Warnings for this section (in addition to story warnings): voyeurism, bit of dirty talk!
Ironhide couldn't stop grinning. He was sure he looked like an idiot, but well, at least he and Ratchet matched.
The field that Prime and Megatron were putting off was amazing, rich, FAMILIAR. THOSE resonances couldn't be faked. Ironhide had never thought he'd feel them again: the sparkdeep heat and power of a bonded ruling dyad, sparks spinning in time, frames...well.
Prime and Megatron had always made a pretty picture at these sorts of things. Either of them alone, stripped bare and ritualistic, were fuel for fantasies. The two of them together, entwined, was enough to pop a mech's plates. Watching the two of them subdue by sheer presence and make a seeker sandwich out of the mouthy Decepticon Air Commander?
THAT was more than any mech could be expected to handle.
Ironhide's arms tightened around Ratchet's torso, holding the medic tight against his chest. Ratchet knelt over his lap, back to Ironhide's windshield. Ironhide's hands held Ratchet steady as he rose and fell, impaling himself eagerly on Ironhide's spike. Their optics were riveted on the dais, sensors flung wide to catch every clank and moan as Megatron and Prime turned Starscream into a shuddering, overwhelmed puddle of seeker.
"Frag they make a pretty picture," Ironhide murmured in Ratchet's audial. "You remember that? Bein' right where Screamer is?" HE remembered that. A ritual long, long ago, when Ratchet had been the Prime's medic and Ironhide his bodyguard. His processor held memories of Ratchet in a lot of erotic positions, but the one of him on all fours, taking Prime's valve and Megatron's spike at once was one of Ironhide's favorites.
Ratchet groaned, his valve tightening down into a deliriously good clench. "Yes...frag..."
Ironhide rumbled in agreement. "Wanna see you up there. Get all the way into Prime, feel him overload while we watch Megatron spike you..."
Ratchet's head fell back, his vocalizer muted but his overload unmistakable as charge crawled lazily from his plating to Ironhide's. Ironhide's circuits sang as Ratchet's valve convulsed around him, squeezing impossibly tight. Ironhide didn't fight it, loosing his own charge with enough force to tip Ratchet over again with an undignified but incredibly hot moan.
"W...wait," Sideswipe said, from somewhere behind Ironhide's shoulder. "You get to frag THEM?"
"Oh yeah," Ironhide answered, easing his and Ratchet's weight down, supporting the medic until he gathered his processor. "What, didn't you hear? Everyone's been talkin' 'bout it."
"The orgy, yeah, but we thought...y'know, only the acolytes and...and nobles and such got to actually frag Prime..."
"Pit, no," Ironhide chuckled, circuits humming pleasantly at the friction as Ratchet rose slowly off his spike. "Anyone can walk up there, take their turn with either or both of them. Nobles'd go first, but with Mirage and Starscream out of the way, field's wide open. S'the whole point of the thing."
The sun was a mere hint of light on the horizon, the night having fallen in a blue veil over the valley. The dark was no match for Cybertronian optics, though, and the Earth's lone satellite glowed bright and nearly-full in the sky. Red and blue light flickered from optics all around, and here and there a bright spark or snake of charge crawling over heated plating.
Ratchet managed to find his struts and get them under him. Ironhide watched Sunstreaker watch the medic with a refreshing mix of confusion and lust. That look was echoed in most of the other faces around them, the younglings apparently fascinated by the show so much closer than the leaders on the dais. Ironhide huffed a pleased vent of air, watching hands roam to the whirr of cooling fans. ::Still got it,:: he smirked to Ratchet.
