Work Text:
4 million years ago (give or take a century)
“You have here a clause about abusive sexual acts,” Damus said, pointing a large, newly-installed finger at one paragraph of the enormous print-out containing all the not-yet entirely compiled edicts from the last century of hodgepodge Decepticon coalescence.
When Damus had suggested that they needed to have a more codified writ of law available to common soldiers, rather than the much shakier “I think I heard Megatron say this once,” legal system that had governed them since his first followers stepped into the Kaon Ring some significant years ago, Megatron had been in favor of the project. It was distracting and cumbersome to be constantly fielding questions and requests for clarification about some piddling disciplinary measure when he was out here trying to cut the Prime’s spark out.
However, he had not accounted for the tenacity with which Damus would take to the task. He reminded himself that it was good to have diligent officers. He could not afford to throw them out the airlock just because he had a processor ache the size of a megatitan growing under his helm.
“Yes?” Megatron said, impatiently.
“Well, I say abusive sexual acts,” Damus hedged. “What it actually says is ‘don’t rape people, you dimwitted lecherous buffoons.’ There’s a lot of grey area here.”
Megatron let his face fall into the forgiving, protective cradle of his palm.
“I’m not entirely sure how to reconcile it with edict number 15,” Damus went on, inexorably, moving his finger back up towards the top of the list. “‘No act of dominance is ever wasted.’ Some of the soldiers have been arguing that’s a tacit authorization, as long as the motivation is correct.”
Megatron thought about the shipment of titanium ore that was being blockaded by some infuriating squishy species that Prime had managed to cajole into dying for him yet again. Megatron thought about the squabble between Motormaster and Astrotrain that he was supposed to be arbitrating so that neither of them brought this army down around their helms like a tower of stacking toy blocks. He thought about the energon refinery on tanker A-6 that was showing signs of tampering despite the whole thing being locked down tighter, as Impactor might once have said, than a mini-bot’s valve panel.
He did not want to be talking about this. He did not even want to be thinking about this.
“Damus, you’re a smart bot,” he said, “please use your logic centers. Rape has always been a punishable offense. If someone is trying to fast talk their way into forcing their depraved sexual desires on anyone else, just cut their fragging head off.”
“Er.” Damus tapped his index fingers together. “But when you say rape, do you want that to—”
Megatron set his palm down on the desk and pushed Damus’s carefully collated collection of prints into a pile as far away from himself as he could get them. “If anyone does anything unwanted to anyone else, you execute them. There. Done. Now go away.”
“Yessir, my lord,” Damus said. “I’ll, er, put it in writing on your behalf.”
4 million years later (give or take a civil war)
Megatron’s peaceful off-shift of putting together lesson plans shattered abruptly at the sound of a klaxxon, and Megatron jolted upright on his berth slab. All thoughts of comparative historiography were set firmly aside. The hallway to the command center was empty of crewmates and Megatron was unhappy to see, when he forced open the door to the bridge, that the bridge was empty too.
Ah, except for one.
“Rung,” he greeted, letting the abused automatic door slide shut behind him on its own. The klaxxon fell quiet behind it.
“Captain,” Rung said, sparing him the polite smile that few crew-members would have bothered with. He was ensconced at the surveillance station, tapping over and over again at the apparently unhelpful screen. “You’ve arrived just in time for the sitting around and waiting portion of the misadventure, I’m afraid.”
Megatron watched him with a faint smile. Rung had pulled his glasses off in order to better squint at the screen display, prodigious eyebrows furrowed.
“I hope it’s not another one of your ex-colleagues,” Megatron said, settling himself smoothly into the captain’s chair at the center of the bridge. “We barely survived the last one.”
“I shouldn’t think there’s any therapist with the ability to dematerialize an entire bridgecrew off their ship in one go,” Rung said. “Although who knows. The last one certainly caught me by surprise…”
“Do you know where they’ve been dematerialized to?” Megatron asked.
“Insofar as I can interpret these readings,” Rung said, with pronounced frustration, “it seems like they’re down on that rogue planetoid, with the absurd energy readings. Rodimus got a call off to me, a moment ago. Something about a scheme or a bet, I couldn’t quite follow. I’m given to understand he’s working on extricating the group.”
Megatron rested his jaw in the L of his thumb and forefinger. While there certainly wasn’t a lot of love lost between him and the majority of the crew, he was captain, and a captain did have certain responsibilities. And anyway, Rodimus was down there. Someone should really save him before he had the chance to do something characteristically reckless.
“Perhaps we should fire on the planet,” Megatron said, considering a nexus of options. “We do have weapons, although not on a planetary scale. Still, enough damage to the surface might—”
“Absolutely not,” Rung said, whipping around from the station, glasses still pushed up on his helm. “Even setting aside the foolhardiness of bringing weapons into a conflict you know nothing about, our crewmates are down there. You don’t know what chain reaction you might ignite.”
