Lyricality

onetruesikorsky asked for commentary on A Thousand Times Over.



General comments: I wrote...probably 85% of this the week before last, while sitting at lady_oneiros's kitchen table. ♥ We had both put off watching any of the TF: Prime season finale. In particular, I was afraid of being jossed for another fic that I'm working on, and lady_oneiros has to worry about The Traps. Once I came to visit and we saw some of the spoilers for the finale episode, however, we knew we had to watch it. And then we did. Twice. And it was epic. I started writing this fic the same day.

Incidentally, my soundtrack for writing this was all the sappiest love songs I could find. ♥

Title: A Thousand Times Over
Continuity: Transformers: Prime
Rating: M/NC-17
Warnings: STICKY. SPOILERS FOR ONE SHALL RISE, PART 3
Disclaimer: I bought them with my birfday monies. <3
Pairing: Megatron/SPOILER
Summary: We're just going to call this Megatron's Best Day Ever.
Author’s Note: The title references a quote by author Richard Bach: “Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.” This story contains major spoilers for "One Shall Rise, Part 3." I owe lady_oneiros just about everything--including the beta-ing for this piece of shameless pr0nz. ♥

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours.
~Unknown

I tried a number of times to find a correct attribution for this quote, but the internet is all over the place on it. I decided to leave it anonymous.

By the conclusion of Soundwave's swift but pointed situation report on activities during Megatron's absence, the other members of Decepticon command had thankfully cleared their expressions of outright astonishment. Knockout had gone so far as to offer a particularly warm welcome to the mech that still wore all the mass and weaponry of Optimus Prime, and Megatron resolved to keep an especially careful watch on the physician's servos during any future examinations of their newest recruit. Breakdown had simply shut his mouth after Megatron's initial reprimand, and if he kept his fists clenched and his weapons systems on standby, Megatron had no intention of drawing Orion's attention to the fact.

I love that Knockout's...appreciation of Optimus is actually canon. Megatron plans to never let Orion alone with Knockout. Airachnid isn't here, because I doubted that she would stay on the ship to face Megatron's wrath. I suppose she might be in the brig.

Megatron had given his own reassurances to Orion before they had entered the bridge, but he had offered no explanations as of yet. Right now, he itched to get Orion into the security of his private quarters.

Everything else could wait.

“Set a standard course,” he ordered, and Soundwave dipped his head in obedience. “Our returned comrade will need time to reintegrate after his...long captivity. Inform me immediately of any additional activity at the core of this planet.” Megatron expected none. No longer did he sense the lurking agony of Unicron's presence in his systems or in his spark, and freedom tasted almost as sweet as the other unexpected gift granted to him by the Unmaker's destruction. Sliding a supportive arm around the back of Orion's waist, he switched to personal channels and spoke to Soundwave directly. :: No other disturbances will be tolerated. ::

With wordless understanding, Soundwave dipped his head in acknowledgement of Orion before returning to the ship's controls. As the communications officer passed, Orion smiled at him. The expression was so welcoming, so diffident, that Megatron almost abandoned his pretense of patience.

Orion remembers Soundwave. Orion likes Soundwave.

He smirked at Orion. “Come. I have fuel enough for both of us.”

That smile turned toward Megatron, and he could bear no further delays. He led the way, but they walked side by side back out of the control room and down the darkened halls of the ship. Orion followed him without the slightest hesitation, but he did examine the ship's construction with undisguised interest as they walked. “This ship...” he began.

That first sentence originally read, "That smile turned on Megatron," until I was doing a reread and started laughing hysterically. Ohhh, you BET it did. So does everything Orion has done, is doing, or will do.

“The Nemesis.”

“We're in orbit above Cybertron?” Orion glanced around the hallway as if desperate for a window, and Megatron was oddly sorry to disappoint him.

“No.” Flattening a hand against the base of Orion's spinal struts, Megatron ventilated once at the smooth interlocking of the plates there, but Orion did not seem to notice. “Here. Come in. I'll explain everything to your full satisfaction.” They had reached the door that marked the entrance to Megatron's quarters, and while Megatron fiddled through the tedious pattern of the locks, Orion smoothed a palm down the Decepticon insignia that marked the door's surface.

