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Ratchet sighed, his shoulders slumping in disappointment as the chemical solution atop the magnetic stirrer refused to change color. The volumetric flask’s contents remained the same stubborn, dark orange they had been when he first began the experiment. He tilted his helm back, grimacing at the yellow ceiling as he tried to trace back where his calculations had gone wrong.
Optics shifting to the side, Ratchet glanced at the shelf full of additives and chemical compounds he was only vaguely familiar with. The war wasn't in a lull, but the front had gone entirely quiet. It was deeply suspicious—an unsettling reality Ratchet had actually agreed with Prowl on during the last officer’s meeting.
The Decepticons were up to something; that much was certain. However, it wasn't the Autobot CMO's job to figure out what, so he filled his time training what few medics they had recently acquired, scheduling check-ups with his more stubborn patients, and fixing a problem that only he seemed to consider serious.
The project was relatively simple in theory; a non-life-threatening issue, but one that desperately needed addressing. Since the start of the war and the influx of lighter, less sturdily built frames into the Autobot ranks, there had been a significant rise in complaints about stiff, aching joints caused by weapon recoil. If Ratchet had the time, the resources, and the personnel, he would retrofit every mech in the army with the internal suspension necessary to fire a blaster without suffering from the blowback.
Since he rarely had more than one of those three luxuries at any given time, Ratchet had assigned himself the task of finding a less invasive, chemical solution.
In the short term, unit commanders had told him their soldiers could simply shrug it off. Ratchet, in turn, had shouted back that in the long term, those soldiers’ shoulder-sockets would eventually deteriorate so badly they wouldn't be able to shrug, let alone fire a weapon.
Ratchet had been granted an assignment on one of the Autobots’ science-class cruisers after his tirade, courtesy of a bemused Prime. The ship was part of the main fleet, trailing just two slots behind the Ark. Remaining so close to the bulk of the army was both his choice and a strict directive from the Autobots’ second-in-command. Prowl had flatly stated that Ratchet was far too valuable an asset to risk, declaring the danger level of any remote assignment entirely unacceptable.
And Ratchet had agreed. Only, it wasn't his own life he feared for if he ever strayed again. His brow ridge pinched tight, and he shuttered his optics against the flux.
There hadn’t been a single survivor on Baracchus. Ratchet had searched and searched, wandering the base’s energon-coated halls for endless cycles, desperately hoping he had missed a hiding bot, or one still clinging to life beneath the weight of their slaughtered comrades. The medic hadn’t even contacted high command to retrieve him until the joints in his knees finally gave out, forcing him to crawl the remaining distance to the communications suite.
He clenched his jaw, forcing a tremor down before it could rattle his plating. He was aboard one of the most secure ships in the entire fleet. No alarms were ringing. Not even an assassin could sneak this deep into Autobot territory undetected. The Autobots around him were as safe as they could possibly be from the violent shadow that seemed to stalk Ratchet's steps whenever he drifted too far from the light.
With a heavy vent, he opened his optics and set himself back to work. How long their untrustworthy quiet would last was uncertain. Almost as uncertain as Ratchet felt about what he was actually doing in one of the ship’s secondary labs.
He was a medic, not a scientist. Though many among the rank and file among the Autobots tended to forget the difference between the two.
The sound of the lab door sliding open caused Ratchet’s shoulders to tense. When no greeting followed, he let out a long, aggravated vent, in no mood to deal with curious MTOs or enthusiastically unhelpful scientists.
Without turning around, he groused, “If you’re here for Wheeljack, he’ll be back on shift in four joors. If you’re here for me and you’re not dying, get out.”
Amused vocals rumbled, “Good thing I’m dying to see you then, eh doc?”
Ratchet's digits tightened around the neck of the flask. He whirled on his heel, hurling it straight at the invading Decepticon’s despicable faceplate—who dodged with a casual tilt of his helm to the right.
The glass smashed against the door behind him, its orange contents hissing as they dripped in slow globs down the metal.
Deadlock raised an optic ridge. “Bad time?”
