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“I’m gonna kill Whirl.” Rodimus curled around his amica after Ratchet had finished looking him over. The ex-wrecker had decided to start a bar fight with a few mechs, which Drift had attempted to stop, only to end up being hit in the helm by a table that Whirl had thrown.
“Drift will be fine, he’ll just have a bit of a helmache when he wakes up.” Ratchet lay down on the other side of his conjunx, reaching out his servo for his other partner to hold. “He’s survived worse.”
“I know.”
“And we’ll be there when he wakes up.”
“Yeah.” Rodimus yawned. “G’night Ratch.”
“Goodnight Roddy.”
---------
Ugh, what did he have last night?
Onlining his optics revealed a myriad of crystal fragments hung on the ceiling. How strange. Stranger still was the weight he felt around his waist.
He turned his helm to his left to see a gorgeous red and yellow speedster who appeared deep in recharge, judging by the complete relaxation of his face.
What was concerning was the Autobot logo on his chassis.
Deadlock attempted to piece together how he had ended up here, but all he could recall was the recent request Lord Megatron had made that he had denied. Perhaps he sought to find some comfort in the arms of some random mech in a club, and then they ended up at his place. He needed to leave before any of this mech’s friends came looking for him.
As he went to move the arm off of him, Deadlock saw there was another servo. Primus, he had really gone crazy the previous night.
Turning his helm to the right caused his processor to do a complete reboot.
Why in Primus’s name was Ratchet in his berth???!?!
Oh frag. He was done for. How did this even-?
A slight murmur from his left.
“Drift? You up?”
He had given them his old name it seems, but surely Ratchet would’ve recognized him? Unless the medic forgot one of the countless junkies he pulled from the streets. It was probably that. He refused to admit how much that thought hurt him.
“You feeling ok?” The speedster was surprisingly courteous, which was perhaps the reason Deadlock had picked him up from whatever dive bar they had been in last night.
“I’m fine.” He attempted to remove the arms from around him and sit up fully. The awake mech allowed him to do so and got up from the berth himself.
“I’ll grab us all some energon.” That was better than Deadlock could’ve expected from a random hookup. “You know how grumpy the old mech gets.” His laughter that followed his quip was enticing, and when he stood up and walked towards the small kitchen, Deadlock couldn’t pull himself away from the view.
Wait, what did he mean by ‘you know how grumpy the old mech gets’? How should he know Ratchet’s refueling preferences?
The medic began to stir from his right, arm rewrapping itself around Deadlock’s waist.
“Don’t try to run off, I still need to do a scan to make sure there’s no permanent damage.” Aww, he must still be half in recharge and think Deadlock was one of his patients.
Deadlock wanted to indulge this fantasy he had suddenly found himself in, and if it were just a dream, surely there couldn’t be anything too pressing that needed to be done in the waking world.
“Do you now doctor?” Deadlock let his voice slip into a slight growl as he leaned down from his upright seating position to get right in Ratchet’s face.
“I do you-” The rebuttal was cut off by Deadlock kissing him. This was a kiss he had always dreamed he would have, and now it was really happening! He allowed his fangs to graze Ratchet’s lips, forcing them to part as he deepened the kiss.
“Damn. Right in front of my breakfast.” The fire colored mech had returned, this time holding three cubes of energon. Deadlock leaned back and took one of the three to pass to Ratchet. As he went to grab his own cube, he wrapped his servo around the mech’s wrist and pulled him down for a kiss as well. He should probably keep his affections equal despite his slight preference between the two. As he pulled away, the bot laughed again. “Not that I don’t enjoy this, but drink your energon. We don’t need the Hatchet coming for either of us.”
Deadlock gratefully took the cube and drank a third of it in one gulp. It had the right kind of iron and iridium shavings he liked. It would be tough to pull himself away from this, but he knew he would have to sooner rather than later. Lord Megatron already wasn’t too pleased with him right now, and this would only add fuel to the fire.
