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Megatron is shaken rudely awake from his recharge by a pair of familiar servos. Actually, he must still be dreaming, because there's no way the grip could really belong to Optimus. He's in his berthroom in the Decepticon base, for frag's sake, there's no fragging way he could ever be so stupid as to break into the space currently occupied by the entire opposing army—
The servos shake him again. His engine rumbles in a low, frustrated growl and he snaps his optics open. He'd been having the most wonderful dream.
“Hello, love,” says one Optimus Prime, beaming down at him, “you're awake! I was beginning to think I wouldn't get the chance to talk to you.”
“...Optimus?” Megatron blinks, squinting, and cycles his optics several times. The red-and-blue before him swims, but does not disappear, and he briefly wonders if he's still dreaming.
He goes to rise from the berth, but the other mech gently shifts to press a palm to his pauldron to prevent this. “No, no, don't get up - they’re probably gonna sound the alarm soon, and we don't want you to look complicit, do we?” His grin is lopsided and terribly cheeky, and Megatron wants to kiss it off of him.
Instead, he settles for saying, “What the frag are you doing?”
“I believe it's called ‘breaking and entering’,” the Prime answers, overly cheerful. The Decepticon groans and digs the heel of his palm into one of his optics. “I'm sorry, did you not want to see me?”
“Dumbaft,” he says by way of answer. “You could have commed me.”
“I could have done.” The Autobot shrugs, blue gaze gleaming with mischief. “But by Primus is that boring.”
Megatron huffs and reaches out to grab the sides of his faceplate, sitting up to bump their helms together affectionately. “I did miss you,” he says, gently, “but I don't think this was the… wisest course of action.”
Optimus rolls his optics. “I'm sick of being wise,” he says, as if that explains everything. Everyone expects Optimus Prime to be all sage and noble, but I'm still Orion Pax somewhere underneath rings in the silence without ever being voiced. It's a little bitter, but it doesn't hurt, not when they find solace in each other again.
“I know,” Megatron says, tracing a scar on the mech's lip with his thumb. His gaze follows the movement as he avoids meeting his lover's. “Primus, this is so stupid.”
“Not even in my top five,” Optimus says. Megatron shoves (jokingly) at his pauldron, then grabs at it to pull his mech down onto the berth with him, humming softly as he curls around Optimus's form.
He'd always been bigger, both in height and broadness, even when they were D-16 and Orion Pax, and it's a fact that hasn't changed as Megatron and Optimus. Secretly, he has always liked this; has always liked folding the bot into his arms, liked the way he fit nicely underneath his chin, the way their servos fit together. Sure, Optimus is broader than Orion had been, but he's still comparably thin next to himself, and slag it all, that waist was just unfair.
He's about to drop peacefully back into recharge when Optimus, fingers curling gently into the top of his chassis, where the armour meets his neck, decides to kick sharply at his shinguard. He jerks, the assault startling him once again into wakefulness, and returns the favour with a kick of his own.
“Ow,” Optimus whines, fingers tightening. “Uncalled for.”
“Very called for,” he counters.
The mech seems to consider for a long moment. “Go frag yourself.”
“Frag me yourself, Prime,” he mutters idly into his neck, where he finds himself now. Gently, playfully, he nips at one of the cables, and Optimus gasps in mock-affront and smacks at his backplate. Affection swells through his field, unabashed, and he nuzzles affectionately against the Autobot’s forehelm again. “If Starscream finds you here, you're slagged.”
“Which is why,” Optimus says, grinning from audial-to-audial, “you’ll hide me, should the time come.”
Megatron squints at him. “And how would I do that?”
The Prime squints right back, jabbing a blunt digit into his chestplate. “Does Starscream often enter your berthroom unannounced?”
“Perhaps,” is his noncommittal answer, but they both know it very much means absolutely not, I can't think of anything more strange.
The Prime rolls his optics and shuffles them both around, dragging the ’Con’s arm up to rest over his waist. “Stop it, you'll make me jealous.”