“Your symbol,” he said, and then the locks disengaged. He withdrew his hand as the door slid open.

Megatron nodded, and for just a moment, he wished that he had not taken the most direct route to his quarters. He might have displayed a bit more of this ship, instead, and flaunted the results of all the work he had done since... Well. He might at least impress upon Orion the extents to which their old political aspirations had taken him.

For now, however, they were here together, and Megatron desired that more than any appreciations of grandeur.

Alert the presses--Megatron is more eager to have Orion to himself than he is to brag about his accomplishments as Decepticon overlord. Orion will be lucky if Megatron ever lets him out of these rooms again, in fact. For Orion's own protection, of course.

The door slid shut behind them. The automatic lighting engaged, but Megatron sent the command to keep it at half power. At the center of the receiving room, Orion stood quiet. His optics traced a path from the black Seerim steel of the walls to the brushed chrome of the furnishings. “This suits you,” he murmured. “I've missed a lot, haven't I?”

Megatron pushed forward a chair, and Orion sat. “I'm afraid so.”

“You said I was a captive.”

“You were.” Moving behind Orion, Megatron busied himself at the dispenser in the corner. He tried not to meet the other mech's optics as he worked. If he averted his gaze, he could listen to nothing but Orion's voice, and he could ignore the modifications to that frame that still stubbornly pinged his defense systems as Prime, Prime. “Tell me—what is the last thing that you remember?”

Orion kept silent for so long that Megatron wondered if he would answer at all. “I remember Kaon. With you. And going back to Iacon afterwards. Then the Council summoned you, didn't they? You wrote to me.” Plainly troubled, Orion rubbed at the plating between his optics. “I was supposed to meet you outside of Iacon. Then...there's a sort of...blur. And you were standing over me, in that cavern.”

What a marvelous place for those memories to suffer an interruption. “The Council betrayed us both.” Megatron poured distilled high grade—the best of all his reserves—into a container and offered it to Optimus.

No. To Orion.

Megatron is being so very, very careful. This is a second chance, and he knows it for the miracle it is. Every moment counts, and this is going to take some patience--he isn't about to say something that Orion's memories will directly contradict. He's also clever enough to improvise. A rather more talented liar than Starscream, he knows the importance of keeping the lie as close to the truth as possible.

Orion hesitated, but took it, and then he drank deeply before coughing as his intakes protested. “Straxus,” he swore, and with vague delight, Megatron recognized the epithet as one learned in the depths of Kaon, megavorns ago. Optimus certainly had never spoken in such a way. “That's strong enough to strip you raw.”

I like to think of this as part of Orion's hero-worship of Megatron. He picked up that slang during his visit to Kaon, and he made sure to use it in conversation.

Megatron poured nothing for himself; he wanted perfect clarity. These were moments he could not duplicate. Kneeling in front of Orion, he rested a hand against one broad shoulder, steadying the other mech and marveling at the ease, the willingness, with which Orion welcomed his touch. Megatron had relished every rare opportunity to invade Optimus's personal space, but this was far different. Orion actually shifted to cover Megatron's hand with his own, and Megatron found himself shaking in places he had long thought numbed.

Interlocking their fingers, Orion sipped at his high grade and regarded Megatron with optics of liquid blue. “They wouldn't listen,” he guessed.

Regarding their hands, Megatron took a moment to answer. “They mocked our convictions and denigrated my motivations. They called all our work nothing but ambition, as if that made our vision any less true.” He remembered the sting of that insult even now, and his plating flared at the imagined threat. “You spoke to them, as well.” Now he needed to take care as he deviated just enough from the truth. “They liked your words better than mine. But it was flattery, brother.” How pleasant to say that word without the sneer of cruel irony. “They wanted to work you toward their ends. They tried to twist us against each other.”

“Is that why?”

Bemused, Megatron arched an optic ridge. “What do you mean?”

“You're treating me a little strangely,” Orion chuckled.

Megatron's fingers twitched. He wanted to drag Orion beneath him and feel the vibration of that low laughter against his chest plates. “Am I?”