Megatron frowned.
“I am the captain here,” he reminded Rung, “not you. In fact, as you have recently abdicated your post, you have no authority at all to tell me what I may or may not do aboard this ship.”
Rung looked at him with surprise. Then he set his expression smooth. “May I remind you then,” he said, “that you are in fact a co-captain, officially speaking, and your fellow co-captain is down there on that planet you’re thinking of launching a missile into.”
“Well I was only thinking of it,” Megatron said, dryly. “Besides, he’s gone, and I’m not.”
“He’s not dead, ” Rung retorted. “He’s just popped down to rendezvous with some alien intelligence. And he’s still got the helm, so in point of order, if he wants that planet bombed, I’ll need to hear it from him.”
Megatron raised his brows. “Very stubborn aren’t you,” he said.
“Occasionally,” Rung said, prim as you like.
“You could give Ultra Magnus a run for his credit, I dare say.” Megatron relaxed back into his chair, letting the tactical sub-units in the back of his processor deal with the problem of Rodimus, since missiles apparently wouldn’t suit. “I suppose it comes in handy to be able to talk circles around whatever daft idea your patients dream up.”
Rung flushed, very brightly blue-green, as if he found the suggestion objectionable, but then abruptly he sagged. He reached up to his helm and pulled his glasses back down over his handsome optics. “I don’t do that anymore,” he said, “I told you.”
“I can’t say I understand why,” Megatron replied, “you were doing as good of a job before Froid as you would be doing after him. Nothing material has changed. I find it… troubling, that you would turn your license over just to punish yourself.”
“That’s not why—” Rung started, and then he dug his fingers into the corners of his faceplate. “You’re only saying that because you don’t understand why someone would come to a therapist in the first place.”
Megatron struggled to find an appropriate retort. He didn’t , actually, understand the appeal. But it seemed to be important to Whirl, among others, and whatever kept Whirl out of his target sights must have some merit to it, in his mind.
“I suppose retirement is as good an opportunity as any to make… friends,” Megatron said, by way of graceful retreat. “I keep being told that’s the central Autobot experience. And here I had thought the central Autobot experience was flashy acts of martyrdom.”
“Making friends is what got me into this state,” Rung muttered, turning away.
Megatron tracked him with intent optics. He did wonder what the circumstances had been, but he rather imagined they were mundane when one got down to the bottom of it. Rung didn’t seem the type to commit scandalous acts of malfeasance. Too busy worrying about his fellow mech.
But then Rung simply stared moodily at the surveillance screen, and though Megatron wasn’t particularly curious about the politics of therapeutic licensure, it began to bother him that Rung didn’t say anything else to him, one way or the other. Rung should speak to him. Megatron wanted him to speak.
He became very annoyed with himself for caring, and then very annoyed with himself for being annoyed with himself, because he was supposed to be taking an interest, and he quite liked Rung, as far as players went in this prison of nonsense that now served to characterize his life.
“Without patients, you’ll have to find some way of filling the hours,” Megatron remarked. “I’ve heard Swerve is hosting some absurd social event… rapid mating, was it….”
Rung made a noise like a lever getting stuck in a gear, and thumped himself on the chest until it gave way. “Speed dating,” he said, weakly.
Megatron frowned. That was not what Ravage had told him. “Just as well if it doesn't involve orgies or any such,” he decided. “I had deeply begun to worry about the state of Autobot debauchery.”
In fact he had asked Ultra Magnus, very delicately, about the whole thing, and been somewhat aggrieved that all he’d gotten for his trouble was Ultra Magnus quoting subsection I.QE* and making a hasty retreat to the safety of a sprinkler inspection. (* “We Won’t Ask So Please Don’t Tell Us”)
“I doubt Swerve would agree to the cleanup involved,” Rung said, sounding a bit faint.
Cleanup? What… oh. Megatron blinked. He’d never considered the realities of such a proposition. He’d mostly thought the others were having him on, when Impactor long ago suggested the kind of hedonism upper-caste bots got up to in their distant shining towers. Megatron felt a bit disturbed at the thought of actual loose fluids being involved.
Just then, the communication suite went off, and Rodimus’s poor imitation of a whisper came hissing through. “Captain to bridge controls,” he said, “Swerve’s got him distracted with some earth trivia, I need you to look something up for me real fast ‘cause I think I know what this little LARPer twit is.”
Rung twisted back and pressed the com button. “Of course Captain, give me a moment.”
“I need Megs, can you grab him for me?” Rodimus’s voice asked. “I wanna do something awesome with the ship that he’s gonna hate.”
