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Megatron sat at his desk in the room he had commandeered to serve as his combination office and quarters aboard the Lost Light. The room was not large, was not finely adorned, and certainly, certainly, was not pink.
It was, perhaps, a bit barren. Megatron had never been the type to become overly attached to sentimental objects—for a long while after his construction, it had not been an option, and once he had begun to champion the Decepticon cause, it had been a distraction for which he’d had very little patience—but even his own, spartan sensibilities had allowed for a modicum of decoration, a few war trophies kept here and there. The dull, grey room in which he sat had neither.
The war trophies, of course, were long gone. What few had not been lost in those last, fading years of his life’s great struggle had been taken prior to his trial and subsequent humiliation at the hands of the Autobots. And as for decoration, he would rather die than give Rodimus the slightest impression he endorsed the sort of frivolity his idiot “co-captain” seemed to live for.
And so he sat in a dull, grey room at his dull, grey desk, churning through the datawork necessary to keep a ship like the Lost Light running. The job was of particular import now, as the ship recovered from the shock and disruption of recent events. Brainstorm’s unique combination of genius and hubris had left the crew and, more importantly, the command staff, reeling. Rodimus, of course, was doing exactly nothing to help.
There were three deliberate, identical knocks at the door.
“Open,” Megatron commanded.
The door opened to reveal the ex-Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord.
Ultra Magnus greeted him with a shallow nod. “Megatron.”
“Ultra Magnus,” Megatron returned the greeting, but not the nod. He flicked a toggle, and the display he had been working on retracted back into his desk. “What is it?”
“We,” Ultra Magnus shifted his weight from one foot to the other, seeming to hesitate for a moment. “We should talk.”
Another awkward beat of silence, of Ultra Magnus trying to parse some portion of Megatron’s mind from his demeanor. It was, of course, a futile effort, met only with Megatron’s usual facade of steel and stone. But then . . .
Then, the hesitation disappeared. The ship’s third-in-command stepped into the room, suddenly decisive, with nothing in his face or posture but strict, cold certainty. “We need to talk, Megatron. Alone.”
Megatron felt the corner of his mouth tug up, just slightly, at that. He approved of that sort of confidence in his subordinates. He always had. It was one thing, he thought, that Starscream had never quite understood in all their time together. Perhaps if he had, their relationship might have been a bit less . . . fraught.
Still, it wouldn’t do to have his subordinates think they could walk over him. He would have to do something to ensure at least a modicum of discomfort on Ultra Magnus’s part when it came to his intruding on Megatron’s work.
“Is that so, Ultra Magnus?” Megatron said. “Then you may as well close the door behind you, since you’ve already taken the liberty of entering without an invitation.”
To Megatron’s surprise, Ultra Magnus simply did so, seemingly completely undeterred. Odd. He had thought Ultra Magnus possessed of a sense of propriety staunch enough to give him pause under the weight of so brazen an implication of rudeness. Apparently he had misread the bot.
Ultra Magnus saw the door closed, then strode in and sat on the edge of Megatron’s recharge slab, the only piece of furniture in the room save his desk and the small stool upon which Megatron currently sat.
“I think you know why I’m here,” Ultra Magnus said.
Megatron’s optics narrowed. “Suppose I do not. Why are you here?”
“It’s about . . .” A fragment of Ultra Magnus’s earlier hesitation crept into his bearing, then. “It’s about your behavior. During the Time Kerfuffle.”
“The—” Megatron began.
“Perceptor’s name for it, not mine,” Ultra Magnus said. “Rodimus heard him say it once, gave him a Star for ‘Posh-est Names for Total Clusterfucks,’ and hasn’t referred to the incident in any other way for the past two days.”
“He wh—” Megatron began.
“I know,” Ultra Magnus said. “Trust me. I know.”
Megatron sighed.
“But we’re getting distracted,” Ultra Magnus continued. “This isn’t about Rodimus, or even about Perceptor. It’s about you, and the actions you chose to take during the . . . incident.”
Megatron scowled, stood, began to pace slowly across the room.
