Ep0 - Megatron's Lab - Wiring - Closed
Nov 13, 2011 15:04:29 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2011 15:04:29 GMT -5
((Steve the Eradicon, Megatron, Barricade))
It had been necessary to raise the examination berth as high as the mechanics would extend to bring the small Eradicon’s form up enough to work on comfortably. The restraints were strapped back, as unnecessary as Megatron had expected them to be, leaving the worker mech almost lost in the grey surface expanse he himself had spent too many hours upon as of late.
No longer, though, Megatron had quietly affirmed to himself, the quantum-splitter welded into his protomatter inside his chassis still forcing the fragment of his spark that bore the Scout’s bond. The pain had lessened considerably, but the ache would remain for as long as his spark was divided - that he’d anticipated and could live with. More troublesome were the system-wide power fluctuations he’d been experiencing since coming online and the restlessness of his fuel processor. Side effects of the procedure that would pass in time, he hoped.
For the last hour, however, Steve had been providing a great distraction from the invisible glitches in his systems, as well as an ongoing mental thread about what had happened with his newly-returned infiltrator. The Eradicon’s chassis was fully opened to his careful hands, his spark exposed to Megatron’s scrutiny.
The significantly bigger mech had to resort to using fine instruments to explore along the spark casing and internal mechanisms without damaging their bearer, offering sensor nodes for the closest, most detailed scans possible. “Have you examined any of your cohort this closely, Steve?” Megatron asked, uttering the designation with as much inflection as he would any of his officers’.
“Yes, Lord Megatron. A few after... after they have taken battle damage.”
Steve would have liked to have said his voice as he reported was unfaltering as he would have liked, but there was a tilt and a shudder in the sub-sonics of his words. He tried to hold very still while the warlord examined the inside of his spark chamber, a procedure which should have made him uncomfortable but eons of being broken down and rebuilt and repurposed, getting ripped up and modded had made the privacy of the spark and all social reservations attached somewhat... impossible.
He flinched slightly at the tug of wiring inside his chest, a jolt through his sensory net that could have been pain but he wasn’t sure it was so deep and gone so fast. “Should I... set up routine exams for the troops?”
“That will not be necessary,” Megatron rumbled smoothly, beginning to withdraw the various probes and sensors back into the adapted scanner he was using. “At least not yet. Not until I’ve extrapolated the results from your base line, and contrasted it with scans from the true drones in Shockwave’s possession.”
Once the lines and filaments had all returned to their housings and their data buffered through the scanner, Megatron began synching the data to his own processor with a step back from the berth. He motioned with one flicked hand that Steve was free to reseal his chassis and move. There was silence for a few moments before he asked softly, seriously, and without bearing down on the Eradicon’s optics with his own gaze: “Why did you want a name, mech, as opposed to your assembly-line designation?”
“For the same reasons as...” Steve stopped, the light across his visor flickering. “I mean... I don’t really think about it much.” A apprehensive pause. Steve closed his chest with a snap and click, then, “I didn’t want one at first. It was Breakdown. He made a joke and started calling me Steve because of a program that I liked to quote for the amusement of the other Eradicons. The others started to call me Steve and after a while ‘Steve’ meant me and that was... it was more appropriate than my assembly-line designation. I wanted to keep it. Breakdown said I should. So I did.”
Steve looked up, EMF rippling nervously off the alloy of his frame. “It was an accident.”
Megatron’s optics clicked up to meet the visor, narrowing minutely. “It was evolution.”
The pause that followed had an undefined air. It may have not be dissimilar from the silence that followed in the Tower Council Halls when the senators heard that a gladiator mech had taken the name of one of the Thirteen... but before anyone might have thought of that the laboratory door hissed open from the opposite side of the room.
“Megatron.” Barricade didn’t say anything else.
No title though Barricade had a subordinate as audience, Megatron noted. With this particular Eradicon it didn’t matter, but if this public familiarity was shown in front of mechs like Knockout or, worse, Starscream, then it would have to be quickly brought into line. Barricade was new to even incomplete spark bonds of this nature, though; he didn’t yet understand how they influenced unconscious behaviour.
The warlord put his back to Steve, replacing the scanner and sliding his claws across the monitoring console. “You’re dismissed.”
Steve didn’t know the infiltrator, only of him ,and knew that when the lieutenant showed up, other things tended to fall by the wayside and Steve was, very much, ‘other things’. He quietly got off the exam table and took his leave, glancing briefly at the dark armored mech who, oddly, caught his stare back before he quickened his pace out of the labs. He didn’t examine the shape of his own anxieties, just fled.
“Huh.” Barricade moved into the room and made no comment on the fleeing mech. “Shockwave’s made a breakthough and has a plan to bring Phantom fully online.”
Megatron gave the infiltrator a cursory glance, ignoring the sharp little flare that flashed through his chassis. An incomplete spark-bond wanting to be fulfilled within a forcibly-divided spark: still infinitely preferable to Bumblebee in his head. “Tell me.”
Cade moved into the room, door closing behind him and came to stand, arms folded, chin up, in front of the warlord. “The Phantom’s weapon lock can be circumvented by causing a systems overload, forcing a glitch in the AI matrix. During this time there is a lag in the security locks which will allow Shockwave to insert a new pilot... but the specifications for the pilot are apparently very specific. Luckily we’ve found a hardware match in Win... Fairwinds.” Cade pretended not to note the vocalizer slip. “I’ll run distraction while Shockwave sets up the power drain necessary to stun the ship’s systems. It’ll take out half the country’s’ power grid so... we need to keep Prime distracted.”
The warlord made a soft sound, finally looking away from the console. “Is that what you were working on last night?”
Cade glanced at the floor, not bothering to keep his EMF guarded as he might have usually... seemed a touch pointless now with everything laid out in the aether between them, whether he wanted it or not. He kept his arms folded across his middle before he moved forward, uncertain about why they needed to get off topic. He didn’t really want to but, slag, how did you ignore something that was shivering like a comm frequency between them?
“I was, yes.” (No, I wasn’t.) A pause. Then, when lightening didn’t strike he continued more quietly, “I thought it would be best to stay focused.”
“At this juncture, absolutely,” Megatron affirmed, his voice only marginally louder than the infiltrator’s had been. He hadn’t noticed lowering it. A short ex-vent drew a line under the unspoken topic; not a sigh but a signal. Let Barricade continue to believe he was able to slip lies past his Commander, even with the beginning of a spark bond in place.
He turned to face Barricade fully, his posture broad and open in the face of the smaller mech’s folded arms and crackling field. “Where is Shockwave planning to get that much power? And what have you in mind for capturing Optimus’ attention?”