Megatron shot a long-suffering expression at Rung, who hid a grin behind an unsubtle fist.
“I’m here, Rodimus,” Megatron said. “Tell me what idiot scheme you’ve invented, and I will tell you whether I’ll indulge it.”
“Says the mech who wanted to fire on the planet,” Rung remarked.
“I only said—”
“Hey!” Rodimus interrupted, entirely forgoing the whisper. “I’m trying to engineer a daring escape here! Can we cut the crosstalk?”
Rung and Megatron exchanged a look. For a moment they were in perfect, exasperated harmony. On a whim that surprised even himself, Megatron said to Rung, “We can pick this up later.” And then—thinking of how little he had liked being psychoanalysed the last time he stepped foot in Rung’s office—he added, “in your quarters.”
Rung stiffened, expression inscrutable behind those green lenses. His usually telling eyebrows betrayed no helpful hint. “Oh,” he said.
Belatedly, Megatron’s processor caught up with his mouth. Rung’s quarters? His private quarters? He might as well have invited himself to Rung’s bunk. A hundred hazy, embarrassing memories of gruff sidelong come-ons in the miner barracks flooded his RAM, sending a flush of heat down the length of his sensor net, right into the dull tips of his pedes.
“Oh,” Rung said, again, but more firmly this time. And then he said: “I’ll have to make some calls.”
Dread dropped to the pit of Megatron’s spark, just at the same moment that Rodimus’s tinny voice blatted out: “Megs, you still there?”
“Yes,” Megatron said. He pivoted his processor power away from the heavy leaden lump sitting with malicious patience in the dregs of his spark, and picked up the call. “I’m here.”
At the end of gamma shift, Megatron finally got the notice he had been dreading. Rung had sent him a meeting notification set for the end of the shift cycle, specifying “discussion of appropriate action” as the subject for review.
There it was, then. He’d gone too far. Rung would want to discuss the incident with him, of course, being circumspect and judicious by nature. Rung always did try to be fair with him, despite all that he was. All that he had been.
Megatron steeled himself. He was Megatron, after all: he had more than once taken hours of live voltage through the spark without screaming. He could certainly accept censure with good grace.
In fact he was fortunate, he told himself, that Rung had been forgiving enough to bring the matter up personally, instead of reporting his gross overstep of boundaries to Ultra Magnus—or worse yet, one of the crew who didn’t profess a modicum of professional respect for a former enemy general. Rung might have told anyone. He might have told Swerve.
Megatron imagined the mob of furious Autobots at his door, united in a single cause, come to drag him out of his hab suite for merciless retribution. Poor helpless Rung, they would say, what kind of a monster would force himself on such a gentle spark? Even the ones who didn’t care much for Rung one way or the other would see Megatron, in all his formidable brawn, against that sweet slip of a mech, and they wouldn’t hesitate a moment to haul him in chains across the deck towards his ugly end.
Would he defend himself? Even if he wanted to, in his weakened state, he was no match for a wall of mechs unified against him. It would be Megatron himself, the Slagmaker, Tyrant of the Deosil Spiral, thrown down on his knees at the pede of one delicate non-combatant. He would be able to do little, short of taking them all down with him in a dark conflagration of Shockwave’s final gift.
Megatron shook off the dread visions. There was no point in planning for eventualities that had not transpired. He would simply go to Rung, apologize sincerely, and accept whatever private censure Rung deemed necessary. And then he would be more careful, in the future, to maintain his professional demeanor among mechanisms who had no good reason to more than tolerate him, anyway.
No matter how fond he began to grow of certain crew members, he must endeavor to remember that they had little reason to return his… affections.
Precisely on time, Megatron arrived at Rung’s door and pinged the notification system. He waited a few tense moments, rehearsing what he meant to say. The door slid open. Megatron ducked inside. “Let me begin by saying, I was out of line to invite myself into your confidence in such a way, or to presume intimacy which I had not earned—”
Megatron stopped. Rung was staring at him, caught in the action of pouring sparkling engex into a pair of crystal flutes. There was more fuel on the table top than in the glass now.
“Er,” Rung said. “So this won’t be a date, then?”
Several moments later, in a flurry of embarrassed scrubbing and hastily given directives, Megatron was seated at Rung’s little table with a glass one third full of sparkling pink engex. He wondered if he was allowed to drink it. Surely Rung wouldn’t intentionally set him up to violate his parole. He eyed the glass warily. No, surely not. If Rung wanted him gone, he wouldn’t be so convoluted about it.
“So you were not, actually, hitting on me,” Rung said, sounding a little wry.
Megatron glanced up for a moment. “Not intentionally, no.”
“Ah.” Rung considered this, with his usual thoroughness, in thoughtful silence.