The medic grit his denta, optics cycling wide as fury ripped through his circuitry, shredding his ability to reason or remain calm.
“Get out,” he snapped. Then, before panic could override his rage, demanded, “What are you doing here? How did you get in here?!”
If Ratchet hadn’t gripped the edge of the table behind him, he was sure his servos would be shaking with fury. Even aboard one of the fleet’s most secure vessels, Deadlock had found him. And yet, no alarm blared. There had been no warning across the intercom, and no scent of leaking energon or machinery smoke had followed the Decepticon into the secondary lab.
Deadlock’s optics roved curiously around the room, taking in his surroundings as if he’d simply wandered into an unfamiliar museum exhibit, rather than one of the most secure, secretive labs in the Autobot fleet.
Red optics settled back on Ratchet, slowly tracing up from his pedes, over his thighs, lingering with an unsettling weight on the glass of his windshield. With a smirk, the interloper offered a smooth, “I have my ways.”
He resisted the urge to cover his Autobot badge, and the spark chamber that lay protected beneath it. As always when the Decepticon assassin appeared, Ratchet’s own safety (violation) was the least pressing concern in the room.
How had Deadlock found him? The CMO’s transfer had been heavily classified, his movements strictly clandestine. Not even Wheeljack had known Ratchet was boarding his ship until the medic was already stepping onto the hangar deck.
So, how then….
Blue optics widened as Ratchet surmised, “Did you put a tracer on me?”
He craned his neck downward, immediately running a diagnostic scan over his own frame for an unfamiliar signature. Deadlock was grabby. He liked to grope, to pretend the lead-up to their interactions was a pleasant reunion between lovers rather than the unwilling farce that it truly was. It could have happened during any one of their previous encounters.
Where would the Decepticon have placed it? Ratchet routinely ran full-spectrum scans on himself to ensure no foreign contaminants ever followed him in or out of the medbay. The only parts of him that didn’t receive such regular attention—an intentional oversight—were his…
As if reading his thoughts, or tracking the sudden, horrified flicker of blue optics, Deadlock let out a low, cruel chuckle.
“Right under your pretty red cover. It detects EM fields, too.”
Taking a slow, menacing step forward, the Decepticon purred, “You’ve been faithful. With a reputation like yours, I have to admit I wasn't expecting it...but that doesn't mean I'm not grateful. And don't worry, doc. I’ve been faithful, too.”
The taller mech didn’t stop until his frame loomed directly over the medic, casting Ratchet's white and red plating into deep grey shadow. Their fields meshed together with a disgusting ease born of once-cherished, now-rejected familiarity. The genuine warmth and affection radiating off Deadlock made the fuel in Ratchet’s tanks curdle.
His olfactorate flared, and the sharp click of his cooling fans cracked through the silence louder than an assassin’s bullet. Terror had caused his frame’s internal temperature to rapidly surge. Deadlock, no doubt, would choose to interpret the medic’s broiling vents more favorably.
Though clenched denta, he seethed, “Why are you here?”
Deadlock’s clawed servo curled, and black knuckles gently soothing down the side of Ratchet’s helm.
“You know why,” the Decepticon asserted softly, an unmistakable tenderness in his vocals that finally rerouted the medic’s survival protocols back to fight.
He slapped the larger mech's servo away, uncaring of the way his most delicate tool stung from the abrupt, violent contact.
Unbothered, Deadlock used his servo’s removal as an opportunity to reposition, bringing his heavily armored arms down around the medic. Gripping the edge of the table at Ratchet’s back, boxing him in. Leaning forward until their chassis scraped together; Decepticon purple marred Autobot red.
The taller mech bent his helm forward. Ratchet twisted his to the side, staring blankly at a grey wall as he bit down hard on his lower lip plates. Warm vents puffed relentlessly against his exposed neck cables, a heavy weight resting against his shoulder.
“I missed you,” Deadlock quietly moped, punctuating his complaint with a trail of peppered kisses against insulated rubber.
