Archive of Our Own

Things are good. Perfect, even.

Optimus Prime has never been so happy. All of his dreams, his goals and his aspirations… each and every one of them has come to fruition beneath the march of his pedes and the beating of his army's drums. Their enemies have been felled, and the monikers of ‘Decepticon’ and ‘Autobot’ melted down into simply ‘Cybertronians’.

Megatron is at his side again, as equal as they will ever be in these once-new, now-old frames. He offers the position of Lord High Protector and it takes Megatron all of a joor to accept.

The process of rebuilding Iacon is well underway, too. It's taking time and resources, but they're doing it. They're still working to repurpose the old mining sectors into energon refinement - while the rivers flow with fuel again, it isn't fit for consumption in its raw state, and with the return of those banished to the surface they have more tanks to fill than ever. Dismantling the mining operations had been harder than expected, but Shockwave had proven himself surprisingly effective with legislation, to the point where Optimus had wondered if he'd once been a senator or the like.

And, to top it all off, at the end of a good day's work Optimus gets to retreat to his own habsuite, lay down in his large, flat-to-floor berth (still an odd concept, coming from the mines) and recharge comfortably. Alone and cold.

So yes, things are good. Things are good because they have to be.

If things are good, then why has Optimus never been so unhappy?

(He knows why. He just has to make sure he's the only one who does.)

That day, when D-16 had shot him, it had been Primus who had given him a second chance. It had been Primus who had set him gently back onto his pedes and said, I will make you anew. He has many things to thank Primus for, but also a great many things to lament.

But he can't. When Primus had given him life once more, he'd also offered a choice: to be Optimus Prime in Iacon, or Orion Pax in the Well.

(‘Choice’ is a funny term. It can be ascribed to many things that aren't a choice at all.)

He still struggles to fit with this new name. It isn't him, and he doesn't think it will ever be - and yet it is all he is, and nothing else. He is Optimus Prime, not Orion Pax. Not the name he'd chosen for himself, the identity he'd carved from jagged stone; it feels like an alias, always has, like he's still Pax underneath. It almost feels like a stage name, a persona for when he's performing, acting to the point he can't distinguish between him and his character any more.

Optimus Prime is an actor, not a liar. Lying and performing are two very different things.

He is good at one, and bad at the other. Lying is not something that comes naturally to him; he's reckless, honest almost to a fault (if he thinks his supervisor's new paintjob is ugly, he's going to tell them. Besides, bright green with a hot pink flame motif? What is this, the circus?), a flaw which he has to work hard to temper as Prime. He cannot go around telling the members of his council that they're acting like a bunch of bickering sparklings, because even though they are, they're still important political figures (although, if he has it his way, they won't be for long. Sentinel's reign has deep roots that he is working to purge).

He's bad at lying, sure. But performing is different.

And anyway, what is he meant to say? Orion Pax is a mech long lost to the ebb and flow of time, he supposes would be fitting for the vocoder of a Prime. I feel his pain keenly, howling through my very core is what he cannot say.

It was his choice to live again. He has no room to complain. Doesn't mean he isn't lying through his teeth when someone calls him Pax and he says That's not me anymore.

══════════════════

The title of Lord High Protector is an unfamiliar one. Heavy, too, not just with responsibility, but also with meaning.

Megatron is not stupid, nor is he oblivious. He knows how to pick up a datapad. He knows what this title means, or at least what it should mean.

I trust you with my life.

(You watch my back, I'll watch yours.)

It's an easy decision, when Optimus proposes the idea. He says it casually, without any of the pomp and circumstance he'd imagine it entails typically, like he's asking the mech to pass the iron shavings and not to become his personal bodyguard and most trusted confidant. Every circuit in his frame sings with joy - Optimus trusts him, still, wholly and dangerously - that he fights against, replacing it with bitterness and his own brand of disdain.

Optimus doesn't want Megatron. Not in any way Megatron has ever wanted him . That much is clear.

He digs through his processor until he can pull up the memory. (It's an easy find, because he's been playing it over and over so often that the filename must be ingrained into the back of his optics.)

“Would you consider accepting a more official title?” Prime asks him, suddenly, and Megatron stills.

He doesn't say anything, though - only hums in slight question, carefully keeping himself steady. His digits creak as he curls them tightly into his knee joint underneath the table, a battered old thing they've been holding the less formal meetings at, and tries to crush the swirl of thrilled feeling currently building in his sparkchamber. His knuckles brush against his spark in doing so, wearing further scuffs into its bruised surface.

Megatron has long since given up on things like hope. These things are superfluous and damaging, a gentle cradle in softer servos that can turn to a crushing vice at less than a nanoklik’s notice. He has no room for this.

So why now does hope sing in the low rumble of his engine, dance in the twitch of jumping wires and cables?

“It's okay if you don't want to,” Optimus ventures, when his former enemy still says nothing, “but I was thinking you might make a good Lord High Protector.”

Megatron ought to scoff at his wording. But he won't, because there is no humour in Prime's frame.

He's carefully relaxed, servos folded in his lap, faceplate neutral and optics unreadable, but his backstrut is ramrod straight and tells of his anxiety. Megatron knows that behind the battlemask his mouthplates are pulled into a nervous frown, lower lip caught between blunt dentae as he chews absently at it.

Optimus Prime's tells for lying are the same as Orion Pax's were, and right now he's showing none of them.

Megatron snarls and cracks yet another hole into the wall with his fist. What reason does the Prime have to keep him so close if not because that's where he wants the mech to be? If not because he just wants his best friend back, tucked warm against his side?