Considering the question, Orion drained the container and set it aside. “Yes,” he decided. With a squeak of metal, he slid out of the chair and joined Megatron on the floor to bring them face to face. “Like you think I'm going to disappear. Megatronus...” He reached out and touched the tips of his fingers to a set of scars on Megatron's faceplates. “These are new.”

Orion definitely has a certain naivete, but he's not an innocent or an idiot. He still knows Megatron well enough to identify his behavior as out-of-the-ordinary, and more than that, never in his memory has Megatron focused so much attention entirely on him. He's not about to complain, but he recognizes the strangeness.

“You might.” Megatron could not quite dismiss the urgency from his voice. After all, this mech had disappeared once before—had turned into someone else entirely. “You've lost a great deal of time,” he said, and while recent memory made him want to flinch away from Orion's touch, he held himself still with effort. “The Council claimed they would make you Prime,” Megatron continued. Orion's optics widened, and Megatron gave him a grim smile in response. Inspiration had struck; he knew just how best to proceed.

This need not even be a lie.

“Prime?” Orion murmured, with an expression of humble astonishment that Megatron recognized all too well.

“It was not true.” Megatron shook his head, and he did not need to feign the anger underlining every word. “They gave you the Matrix, but it distorted you. The Council was never interested in justice—only in the perpetuation of their status quo. The corruption. The caste system. Their Matrix reprogrammed you, and it turned you into their tool.”

Orion's optics widened to their greatest aperture as they filled with lasting horror. “I was Prime,” he repeated, and in a moment, clarity broke through his confusion. “Optimus. That was what that mech called me. Optimus...Prime.”

“Yes,” Megatron said, keeping his expression steady. “Soundwave and I, and the others—we opposed the Council. We called ourselves Decepticons, because they had so terribly deceived us. The Council and their followers chose the title of Autobots, and they forced you to oppose me as their leader.” Optimus made a low, atonal sound of protest, and Megatron freed his fingers so that he could rest both hands against the other mech's shoulders. Orion leaned into his touch. “Forgive me,” Megatron said with all the sincerity he could muster. “For taking so long to free you from their control.”

I am particularly proud of Megatron's version of the truth. Breaking his hold will be incredibly difficult for the Autobots, I think.

“Forgive you?” Anguish etched itself across Orion's face. Megatron had never forgotten how easily he had read Orion Pax, and in contrast, how abstruse the same mech had become as Optimus Prime. Orion touched the scars over Megatron's lip components again. “Did I do this?”

Megatron saw no reason to deny the truth. “You were not yourself.”

“How could you forgive that of me? Brother.”

Orion spoke the word like a benediction, his body—Optimus Prime's body—leaning even closer, those powerful fingers still brushing Megatron's lip components. Megatron had forgotten just how tactile a creature Orion Pax had been. A tremor began in Megatron's chest, like a flutter in his spark, and it suffused his frame to finish in the curves of his claws. “You are here with me now,” he said, very low. “Like this. I would forgive almost anything for that.” An empty, aching heat pulsed in his frame, and perhaps Orion felt it too, because he made no protest at all when Megatron pulled him closer yet.

lady_oneiros and I had a few discussions about Megatron's overall state of mind, and we agreed particularly on one point: if Megatron had truly wanted to kill Optimus--for the purposes of revenge or victory or whatever fits--he would have done it. No better opportunity would ever have presented itself. Memories gone, in the presence of a mech he truly trusted, Orion would never have seen it coming. Despite all Megatron's fantasies in 'Sick Mind,' Optimus's death was not truly his ultimate wish. He wanted his partner back. And now that he has him back...Megatron hardly knows what to do with himself.

A delicate warmth rippled through Orion's body, along with a gust of air from his vents. After a startled moment, Megatron recognized the reaction as embarrassment. His own systems notched a step higher, a step faster, and his cooling fans activated as his thrusters began to spin.

“You got the upgrade,” Orion noted, even as he allowed Megatron to run claws over his torso and trace the transformation seams along his hips. His systems stuttered with erratic hums and pings as his temperature began to rise. “Can you fly? Jet mode and everything?” With hesitant hands, he stroked the arcs of Megatron's shoulder armor, as if seeking where regular plating transformed into sweeping wings.

