acidic edge of Megatron's violence; he hooked into that emotional lifeline and followed it farther to discover the softer places where brutality met desperation. Somewhere in Megatron's core was the kernel of a longing Optimus had touched once or twice before-he recognized the hunger and resonated with it, because he wanted justice, too, as more than an ideal or a Golden-Age legend. He couldn't give what Megatron had once wanted so badly, but he could share the painful pressure of the desire.
Dental plates crushed together and bared, Megatron snarled like steel tangling through iron gears and pulled himself back, bracing himself on both arms and then on the joints of his knees. Their sparks flickered and stretched between them, so desperate to stay joined that Optimus clutched at Megatron in the grip of a pain that strained and snapped through both their chests. The connection broke strand by strand until Optimus fell back against the berth with a whistling sob.
“You have a talent for emotional manipulation,” Megatron panted. Gears grated in the coarseness of his voice. “But I will have control over you yet.”
Optimus made a low, broken sound of protest mixed with humiliating want. He reached out with both hands, but Megatron caught his wrists and rolled him over with barely an effort, pulling Optimus' back against the broad angles of the Decepticon's chest. Megatron eased onto his side and curled a hand over Optimus' spark to force them tightly together. Against the plating of his back, Optimus felt a heat so strong it ached, and he cried out at the sharp pleasure of Megatron's fingers and the unbearable pulse of Megatron's spark.
“Primus,” Optimus gasped, arching his neck until his head clanged against Megatron's shoulder. “Primus!”
“Invoke my name, instead.” Megatron grazed his dental plates over the tips of Optimus' antennae, those heavy fingers clenching and relaxing, clenching and relaxing around Optimus' spark. Pain sputtered in the moments of pressure and melted into ecstasy with each release. Optimus heard the stutter in Megatron's intakes and felt the increasingly erratic rhythm of both their sparks, and while the lack of a merge made the impressions less distinct, he still knew the moment when Megatron's spark began to flicker and flare.
“You have control over me,” Optimus hissed, writhing helplessly under the touch as the pleasure built and built. “But no control over yourself.” Megatron growled against one hypersensitive audio, his fingers clenching.
Overload struck like interior lightning. Optimus jerked up against Megatron's fingers and shouted his pleasure aloud; his frame trembled as electrical bliss pooled in every stressed component. Relaxing fully into the conflagration, he forced himself to feel it instant by instant, wire by wire, circuit by circuit. He forced Megatron to feel it, too, and the Decepticon raised his voice in a ragged exclamation as shared pleasure wiped away his resistance and dragged him into unbearable and physical joy.
Optimus sank his fingers into Megatron's wrist and pushed that heavy hand deeper to intensify the stimulation. He whined and groaned as the sensation crested again. The second overload sent heat erupting through his systems, and his vents sputtered to their highest cycle. Optimus clenched his fingers and strained into Megatron's touch, hoping for a third, but his higher functions protested and he shuddered offline just as Megatron roared and completed the cycle for them both.
System reboot
Optimus onlined again to a sense of weightless satiety. His fingers ached, still snarled into the wiring of Megatron's wrist, but the balance of his components remained blissfully numb. Somewhere between stasis and restarting he had lost a full quarter of a megacycle.
He tried his vocal processor and discovered that he could speak, after all.
“You're taking me with you,” he murmured.
Megatron sounded as rough-edged and dazzled as Optimus felt. “No.”
Optimus struggled against the weight of Megatron's arm before managing to turn over, leaving long scratches on one shoulder and both his hips. Brought close again, their sparks flickered and merged. Strands of light intertwined in immediate connection and emotions blended with subtle fire. Megatron hissed, and his hands jostled at Optimus' shoulder plating, but the Decepticon didn't push away. Shivering, Optimus settled into the connection as he turned his face against Megatron's neck. His words vibrated against the cabling. “You are. Because otherwise, I'll make sure you have no other choice but to place me in stasis lock.”
Megatron went entirely still. Optimus kept his vents cycling steadily while flooding the bond with wary determination. No matter how real, the threat was nevertheless a gamble-experience had demonstrated that when one of them dropped into stasis, or at least into recharge, the other did not necessarily follow. The conscious half, however, still suffered setbacks, including reduced motor control, slowed processor speed and impaired logic functions. During a human talk show, Optimus had once heard a caller describe herself as doing things while “half-asleep,” and he supposed the expression was apt enough. Their recharge cycles had begun to synchronize no matter how the ship or their individual wills separated them.