It's political, surely. What better way to show the people that they've tamed the evil Decepticons than to lock their figurehelm into the collar of a domesticated dog and tether him to a gilded post?

A rope goes both ways. If Prime thinks he can control him, he'll tie the end around the slagger’s neck and toss him off the jagged walls of this Primus-damned place.

And if Megatron goes with him, well. He'll just have to hit the ground too.

══════════════════

Optimus Prime is by no means as perfect as he would like to appear. He is, unfortunately, still just a mech, for as much as other bots like to paint him as some kind of god. He's just a mech, and he's young, and he's already died once. If Orion Pax had been young, Optimus is even younger.

He's young, and fragging dumb, with the responsibility of countless lifetimes over his shoulders. Primus himself had settled it there, silently asked Optimus to bow his helm so that he might settle the planet herself between his pauldrons, not quite a crushing weight but still a pressure he cannot ignore. Primus himself had patted him gently atop the helm, like the sire he isn't sure he ever had, and pushed him, rebuilt, back into living.

It's something he tries not to dwell on, and yet it takes up half of his processing power on a good day.

Megatron's low vocoder breaks Optimus from his thoughts. “What are you doing?”

He glances up, barely managing to stifle the Huh? behind his teeth. (You are a Prime. Act like one.) Instead he blinks at the mech, and when he does not elaborate, prompts, “What do you mean?”

Megatron's dark optics shift slowly to his left arm, elbow clutched in his opposite servo so tightly that his digits scratch away at the silver paint at the top of his vambrace.

Ah. He hadn't even realised. It's so frequent a pain that he's learnt to ignore it entirely, even scorching through his lines as it does, pulses of white-hot agony exploding through his circuitry harsh enough to short his mechanoreceptors, making his fingers feel heavy as he places them against the edge of the desk. They're so numb that they actually slip from the edge, and he has to catch himself with his opposite servo yet again.

He risks a glance at his companion's expression and immediately brushes aside any hopes of his little slip going unnoticed. Red optics are fixed intently on his wrist where his fingers curl around it, and he knows that Megatron has seen it. All of it.

What is he meant to say? I still feel it? The pain of death, of losing myself physically and otherwise? Or It's like being shot all over again - I can't even feel the tips of my fingers?

No. These pains aren't real, just a product of improper or incomplete coding where he'd been reformatted from a miner to the echo of a god in death, when half of his processor had been blown to pieces anyway.

He's a vast, endless being crushed into a frame too big and too small for him. The wings he doesn't have cut into the plating of his back where he folds them tightly against himself, a bird in a little gilded cage. He is himself and every single Prime before him, and it makes his spark ache, clamped as it is beneath the heat of the Matrix.

By the Allspark, what does he say? Megatron is staring at him again, a twitch in his optics that could be either irritation or - dare he even consider it - concern.

“Prime,” Megatron tries, but Optimus does not hear. His helm is spinning, the silent voices of thirteen different bots pounding against the insides of his head, and slag it all if he doesn't want to just crack himself open and let them free.

He is, unfortunately, still just a mech.

“Prime!” Megatron barks, teeth bared as a broad black servo flashes out to grasp at his wrist, the brush of his fingers against blue knuckles like a brand. Optimus jerks, then immediately rearranges himself into a relaxed position, pulling a wobbly smile onto his face out of instinct. Megatron will not see it behind his mask, but maybe it'll reach his optics.

Megatron knows pain. He has ripped out his own cog and pulled open his chest with his fingers, forcing a new self into the fracture left behind, rewriting himself and his frame and all his ideals as he does. He has beaten Quintessons and Autobots alike into the ground with fist and pede and tri-barrel and has been beaten in turn. Once Optimus had watched a particularly brave little warrior tear his arm off at the elbow, and yet the Decepticon kept fighting.

(That brave little warrior hadn't even had the time to regret their actions before he'd torn them into pieces and thrown their ribbons to the wind. Optimus had been unable even to gather enough pieces for a proper funeral.)

Megatron knows pain. Which is why Optimus is sure the mech doesn't believe him when he smiles and says, “I'm alright.”

But all he says is, “Hmm.”

══════════════════

I do not care for you, Megatron tells the Prime seated across from him. I do not care for you. I do not care for you. I never have and I never will. I do not care for you.

He wears his anger as a mantle, a broad strip of feeling torn from the woven mesh of his jumbled, confused emotions. It's been the only thing to keep him warm when nothing else would, down in the dark of Decepticon bunkers, all cold steel walls and rough, lumpy berths as they were.

There is much here that would warm him if only he would let it. But millennia of war has made him skeptical, as he feels it would anyone.

Still, there is part of him that just aches to reach out, to bridge the gap across the scrappy table in this scrappy little bar Prime has dragged him to, presumably to make a show of their allegiance; a part of him that longs to pull the mech into himself, and keep him there for as long as the world allows.

There is part of him who cries and weeps into his servo, digging the heel of his palm into golden optics and biting at the fingers of the other in a pitiful attempt at stifling the low, whining keens threatening to spill from his lips. There is part of him who wants nothing more than to have Orion back.

Megatron has been trying for millennia to kill this little part of him, the one who remains as D-16, and for millennia he has been failing.

(Across from him, over a wonky table in a dimly-lit, low-ceilinged bar, Optimus Prime thinks of how he has long since killed Orion Pax, and refuses to let even his memory live.)

══════════════════

“You're being a coward,” Elita-1 tells him, muffled around the straw in her mouth. It's yellow, and curly, and suggests a drink quite unlike her usual, the strong stuff she drinks straight from the mug.