“Yes. All of it.” With a chuckle, Megatron guided him onto his back.

With an unsteady ventilation, Orion eased back onto his elbow joints and curved his lip components as Megatron loomed over him. “What's it like?”

“I'll take you,” Megatron promised. He could imagine it—catching this mech in his arms, fully engaging his flight systems, and spiraling into the sky. Taking him there, pushing inside, all slick heat in the cold of the thin atmosphere, where Orion would have to cling tight to keep from falling.

I suspect that Orion would enjoy this just as much as--if not more than--Megatron.

Orion settled fully onto his back, but then he shifted in discomfort as his smokestacks scraped at the grating of the floor. “This frame still... It feels a little strange.” Orion ran his hands over his own chest, and his fingers snagged on the projections of his unfamiliar alternate mode. Visibly curious, he examined the slender lines of his windshield wipers, and a sudden shudder wracked him from head to foot. “...Oh.”

I have no idea why I like the idea of those windshield wipers being sensitive. I just do.

Anticipation coiled, unbearably heavy, deep in Megatron's center. “Let me help,” he growled, barely able to restrain himself to gentleness as he slid his hands up the insides of Orion's thighs and eased them apart. “We will make it more familiar.” The tips of his claws traced the seams of Orion's pelvic plating, and Orion's hips twitched upward into the touch. With only minimal urging, the panel withdrew. Megatron hissed through clenched dental plates as the heat, the scent of Orion's exposed valve struck his sensory net and set it aflame. Orion's spike extended as well, the length of it so finely tooled as to render the seams between the ridges almost invisible. Distracted momentarily from his ultimate goal, Megatron rubbed his thumb from the base to the tip, and Orion cried out in open appreciation. Closing his hand around the length, Megatron gave it a couple of slow, experimental strokes. Orion squirmed, voice rising into a shout, vulnerability flickering through his optics like pleasure edged by pain.

“Primus,” he whispered as Megatron eased his grip.

For me, the most important dynamic in this sex scene was Orion's full and complete consent. He's not quite as urgent as Megatron--how could he be, when Megatron has been missing him for so much longer?--but he's just as eager. I was so happy to get a review about that. ♥

“Shh.” Megatron soothed around the base before gliding the tips of his claws around the rim of Orion's valve. Lubricant gleamed in the dim lighting, and Megatron felt the pulse of his spark quicken in response. “Do you remember this?” he asked, as he scratched gently around the entry nodes before sliding a finger inside.

Orion quivered, and Megatron felt the flutter in the calipers that gripped him. “How could I ever forget?”

In all the ages since Cybertron's fall, had anyone dared to penetrate Optimus Prime? Megatron doubted it. More than that, he longed to believe that no one else had dared to touch this body in quite this way and that this frame, this mech, belonged to him alone. He slipped another finger inside, and Orion spread his legs even wider and bent his knees, canting his hips into every caress.

Orion groaned, rocking his hips and spreading his arms in welcome. “Come here.”

Tempted, Megatron nevertheless shook his head and withdrew his fingers. He licked lubricant from their tips. “Relax,” he said, and pressed a hand to Orion's chest, holding him down. The other hand spread between his legs, holding him open, and Megatron bent down close, drawing in that scent as it erupted like glittering silver all across his sensory net. Orion had always smelled—had always tasted—so clean, newly-minted, and even their time on Earth had not sullied him. Spreading Orion's legs a little further apart, Megatron leaned in and licked, nudging at the entry nodes.

Orion writhed, his hands clawing at the floor and then fastening just under the edges of Megatron's helm, and for a moment, Megatron regretted this position for his inability to watch Orion's face.

They would have plenty of time for that. For everything else.

Megatron explored Orion with nothing but his glossa; his hands kept still to hold Orion steady. He circled the nodes, teasing as much as he could bear before stimulating each one directly with slow, probing licks. Orion nearly came apart. He trembled and moaned and begged—actually begged—until Megatron cradled his hips in both hands and pressed his glossa deep inside, deep enough to rub against the initial set of interior sensor nubs. The slippery heat almost overwhelmed him, even in this position. His vents struggled as his internal temperature spiraled upward, higher and higher, peaking when Orion convulsed against him and keened in overload.