“I didn’t,” Ratchet sneered, a wave of revulsion causing the medic’s armor to lock tight, squeezing painfully around his protoform. “It’s barely been a deca-cycle. Why are you here?”
What have you done? Who have you killed to reach me this time?
“Autobots aren’t supposed to be liars,” Deadlock sighed, nuzzling into the crook of his neck. “Is this because I was too mean last time? I’m sorry, alright? First you disappeared to that edge-of-space outpost. Then, you ignored me for that dead bot.”
That dead bot would have lived had Deadlock not insisted on distracting the medic in the most detestable of ways. All of Baracchus would have survived—never even appearing as a blip on the Decepticon’s radar—had the assassin not led his squadron there. If only Ratchet, the Autobot Chief Medical Officer, hadn't tried to use their base as a physical, personal retreat from his own toxic shadow.
And now, deep in Autobot territory, it had found him again. The lack of alarms could be for any number of reasons, given a mech of Deadlock’s lethal caliber. There could be, likely were, bots already offlined. Others with their frames slowly greying in the ship’s corridors, unable to transmit a comm for help.
But there would not be a second Baracchus. Whatever Ratchet had to do—Deadlock was right.
Releasing a shaky vent, Ratchet unclenched his servos from the desk, resting them unsteadily against the crest of the Decepticon’s white hips.
“I do know why,” he finally admitted.
Because he would never be forgiven for leaving The Dead End. For turning his back on Drift, the long shadow stretching behind his hunched frame during the medic’s march back to Iacon permanently blackening the distraught mech’s spark.
Drift’s desperate desires had festered into the monster Deadlock. And Deadlock wanted Ratchet to suffer.
The hopeful, hitched vent of, "Really?" That followed Ratchet's confession was so painful, he almost thought a dagger stabbed straight through his spark had accompanied it.
But then, Ratchet’s luck had never been that great.
He smoothed his servos up Deadlock’s waist, dragging them over the sides of his chassis before framing them on either side of the Decepticon’s badge. A visible shiver racked Deadlock's frame with every faint touch, and soon the loud, synchronous whirring of two sets of cooling fans filled the lab’s stale air.
The heavy weight on his shoulder lifted as Deadlock pulled back. Crimson optics were dim with lust, widened in disbelief.
Swallowing around a dry intake, Ratchet continued, "It's the same reason you always pound after me." Then, with every metric of tensile strength in his arms—pushed.
Deadlock yelped as he fell backward, landing on the lab’s grey floor with a clanging crash.
Giving the Decepticon no time to recover, Ratchet closed the distance, standing over his downed frame and sneering down at the delusional mech.
“Open your panels and let’s get this over with,” he snapped. “I don’t have time for your pathetic dawdling.”
Olfactorate flaring, Deadlock’s tender, shocked expression twisted into a menacing grin. “This isn’t quite what I had in mind when I came to see you, doc. You sure this is what you want?”
“Let’s not waste any more time by pretending you care about what I want. Chop-chop.”
Ratchet stood directly over the Decepticon’s black pelvic span and dropped to his knees with a barely concealed groan. His joint-suspension creaked from the sudden impact, but he ignored the discomfort as he settled the rest of the way down. His aft rested directly over Deadlock's spike cover.
The thick metal was already expectantly warm.
He glared down at the Decepticon, whose engine revved with a deep, ravenous hunger; vibrations rocked through Ratchet's frame, loosening tense armor.
The mech’s dark grey grin had morphed into a wide, fanged smile.
“Alright, doc, but this is your operation. I’m not going to lift a servo to help.” Then, unable to help himself, mumbled out a quick, “Unless you ask me to.”
The temptation to snip back with a bitter, you never do what I ask—which is leave me alone, was strong. However, the want to get this horribly demented encounter over with was stronger. The faster he satisfied Deadlock’s depravity, the sooner he could begin treating the Decepticon’s victims.
“Just pressurize your damn spike,” he grunted. “Or do you expect me to do that for you too?”