With a sudden and stunning reversal, Megatron flipped Optimus onto his back and flattened him into the memory foam until he could feel the metal plates beneath it. Megatron narrowed his optics into needle-thin slits. “Do not try my patience when you know how little I have to spare.”
Flash points of pain erupted throughout Optimus' sensory grid, but he met Megatron's glare with equanimity. Joined like this, Megatron couldn't doubt Optimus so long as Optimus didn't doubt himself, and in some intangible measurements, his force of will balanced that of Megatron.
A growl rumbled from Megatron's frame into Optimus' own. “I would consider dragging you along only with both your hands stasis-cuffed behind your back.”
Optimus tilted back his head, showing Megatron the vulnerable, cabled curve of his throat. “It's a deal.”
Megatron buzzed a snort, but it was a deal that the Decepticon lord could-after a fashion-accept. Irritation and suspicion coiled through the connection between them, but the deeper threads of honor held surprisingly true. Optimus had guessed that Megatron possessed honor of one sort of another, but only recently had he begun to comprehend the complicated levels of it. They regarded each other for another cycle or so, inside and out, until something between them loosened at last and Megatron shifted the bulk of his weight.
He dipped his head, curved his lip components before hooking dental plates into the cabling below Optimus' chin. Unpleasant amusement slithered its way through the bond. “Whatever humiliation you wish, then.”
The ship continued its course toward Cybertron.
Optimus trembled and gasped and let himself be subdued.
(To be continued.)
*****
Rating: M/NC-17, Slash
Universe: Transformers: Animated
Pairing: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Author's Note: Spoilers for A Bridge Too Close, follows an alternate ending into a new continuity. Finally, the next part! I don't dare to mention how long I've just been sitting on this while it waited for editing. The rough drafts of the last two parts are complete, so things should move along more quickly now.
Another fuzzy cuddle to lady_oneiros, who continues to force my improvement by use of the motivation stick ow ow.
Part IV
“His Excellency Lord Megatron commands your presence.”
Optimus kept his back to Shockwave, watching the communication officer's dim reflection in the transparashield of the window. He kept silent for a full cycle by his internal chronometer to test Shockwave's patience and his own ability to be irritating. “Do you think I can't tell when he wants me?” Optimus said at last. He felt the longing like a spur of steadily searing heat at the center of his spark. For the moment, he could resist it, and he and Megatron had developed a habit of avoiding each other until resistance became more unbearable than surrender. Perhaps because their bond was so new, their limit wasn't long-several orns at most.
Reflected in the window, Shockwave's single optic thinned. Though subtle by nature, Megatron's favorite officer had his own variety of facial expressions, and Optimus recognized the sullen irritability of this one. “Then refrain from making me into your messenger,” Shockwave said.
“Is that what you said to him?” Optimus couldn't help quirking his lip components.
That slitted optic narrowed horizontally as well, and Shockwave turned away from Optimus and made for the door. He had plainly decided that this duty was complete.
“We've changed course,” Optimus observed. His voice stayed soft, but the words alone were still enough to bring Shockwave to a halt. The door panel hissed open in front of him, then hissed shut before he turned to Optimus again.
“Our navigation is none of your concern, Autobot.”
Optimus whirled to face him fully, narrowing his own optics. Shockwave was not large, for a Decepticon at least, and he and Optimus were of a height. Staring him down always proved easier than challenging any of Megatron's other lackeys. “Tell me where we're going.” Optimus already knew-if he'd worked out his calculations correctly-but he would appreciate confirmation.
Unmoved, Shockwave stared back at him. “Ask Lord Megatron, if you cannot bear your own curiosity.”
“We're going toward Cybertron,” Optimus said, fisting both hands at his sides and wondering if he could blame Megatron's influence for the growing desire to wrap both hands around Shockwave's neck cabling and squeeze. “And since the Elite Guard is massed there, I can only imagine that Megatron's abandoned his plans of using the space bridge system to invade.” Megatron had given him leeway enough to examine more of the ship, and Optimus had counted enough Decepticon warriors to make him unpleasantly nervous but not enough to mass a full-scale attack on the Autobot stronghold of Iacon.
“I am under no obligation to tell you anything at all,” said Shockwave. He turned again toward the door.
Optimus lowered his head, vents gusting out a silent sigh. “Where is he?”