“I plan on doing exactly everything I promised those fraggers I’d do if they didn’t slag me.”
Cade smiled viciously, mockery and glee running through the aura of his EMF, sliding across their connection like a slow winding electrical current, lazy and self-satisfied. But having said that, he sobered again, vaguely unnerved by the close-range affect Megatron was having on his electromagnetics. It felt like... a little bit like having Frenzy back, the easy transmission and reception of emotion between them... but worse. He could always keep most of his thoughts and feelings from Frenzy even when the skitzy glitch was sitting in his fragging chest.
Suddenly, he wasn’t sure if he had gotten away with that last lie, if a partial spark-bond even allowed for that...
Slag.
“As for Shockwave, he plans to drain off six major power stations and redirect the power from the greater west coast area directly into the Phantom. The ship’s too tough to be damaged on the hardware or basic software level, but it will frag up some of its firewalls, give Fairwinds the time she needs to get into the systems and integrate.”
“Six strike teams, one for each station, and all to attack simultaneously,” Megatron iterated, already consulting work rosters with habitual immediacy. Fairwind’s involvement in the task was encouraging - this was the kind of work she was built for, and it was good to see her being utilised as the powerful instrument that she was rather than disregarded for the sparkling-like facade she put on.
The larger mech closed some of the distance that remained between them, though not quite enough to be within reach. The warm presence of someone else where there had only been someone missing eased some of the sharp aches in his spark, and the proximal comfort was stronger the closer their bodies were. Megatron kept his own side of the bond carefully schooled and out of the living line of the connection, a skill he’d mastered with Nos likely before Barricade had even been sparked.
“I’m granting you full command of this mission, Barricade,” Megatron intoned firmly, optics bright and resolved. “Keep me apprised of every development, and the order to fire remains my right, but you are otherwise granted full autonomy to see this through.” To prove that you can finish this. To win the war for me and prove that this truly wasn’t a waste of time and energy.
Barricade nodded, aware of what rode on this mission, more than the end of a war (though that was certainly enough) but an undefined value that Cade had not yet named.
“I won’t fail you in this,” said Barricade quietly. “I stake my spark on it, I’ll finish this out or get slagged trying.” There was a beat in which the sincerity of that hummed like an audible tone in air... then Cade smirked. “Course that’s not exactly plan A. I’m rallying Scatterdust and his troops and getting them ready for the strike. I’ll need the best of them so Steve and his circle need to be left alone for the duration of the mission. I think the flyers should stay with Scatterdust and man the powerstations. I need a small group of ground units to keep things crazy while I move on the Bots. The details - I’ll handle those.”
“With the importance of these attacks being both simultaneous and successful, I would recommend putting an officer in command of each individual strike force,” Megatron advised smoothly , looking Barricade over more closely now and noting that his injuries that had marred him the night before were now gone. “Get Starscream , Serotype and Breakdown, amongst others, into the field and acting like Decepticon warriors and agents whilst you cause your usual brand of mayhem to keep Prime diverted.”
Barricade nodded. “Trust me,” he said, optics roving sidelong, as if looking into some yet un-resolved future. “With what I have in mind, if even half their forces don’t waste their time chasing me, I’ll think less of them. ‘Sides, I have a few promises to keep and I hate not keeping those.”
Dark optics swung back to Megatron’s, which might have been in error because the moment he did a kind of dizzy lurch rushed his spark, quickening his pulse and setting his circuits humming with a dim sense of disorientation that coalesced sharply and unexpectedly into longing. What the slag? Cade clamped down on this immediately, unnerved by the intensity of this rogue impulse, so strong it was in the rhythm of his engines, in his code, shivering into uncontrollable frequencies of his EMF. He couldn’t... why couldn’t he hide it? Frustration spiked him suddenly at this new variable.
Frowning, Megatron took a step closer to the smaller mech, resting one large hand on Barricade’s shoulder. It was not a gentle touch - rather grounding and assuring. “You will adjust. It will be a more persisting feeling whilst the bond is incomplete, but there’s no harm in leaving it that way.” A thin, quirked smile. “As for masking yourself from me, you’ll learn that too, in time. Though it can never be as it was before.”
A small slide of alarm - bright and sharp - moved through Barricade at that, an instinctive reaction. Infiltrators didn’t give up anything easily, their own emotions least of all and though he’d known this was going to happen the reality and the theoretical literature on spark bonding didn’t line up - the downloads didn’t tell you about becoming aware of the new code arrangements in your own systems, like being made stranger in your own mesh, like someone was touching you when no one was there...
Cade shifted a little, optics flickering with unease. “The Eradicons,” he said somewhat suddenly, swapping subjects, “I’ll be relying on them. Is there something I should know? This batch is smarter than the drone-soldiers I remember.”
Megatron allowed the moment to draw out, just long enough to make it clear that he saw that non-sequester for exactly what it was, and was consciously permitting it to fly. “As you’re no doubt aware, a group of the Eradicons have developed a sense of identity and self, even going so far as to take designations from themselves inspired by the human media they spend so much time immersed in. This has the advantage of making them more intuitive, adaptable and combat-efficient, but means that they are no longer drones to be used as mere equipment. For now their status on this ship will remain the same, but the evolved mechs will be managed more closely. You won’t find their advancement to be a difficulty. They are still loyal to me, and to the Decepticons.”
Barricade tilted his head. “Self-designation?” he said. Even now the word held threads of its anarchic heritage, those subtle sub-sonics of linguistic secrecy, a word meant to be whispered and spoken in private and to mechs you trusted implicitly. During his time as a deep-cover agent for the upper-caste enforcers Cade had seen worker mechs spark-stripped for speaking of it around the wrong officers of the law and the words now still held that history for him. “So Steve, Manfred, Bruce, those are all the names they’ve picked? They picked native names, not Cybertronian derivatives?” Cade hummed mildly. “That’s... interesting. They didn’t follow Scatterdust’s example.”
A hummed engine rumble as Megatron turned back to the console, bringing up the model compiled from the scans he’d taken from Steve. “Most of the drones on this ship are significantly younger, and have far more interaction with the native cultures and peculiarities than those of Cybertron that was. It is... ridiculous, but it is their right if they are capable of making the choice.”
The spark as displayed on the large screen did not appear as it did within the chassis to the naked optic. Whilst finding a way to overcome and bypass the gestalt bond with Bumblebee, Megatron had delved deeply into metaphysical theory and research into spark structures and interaction that had been almost entirely abandoned since Cybertron went dark. On the screen now, the glowing orb shifted like ink in water, tendrils that ultimately sank into subspace and undefined facets of the universe to create bonds floating lazily around the central mass.
