Five Firsts Challenge - Megatron/Ratchet

[darthneko]

Title Chaos Theory
Rating: NC17 (for the last part)
Wordcount: 9,085
Universe: Deliberate crazy mashup of G1, IDW, and Bayverse.
Characters: Megatron/Ratchet (with random guest appearances by others)
Warnings: Violence, and mech/mech sticky smut in the last segment.

Notes: This came about from this prompt on the kink meme - in a nutshell, Ratchet, Megatron, and time travel. Current day Ratchet ending up (via freak time travel accident) on pre-war Cybertron and running into a much younger pre-war version of Megatron. I've got a massive epic for the prompt outlined, but this here is five excerpts of the oddity that is Ratchet and Megatron. Context can be kind of seen if you squint and it really is a crazy mashup of continuities - I'm envisioning G1 and IDW mechs in my head, but with Bayverse-esque transformations and cherrypicked backstories for everyone.

:: Intervention (first meeting)

When the first fist came arcing towards him his reaction was as instinctive as ventilation, made that way by countless vorns of repetition to hardwrite the code into his autonomics. One swift twist and heave and his would-be attacker went tumbling pedes over skidplate, landing with a strut rattling clash. Ratchet kept one sensor trained on the downed foe even as he was sinking into one of the first form defenses that Ironhide had drilled him in literal millennia ago, hands open, center of gravity dropped low, guard up. Defense protocols roared to life in a fraction of a nanoklik, routing power and hydraulics in a heady rush as proximity sensors came online.

It was, after the complete wreck of a day he had had so far, a comfortable familiarity. Grinning harshly, an expression that had given 'Cons as well as his patients pause, he beckoned to the watching gang. "Well? Come on, then. Come at me."

The big, rough looking one snarled something in a gutter Kaon dialect, too heavy for Ratchet to make out, before producing a thick, blunt charge rod, the kind crowd Enforcers had used when the use of weapon grade force wasn't permissible. "Get him!"

Ratchet sank into his pedes, grin turning even sharper. "You're welcome to try."

They were on him in a rush. Five to one in the tight confines of a pedestrian connection conduit was more like sparring on board ship than it was like an open battlefield, and a handful of mechs was nothing like tracking the movement of half an army. It was easy, motion without conscious thought, block, twist, throw, strike, and the give of armor plating beneath his fists was simple gratification, all of the reeling emotion and temper of the day plus vorns of practice coming together in a smooth, seamless blend. That his attackers were blocky grounder models, decked in unfamiliar colors, didn't matter - the moves were familiar and it could have been Ironhide's fist that he ducked, Wheeljack who he grabbed, deflecting the mech's own momentum into a flipped crash that came up short against the sparring room wall, or Bumblebee who got in a lucky feint at one of Ratchet's ventral sensors, only to fall back at the quick reaction of the medic's fist.

In the almost commonplace feel of the moment, as another of his attackers reeled back to crash to the ground, it wasn't until the charge rod impacted his blocking forearm with a heavy burst - barely perceptible as a low grade sting, the charge dispersed against frontline grade armor plating - that higher level protocols spun up in a burst of actual combat codes. Sensor sweeps onlined and reported automatically, the data flooding across his HUD as his own weapon systems powered up…

…and the scans came up empty. Ratchet fumbled a block, one mech's fist glancing off his shoulder, as his attention turned sharply inward to the information - or lack thereof - that his sensors were telling him. Five mechs, assorted unknown frametypes that grudgingly identified, when he repeated the query to his archival files, as standard labor construction. Minimal shielding. No weapons.

His systems had registered the charge rod as a weapon, however flimsy. Combat scans, however, came back empty - there wasn't a blaster, blade, or caliber round anywhere on any of them. He ran the scans twice, then again, only to stare in blank incomprehension at the same results. Minimal civilian armor plating. No weapons. Not even a weapon mount on any of their frames, and he could scan clear through to their sparks, their entire frames unshielded and without even the routine scan blocks that even the least combative of Autobots wore as a matter of course.

Primus. They were civilians.

It had been nearly eleven thousand vorn since he had last seen a neutral, and even neutrals wore weapons if they had half a processor and any smidgen of appreciation for keeping their own afts intact. And these… these weren't even neutrals. These were civilians - unarmed, unarmored, light framed working class civilian models. Not neutrals, not Autobots, not Decepticons - these were mechs who, for as tough as they thought they were, might as well have all the sturdiness of a sparkling.

Primus in the Pit, he was fighting younglings. Worse than younglings - the last youngling Ratchet had upgraded had been Bumblebee, and the little scout had easily sported at least thirty-eight times as much armor plating as any of the would-be attackers did during his maturing vorns - Ratchet had made sure of it.

If the attack hadn't registered first as sparring, if he hadn't been pulling his punches the way he would have for a friendly match, it was entirely possible that Ratchet, armored like a frontliner and with a reinforced frame for the strength to haul and carry even the Prime's mass, could have torn them apart with his bare hands.

The realization processed, start to finish, in a scant nanoklik, bringing him up short with a sickening horrified lurch as he frantically overrode and canceled his own weapon systems. These were not Decepticons. These were not the hardened survivors of Cybertron's civil war. They weren't soldiers, they weren't anything even close. Ratchet ducked one blow, turning his palms up in surrender, but failed to dodge another blow that impacted hard against his helm. It coupled with his own shock to wash static across his sensors for a critical moment and that was all his incensed attackers needed to press the advantage. The charge rod cracked much sharper real pain against his audial array and made him too slow to counter the blow that yanked one foot out from under him and sent him to his knees. They were on him like sharkticons after that and Ratchet rolled with it, clamping his armor tight and tucking down to let their blows fall on his thickest back plates.