Ratchet’s valve cover snapped back, the thick outer folds already glistening with clear lubricant. Completely unrelated to the other's lecherous coercion. Instead, it was the automated result of a caliper-flush protocol the medic had installed at the first private opportunity after Baracchus.
If there was any pride to be found in this caustic humiliation, it was that Ratchet’s mastery over his servos kept them steady. They didn't shake as he reached beneath himself to circle a digit around the edge of Deadlock’s spike cover. The heated metal was already wet with the medic's own internal fluids, and thin ribbons of steam slowly wafted up from the Decepticon's gapped seams.
Good. Meant the con was already worked up, and that Ratchet wouldn’t have to use his servos for anything more than guiding the damn, overcompensatingly large spike inside him.
Deadlock's cover retracted and a long, tapered spike extended. The blinking red biolights along its length were fogged over with condensation; a stray arc of static electricity leaped from the tip, silently begging for a connection Ratchet was loath to grant.
With a deliberately beleaguered sigh, the medic gripped the sensitive metal none-too-gently. Then—
“W-wait, you have to stretch,” Deadlock stammered, the poorly concealed panic in his vocalizer cutting through his performative bravado. “That’s still part of the deal. You can’t be hurt…that way.”
Ratchet’s mouth fell open, his expression a stalemate between disgust and bafflement. As if the coercive slagger hadn’t already hurt Ratchet in every other way imaginable. Torn valve lining and crushed calipers could be mended—the destruction of Ratchet's self-worth and taint left on his spark after every unwilling encounter was a permanent, unrecoverable corrosion.
Disgust won the war. He made a sound somewhere between a groan and a gag before lifting his aft, planting a servo flat against Deadlock’s chassis to steady himself.
Using his opposite servo, Ratchet pressed his index and middle digits against his valve, sliding them past the outer folds and gathering a generous amount of automated lubricant along their red plating, before pushing them deep into his slick opening. Without giving himself time to adjust, the medic began scissoring himself open, moving his digits in and out with clinical efficiency until he felt the tense internal rubber finally begin to soften.
The movements didn’t feel good; he wasn’t aiming for pleasure, but expediency. Every astro-second spent with the Decepticon beneath him was another tick of the timer counting down against Autobot lives.
Panting from the sheer exertion, a particularly electric rub against his interior nodes caused pleasure to ripple along his calipers despite his best efforts. His engine let out an involuntary growl—and an emboldened black servo lifted off the floor, hovering just above a red hip.
His field buzzed with a powerful pulse of rejection; the first time he had ever allowed their fields to truly mesh ever since Deadlock had revealed his intentions all those centuries ago.
Glaring down at the waste of spare parts, he barked a harsh order. “Keep your servos to yourself. You don’t get to touch me. And you don’t get to pretend this is anything but what it is.”
Deadlock visibly gulped, wordlessly nodding as his servo dropped back to the floor. The sharp screech of his claws gouging into the metal was followed by a shaky, “Whatever you want, doc. I’m all yours.”
With one last push and pull, Ratchet finished stretching himself. He removed his digits to the nasty burble of thick fluid shifting and debauched bubbles popping.
“I want you to shut up,” he retorted.
Using his wet servo, he took hold of Deadlock’s spike and, ignoring the shiver his touch produced, lined it up with the entrance to his quivering valve.
A sudden flush of energon-bile burned its way up his intake; he swallowed it down, manually overriding his tank’s purge protocols. No matter how ill the thought made him, Ratchet had to force it down—to take it all the way down.
Taking the subtle bulge of Ratchet’s neck cables as a sign of nervousness, the Decepticon’s arrogance returned as he grinned, “No promises.”
“Wouldn’t expect one, Deadlock.”
Ratchet was fully aware of how valiantly benevolent Deadlock viewed himself. As if their encounters were some cross-factional, sweetspark deal between old friends. It wasn’t and never would be—Deadlock had seen to that himself.
Now, it was time for Ratchet to rip the poorly soldered repair plate off and reveal the festering rot underneath.