Megatron motioned with one claw across the screen, indicating a particularly strong white thread of light. “The change appears to be originating directly within the spark as opposed to out of the prolonged networking of their processors and repairing one another with their own parts. This strand does not occur so significantly in drones, but it has grown.”
Cade moved forward to brace his hands against the edge of the console control, optics reflecting back the data scroll and glyphs running down the screen. “Sparks don’t do that though,” said Barricade, reaching claws toward the warmly glowing holo construct, that over-bright thread running from the bright centre of Steve’s consciousness. He hesitated, looking back at Megatron. “Right? Sparks can’t... change in structure like that.” Cade paused, thinking before looking back at the screen. “Then again, if sparks were capable of evolving to overcome hardware limitations its not like anyone was watching drones close enough to notice.... Are Steve and your Radcons the first real case-study on this? Why are they evolving? Why now?”
Folding his arms back across his thick chassis, reminded again of the mutilation he’d made upon his own spark that was now throwing out its own batch of problematic side-effects, Megatron spoke without looking at Barricade. “I don’t know - and there’s no data on the subject to begin speculating why they’re evolving now. When the uprising first occurred, it was not with drones - it was a choice of the mind, not of the spark. Drones were built because of the uprising, their sparks lesser as their processors were limited. Sparks are more, organic than protoform in that they are malleable, to an extent... My own was drastically altered less than a cycle ago.”
Cade glanced at his commander, mildly tempted to comment that ‘altered’ and ’butchered’ were two vastly different words and he should look into the nuances of the meaning... but his self preservation was just slightly too strong and frankly it wasn’t funny. What Cade had watched the warlord do to himself - severing a portion of his spark from itself - had been an extreme of willpower beyond what Cade was certain he had the ability to endure. Self-mutilation incomprehensible. Cade was used to all manner of breach upon his hardware, his software, inured to agony and the system-strip shred of pain through his sensor net...
He did not well bear attacks on his spark. Autobots never breached a spark for purposes of torture - threatened to rip it out, sure, but never physically touch or crack the actual chamber. Taboo was pretty strong and even Cons tended to shy from the act. Thinking of it made Cade unnaturally aware of his own spark inside his chest, of the electrical murmur in his systems left by the partial bond.
“Speaking of,” he murmured, “I assume there are no ill-affects thus far, as I doubt you’re going to check in with Knockout about matters of the spark...”
“Knockout knows nothing about this,” Megatron replied, his sharper tone conveying that the Decepticon medic was not going to know anything, either. “And none of the repercussions will affect you through the bond, minimal as they are.” Omission and downplay were far easier to execute with the bond and Barricade’s proximity. He wasn’t yet certain as to how sensitive Barricade was to the eddies that now flowed between them; whether he had learned to read them yet. Distinguish them.
Cade translated Megatron speak to: ‘I’m fine, shut up, eat slag, then go die.’ He shrugged. “I haven’t had any ill affects thus far, just... some feedback I guess. My systems are adjusting.”
‘Adjusting’ another word that didn’t quite cover the meaning he was going for, but would have to do because there wasn’t a word that said, effectively, ‘It feels like you have your hand on my shoulder every waking minute and I’m aware of the weight. Not always, but sometimes I forget and then the next moment I stand up or turn my head and then remember.’ Barricade shifted again, somewhat uncomfortably.
Megatron paused in the almost-idle gestures of working, drawing his attention fully away from the hologram to look upon Barricade. He could see as much as feel that the mech was uneasy, perturbed by this strange exposure of self and perception of another that came with a spark bond - even one not wholly completed. A part of him still rooted in old instinct wanted to tell the younger mech that he could ask questions about their bond, that they could talk about this as equals, that for all they would do to keep their positions as Commander and Infiltrator at the fore, sometimes this was going to temporarily supersede. Because even half a spark bond was still a bond, and there was no way to pretend that it wasn’t there.
But Barricade would react as well to that as a Turbofox would to being shoved into a munitions locker. Settling for sending a quiet pulse of invitation/acceptance/knowledge across instead, Megatron nodded towards the door behind the mech. “Go kill something, Barricade. You’ll feel better.”
The infiltrator turned around, leaning back against the console, optics holding steady on the warlord’s. “I’d feel better,” he said, “knowing this war was over and the Bots were dead. My temporary sense of disorientation will pass and then I’ll have all the time in the world to get used to your frequencies running through my systems every nano-kilk of every day.”
His EMF was open, made no attempt to hide the unfamiliar race of both dread and alien anticipation at the prospect – both an unease and a deep almost painful sense of longing at the idea. Barricade hummed with dissatisfaction, noting the curt slide of arousal that seemed to come far too easily at something as simple as a frequency pulse from the other mech. His claws on the edge of the console dug in slightly, a fractional tension and heat crawling slowly though every circuit from his spark chamber out.
“And everything else,” Megatron murmured with a thin, knowing smile, his optics narrowing as he reached out one claw and drew it in a slow, deliberate line down the mech’s chassis. An echo of response reverberated down the bond - the tip of the iceberg, and the foreknowledge warmed his lines as much as the contact now did. “There’s more to this than just my frequency running through you, and yours through me. Things that you won’t want to get used to.”
Cade had to physically resist the arch that slid up his backstrut like an electrical current, the heady surge of heat and static that rushed through his chest like someone reaching into his spark chamber and sliding a charged fist around every sensory system there. The ache under his armor intensified and slid through every circuit, shivering in his code like a viral attack – unfamiliar lines of software activating parts of his inner framework he hadn’t thought of in eons and the sensation was confusing and startlingly good.
“There are… a few things I think I could get used to,” said Cade, voice underscored with a dark note of arousal, heavy with it. Heat was coming off his alloy like a kiln, metal clicking and humming. His optics flickered curiously. “You’ve done this before? The bond thing?”
It was the Cybertronian equivalent of a bucket of ice water. Megatron withdrew his hand, his features turning carefully expressionless, though he knew it was inevitable that something had already communicated across the bond. “Not... like this,” he ultimately admitted, quietly though, mercifully to his own audios, not softly. “Not with a mature mecha.”
Cade didn’t move for a moment, startling how immediately he cooled and how instantaneously he understood. “Nos,” said before he realized he didn’t have a right to that name and immediately shut up, clenching his dentals and dropping his optics. He couldn’t parse the unfathomable sear of rage and grief that ran through him like a sucker punch, coming from that same shivering code that just moments before had charged him so hard he’d nearly fallen off his pedes. Cade looked up.
“This is not the same,” he said calmly, coldly. “I am not someone to be taken from you. You’re my commander and I was sparked a soldier. I’ve given my life over to your orders a thousands times over and nothing about that has changed.” Cade lifted his chin. “I don’t belong to anyone, but I’d belong to you, Megatron.”