It was impossible and stupid and pointless. He could have told them - had already told them! - that he had nothing on him that was worth the trouble, without a cred or ident chip to his name. It wasn't entirely true, though, and he could acknowledge that through the cold sparked view of having seen and done too much salvage from the dead over the vorns. He was, by the standards of bygone ages, wearing a veritable fortune of cutting-edge military grade armor and modifications, weaponry, and medical equipment. His systems, stripped for parts, would be worth - oh Primus, the irony made him choke - a Senator's salary. It all depended on how ruthless, how desperate, and how fragging angry his attackers were.

Combat protocols and weapon systems were still trying to spin up; Ratchet isolated and deactivated them ruthlessly. A harder blow against a side sensor made him grunt, curling tighter. There were dozens of probability scenarios running through his processor but very few of them didn't include deactivation of one or all of his attackers - he was fairly certain even his lowest tight beam laser setting would take off entire limbs instead of just slagging the relays of a critical joint, hard ammunition would rip through their armor like so much organic paper, and switching to alt mode on a pedestrian thoroughfare was no way to escape unnoticed even if he wasn't fairly certain that, with minimal maneuvering room, he ran a better than good chance of having energon on his wheels before he could get away.

Fingers hooked into the scruff of his highest dorsal plate, jerking him up roughly... or trying to. Gravity and Ratchet's own mass made it a less than effective endeavor but it yanked him out of his defensive curl just enough for his attacker to jam something beneath the edge of the armor plate, up against thinner shielded protoform neural net conduits. Ratchet had half a nanoklik to curse himself because a weak and pitiful enemy was still an enemy and he should know better, slaggit all to the Pits, before the charge rod crackled on and real pain surged in a lightning burst directly from his lines to his CPU.

It was a ruthless maneuver that could have stasis locked a civilian frame, if the initial surge didn't burn out their entire neural net first. Ratchet roared in pain, static and binary distorting his vocalizer, frame stiffening in shock from the wash of pure fire that burned through him.

A hand grabbed his chevron, forcing his head up and back. It took him a precious few nanokliks to even register the sudden lack of pain as the rod was yanked free, systems rebooting furiously in a cascade of errors across his HUD, and then... Oh Primus, Unmaker take it, scrap, NO - the rod was back, shoved down between his collar plates and a main energon line, and all he could do was brace himself for the pain as his weapons systems tried to sluggishly cold boot around the errors and his own slagging soft sparked overrides.

It wasn't the sensation of taking a shot at point blank - it was worse, sweeping in pulsing waves over his entire sensor net, his vision shorting out to white as his systems spasmed. It burned through him, sensors funneling back nothing but unspecified pain like acid in his energon lines, going on and on and on in an oscillating frequency of current that ripped over and through him relentlessly.

There were codes that were universal to all frame types and every medic knew them spark deep. Codes that would turn off the subroutines that processed pain and others that could deactivate entire sensors, rendering them inert and numb. Codes to isolate, partition, and involuntarily test repaired systems as a medic worked. Ratchet spun them up as quickly as he could force them past the haze of pain addled errors, cutting every secondary, tertiary, and non-vital primary sensor that he could. The sudden absence of the vast majority of the pain, as well as any sense of his own frame, was like cutting overstrung tension wires; the ground rushed up to meet him, his frame tumbling down like so much scrap.

What sensors he had left were still frantically screaming pain at him. He fire walled the sensation, routing it in a recursive loop within a partition, where the errors flickered in angry alert over part of his HUD but the pain blissfully ceased, a distant and academic thing. The relief of it was as stunning as the pain had been, a ringing sort of absence of anything that was disorienting and didn't help him to reboot critical processor threads and systems any faster.

His first dull realization was that while the charge rod was still lodged against his neck there was no hand holding it there. No hands - at least, not by visual inspection - on him anywhere. Aching too much to process his luck, Ratchet clumsily accessed the motor subroutines of his arms, activating motion controls that he couldn't feel and left his own limbs responding like disconnected waldos to visually cued commands.

It took him several tries but he finally managed to paw and pry the charge rod loose, operating solely by visual and vague pressure input until it clattered to the ground, bare microns from his face plates. Biting back a groan, he began queuing up reboots as quickly as he could, giving priority to defense and combat systems after the necessities of his basic sensor array.

Sensation flooded back in a scalding surge that dragged a static blurred sound of protest from him, errors flooding with renewed vigor into his system log. Overwrought sensor nets flared and died and flared again, flickering in a sensation like hot gun fire that made him bite back more sound as he forced his limbs to respond, rerouted around more errors, and pulsed a brief scan to ascertain the location of the enemy.

What he found made him pause. There were three down - alive, a secondary reflexive scan confirmed, but incapacitated, and when he gingerly turned his head his optics confirmed sprawled limbs and frames on the plascrete ground. A fourth was only a dim ping at the edge of his scanner sweep - rapidly retreating - and the fifth…

Metal striking metal made a very distinct sound, as did the crumpling of duryllium plating, and there was nothing else that sounded like the wet metal shriek of systems tearing apart, a mix of snapped wires, rending plates, and splashing energon. Ratchet didn't need a scan to know that was fatal, not when the head of the largest of his attackers clattered to the ground several nanokliks before the remains of the mech's frame did, joints slowly collapsing in a growing pool of fluids.

Turning his head against the scorched lines where the charge rod had rested was another small burst of agony, but better that then blindness in the face of the unknown. Not that it helped much - he could make out a blur of silver and black plating on a tall, heavy frame, and then everything washed static for a spark pulse. When it cleared the blur had resolved into silver pedes and massive black shin plates, and a pair of large hands that settled gingerly on his shoulders, helping to lift him when his own arms threatened to give out. "Are you alright?"

