Title: Scandal
Fandom: Transformers G1
Pairings: Optimus Prime/Elita One, Optimus/Elita/Ultra Magnus
Rating: T
Word Count: 856
Summary: Magnus is scandalized. Optimus and Elita are affectionate. Set soon after whenever Magnus reestablishes contact with the Ark crew.
Content advisory: PNP interfacing and semi-interfacing, none of it terribly explicit. References to snuff.
It was the most scandalous thing Magnus had ever seen.
He stood, frozen, in the doorway, watching Elita writhing on Optimus' lap, her full set of cables out and connected all over Optimus' body, both engines idling uselessly as the cables glowed with power and brought them both to an explosion of wasted energy.
Not in fifty thousand vorns had Magnus seen an Autobot do such a thing.
Decepticons, yes, when they had the energy, and he'd found comrades dead under this treatment, their transfer cables forced out and drained by the enemy, consumed for a moment's pleasure.
It was terrible way for a bot to die.
"Elita--!" He wanted to leave, to forget that he'd ever seen such a thing, but he had to say something, had to do something, even if they were his commanders and his oldest living friends...!
Optimus saw him first. "Magnus..." He sounded so happy, so content...Magnus could almost think it was still the early days of the war, when such indulgence was, though wasteful and frivolous, still permitted. "Old friend. Would you like to join us?"
Elita by now had looked over her shoulder and noted the look on Magnus' face. "Magnus..." she said, softly. "We have the energy, now, and you deserve your share."
"This was why Cybertron died!" Magnus said, and although he remembered, now, the heat and light and abundance of this planet, he just--that was no excuse. No excuse, not any more than the occasional successful raids had been excuse, not when so many of them had lived and fought and died in cold dark hunger, with no more than an embrace and a simple datalink to share with a friend. "I know Optimus was offline the last four million years, but you, Elita--! You should know better."
"Magnus..." Elita walked over to him, and Magnus allowed her to reach up and put a hand on his shoulder. "The sun here gives off more energy in a day than we could ever store."
"For as long as Earth has as sun," Magnus glowered, but Elita was his commander, and she must be right.
"For as long as it does, and for as long as we are welcome here," she leaned up, wrapping her arms around Magnus' neck as they had many, many times against the cold and the dark.
"Don't ask me to do that, Elita, please." Because if she asked, or if Optimus asked again, he would. His arms wrapped around her back, holding her close.
"No," she agreed. "But a data-transfer, between the three of us? Just like the old days?"
It wasn't the three of them, in the old days, there were always more, and he and Elita had never shared that particular intimacy until Optimus had left them. But Magnus didn't protest, just carefully, efficiently, opened his panel and offered Elita his data cable.
"If I may?" Optimus came up beside them, wrapping an arm around Magnus and another around Elita; and his body was so warm and well-energized that Magnus couldn't help but lean into his touch, body desperate for the energy that Optimus shouldn't be wasting.
"Magnus?" Elita asked. Magnus nodded.
Elita made the three-way connection, and Magnus gasped, his whole body heating and his engine threatening to kick on as though he were going to--no, it was just the warmth of Optimus' and Elita's connection, and the heat of Optimus' years on earth.
Four million years. The units, and the request, came from Optimus; and Magnus replied, showing his Prime vorns and vorns of struggle in the dark, vorns of fighting when there was hardly the energy to move, vorns where the Autobots dwindled until there were only a few small squads fighting for life and freedom, keeping a small spark of energy alive.
His memories were echoed and redoubled by Elita's, and Optimus gasped, leaning onto them both; a few scant years of Earth and Sun could hardly counteract that.
But it would, the thought was Elita's. It would have to.
The vision of sun-light they sent him was nothing like the energy Elita and Optimus had been so casually trading earlier; but his systems overloaded and sent him into momentary stasis anyway.
When he came back to himself, Optimus supported him against his chest, and he drank the energon cube Elita offered him. "Thank you," he said automatically.
"Thank you," Optimus said. "Both of you. For all that you did in the time that I missed."
Elita just hugged them both, and Magnus relaxed into the embrace. And then shuddered, as he thought: "Don't ask me to do--what you were doing before."
"We wouldn't," Elita said, and Optimus nodded. "But if, someday, you change your mind, you can always ask us."
"Thank you," Magnus said, uncertainly, but he stayed in the warmth of their embrace.