Almost every mecha on board the Nemesis had been sparked in the early years of the Great War, or in the turbulent decades building up to it, when Megatron was just emerging from the gladiatorial arena as a political menace to the upper echelons of a corrupt and disparate class society. The later generations functioned on Decepticon outposts, a handful of ships and in hiding on unknown worlds. The oldest and most loyal he had cultivated onto the flag ship, where they could all be directed towards the same goal of destroying Prime and his equivalent of the faction’s core. Megatron was older than all but a handful, and only Soundwave, Fairwinds and now Barricade knew anything of his life before he took a designation. Though he considered D-16 a past and dead life, some instinctive traditions and modes of thinking had endured the War, suppressed and hidden as they had been.
Barricade had always unknowingly drawn such unconscious inclinations to the fore, and his recent actions and bluntly honest words now in the safe seclusion of this room had stoked them. Megatron was the most powerful Decepticon in existence, and only closely disputed by the last of the Primes as the most powerful Cybertronian in the universe. In the basest of terms, his mate, his elected private equal, should be lavished with the fruits of that position, laid basking in his power and might as a mirror and a demonstration of it for all to see. Live as a powerful consort, trophy and partner - coveted and feared.
Megatron had no illusions that these old fashioned ideas belonged to a dead world and a lost time, nor that Barricade would purge at the very notion of being elevated in such a way. The warlord had instead shown his favour by granting the dark mech unparalleled leeway, autonomy and indulgence since the beginning. Freedom to operate unsupervised for 200 hundred years, to run rogue without needing to answer for the time was the most valuable thing he could give to Barricade, and he’d taken great pride and satisfaction in seeing what the mech had achieved through it.
To this mech now, Megatron placed a hand across the nape of his neck and touched his chin and mouth to the fore of his helm. His words were a warm hum, more an accompaniment to the beyond-verbal communication taking place beyond feeling. “N05-D16 was before you, before Prime, before the Decepticons, and belongs to that long-dead time, that other life.”
A hot ventilation and the warlord’s grip tightened, forcing the infiltrator’s head back in the same instant as he pressed forward to press and arch Barricade back into the console. As Megatron crushed their mouths together, his other hand grasped the mech’s chassis and played into the gaps between the armour plates, flicking artfully over the neural lines he could reach and humming magnetic resonances against those he couldn’t.
He spoke in a growled litany against his sparkmate’s mouth, pouring the words across his glossa as much as into his audios. “You, Barricade, are incomparable. I should have crushed your spark a dozen times over, have destroyed others for less. You are infuriating, reckless, irrepressible, primitively vicious, insubordinate, arrogant in your presumptions and idiotically rash in your actions. And you are mine.” Moving back just enough so that he could see Barricade’s optics, his own wildly bright, Megatron added: “Now end this war with me.”
Barricade was shocked how hard his charge came back, a shunt of heat and lightening uncoiling hot behind his chest plates and sliding through the locus of his spark chamber and through every aching neural line. The arousal came so swiftly, so totally over him the immediacy of his response bordered on profane. The infiltrator arched up, reached back over his head to grip the bottom of the display screen, his armor splitting at the spark with a hum and crackle of white-blue light.
He moaned, his engine gunning, his body thrumming dangerously hot beneath Megatron’s touch. He couldn’t remember wanting someone this intensely before. It was in his basecode, running through every line and feed, pressing into his sensor net so powerfully he couldn’t think through the haze of want, the vibration of his commander’s EMF through his frame, playing his alloy to an unbearable pitch and flux. He could taste the ozone crackle of raw spark energy, a current conducting through and charging his dark frame so fully he could hear his pitch and buzz of his arousal.
“Don’t belong to anyone,” Barricade gritted, optics flickering and darkening. “Just you. Don’t want anyone…just…”
An amused rumble rolled through Megatron’s vocaliser and vents jointly, his hand flaring over the suddenly-opened gap in Barricade’s chassis. The mech had never opened easily in all the time he’d known him in this way. Never like this - abrupt and instinctive and with a primal need that overruled conscious thought and control. “I didn’t think you’d still be this... sensitive,” he remarked quietly, curious and enthralled, running the tip of his thumb just inside the edge of one of the thick plates.
Cade swore and jerked instantly, an electric tesla arc banding white-hot through the inside of his chest and the infiltrator found himself shuddering, spark clenching, pulsing impossibly hot inside him. He cycled his vents hard, trying to cool off, tangled in a haze of interface subroutines that synced his frequency instantly to the other mech.
“Side effect?” Cade demanded, not sure if he was annoyed at his inexperience or if his frustration stemmed from his commander’s laconic approach to ‘facing him flat as he would have liked. Another merge impulse jolted his system, setting his neural lines crackling with arousal and suddenly Barricade was sitting up, one hand hooked blindingly fast around Megatron’s neck, the other gripping the warlord’s wrist, drawing his hand more deeply into the bright lattice of lightening charging the circuitry around his spark. The feeling was like putting a powerline directly into his neural net and he groaned.
“If this is normal,” he said, voice ragged, “then I get the fraggin’ appeal.”
Megatron met the smaller mech greedily, one hand dragging up a powerful thigh and lifting Barricade easily against his waist, leaving only a modicum of hot air between their frames. “I suspect it’s your function - usually so cut off from...” He parted his own chest plates, spark energy lunging forward to find its bonded counterpoint, in the same moment as he circled Barricade’s chamber with his thumb. “Contact.”
“I’m not exactly spark-shy,” said Barricade humorlessly, but cut off hard, gasping as the completed current between them promptly put an obscene arch into his backstrut.
Jerking, optics shuttering, he momentarily forgot what he was going to say in the wake of his whole sensor net going white hot with pleasure. He heard himself, his vents cycling erratically, the rev of electrified internals, the scrape of armor as he bucked up instinctively against the mech over him and the deep drag of arousal as it moved through the subsonics of his voice. He couldn’t remember a merge going this deeply though him, pleasure verging on agony. He found himself shaking, biting back reactive sounds.
“Never felt… like this…”
Megatron crested with him, curling hard into the body clinging so tightly to him, pulled by servos and spark jointly. “Nor have I,” he rasped in a low, heady gasp of speech, close to Barricade’s audio. His pedes jerked, fighting to keep them upright when his legs turned hollow with strut-deep pleasure and relief that he hadn’t known.
A low laugh rose slow from Barricade’s throat, static-laced, deeply aroused. He leaned up, groaning as he pressed into the other mech, spark-to spark, a current so strong it felt like he was losing himself. “Take me off the duty roster for a few hours.” He smiled into his partner’s audio, panting. “I can spare the time...”