Deep voice, heavy Kaon accent giving the words a secondary vibration that was somehow familiar. Ratchet cycled two quick ventilations and pushed through a complete reboot of his motor systems, shoving errors to the side as he forced himself slowly upright. His voice was scratchy with static undertones bleeding into it, but steady enough. "Yes. Yes, I'm alright. I'm fine."

The stranger's hand - which, Ratchet was grimly aware, had just ripped the head off of another mech who was draining out with rapid finality only yards away - remained on his shoulder, a steadying pressure, and the deep voice barked a low sound of disbelief. "You had a rod shoved halfway through your systems, of course you are. Easy! Try not to move."

"I'm fine," Ratchet repeated, and all right, he actually wasn't, but it wasn't anything his autorepair couldn't deal with and yes, okay, the injunction not to move was a wise one - turning and raising his head too quickly washed more static over his field of vision, forcing him to reboot his optics before the face of his rescuer came into focus.

He did not, Ratchet was proud to note, either flinch back, yell, or power up his weapons - primarily because he wasn't sure he could do any of the above, but the shock made a wonderful dampening agent to the spark deep thrill of sheer fear. It was not, he told himself, for lack of bearings - he would have liked to see anyone, even Ironhide, not have the same reaction to the sudden appearance of an enemy less than an arm's length away.

Particularly that enemy. The lights of the thoroughfare traced the distinct shape of a silver helm that Ratchet had never desired to see as closely as he was seeing it right then. Unfamiliar red splashes decorated the surface, but the shape was as unique as they came and indelibly burned into every Autobot's processor.

Red optics narrowed, watching him intently, and that deep voice was now entirely too familiar once he knew what to listen for and could hear the echo in his processor of the same voice, grown deeper over time, the Kaon harmonics deliberately smoothed away though he had never completely abolished them. "There's a med clinic in the next sector. I can take you there…"

"No!" It came out a little more forceful than Ratchet intended, helping to shake himself out of the stunned shock. "No, that… that won't be necessary." Clinics involved records and identities, all of the same reasons Ratchet couldn't access his own accounts. He hissed softly, only partially in pain, the realization that he would need to avoid any and all official channels coming down hard on the tail end of too many shocks in a row. "Truly. I'm alright." Then, the words sticking reluctantly in his vocalizer because he could not be saying them but it was what one said to a mech who rescued you and slaggit to the Pit, he needed to blend in, "…thank you."

Broad mouth in a strong lined face, curving upwards in bemusement. It was easier if he focused on the details, rather than the whole. Red optics, bright with… youth. That was the difference. Clean, young lines in that oh-so-familiar and hated face. Splashes of red, not just on his helm but across that familiar broad chest. Blockier and heavier shapes to the frame and back, without the spartan streamline he would adopt later, and there were hints of a heavy labor frame - hauling or mining, one of the industrial grade types - peeking out in the rotary cuffs at his joints and in the overlap of plates across his vents.

A black hand left his shoulder and dropped down into his range of vision instead, palm extended. "You're welcome," his rescuer rumbled, and then, as though Ratchet could not know - as though anyone would ever not know, as though it wasn't a name that was written across their very world and out into the stars in energon and war - "I'm Megatron. Do you have a designation?"

He managed to clip off the first three automatic responses before they ever left his vocalizer, then bit back the fourth as the simple reality of his own designation took an unpleasant turn when given any thought. He wasn't, absolutely couldn't be, Ratchet. Not now, not vorns before the War ever started. Not when 'Ratchet' was the designation of a young - Primus, he had been so very young! - rising star on the Senate floor, an outspoken mech with hard ideals and too little diplomacy, and no inclination at all to take up either arms or medicine.

'Ratchet' was a known designation in the newscasts of the day. Which meant an infinitely older, more cynical, worn, and vastly more experienced Autobot medic could not and never would be Ratchet.

He cycled a ventilation, rebooting his vocalizer with a muted click, damped down a dozen or more instinctive systems clamoring for his attention, and gingerly reached for the hand of Unicron's own spawn as the only easily available means of hauling himself to his aching pedes. "Hatchet," he rasped. "Call me Hatchet."

:: Incandescent (first combat)

It had come out of nowhere - one klik Breaker and Hardwall were sparring in one side of the ring, just warming up, and the next a white frame shoved past the frames of watching gladiators, a red hand came down on Hardwall's scruff, and the smaller of the two sparring partners found himself aft over end and fetched up against the heavy walls of the fight ring. Megatron, if he hadn't been watching at the time, might not have believed it.

Hatchet planted himself solidly in front of Breaker, in a creditable mimicry of an actual unarmed defense form. "Come at me," the medic snarled.

Breaker shuffled nervously, optics flickering. He was a big mech, heavy plated, one of their best brawlers and easily twice the medic's mass. It was easy to imagine him just picking up the smaller mech and tearing him into pieces, but in the two decacycles since Hatchet had joined the Kaon Circuit medical staff they had all of them gained a new and impressive respect for just what a medic was. Used to being patched by engineers and half-trained university washouts, the speed, professionalism, and sheer competency that Hatchet had brought to the Circuit was something new and altogether unique. What he fixed stayed fixed - not partially, not 'unless you hit it just wrong', not with a lingering ache that never quite vanished. A mech destined for a short trip to the smelter could be thrown on Hatchet's table, spark guttering, and not once - not once - had that same mech failed to get back up again and live to fight another day.