“The throne room.” Shockwave apparently couldn't resist a parting shot, even when giving it in a thoroughly neutral tone. “But of course, you knew that yourself.” The door hissed open and then shut again behind him.
Optimus stalled for a cycle or two. Resistance wasn't particularly useful, but both he and Megatron found a certain bitter satisfaction in it-for as long as it lasted. Finally, Optimus gathered the splintering bits of his resolve and left the string of rooms that still served as his usual cage, his servos tensing measurably when he crossed the boundaries created for his own protection. Walking alone through Decepticon territory still unnerved him. In general, the other sentient creatures of this ship stayed to the edges of Optimus' path and left him alone, though a good number of them muttered slippery insults when Megatron's presence couldn't protect him.
In the corridors, he kept his battlemask raised, and he only lowered it after the double doors to the throne room opened under his vocal command.
Megatron lounged on the throne like something feral and feline, all capability and claws.
“Megatron,” Optimus said. He started toward him and paused only when something moved at the edges of his sensory perception. They weren't alone, and that was singular. Optimus faltered over another step and came to a shaken halt, tempted to go for the ax. He curled his hands into fists and kept them at his sides through will alone. In the interwoven skeins of their bond, Megatron remained calm, but that unexplained serenity couldn't quite force Optimus to relax in return.
The leader of all Decepticons regarded him with a slow and steadily chilling smile. “Come here,” he said with the faintest prickle of teeth below the command.
“I would really rather not.” Optimus studied the other figure cast in the dim lighting by the throne, and his optics flickered after a moment in recognition. Thunderblast. She stood sullenly, her arms crossed over her chest, but she curved her delicate lip components when their optics met. Optimus shook his head and looked to Megatron again before saying, “Not until you tell me what's going on.”
Megatron's smile faintly widened. He beckoned with one finger, radiating dark amusement through his posture and his expression, but Optimus felt a wave of distracting uneasiness pass through their bond before fading again. Whatever this was, it meant more than Megatron's penchant for humiliating his bondmate, and Optimus let his anxiety meet Megatron's unusual lack of confidence somewhere in their center. Megatron withdrew predictably in response as the pathways between them went icy.
“I have spent an inordinate excess of time in training you,” Megatron said when Optimus only shook his head again. “In order to reduce the liability you represent. Perhaps you would do me the honor of demonstrating an improvement.”
Optimus tried to reconcile his previous notions of “training” with the unadulterated violence to which he and Megatron often resorted before surrendering to the inevitability of merging sparks. Sparring, yes. Training...involved a certain expectation of performance, or so he had believed, and he had grown used to Megatron indulging his attacks for a certain number of cycles before knocking him summarily on his aft. Often more than once. But then again, perhaps those cycles of successful defense had grown longer in the last several orns, and perhaps he had developed a little ingenuity to compensate for his relatively diminutive size.
“Against whom?” he asked, optics narrowing. He turned a glance on Thunderblast. “On her?” His Autobot pride protested, not only based on her model frame and her former purpose, but also on her unapologetic identity as a Decepticon. He was in no particular danger, and honor didn't demand any sort of duel. Sparring with Decepticons-outside of Megatron-seemed a step too close to the fine edge of fraternization, friendly or not.
That smile twisted along Megatron's mouth again. “Why, yes. Unless you fancy a larger opponent.”
“I'll understand if you'd rather not risk your shiny plating,” Thunderblast interjected. Her voice and her smile spoke of self-confident disdain. “Little Autobot.”
That stung, even if she was shorter than him by a head and less than a fourth his mass. Optimus was accustomed to insults-but no longer to the opportunity to defend himself against them. He was vastly outnumbered here, just one among so, so many, and while he didn't intend to risk underestimating her... He couldn't deny an impulse to fight that wasn't just Megatron's lingering presence in the bond.
Optimus cast a sideways glance at the lord of all Decepticons before raising his battlemask again and unfurling the ax. He tested his grip with both hands against the handle. “Worry about your own,” he said to Thunderblast, annoyed that the words sounded more like genuine concern than pre-battle taunting.
Parting her lip components, Thunderblast grinned with a permeating hiss. The vibroblades that Optimus had glimpsed her using in the demonstration hall fanned out across her shoulders, giving her a delicately bristling appearance that disappeared when she shifted into a defensive stance. “Come on, little Prime,” she said, beckoning him with a hand full of blades. “I don't bite, but I do sting.”
Behind the mask, Optimus set his jaw. He was always weaker on the offensive. He hated that his willingness to be manipulated had landed him in the position.