Megatron is not exactly good at sharing his feelings, but I didn't think that should deprive him of the opportunity to worship Orion in the most eloquent way possible. Megatron would never do this for anyone else.

Groaning, Megatron licked him through it, only withdrawing when Orion went lax and quivering. Shaking as well, visual feeds muddled by overheat warnings, Megatron crawled up his body to hover between his thighs. Megatron felt the shift as his own pelvic panel retracted without his command, and his spike immediately extended to full and aching pressurization.

Without hesitation, Orion lifted his hips, offering himself, and with a snarl, Megatron slid fully into him with a single, powerful thrust.

The calipers closed around him, quivering with strain. That suggestion of friction forced him to move, even if slowly, barely rocking his hips as Orion adjusted around him. Moaning, Orion wrapped his legs around Megatron's hips as his valve stretched in accommodation. They were so good a fit. How many mechs had Megatron taken who had torn, who had objected—even with preparation—to his size? He was not a model of standard proportions. But now, neither was Orion Pax, and when he gasped, it was not in pain or protest, but in the grip of the heady sensation of being filled entirely to capacity.

“Please,” Orion whispered. His hips rocked; the calipers tightened.

Megatron could not deny him. Every deepening thrust seared pleasure through his frame, rubbed against Orion's terminal nodes, made both of them shout. Orion's hands clawed down Megatron's back and tangled into the hidden catches of his wings. Growling, Megatron pushed harder, pressing them together to rub Orion's extended spike between their frames. Orion sobbed, convulsing again, and the calipers clamped so tightly that Megatron roared, hips pistoning as he rode Orion's overload into his own.

He kept moving, if gradually, even when the ecstasy had faded into languid aftershocks. When he returned to lucidity, Orion was still beneath him, still around him, and Megatron reset his optics to be certain of this new reality.

Yes. It was his own.

Best. Day. Ever. Megatron really has no idea how to be this happy. Or, as lady_oneiros best expressed it:
Megatron: FIRST PLACE!1!!!1!

“Feel better?” Orion smoothed his hands over the curves of Megatron's helm and nuzzled at one audial receptor. His laugh was low and smooth. “I thought you might throw a rod if I didn't get you into me fast enough.” The laughter eased into something warmer, something aching and wondrous. “I've never seen you like that.”

Orion's second line here is probably my favorite line in the entire fic.

I've missed you, Megatron would not say. Being so transparently eager was humiliating enough. “...It's been a long time,” he said at some length, and his voice was even rougher than usual. He cycled his vocoder and cleared it of static.

Orion shifted beneath him, but did not ask him to move and made no attempt to escape Megatron's greater weight. Starscream had always whined about the compression of his wings until Megatron had released him. Orion simply sighed, and Megatron could hear the softness of the smile in his voice. “How long?” he asked. “How long has it been?”

One of our shared jokes is that whenever Starscream talks, Megatron hears nothing but the audio-splitting squawking of a giant bird. *SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK FLAP SQUAWK* Who can blame him for beating that into silence every now and then?

“Too long.” Megatron had not previously thought to count, but now he did. “Three hundred and fifty-two megavorns.”

Orion flinched so hard that Megatron slipped out of him. “What?!”

Surprise!!! :D

Growling faintly in disappointment, Megatron rolled off of him. The loss of weight allowed Orion to struggle up onto his elbow joints in stupefied shock. Megatron let him get no further, of course, and he snagged the other mech by the shoulders and drew him close against his chest. “I wouldn't tease you,” he said. He actually felt something like a pang behind his chestplates when Orion sagged against him, trusting him. “We've been apart for a long time, brother.”

Megatron is not used to anyone trusting him the way Orion does. The reawakening of his own tenderness comes as a surprise, as well.

“That's an incredible understatement.” Orion tried to laugh, but the sound was weak, and it left him shaking instead. Megatron did not allow himself much worry; Orion had proven himself resilient. He would adjust. “After so long... You freed me from them. How? Why were we in that cavern?”