“Ok, you’ve delayed me long enough.” Ratchet sat up, tossing his empty cube to the side. “Let me scan you now.”
“You really don’t need to; hangovers will be terrible no matter what.” Both mechs stared at him. “What?”
“Did you forget how you ended up here?” Ratchet asked.
Yes. “No.”
“How did you end up here then?” Deadlock prayed they wouldn’t be too upset.
“Fine, I don’t remember how I ended up here between the two most beautiful mechs I’ve ever laid my optics on.” Hopefully, the flattery would smooth over his blunder.
“Whirl threw a table at you.” What. Why would a Wrecker stop at throwing a table at him? Wouldn’t he try to finish the job?
“Rodimus, you could stand to explain a little bit more.” Oh, he finally had a name for the speedster.
“Ok, so, we were at Swerve’s and Whirl just started going at some mechs for some reason, btw I’m letting Magnus sort that all out, and you tried to get in the middle of it and Whirl threw a table at you.”
“Ah.” That was likely the main reason for the helmache. Wait, if he was unconscious, then they didn’t do anything. Why had they taken him back to this room at all? Deadlock needed an out, and he needed it now. “Is there a washrack nearby?” Rodimus shot an odd look at Ratchet but only said,
“Yeah, just right there, remember?” As he pointed towards a door on the west wall. Perfect, he could just slip out of a window and find his ship that he was sure he had brought with him to whatever planet ‘Swerve’s’ was on.
Deadlock removed himself from the berth and entered the washrack. He turned to see himself in the mirror.
No. Wait. Who was this? What happened to him?
He looked so much more delicate than before. His plating was a pearly white again, his optics were a bright blue, and his yellow accents were erased entirely. Yet, the thing that shook him the most was the bright red, glowing Autobot insignia right above his spark.
Deadlock was beginning to suspect that he had forgotten quite a bit more than just last night.
----------
“Was he activating off, or was that just me?” Rodimus couldn’t help but stare at the door his amica had gone behind. “Why wouldn’t he remember what was in his own room?”
“He could just be suffering from some mild memory loss due to the aforementioned table to the helm. It should be fine after another full recharge cycle. Drift would tell us if he was injured any more than that.”
“Would he?” Ratchet gave a tired look as he responded,
“No, he wouldn’t. You might have to force him down to the medbay at some point today.”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
A crash from the washrack startled the two of them.
“Scrap.” Of course, something had to be going wrong around here. “Drift! Are you ok?”
No response.
“Drift, respond or I will override the door controls!” Ratchet’s fear in his EM field bled into Rodimus’s.
Still nothing.
Ratchet quickly rushed to the door and slid it open with his medical code. His gasp had Rodimus sprinting to the door as well.
The mirror was in dozens of shards on the ground, and Drift’s fist was right in the middle of where the mirror was. Some of the shards had dug themselves into his servo and were dripping energon profusely.
Rodimus put himself in Drift’s optic range in an attempt to snap him out of whatever mindset he had put himself in. This gave him no time to react as the servo not impaled with glass shot out and wrapped around his throat.
“WOAH! Hey Drift, what’s-”
“THAT’S NOT MY NAME!” Slag, frag, FUCK!
The servo around his throat tightened. The world was getting blurry. He was so killing Whirl later.
“Deadlock.” Ratchet's voice had slipped into his professional medic tone. “Please let Rodimus go. I promise we can explain any questions you may have.”
“WHY DO I LOOK LIKE THIS?” Thankfully, the servo loosened slightly as the other gestured wildly to the rest of his frame. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!”
Rodimus attempted to answer but only managed static. Primus, literally give them one singular break, please. Ratchet took a half step closer.
“Please, just take a moment and let me look at that servo. The glass can’t be comfortable.” Rodimus had never heard Ratchet be this kind to a patient before, but to be fair, Ratchet’s patients usually weren’t his conjunx holding his other partner hostage. Drift only let out an animalistic snarl.
