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Overlord loves,he doesn't fall in love,he loves the smell of fear, the alkaline taste of freshly spilled energon, he loves the creaking of joints until they're less than scrap metal,he loves himself.He's not one of those mechs who spill their spark onto another's structure,for him, loving someone is not having that constant urge to rip out their optics and voice box when he's irritated, saying "I love you" is a "I don't want to kill you yet" and leaving scratches on the paint instead of their internal organs.
He'd heard a thousand and one fallacies about feelings, each more repetitive than the last.Overlord could only recall three words in common:passion,madness,and the greed of a companion,emotions that held very different contexts for the Phase Sixer.
Passion,he was passionate about the victim's final cries,the screams of suffering,the gasps of panic,the cries buried by nothing but the force of his field;he was even more passionate when the bot beneath him was so full of himself that he believed he could defeat him and emerge unscathed from his servos.
He was still haunted by the memory of their first encounter,the mnemosurgeon hadn't even had time to turn around before he was trapped in the triple-shifter's grasp,he tried to kick and scratch,barely managing to leave anything but fine smudges on his paint,the horrified look on his face as he watched Trepan bleeding out on the floor.Honestly,he doesn't know why the ex cop bothers using the visor and mask when his body language it's so obvious,the way his shoulder pads tremble at his touch,how his breathing quickened every time a new mech was brought to him for dissection,his body tensing when he it's lifted from the ground to have his mask kissed.
(Which would soon be his lips,he was only being generous because it looked like the smaller mech was about to have a fit when Overlord entered his quarters while consuming his morning energon and put his mask in an astrosecond.)
The madness,the first time he laid eyes on the student, his plan to capture his master went down the drain,Chromedome was an apprentice,a very good one,still less experienced in manipulating memories than someone like Trepan.He blames his soft voice and that slender frame that encased him,his thin,albino needles,like the rest of his arms, seems less lethal at first glance compared to his tools,which are more like miniature drills.That Was until you saw him in action,his servos expertly scanning the brain module,knowing everything he needs to find,he doesn't need to remove his visor to see his methodical gaze,a simple "click" was enough to strip your soul bare,ignoring the groans of pain from his living samples.
The greed,the desire to possess him courses through his veins whenever he sees him using his tools onto some unfortunate mech,the palpable concentration on his work area,the scoldings he receives for being distracted or wasting a perfectly good module,his attempts to intimidate him always elicit a laugh,that is until the mnemosurgeon plunged his needles into his neck or back.
He doesn't want him far away,he's imagined him more than once with a leash around that swan-like neck.He tries not to lose sight of him, they have learning sessions,awkward silences(only for the shorter one),they don't eat together,it was a boundary he imposed based on his only rule:"The visor and mask stay on my face."
They even wash together in the washing station that Chromedome describes as "ridiculously large,"where he runs the servos up his long,thin legs to his rounded hips,biting and sucking the energon from his neck like a starving turbo fox.The solvent soaks them to their feet;Chromedome insists that cold solvent is better for the joints,not that they need a hot shower when they rub each other so avidly,for his part, the ex-cop just strokes his back,it doesn't surprise him that he's shy in those matters considering that the first time they "kissed,"their vents produced enough smoke to set off a fire alarm,it was pathetically cute.
He doesn't need it,but that doesn't mean it's not good for him,Overlord is more than happy to keep the mnemosurgeon for a while, spinning him around his servos;the gravity of his sins like memory-eaters drawing them together,grooming the pins,emptying the minds of the dullards while competing to drain each other's blood,biting,pulling,kissing,and tearing the skin from their lips.
Perhaps only in this way could Overlord love.