Optimus has chosen a livelier bar this time, very different to the last one he'd been to with Megatron. This one is far more his speed, more of a cafe than a proper bar, with soft lighting and walls of art and crystals.

One day, he will bring Megatron here. But for now he figures that other quiet, vaguely seedy bar is probably more what he's used to.

“I am not,” he refutes calmly, trying not to feel much of anything.

You are a Prime. Act like one. There's no good in playing the part if he's going to drop it on a whim.

No. It's not a role, is it. It's him. It's what he is and all he is.

“Don't even bother,” the femme drawls, taking a long, drawn-out sip. “You're an awful liar.”

“Was there something you actually wanted?” Optimus interrupts, then winces and plasters an apologetic smile over his faceplate. “I doubt you invited me out just for a chat.”

“Perceptive as always,” she responds, with more than a small measure of sarcasm, and clinks the ice around in her glass. Optimus notes with a very vague sense of admiration that she has already finished the whole thing, while he is only a quarter of the way into his. “I wanted to talk to you about—”

“If it's work-related, this may not be the best place,” the Prime interjects quickly, glancing nervously around. The bartender gives him a lazy wave, and aside from her there's only three or four other patrons - a small post-bot in a scuffed blue paintjob, nursing a somehow grey drink (he didn't even know they did drinks that weren't brightly coloured), a mostly-green speedframe he vaguely recognises as Cross-something-or-other, and a pair of femmes in broad blue-and-white and much smaller pink. Overall, it's not a particularly offensive crowd, and he doubts any of them are likely to be plotting against them, but… He supposes Primacy has made him paranoid.

Elita stares at him.

“—Megatron,” she finishes, after an unnerving pause, as though she hadn't been interrupted in the first place.

I wanted to talk to you about Megatron.

“Is something wrong?” is the response he carefully chooses, taking a sip of his drink. It's light and fruity, the kind of thing that he— that Orion used to love, but now it only tastes like sugar and leaves a strange residue on his tongue.

Perhaps he won't be bringing Megatron here after all.

Elita nods casually, leaning forwards to stick her straw into his glass. He feels a sudden wave of fondness towards her - only she would be brave enough to steal a drink from the Prime - and it's for this reason only that he pushes it over to her, and not because the taste reminds him too much of a dead mech. “Thanks. Anyway. I wanted to address all your…”

Optimus says nothing, just waits for her to finish. He has a nasty feeling he knows what this is about, anyway.

“...moping,” is what she settles for, resting her chin on the back of her servo and staring up at him through narrowed optics. Her gaze is calculating, optics cycling as she studies him, searching across the lines of his faceplate.

The mech's core temperature drops a few degrees, and he clicks his battlemask shut on instinct.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he says at length, folding his servos neatly over each other and flexing the joints to stop them from clenching so hard he creaks.

“This,” she says, indicating his mask, “and this,” then to his tensing servos, “tell me something different.”

Optimus does not want to talk about this. He can't think of anything to say that would satisfy her, anyway, and he knows trying to distract her won't work - she's too intent, hyperfocused on him - so he thinks of another way out.

(Orion Pax was always good at improvising.)

So he thinks, and thinks, and comes up short.

(It's a shame Orion Pax is gone.)

A whole klik passes until Elita huffs, leaning back in her chair. The distance should relax Optimus a little, and yet he only feels sick. “Tell me the truth .”

Truth. The Prime is meant to be about truth, isn't he? But the truth is, Optimus…

Optimus is scared. Even after millennia of war he still feels it, raw as it was on the day of his rebirth. He'd thought his fear would fade with time. He'd been wrong.

He's scared of a great many things: being wrong, failing his people, losing his closest companions… Scared that someone will find out who he actually is: Orion Pax, troublesome mining bot with dreams bigger than his own helm and double the attitude. Because no matter how much he shuts the memories out, the taste of a different designation and same-but-different armour over another frame, he will never be the mech everyone seems to see when they look at him.

Everyone else sees Optimus Prime, vessel of holiness, servo of Primus come to guide them. But when he looks in the mirror, all he sees is a lost little miner, playing at being someone of importance. Someone of value.

Ironically enough, the only one who actually seems to see him is Megatron. Primus is cruel with his jokes.

And, oh. Megatron.

What was it he’d said to him, all those cycles ago?

A killer is still a killer, no matter how beloved. You're no different from myself.

We are not the same, Optimus remembers saying, even as he drove his blade between the gaps of his foe’s armour. Megatron had merely cackled, mirthless, devoid of any emotion except contempt as he swept his servo downwards to indicate the fresh wound, an almost bitter smirk pulling at his features, and said,

When you kill, it's righteous. It's justice, retribution. But when I kill, it's murder. And it was you who made it that way.

And, well. He'd been right, hadn't he? Optimus had been the one to banish him from his home, the only one he'd ever known, with not so much as an explanation. Not so much as an apology.

Orion Pax used to think that D-16 was his home. He never would have admitted it, obviously, but he'd always liked to imagine it was mutual.

He supposes Megatron had not been the only one to lose his home that day. He's always coped by separating Megatron from D-16, but the raw truth is that they're still the same bot - an upgraded frame, sure, and an angrier spark, but nothing inside has actually changed. Nothing intrinsic, no integral part of his being; just a name, not his very spark, clamped beneath the scorching weight of the Matrix. Not his processor, filled with whispers of saints long-since dead.