Megatron carefully lifted his glass. He determined the three most likely avenues Rung would take to do away with him permanently, based on convenience and temperament. Poison wasn’t likely either. He took a sip.
“But you wouldn’t be opposed to fragging me,” Rung concluded, “would you?”
In its shock, Megatron’s throat executed a complex maneuver in which it tried to push liquid up and down both at once, and he ended up coughing half a mouthful of pink sparkling fuel over the back of his hand while the purge commands went haywire.
When he had his systems finally back under control, he looked up to find Rung offering him a silky asbestos kerchief.
He accepted it begrudgingly.
“Just tell me if I have it wrong,” Rung said. “As you may have guessed, I’m not opposed to the proposition myself.”
Megatron paused in blotting his chin. “You aren’t?”
Rung gave him a look that seemed both exasperated and …fond? “I rather thought the engex and dimmed lighting might have tipped you off.”
“But I’m,” Megatron said, and then thought about all the things he was. He settled finally on, “something of a pariah at the moment.”
Rung nodded his head in general agreement, but didn’t seem any more put out by the reminder. “I’ve already decided to treat you as if your defection is sincere,” he said, “and to that end, if we want to keep you here, as Autobots, we had better begin by showing you the benefits of keeping Autobot company.”
Megatron’s spark did a sick little swoop. “You almost sound as if you’re offering yourself as a bribe for my good behavior.”
“Well, that wouldn’t be an entirely undesirable outcome,” Rung said, “but no, I think if you were the type to be bribed with favors and indulgences, the war would have ended a long time ago. I just mean that there’s no point in dragging your litany of crimes into every possible social interaction, unless my goal is to drive you back into the arms of Soundwave and his mechs.”
“That’s very… practical of you,” Megatron said, and felt a confusing jumble of emotions about that statement, most of them unpleasant. Still, this was a break from what the rest of the ship was doing, so he couldn’t really object.
“I’m a practical mech,” Rung said, with good humor. “And you’re very beautiful.”
If Megatron had dared drink anything more, he would have been coughing again. As it was, he cleared his throat awkwardly.
Rung sat back. “Am I too forward?” he said.
Megatron was chagrined to realize that the feeling seeping through his internals was now something squirmy and warm and possibly pleasant. “...No,” he said, “not entirely.”
Rung’s eyebrows went up, and then settled back down in a knowing slant. “Ah,” he said. “Maybe I should be more forward?”
Rung got up from his seat and came around the table, at an easy pace, and then used both the table edge and Megatron’s own shoulder seam to pull himself up into Megatron’s lap. The fit was tight, but Rung was not a bulky mech, and so he sat down over both of Megatron’s thighs and placed his hands neatly on the etching of the silver chest plate.
“Hello,” he said.
Megatron, very much unaccustomed to this level of familiarity, blinked and said, “hello.”
“Hm,” Rung said, and wiggled a little bit in Megatron’s lap. “This seems promising.”
Megatron had to manually redirect energon flow to prevent any embarrassing overheating. “...What are you doing?”
“I’m attempting to assure you of my genuine interest,” Rung said. “Is it working?”
“I’m starting to think you need a psychiatrist of your own,” Megatron grumbled.
“You know I had one,” Rung said, “until you shelled the station he worked from, not quite halfway through the war. Do you want to keep having this conversation, or can we go back to flirting?”
“Were we flirting?”
Rung quirked his mouth. “Well I was,” he said. “I’m not sure what you were doing.”
Megatron shrugged, helplessly. “Trying to figure out what you were doing.”
“Mm, well, now that that’s cleared up,” Rung said, and gave a slight but extremely suggestive roll of his hips.
Megatron stiffened. He had no idea where to put his arms. Visions of mobs at the door warred with visions of delicate hands pulling aside latches to bare forbidden, hidden things.
“I don’t have to be on duty for hours,” Rung said, “we have plenty of time to work something out, if you’d like to. I did do my research before calling you here.”
Megatron, with his helm full of visions and his lap full of heat, despite his attempts to control himself, found that he was nearly at a loss for words. He thought about laying Rung down, the way he’d once been laid down, and then realized it probably wouldn’t be like that at all—Rung would be more the type to lay him down, if it weren’t for the obstacle of their sizes. And still… to let Rung push apart his legs, to let Rung touch that willing softness between, to be smiled at… perhaps even to receive his overload, that shivery hot rush that Megatron remembered more in dream than in fact…
Rung perked up. “Oh, I felt that,” he said, and slid a hand down Megatron’s abdomen to follow the increasing warmth.
It took Megatron a couple tries to get his voice out, clear and respectable. “What do you want of me?”
Rung grinned. It was such a charming expression on his normally composed face, and it made him look younger than he was. “Let’s make a contract. I know Decepticons find those very important.”