Raising the ax above his head, he made a perfunctory charge at her: the same technique he had tried on Megatron back in Lockdown's ship. She had the advantage of readiness, of course, and the lithe wiring of all femme models, so her abbreviated dodge and return thrust were no surprise. Edging sideways, Optimus avoided the simultaneous strike of three vibroblades in one hand and raised his ax to block the swipe from the other three.
Clicking in an oddly adolescent sort of frustration, Thunderblast tried to dart through his defenses again, but Optimus had learned during his Academy days the many methods of keeping smaller bots from using his own size against him.
In recent orns-given the lethal motivation of Megatron's usual sparring method-he had learned far more than the simple enhancement of his Academy repertoire. Optimus dropped to the floor and skidded across the metal plating, ax swinging in close and nearly taking off both Thunderblast's legs at the knee joints. The femme flipped away, hand over hand for a graceless landing, but the attack had sheared two or three wires at the back of one calf. Sparks skittered across the floor. Optimus glimpsed Thunderblast snapping her pointed dental plates together before she flew at him again.
She was all blades and edges, liquid mercury sliding into and out of his focus. Optimus registered the pain almost before he registered her movement, and he belatedly cried out at the sharp slice of one of her vibroblades through his dermal plating. The blade carried an electric charge that briefly disrupted his systems, making him stumble badly enough that she nearly succeeded in striking him again.
Megatron snarled; he felt the pain as well in such close proximity.
Ducking narrowly beneath Thunderblast's swipe, Optimus pivoted to meet two more blades with a blow from his ax. One blade shattered, and Thunderblast snarled something incomprehensible in a low-caste dialect as the disrupted charge sizzled through her arm, leaving it temporarily useless. Despite the blow, she was still lethal, and Optimus blocked strike after strike in a series of tightly orchestrated turns. He knew his form was good enough, but he didn't expect the strange ripple of highly physical appreciation that started in his spark and spread outward through his systems. The emotion was so intimate that Optimus took a graceless moment to realize that it originated with Megatron. Optimus trembled with brief but lingering wonder at the slow ignition of desire, the unspeakable interest in all the nuances of his frame as he moved in all the ways he had ever been taught.
Distraction was probably inevitable under the circumstances. Knowing that provided no satisfaction once Thunderblast had succeeded in thrusting a blade between the plating of his chest and his shoulder, only barely missing the joint. Optimus stumbled backwards, groaning as he pulled the blade free. He transferred the ax to one hand and heard Megatron's vents activate in agonized gasps.
Both arms functional again, Thunderblast slipped around behind Optimus with a swift backward flip. A needle of pain cut through his systems as another of her vibroblades entered through a gap in his back plating. Optimus shouted a curse as he twisted to wrap a hand around the base and rip it back out. A scatter of sparks and mech fluid followed it, and Optimus registered Megatron's low-frequency growl and flinch. The Decepticon Lord bared his teeth and raised his hand. Thunderblast slowed, interpreting a call for a halt.
Optimus growled in return and aimed such a venomous glare in Megatron's direction that the Decepticon leader actually paused and arched both optic ridges. His doubt filtered through the bond, and Optimus made an effort to push it back with a determination greater than the balance of Megatron's distrust.
Megatron considered in silence, and then he lowered his hand.
“Keep it up,” Thunderblast laughed, her optics focused on Optimus again. “I'll cut you in pieces.”
Optimus heard something fierce and not quite frightened shadowing each word. Her attacks had a focus-a wild frenzy of movement followed by evasion-and this time he watched for it, blocking the the strikes of her remaining blades with the handle of the ax until functionality returned to all his disrupted servos. She had quicker reflexes but slower recoil than he, and while she could strike again and again, her proximity to her target would make avoiding a direct blow difficult.
He braced himself on one foot and spun below her strike, slicing the same path along the backs of her knee joints to make her sway and overbalance. She hit the floor and barely caught herself on both hands. With a heave and a groan of straining joints, Optimus spun again and brought the ax in a clean downward stroke. He wrenched to a halt just as the blade touched the fine seams of Thunderblast's chest. She stopped her backwards scrambling and went utterly still. For an instant, Optimus saw real fear in the widening lenses of her optics, and his fuel tanks churned in a disastrous prelude to nausea.
Then he reeled with a wave of unexpected and ravenous triumph-a vicarious bloodlust blended seamlessly into sensual lust that ricocheted off all of Optimus' emotional touchstones and sent his vents gasping.