It's guilt that flushes through him now, a wave so powerful he finds himself drowning in it - it's Megatron has always just about mollified his oversensitive processor, but it's still Dee makes him feel like purging. All the things he's done to the mech - casting him out, waging a war against him, injuring and nearly killing him again and again and again - all of this he has done not just to Megatron, but to his best friend. To the mech who had invited himself in and nestled right into the hole where Orion's cog should have been.

D-16 had always been his missing piece. It's a shame that only now is he realising it.

“The truth,” he echoes, finally, hollow, only when Elita rests a servo gently on his vambrace and levels him with a concerned stare. “I loved him.”

“I know,” Elita says. It's soft, yet neither a sympathy nor a means of soothing or pacifying. It's just… an acknowledgement. 

Optimus takes a long, shaky in-vent. Elita-1 moves to rub her thumb gently along his wrist.

“I still do.”

Her smile is almost sad. “I know.”

══════════════════

Somebody is moving up behind him. Megatron doesn’t bother looking over to see who it is - he knows already. There's only one mech whose ridiculous heels make that stupid clicking sound.

“Leave me,” he orders, vocaliser carefully level, and stares down over the edge. His new companion clearly has other plans, however, because they're decidedly not leaving him.

“You've got that look again,” Starscream comments, snidely, lowering himself to perch on the ledge next to him. Iacon's great towers stretch beneath them, seemingly endless, and Megatron’s dangling legs twitch with poorly-contained irritation. “That sad little frown  you get when you're thinking about him.”

“If you've come to mock me, don't bother,” is all Megatron offers. He's in no mood to humour the seeker right now.

Starscream huffs and stretches his EM field slightly outwards so that it brushes against the edge of the other mech's. It's exasperated, a faint undercurrent of affection and maybe a little dash of concern. Were Megatron a different mech, he might be moved by it. But he isn't.

He says nothing, just stares down at the drop again, thinks of what it might be like to fall. He’s sure Optimus could tell him if he only asked, but, well. In a way, he already knows.

Starscream kicks his pedes idly and looks— upwards, towards the sky, like he's searching. He looks oddly pensive, brow drawn and lips thin, maybe a little sad, but Megatron doesn't care to ask. Starscream will tell him anyway.

“I know what it's like,” the seeker says, at great length, “a little. To love, and to lose.”

He does look up at this, finally, turning his helm to meet the flightframe’s gaze, but he remains fixed firmly skywards, red optics heavy with sorrow, and Megatron feels like this isn't a conversation he can rush. For as irritating as the seeker can be, he's a strong mech at his core, and they have developed a bond of sorts over the cycles and cycles of war. Megatron likes him, in the same sort of way a soldier grows to like their energon rations; grating, hard to swallow, and begrudgingly accepted all the same because it's just something to keep you going.

A klik passes in silence. Two, three, until Starscream speaks once more. “I didn't think I'd ever see him again. And in those rare dreams where I did, he hated me.”

“Hmm,” says Megatron, flatly.

“I spent cycles trying to convince myself I hated him, too.” The seeker stretches upwards, wings twitching, and rolls the gyro of his shoulder with a wince. The war may be over, but peace alone cannot erase the pain of old wounds, as Megatron knows all too well. “I was wrong. So I did something about it. And now I'm - well.” There's an almost wry curl to his smile. “The happiest I can ever remember being.”

Megatron gives him a sideways glare. Starscream spits out a burst of amused static.

“So you've come to boast?” the ex-warlord rumbles, plating flaring out slightly with his rising anger. For a moment he stares, engine snarling, but Starscream merely raises an optic ridge and he forcibly calms himself, gritting his teeth and venting steadily. “Good for you, Starscream.”

They lapse into silence again. It is almost enough for Megatron to forget that he isn't alone.

“Why are you here?”

Almost.

“Am I not allowed to be?” 

Starscream twitches a wing in irritation. “No, you bucket of rusty bolts. I mean here, sitting on the edge.” With a dramatic sweep of one servo he gestures about them, from the crumbling ledge to the buildings stretching far below, and levels Megatron with a scrutinising stare. “You don't have wings - you can't fly. If you fall, Megatron, you die.”

The mech hums, tilting his helm away. He can't bear to look at the seeker right now. “It doesn't matter if I fall.”

“Well,” Starscream huffs, “don't expect me to jump in after you. I'm not saving you.”

I'm done saving you.

Silence again. After a klik or so, Starscream rises to his pedes, brushing the dirt from his frame. Megatron stares resolutely downwards. Iacon is buzzing with life beneath him - a life he'd spent so long trying to kill. Now, though, he finds it oddly beautiful.

It's funny. Back when he was still a miner, Orion would wake him in the middle of recharge and drag him up onto the roof just to watch the world go by. But D-16 had always been too busy watching him to take anything else in.

“I've seen the way he looks at you,” Starscream adds at length, briefly resting a rough servo on Megatron's pauldron. “I think everyone does. Get over yourself, Megatron. You can't let fear control you.”

“Brave words for someone who spent fifty cycles in hiding,” he mumbles. It's weak as retorts go - he's irritated only because Starscream is right. But the seeker doesn't retaliate, only turns and disappears, leaving him alone with his rampant thoughts.

By the Unmaker, if only Megatron could take back all the things he's done. If only he could go back and throw himself into the Well instead of Orion. If only. If only.

Lord High Protector. The title should bring a smile to his face, and yet it only brings him sickness - D-16 had loved Orion Pax, wholly and unabashedly. He would have tripped over himself in his haste to fall at the Prime's pedes. Megatron should hate Optimus Prime, and yet. And yet.