“You’re holding the crew hostage and using their lives to threaten me into interfacing with you,” he stated, his vocals flat. “Now, shut up, and let me do my job.”
Crimson optics widened. “That’s not—”
He sank down, biting his lower derma as his valve was stretched wide and the spike’s bulbous ridges caught against lit calipers. His own hasty loosening hadn’t been anywhere near as thorough as Deadlock’s typically was—how unsettling that this farce had continued long enough for there to be a typical—and his knees shook as he forced himself to continue sliding down, fighting to keep any hint of his discomfort from revealing itself in his field.
Deadlock gasped, throwing his helm back and making no effort to hold back his enjoyment. A debauched litany of groans and sighs, a half-whispered still so tight, followed by doc, please.
Ratchet ignored him. Once the outer rubber of his valve flattened against the black pelvic armor, he was already rising again, wishing with every line of code of his processor that he could dampen his pleasure receptors as calipers squeezed tight around the hard length gliding against them.
But that was against their sham deal, too. How Deadlock would know if the medic was faking his begrudged moans, Ratchet had no clue. However, he knew for certain it wasn’t worth a single Autobot life to find out.
Ratchet had already been forced to learn what happened when he made Deadlock wait.
Fluxes of past failures, combined with the rapid, intensely physical pistoning, kept his internals burning even when his spark iced over with absolute fear.
He wasn’t moving fast enough. A klick had already passed, and he wasn’t anywhere close to overload. The Decepticon beneath him—whose worshipful sighs had faded back into a lazy, satisfied grin—wasn’t either. Clear lubricant coated his inner thighs, but there wasn’t a single drop of transfluid to tint his white armor pink.
His vents heaved, his cooling fans catching and stuttering from overwork as he, in an error of pure desperation, attempted to bypass his own hydraulic safety protocols and failed.
One of his knees buckled, and he fell forward, catching himself on one of the Deadlock's overly large shoulder pauldrons just before their faceplates could smash together. The Decepticon laughed; the sickening scent of stale energon wafted across Ratchet's derma.
Knowing Deadlock, and Ratchet did have that misery—the siphonist’s last meal had come from an unsuspecting Autobot’s neck.
"Finally going to kiss me?" The con teased, once again playing as if there were some kind of push-and-pull intimacy between them. As if it wasn’t all yank and shove from the deranged mech’s side.
“Thought I told you to shut up,” he grunted, righting himself and biting back a groan as the spike slid deeper than was medically advisable.
His arms shook as he tried to push himself back into a kneeling position, but Deadlock, unable to resist Ratchet’s sudden weakness, jerked his hips upward, driving the massive length deeper inside him. Its curved tip pressed against his interior node, nearly causing the medic to collapse all over again.
“I said don’t move!” He snapped, his hips trembling, battling a nauseating surge of self-directed revulsion.
Ratchet didn’t want their interface to feel good. He needed it to.
A loud screech—claws tearing through thin metal flooring—filled the lab. Crimson optics, dark with desire, flashed brightly in warning. “Either you move, or I do,” Deadlock threatened.
So much for not moving a servo. If the medic were any good as an actor, he would have feigned an outraged affront. But he was already too used to Deadlock changing the script mid-scene to suit his every sadistic whim.
Rather than argue, he allowed his ire to pierce through the other’s rising agitation as he finally managed to support his considerable weight on both legs without his gyro-stabilizer malfunctioning.
“That another one of your slagging deals?” Ratchet fumed down at the Decepticon.
“Call it whatever you want—you’re the one that started this.” Deadlock’s response was delivered with all the casualness a brutal Decepticon could muster. His field, however, was a dense swath of appetent impatience.
Ratchet hated how it crawled all over him, prickling against his armor, tingling against the edges of gapped seams and entangling with the wiring of his clenched protoform. Raw. Unadulterated. Want.
It was terrifying. It would never stop. Deadlock would never stop. If he could hunt Ratchet this deep into the heart of the fleet, he could find the medic anywhere. Anyone near him would be in constant, lethal danger from the assassin.