Primus blessed, some of the gladiators whispered. And then, though none of them would admit to being the start of it, the other whispers had come - Military. The Polytech university in Crystal City. Or the medical facilities in Altihex. Someone, somewhere, had whispered Iacon and that had caught everyone's fancy - just the idea of their own Science Academy trained Iacon-framed medic was so completely ridiculous that it was laughable, but it was an engaging fantasy all the same. Whatever the case, Hatchet was the best find that the Kaon Circuit had happened on in ages and no one would willingly raise a hand to their best medic.

Except that said medic was standing on the fight ring grounds, his power plant growling an deep, angry sound, and when Breaker tried to move away Hatchet stepped forward, pressing the issue. "I said, come at me!"

Breaker cast a pleading look around at the other gladiators. The medic had been the spark of near miraculous competency in the medbay but had hardly been seen outside of it ever since he had taken the job. He ghosted in, he fixed you, and then he silently went on to the next. Where this - whatever this was - had come from, Breaker had no clue and neither did any of the rest of them. "I don't want to hurt you," the gladiator said, palms raised in placation.

Megatron hadn't been in position to see the medic's face, but the sharp, dismissive tone of his voice told volumes. "You won't. Now come at me, coward!"

With one last despairing glance around - the medic was obviously spoiling for a fight and that was their job, after all - Breaker heaved a ventilation and then halfheartedly balled his hands into fists and stepped into a slow, easy punch.

Megatron would have laid easy odds that the gladiator out-massed the medic by several tons, and he wouldn't have been the only one taking that bet. Which made the stunned silence in the klik after Breaker hit the ground, skidding his body length across the floor, all the more resounding.

Hatchet had turned towards them, the pristine blue of his optics sweeping over the gathered gladiators. "Well?" he spat, flicking a disdainful hand at where Breaker was levering himself to his pedes. "Is that the best you have? I thought I was going to get a fragging workout."

As much as none of them wanted to hurt the medic they were still gladiators, the best and hardest of Kaon's Circuit, and none of them had gotten there by backing down from a challenge. Someone stepped forward and the ring of armored frames shifted until Demolisher stood clear, large hands flexing. "Hope you can fix yourself," he had rumbled. Hatchet's smile had been all sharp edges and dente.

"Don't worry," the medic had said, sounding almost happy. "I'll put you back together afterwards."

And then… Megatron had saved it all to video file, the better to review it later, and to remind himself that it had actually happened. Demolisher hadn't pulled his punch the way Breaker had. Neither had Hatchet. And where their quiet, somewhat intense, competent enigma of a medic had been, there had been… this. Speed and fluidity of the strike molding into sudden solidity of the impact; Demolisher had grunted with the first blow, optic band flickering bright, dodged the second, and Megatron, who had learned what he could from older gladiators in piecemeal fashion had glimpsed flickers of half a dozen unarmed forms in Hatchet's blows, a multitude of styles blended together.

Then, scarcely two kliks later, Demolisher had gone the same way as Breaker, face down on the floor, but where Breaker had sheepishly picked himself up Demolisher came up with an angry roar and the whine of activating weapon systems.

Megatron, who had been watching Hatchet, had seen something almost like relief flicker across the medic's face, and then Demolisher was moving, lunging at the medic with an energon blade while other mechs yelled or got out of the way, or into the way, and then the high, dente grating pitch of shearing metal had sounded a nanoklik before Demolisher's pained yell as he hit the floor a second time.

Hatchet's pede had come down squarely on his chestplates but it was the industrial sized strut saw that had unfolded from the medic's arm - which had already taken off Demolisher's energon blade at the base - which kept the gladiator in place. "Quick whining," the medic had told him, not entirely unkindly. "I'll fix it." He had stepped back to let the gladiator up, quick transformative flips folding the multi-bladed saw away. The hum of an actual weapon system charging up had been loud in the silence, which was when they had all realized that their medic was not only far heavier than he looked, but was actually armed. "Well? Anyone else got the bearings to try?"

Blackout had nudged Megatron, a sharp jab into the younger gladiator's side vents as they had watched another of Kaon's best fighters leave an imprint on the floor from a grappling match with their best medic. "You're overheating," the other mech had informed him, deadpan. "Might want to throttle back your fans."

:: Invincible (first injury)

"Glitch!" There was something comfortingly familiar in not having to hold his tongue any more; professionalism, Ratchet had concluded, was overrated, especially amongst short wired, cross circuited, rusted out glitches.

"Are you even listening to me?!" A quick rap of the torque spanner in his hand against an audial earned him a brief flinch and Megatron's deep voiced rumble, but the gladiator's optics were still dimmed in a powered down haze after his last fight.

Ratchet swore, working with swift, steady motions to free the last dorsal plate, then swore again as his fingers slipped in the mix of energon and lubricant that was still welling up sluggishly from a deep rend in the gladiator's primary pharynx cables caused by the thick metal links that were embedded.

"Glitch," Ratchet spat again, and then, because the gladiator wasn't responding with nearly the clarity that he would have liked, he tweaked another line with a sharp twist before quickly deactivating the immediate sensor net and starting to clamp the lines off. "Primus forsaken, slag sucking, aft headed glitch! You're going to get yourself killed!"

Megatron's optics flickered briefly, trying to focus. "Part of the job," he noted, his voice thick with static.

Long practice kept Ratchet's hands steady when all he really wanted to do was beat the slag out of the processor-less scrap he was having to fix. "That's not what I mean," he snapped, and oh Primus, some distant back part of his processor was logging, when had it come to this? He was telling off the Decepticon Warlord for almost getting slagged. Exventing, Ratchet cycled his optics quickly and tried not to remember another lifetime when he would have been celebrating and cheering on anyone who had gotten a good shot in on the Slagmaker.

Focus, Ratchet told himself. It was, as Megatron was fond of saying, part of the fragging job.