“....A what?”
“A contract?” Rung said, again. “I think maybe climbing up here was a bit too Autobot of me, but you’ll forgive me if I’m overeager. I took the liberty of starting us some forms.”
For a moment all Megatron could think was: are all Autobot therapists prostitutes also?
Rung was still waiting on a reply, his expression going gradually from sunny to puzzled.
“Obviously I can’t condone involving the DJD here,” Rung went on, a little hesitantly, “but I was thinking we might have Ultra Magnus function as the figure of authority, since he’s so naturally predisposed to rule enforcement and contract language, and it doesn’t hurt that he won’t be eager to get any more involved than he has to be…”
Megatron could not imagine reporting the violation of a sex contract to Ultra Magnus. He simply could not.
“I’m sorry,” Megatron said, with as much grace as he could muster, “I thought we were talking about—” He grimaced. “I suppose I shouldn’t have assumed that you were interested in a mutual romance.”
Rung opened his mouth. “I,” he said, “I thought… what?”
Megatron frowned deeply. “I’m not sure what kind of payment you’re even after. You must know that all my assets were seized or disbursed by now.”
“Payment?”
“Yes?” Megatron said. Confusion was beginning to turn into irritation. “That’s generally what contracts are for. Why else would you mention it?”
Rung stared at him.
“Anyway,” Megatron said, briskly, “I’m not in the habit of exchanging payment for personal services. If that’s all you’re offering, I respectfully decline.”
“Megatron…” Rung said, slowly, as if he suspected Megatron was an imbecile, “I’m talking about a consent contract. A mutual consent contract.”
“A what?”
“A… Megatron, surely you know what a mutual consent contract is. They’re your army’s invention. Decepticons have been signing and exchanging them nearly since the start of the war.”
“What, for sex?” Megatron admitted to complete bewilderment now. “What would be the point?”
Rung leaned away until his back was pressing the edge of the table and then pressed his palms together in front of his mouth. “Oh dear,” he said. “You’ve never even heard of it?”
“Obviously not.” Megatron was aware of his voice becoming even more harsh and clipped than it had been, but he couldn’t help it. He’d always had the feeling that those around him understood this realm of function better than he, and now it felt like Rung was just rubbing his face in it.
“But,” Rung said, “you’re a Decepticon. Pardon me, but in fact you’re the Decepticon.”
Megatron glared. “Are you sure this business isn’t just Autobot propaganda?”
Rung, taken aback, muttered, “I did research on this, to understand your culture, and you don’t even—-” He shook his head. He set his mouth in a more neutral line. “How far back do I have to go with this?”
“The beginning usually suffices.”
Rung’s hands stayed steepled in front of his mouth for a moment longer. “The beginning,” he echoed. “You must remember—back near the beginning of the war, when you made rape a capital offense.”
Megatron thought back. “Yes.”
“And how did you set up the system for determining guilt and meting out punishment?”
Megatron stared at him for a long, horrible moment. “I delegated.”
“You delegated,” Rung said. “To whom?”
Megatron coughed into his fist. He must not have gotten all the liquid out of there. “Tarn.”
“...I see.” Rung was quiet for several terrible, ominous seconds. “And it never occurred to you to inquire about how he was handling the issue?”
Hmm. No. Tarn did periodically brief the command council with his endless list of suggested infractions, recent punishments, and ongoing investigations. Megatron usually spent the interminable hell hour running logistical calculations behind his optics. Or, occasionally, sleeping upright in his chair.
With a little heave and kick, Rung pulled himself up onto the edge of the table and out of Megatron’s lap. He perched there, ankles crossed, and gave Megatron one of his long, evaluative once-overs.
“Well,” Rung said, “I’ll tell you how the issue was handled, then, shall I?”
Megatron, with the exquisite agony of mortification one cannot talk oneself out of, nodded.
“Tarn devised a hard consent system,” Rung said, “by way of bureaucracy. As with all things in the Decepticon justice system, there is a presumption of guilt until proven innocent. Anyone accused of sexual misconduct is summarily executed unless they can prove that mutual consent was explicitly arranged between both parties. After the first few times an accusation resulted in the desanguination of a Decepticon, I imagine, your mechs became reasonably wary of meeting similar fates.”
Rung reached over and retrieved his datapad, sliding it across the table to show a neat and unmarked form. It was comprised of a short disclaimer, a list of sexual acts with a yes and a no box next to them, and a place at the end for seal signatures.
“This is the simplest version, as Drift explained it to me,” Rung said, as if reading Megatron’s mind. “They became more complex as time went on. From the way Drift spoke about it, I think there was a feeling that no potential paramour was off limits, no matter how vile their personality might otherwise be, as long as there was a contract as insurance.”