“Wouldn't that be a shame.” Amusement tints the tone of his vocaliser as he speaks, darkened optics shifting from crimson to almost-orange. It's something Optimus has been seeing more and more of lately, and he's more than willing to admit that to him, at least, it's infinitely more beautiful than any Cybertronian sunset.
Megatron yelps when the bot kicks his shin again.
“What is your fragging problem?” he hisses, gaze darting anxiously to the doorway. “Are you trying to irritate me?”
“Nope.” He pops the ‘p’ and kicks harder at him.
“Then are you trying to alert this entire base to your presence?” Megatron snaps, irritation building. It's probably a funny sight - his teeth are bared in a fanged smile, but it's buried in Prime's neck, and his arm is tight around the other mech.
“Nah.”
“Primus.” He sighs heavily, like he's terribly put-upon, and tucks himself under his enemy's chin. “You are a fool.”
“And your insults are getting really boring,” Optimus retorts mildly. “You used to be cool, Megs. With actual good insults.”
“Do not call me ‘Megs’.”
“Fine,” he says, and Megatron relaxes slightly, “Meggles.”
Megatron flips. Literally. He grips Optimus by the shoulders and turns him onto his backstrut, pinning him into the berth, optics burning red and fangs once again bared. It would be a genuinely threatening display were it not for the smears of red and blue along war-forged silver, the soft whirring of his vents, and the gentle cycling of his optics as he tries to not-so-subtly take in the sight of the Prime beneath him.
Optimus merely quirks an optic ridge and says nothing.
This is becoming a problem. He has a major dilemma: if he climbs off he'll look stupid, but if he just sits there on top of him and does nothing he'll, well, look stupid. Primus below, he hates this mech.
“Are you gonna do something, or,” drawls Prime, sounding almost bored. He draws his mouth into a casual, borderline uninterested smirk ( excitement and anticipation prickle through his EMF, the lying scrapheap), and the upward pull of the corner of his lips reveals just the barest hint of blunt fangs.
Megatron's fans kick up a notch and he resets his vocaliser with a click that rings heavily through the silence. His intake feels horribly dry.
Finally, finally, he leans down and—
— ALERT: PROXIMITY BREACH. LOCKDOWN IN EFFECT UNTIL THREAT NEUTRALISED.
Megatron groans, scrubs a servo down his faceplate, and flops onto his back besides his companion.
“Frag,” he says, with feeling. Optimus snickers into his palm and tries to mask the muted disappointment rippling through his field. The door to his hab slides upon with a shhnk .
This, finally, serves to make the Prime look a little sheepish. “Uh-oh.”
“Every single interior door is now permanently open,” he informs the mech, more than a little snippy. Optimus says, brightly, Ah, and he responds with a dry “‘Ah’ indeed.”
“Lord Megatron!” someone screeches from somewhere down the hallway, and he recognises the crackling, high-pitched vocaliser immediately as belonging to Starscream. “We must ensure your safety.”
“I can take care of myself, Starscream,” he calls back, as coolly as possible, forcing as much authority into his voice as possible. “I am not a sparkling.”
They both hear the returning “Barely.” It goes ignored. They both wait until the rhythmic, steady clack, clack, clack of the seeker's heels fades away down the hallway, and then both huff a poorly-stifled laugh.
“If they find you, they'll kill you,” Megatron whispers, and Options bumps their helms together and breathes a laugh against him that devolves into a fit of quiet giggling. Megatron smacks a servo over his faceplate and tries to repress a snicker of his own.
(“Shh!” D-16 hisses desperately, throwing his servo over Orion's mouth. “Shut up! If Darkwing finds us here, we are so dead!”
Orion squints in his amusement and licks against D’s palm.
“What the frag— Seriously, Pax?!”
The mech shrugs, and D-16 holds exasperated optic contact with him for a few moments before they both devolve into quiet laughter, leaning against each other for support.)
For one brief, painfully beautiful moment, it's like they're D-16 and Orion again. The moment itself passes quickly, but memory remains.
“We need to find a way to get you out of here,” Megatron asserts in a low, rumbling murmur, and Optimus huffs and leans against him petulantly.