One link came free, more energon welling in its wake. The second was harder, his hands slipping again, and Ratchet had had it up to the proverbial breaking line, all of the frustration and fear and disgust bubbling up in a slurry that found its way out in a paint blistering string of gutter Kaon as he grabbed the remainder of the free links and wrapped them around his hand, yanking them hard enough to force Megatron's head up. "This!" he spat into the other mech's face plates. "This little piece of slagging vanity is going to get you fragging killed, you half sparked drone!" Snarling, he dropped the weight of the team insignia, it's all too familiar sharp edges sculpted out of pure duryillium to hang on a thick chain of the same. "It nearly got you killed this time. It's a fragging free handhold, you rust bucket! And between it and your central lines, if it gets wedged up under your collar plate, it's your lines that are going to give!" The second link finally came free and Ratchet threw the energon smeared metal piece onto the floor at the gladiator's feet. The words were thick in his vocalizer but once started he couldn't stop, the same tirade he would have given Prime or Ironhide or Cliffjumper spilling out of him. "Primus in the Pit, if you have to wear it then paint it on! Burn it, brand it, weld it, I don't care, but get rid of the short charged hand hold around your slagging neck!"

Megatron said nothing and Ratchet, his anger venting in a profanity laden stream of hissed growls, continued his repairs. By the time he had removed the links, clamped all of the lines, and hammered the removed plating back into shape to be reattached, the gladiator's optics had slowly brightened until Ratchet was fairly certain, when he removed the sensor blocks, that his patient wasn't going to slip into either recharge or stasis lock on the spot.

"There," he snapped, clamping the last plate into place. "You're done. Get the frag out of my medbay."

Megatron gingerly rotated his neck, checking the repairs, then nodded. "Thank you," he said quietly. Reaching up, he removed the remnant of the chain and emblem, holding it in his hand for a long moment

His optics, when he turned them on Ratchet, had something the medic couldn't even begin to identify. "Branding," he said, humming softly in thought. "Your hands are the steadiest I've ever seen. Would you do that for me?"

Ratchet had to shutter his own optics, but the all too easily summoned image of a purple emblem branded against silver chest plates made something inside of him twist. "Later," he said thickly, already knowing what his own answer would be. "Ask me later. Now get out of here."

:: Inherent (first jealousy)

A hard hand caught his arm as he exited the medbay, the gladiator using Ratchet's own inertia to yank him off course. He half stumbled, surprise slowing his reaction. "Megatron? What-"

"We need to talk," the gladiator informed him shortly, his grip implacable as he half steered and half shoved Ratchet around the corner to the adjoining corridor.

"Can it wait? I need to swing by supplies-" anything else Ratchet might have said was cut off with a grunted burst of static as a large hand planted itself solidly against his chestplates, shoving him back against the wall.

"What," Megatron demanded, the red blaze of his optics only a bare handspan from Ratchet's own, "the slag was that?"

"What was what?" Ratchet shot back irritably, shoving - trying to shove - the gladiator's hand away. "What in the Pit are you going on about?"

Megatron growled, a low, rough sound that trembled straight down Ratchet's back struts in a rush of triggered hardcoded combat routines that he had to consciously throttle back. It was easy, too easy sometimes, to let himself be lulled into a complacent haze, planetary rotations and work cycles blending together into an idle processor creation where 'Megatron' was only the name of Kaon's best up and coming gladiator, a young mech who liked high grade and historical and mystery entertainment files and who could, when overcharged enough, be talked into performing some of the layered stanzas he wrote in his spare time. It was too easy to forget until he was forcibly reminded that the mech who was looming over him, one hand crushing him back against the wall, was the Slagmaker himself, a merciless would-be warlord with the energon of countless Autobots and innocents on his hands, who routinely stood toe to toe with their last Prime across battlefields that had destroyed their entire world.

Not yet, Ratchet reminded himself. That wasn't the reality yet, but it was hard to remember that when the sharp, furious snarl of the gladiator's anger was flared around him and slicing like knives into Ratchet's field, ripping at him in a close, visceral reminder of what would be.

"You know fragging well what," Megatron snarled. Desperate survival routines were flaring in cascading trees of flight or fight if-then probabilities in the depths of Ratchet's processor, the gladiator's lowered voice too reminiscent of the vocal modulations that accompanied deactivation by fusion cannon, never mind that the gladiator didn't yet own what would become his signature weapon. Ratchet shoved the reflexes away, triggering medical partitions to keep himself unresisting as Megatron pressed him harder against the wall. "What in the Pit do you think you're doing with that slag sucking waste?"

Processor partitions gave Ratchet better space to think without the clutter of emotions or reflexive panic, for all the good it did him. The gladiator was genuinely furious about something but Ratchet had no idea about what. "I don't know what you-"

The gladiator's free hand caught Ratchet's chin, reinforced armor plated fingers curling painfully hard around his jaw. "Don't play coy," Megatron hissed, his ventilation washing warm across Ratchet's face as the taller mech leaned in. "Unmaker take it, you're not theirs and I'll prove it on their upstart worthless frames if I have to!"

The pattern fell into place with a sickening cold rush that swept straight to Ratchet's spark. Fear - not for himself but oh, Primus, the plural indicator was a dead give away, the gladiator meant the twins - shocked him into frozen silence for a spark pulse. Every thread tier in his processor stuttered for a split fraction of a nanoklik and then roared back online in overdrive, frantically racing for a means out of the slag furnace that was unfolding before him.

An enduring trait of Ratchet's spark, however, was the ability for his vocalizer to kick in before his processor did, and a short fused temper. The wash of purely selfish indignant outrage which followed hard in the wake of the fear leant an extra burst of strength to the responding shove that, braced as he was against the wall, succeeded in pushing the gladiator's bulk back a step and bought him several more nanokliks to frantically think. "That's what's got your fuel line in a kink? Slagger, you're out of line!"