And yet he would pull out every last inch of his wiring for the mech, weave it into beautiful, bloodied patterns to soften the ground under his pedes. He would flay himself bare for Optimus to inspect in steady servos and ask for nothing in return. Anything for Optimus to smile at him the way Orion always had.

Megatron should hate Optimus Prime, but he has never been one to do what he should. Not since the day he was remade.

(He has festered in his bitterness and his resentment for a long, long time. He's sure he can keep it up a little while yet.)

══════════════════

Elita might be getting sick of his - well - pining. At least if the way she says “Optimus, I'm sick to my back dentae of your pining” is anything to go by. And, in truth, Optimus is getting a little sick of it himself. Trouble is, he's far too ‘mopey’ (another of Elita-1’s choice wordings) to actually do anything about it. Too mopey, and too afraid.

As always, sneers that horrible little part of him. But Optimus needs to know, at least. Even if he doesn't get— what? Comfort? Reciprocation? Megatron himself?

Even if he doesn't get any of these, he needs closure. So he opens his comms and deliberates on what to say.

[ Hey! Can we talk? ] he does not send.

[ Megatron. I would appreciate it if you could contact me at your earliest convenience. I have matters I wish to discuss. ] He frowns at this one for a moment, willing the glyphs to take the right shape, then sighs and deletes it too. The formality of it is stifling and likely only to drive Megatron further away.

Irritated, he drums his fingers against the polished surface of his desk. One, two, three, four, five. Again. And again.

He stares at his latest message for a long while.

[ If you have five kliks, can you drop by my office? I'd like to run a couple of things past you. ]

With a groan, he sends it, and drops his helm into his servos to wait.

(You're being a coward, Elita-1 tells him in the back of his processor.)

(I know, he says, in response.)

══════════════════

“—about the files I sent you?”

Optimus, appearing startled, glances up from his servos. His mouth is hidden behind that slagging mask, but Megatron is sure his mouth is sitting in a little ‘O’. “What?”

“Is this about the files I sent you?” he repeats, a little impatiently, idly tracing a deep gouge in the thick plating of his thigh. It's an old wound, from nearer to the start of the war. He can't remember who had given it to him.

Optimus blinks. “The files?”

Megatron has to lock his jaw to stop from growling. This mech is as irritating as ever - it's like he knows just how to rile him up. “Is there anything going on in that helm of yours, Prime?”

The red-and-blue mech shifts, looking a little hurt, and for a moment Megatron feels a flash of guilt. But by now he's adept at dealing with such emotions, and crushes it quickly beneath his heel. “Sorry, I'm…”

“Come on, Prime. You didn't call me here to chat.” Although I almost wish you did.

“No,” he agrees. Then says nothing.

Megatron stares. “So what did you want?”

“I want you,” Optimus answers.

Silence, immediate and defending, as Megatron's jaw falls right off of his face. Optimus mirrors this in an expression of abject horror.

I want you.

“You what,” the ex-Decepticon croaks, eventually, as the Prime's vocoder hisses static before resetting with an anguished click.

“...If you would let me finish,” Optimus continues, like he'd been interrupted, and Megatron scowls. The moment is lost. “I want you… um, to look at some of this legislation with me.”

Megatron's spark most definitely does not sink in his chassis. The Prime is playing with him again, taunting him with that which he will never attain. As always.

All at once he feels an eternity’s worth of longing rushing to the surface, tainted with pain and now rotting into something darker, more bitter. He feels his mouth curl, sharp fangs pricking into the softer metalflesh of his lip, and squeezes his servo into a fist beneath the table.

“I don't like you,” he says, slowly, watching with a sick sort of satisfaction as Optimus's finials tip backwards, and something in his optics breaks. “Let’s keep this professional, Prime.”

There's a sudden, rumbling snarl from the Prime's engine as he straightens himself up, optics burning as he glares over at his companion. Megatron, slightly startled, leans back in his chair just a little.

“Why do you refuse to call me by my name?” He’s practically bristling, plating flared out and finials pinning backwards, dentae bared. “Do I disgust you that much? Am I that repulsive to you?”

“What do you want me to call you?” he snaps back, feeling very much like smashing the table in two. “ Orion Pax?”

“By my name!” he grinds out, with an angry hiss of air from his smokestacks. He rises to his pedes, fists tense at his sides, and Megatron stands to meet him. “Is that so hard, Lord Protector?”

Megatron scoffs at him - only because he thinks spitting might get him thrown through the wall right now. “Don’t mock me. I know exactly why you gave me that title.”

“Oh?” Optimus lifts an optic ridge, peering up at him through squinting optics. “Is that right? Do tell.”

“You want to keep me close,” he rumbles, slow and thick with the poison that drips from every glyph, to the tip of his finger where he prods the mech in the chestplates with each new syllable. His digit taps against the thick glass housing the Matrix, and for a mere nanoklik he finds himself wishing he could reach in and tear it right out. “You want to keep me where you can control me. Tough luck, Optimus Prime. I will never be controlled again.”

He’s expecting anger, righteous and blinding. He’s expecting scorn. Honestly, he’s expecting to be punched. At least then he wouldn’t have to throw the first hit.

What he isn’t expecting is the Prime’s sudden outburst of laughter.

“What?” he barks, suddenly feeling strangely exposed. “What’s so funny?”

“You,” his companion manages between bouts of deranged, cackling laughter. “You think you know everything, but you’re really fragging dumb.”