Megatron appeared serene, but his fingers gripped hard enough at the arms of the throne to strain his servos, and Optimus panted with the increasingly erratic rhythm of their shared sparks. “Finish her if you wish,” Megatron said, his optics narrowing. “You have earned the right.”
Thoughts and feelings muddied, Optimus couldn't determine whether that would please Megatron or not. “Thank you, but no,” Optimus muttered. With deliberate care, he folded the ax away, and then, in spite of his practical judgment, he offered Thunderblast his hand.
Optics narrowed into slits, she hesitated far longer than was polite. Optimus had no idea what a Decepticon would make of the gesture-deference for an opponent, weakness displayed as concern, insult toward a defeated rival? Previous to bonding, he would have imagined her data tracks corrupted by cruelty and her emotions nonexistent. When she finally curled her fingers over his, she curled her lip components into a sneer as well. She neither needed nor wanted his assistance, but she took it, and the instant she was steady on her feet they both withdrew.
She was lean and lovely and as full of molten steel as Elita had ever been, and despite what he probably should have desired, Optimus wanted nothing of her. Something in that should have been devastating.
Instead, he shuttered his optics for a moment against the agitated heat and irritated power of Megatron through their bond. Only recently had Optimus really begun to appreciate Prowl's endless quest for tranquility. Sometimes serenity was a worthwhile goal in itself.
Megatron tilted his head toward Thunderblast and spoke with silky disdain. “You are dismissed. Remember what bested you. And how.” His optics narrowed. “And most of all...who.”
With a hiss that wasn't quite defiant, Thunderblast bowed low and lethally smooth, and then she fled the room like a shadow in disgrace. Optimus watched the door panels close behind her before he lowered the plates of his battlemask. “Don't ask me to do that again,” he said after a cycle or so of silence. He cast a long and level look at Megatron, who was watching him with the corners of his lip components pulled downward into a frown.
“You are yet a fool,” the Decepticon said. “No one will ask the privilege of ripping off your head. Or mine.”
“I did what you wanted.” But not what Megatron had expected. Optimus still felt the dizzying rush of that exultation-the way Megatron's spark had flared in a silent starburst of vicious satisfaction: a pleasure as keen as the involuntary throb of sudden overload. The rhythm continued to beat strong behind Optimus' own chest plates.
Megatron rose and descended the dais; he was a predator denied some fundamental aspect of necessary violence. “Not without suffering an irritating amount of damage.” He picked up one of the goblets on a nearby table, only to put it down again with restless dissatisfaction. He turned his back on Optimus and paced from one end of the room to the other, crossing back and then forth a pace or two shy of brushing against Optimus' frame. So much unnecessary activity made Optimus more than wary, and he wondered what worse violence might result when Megatron abandoned his usual sparsity of movement.
“Offering more field repairs?” Optimus arched an optic ridge.
Discord roiled between them and formed a cresting wave. They knew the unsettled direction, if not the actual structure, of each other's thoughts.
Optimus crossed his arms over his chest and shuttered his optics for a moment. He activated them again to stare hard at the broad angles of Megatron's back. “If I asked you,” he sighed at length, “would you just tell me what you're planning?”
All those angles stiffened with subtly dangerous tension.
“I don't want to look,” Optimus said. “But I will.” Behind his chest plates, his spark gave an almost audible thrum-a leap and pulse that made him shift from foot to foot to better support the pressure.
Megatron glared at Optimus over one shoulder for an interminable moment, and then his dental plates flashed faintly as he chuckled. His amusement was, as always, brief. This time he followed it swiftly with authority. “Shut up. And follow me.”
Refusing to acknowledge the danger of that phrase, Optimus did as asked and followed Megatron across the throne room and to a door panel concealed in shadow at the back of the chamber. The door slipped shut behind them and left them in darkness. Uneasy, Optimus lifted a hand, contacting the living metal of Megatron's back plates and jerking his fingers away again. The lights in the throne room reacted to movement, but these reacted only to Megatron's vocal command, and they flickered on to reveal a high-ceilinged corridor that led to an electrically bolted door. The door would just barely accept Megatron's massive frame.
Megatron fussed with the locking mechanisms for a quarter-cycle, entering codes until a security light flashed yellow and the door opened in two separate panels. One was a blast door for protection against explosive agents of all registered intensities. The other was a frequency barrier-designed to disrupt and disperse any transmitted attack.