And yet, looking down at the mech’s arrogant faceplate...he still couldn’t find it in himself to hate him.
Ratchet had forged his own personal monster. The last promise given to him by Drift had been kept. His own actions, his expertly crafted servos, had carved out the hollow mold for all the avarice and malice of Deadlock to pour into.
He’d had his chance, likely his last, to end Deadlock’s threat back on Baracchus.
You could have crushed me, but you didn’t—why?
Or had he?
Slowly, he lifted up off the spike until only its tapered tip remained inside him. He felt it twitch against his opening, desperate and needy. Black servos lifted off the floor, the tips of razor-sharp claws scraping restlessly against the white armor of his thighs, peeling the paint.
Licking his lower derma, Deadlock whined, “C’mon, doc, you’re killing me—”
The entire mechanical tonnage of a heavily modified emergency vehicle slammed onto the Decepticon’s pelvic span.
And bounced right back up.
Deadlock’s vocalizer squealed something ugly and full of static. And euphoria.
Frowning, Ratchet lifted himself again, and dropped. Instead of crumpled armor and busted cabling, the other’s pelvic span gave under the added mass, springing up and down as the medic set a crushing pace.
This isn’t right, he thought between disorienting, electric bursts of his own pleasure.
Deadlock’s lower extremities weren’t specced to account for a mech of Ratchet’s weight—not while pinned flat on his back without the load-bearing support of his full frame. Even lifting Ratchet had been a visible challenge for the Decepticon in the past.
Between vented moans, a mixture of disappointment and pleasure, he managed to pant out, “What have you done to yourself?” This time?
The con’s blackened optics snapped back online (when had they gone dark?), and he gasped as sparks flew from where their frames collided. “I—oh, oh, doc. Right there, just like that. You’re so good. More. More, please, Ra—”
Ratchet’s engine revved as he dropped and stayed down, grinding his hips in a swivel against the spike inside him. He shuddered, optics brightening a painful degree as white-hot shocks of pleasure shot from his valve, racing up spinal strut.
“Sh-hut up,” he rasped.
Deadlock banged a fist onto the floor, lifting his helm and baring his neck cables as he panted with delirious ecstasy, “Yes, yes—Ah-ah!”
Using his opposite servo, Deadlock gripped the side of his own helm, claws digging deep into the white, oval cheek guard. “You’re still mad, right? Y-yeah? H-harder. Frag me harder, doc. I deserve it. You’re punishing me, I’ve been bad. So, so ba—”
Ratchet slapped a servo straight over the con's babbling mouth, roughly digging his thumb into the corner and smearing half-dried lubricant over his faceplate. It slipped past Deadlock’s derma and pressed against the back of his glossa, causing the mech to gag.
Back hunched, Ratchet refused to slow even as his knees burned, and a cooling fan jammed. His core temperature rose to dangerously high levels. His armor dropped wide open, revealing a tangled maze of strained cables and multi-colored wiring. Arcs of purple and blue electricity danced over his white and red plating, and the heavy, rhythmic bulge of his fuel pump overworking became visible.
A moan vibrated against the medic’s thumb, causing him to shiver. When Deadlock tried to speak around the obstruction, Ratchet grit his denta and squeezed his lower abdominals, fully aware the con would feel—and see—the internal constriction.
“The only thing you deserve,” he ground down, something mean and vindictive oozing into the interface, turning his lust-soaked haze bitter. “Is to be locked up with the rest of your kind. You’re a filthy little pervert. That’s all you are.”
Deadlock rapidly nodded his helm in agreement, causing Ratchet’s hold to slip and the con’s denta to scrape against his thumb. Drool built up and dripped out the side of the mech’s mouth, seeping into the seams of Ratchet’s digit.
He leaned forward, forcing Deadlock’s helm to bear more of the medic’s weight as he vented harshly, “You’re disgusting. Vile. No con wants to touch something so filthy.” He rocked his hips back and forth, his valve gripping onto the spike in a deliberate way he knew was painful. “That’s why you have to chase me down, isn’t it?”