The medic grinned back over his shoulder, not even bothering to close his panel as he stood. Ironhide watched as at least six pairs of optics tracked Ratchet's bared valve rather than his face. Ratchet's EM field was loose and happy, sated and hungry all at once. Ironhide watched the medic eye his admirers right back, optics taking in Bumblebee's quick hands, Hound's warm smile, the broad expanse of Skyfire's wings, even Cliffjumper's coiled energy. Every mech, Ratchet had said once, had their attractive points. Ironhide tended to agree. His own optics tracked up to the dais, where Starscream's ultrasonic keen was drowned in Megatron's subsonic rumble and Prime's cry of joy. All three of them peaked again, charge crawling over them like foxfire leaping from Prime's and Megatron's hands to skitter across Starscream's flared and sparking wings. The peak was contagious, rolling out over the gathering and leaving groans and cries of pleasure from Autobots and Decepticons alike in its wake.
When Starscream rose a breem later, smirk in place but frame loose and relaxed, his optics were pure white.
This, Ironhide knew in the back of his processor that was not busy watching the Lord Protector's hand slide slowly back into the Prime's slick valve, was going to change everything.
It was a giddy, unbelievably good thought.
Still, even after that show, no one had made a move toward the dais. Closest was Sunstreaker, whose hands were all over his twin but whose optics were fixed on the dais with slightly uncertain but obvious hunger.
Well, Pit, they'd never get the party started at this rate.
Ironhide cocked an optic at Ratchet. "Show the kids how it's done?
Ratchet grinned, hauling Ironhide up to his feet. "Always."
Ratchet had seen many things in his lifetime. Many things that younger mechs would believe impossible. Peace, for instance. A Cybertron bright and bustling with life. Megatron accepting the Senate's decrees with proper respect or presenting his case before them and winning concessions. Megatron and Optimus, both drowned to the vents on high grade, giggling and necking in a dark corner like younglings. Megatron and Optimus like this, ritually stripped, optics glowing with holy blessing, frames saturated with charge in front of an enthralled crowd.
So it wasn't that Ratchet didn't believe it was possible. He just didn't think it was LIKELY. And as un-fakable as the resonance changes were, as unlikely as it was that a blessed Prime and the god he embodied could be fooled by a Decepticon ruse, Ratchet just preferred to know for himself.
The gathered mechs parted before his and Ironhide's advance like water, blue and red optics turning to them. A knot of white, also, surrounding Mirage. Ratchet had lost sight of Jazz, but if Mirage was currently stroking every Autobot he could reach, then Ratchet guessed Jazz was somewhere out of sight, making some very happy Decepticons.
They passed one of them on the way to the dais. Starscream looked as if he was going to say something snarky (blessed or no, he was still Starscream). Ratchet pre-empted him by reaching up, yanking the seeker's head down by a vent, and kissing him long and hard. Buried in Starscream's surprised but rapidly warming response, Ratchet missed most everyone else's reaction, but he thought he heard a collective intake, a chuckle from Ironhide, and a few groans from somewhere in the crowd.
Starscream's hands fluttered around Ratchet's frame like uncertain birds that hadn't found a good spot to land. Ratchet pulled back, smirking,. "Air Lord," he said, his glyphs perfectly proper and respectful as he turned away and set his feet one by one on the glyphs for strength, wisdom, courage, compassion, selflessness...
Optimus' field was a wash of pride-approval-welcome. It felt like the finest oil bath, that same sense of ease and comfort seeping into every seam, filling every joint, soaking away the corrosion of pain and despair. Ratchet had forgotten how good that could feel, and he lifted his face in acceptance, his spark reaching for more of the same. "My Lord Prime."
"My friends, welcome," Optimus replied, his hands familiar in their strength if not their shape as they gripped Ratchet's shoulders. His field was sweet, wide open and broadcasting sparkdeep care and contented desire, heady with the scent of ozone and lubricants.
Ratchet hadn't meant to get distracted, but he was only a mech, and he couldn't have fought that invitation even if he'd wanted to.
Optimus' mouth met his halfway, the Prime bending down to reach him, pliant even though he towered over the medic. Ratchet thrust his glossa out, up, in, and groaned at the warm welcome he found there. Medic-sensitive fingers pressed ultrasound scanning pulses along strut and protoform, and Optimus' vocalizer bled to static for a long moment at the sensation, his frame swaying.