“Do you have some good excuse?” Ultra Magnus asked. “Or did you really just attack a member of your own crew because you got upset and scared, like it looked?”
Megatron stopped and turned to face Ultra Magnus. “As I told you at the time,” he growled, “I had to defend myself. To speak for my interests.”
“Right,” said Ultra Magnus. “Just ‘speaking for your interests.’ Which is why Preceptor had to visit the medibay afterwards to get his jaw component realigned.”
“Perceptor,” Megatron snarled, “got in my way.”
“No,” said Ultra Magnus. “I got in your way. Because you were acting unreasonably.”
“Unreasonably?”
What did Ultra Magnus think he was insinuating, sitting there so calmly on Megatron’s recharge slab?
“Unacceptably, in fact. Perceptor took the only prudent course of action, given the circumstances. You hit him for it, several times, and it wasn’t until I had physically restrained you and Perceptor had told you off that you finally backed down,” Ultra Magnus said, a bit of heat making its way into his voice.
Megatron felt a matching ire rise within his spark. He stepped forward, loomed, and fixed Ultra Magnus with a cold sneer. “I believe, old friend, that you are letting our personal history get in the way of your own proper behavior. Is this how you speak to your commanding officer?”
Ultra Magnus’s optics flickered and his face set into a grimace. Then he rose, and suddenly the tables had turned; the situation was reversed. Suddenly, Megatron was looking up at Ultra Magnus.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Ultra Magnus said, optics cold. “I don’t know how you ran things on your side of the war. I suspect it was a bit different than what I’m familiar with. But you’re an Autobot, now. You claim to be reformed. You wear the badge. And on this side of the war, when a senior officer acts inexcusably poorly, we believe in making sure that that officer is held accountable.”
An extremely unpleasant sensation washed over his frame. After a moment of sinking realization, he put a finger on what it was. Megatron felt small.
He tried to compensate with bluster.
“Very well,” he said, through a smirk that was entirely incongruous with his current mood. “And now that you have interrupted my work, apparently for the sole purpose of chastising me for what is indisputably water under the bridge, do you now consider me held appropriately accountable?” He practically spat out the last word.
Ultra Magnus paused, stared down at Megatron. A strange expression—Megatron couldn’t tell whether it was cowed contrition or bewildered disbelief—flashed over his face. Then, it shifted to a dire scowl which left little room for hope that Megatron’s gambit had been successful.
Ultra Magnus placed one hand against Megatron’s chest and stepped forward, pushing Megatron back until his shoulders hit the wall behind him. “No. No, Megatron, I do not.”
Megatron tried to convince himself that the reason he hadn’t put up any real resistance to the motion was that he hadn’t wanted to embarrass himself with the wasted effort. Ultra Magnus was, after all, bigger and stronger than he was; he had proved it during their last altercation. For some reason, though, that very line of thinking seemed to be putting the lie to his own excuses.
And so? Megatron thought. Don’t let yourself linger on it, fool.
“What, then?” he sneered. “Would you have me kneel? Grovel at your feet? Beg forgiveness?”
The pressure against his chest suddenly increased. He thought he felt something in the steel wall behind him give way slightly. “You know as well as I do how little that would fix,” Ultra Magnus said.
“And yet a part of you wants it anyway,” Megatron said. He let a droll, insincere smile surface on his face. “Must be that vaunted Autobot sense of mercy—”
Ultra Magnus’s hand shot up to Megatron’s neck; his other arm crashed against Megatron’s chest, keeping him pinned, helplessly, against the wall. “Perhaps I do want it. Perhaps I could make you do it.”
Megatron laughed. “No, Autobot, you won’t. You’re far too busy worrying about your rules and your codes, following those arbitrary little compulsions you call ‘morals.’ You could never actually—”
In a sudden, twisting motion, Ultra Magnus threw Megatron to the ground. “Article 5, Section 32, Paragraph 4 of the Autobot code,” he snarled.
