Masquerade

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG-13
AU (RP Axiomnexus)
Wing, Megatron
 The last night of the Pixel Festival, it's 'unlucky' for a mech to spend alone.  They are in disguise, in holoemitting masks. And...oh yeah, Megatrons are illegal. Think that's all you need to know? 
Birthday present for...well...Megatron?

Wing paced, the false wings from his holoemitter rustling in the cool air.  He opened his palm, just to look at the transparent blue keycard Megatron had pressed into his palm, as if to remind himself it was real.

It did no good. He would not put it past the warlord to deceive him this way, extend a pretend favor and then withdraw it, or use it as a tactical feint.  He’d seen the way Megatron had approached the other mechs, had felt the way it burned against his own spark to think Megatron wanted them and not…Wing.

You’re being ridiculous, Wing scolded himself. He turned to face the hotel suite’s large mirror, staring at his mask’s reflection.  You’re being foolish. You do know who he is, don’t you? You do remember what he’s done, what he will do?

Yes.  I remember. He destroys my world. But not alone.  And he would not be…himself, so full of rage, and hate and defiance, if that world had not made him so.

Maybe this was only some kind of divine justice, then. Maybe this was some arcane payback for the part he had played in making Megatron, in implicitly supporting a corrupted system. Maybe he had earned this pain.

He didn’t fight it, letting it wash over him, as he stared into the mask’s emerald optics. This is what is, he told himself.  Do not fight reality. 

He felt his own wings shift, missing the weight and presence of the Great Sword. It had disrupted the holoemitter. He felt naked without it, unbalanced.

And lost.  He turned around, and the hotel room seemed to make its purpose blatant: the enormous berth.  This was no debate chamber, no council room, no quiet place to sit, civilly exchanging ideas.  And he felt suddenly nervous. 

They had only had that once, fast, hard, dark, on the stained floor of the Arena, both raw with pain and loss and loneliness.  And not since, not even a promise of a second time, until tonight. 

Do you believe, Wing? Do you trust?

Foolish questions. He believed. He trusted. It was all he could do.  And he knew to do. 

He moved to the balcony, the crystal-carved railing cool in the night air, tingling with day-caught piezoelectricity against his palms.  Zone One: beautiful, expensive, a plush kind of luxury beyond anything in Crystal City.  Everything opulent, ornate, overly beautiful, flaunting expense.  Beauty as power.

Something, he thought, Megatron would find ironic.  

Perhaps, though, Megatron had been caught. The TransTechs surely knew he was here, and what better way to lure him out than play to his ego, give him a chance to twit them with their own holiday by walking freely, boldly, among them?

A sound behind him, and he turned, awkwardly, the high shoulder-wings of his mask blocking his view.  There, yes, Megatron, in the ornate, scaled white-grey armor. Aerial, Wing remembered, and wondered about the choice. Envy or mockery? The lines almost always blurred with Megatron.

The larger mech’s helm swept the room, lighting on Wing’s silhouette against the glittering night sky.  “Wing.”

“Yes.” What more could he say? It was enough of a confession that he was here, and the relief in his voice was another vulnerability. And Megatron did nothing but exploit vulnerabilities. 

Megatron moved to the balcony, not his usual possessive stride, but something slower, as if feeling the plush filaments of the floormesh shift and roll beneath his footplates.  He looked over the panorama, one hand resting idly on the framing of the doorway.  He inclined his chin, the gesture familiar, even under the mask’s altered contours.  “I never saw this in the mines.” A statement, and a condemnation of the old Cybertron.

“And is it worth seeing?”

“Under these circumstances?”  That amused snort.  The optics fell to Wing’s frame, and he could feel them searching him, lingering over the wings, the delicate gold chasing on the blue armor. It wasn’t who Wing was—a borrowed mask, a hand-me-down identity. Is this what Megatron wanted him to be? “Tell me, Wing,” Megatron said, his voice softening from a demand, “did you doubt that I would come?”

Always, an attack, every conversation some intricate sparring match.  Wing would not parry. “Yes.” Disarming offense.

“Why?” The head tilted, curious, the long horns carving an arc in the night.

Riposte:  “Why do you think?”

A hoarse laugh. “Cowardice, Knight?”

“No.” Wing turned around, his palms seeking the balcony’s cool crystalline smoothness, the city at his back.  “Your answer would reveal much.”

“As would yours.”

Wing cocked his head, feeling a faint smile flicker over his face, the velvet pull of the holoemitter mimicking the expression. “I’ve revealed enough already.”

“And you decide, now, on what is ‘enough’?” A sleek challenge, the hand moving from the doorframe, Megatron stepping out onto the balcony.

“I am not one of your Decepticons,” Wing said coolly, tilting his head up as Megatron approached.  “I do not belong to you.”

“You don’t?” A sharp smile. “Yet here you are, in my room, Wing. Wanting—clearly, obviously—one thing.  What would you call that?”

Desire, want, longing, connection, comfort, love…Wing could think of half a hundred names, and none that wouldn’t earn Megatron’s scorn. He tried to harden his face, feeling the green optics tighten to narrow shards of light. “Lust.”

“Ah.”  Megatron stepped closer, the EM field licking over Wing’s body, hot and shifting, like conquest.  His chestplating brushed Wing’s, the optics tilted down to him, as though the jeweled splendor of the city was unimportant, nothing. It was this magnitude of attention, the keen focus, like a lasersight, that had first drawn Wing to Megatron—the intensity, almost like Drift’s, only harder, more confident.  A mech who had never had someone save him, who would scorn the very idea. “Is that allowed? A Knight, succumbing to lust?” He didn’t wait for an answer, pulling Wing against him, hands hard bands around Wing’s upper arms, his mouth covering Wing’s, glossa forcing its way past the unprotesting lipplates, a conqueror tasting his conquest.