It had been necessary to raise the examination berth as high as the mechanics would extend to bring the small Eradicon’s form up enough to work on comfortably. The restraints were strapped back, as unnecessary as Megatron had expected them to be, leaving the worker mech almost lost in the grey surface expanse he himself had spent too many hours upon as of late.
No longer, though, Megatron had quietly affirmed to himself, the quantum-splitter welded into his protomatter inside his chassis still forcing the fragment of his spark that bore the Scout’s bond. The pain had lessened considerably, but the ache would remain for as long as his spark was divided - that he’d anticipated and could live with. More troublesome were the system-wide power fluctuations he’d been experiencing since coming online and the restlessness of his fuel processor. Side effects of the procedure that would pass in time, he hoped.
For the last hour, however, Steve had been providing a great distraction from the invisible glitches in his systems, as well as an ongoing mental thread about what had happened with his newly-returned infiltrator. The Eradicon’s chassis was fully opened to his careful hands, his spark exposed to Megatron’s scrutiny.
The significantly bigger mech had to resort to using fine instruments to explore along the spark casing and internal mechanisms without damaging their bearer, offering sensor nodes for the closest, most detailed scans possible. “Have you examined any of your cohort this closely, Steve?” Megatron asked, uttering the designation with as much inflection as he would any of his officers’.
“Yes, Lord Megatron. A few after... after they have taken battle damage.”
Steve would have liked to have said his voice as he reported was unfaltering as he would have liked, but there was a tilt and a shudder in the sub-sonics of his words. He tried to hold very still while the warlord examined the inside of his spark chamber, a procedure which should have made him uncomfortable but eons of being broken down and rebuilt and repurposed, getting ripped up and modded had made the privacy of the spark and all social reservations attached somewhat... impossible.
He flinched slightly at the tug of wiring inside his chest, a jolt through his sensory net that could have been pain but he wasn’t sure it was so deep and gone so fast. “Should I... set up routine exams for the troops?”
“That will not be necessary,” Megatron rumbled smoothly, beginning to withdraw the various probes and sensors back into the adapted scanner he was using. “At least not yet. Not until I’ve extrapolated the results from your base line, and contrasted it with scans from the true drones in Shockwave’s possession.”
Once the lines and filaments had all returned to their housings and their data buffered through the scanner, Megatron began synching the data to his own processor with a step back from the berth. He motioned with one flicked hand that Steve was free to reseal his chassis and move. There was silence for a few moments before he asked softly, seriously, and without bearing down on the Eradicon’s optics with his own gaze: “Why did you want a name, mech, as opposed to your assembly-line designation?”
“For the same reasons as...” Steve stopped, the light across his visor flickering. “I mean... I don’t really think about it much.” A apprehensive pause. Steve closed his chest with a snap and click, then, “I didn’t want one at first. It was Breakdown. He made a joke and started calling me Steve because of a program that I liked to quote for the amusement of the other Eradicons. The others started to call me Steve and after a while ‘Steve’ meant me and that was... it was more appropriate than my assembly-line designation. I wanted to keep it. Breakdown said I should. So I did.”
Steve looked up, EMF rippling nervously off the alloy of his frame. “It was an accident.”
Megatron’s optics clicked up to meet the visor, narrowing minutely. “It was evolution.”
The pause that followed had an undefined air. It may have not be dissimilar from the silence that followed in the Tower Council Halls when the senators heard that a gladiator mech had taken the name of one of the Thirteen... but before anyone might have thought of that the laboratory door hissed open from the opposite side of the room.
“Megatron.” Barricade didn’t say anything else.
No title though Barricade had a subordinate as audience, Megatron noted. With this particular Eradicon it didn’t matter, but if this public familiarity was shown in front of mechs like Knockout or, worse, Starscream, then it would have to be quickly brought into line. Barricade was new to even incomplete spark bonds of this nature, though; he didn’t yet understand how they influenced unconscious behaviour.
The warlord put his back to Steve, replacing the scanner and sliding his claws across the monitoring console. “You’re dismissed.”
Steve didn’t know the infiltrator, only of him ,and knew that when the lieutenant showed up, other things tended to fall by the wayside and Steve was, very much, ‘other things’. He quietly got off the exam table and took his leave, glancing briefly at the dark armored mech who, oddly, caught his stare back before he quickened his pace out of the labs. He didn’t examine the shape of his own anxieties, just fled.
“Huh.” Barricade moved into the room and made no comment on the fleeing mech. “Shockwave’s made a breakthough and has a plan to bring Phantom fully online.”
Megatron gave the infiltrator a cursory glance, ignoring the sharp little flare that flashed through his chassis. An incomplete spark-bond wanting to be fulfilled within a forcibly-divided spark: still infinitely preferable to Bumblebee in his head. “Tell me.”
Cade moved into the room, door closing behind him and came to stand, arms folded, chin up, in front of the warlord. “The Phantom’s weapon lock can be circumvented by causing a systems overload, forcing a glitch in the AI matrix. During this time there is a lag in the security locks which will allow Shockwave to insert a new pilot... but the specifications for the pilot are apparently very specific. Luckily we’ve found a hardware match in Win... Fairwinds.” Cade pretended not to note the vocalizer slip. “I’ll run distraction while Shockwave sets up the power drain necessary to stun the ship’s systems. It’ll take out half the country’s’ power grid so... we need to keep Prime distracted.”
The warlord made a soft sound, finally looking away from the console. “Is that what you were working on last night?”
Cade glanced at the floor, not bothering to keep his EMF guarded as he might have usually... seemed a touch pointless now with everything laid out in the aether between them, whether he wanted it or not. He kept his arms folded across his middle before he moved forward, uncertain about why they needed to get off topic. He didn’t really want to but, slag, how did you ignore something that was shivering like a comm frequency between them?
“I was, yes.” (No, I wasn’t.) A pause. Then, when lightening didn’t strike he continued more quietly, “I thought it would be best to stay focused.”
“At this juncture, absolutely,” Megatron affirmed, his voice only marginally louder than the infiltrator’s had been. He hadn’t noticed lowering it. A short ex-vent drew a line under the unspoken topic; not a sigh but a signal. Let Barricade continue to believe he was able to slip lies past his Commander, even with the beginning of a spark bond in place.
He turned to face Barricade fully, his posture broad and open in the face of the smaller mech’s folded arms and crackling field. “Where is Shockwave planning to get that much power? And what have you in mind for capturing Optimus’ attention?”
“I plan on doing exactly everything I promised those fraggers I’d do if they didn’t slag me.”