Megatron tried to get up. Ultra Magnus planted a foot on his chest and pushed. Megatron sprawled back into a tangle of limbs. His head crashed against the corner of his recharge slab. Ultra Magnus hooked the fingers of one hand under the side of Megatron’s helmet plating and wrenched him up to his knees.
“‘When a senior officer acts outside the bounds of their authority and commits crimes or abuses against their own subordinates,’” Ultra Magnus said.
He shoved Megatron back against the slab, tipped his head back, and leaned down over him. Megatron grabbed at his arm, but his grip was too strong, Megatron’s angle of attack all wrong, Ultra Magnus had all the leverage, all the control—
“‘When all other attempts to reason with said officer have failed,’” Ultra Magnus said.
Megatron gave up on moving Ultra Magnus’s arm and tried to stand instead, or at least to worm his way free of his subordinate’s grip. Ultra Magnus’s fingers may as well have been steel rivets, his arm a ship support strut.
“‘When no other ranking officer is available for contact,’” Ultra Magnus said.
Megatron twisted, struggled, writhed, all uselessly. Ultra Magnus endured, inexorable as gravity.
“‘Said officer’s immediate subordinate may assume temporary command through any and all necessary means,’” Ultra Magnus concluded.
Megatron fell limp, kneeling, his back pressed against the side of his recharge slab, his head tilted back at an uncomfortable angle over its edge. He glared at Ultra Magnus, and Ultra Magnus glared back. They were both venting heavily.
Megatron broke the following silence first. “Rodimus is available.” His voice was quiet, low. “You could contact him. The conditions for your little code provision haven’t even been met. You’re a farce.”
Ultra Magnus’s face twisted into a tight grin. “Rodimus said he was ‘doing something super extremely important’ this morning and ‘not to bother him with anything short of another Kerfuffle-level incident.’ I’m willing to place my stake on him not calling foul on this. How about you?”
Megatron felt a dour expression fall across his face. He didn’t dignify Ultra Magnus’s question with a response. Instead, he replied with a question of his own. “Is this your ‘necessary means,’ then, Autobot? You couldn’t persuade me to toe the line with your words, so you thought you’d resort to some light fisticuffs to make me behave?”
Ultra Magnus leaned closer, until his face took up nearly all of Megatron’s field of view. His grin faded, and his optics narrowed. “The code doesn’t say I have the authority to cuff your ears and hold you down for a few seconds. It says I have the authority to ‘assume temporary command.’ And I don’t believe I’ve accomplished that yet.” Ultra Magnus’s fingers dug roughly into the plating under the edge of Megatron’s helm. “Is this my necessary means? No, Megatron. I haven’t even started in on those.”
* * *
The door was locked. Ultra Magnus had made a show of locking it, after he’d cuffed Megatron’s hands behind his back and affixed the cuffs to an empty hardpoint on the small room’s wall. It didn’t make any difference, of course. Megatron had no intention of attempting escape. It would have been futile, for all the same reasons that he hadn’t put up any real fight when Ultra Magnus had first turned the confrontation physical. And no one, no one, would simply walk into Megatron’s quarters uninvited. So it made no difference that the door was locked.
At least, it shouldn’t have made any difference.
There was something about a locked door, Megatron was coming to realize. A certain psychological pressure seemed to emanate from the threshold—it once had been a portal; now, it was not. Open and shut. It was that simple.
And yet Megatron could not seem to keep his mind away from it. Perhaps that was why Ultra Magnus had been so deliberate about the process in the first place. Perhaps he had wanted to put Megatron on edge in just this way.
Or perhaps there was something else going on in his processor, some notion of security, or proper procedure, or (though the very thought beggared any internally consistent logic) even privacy. After all, Megatron had long since learned that it was best not to underestimate the devotion with which Autobots followed the various whims they disguised as overactive senses of duty or ethics.
In the end, it did not matter. The door was locked, and there was nothing Megatron could do about it. And he had the sneaking suspicion that this fact would not be the primary object of his concern for very much longer.
Megatron knelt, forced to do so by the angle and height at which his cuffs had been attached to the wall. Ultra Magnus stood before him, near enough that Megatron could feel the heat radiating off his frame. Megatron looked up at him.