Wing’s own hands came up, clinging to the foreign armor, the projections and contours unfamiliar under his touch, which remembered only vaguely that once. But he hungered for the touch, for the emotion behind the touch—scorning but yielding, taunting but giving. His body gave his answer for him.

The white wings of Megatron’s costume flared out, circling Wing, becoming his whole world, possessive.  Wing leaned forward, sliding one knee up the outside of Megatron’s leg, his thigh glossing over the battered, heavy plating, the strangely rich texture of a hundred scratches and abrasions, as though Megatron’s own armor told a story built on pain.  Against which Wing’s own silky, glossy polish seemed a testament to innocence, to the gulf of experience between them.

It only sharpened his hunger, and he turned his mouth from the kiss, burying it in the white neck plating. 

Megatron lifted him, easily, as though he weighed nothing, hands hard on the backs of Wing’s blue-disguised thighs, hauling the jet up, legs around his hips. Megatron spoke, barely a whisper, the sound vibrating against Wing’s eager mouth. “Did you worry, Knight? Did you think I was captured?” A hand sleeked down his back, his entire weight supported on the other arm. “Did you worry they would come for you as an accomplice?”

“No,” Wing breathed, hot with honesty. Of all his fears, implications for himself had never struck him. And this close, chassis to chassis, his own spark pulsed hard against his systems, his systems racing with the danger—Megatron’s proximity, the awareness of how quickly he could simply be…thrown off the balcony.  And other dangers, more potent, more real—the danger of getting exactly what he wanted.

He squirmed his body, pressing against the hand cupping his thigh, pushing up to brush the curve of his nasal against the plating on Megatron’s mask, their optics swimming intimate, green and crimson light swirling together, radiating desire and something deeper.  His mouth flirted with Megatron’s, letting the sensuous buzz of the holoform sweep over the mouthplates, delicate, light caresses.

Megatron growled, whirling, to shove Wing against the rough, ribbed sheeting of the hotel’s exterior, hard enough to shatter that too-intimate gaze, hard enough to drive their pelvic spans together.  “Admit,” he rumbled, grinding his chassis against Wing’s, “on Cybertron you would never have touched me.”

“You’re not who you were on Cybertron,” Wing breathed, the words rolling with the smoothness of long use. An argument he’d had many times with himself, as Ratchet and Hot Rod had railed at him, mocked him, as though he’d somehow…not known what he’d done.

He hadn’t, not really. Just that that night, their pain and loss and loneliness had resonated, vibrating them to the same note, sweet and pure that sang through their bodies.  And the filth and violence of the Arena had become a backdrop, the darkness against which they were a flare of light.

“And you,”  Megatron said, optics red, wide, glittering with that arrogance that had given away immediately who he was, through the mask, through everything, that Wing marveled could ever have glowed from a mere miner. “How far have you fallen, Wing?” He ran hard hands up the chassis, Wing’s weight supported against the wall.  He leaned closer, his voice dark and rich, indigo velvet. “I destroy Cybertron. And you desire me.” 

“Yes.”  Contradictory, a violation of all he believed, all he fought for.  But that made it no less true.  “Adherence to logic makes us nothing more than drones, Megatron.”  Another pat aphorism, one of the slippery philosophies he’d mastered ages ago.  He was stunned to find it here, patching over the grey morality, but needing it, clinging to it as something that kept his world in order, in sense. He had so few stabilities here, now. He was dead back home, his world lost to him, future torn from him. He needed something—something—to pin his life on, something to drive his faith and belief in as solidly as a sword into its sheath. 

And that something was here before him, pressing him into a wall, wearing another’s face.

“And adherence to desires, Wing? What does that make us?” A hand stroking down his wings, under the buzz of the holoemitter, with a pressure that verged on pain, finding, somehow, the actual wing panels compressed against his back, tugging them out with a touch made urgent by desire, wanting Wing to look this way, but feeling underneath for what he really was. 

Wing writhed, letting his wings flare into the touch, arching his body against Megatron’s, taking the pain of pushing through the holoemitter, as he took everything from Megatron: expecting no mercy, no kindness, only a need that stripped away all pretense, all rank and history and left only two mechs, sparks pulsing a hand’s span apart from each other.  “Alive.”

 

Comments

[not-your-gun.livejournal.com]

I am so flattered.

How can I not be?

I love this scene...I love Wing fearing Megatron's capture as equally as fearing Megatron will throw him off the balcony. I love that they let themselves feel so deeply on that night--one of the only nights they'd have the opportunity to, and also love that you worked in their traditional banter...they conquer each other with words as readily as actions.

But really, you wrapped it up well--Wing got the last word in, and it was a good word to end it on. A good answer.

Poor Wing. <3

[silaphet.livejournal.com]

striking, surprising, emotionally confrontational & thought provoking. hot damn, robot pron is the profound! ^.^

[swordofpeace.livejournal.com]

Admit it, Magnum. Throwing Wing off the balcony would have crossed your mind. He is a jet, after all. And he does spend most of his time making you crazy.

...just, more fun this way. :)

and one day you'll learn that Wing always gets the last word.

I'd actually intended to go, ahem, further but...yeah. I think we all know what happens next?

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Oh the RP is ruthlessly anti-shipping, as I learned the hard way. And Wing and Megatron actually drive each other crazy. But, lol, 'pacifist' and 'genocide' are now terms of affection?

But still, it's fun to pretend. And in a way, it's an AU of an AU!

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

IDW Megatron is really my favorite character in the game, and it was fun to pretend. The player's version is SO much cooler than I've written him, but...I tried? :)

[velvet-infinity.livejournal.com]

You leave me wanting more. Surprisingly. I wan't sure with these two at the beginning, but.... wow.

[silaphet.livejournal.com]

<3