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The rule – the only rule – was that neither of them ever asked the other to change faction.
Mirage had never been big on rules, which, he supposed, made him a bad Autobot; but Thundercracker liked them. Mirage sometimes wondered whether that made Thundercracker feel like a bad Decepticon.
Even Mirage had to acknowledge, though, that their one rule was useful. It was what made the meetings between them possible. If either of them actually made the offer, then these rendezvous – so casually arranged, as if they just happened to be in the same place at the same time, and yet so meticulously hidden from both sides – would have to end. Because either the answer would be yes – and it couldn't be yes – or it would be no. And the mech who'd asked would either have to leave, or admit that it had never been the faint, loyal hope of turning a high-ranking enemy officer that had kept him – kept them both – coming back so many times.
A very keen observer might have noticed the extra set of tire tracks materialising out of nowhere as Mirage wound his way up the mountain, but the spy had done an extra sweep of the surrounding area. No signals apart from his own, and a single, purple-tinged pulse waiting in the cave near the summit.
Thundercracker was standing just inside the cave mouth, with a flier's reluctance to stray too far from the sight of the sky.
Some nights, Thundercracker would be brimming over, words bursting out of him practically the moment he heard Mirage's engines. “I can't take being asked to lie to our own troops,” or, “What do they think the fragging brand means?” or, “If Starscream tries it one more time, I'll challenge him for trine leader; I'll have no choice.”
But things were always different in the wake of battles.
Tonight, Thundercracker kept his silence as Mirage pulled up. The spy transformed and slipped into the cave past him, their EM fields barely brushing, and they stood staring at one another, optics glowing warily in the darkness.
Mirage started. “During the – on the field, today. Were you...?”
“No,” the Decepticon replied, a little stiffly. “You?”
Mirage flashed an ugly-looking gash on his forearm, and smiled ruefully. “Your tr -” He stopped himself just before he said “trinemate”. No need to lay that particular burden on Thundercracker. “Your comrade was a little too quick for me today.”
Thundercracker leaned in to look at the wound, and couldn't quite suppress a low hiss of sympathy. Then he turned away, and Mirage tucked the wounded arm behind his back discreetly.
“You know,” the seeker began, staring moodily out at the night sky, “when we landed on this planet, I really thought this could be a fresh start. Cybertron... fighting among the ruins of what we used to be... it locked us in. There was nothing left but the war. But here – I thought that perhaps we could find a way to share this world's resources that wasn't as... well, brutal.”
“Maybe not peace,” Mirage mused, “but a truce of some kind.”
Thundercracker folded his arms. “Why do you think we can't?”
This was dicey territory, but Mirage didn't want to lie. “Megatron was the one who started trying to stockpile energon to take back –”
Thundercracker's hand rose, sketching an elegant shushing gesture in the air. “Not why we didn't. Why we can't.”
“You've never said it like that before, you know. Can't.”
“I know.” Thundercracker's deep, pleasant voice was strangely thick, although Mirage couldn't see his expression. “But am I wrong? Do you remember when we used to meet, back home? In the early days, I mean. We'd talk about what it would take for the war to end without both sides completely destroying each other.”
Mirage remembered. Back when there were still a handful of bars running in the bigger cities, in defiance of the war, and it was possible to meet for a drink on neutral territory if they were careful. Mirage was a raw recruit to whom faction still felt like an academic exercise – one where he wasn't at all sure he'd come up with the right solution – and Thundercracker was only beginning to wonder whether his trine leader had pulled him into something that was going to spiral out of control, and the entire war was fresh and awful and strange. Primus, people still thought it would be over within the vorn, back then.
“A whole extra planet to divide between us,” Mirage said wryly, remembering the conclusion they'd come to late one night, not long after the first battle that had actually pitted them against one another. He could still conjure up the ache in his plating; the hot, acrid smell of their scorched-dry fuel tanks, since both armies had been running at near-starvation levels; how treacherously good it had felt to rest his head against Thundercracker's shoulder vent, and pretend, just for a moment, that he wasn't snuggling up to a member of the air force that had nearly strafed his unit out of existence a few days before. “With energon that would never run out.”
Thundercracker waved a hand at the alien world, unspeakably rich in fuel, laid out before them, and glanced at Mirage over his shoulder.
Mirage drew close behind him. Thundercracker allowed it without a second thought; a sign of trust Mirage would never stop marvelling at. “So do you think Megatron is right? War is simply our nature?”
Thundercracker gave a short bark of laughter. “Cybertronian nature, or Decepticon nature?”
“I nearly was one of you, remember. Our natures aren't all that different.”
The seeker bowed his head in silent acknowledgement. He was a good deal larger than Mirage, but here, now, with his wings curled around himself and his armour furled so tight it creaked with the strain, that was easy to forget.
Mirage's first lover had been a jet, and he knew all the secret places on a flier's wings – the ones to tease, and, as now, the ones to soothe. He stroked the lower edge of Thundercracker's wing, clever fingers preening the battle-roughened plating. After a long moment, the wing stretched out, trembling slightly, pushing into his touch.
“Sometimes,” Thundercracker whispered, “I think I have more in common with you than with the rest of the Decepticons.”
Mirage nearly said it. He nearly did, in spite of their one rule, because no rule was worth the sound of Thundercracker's voice that close to breaking.
It was on the tip of Mirage's glossa. Come home with me.
Come home, and be an Autobot... and spend the rest of the war shrunk in on yourself like this, trying to look like you're smaller and weaker and more harmless than you are, in the hopes they'll forget about your past. Spend every day frantically trying to fit in.
Like I do.
Instead, Mirage moved his hand to the flat of Thundercracker's wing, rubbing in calming circles. It was too dark to see the Deceptibrand beneath his fingers, but he knew it was there. “If I'm honest, I feel the same way about you, and the Autobots.”
He circled around the jet, and Thundercracker's arms came up to loop around his waist as Mirage stretched on his tip-toes to brush a kiss over Thundercracker's lower lip.
The spy fanned his fingers out, cupping the Decepticon's cheek, and pressed their foreheads together. For a moment, he let the near-silent purr of his own engines mingle with the louder rumble of Thundercracker's, let their ventilations fall into sync, and shuttered his optics.
They flew open again when Thundercracker kissed him in return, achingly gently. Mirage felt his hand being lifted away, Thundercracker's fingers twining with his... and then his hand was carefully turned over, and the warmth of Thundercracker's lips touched the half-healed gash on his forearm. The kiss stung, just a little. Mirage felt himself perversely wishing that it hurt more.
“Time's up,” he murmured. “Isn't it?”
Thundercracker nodded. “Same time next month?”
“Always.” They both winced a little at the implications of that. “Okay, hopefully not always,” Mirage amended with a rueful smile. “Here's to the day we won't need to sneak around.”
Thundercracker paused on the threshold of the cave, and glanced back at him. For a second, it seemed as though he wanted to say something else, but he merely replied, “Here's to that day.”
And then he transformed, and was gone.