Crimson optics, fogged over with lust, widened and the mech shook his helm no. A sharp fang cut into one of the riveted seams in Ratchet's thumb, slicing through a thin energon line.
The con closed his mouth around the digit and sucked.
Ratchet gasped a silent, airless moan, his valve spasming as a sudden, agonizing overload took him. Deadlock groaned loudly as he siphoned the medic’s leaking energon, his hips jerking upward in tandem as transfluid—hot and uncomfortably thick—gushed into Ratchet's valve. Its sticky warmth leaked down around the sides of the spike, soaking his and the Decepticon's pelvic plating.
Before he could cool his internals or recover motor control, Deadlock was already taking hold of Ratchet's wrist, lifting the red servo off his faceplate. He brought the trembling digit tips to his derma, brushing soft, lingering kisses against each one.
With a disgusted sneer, Ratchet yanked his servo away. Giving no warning, he pushed himself off his knees using the con’s chassis. Globs of transfluid fell from his gaping valve, landing on Deadlock’s depressurizing spike and between his legs.
Smoke billowed from his vents, and Ratchet sucked in gulps of air to supplement his damaged fans.
Not about to give the Decepticon another reason to touch him, Ratchet quickly reached into subspace (his servos failing to properly grasp on the first try) and pulled out a medical-grade cleansing cloth. Clean-up was part of the deal, and while Deadlock usually insisted on being the one to wipe away the evidence of his crimes—he had never explicitly stated Ratchet couldn’t be the one to do it.
Of course, there was only so much he could do with a mesh cloth, and he didn’t have time to stand around scraping the con’s spoiled internal fluid out of him. In less than a klick, he’d cleaned most of the visible pink mess from his valve.
There was nothing to be done about the paint transfers or scratches along his thighs. If asked, Ratchet could always pull the drunken, party-ambulance card, outdated as it was.
He tossed the dirty cloth at Deadlock, who still lay panting on the floor. It landed on his limp spike.
Disgusting.
On shaky legs, Ratchet walked back to the lab table, already categorizing what he could use for triage. There wasn’t much, but—
A wild laugh broke the medic out of his thoughts.
"You're still here?" He snipped without turning around. "Deals through. Get out, and I swear, if you kill one more Autobot on your way out…." His threat trailed off, not out of any sort of unspoken menace. But because he genuinely had no idea what he would do.
Even with legendary servos attached to his wrists, his own impotence was hard to grasp.
The sound of heavy metal shifting and rising forced Ratchet to cast a quick, reluctant glance behind him—just in time to see Deadlock sniff the fluid-soaked rag before casually subspacing it.
Not even surprised by the display, he turned back to the table and began mixing a foul-tasting but potent analgesic. Using a sterile beaker, he combined orange and green chemicals, manually agitating the solution until its color transitioned to a light, muddy brown.
“Alright, doc, no killing bots on my way out,” Deadlock assured, though the direction of his pedesteps suggested the con was walking in the exact opposite direction of the exit. “But then…I didn’t kill any on my way in, either.”
Ratchet’s stirring servos slowed to a complete stop at the admission. He carefully placed the beaker down on the table, resting his hands flat against the cold surface to keep his frame from succumbing to exhaustion as an immense weight tempted to lift off his bent shoulders.
“If you’re lying to buy time—”
“I’m not.” Deadlock murmured over the top of Ratchet’s helm as he came to a stop directly behind the shorter mech, his chassis bumping against the medic’s back. “I’m a lot of things, doc. A lot of terrible things, but a liar isn’t one of them.”
“Then how?” He asked, vocals cracking, unwilling to believe he had initiated that self-inflicted humiliation ritual for nothing.
“How did I get on the ship?” Deadlock rephrased with a hum. “I have my ways,” he said teasingly, wrapping his arms around the medic and dropping the side of his helm onto the top of Ratchet’s.
With a chuckle, the con added, “And Sounders might have owed me a favor. Where do you think I got the tracker from?”
“I don’t care,” Ratchet whispered.