The concept boggled. Megatron tried to imagine a genericon feeling confident enough to proposition Vortex. Or Motormaster. Or Overlord.
Well, probably not Overlord. He imagined few people were confident enough in the DJD’s ability to subdue Overlord that they would stake their well being on it.
“By the last phase of the war, there were personalized contracts delineating everything from the acceptable intimacy level of cuddling to the exact placement of ejaculate. Swindle and his ilk made a killing, as I understand it.” Rung pulled the datapad back to himself and tapped through it, pensively. “All the real lawyers ended up becoming Autobots, after all. Or at least,” he amended, “the ones that survived.”
“This is ridiculous,” Megatron said. “The whole thing is ridiculous. If I didn’t know you better I would say you were having a laugh at my expense.”
Rung glanced up, lifting one eyebrow. “Actually I think the complexity of the Decepticon Contract is rather beautiful,” he said. “The emphasis on communication, the clarity, the unity of pleasure… I would prefer a regular chain of command, if we must be within a military structure, or maybe intervention by a support group instead of bloodthirsty torturers, and the presumption of guilt is problematic, but…”
“I mean this whole quibbling about guilt and insurance,” Megatron said, impatiently. “If another mech offends your dignity, kill him yourself. All this back and forth is a needless complication.”
Rung looked up sharply. “How do you go about propositioning someone, then?”
Dryly, Megatron replied, “Well for the last several million years, generally I don’t.”
“You... don’t,” Rung repeated.
“I’ve been extremely busy waging a war,” Megatron remarked. “And I admit… there was a long time where I…”
He trailed off, struggling to articulate the vast deserts of hate that lay just behind him—red rust beneath a starless sky, unforgiving and featureless, where he had eaten only the bitter dust and been glad of it. He had lusted for nothing then, save uncompromising devastation.
“I had little interest in such things,” he said at last.
Rung nodded slowly. “And before that?”
Megatron fought down a flush. Before that, when he’d been new. When he’d been naive and ambitious and interested in people.
“I had a few encounters,” he hedged.
“And what were the expectations of those?”
“If I fancied someone, we might, er,” Megatron coughed into his fist, “fool around a bit, and if he did something I didn’t like, I’d throw him into a wall.”
Rung gave him a deeply, deeply unimpressed look.
“Isn’t that how Autobots do it?” Megatron asked.
“Actually yes,” Rung said, “I believe Impactor once used that exact explanation for how he had envisioned a night going.”
The sour estrangement of a millennia old war rolled back unexpectedly, and for a moment Megatron imagined Impactor among the ranks of soldiers, on a long tour, scouting the barracks for some willing soldier to roll. I’m sure you did well for yourself, he thought, you enormously stubborn blockhead.
“Tarn certainly had an interesting effect on the culture, if you think about it,” Rung said. “In a day-to-day sense, he probably had as much influence on the way Decepticons lived than even you did. Maybe more?”
The ghost of a smile slipped back off Megatron’s face. “Just because Tarn decided to combine the worst parts of death and taxes into a nightmarish sex bureaucracy doesn’t make him the architect of the Decepticon lifestyle.”
“You’re very against this whole system, aren’t you,” Rung observed. “Would you have preferred something else? A different system, maybe?”
“There’s already a system,” Megatron retorted. “One is propositioned, one accepts, one readies defenses as necessary. Depending on some coddling outside force to save you isn’t—wasn’t—the Decepticon way!” He thumped the table with his fist. “In any case, what good does it do you, when you’ve already been abused and cast aside, that perhaps in time the one who misused you will eventually suffer an ignominious end? Better to take up matters yourself, now, while you have them in your sights. Deny them at all the pleasure of your submission and suffering!”
Rung had rocked back in his perch, eyebrows very high on his forehead. “Alright,” he said, in the tone of someone who hadn’t decided if that ticking noise was a bomb, yet. “What if you can’t do that, though?”
Megatron vehemently jabbed the table top beside Rung’s thigh. “It’s your responsibility to be strong enough to resist, otherwise—”
“And if you did something that I didn’t like, what do I do about it? I’m much smaller than you, and unlike Tailgate I simply cannot throw you into a wall.”
Momentum got Megatron as far as opening his mouth, and then, belatedly, he closed it again. “Yes, but,” Megatron said, “Rung. I wouldn’t hurt you.”
Rung gave him a long, merciless look over the rim of his glasses. Megatron fought with the urge to fidget.
“I have had things done to me that I didn’t like,” Rung said, folding his hands neatly in front of him. “In those situations, all I could do was persevere. I wasn’t strong enough to break the walls, or throw off the guards, or snap the restraints on an examination berth. Would you say I deserved that?”