“So, what’s next?” he asked with a sneer. “You’ve brought out the chains; is it the whips next? Perhaps the scalpel?”
Ultra Magnus crooked one finger up under Megatron’s chin, pushing his neck back just far enough to make him feel exposed. “Scalpels have never been my style. And I’m sure I could do a better job at beating you with my fists than I could with any whip. But no, neither of those things are what I had in mind. I don’t plan to resort to crude bullying unless you force the issue. Are you going to do that?”
Megatron scowled silently, fighting the urge to squirm from the uncomfortable stretch forced into his back by the cuffs and Ultra Magnus’s touch.
Ultra Magnus got down on one knee, still nearly a head taller than Megatron. He gripped Megatron’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced Megatron to look him in the optics. “Are you going to do that, Megatron?”
Megatron snarled, tensed—
—remembered a locked door—
—forced himself to relax.
“No,” he said. “I’m sure it need not come to that.”
And just like that, Ultra Magnus released his grip, stood, and took a measured step back. “I’m glad to hear that.”
Megatron sagged away from the wall, as far as his cuffs and strained arms would allow. He let his head hang, dropped his gaze.
“As I mentioned, your recent behavior was unbecoming of an Autobot officer and, frankly, unacceptable. You will promise Perceptor an apology before I let you leave this room.” Ultra Magnus’s voice was stern and iron-steady.
Megatron managed a chuckle. “I will do no such thing.”
Ultra Magnus continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “When you have given that promise, I will know that my temporary assumption of command has been successful and its purpose served.” A finger hooked Megatron’s chin again, pulled it upward. “We’re only here as long as you refuse to give your word you’ll apologize.”
Megatron exhaled sharply through his nose, then gave his head a twist, pulling his chin away from Ultra Magnus’s finger, ducking his head down near his shoulder.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” he growled. A defiant grin crept over his expression. “Just how much patience do you have, I wonder?”
There was a small movement at the corner of his vision where Ultra Magnus stood, accompanied by the soft hiss-click of shifting plating.
“Enough,” Ultra Magnus said, and then dropped his spike across Megatron’s face.
* * *
Megatron lay on his back, stretched out across his slab, his hands held, cuffed, above his head.
It had begun simply enough. Ultra Magnus had exposed himself to Megatron, and Megatron had done his level best to take advantage of the window of weakness so provided. But apparently, no one had ever explained to Ultra Magnus how good a blowjob was supposed to feel. Or, at least, how he was meant to react when someone made him feel that way.
Megatron was good. He knew he was. For that matter, judging purely by its physiological reaction, Ultra Magnus’s spike seemed to understand that fact. But Ultra Magnus himself was implacable. Megatron couldn’t understand how he could just . . . just stand there, with that same, infuriatingly controlled look on his face, when his spike was pulsing, throbbing, dripping on Megatron’s face, in Megatron’s mouth . . .
After about five minutes had passed, Ultra Magnus had reached over Megatron’s head, and with the press of a button, released the cuffs from the wall into his own sturdy grip. That the action had suddenly plunged his spike much deeper into Megatron’s throat may have been an unintentional side-effect, but Megatron had his doubts. After that, one brief and uncomfortably one-sided scuffle later, he had found himself here: cuffed to his own slab, stripped of his interface panel, under Ultra Magnus’s none-too-gentle tutelage, learning what he suspected was the most humiliating script ever conceived of in the history of the Cybertronian race.
Ultra Magnus ran one teasing hand down Megatron’s flank. “Do you want me to put it back in?”
Megatron just snarled in response.
“Then say it.”
“I’m . . . I’m a good Autobot.” Megatron forced the words out from between clenched teeth.
The tip of Ultra Magnus’s spike played at the entrance of Megatron’s valve, flirting, teasingly. Ultra Magnus himself seemed maddeningly unaffected by the motion. “Hm. But is that true, Megatron?”
