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It was early when someone started knocking at his hab suite door. Optimus - no, Orion now - no, Optimus… Anyway, he was hung-over.
He and Megatron had spent the night drinking at the same table, in a secluded corner of Maccadam’s. Not speaking. Just drinking, and basking in the relative novelty of being in the same place and not trying to murder each other.
Megatron got drunk first. Just like old times - big tough mech, but he could never hold his engex. It was oddly reassuring that despite all the rebuilds and all the years of war, this one small thing hadn’t changed.
Optimus could hold his own engex just fine. Still, it didn’t take long for him to follow. He knew how to drink with a purpose. And he had a purpose tonight. A sadness to bury, and no more war to fight in the morning.
They had nothing to say to each other. Or too much, maybe, and no way to find the words, or no idea where to start. Optimus, for his own part, had no desire to speak. He drank. Blurr made sure that no one bothered them. Mostly, no one even seemed to notice they were there.
Eventually, Megatron reached for Optimus’ hand across the table. His hand moved very slow - because he was drunk, maybe. It halted abruptly just before touching him, and came to rest heavily on the table. Nothing but a thin sliver of air separated them. A single flinch would bring their fingertips into contact.
Optimus neither flinched away nor pushed his hand closer. Megatron’s hand stayed in place like it was welded to the table. That tiny gap between their fingertips became the focus of all of Optimus’ drunken attention - a warm, fragile buffer of air.
They sat, feeling the faint heat and the familiar electromagnetic interference of each others’ circuitry, where their fingertips almost touched. Not looking at each other. Not moving, except to reach for their drinks. Certainly not meeting each others’ eyes.
The night went on. No one bothered them. Blurr quietly refilled their glasses without being asked to. They drank.
Optimus was hung-over that morning, but at least he’d managed to get some recharge.
Megatron looked far worse off. He hadn’t cleaned himself up. His expression held a discomfort that was more than physical. His optics had the filmy, unmodulated brightness of an insomniac.
He pushed the datapad into Optimus’ hands. Optimus stared at it, still half-asleep and having trouble focusing his vision or his thoughts. By the time he came up with something worth saying, Megatron was already gone, and he was left standing there alone in his own doorway.
Optimus went inside, still holding the datapad, and squinted down at the screen.
The main directory just said “Poetry”.
No introduction. No explanation. Just file after file, each one a poem.
Optimus sat down heavily. He squinted at the screen again as if it may have changed. It hadn’t. The list of poems was still there - so many that they couldn’t all fit on the screen at once. He scrolled and scrolled, and there were still more of them.
Optimus stared at the datapad in his hands for a long moment, not moving. He scrolled furiously back up to the top of the list. He opened the first poem, and he read it.
It was old, by the time-stamp. Written just as the war began - their war. A poem full of pain and fury. Optimus read it once, twice, then furiously flipped to the next one and read it, and the next.
Megatron’s craft had improved. Even his first works - awkward and unpracticed and painfully raw - had drawn Optimus immediately in. But his skill had increased the more he wrote. His words became more efficient even as his feelings became uglier.
Some of the poems were about him. About Optimus.
Not all of them, but enough. Enough to see that Megatron had chosen the poems on this datapad specifically for Optimus to read. Maybe that was what he'd spent the night doing - scouring over four million years of poetry.
Some of them were about Megatron himself. About his philosophies, and how they’d changed. About his flaws and his failures and his weaknesses. About the desires he strangled and the inconvenient feelings that he’d let out only like this, in verses that he expected no one would ever read.
They were all raw. All like a spark chamber ripped open, life shining through the ugly cracks.
They went on and on. File after file. Poem after poem. Optimus read, although his optics burned and his hand shook and his joints grew stiff and aching. He read, and read, until the scroll bar ended and there was one file left.
It had a time stamp of very early this morning. And that was what Megatron had been up all night doing - not selecting poems, but writing this.
Optimus read it.
It was different than the others. He was too tired to comprehend it properly. He was sure of that. He would re-read it, later. He would re-read all of them.
It was a poem about change. About transformation. And about the things that didn’t change - the spark around which plates shifted and parts were removed and rebuilt. But there was more to it than that. Optimus read it twice, then let the words sit in his mind and stay there.
He closed the file and finally looked up. His body ached from holding still, and his optics were dry and painful, and he was low on fuel. He’d been reading for hours without realizing.
That had been the way of things between them, once. Megatron would give Orion a datapad full of his latest poems -- although never this many at once -- and Orion would read it in a frenzy.
Megatron used to mock him for it - “You like reading too much to be just a cop” - and Orion would smile behind the mask and say, “I always thought, if things had been different, I could’ve made a pretty good librarian.” And when Megatron laughed at that, it had been warm, not mocking. Megatron had never seen him as just a cop. Like Senator Shockwave, Megatron had always seen him as something more.
Back then, Orion and Megatron had a data link set up between them. Megatron was rarely brave enough to watch while Orion read his poetry, but he would get pinged with data at each file access. Notified every time Orion opened one of the poems. Notified when Orion lingered over one, or when he closed it and went back to it and closed it and went back to it again.
Megatron wouldn’t stay and watch, but he’d admitted to Optimus that he waited anxiously for those pings of data. He had always been so insecure about his poetry. So afraid to share it.
Optimus abruptly realized that perhaps that was another thing about him that, all these years later, hadn’t changed.
He stood. He forced himself to drink something, to silence the repeated pinging of his low-fuel warning. Still holding the datapad, he left his room.
Optimus found the hab-suite that Megatron had spent the night in. It was being guarded -- no doubt Prowl’s doing, but probably for the best. Optimus shooed the guards away before he knocked. When no one answered, he knocked again. The door opened, and Megatron stood there in the doorway. He clearly hadn’t slept.
Megatron stared at the datapad in Optimus' hands, his optics over-bright. Optimus stared at Megatron's badge.
“I read them,” Optimus finally said.
Megatron was still looking at the datapad in Optimus’ hand. In the periphery of his vision, Optimus saw his expression change to something like surprise.
“All of them?” Megatron asked, his voice staticked with exhaustion.
“Yes,” Optimus said.
Megatron waited for him to say more, but Optimus wasn’t ready to talk. Not yet. Maybe after more sleep. Maybe when he wasn’t still hung over. Maybe when he’d had more time to think. If they were going to do this, it was going to be -- not like last time. They were going to do it right.
Megatron reached for the datapad, his movements slow and intentional. He took hold of it and gently tugged.
Optimus didn’t let it go. Megatron tugged harder; Optimus’ grip tightened. For a brief moment, they both held the datapad, not touching each other, but feeling the tug of each others’ weight in what they held between them. Then Megatron abruptly released it. Unwilling to fight any more, even over this small thing.
“I want to re-read them,” Optimus said. “Tomorrow. With a clearer head.”
Something in Megatron’s posture shifted. “Ah,” he said, almost a gasp. Optimus heard him trying to clear and reset his vocalizer, but whatever it was Megatron was trying to say, it didn’t come.
“Tomorrow,” Optimus repeated.
They stood there for a long moment before Optimus finally turned away and Megatron watched him go.