"Am I?" A hard shove back, both hands on his shoulders this time, and Ratchet was pinned tight to the wall again, Megatron's larger frame pressed against him in a hold he couldn't break. "You spend more time on them than anyone else, you're always after them - what the frag else do you call it?!"

Oh, Primus, of course he spent more time with them, Ratchet thought with a sick mix of rage at the unfairness and the cold realization of what it would have looked like to an outsider. The twins were one comfortingly familiar thing in a world turned inside out, but he couldn't even begin to tell Megatron that and there was actual fury blazing in the gladiator's optics, the kind that promised a swift and brutal deactivation to a perceived threat. In the gladiator pits it was a very real threat and Sunny and Sides were... Not the hardened frontline warriors he knew. Not even close. Here, now, vorns before war became a reality, they were too young, too inexperienced, too vulnerable, and this had to be scrubbed before it ever took root because the alternative - an Ark without Sunstreaker's taciturn temper, without Sideswipe's cheerful irreverence, Autobots without their two best warriors - wasn't worth thinking about.

There, though, buried in that thought thread, was a pale hint at a palatable solution. It was even easy enough to put the proper touch of indignant anger in his own voice - it wasn't the first time he'd heard himself cast in a starring role of rumors involving the twins, and he'd laughed outright in Wheeljack's face before reading him the riot act about using what leftover scrap remained in his processor before vocalizing every inane thing that overcharged bots made up somewhere at the bottom of cubes of high grade. He respected the twins, he even sometimes liked them, but there wasn't enough high grade on the Ark to make him take the two of them to berth, or vice versa.

"I call it being a medic," he snarled, shoving ineffectually at the gladiator's chest. "Primus in the Pit, they're younglings. They don't belong here! If I don't look out for them, who will?" Very real frustration with the world he had found himself in manifested, and whatever crackled through his field it made Megatron take a half step back, optics flickering. "They're younglings, and barely even that! Pit, they're less than a rotation out of their sparkling frames, and they were upgraded too fragging soon. And then you bring them in here and expect them to fight - Primus, they're just younglings!"

Megatron was still, watching him, something indefinable in the ruby burn of his optics, but the open threat of rage was rapidly draining away. The gladiator grunted, gingerly letting up on his hold. "So you're… what? Protecting them?"

"Someone has to," Ratchet replied bitterly, and there were so many layers of truth to it that it hurt. "I'm a medic."

Megatron cocked his helm, optics narrowing. "Why?" He waved Ratchet's sputter aside with an impatient gesture. "Why bother?" he clarified. "Ones that young - they're crowd fodder. Quick entertainment, nothing more. Why waste your time?"

"It's not a waste," Ratchet said, stung. It was all overlaid in a jumble in his processor, formidable frontliners with youngling senses of humor and untrusting younglings with optics too old for their age. "They're not… even if it was a waste, which it's not, does that mean I should just walk away? Why should I bother fixing any of you, then?"

The corner of Megatron's mouth quirked up, his field pushing a trickle of warmth at Ratchet as though the slicing fury of only kliks before was nothing but a figment. "Because you're a medic," he drawled, the warm press of his thumb tracing the line of Ratchet's cheek. "They're not a waste of time, hmm? Maybe." He leaned in, venting warmth against the plates of Ratchet's face. "You're very protective. You'd make an excellent caretaker."

It was so utterly out of context that Ratchet was still sputtering when Megatron drew away, the gladiator's smirk all but palpable and an entirely different heat burning in his optics. "Don't get your hopes up," he warned, the sober tone at odds with the way his optics raked over the medic's frame. "The young ones don't usually last." And with that he was gone, turning on one pede to stride away, leaving Ratchet still swallowing static and the sour remnants of fear.

"Medic!" he managed to yell after the gladiator's retreating back. "I'm a medic, you rusted glitch!"

Only when Megatron had disappeared around the corner did Ratchet let himself sag back against the wall, hands coming up to cradle his helm and the incipient ache therein. "Oh Primus," he groaned, "'Caretaker'. Pit. How is this my life?"

:: Imagination (first really kinky sex)

Megatron sucked in a deep ventilation as he stroked lightly over the red panel, the heated charge of the metal stinging his fingertips. "Slag," he breathed, power plant growling a quiet counterpoint, "you're burning up."

The almost reflexively sharp barbed answer the day before, or even earlier that same cycle, would have been something like "tell me something I don't know" or "do you always state the obvious?". That had been a handful of joor and four additional links earlier, however, and the medic didn't seem to have the processor capacity left for snark. Pressed between Megatron's bulk and the wall, Hatchet's helm was tipped back, his optics dimmed to a deep cobalt blue, and Megatron could feel the fine tremors running through the medic's solid frame in time to the throbbing rumble of his deeply baffled power plant.

It was one of the more alluring sights Megatron could recall and he greedily flagged the memory file, tagging it for easy retrieval. Another stroke, more pressure, and the medic's backstruts arched, pressing smooth red hips into Megatron's grasp, matching red hands scrabbling for a grip across the heavy plates of the gladiator's shoulders. "So slagging hot," he rumbled, dipping his head to run his mouth over the exposed lines of the other's throat. That close, tiny sharp flares of charge licked over his glossa, bright bursts mixed into the thick taste of the medic's field that filled his intakes, heavy with need. Megatron cycled it in deeply, biting back a low moan. "Primus... you're hot enough to melt. Open?"