Megatron seethed, refused to give Ultra Magnus the answer he knew he wanted. In response, Ultra Magnus’s hand slipped down Megatron’s side, across his hip, and stopped at his throbbing spike. Then, with the lightest of touches, he wrapped his fingers around it and began to gently tease the sensor cluster just below the tip with his thumb. The sensation was electric, and it was all Megatron could do to keep himself from throwing all dignity to the wind and rutting into Ultra Magnus’s hand.
“I asked you,” Ultra Magnus repeated, optic ridges raised in a patronizingly patient expression, “Is that true, Megatron? Are you a good Autobot?”
Megatron squeezed his optic shutters closed, held out for a beat longer, then spat, “No. No, I suppose not.”
Ultra Magnus’s hand disappeared from his spike, and Megatron allowed himself to relax, just a bit. Then, strong hands gripped either side of his waist, just above his hips, and pulled him ever-so-slightly onto Ultra Magnus’s spike.
“Why not?” Ultra Magnus said. “Why isn’t that statement true?”
It was unspeakably tantalizing, indescribably tempting. He felt the rim of his valve widening to admit Ultra Magnus’s girth, felt the head of his spike stop just inside. And all he had to do to get the rest was surrender one small fraction of his pride. Or maybe . . .
He opened his optics, fixed Ultra Magnus with a petty smirk. “Because I still refuse to apologize to Perceptor for acting in my own self-defense.”
“I see,” said Ultra Magnus. “I’m . . . disappointed.”
And he pulled his spike back out of Megatron’s valve.
Megatron seethed in sudden rage, indignation, desire—he strained against his cuffs, struggled to get free—
It was useless. Ultra Magnus held him against his slab, his hands unmoving and sturdy on Megatron’s hips. After a long moment, Megatron’s sense of dignity caught up with his spike and he forced himself to calm down and lie still.
“Finished?” Ultra Magnus asked.
“Am I—Slag off,” Megatron snarled.
Ultra Magnus suddenly thrust into him, the full length of his spike plowing Megatron’s innards apart, his grip—Megatron was sure—leaving dents in his hip plating.
“Article 17, Section 12, Subsection 3. An Autobot may not direct profanity at their commanding officer.” Ultra Magnus punctuated the sentence with another deep thrust. “Punishment for doing so is at the discretion of said officer. And since, per 5-32-4, I have assumed temporary command, the provision applies. Unless, of course, you’d like to file a complaint under Article 23?”
Ultra Magnus hilted himself in Megatron’s valve. His spike stretched Megatron open around it, left his valve pulsing, squeezing at its girth. It was thick, fever-hot, throbbing. Any thoughts Megatron might have had of filing a procedural complaint flew right out of his processor along with . . . well, along with essentially every other thought he was having right that moment.
Ultra Magnus held him there, wrapped around his spike, for a few long, still seconds. Megatron wasn’t certain, but he may have let out a quiet moan.
“I thought not,” said Ultra Magnus.
And then he kept going.
* * *
Megatron couldn’t think. At least, he couldn’t think about much. He was fairly certain he could still think about the enormous, pulsing spike splitting him open, thrusting in and out with the brutal regularity of a particularly time-conscious pile driver. In fact, he was fairly certain that was just about the only thing he was capable of thinking about. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. And the other thoughts just didn’t seem to matter.
Ultra Magnus held him at his waist, mostly, though he occasionally brought one hand or the other back to wrap around Megatron’s spike. When he did, the flashes of novel pleasure overtook the valve-splitting, pounding waves of sensation, pushing Megatron closer, closer, ever so close to the edge—
And then, like clockwork, it stopped. The hand went back to his waist, the pulsing thrusts of spark-deep fullness slowed, and Ultra Magnus’s voice, the only sound in Megatron’s tiny, narrow world, made another bid to relieve him of his honor.
“—can see you’re flagging,” Ultra Magnus was saying. “I haven’t asked you for much. Nothing unreasonable. Just a promise to do something you should have known to do yourself.”
“Go to hell,” Megatron spat, and then the cycle began again.
Sensation, pleasure—why was Ultra Magnus so good at this?—his legs spread forcibly apart, his vents flaring, his spark—his spark—
“—another chance. What’s it going to be?”