He could almost tell the truth. “That cavern was the spark chamber of Unicron, the Unmaker. We had joined forces to prevent him from fully awakening.” He ran the tips of his claws over Orion's antennae fins. “Even as Optimus Prime, at the spark you must have known that I was your ally, not your enemy.” Orion made a low sound between agreement and distress, and Megatron stroked the chrome detailing on his back. “As the vessel of Primus, the Matrix was Unicron's ultimate undoing. But his return to stasis resulted in the destruction of the Matrix, as well.”

“Unicron,” Orion repeated. “Straxus.” Megatron almost wanted to chuckle; that old imprecation made him sound impossibly quaint. “You said that we weren't orbiting Cybertron,” he continued, with a certain hesitation behind the words. “Where are we?”

Irritation welled and spilled over, and Megatron was grateful that he need not hide it. “We are currently tied to a very small, entirely undeveloped, but unfortunately energy-rich planet known as Earth.” He did not bother to speak in any of humanity's many tongues, but simply rendered the word as the Cybertronian glyph for worthless organic soil. “The gravitational pull of Unicron's physical form created it.”

Orion leaned up, and his optics glowed the pure Iaconian blue that Megatron remembered so well. “An organic planet,” he said, and Megatron belatedly remembered that Orion Pax had quite literally never left the surface of Cybertron—not so much for a shuttle flight from one city-state to another. “What does it look like? Can we go back there...onto the surface?”

“No.” Megatron had no intention of allowing Orion to return to Earth. Certainly not now. Not when the Autobots would be waiting for the chance to rescue him.

Follow those instincts, Megatron. Just imagine what Orion will be like when he discovers that Earth is a blue-green wonderland full of fuzzy baby animals and butterflies.

Plainly disappointed, Orion nevertheless accepted the edict with a nod and the slightest downward tilt of his antenna fins. “Ah. Are we already on our way back to Cybertron, then?” A different sort of hope softened the gleam of Orion's optics, and Megatron remembered how deeply this mech had loved their world and how willing he had been to fight for its future—at least in the political arena. While Orion had proven unable to apply the necessary force, at the close of the Golden Age... The universe was a different place, now.

“No,” Megatron repeated. He paused, but he could think of no gentle way to proceed. “The war has gone on for megavorns, old friend. Cybertron was—and still is—badly damaged.”

Orion braced one arm against Megatron's chest and regarded him steadily. “Damaged.”

He had always been clever, but Megatron could hardly regret the fact. “It is not currently habitable,” Megatron admitted. “The Council's obsession with maintaining control led them to launch the AllSpark into deep space. Cybertron itself began to die. Leaving it to recover became the only possibility for the continuation of our race.”

Orion's optics had grown wider as Megatron spoke, but now they shuttered in an expression of despairing denial, and he shook his head. Fighting his own impatience, Megatron summoned up a degree of sympathy and expressed it with a low, humming chord. After a moment, Orion's voice joined his and deepened the resonance. The walls of the room vibrated with their shared lament, and for just an instant, the sensation sheared away experience and cynicism together. When Megatron had stood on the deck of the converted Trypticon, watching the last of the ships peel away from Cybertron's darkening surface, Soundwave had stood at his shoulder and sung in similar anguish.

“I am sorry,” Megatron murmured in the same key. He surprised himself by meaning it.

I like this exchange. I imagine that abandoning Cybertron hurt the Decepticons quite as much as the Autobots, and for all Soundwave's silence in this continuity, I envision him as a mech of deep sensitivities. Not telepathic, perhaps, but as close to empathic as any Decepticon can be. Along those lines, Megatron is startled here by his own understanding. Orion is losing Cybertron for the first time, and Megatron remembers how that feels.

Shaking his head, Orion onlined his optics and rested his palm against the center of Megatron's chest. “I cannot pretend to understand all of it. Not yet. But... Plainly there are worse outcomes. At least I know myself.” His fingers traced the Decepticon symbol. “At least I know you.”