"Now, now, lock your joints," Ratchet chided mildly. "Wouldn't want to have to stop the exam, hmmm?"
Optimus' chuckle did not quite obscure the subtle tension of him following his medic's orders, ventilation shuddering.
"Good." Ratchet moved his fingers down, slowly, half-scan, half-caress. Optimus was doing fine, systems aroused but at peak performance, frame undamaged, energon levels steady. He knew that this would be the case through the whole ritual. Only afterwards would Optimus feel fatigue. Until then, he was powered by something deeper, more elementary than the energon in his tanks. The medic in Ratchet noted all these things, relieved at them.
The mech in him shuddered with want, the sight and sound and smell of a lubricant-slicked, blessed Prime enough to make his circuits crawl with charge. It was beautiful, sacred, unbearably erotic, and Ratchet couldn't help but linger. His hands traced down further, wringing soft sounds of pleasure from Optimus as he pressed the tingle of scans and his own field into sensitive protoform. Chest, sides, torso and further down, under, IN.
Optimus' rumble of pleasure rolled over the valley as Ratchet's fingers slid effortlessly into his valve. Slicked as he was with lubricants, there was next to no friction, warm lubricants sliding into the joints of Ratchet's fingers, dripping down to his wrist. Ratchet caught Optimus' mouth again, free hand bracing Optimus' shoulder as his other thrust three fingers in easily. "Prime," Ratchet breathed, his HUD fritzing with the heat-pressure-friction from medical-grade tactile sensors clutched in such exquisitely tight, slick HEAT. Chemical sensors scrolled components across his HUD, all perfectly as they should be. It made the sensor check, the slow, methodical flicking of sensory clusters, the waking of each with touch and medical frequencies, all the easier. Ratchet started at the rim, tracing his fingers around, then slowly worked his way in.
Optimus' hand tightened on Ratchet's shoulder. "Ratchet...ah!..."
Ratchet hmmed amiably, progressive and ruthless as he spiraled his exam around, testing the valve's stretch, sensors alert for burrs and activated repair nanites that would indicate damage. He found none, but he was thorough anyway. (Can never be too careful, after all.) Their size difference made it such that Ratchet had to push in further to reach the deeper nodes, Optimus' valve taking his entire hand, then his wrist easily as he continued in, satisfied by the response he was getting both from the sensors and their owner. He tilted his head up again, breathing across Optimus' lips, "Anything hurt? Any errors?"
Optimus shook his head, vocalizer clicking as if he was trying to say something but then staticking out in a cry as Ratchet reached one deep node whose position and placement made it oft-neglected by a thrusting spike. Ratchet circled it with one finger, feeding it pressure and heat, and the Prime trembled above him, his hands gripping Ratchet's shoulders more for support now than anything else.
"Good," Ratchet answered, free hand pulsing soothingly over Optimus' cables and coming to rest against the cables and rotors of his neck. Optimus turned into that hand, venting hot against Ratchet's palm before pressing his mouth to it. So long hidden behind his facemask, Ratchet knew, would made the unaccustomed touch a thrill of overamped sensation from long-underused sensors.
Ratchet curled his palm around Optimus' cheek, thumb sliding over Optimus' lips even as the fingers of his other hand crooked, pushed, pressed, and were rewarded with a soft, eloquent groan of increasingly urgent static. The Prime's field was a haze of simmering pleasure, strength and love distilled to a frame that translated connection and unity as pleasure, altruism and service as divinity.
It was an intoxicating thing to have in his oh-so-sensitive hands. Ratchet was fairly sure that Primus would forgive him for enjoying that in a slightly-less-than-professional way. He'd never seemed to have any objections before.
"Very good. Now overload for me," Ratchet murmured, turning his entire hand just SO and nearly forgetting to do the entirely necessary-no-really scan of power levels and load responses as the Prime arched and cried out.