“I was hoping we'd get to spend some actual time together. You know, not at each other's throats for once.”
Megatron looks down at him with a bemused glint to his optics and remains silent.
“Okay,” the Autobot adds, after a moment, “I mean, at each other’s throats doesn't sound too bad. If you catch my drift.”
Megatron sighs. It's going to be a long - he quickly checks his chronometer - evening.
He thinks for a klik, weighing up their options. Optimus will be spotted immediately if they leave his hab - there's bound to be someone in the halls to see him now that the alarm is raised, although there is still a risk of someone searching in here for the apparent intruder, however slim… Either way there's a risk, and either way he needs to get Optimus out of here. Because, as much as he loves seeing and spending time with him, there are much easier (and safer!) opportunities to do so than right now.
Wait.
How did the Prime even get inside without initially triggering the alarm? He relays his question to his companion, who lifts him he pauldron in a shrug, feigning innocence.
“That's delicate intel,” he tells him, with a little secret smile, like this is something really important and not, well, how in the Pits he got in here. “If I told you, I'd have to kill you.”
“You can try,” Megatron answers mildly. “But you'll never succeed.”
“Sure, sure.” He waves a servo dismissively and Megatron sets his processor back onto the topic before them. He chews slightly at his lower lip, fangs pricking gently at the scarred metal, indented with little nicks. (He'd had this habit as D-16, but back then he hadn't had such prominent teeth. Now the metalflesh is textured gently with pinprick scars.)
(He misses the way Optimus cycles his optics to one of their widest apertures, watching the movement with a little more interest to be completely casual.)
Optimus jerks with the force of an idea, like a blow to the helm with a shovel. He grasps at the Decepticon’s pauldrons, shakes him a little more violently than strictly necessary, and hisses “Hit me!”
Megatron blinks. Once, twice. “What?”
“Hit me,” the Prime insists, optics alight and faceplate pulling into an almost manic smile. “You gotta hit me hard, though. Make it look real.”
Megatron squints at him. The mech's grin is earnest, and he's burning with that same self-assured determination as always, the glow of a mech who knows exactly what he's doing (even when he doesn't).
He shrugs, pushes up off of the berth, balls his servo into a fist, and swings.
“Yeowch!” Optimus near-howls, muffled quickly by his palm. There's a small dent in his cheekplate, the black paint of Megatron's fist smeared over it, and coolant gathers in the corners of his optics. “That's… That's good. My turn.”
Megatron blinks. “Hey, wait—”
Too late. Optimus absolutely decks him one. They exchange blows for a little while - Optimus taking more than Megatron - and the Decepticon is becoming less confused and more incensed; what kind of fragging plan is this? Punching the slag out of each other in his berthroom while the majority of the base is searching viciously for their supposed intruder?
He goes to speak, to growl his distaste for this ‘plan’ right at the Autobot, but his opponent simply stops, relaxing his stance like he's flipped a switch, and grins up at him, wiping at his lips with the back of a servo. It comes away tinted blue from where his mouthplate is cut.
“That'll do,” he says brightly. Megatron has to physically stop himself from another swing.
“Are you going to explain this?” he grits out, gesturing with an irritated servo between the two of them. “I thought you'd come to see me, not to spar.”
“Yeah, it's part of the plan.” He busiest himself with digging around in his subspace, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouthplates in concentration (Megatron tries his hardest not to be distracted by this) before he lets out a jubilant little a-ha! and pulls out a… pair of cuffs?
“Why do you have those?”
Optimus winks. “Never know when you'll need them.”
“O…kay.” He's choosing not to look too deeply into that, instead squinting at the mech as clips them over his own wrists. He curls his lip into a half-sparked sneer. “This plan of yours better be slagging good.”
Optimus looks blankly at him as if to say what plan, then winks, offering his bound wrists. When Megatron just continues to stare, he rolls his optics and explains slowly, gesticulating all the while as though talking to a newspark, “We are in civil unrest. Handcuffs used to arrest bots. Yes?”