Tanks knotted uncomfortably, Megatron reevaluated what he knew of Rung. Megatron had survived enough—had horrors enough to his name—that he could easily fill in the substance of the memory. Rung didn’t need to explain specifics. He had not realized they had this in common. Somehow he had assumed that Autobots would not understand what it meant to be stripped bare, crushed down, thrown to the wastelands. Why would they have chosen to become Autobots, if they understood?
“No one deserves to be victimized,” he said. His frame was staticky and uncomfortable with nervous energy. His hands were gesturing without his approval. “Rung, you misunderstand me entirely!”
“Not entirely,” Rung said, with a deceptively mild voice. “Was it not my responsibility to defend myself? If I allowed a tormentor to derive pleasure from my suffering, didn’t I fail, as you said?”
“I’m sure you tried—”
“I did not try anything,” Rung said. “I was small. I had dependents to think of. I was promised that I could go afterward, if I didn’t make a fuss. And then I was in the belly of the beast, friendless, knowing that things could be even worse. Sometimes you cannot fight back. Sometimes persistence is all you have.”
Megatron tasted poison. He remembered Messantine, Trepan, that terrifying moment before the alarm had sounded when he had realized there was nothing he could do, no action he could take, and he would not even know enough to have revenge on his tormentor when it was all over with. Only this: only the brief, lightning flash of horror white-etched behind his eyes, before the endless, baffled dark.
“You at least should have tried,” he gritted out, hands forming fists on the table top.
“And be beaten? Incarcerated? Possibly mutilated for my trouble?”
“Anything rather than be powerless,” Megatron said, fuel pump drumming against his frame until he could barely hear past it. “Bite, scratch, make them angry, make them curse themselves for picking you, anything but submission.”
With delicate irony, Rung remarked, “It is better to die than submit, is that it?”
“You can’t rely on perseverance to save you,” Megatron blazed on. “What if you hadn’t survived, then who would have seen justice done? No one will save you, so you have to save yourself! And if you can’t save yourself, avenge yourself.”
Rung rapped his fingertips against the table in rapid little waves, his mouth pulled into a thoughtful frown. “Is it better to die?” he asked. “If you die, then the last experience you will ever have is pain and fear. If you live, you might have better days ahead of you. If I had died for my vengeance,” he went on, “I wouldn’t be here with you now, having this very interesting conversation.”
“If you don’t take control of your condition by force—” Megatron jabbed the table again, “—how else can you hope to be safe?”
“Ah,” Rung said, “so we come full circle. Relying on Tarn’s contract system would require you to put faith in a third party, but you have no faith left to give.”
Megatron ground his teeth. He couldn’t very well say: In the state of nature, everyone would definitely hurt me unless I shot them with my gun. And it wasn’t any better to say instead: I need to control the world and everyone in it, for how else can I protect myself?
“Faith is expensive,” Megatron grit out. “And my credit is long run out.”
Rung nodded. Megatron half expected to be mocked, but Rung only seemed interested, and even sympathetic.
“Is that why you said yes to me?” Rung asked. “Because you know that I can’t hurt you?”
Megatron looked up, startled, and realized that Rung didn’t know. But how could he not know?
“Rung. You can certainly hurt me,” Megatron said, his voice unexpectedly hoarse. “You have friends here. I’m alone. You could hurt me in so many ways.”
Rung frowned. “But you came here anyway,” he said, after a moment.
“Obviously,” Megatron said.
“Knowing that I could—” Rung shook his head. “ Thinking that I could... could have you thrown out the airlock, if I meant you ill?”
“You wouldn’t.” Megatron gave him a wry look. “Unless I deserved it, possibly. I am endeavoring not to deserve it.”
“But I could.”
It dawned on Megatron, then, that Rung wasn’t returning the wry look. Where moments before he had been cool and confident, interested but not overly emotive, all at once he was… Did he seem fragile, to Megatron? But why? All that Megatron had said was the truth. The truth… which was…
Megatron had gone to him. And when Rung had offered, he had said yes.
“But you could,” Megatron agreed. He considered his hands, closed tight in fists on the table top, with their strength and simultaneous limitation. “I have… faith. In you. In your character. I suppose that’s why I came.”
And then Rung did something no one had done in what felt like a lifetime. Rung smiled at him—a real smile, beatific, bright—and leaned forward, and placed both his small hands around one of Megatron’s fists.
He became aware of a swimming in his helm, lightheaded as if he had just fallen from orbit and hit the ground without stopping. Magnus. Rodimus. Rung. Even some of the others, the ones who hated him but managed to be fair, and the naive ones, who hadn’t yet learned to distrust on principle—
In the red and bitter dust of that desert, even half-buried, their glitter broke the darkness.