Megatron is opening his mouth for a biting retort when Optimus swipes innumerous datapads scattered across the desk onto the floor, takes him by the waist, and drags him into a rough kiss. It’s harsh, and angry, and Primus above and below Megatron could weep. He practically climbs up onto the desk in his attempts at bringing that gaudy red-and-blue mech as close as possible to himself, digits digging into the seams at the plating of his hips.

Optimus is warm and receptive beneath him, smoke billowing from his stacks as he pulls the bigger mech off the desk and straight into his lap, winding his arms around his waist and shoulders to pull him closer. His broad servo finds the back of Megatron's helm and settles there. It’s a motion that should be comforting, and yet it only makes him mad.

He kisses the Prime harder, sharp fangs digging mercilessly into his soft lower lip, harder and harder until energon spills onto his tongue and Optimus shoves indignantly at his pauldron.

Megatron breaks away, swipes at the cut with the pad of his thumb, and licks the blue from his digit. His companion watches the movement closely, wide-opticed and venting heavily, and a sense of triumph spikes suddenly in his emotional subroutines. He's known conquest, plenty of it, but never like this - never in a way that sends his spark racing, never tasting so sweetly on his tongue. It's dizzying, heady, has his helm spinning and his frame working on its own accord. He feels out of control. He loves it. He hates it.

Optimus goes to say something, to pose a question, maybe, but all he gets out is Meg— before the mech silences him with a palm over his mouth, bending to scrape his teeth now along the Prime's neck and jaw. He's vaguely aware, somewhere a long way down, that he's being maybe a little too rough, but he's so full of wrath that his energy needs to go somewhere, and aggression has long since been the easiest outlet for him.

After a long, long while Megatron draws back, finally removing his teeth from the Prime's neck. “Don’t think you have me tamed,” he mutters against the mech's collar. “You'll find even the most loyal hound has teeth.”

Optimus blinks down at him, a little dazed, and touches gingerly at the newest bite mark at his jaw. The mask will hide it, probably, but Megatron knows it's there and that's enough. “Yeah… Clearly.”

Once again, his vexation rears its ugly helm. “Is this a game to you?” he snarls, pointed dentae still stained blue. Optimus squirms uncomfortably beneath him, leaning back a little in his chair, and Megatron grips him tightly along the edge of his jaw. “It always has been, hasn't it, Orion?”

Immediately the mech under him offlines his optics, squeezing them tightly shut. There's a pinch in his brow and his mouth is pressed into a thin, careful line. He looks— guarded, strangely, the most Megatron has ever seen him look without that Primus-forsaken mask.

“I am no longer Orion Pax,” he murmurs, slowly, like someone's tied a rope around his tongue and is pulling the glyphs out of him, “in the same way you are no longer D-16.”

It is both a rejection and a wounding strike. Megatron thinks maybe he should feel hurt, but he isn't feeling much of anything.

“I see,” the mech answers, dropping his servos from their respective places across red-and-blue plating. He should never have let his longing get the best of him - should have kept a tighter leash on all that extraneous emotion he'd always known he didn't need. He stands, slipping easily from the Prime's lap, and tries not to feel like he's being cast out yet another time. He should be used to it by now, anyway.

“Megatron, wait,” Optimus tries, but he has already shut the door.

══════════════════

Optimus groans, burying his face in his servos as the barmech drifts over to refill his cube. His HUD brings up a servoful of warnings about his intoxication levels and calculations for the tab he's racking up that he deliberately ignores. “Elita…”

“You fragged up,” she informs him, flatly, and he hiccups miserably. “So now you just have to fix it.”

“There is no fixing it,” he moans, snatching up his drink to down it in one. The poor serving bot, who has made it no more than three feet away for the past half a joor, quirks a brow and pours yet another drink. “Primus, he kissed me. He kissed me and I— I told him I wasn't me?”

Elita, who at this point is probably well used to his drunken antics (he's never been a big drinker, only when it involves Megatron and his own fumbling idiocy, which is happening more and more of late), pats him gently on the arm and pushes the barmech off when they try to pour another drink. Optimus watches forlornly as they scuttle quickly away, looking quite pleased to finally have an escape.

“What did you do that for,” he whines, and when she whacks him upside the helm, “ow.”

Thank the Thirteen he's a warframe, because any smaller mech would have been blackout in overcharge and suffering from engex poisoning by now.

“I think you know why.”

“Go away.”

“You invited me here,” the femme points out, leaning forwards to steal one of his untouched rubber chips. She pops it into her intake and grimaces at it - it's gone cold and is even chewier than normal. “I'm meant to be your commander, not your relationship advisor, but that's all I seem to be doing at the moment.”

“What do I do?” Optimus whinges, giving her his best pleading optics. She sighs, scrubs at her faceplate, and cuffs him again around the audial.

“Talk to him,” is the answer. Once again, he drops his helm into his palms and hiccups woefully.

══════════════════

I am no longer Orion Pax in the same way you are no longer D-16.

Megatron snarls. The datapad he's holding cracks underneath the pressure of his tightening grip, a splintering fracture across its bright screen that he wants to stick his servos into and rip open.

You think you know everything, but you're really fragging dumb.

He'd been right on that. Megatron is dumb. He's thrown it all away, again. The datapad creaks.

I want you.

Frag, hadn't it been Optimus who had started it? Wasn't it the Prime who had reached across the gap and pulled him down into his lap, held him with warm servos at his back and waist and neck and hips and kissed him fervently, feverishly, like it was the last thing he might ever get to do?

Well. If Megatron has it his way, it will be the last thing he ever gets to fragging do.