The words were accompanied by another stroke, fingertips trailing over the thin seams of the medic's panel, and Hatchet whined, static bleeding into his vocalizer. Megatron throttled back his own fans and kept his touch light, tapping teasing vibrations into the interface panel beneath his palm. "Open up," he coaxed, the words exvented across the smaller mech's audials as he pressed closer, forcing pale thighs to spread wide around his girth. "There's one more - you can take it, I know you can. One more link. Just one more. Open. Open for me."

"Slag you," Hatchet ground out, vocalizer thick with static, but his panel snapped open, spilling burning heat and slick lubricant into Megatron's waiting hand.

Megatron groaned, deep and low, as his fingertips slid over the burning charge of lubricant slicked external sensors and slipped into the first ring of the medic's valve. It irised open for him easier than he could have dreamed, sensor nodes primed and sparking against his touch, and he could feel the first link sphere, smooth and slick and counter charged, lodged just within the second ring. Hatchet's helm fell back with a sharp thunk against the wall, a mixed cry of static and binary bursting from him for the barest nanoklik before the hard sound of his vocalizer shutting down cut it off. Megatron growled, unable to resist pressing firmly against two of the nodes to bleed off a burst of the charge that was leaking from them. His medic bucked up against him, shuddering, handfuls of glossy white plates pressed so close that Megatron could feel the mech's tightly repressed field seep into and under his own, surges of it flickering out in waves that sparked heat and rippled pleasure through his circuits.

"Primus." It was all he could do to throttle back his own systems, the charge burning through him with a sweet, urgent ache. "Oh, Primus... I could take you right now. Primus in the Pit, you're so open, you're burning with charge. Slag, so fragging hot."

Hatchet reset his vocalizer with a brief, aborted keen, his fingers hooked deep into the joins of the gladiator's shoulders, optics bright and sharp. "Just do it," he rasped, intakes panting in broken bursts. "Ah!" His hips jerked as Megatron slid his fingertip free, stroking over rim sensors, the burst of static lending a deep, angry growl to his words. "Slagging chaos glitch spawn, they're going to come looking... just get it over with!"

Megatron chuckled darkly. "They already know what we're doing - or think they do." He pressed his mouth to the medic's audial, rumbling the words directly against the sensitive surface. "Their imaginations aren't good enough. Not for this. Ready?"

"Frag, yes, just-" Hatchet cut himself off with a sharply hissed intake as Megatron's chest plates split, locks unclasping. His armful of heated medic went stiff and rigid in a flash, the fingers at his shoulders pressing hard, painful warning into articulator joints that the gladiator didn't doubt the other could rip out in a spark beat with ten times the precision of any fighter. "Slag, what, no, wait…

"Hush," Megatron said as softly as he could. It wasn't a surprise - not when it took joors to relax the medic into tactile intimacy, never mind anything greater - but the real fear that arced white through Hatchet's optics made him grit his dente and suppress combat protocols that wanted to spin up in response to whatever or whoever had put it there. Keeping his movements quick and his free hand firmly on the other's frame, he slid his outer armor apart just enough to reach beneath it and pluck the link sphere out from where it had been nestled against his inner core layer.

Hatchet's optics flickered as the medic rebooted them, surprise crackling in a sour, stuttered lash through the medic's field. "Did you… what… Did you seriously just…"

Megatron snapped his plates closed, holding up the silvery sphere between thumb and forefinger. "You said the others were cold," he reminded the other mech, pressing closer, and the combined vibration of their power plants made his own ventilations stutter, vocalizer dropping into a deeper, rougher note. "So I kept it warm for you."

"You…" It wasn't often that Hatchet was at a loss for words, the medic's biting wit lost in sheer surprise. "It… you… In your spark? Glitch headed slag sucking fragger, you could have…"

Megatron swallowed the rest of the tirade with his own mouth before the medic could ramp himself into a temper, only relenting with a last flick of his glossa when he was sure he had the other's attention once more. "Next to my spark," he corrected, the words vented hot against an audial array. "Just close enough to feel it, like the sensor ghost of a charge. And now…" He pressed the other close to the wall and raised the hand with the sphere to cup Hatchet's jaw, holding the medic through a reflexive flinch. "Feel that? That's my charge, hot from my spark." He let his mouth trail across the warm plates of the medic's cheek, tasting heated metal rife with electric field. "And that is going to go in your valve."

Hatchet hissed, a tiny, shakily vented sound as Megatron rolled the surface of the sphere across the plane of his cheek to press it, lightly, against the medic's lips. "Last one," Megatron whispered roughly. "Largest one, and you're already so slagging full. That little one this morning? It's going to be pushed all the way to your tightest ring. Three joors left in the shift cycle and this is going to be in you, stretching you wide open, the entire time. You're going to feel it every klik, every time you move, charged up and hot but nothing to connect to."

Hatchet's ventilations had turned harsh, his optics fading dark once more with only the barest trace of alarm still rimming the edges. His mouth fell open at the press of the sphere, glossa flicking out to caress the metal, and his systems gave a stuttered growl at the taste of the charge infused into it. Megatron couldn't have suppressed his answering growl if he had wanted to, surging up through his power plant to vibrate in strut and plate alike as he watched the medic open wider and suck the smooth sphere between curved lips, rolling it across his glossa.

"Primus." Somewhere between a prayer and a curse, it was the only thing Megatron could force from his vocalizer. Hatchet moaned, long and low, when the gladiator's fingers pressed against his lips. The sphere slid smoothly back into Megatron's grasp, hot and slick with intertwined charges that prickled against his sensors.

"Tastes like you," the medic gasped, venting hard. "Slag, do it! The next round is in nine kliks, I've got to get back to the bay..."