Cade smiled viciously, mockery and glee running through the aura of his EMF, sliding across their connection like a slow winding electrical current, lazy and self-satisfied. But having said that, he sobered again, vaguely unnerved by the close-range affect Megatron was having on his electromagnetics. It felt like... a little bit like having Frenzy back, the easy transmission and reception of emotion between them... but worse. He could always keep most of his thoughts and feelings from Frenzy even when the skitzy glitch was sitting in his fragging chest.
Suddenly, he wasn’t sure if he had gotten away with that last lie, if a partial spark-bond even allowed for that...
Slag.
“As for Shockwave, he plans to drain off six major power stations and redirect the power from the greater west coast area directly into the Phantom. The ship’s too tough to be damaged on the hardware or basic software level, but it will frag up some of its firewalls, give Fairwinds the time she needs to get into the systems and integrate.”
“Six strike teams, one for each station, and all to attack simultaneously,” Megatron iterated, already consulting work rosters with habitual immediacy. Fairwind’s involvement in the task was encouraging - this was the kind of work she was built for, and it was good to see her being utilised as the powerful instrument that she was rather than disregarded for the sparkling-like facade she put on.
The larger mech closed some of the distance that remained between them, though not quite enough to be within reach. The warm presence of someone else where there had only been someone missing eased some of the sharp aches in his spark, and the proximal comfort was stronger the closer their bodies were. Megatron kept his own side of the bond carefully schooled and out of the living line of the connection, a skill he’d mastered with Nos likely before Barricade had even been sparked.
“I’m granting you full command of this mission, Barricade,” Megatron intoned firmly, optics bright and resolved. “Keep me apprised of every development, and the order to fire remains my right, but you are otherwise granted full autonomy to see this through.” To prove that you can finish this. To win the war for me and prove that this truly wasn’t a waste of time and energy.
Barricade nodded, aware of what rode on this mission, more than the end of a war (though that was certainly enough) but an undefined value that Cade had not yet named.
“I won’t fail you in this,” said Barricade quietly. “I stake my spark on it, I’ll finish this out or get slagged trying.” There was a beat in which the sincerity of that hummed like an audible tone in air... then Cade smirked. “Course that’s not exactly plan A. I’m rallying Scatterdust and his troops and getting them ready for the strike. I’ll need the best of them so Steve and his circle need to be left alone for the duration of the mission. I think the flyers should stay with Scatterdust and man the powerstations. I need a small group of ground units to keep things crazy while I move on the Bots. The details - I’ll handle those.”
“With the importance of these attacks being both simultaneous and successful, I would recommend putting an officer in command of each individual strike force,” Megatron advised smoothly , looking Barricade over more closely now and noting that his injuries that had marred him the night before were now gone. “Get Starscream , Serotype and Breakdown, amongst others, into the field and acting like Decepticon warriors and agents whilst you cause your usual brand of mayhem to keep Prime diverted.”
Barricade nodded. “Trust me,” he said, optics roving sidelong, as if looking into some yet un-resolved future. “With what I have in mind, if even half their forces don’t waste their time chasing me, I’ll think less of them. ‘Sides, I have a few promises to keep and I hate not keeping those.”
Dark optics swung back to Megatron’s, which might have been in error because the moment he did a kind of dizzy lurch rushed his spark, quickening his pulse and setting his circuits humming with a dim sense of disorientation that coalesced sharply and unexpectedly into longing. What the slag? Cade clamped down on this immediately, unnerved by the intensity of this rogue impulse, so strong it was in the rhythm of his engines, in his code, shivering into uncontrollable frequencies of his EMF. He couldn’t... why couldn’t he hide it? Frustration spiked him suddenly at this new variable.
Frowning, Megatron took a step closer to the smaller mech, resting one large hand on Barricade’s shoulder. It was not a gentle touch - rather grounding and assuring. “You will adjust. It will be a more persisting feeling whilst the bond is incomplete, but there’s no harm in leaving it that way.” A thin, quirked smile. “As for masking yourself from me, you’ll learn that too, in time. Though it can never be as it was before.”
A small slide of alarm - bright and sharp - moved through Barricade at that, an instinctive reaction. Infiltrators didn’t give up anything easily, their own emotions least of all and though he’d known this was going to happen the reality and the theoretical literature on spark bonding didn’t line up - the downloads didn’t tell you about becoming aware of the new code arrangements in your own systems, like being made stranger in your own mesh, like someone was touching you when no one was there...
Cade shifted a little, optics flickering with unease. “The Eradicons,” he said somewhat suddenly, swapping subjects, “I’ll be relying on them. Is there something I should know? This batch is smarter than the drone-soldiers I remember.”
Megatron allowed the moment to draw out, just long enough to make it clear that he saw that non-sequester for exactly what it was, and was consciously permitting it to fly. “As you’re no doubt aware, a group of the Eradicons have developed a sense of identity and self, even going so far as to take designations from themselves inspired by the human media they spend so much time immersed in. This has the advantage of making them more intuitive, adaptable and combat-efficient, but means that they are no longer drones to be used as mere equipment. For now their status on this ship will remain the same, but the evolved mechs will be managed more closely. You won’t find their advancement to be a difficulty. They are still loyal to me, and to the Decepticons.”
Barricade tilted his head. “Self-designation?” he said. Even now the word held threads of its anarchic heritage, those subtle sub-sonics of linguistic secrecy, a word meant to be whispered and spoken in private and to mechs you trusted implicitly. During his time as a deep-cover agent for the upper-caste enforcers Cade had seen worker mechs spark-stripped for speaking of it around the wrong officers of the law and the words now still held that history for him. “So Steve, Manfred, Bruce, those are all the names they’ve picked? They picked native names, not Cybertronian derivatives?” Cade hummed mildly. “That’s... interesting. They didn’t follow Scatterdust’s example.”
A hummed engine rumble as Megatron turned back to the console, bringing up the model compiled from the scans he’d taken from Steve. “Most of the drones on this ship are significantly younger, and have far more interaction with the native cultures and peculiarities than those of Cybertron that was. It is... ridiculous, but it is their right if they are capable of making the choice.”
The spark as displayed on the large screen did not appear as it did within the chassis to the naked optic. Whilst finding a way to overcome and bypass the gestalt bond with Bumblebee, Megatron had delved deeply into metaphysical theory and research into spark structures and interaction that had been almost entirely abandoned since Cybertron went dark. On the screen now, the glowing orb shifted like ink in water, tendrils that ultimately sank into subspace and undefined facets of the universe to create bonds floating lazily around the central mass.