“Answer me this one question doctor, since you refuse to answer any others: how did I get here? I can’t imagine the Prime would let someone like me near his Chief Medical Officer, and I don’t even know where you fit into this.” Drift dug his digits into his throat cabling slightly, which was really just adding insult to injury at this point.
“What we told you earlier was true-”
“LIES!”
Rodimus watched Ratchet take a quick resetting vent. Thank Primus the medic knew what he was doing.
---------
Ratchet had no slagging clue what he was doing.
His usually calm conjunx was partly strangling their amica, and he was convinced that he was still a Decepticon. Weren’t things like this only supposed to happen in those bad pieces of human media packed to the brim with overdone tropes?
“Dri- Deadlock,” He couldn’t afford to make a single mistake. If Drift ended up truly hurting Rodimus, Ratchet knew his conjunx would never forgive himself. “What reason do I have to lie to you?”
“You have every reason to do so! I’m one of Megatron’s top generals. I’m sure Prowl would love to get his claws in me.” At least Ratchet knew at what point in time Drift’s processor currently thought he was in. “That’s what it is, huh. Prowl found out about our past and put you in my way.” How was Drift getting any of this? “But how in the pit does this fragger fit into this?”
Rodimus wasn’t looking great. Ratchet presumed he was going through some sort of shock.
“Look, this may be hard to process, but you haven’t gone by Deadlock in a very long time.” Drift didn’t cut him off this time, so Ratchet pushed forth. “I’m your conjunx, and you’re currently strangling your amica.”
Ratchet pushed the sincerity through their bond, and he felt Rodimus do the same.
Drift released Rodimus and stumbled backwards.
“How-why?” His voice sounded so sad that Ratchet wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around him, but he knew that that wouldn’t help right now. “Help.”
And with that, Drift dropped straight to the ground.
Ratchet just barely caught him before he hit the floor.
---------
Drift awoke to murmurs a short distance from him.
“...might not remember this.” Ratchet.
“What if he still doesn’t even know who I am?” Rodimus, but his voice sounded off.
Drift’s attempt to sit up was stopped by a cuff that held one of his servos to the small table beside their berth, and looking at the other one revealed that it was heavily bandaged. The movement of the table caused both of the other mechs in the room to look at him.
“How could I not know who you are, Rodi?” Rodimus’s optics lit up brilliantly.
“Drift?”
“Who else could I be?”
Rodimus threw himself at Drift. The pure relief in his amica’s field felt heavy, and Drift cradled him and rubbed soothing circles on his spoiler. He couldn’t help but notice the dents on Rodimus’s throat. Someone had tried to strangle him. Drift cupped his chin with the bandaged servo and lifted it to allow him to see the damage better.
“Who did this?” Rodimus let out a croaked laugh.
“You did.” Drift’s spark froze in his chassis. “You didn’t…know me. You thought you were Deadlock again.”
No. How could that monster in him claw its way out again? How could he have hurt Rodimus? Primus, he was horrible-
“If anything, it’s Whirl’s fault.” Ratchet had slid behind him and undone the cuff. “Your memory files must’ve gotten corrupted when you took that hit to the helm. I should’ve prepared for more outcomes. I was careless with-”
“Hey, wait! It’s usually my thing to blame myself!” Rodimus shouted indignantly. “You two are stealing my thing!”
The three devolved into laughter.
When it died down, Drift lay back into his two partners' arms.
“Primus, we all need so much therapy.”
“Agreed.” Ratchet and Rodimus said in sync.
They all lay there, simply basking in each other’s presence. He still needed to apologize.
“I love you both. I pray that I will never be put in that mindset again. If I had-”
“I love you too, babe, but please just duck next time someone throws a table.” Rodimus flicked his forehead lightly.
Ratchet flicked Rodimus in turn, eliciting a small yelp from the Prime.
“Recharge. Both of you. Now.”
Not wishing to invoke his ire, the two speedsters settled down, and the three of them fell into a peaceful rest.
They were all safe in each other’s arms.