Megatron cut the other off again, mouthplates sealed together. A shove pushed the medic's pedes further apart, hips pulled forward, and the vibration of Hatchet's cry as Megatron's fingers slid over his valve was swallowed on the gladiator's glossa.

He pressed the sphere to the rim of the medic's valve, sliding it deliberately over sensor nodes, lubricant coating his fingers and the metal of the sphere alike. Cupping it with his first three fingers, he pressed the heel of his palm against the cap of the medic's sheathed spike and slowly, firmly, pushed the link sphere inwards.

Hatchet made a sound that was mostly binary, a wordless cry that Megatron took in, glossa pressing into the medic's mouth in mimicry of the sphere that was pushing against the first ring of his valve. A nanoklik and the gladiator relented, letting the tight valve aperture shove the sphere back into his hand, only to press it inwards once more, then again, and again, in short, rhythmic motions, each a little deeper than the last.

"So fragging open," he whispered, the words exvented raggedly against the medic's open, panting mouth. "Primus, you're dripping charge. I could drink it out of you, you're so slagging hot." Another press, longer, harder, feeling the slow give of the tightness the link spheres were working against. Hatchet keened softly, his grasp on the gladiator's shoulders shaking, and Megatron smirked. "Wait until I get you home," he promised roughly. A twist of his fingers rolled the slick sphere, halfway inside the medic's first ring, and Hatchet's optics offlined, his whole frame trembling. Megatron hissed, his own vents howling a throttled roar as his systems tried to dump heat. "Trigger the last switch, link them all together, and I'm going to pull them out, one right after another." He pressed his lips to the medic's audial, letting the low growl of his voice drag another twitching tremble from the other's frame. "You're going to be so open and I'm going to fill you, every single cubic measure, every node, every ring. Make you scream."

Hatchet vented hard, optics rebooting in a flare of deep, burning blue. The grip on Megatron's shoulders released and the medic's hands were at his helm before ingrained combat alarms could even track the movement, talented fingers slipped up and underneath the edge of his helm where it met the back of his neck, pressing sharply against buried nodes. "If I can fragging walk next cycle, you Pit sucking chaos spawn," he growled, vocalizer thick with static, "I am going to be very disappointed in you. Now get ON with it!"

"Sweet talker," Megatron growled. Bracing his hand against the slickness, he cupped the sphere and pushed hard. Hatchet roared, the nanoklik of sound pure binary before it cut off as the medic arched, backstruts taut and trembling. "That's it," Megatron murmured, the softer words mouthed against the medic's cheek plates. "That's it, relax, let go, it's almost…" Firm, steady pressure, sinking inexorably inwards, and then the final rushing give as the medic's valve ring yielded, spiraling wide enough to let the intrusion in. Hatchet jerked, helm falling back against the wall, a crackling cry escaping his vocalizer.

Megatron held him close, pressed tight against the wall. Hot lubricant was spilling over his fingers and he exvented a slow, shaky rush of heat as his fingertips slipped over the first bare width of the medic's inner valve ring, stretched taut and clenching around the circumference of the link sphere. "Primus," he breathed. "Slag, you did it. All of it, all the way." He let his thumb rub gentle circles over external sensors, ramping up the tremor in the medic's heavy frame. "Perfect," he whispered, "so fragging good. Knew you could." He gave the ring one last pet, fingertips skating over the smooth surface of the sphere holding the aperture open. Pressing his mouth to the medic's audial, he let his voice drop as low and deep as he could. "Now - close it."

Hatchet's vocalizer was muted but Megatron could feel the other mech's silent cursing, an endless stream of half formed gutter glyphs that saturated his field, afloat on a wave of charge that was going nowhere fast. His cover snapped shut, sharp enough to clip Megatron's fingertips, leaving the medic leant up against the wall, shaking, white thighs streaked with still steaming lubricant that had spilled from his tightly closed panel.

Megatron hissed a few choice curses of his own and pinged his chrono. Four kliks. Pushing the medic back against the wall, he dropped to one knee, hands hooking underneath the other's leg joins as he shoved the white limbs further apart. Hatchet's field flared through the touch - need, heat, alarm - and Megatron half shuttered his optics, spread the medic's legs, and dropped his mouth to the streaked rivulets of lubricant.

Heat and charge, thin and slick and messy, and the trace metal and light oil taste pinged readily against memory files of holding the medic down and licking him open, of sucking and teasing each grudgingly activated ring until the other was trembling with charge and achingly ready. "Pit, Hatchet," he breathed, glossa sliding along a transformation seam, following taste and touch up to the burning heat of the medic's panel. "Primus… I could fill you right now, deep as you can take it. Make you scream, let them all hear how slagging good you are…"

Hard red hands on his helm, holding him, his mouth shoved back against one of the streaks of lubricant. "Not," Hatchet ground out, the word ragged, "now. Have to get back to the bay. You made the mess - clean it."

Megatron chuckled, low and deep in his intakes, and flattened his glossa against heated armor plating, dragging upwards in long, meticulous licks. It wasn't perfect - it barely did anything to make the medic look less debauched, not when the heat and charge was all but dripping off his field, no matter how tightly he clamped it - but it might pass a quick glance.

With one klik to spare he climbed back to his pedes, resisting the urge to trail his fingers over that tempting, heated panel. "You'd better get back to the bay," he whispered. "Next fight is starting. They'll be wanting you." He let his thumb trace the inner seam of one hip, flicking lightly against the very edge of the medic's panel. "I'll come find you when your shift's up."

Hatchet's cursing as Megatron sauntered away was multi-dialect, profane, strong enough to blister sheet metal, and not muted in the slightest. Smirking, his own systems running so hot there was a deluge of error warnings spilling across his HUD, Megatron put an extra smug hitch into his step as he kept walking.