Paranoia, indeed.
Never before had Optimus glimpsed Megatron's private rooms, except in moments of shared memory, but such glances barely counted as more than incidental intimacy. Always before, Megatron had come to him, and they had performed their usual complicated dance of resistance before tearing into each other and merging hard and hot and frequently on or against the sturdiest available surface.
Under the circumstances, Optimus hesitated on the threshold until Megatron lost patience and yanked him inside by one wrist. The Decepticon spent another cycle or so in resetting the door locks, and Optimus took the opportunity to examine the front room-or rather, the only room, since he couldn't imagine the narrow panel beyond the berth leading to anything but a sanitation chamber. Though vaulted and vast, the room contained no apparent personal belongings at all. Even so, Optimus found a certain dark beauty in the high quality of the furnishings and the brushed chrome of the walls. The berth was wide and covered in black memory foam. It was a vast improvement over the metal military singles that Optimus had suffered on since his activation, and he could imagine too-easily losing track of himself in it.
He wondered what other sort of respect or consideration he had earned by besting a minor Decepticon warrior.
He knew why they were here; he wasted no more time on hesitation. Walking to the berth, he pressed his hands against the covering, needing the leverage to hop up and sit on the surface. It was really too tall for him; his feet dangled off the floor and made him feel more like an undersized protoform than ever.
“How presumptuous you are.” Megatron had finished with the door and had turned back to face Optimus, only to find him making himself as comfortable as he could.
Optimus gave the Decepticon an insouciant little shrug. “We're not really here to talk, are we?”
“So you assume.” Megatron stalked toward him, and the liquid grace of each movement made Optimus tense in an uneasy combination of anticipation and suspicion. Pausing at the side of the berth, the Decepticon ran the fingers of his left hand over the gun on his right arm, setting off a series of whirring clicks and grinding hums that ended with the abrupt detachment of the firing barrel.
Optimus watched in silence, strangely moved by so domestic a gesture. Though never fully at ease, Megatron radiated a certain security behind these double-paneled doors, and when Megatron pressed a hand against Optimus' chest, pushing him flat against the berth, Optimus couldn't summon the will to resist. Megatron loomed over him, kissed him like the rough afterthought of a deeper passion. The detached gun barrel went onto the floor beside the berth with a clank. A heavy hand curled over Optimus' forearm, and fingers slipped into the seams at his elbow joint to stroke with a proprietary caress.
Turning his face aside, Optimus shuddered with the quickening rhythm of his spark. “Answer my question,” he said, vents panting.
Megatron bit at the tender cabling of Optimus' throat before pulling back with a smirk. “No. We are not here to talk.”
Restlessly trembling, Optimus nevertheless found a handhold in the gaps of Megatron's back plating and clenched his fingers around superficial but sensitive wiring. They both hissed. “We're going to Cybertron,” Optimus muttered. “I want you to tell me why.”
Megatron buzzed a snort. “My plans for revolution did not end with the space bridge, youngling.”
“You can't attack Cybertron directly.” Megatron's weight pressed heavily against Optimus' chest, his mass combining with his presence to make an almost unbearable burden. “You don't have the soldiers. You could only consider it before by pulling the majority of the Autobot forces away to the outposts.” The smug confidence seeping its way through their bond suggested that Megatron had a far different, far less predictable plan for this assault.
Megatron rested both elbow joints against the berth, redistributing his weight as he spoke. “You knew something of the Allspark, if only enough to identify it.” His fingers pulled at the tips of Optimus' antennae with just enough force to make Optimus shift and twitch. “Tell me, then, what you know of the Matrix.”
Tightening both his arms around Megatron's torso, Optimus dug his fingers deep into the neural wiring of the Decepticon's back, fighting sensitivity with the exploitation of equal sensitivity. Megatron flexed hydraulics in his arms and growled. “It's the reliquary of Primus. It's in Iacon, in the Temple, under guard.” Optimus pushed his own growing discomfort through the bond until Megatron relented and adjusted his weight yet again. “Ultra Magnus placed it under protection after the assassination of Prime Nova.”
“Ultra Magnus placed it under protection after discovering he could not access it himself,” Megatron said with the rippling edge of a snarl beneath the words.
Optimus stilled for a moment, uneasiness tightening and then loosening his grip on Megatron's wiring. “No one can access it. No one could use it, even during the Great Wars.”
“That hardly means that carrying it is not a possibility. Only that the proper bearer has not been found.”