Megatron motioned with one claw across the screen, indicating a particularly strong white thread of light. “The change appears to be originating directly within the spark as opposed to out of the prolonged networking of their processors and repairing one another with their own parts. This strand does not occur so significantly in drones, but it has grown.”
Cade moved forward to brace his hands against the edge of the console control, optics reflecting back the data scroll and glyphs running down the screen. “Sparks don’t do that though,” said Barricade, reaching claws toward the warmly glowing holo construct, that over-bright thread running from the bright centre of Steve’s consciousness. He hesitated, looking back at Megatron. “Right? Sparks can’t... change in structure like that.” Cade paused, thinking before looking back at the screen. “Then again, if sparks were capable of evolving to overcome hardware limitations its not like anyone was watching drones close enough to notice.... Are Steve and your Radcons the first real case-study on this? Why are they evolving? Why now?”
Folding his arms back across his thick chassis, reminded again of the mutilation he’d made upon his own spark that was now throwing out its own batch of problematic side-effects, Megatron spoke without looking at Barricade. “I don’t know - and there’s no data on the subject to begin speculating why they’re evolving now. When the uprising first occurred, it was not with drones - it was a choice of the mind, not of the spark. Drones were built because of the uprising, their sparks lesser as their processors were limited. Sparks are more, organic than protoform in that they are malleable, to an extent... My own was drastically altered less than a cycle ago.”
Cade glanced at his commander, mildly tempted to comment that ‘altered’ and ’butchered’ were two vastly different words and he should look into the nuances of the meaning... but his self preservation was just slightly too strong and frankly it wasn’t funny. What Cade had watched the warlord do to himself - severing a portion of his spark from itself - had been an extreme of willpower beyond what Cade was certain he had the ability to endure. Self-mutilation incomprehensible. Cade was used to all manner of breach upon his hardware, his software, inured to agony and the system-strip shred of pain through his sensor net...
He did not well bear attacks on his spark. Autobots never breached a spark for purposes of torture - threatened to rip it out, sure, but never physically touch or crack the actual chamber. Taboo was pretty strong and even Cons tended to shy from the act. Thinking of it made Cade unnaturally aware of his own spark inside his chest, of the electrical murmur in his systems left by the partial bond.
“Speaking of,” he murmured, “I assume there are no ill-affects thus far, as I doubt you’re going to check in with Knockout about matters of the spark...”
“Knockout knows nothing about this,” Megatron replied, his sharper tone conveying that the Decepticon medic was not going to know anything, either. “And none of the repercussions will affect you through the bond, minimal as they are.” Omission and downplay were far easier to execute with the bond and Barricade’s proximity. He wasn’t yet certain as to how sensitive Barricade was to the eddies that now flowed between them; whether he had learned to read them yet. Distinguish them.
Cade translated Megatron speak to: ‘I’m fine, shut up, eat slag, then go die.’ He shrugged. “I haven’t had any ill affects thus far, just... some feedback I guess. My systems are adjusting.”
‘Adjusting’ another word that didn’t quite cover the meaning he was going for, but would have to do because there wasn’t a word that said, effectively, ‘It feels like you have your hand on my shoulder every waking minute and I’m aware of the weight. Not always, but sometimes I forget and then the next moment I stand up or turn my head and then remember.’ Barricade shifted again, somewhat uncomfortably.
Megatron paused in the almost-idle gestures of working, drawing his attention fully away from the hologram to look upon Barricade. He could see as much as feel that the mech was uneasy, perturbed by this strange exposure of self and perception of another that came with a spark bond - even one not wholly completed. A part of him still rooted in old instinct wanted to tell the younger mech that he could ask questions about their bond, that they could talk about this as equals, that for all they would do to keep their positions as Commander and Infiltrator at the fore, sometimes this was going to temporarily supersede. Because even half a spark bond was still a bond, and there was no way to pretend that it wasn’t there.
But Barricade would react as well to that as a Turbofox would to being shoved into a munitions locker. Settling for sending a quiet pulse of invitation/acceptance/knowledge across instead, Megatron nodded towards the door behind the mech. “Go kill something, Barricade. You’ll feel better.”
The infiltrator turned around, leaning back against the console, optics holding steady on the warlord’s. “I’d feel better,” he said, “knowing this war was over and the Bots were dead. My temporary sense of disorientation will pass and then I’ll have all the time in the world to get used to your frequencies running through my systems every nano-kilk of every day.”
His EMF was open, made no attempt to hide the unfamiliar race of both dread and alien anticipation at the prospect – both an unease and a deep almost painful sense of longing at the idea. Barricade hummed with dissatisfaction, noting the curt slide of arousal that seemed to come far too easily at something as simple as a frequency pulse from the other mech. His claws on the edge of the console dug in slightly, a fractional tension and heat crawling slowly though every circuit from his spark chamber out.
“And everything else,” Megatron murmured with a thin, knowing smile, his optics narrowing as he reached out one claw and drew it in a slow, deliberate line down the mech’s chassis. An echo of response reverberated down the bond - the tip of the iceberg, and the foreknowledge warmed his lines as much as the contact now did. “There’s more to this than just my frequency running through you, and yours through me. Things that you won’t want to get used to.”
Cade had to physically resist the arch that slid up his backstrut like an electrical current, the heady surge of heat and static that rushed through his chest like someone reaching into his spark chamber and sliding a charged fist around every sensory system there. The ache under his armor intensified and slid through every circuit, shivering in his code like a viral attack – unfamiliar lines of software activating parts of his inner framework he hadn’t thought of in eons and the sensation was confusing and startlingly good.
“There are… a few things I think I could get used to,” said Cade, voice underscored with a dark note of arousal, heavy with it. Heat was coming off his alloy like a kiln, metal clicking and humming. His optics flickered curiously. “You’ve done this before? The bond thing?”
It was the Cybertronian equivalent of a bucket of ice water. Megatron withdrew his hand, his features turning carefully expressionless, though he knew it was inevitable that something had already communicated across the bond. “Not... like this,” he ultimately admitted, quietly though, mercifully to his own audios, not softly. “Not with a mature mecha.”
Cade didn’t move for a moment, startling how immediately he cooled and how instantaneously he understood. “Nos,” said before he realized he didn’t have a right to that name and immediately shut up, clenching his dentals and dropping his optics. He couldn’t parse the unfathomable sear of rage and grief that ran through him like a sucker punch, coming from that same shivering code that just moments before had charged him so hard he’d nearly fallen off his pedes. Cade looked up.
“This is not the same,” he said calmly, coldly. “I am not someone to be taken from you. You’re my commander and I was sparked a soldier. I’ve given my life over to your orders a thousands times over and nothing about that has changed.” Cade lifted his chin. “I don’t belong to anyone, but I’d belong to you, Megatron.”