A happy, satisfied field blanketed his own horror-stricken, self-loathing, as if to comfort him. No longer with the strength to resist, he sagged forward, elbows trembling with the effort to hold up his weak frame.
“What now?” He questioned. “You-you threaten to kill them if I don’t interface with you again? What the frag do you want from me? How much more are you planning to take?”
In a rare bout of seriousness, Deadlock vowed forebodingly, “Everything you have.”
The helm atop his own shifted, and a kiss was pressed against his audial, slow and wet. Derma brushing softly against white armor, the con sweetly promised, “I’m settling for your frame now, but when the war is over, I’ll have your spark. And just like your frame—you’re going to be the one to give it to me.”
Ratchet said nothing, unable to do more than stare down at the stains sullying his servos.
When more than a klick of silence passed, Deadlock sighed and repeated, “I really am sorry about Baracchus. How about this—I’m going on an off-grid mission soon. That's why I had to come to see you again. I like to give you time between our deals, but I just don't know when I'm going to be back, and the thought of you being mad at me the whole time I'm going really, um…well, I didn't like it."
Ratchet snorted, a numb sort of disbelief taking over. “You snuck onto an Autobot ship deep in Autobot territory because you don’t want me to be mad at you…for massacring a noncombatant outpost and raping me?”
The arms around him tightened. “Don’t say that. That’s not what this is. We make deals; I give you a choice. The last one was just a little one-sided.” Then, Deadlock mumbled something so abhorrent Ratchet tried to jerk out of his arms, anger temporarily causing his strength to return.
Deadlock’s hold didn’t budge, and he huffed, “Sorry, sorry, don’t be mad. How about this—a ship can't land where I'm going. That's why I was retrofitted with shock-drop suspension. I can't tell you where, but how about I promise not to kill any bots except my targets?"
The con’s derma kissed a curved path around Ratchet’s audial, to his neck, ending on his shoulder. Vocals softly intimate, Deadlock crooned, “As a thank you. For this. It means a lot to me that you initiated. I only came here to see you; I didn’t think we would get to 'face before I left. This was a gift.”
Nipping the back of Ratchet’s neck, he continued, “I’m grateful.”
Chuckling lowly, the nip turned into a bite, and sharp denta pierced insulated rubber. There was no pleasure, only a stinging pain from the penetration, and Ratchet made no outward motion to signal he felt anything at all.
Between indolent swipes of his glossa against Ratchet’s slowly leaking energon, Deadlock cautioned, “Of course, if you sound the alarm when I leave, I’ll have no choice but to kill anyone who tries to stop me. You understand, right, doc?”
Shock-drop absorbers. Why hadn't Ratchet thought of that? While meant for leg and tire suspension, there was no reason he couldn't create something with similar springs for shoulders. Adjustments would need to be made: smaller and tighter coils, but—
“Doc?”
He sighed, drained and lacking the patience to decipher Deadlock's physically violent-to-violently needy mood swings.
“Go,” was all he answered, vocals deadpan.
The tips of the con’s claws dug into his armor, leaving more marks Ratchet would have to buff. More work. The floor was unsalvageable. The deep gouges left would need to be covered. Maybe he could move a shelf or some other cumbersome scientific instrument over them.
Eventually, after several long, dragging klicks, Deadlock’s hold finally slid away. However, his oppressively possessive electromagnetic field still lingered in the air, clinging to Ratchet's armor like a lost youngling.
The mech’s thudding pedesteps neared the secondary lab door, and a gentle breeze told the medic that it had cycled open.
Deadlock left on a promised threat— “Be seeing you, doc.”
Then, the doors closed; Ratchet was alone.
Left to his work and his own resolute contemplations. He parsed through how he was going to inform high command about the Decepticon assassin’s upcoming mission, weighed against the crushing depth of what had actually transpired between them. Whether he would finally admit to the repeated violations—and likely face permanent confinement to Autobot headquarters—or find a way to obscure his source. If he even wanted to.
And he counted everything he had ever done to deserve Deadlock’s torment. That he did deserve it…was never a question.