Denial. Pleasure. Denial.
“—to be here for as long as this takes—”
No. No. Sensation. Hunger.
Silence.
True stillness settled in Megatron’s chamber for the first time in hours. Ultra Magnus’s hand rested lightly on Megatron’s spike, his own spike throbbing at the entrance of Megatron’s valve. He stayed there, steady. Megatron twitched in his grip, tried to thrust his hips, was held effortlessly down.
“I won’t ask you whether you want it. You’d lie. We both know that,” Ultra Magnus said.
Megatron tried to deny it, tried to speak out against the brazen accusation, but for some reason, his vocalizer didn’t seem to be functional.
“So,” Ultra Magnus said. He slid his thumb slowly, softly, up and down the front of Megatron’s spike, sending sharp flutters of sensation coursing through Megatron’s frame. “We can keep going for as long as you take to recognize your mistake. We can keep doing . . . this. Or, you can admit you were wrong. Make one little promise. I won’t even make you say the words to me. Just nod. And I’ll take you at your word. Because we both also know that your word, for matters like this, is good.”
Megatron shivered under his touch, felt his valve clenching and unclenching on nothing, wanted—desperately—to feel his spike inside him once again. Ultra Magnus waited. Megatron gave him nothing.
“Just nod. It’s that easy, Megatron. Just nod, and I’ll finish you off before I go.” Ultra Magnus’s voice was steady, quiet, calm. His tone was belied by the fact that Megatron could still feel his spike desperately throbbing against him.
“Just nod, Megatron,” he said. Then, again, “Just nod.”
And Megatron, Primus help him, did.
EPILOGUE
Perceptor wasn’t sure why Megatron had called him to his hab-suite, and he certainly hadn’t been expecting Ultra Magnus to be present when he arrived.
The now-crowded room smelled just a bit of stale energon. Had these two been—? No, that was absurd. It must have just been a minor leak in the ship’s supply ducts somewhere nearby. He made a mental note to ask Borer to look into it when he was done with this whatever-this-was.
Speaking of which, what was this? He had walked in the room to utter silence after the terse “enter” which had invited him in. Megatron sat, perfectly still, at his desk, and stared at Perceptor with narrowed optics. It wasn’t until Ultra Magnus reset his vocalizer with a loud cough of static that anything actually happened.
“During the recent . . .” Megatron began, then seemed to fumble for a word.
“Time Kerfuffle,” interjected Ultra Magnus.
“. . . Time Kerfuffle,” Megatron said. If looks could lay down and die from exasperated second-hand embarrassment, Megatron’s would have been right at the front of the queue to do so.
Perceptor wasn’t quite sure whether to be insulted or to derive some small degree of sadistic satisfaction for having invented the phrase. He settled for a healthy mix of both.
Megatron continued, his words seeming to need to fight their way free of his vocalizer. “I fear that I slightly overestimated the amount of aggression requisite during a certain period of time in which you were present.”
Perceptor let a slight smile quirk the corners of his mouth. “Is that so?” he asked.
Megatron scowled. “Yes,” he said. “You have my . . . regrets.”
Ultra Magnus reset his vocalizer again. Perceptor looked his way, but his optics were focused on Megatron. Ultra Magnus reset his vocalizer a third time.
“Right, yes, fine,” Megatron said. His scowl threatened to twist his face with enough force to turn it inside out. “I’ll say it. Just give me time. I was getting there.”
“Say what, now?” Perceptor asked. Then he turned to Ultra Magnus. “What was he going to say?”
A stupid grin had plastered itself across his face by this point. He wasn’t sure how Ultra Magnus had managed it, but he was fairly certain he was about to be handed a memory he would cherish for cycles and cycles to come.
“He can speak for himself,” Ultra Magnus said.
“Well?” Perceptor asked, turning once again to Megatron.
Megatron flinched, grimaced, gripped his desk with crushing strength, and forced out words that seemed to burn more than cheap engex. His voice was quiet, but clear.
“I’m . . . sorry,” he said. “Now get the hell out of my bunk.”