“You're insane,” Optimus replied. “Malfunctioning. No bot has actually carried the Matrix since Prime Nova. No model is built for it.”
Megatron smirked. “The model adjusts to suit the artifact.”
Joints stiffened by dawning horror, Optimus shook his head in wordless denial. “You mean to put it into yourself,” he whispered. “Like the Allspark.” The idea filled him with a primal dread-it was sacrilege taken to the greatest possible extreme. Nothing touched the Matrix. Purity was its absolute requirement. “It will reject you,” he said, his jaw locked, his voice interrupted by tremors of shocked static. “The Autobot Matrix of Leadership would never accept a Decepticon.”
With a low sound of amusement and disdain, Megatron shifted against him, leaning over him and pressing him into the berth. This time, Optimus struggled against his weight. “The Matrix existed long before factions, Prime. It cares nothing for affiliation. Only for capability.”
“You aren't capable.” Optimus stilled and held Megatron's narrowed gaze. “I know what you are.”
Megatron growled, a subharmonic sound. He traced his fingertips over the cabling of Optimus' neck, letting his full weight rest against Optimus' chest, and the growl turned oddly gentle as Optimus' windshields creaked in protest. Optimus cursed himself for welcoming the pressure. “You are an adolescent protoform,” Megatron said against Optimus' audio receptor. “Worse yet, you are an unforgivable optimist. Everything you think you know is distorted by your ridiculous preconceptions of balance and fairness.” He bit into a fragile fuel cable, hard enough to start a thin trickle of oil. “The world is not so simple as you are. Do not attempt to insult me.”
“You're a monster,” Optimus said, his body responding far more profoundly than he could hope to control.
Megatron chuckled. His chest plates parted in a grinding slide due to the pressure between them. His exposed spark was strangely cool, impossibly sweet, irresistible, and Optimus thrashed his head back and forth against the berth and felt his chest plates straining in return. “Almost certainly so,” Megatron agreed. “And yet we are fully compatible. Think on that.”
Optimus wanted to refuse, but he was the other half of this equation, and his chest plates parted with a shuddering squeal. Spark met spark and flickered with tactile joy. With a cry of protest, Optimus arched as Megatron filled him with the dark sweetness of a self-satisfaction almost as intense as overload. Honeyed and hot, the sensation pushed them tighter together, twisting Megatron's pleasure into Optimus' pain. The pace slowed as they tempered each other, emotions blending and blurring at all their edges. Desire-and the raw purity of their resonance-deepened the link.
Megatron didn't so much kiss him as taste him, sharp dental plates sliding along the malleable curve of Optimus' lower lip component. Fascination and a bittersweet thread of desire reached for Optimus through the bond, and he experienced secondhand the powerfully emotional undercurrents of Megatron's appreciation for aesthetics. Willingly or not, Megatron found something in Optimus beautiful-if only in a physical sense.
Their intimacy forged deeper paths into each other. Optimus tasted the acidic edge of Megatron's violence; he hooked into that emotional lifeline and followed it farther to discover the softer places where brutality met desperation. Somewhere in Megatron's core was the kernel of a longing Optimus had touched once or twice before-he recognized the hunger and resonated with it, because he wanted justice, too, as more than an ideal or a Golden-Age legend. He couldn't give what Megatron had once wanted so badly, but he could share the painful pressure of the desire.
Dental plates crushed together and bared, Megatron snarled like steel tangling through iron gears and pulled himself back, bracing himself on both arms and then on the joints of his knees. Their sparks flickered and stretched between them, so desperate to stay joined that Optimus clutched at Megatron in the grip of a pain that strained and snapped through both their chests. The connection broke strand by strand until Optimus fell back against the berth with a whistling sob.
“You have a talent for emotional manipulation,” Megatron panted. Gears grated in the coarseness of his voice. “But I will have control over you yet.”
Optimus made a low, broken sound of protest mixed with humiliating want. He reached out with both hands, but Megatron caught his wrists and rolled him over with barely an effort, pulling Optimus' back against the broad angles of the Decepticon's chest. Megatron eased onto his side and curled a hand over Optimus' spark to force them tightly together. Against the plating of his back, Optimus felt a heat so strong it ached, and he cried out at the sharp pleasure of Megatron's fingers and the unbearable pulse of Megatron's spark.
“Primus,” Optimus gasped, arching his neck until his head clanged against Megatron's shoulder. “Primus!”