Megatron huffs and looks away, setting his faceplate into his most thunderous scowl as he snatches up the handcuffs and begins to march them out into the hallway. He’s tense, braced to meet any manner of Decepticons on their way out, and— Pits, what would he say? How would he even begin to explain this? But thankfully, luck is on his side today, because they meet no-one. He will not think too much about it or his luck will run out.
“You know,” Optimus says, mildly, like he’s just read something vaguely interesting on the newspad, “visiting you would be a lot easier if you’d just sign a peace treaty already.”
“Draft one, then,” he mumbles, not really paying attention, still on high alert with his sensor net spread as far as possible. These passages are rarely used by anyone but him - it’s just a labyrinthine series of corridors and unused storage rooms, one of which he’d claimed as his habsuite (comfortably far from everyone else, but not ages away) - but it’s best to be vigilant.
“Okay,” the Prime responds with a shrug. He cranes onto the tips of his pedes to peer over the shoulder of his ‘captor’, then starts to become irritated when there’s nothing in sight that warrants this little interest in him, judging from the way he swings his cuffed servos against the mech’s hip.
“Ow,” the Decepticon leader says flatly, but otherwise ignores him. “Nearly there—”
“Nearly where?” purrs one of the last voices Megatron wants to hear right now, uncomfortably close to his audial. He stifles a sigh and tips his helm to the side.
“Starscream,” he greets, tilting his chin.
“Lord Megatron. Pleased to see you still function.” Starscream tilts his chin in response, then locks hungry optics on the only-slightly-battered Prime at his side. Megatron only just stops his frame from stepping in front of the smaller mech, resulting in a slight, strange jolting motion that he hopes nobody notices. “And… Who is this? Optimus Prime?”
Optimus gives him a wonky smile, the movement pulling at his lip and re-opening the small cut his nanites had been hard at work healing. Energon drips slowly down his chin and the seeker watches with thinly-veiled interest. “In the dented metal.”
Red optics drift to the cuffs still settled snugly around the Prime’s wrists. “And in chains,” he adds, raising his gaze back up to Megatron’s. He looks curious, slightly judgemental - all par for the course with him.
“I caught him bumbling around somewhere outside my hab,” he half-lies, because Optimus had been bumbling around inside his hab, “and now I am escorting him out of our territory.”
No point in lying to Starscream. The mech is far older than the two of them combined and has a strange penchant for seeing other's lies.
There's a gleam to the seeker's optics as he leans forwards, gripping Optimus by the chin and inspecting that damned cut on his slagging mouth. Megatron should never have punched him there. “Escorting him out?” he drawls, turning Optimus this way and that, taking stock of the various dents and scuffs on his faceplate. “Why not kill him now and be done with it? Looks to me like you've already tried.”
Something within him itches.
“Starscream,” he says, quietly, venomously, drawing himself up to his full height, pauldrons set and expression dark. He knows his optics are burning as he sets one broad, heavy servo roughly on the seeker’s shoulder where it meets his neck, tips of his digits brushing dangerously against the ridge of his wing. The pad of his thumb presses lightly into thick neck cabling. “Are you questioning me?”
Starscream is power-hungry, but he is no fool. His lip twitches and he scoffs, but relinquishes his grip on Prime's face anyway, stepping carefully out of the mech’s grip and to the side to allow them past. “No, my Lord. I would never.”
That's what I thought, he wants to say, but instead he goes with “See to it that the alarms are disabled. The situation is under control.”
Starscream says nothing, merely nods and stalks away. Once he's sure the mech is gone, he sighs, turning back to his companion. “We're nearly there. Let's go.”
“That was hot,” Optimus comments amicably, and begins walking again. In the wrong direction.
Megatron grabs him and turns him down the right corridor, then pauses, optic ridges furrowing. “What?”
Optimus Prime whistles a jaunty little tune and ignores him.
Three days later, he returns to his habsuite to find a datapad placed neatly on top of his berth, labelled ‘FIRST DRAFT’ in that robochicken-scratch writing he'd recognise anywhere. He picks it up, reads through it, and sends out a comm.
[ That peace treaty of yours looks good. ]