══════════════════

Megatron is most definitely avoiding him. Optimus can tell. Mostly because he hasn't seen the mech since their last (incredibly awkward) interaction, which is actually a problem, considering they're Prime and Protector. There's a rapidly-mounting stack of administrative documents requiring both their signatures cluttering his desk and he's already had to postpone three public appearances because he cannot find the mech anywhere.

It's starting to get a little silly. Not that Optimus Prime has a temper.

The thing is, Optimus had been… Well. He'd been lying again, hadn't he? When he'd opened his stupid mouth and said I'm not who I was, and neither are you ?

Optimus—

No. Orion.

He's spent the better part of his life lying - not just to everyone else, but also to himself. He's spent the better part of his life lying, and he hates it.

He'd told himself, at first, that it was for the best. That Primus had chosen him, gifted him the chance to try again. That Primus had picked him for a reason - that he had some greater purpose than drilling rocks and sneaking into the archives. That he owed it to Primus to try; that nobody would miss a dead mech.

But what has Primus ever done for him? What has Dee done? Why would he take the servo of a god who didn't care until it suited him when in front of him is the mech who has always, always held him - since the day they met - with such softness?

Frag. Sometimes he could reach into his chassis and rip the Matrix out. Maybe then he could love like he used to.

(It's another lie. He loves more than he ever thought he could.)

══════════════════

“Megatron.”

Slag. He knows that vocaliser. Growling, he ducks his helm and picks up the pace a little - maybe if he looks busy, Optimus will leave him alone.

The approaching pedesteps quicken. “Megatron!”

Damn it. Okay. They were bound to have this conversation eventually.

“Yes?” he forces out through gritted dentae, finally standing still but not turning to face the mech. His servos clench and unclench at his sides and he has to forcibly wrest his expression into one of indifference.

“I wanted to talk to you.” A servo comes to rest on his pauldron. The touch is light, warm, almost hesitant, and it makes him mad. “About— you know. What happened. Last time.”

“I believe you made yourself perfectly clear,” he snaps, giving into the urge to drop his shoulder away from the Prime's touch. He's sure that if he looks, there will be a perfect print of his palm scorched into scarred silver. “We have nothing to talk about.”

“Listen, I was thinking, and I realised—”

Again, the smaller mech goes to speak and again Megatron abruptly silences him, his anger roiling viciously beneath the surface. His companion’s EM field is hot with frustration, some angry sort of want jutting out in harsh points, digging into Megatron's plating.

The mech circles around to his front and Megatron hisses angrily, turning to walk in the opposite direction, but—

“Would you just shut up and listen to me?” Optimus thunders, grabbing him by the pauldron to spin him around. Megatron snarls, combat systems whirring into life at the perceived provocation, and without really thinking about it he sends a forceful punch cracking across the Prime's jaw.

The red-and-blue mech reels backwards, catching himself on a nearby column, and when he looks up his optics are so bright they are almost aglow, narrowed and furious. Smoke trails slowly from his stacks, a sure indicator of the anger he's trying to control - he's always liked to play holy, but this time, Megatron isn't going to let him. This time, he wants to see Optimus; Optimus, the mech, not Optimus, the Prime. He wants to see if there's anything left in there he can recognise.

“I could kill you,” he growls, trying his best to rile the mech up. “In fact, I just might.”

The Prime’s smokestacks actually whistle - that's new - as he launches himself forwards, servos outstretched, and they fall back into violence.

Megatron's optics are hard and focused, cold steel, looking not at him but rather through him, running sims and calculations and predicting his next move before even he knows what it will be. There's a certain beauty to him, in the sureness of his movements, clean and precise, deadly, that Optimus has always sort of admired.

It's a far cry from the start of their conflict, where they'd both been sloppy and uncontrolled, fighting purely off of instinct and anger - but wartime is a cruel yet apt teacher both in how to hurt and how to stay alive, and Optimus has spent more of his life in war than he has in peace.

Now he finds himself fighting with a rage he's not sure he's ever truly known, discharging shots from his blaster and swinging wildly with his axe. Next to Megatron, he's messy, uncoordinated, energon burning through his lines like enginefire, all-consuming in its inferno.

Later, he will be embarrassed by this. He will bury his face in his servos and slide downwards where he leans against the wall, fans working at their maximum speed to try and keep him at an appropriate temperature. But for now, he spits the energon from his mouth and only very narrowly avoids another strike from his opponent.

“You must be getting old.” Megatron is goading him, he thinks, but it sounds like he's miles away, voice echoing against the empty walls. “You're getting… sloppy.”

Optimus snarls and swings another punch that Megatron blocks easily, twisting his arm backwards so that the Prime slams against his chest, pinned there in his harsh grip. It's— It's weird. Like a dance, intimate, but it hurts . Down to his core.

He looks up and Megatron is glaring down at him, optics burning that same sickening crimson. He goes to move, to break out of the mech's grasp, but instead Megatron uses the motion to turn and pin him against the wall, fist slamming into the wall just shy of his audials hard enough to leave a dent.

Suddenly he is reminded of a time long, long ago, where D-16 had pinned him to the wall and told him he was reckless and stupid and Orion, you could have died, what in the Pits did you do that for? If I'd lost you—

Orion had wanted to kiss him, then. And he still wants to now.

“I hate you,” he says, but his vocaliser wobbles and he doesn't mean it. “I hate you, I hate you, I…”

He trails off. He can't keep lying.