For several cycles, silence fell between them. Orion leaned closer again, causing the superficial synchronization of their systems, and Megatron exploited the opportunity to explore the other mech's ventral plates. Even on Optimus Prime, those plates had tempted him; so tightly interlocked, they expressed a lasting strength. When Orion stretched against his caresses, those folds loosened, and Megatron slipped the tips of his claws into the gaps.

Despite Orion's responsiveness, his optics had unfocused. Megatron remembered that pensive expression well; it pricked him with a thrill of apprehension.

“You said we couldn't go there,” Orion said at length. His voice had turned a little tremulous, but his optics shone steadily when he looked up at Megatron. “But could I just...get a look at it? Can we see it from this ship?”

No.

Megatron wanted to follow his immediate impulse. He hesitated, nevertheless, because Orion was asking so little. The Autobots could never reach them here with the ship's shielding at full capacity. They were impotent. Even if they could gather the resources to scrawl an enormous message across the surface of the planet, Orion would have no idea how to interpret it. Nothing had stirred his missing memories thus far. What harm could be done with one look?

Megatron is already breaking his own rules for Orion. He's utterly doomed.

This room had a window, but the current orientation of the ship would prevent a full view. “Here.” He urged Orion back a bit, just enough to help the other mech to his feet. “Come with me.” Orion paused just long enough to twine their hands together again, and then he followed Megatron through the receiving room and to a doorway at its opposite end. The berthroom stretched beyond it, and Orion spent a moment studying the furnishings, running a hand over the end of the berth itself. Megatron left him to it, while he familiarized himself again with the shutter controls. He had found little reason, recently, to look out into space: his alt mode provided a much better, much closer perspective.

He flipped the correct switch. With a whirr, the interior plating over the viewing window folded into the recesses of the wall, and the blackness of the universe beyond the Nemesis spread out in all directions, interrupted only by the partial sphere of the Earth.

It was off-center in the viewport, but Megatron could do nothing about the presentation. Currently waning, it appeared largely white—its southern pole wreathed with great swirls of cloud. The blue of its oceans shone at its uppermost boundary. Ridges of brown and green detailed the landmasses of its surface.

Leaning close, drawn forward as if summoned, Orion pressed his hands to the reinforced transparasteel and stared. One long, gradual ventilation cycled through his systems.

Orion is a housecat wondering why it can't get through a glass door. *mew mew mew paw paw mew paw paw paw mew mew mew mew*

“It's beautiful,” he said. Wonder ached at the deepest wavelengths of his voice.

Is it? Megatron wanted to ask, but he kept his peace. “I suppose.”

“You suppose?” Orion laughed and shook his head without averting his optics. “You must have gotten cynical, my friend. But then...you've seen others, I'm sure. Are they all like this?”

Megatron considered the question as he arranged himself at Orion's back. “Similar.” The shielding around the ship lent the planet a mildly haloed effect. “But none of them are exactly the same. The oceans here...they are made of water.”

Ventilations hitching, Orion tightened his fingers against the glass—as if he could press straight through it and hold the Earth between both his hands. “Water,” he repeated. The excitement of so great a rarity threaded through the word.

From behind, Megatron slid one arm around Orion's waist and pulled him closer. He tilted his head and ran his dental components along the shining length of one smokestack, and Orion shivered against him.

This is Megatron in love, as honestly and completely as he ever can be, and I like how he can't go more than a minute or two without touching Orion. Orion, of course, couldn't be happier. Like Megatron mentioned, he's far more tactile and open than Optimus. He isn't nervous or wary of showing what he feels...although now and then, he is shy.

“Megatronus,” he murmured.

With a sharp smile, Megatron continued to bite carefully at the back of Orion's neck before sliding his mouth up one delicate antenna fin. “I shortened my name, before we ever met with the Council,” he said. “It was a bit of a mouthful.” He had wanted to distance himself from his chosen namesake, as well—standing on the metaphorical shoulders of anyone, even one of the legendary Thirteen, did not suit his ideas about his own destiny. “Call me Megatron.”

Orion hummed in agreement. Turning in Megatron's hold, he flattened his hands at either side of Megatron's chest and tipped his head upwards. “Megatron,” he said, before they kissed for the first time in three hundred and fifty-two megavorns.

**************

There you go! ....This was harder than I thought it would be, heh.