As if the words were welling up, liquid and urgent at the back of his throat, Megatron said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m afraid, I’m more afraid than I’ve been in four million years, but I’m happy, and when you smile at me like that you make me think I’d do anything to be a person who can make you smile, and I don’t know what’s happened, I don’t know anything.”
He closed a hand around his mouth, the hand that Rung was not holding, and let himself shudder.
“I’m thirsty again,” he whispered.
Rung squeezed him. “Oh Megatron,” he said.
And that was all. For a long time they sat there, in Rung’s bedroom, all plans and fine fuels forgotten. Rung held his hand, stroking absently with a thumb, and Megatron rattled his way through something too enormous for description, because the oasis that lay at the end of that terrible desert was flowered in endless, cruel blue.
“I apologize,” he said, at last, when the invisible fist around his throat had slackened somewhat. “We’ve done everything except what you invited me here to do.”
“You don’t have to apologize for that,” Rung said.
“You understand I did like… that is, if I hadn’t…”
Rung leaned forward and chucked Megatron under the chin. It was an exceedingly unusual experience. He didn’t think anyone had done that to him since Terminus.
“None of that,” Rung said. “We had an extremely enlightening conversation. I’m glad you came.”
Megatron touched his chin, fingers hovering over the tingling echo of Rung’s metal. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him just for the sake of doing it.
“Maybe next time…” Rung said, and then hesitated.
Megatron looked up. “Next time?”
Rung picked up the datapad and turned it around for Megatron to look at. “If you want to… try this again,” he said, and pushed the ‘pad into Megatron’s hands.
It was a more dignified style of communication, he had to admit. There was probably some merit to it. Anyway he had trouble imagining Rung swaggering up like any of the laborers he had once known and saying, hey smart guy, you wanna be my valve for a little while?
The first row was Spike Use: Yes [ ] No [ ]
He scrolled down.
“You could fill this out. If you like,” Rung said. “Even if you have faith in someone, it can be nice to communicate your needs before you throw them into a wall.”
Megatron looked up sharply, but Rung was only smiling, with the edge of his lip pulled up crookedly towards his eyes. Megatron attempted to smile back. He wasn’t sure how good it was.
He glanced back down. “I was thinking it would be a shame to have gone through all this and still not have gotten to feel your spike.”
Rung made a strangled little noise. "My spike?”
Megatron, sensing perhaps he had made another tactical misstep, said, “Unless you’re a valve mech exclusively?”
“Er, no. I’m versatile,” Rung said. He seemed to be thinking very hard about something, fingers rapping absently at the table again. His brow was furrowed.
Megatron frowned. “If you don’t want to—”
“No!” Rung said, “No, I would definitely—I mean if you would let me—um.” He coughed into one neat little fist.
Then he refixed his gaze on Megatron, and suddenly it was all keen appraisal. His attention seemed to open Megatron like a wrapped package, peeling him apart in paper layers down to the spark.
He grinned slyly. “Is that what you’d like? You want me to give it to you?”
Warmth flushed back up that newly familiar channel in his spinal strut. “I’ll fill out the contract,” Megatron said, instead of making a further fool of himself.
“I can’t wait,” Rung said, and kept grinning at Megatron until he felt as if his frame was going to short out from the heat burden.
Megatron said, “Ahem,” and then stood, tucking the ‘pad away in his subspace. Then he held out both hands and supported Rung as Rung hopped down off his table perch.
It was strange to step out into the impersonal grey light of the Lost Light’s hallways, after what felt like a geologic eon in Rung’s suite. Just beyond the door, Megatron paused and turned. Rung had his hip leaned up against the door-frame, watching with an expression of perhaps... fondness.
“Were they ever punished?” Megatron said. “The ones who hurt you?”
“Mm, in a sense, I suppose. Quite unrelated to their crimes against me. You sent Starscream after them, in the early years, and I’m sure when he ripped their helms off he was none too gentle about it.”
It was a matter-of-fact recital. Megatron struggled with a burst of mean satisfaction, with the impulse to congratulate himself, all of it a muddle with his other regrets. “Does that help?” he asked.
Rung drew his expression into a distant frown. “Sometimes I’m glad about it, and I wish I wasn’t. Sometimes I’m only angry. Sometimes I feel nothing at all.”
The pleasant burst of feeling dissolved. “Ah,” said Megatron.
“I try not to think too much about them,” Rung said. He shrugged one shoulder. “Thinking about it does me no good. I don’t live to spite them any more than I live to please them. I just live.”
Megatron must have looked as lost as he felt, because Rung gave him a sort of sad smile and said, “I think it’s much better not to live for your ghosts, Megatron. They don’t have your best interests at heart.”
And then he went inside, and closed the door, and left Megatron alone in the corridor of an impossible ship even now flying steadily away from everything he had ever known.