“You told me you weren't Orion,” Megatron rumbles, low and crackling with hints of static, “but I think you lied.” He's ducking his helm, gaze flittering repeatedly down to the smaller mech's mouth, and slag he wants this mech so much it hurts, but he's fragged things up again and again, he can't keep hurting his friend like this—

“Dee,” he raps, resetting his vocaliser with a click. “Dee, listen—”

“You told me I wasn't D-16, too.” He might be imagining it, but he thinks he sounds… hurt. “Did you… Did you mean it?”

Optimus swallows, thick. His throat feels tight. He doesn't know what to say.

There's definitely something broken in Megatron's gaze. His vents are shaky and golden-yellow bleeds through into his dark optics, swirling in the corners of red. “Do you really not recognise me?”

“Slag,” he breathes, disengaging his battlemask with a shh-thnk. In one swift movement, he stretches upwards, locks his arms around the back of Megatron's neck, and kisses him.

Megatron lets out this broken keening noise and melts into him, servos scrambling from the wall to cup his cheeks, thumbs swiping at the coolant starting to slip from his optics. He's crowding into Optimus's space, engine rumbling and warm, EMF heavy with sadness, longing, apology, I'm sorry, please don't leave me again—

“I'm sorry,” he whispers into the corner of Megatron's lips, running his servos along broad shoulders, rubbing soothing patterns into warm silver plating. “Primus, Dee, I'm so sorry. For— everything.”

“I'm—” Megatron’s vocaliser clicks as he resets it past the hiccup in his voice, pressing another kiss against Optimus's mouth. “I've been so lost without you, and I hate it. Millennia of war and I'm still the same as I ever was. Cowardly. Small.”

“I really thought you hated me,” Optimis murmurs after a while, feeling really quite miserable with himself. “And after everything I did to you, I wouldn't have blamed you.” A slow, rattling in-vent. “The worst part was, whenever I saw you, I was angry at you, but at the same time all I wanted to do was just… drag you back home with me. I was driving myself mad.

“I hurt you,” he continues. “In more ways than I ever knew it was possible to. When you were hurting, when you needed me most, I cast you out of your home. And then even when you did come back, I kept you at arm's length, because I was so afraid of hurting you again. Ironic.”

Silence. Optimus swallows and tries not to feel too scared.

“I don't want to be your plaything,” is all Megatron says, at length, seemingly half a warning and half an admission. He looks oddly guilty, here in the warmth of the Prime's embrace, the Matrix glittering beneath his palms. He spreads his fingers across the surface of the mech's broad chestplates and feels himself a sinner knelt before a stained glass window, awaiting the judgement of Primus. “I figured that was all you wanted me for. A political tool, a guard dog you could control.”

An odd mixture of guilt and disgust settles heavy in the bottom of the Prime's tanks. Megatron had really thought that? Although, it… makes sense, doesn't it? What has he ever done to prove otherwise?

“No,” he mutters, when Megatron just stared at him. “No, I… Sorry. I’ve fragged a lot of things up.”

Megatron huffs against him, exasperated yet fond, and he finds himself shrinking a little, folding defensively into himself. But the silver-grey mech lifts his chin gently on two digits and says, affection curling at his lip, “You're such a dumbaft.”

“So are you,” Optimus retorts a little snappily, trying not to feel too hot. Then, when Megatron snacks gently at his pauldron - “Hey! What was that for?”

But Megatron never gives him an answer. He's too busy kissing him again, one servo cradling his jaw so tenderly he feels he might have suddenly turned to glass without his noticing - what other explanation does he have for the gentleness his Protector is treating him with? It's almost surreal; a warframe capable of such violence, such destruction, with servos that whisper so gently across his plating.

“I love you,” he whispers, without meaning to, into one of many kisses. It must be the wrong thing, though, because Megatron stills, frozen like he's experiencing a system crash. His servo twitches against Optimus's waist and the Prime curses himself inwardly. He should have known - Megatron has been flighty ever since the first incident, and now that they seem to have a good thing going Optimus slags it up by saying that of all things? What a—

Megatron shifts, wrenching him from his spiralling thoughts with a gentle scrape of teeth along his jaw, and despite how light the touch is it still makes the Prime's vents hitch. It's his turn to freeze now, wide-opticed and engine rumbling uncertainly, feeling (and presumably looking) for all the world like a skittish electrodeer, caught in the beam of a miner's helmlamp.

“I'm going to end up ruining you,” Megatron breathes, right against his audial, pointed teeth grazing against sensitive finials. Optimus only barely suppresses a shudder, and he's sure Megatron knows this from the tremble of self-satisfied silent laughter across the powerful line of his shoulders.

“You already have,” Optimus responds, once he's managed to pull his processor together just enough to actually think. He leans in, brushes a kiss to the side of Megatron's helm, and continues in a low whisper, “Do it again.”

══════════════════

“That's disgusting,” says Starscream, lip curled in his distaste. “In the hallway, of all places. Primus.”

Soundwave, who is casting the feed to a monitor, shrugs. “Soundwave: has seen worse.”

“Seriously?” The Seeker looks genuinely revolted, like his companion has just told him he's been watching Skywarp spit into his morning energon every day for the last ten cycles. Which, to be fair, doesn't sound too far-fetched. “From who?”

“I believe he is referring to you,” says Shockwave, piping helpfully up from Soundwave’s other side. He does not remove his optic from the screen. Starscream is sure he's gathering data and formulating a plan for the very nanoklik he and the other 'Wave return to their quarters. “And Skyfire.”

Starscream slams his fist through the monitor.

“Soundwave: was watching that,” is the only mildly irritated objection he gets.