Almost every mecha on board the Nemesis had been sparked in the early years of the Great War, or in the turbulent decades building up to it, when Megatron was just emerging from the gladiatorial arena as a political menace to the upper echelons of a corrupt and disparate class society. The later generations functioned on Decepticon outposts, a handful of ships and in hiding on unknown worlds. The oldest and most loyal he had cultivated onto the flag ship, where they could all be directed towards the same goal of destroying Prime and his equivalent of the faction’s core. Megatron was older than all but a handful, and only Soundwave, Fairwinds and now Barricade knew anything of his life before he took a designation. Though he considered D-16 a past and dead life, some instinctive traditions and modes of thinking had endured the War, suppressed and hidden as they had been.
Barricade had always unknowingly drawn such unconscious inclinations to the fore, and his recent actions and bluntly honest words now in the safe seclusion of this room had stoked them. Megatron was the most powerful Decepticon in existence, and only closely disputed by the last of the Primes as the most powerful Cybertronian in the universe. In the basest of terms, his mate, his elected private equal, should be lavished with the fruits of that position, laid basking in his power and might as a mirror and a demonstration of it for all to see. Live as a powerful consort, trophy and partner - coveted and feared.
Megatron had no illusions that these old fashioned ideas belonged to a dead world and a lost time, nor that Barricade would purge at the very notion of being elevated in such a way. The warlord had instead shown his favour by granting the dark mech unparalleled leeway, autonomy and indulgence since the beginning. Freedom to operate unsupervised for 200 hundred years, to run rogue without needing to answer for the time was the most valuable thing he could give to Barricade, and he’d taken great pride and satisfaction in seeing what the mech had achieved through it.
To this mech now, Megatron placed a hand across the nape of his neck and touched his chin and mouth to the fore of his helm. His words were a warm hum, more an accompaniment to the beyond-verbal communication taking place beyond feeling. “N05-D16 was before you, before Prime, before the Decepticons, and belongs to that long-dead time, that other life.”
A hot ventilation and the warlord’s grip tightened, forcing the infiltrator’s head back in the same instant as he pressed forward to press and arch Barricade back into the console. As Megatron crushed their mouths together, his other hand grasped the mech’s chassis and played into the gaps between the armour plates, flicking artfully over the neural lines he could reach and humming magnetic resonances against those he couldn’t.
He spoke in a growled litany against his sparkmate’s mouth, pouring the words across his glossa as much as into his audios. “You, Barricade, are incomparable. I should have crushed your spark a dozen times over, have destroyed others for less. You are infuriating, reckless, irrepressible, primitively vicious, insubordinate, arrogant in your presumptions and idiotically rash in your actions. And you are mine.” Moving back just enough so that he could see Barricade’s optics, his own wildly bright, Megatron added: “Now end this war with me.”
Barricade was shocked how hard his charge came back, a shunt of heat and lightening uncoiling hot behind his chest plates and sliding through the locus of his spark chamber and through every aching neural line. The arousal came so swiftly, so totally over him the immediacy of his response bordered on profane. The infiltrator arched up, reached back over his head to grip the bottom of the display screen, his armor splitting at the spark with a hum and crackle of white-blue light.
He moaned, his engine gunning, his body thrumming dangerously hot beneath Megatron’s touch. He couldn’t remember wanting someone this intensely before. It was in his basecode, running through every line and feed, pressing into his sensor net so powerfully he couldn’t think through the haze of want, the vibration of his commander’s EMF through his frame, playing his alloy to an unbearable pitch and flux. He could taste the ozone crackle of raw spark energy, a current conducting through and charging his dark frame so fully he could hear his pitch and buzz of his arousal.
“Don’t belong to anyone,” Barricade gritted, optics flickering and darkening. “Just you. Don’t want anyone…just…”
An amused rumble rolled through Megatron’s vocaliser and vents jointly, his hand flaring over the suddenly-opened gap in Barricade’s chassis. The mech had never opened easily in all the time he’d known him in this way. Never like this - abrupt and instinctive and with a primal need that overruled conscious thought and control. “I didn’t think you’d still be this... sensitive,” he remarked quietly, curious and enthralled, running the tip of his thumb just inside the edge of one of the thick plates.
Cade swore and jerked instantly, an electric tesla arc banding white-hot through the inside of his chest and the infiltrator found himself shuddering, spark clenching, pulsing impossibly hot inside him. He cycled his vents hard, trying to cool off, tangled in a haze of interface subroutines that synced his frequency instantly to the other mech.
“Side effect?” Cade demanded, not sure if he was annoyed at his inexperience or if his frustration stemmed from his commander’s laconic approach to ‘facing him flat as he would have liked. Another merge impulse jolted his system, setting his neural lines crackling with arousal and suddenly Barricade was sitting up, one hand hooked blindingly fast around Megatron’s neck, the other gripping the warlord’s wrist, drawing his hand more deeply into the bright lattice of lightening charging the circuitry around his spark. The feeling was like putting a powerline directly into his neural net and he groaned.
“If this is normal,” he said, voice ragged, “then I get the fraggin’ appeal.”
Megatron met the smaller mech greedily, one hand dragging up a powerful thigh and lifting Barricade easily against his waist, leaving only a modicum of hot air between their frames. “I suspect it’s your function - usually so cut off from...” He parted his own chest plates, spark energy lunging forward to find its bonded counterpoint, in the same moment as he circled Barricade’s chamber with his thumb. “Contact.”
“I’m not exactly spark-shy,” said Barricade humorlessly, but cut off hard, gasping as the completed current between them promptly put an obscene arch into his backstrut.
Jerking, optics shuttering, he momentarily forgot what he was going to say in the wake of his whole sensor net going white hot with pleasure. He heard himself, his vents cycling erratically, the rev of electrified internals, the scrape of armor as he bucked up instinctively against the mech over him and the deep drag of arousal as it moved through the subsonics of his voice. He couldn’t remember a merge going this deeply though him, pleasure verging on agony. He found himself shaking, biting back reactive sounds.
“Never felt… like this…”
Megatron crested with him, curling hard into the body clinging so tightly to him, pulled by servos and spark jointly. “Nor have I,” he rasped in a low, heady gasp of speech, close to Barricade’s audio. His pedes jerked, fighting to keep them upright when his legs turned hollow with strut-deep pleasure and relief that he hadn’t known.
A low laugh rose slow from Barricade’s throat, static-laced, deeply aroused. He leaned up, groaning as he pressed into the other mech, spark-to spark, a current so strong it felt like he was losing himself. “Take me off the duty roster for a few hours.” He smiled into his partner’s audio, panting. “I can spare the time...”