“Invoke my name, instead.” Megatron grazed his dental plates over the tips of Optimus' antennae, those heavy fingers clenching and relaxing, clenching and relaxing around Optimus' spark. Pain sputtered in the moments of pressure and melted into ecstasy with each release. Optimus heard the stutter in Megatron's intakes and felt the increasingly erratic rhythm of both their sparks, and while the lack of a merge made the impressions less distinct, he still knew the moment when Megatron's spark began to flicker and flare.
“You have control over me,” Optimus hissed, writhing helplessly under the touch as the pleasure built and built. “But no control over yourself.” Megatron growled against one hypersensitive audio, his fingers clenching.
Overload struck like interior lightning. Optimus jerked up against Megatron's fingers and shouted his pleasure aloud; his frame trembled as electrical bliss pooled in every stressed component. Relaxing fully into the conflagration, he forced himself to feel it instant by instant, wire by wire, circuit by circuit. He forced Megatron to feel it, too, and the Decepticon raised his voice in a ragged exclamation as shared pleasure wiped away his resistance and dragged him into unbearable and physical joy.
Optimus sank his fingers into Megatron's wrist and pushed that heavy hand deeper to intensify the stimulation. He whined and groaned as the sensation crested again. The second overload sent heat erupting through his systems, and his vents sputtered to their highest cycle. Optimus clenched his fingers and strained into Megatron's touch, hoping for a third, but his higher functions protested and he shuddered offline just as Megatron roared and completed the cycle for them both.
System reboot
Optimus onlined again to a sense of weightless satiety. His fingers ached, still snarled into the wiring of Megatron's wrist, but the balance of his components remained blissfully numb. Somewhere between stasis and restarting he had lost a full quarter of a megacycle.
He tried his vocal processor and discovered that he could speak, after all.
“You're taking me with you,” he murmured.
Megatron sounded as rough-edged and dazzled as Optimus felt. “No.”
Optimus struggled against the weight of Megatron's arm before managing to turn over, leaving long scratches on one shoulder and both his hips. Brought close again, their sparks flickered and merged. Strands of light intertwined in immediate connection and emotions blended with subtle fire. Megatron hissed, and his hands jostled at Optimus' shoulder plating, but the Decepticon didn't push away. Shivering, Optimus settled into the connection as he turned his face against Megatron's neck. His words vibrated against the cabling. “You are. Because otherwise, I'll make sure you have no other choice but to place me in stasis lock.”
Megatron went entirely still. Optimus kept his vents cycling steadily while flooding the bond with wary determination. No matter how real, the threat was nevertheless a gamble-experience had demonstrated that when one of them dropped into stasis, or at least into recharge, the other did not necessarily follow. The conscious half, however, still suffered setbacks, including reduced motor control, slowed processor speed and impaired logic functions. During a human talk show, Optimus had once heard a caller describe herself as doing things while “half-asleep,” and he supposed the expression was apt enough. Their recharge cycles had begun to synchronize no matter how the ship or their individual wills separated them.
With a sudden and stunning reversal, Megatron flipped Optimus onto his back and flattened him into the memory foam until he could feel the metal plates beneath it. Megatron narrowed his optics into needle-thin slits. “Do not try my patience when you know how little I have to spare.”
Flash points of pain erupted throughout Optimus' sensory grid, but he met Megatron's glare with equanimity. Joined like this, Megatron couldn't doubt Optimus so long as Optimus didn't doubt himself, and in some intangible measurements, his force of will balanced that of Megatron.
A growl rumbled from Megatron's frame into Optimus' own. “I would consider dragging you along only with both your hands stasis-cuffed behind your back.”
Optimus tilted back his head, showing Megatron the vulnerable, cabled curve of his throat. “It's a deal.”
Megatron buzzed a snort, but it was a deal that the Decepticon lord could-after a fashion-accept. Irritation and suspicion coiled through the connection between them, but the deeper threads of honor held surprisingly true. Optimus had guessed that Megatron possessed honor of one sort of another, but only recently had he begun to comprehend the complicated levels of it. They regarded each other for another cycle or so, inside and out, until something between them loosened at last and Megatron shifted the bulk of his weight.
He dipped his head, curved his lip components before hooking dental plates into the cabling below Optimus' chin. Unpleasant amusement slithered its way through the bond. “Whatever humiliation you wish, then.”
The ship continued its course toward Cybertron.
Optimus trembled and gasped and let himself be subdued.
(To be continued.)
*****