Optimus' overload rolled over Ratchet rather than through, caressing his spark but not pressing. His valve clamped hard around Ratchet's hand, his body swaying and finally being eased to its knees, supported by Ratchet from the front and Ironhide from the back. "Very good," Ratchet said, satisfied on more levels than one.
Optimus chuckled and leaned down again, kissing Ratchet sweetly. ::Be nice, my friend.::
Ratchet didn't need to ask what he meant. That brush of spark had gone two ways. ::When have I ever not been nice?:: Ratchet asked innocently as he retrieved his hand in a final, intimate caress and stood.
Over Optimus' shoulder, Ironhide smirked. ::Don't do anything I wouldn't do, Ratch.::
::Never,:: Ratchet answered.
::Going to give him an energon candy next, doctor?:: came on another channel.
::No, but I might give you one, if you're good. It could only improve your disposition.:: Ratchet stole one more kiss from Optimus before turning to his real objective here. He stepped boldly forward, into Megatron's reach. The rich haze of Megatron's field held things that Ratchet hadn't felt in thousands of vorn: the Lord Protector's steely resolve and awesome strength no longer saturated with rage, no longer sharpened by hate. Feeling that eased something deep in Ratchet's spark.
Ratchet's optics were drawn to the map of welds and patches crisscrossing Megatron's frame. Varying ages, varying levels of skill behind the torch, varying severities of the wounds...
Optimus had begun to look like that. The thought made Ratchet's spark contract painfully, then, tentatively, expand again.
The Lord High Protector's instincts were not the Prime's. He was not, strictly, supposed to be a comforting or even COMFORTABLE guardian, and no Cybertronian, Autobot or Decepticon, had thought of him as such in recent memory. Which made the way Megatron's field reacted to that flash of pain and loss all the more amazing. The push of reassurance came blunt and unquestionable, lacking the Prime's finesse but just as instinctive.
Ratchet started a sensor diagnostic in surprise. Megatron just looked slightly pained. ::Are you still here merely to make fun of me, medic?::
::No. Not MERELY to make fun of you,:: Ratchet sent back, stepping close enough to touch. He laid a hand on one long, skillfully-done weld that arced over Megatron's secondary fuel pump and scored deeply into protoform. "I remember this one."
"Wirrix II. It's not pained me since." Megatron's optics brightened at the touch, his field flaring in aggression that was for once not MALICIOUS, merely...possessive. Protective. The light shadow to the dark desire for conquest that it had become. Had been? Ratchet fought to keep his surprise out of his field and must have failed.
Megatron chuckled as he reached out, fingers stroking with surprising deftness over Ratchet's chevron. ::Here to test me, medic?::
The experienced touch over such a sensitive component distracted Ratchet from smirking only slightly. ::Did you expect anything less?::
::Never.:: Megatron's smile turned knowing, one hand tracing down to Ratchet's own. "You always had such TALENTED hands." He pulled one up, licking the remnants of Optimus' lubricants off it without breaking Ratchet's gaze.
Licking and SUCKING. Ratchet's systems, primed and ready and unsure as to why they hadn't overloaded yet, helpfully suggested other parts of his anatomy that could use such attention.
This is happening, Ratchet thought as he stepped forward one final time into Megatron's arms, his head tipped up to receive the kiss that pressed warm and firm to his lips. This is REAL. His hands left the welds to trace over more sensitive areas. Though really, Ratchet thought, with all that plating removed, just about anywhere had to be sensitive. Megatron's reaction as he traced over exposed components, fingers following the delicate tracery of sensory circuits, only confirmed his suspicion. Ratchet pressed closer, letting the vibration and hum of his systems wash over every exposed sensor.
Megatron purred, pulling Ratchet flush against him so that it vibrated through Ratchet in a strut-melting wave. And his field: still...annoyed, but perfectly benign. Was Megatron that good of a liar? Or was Primus truly with them again?
Wry amusement trickled through his field, as Megatron's hands cupped Ratchet's helm, pulling him into the kiss. ::Go ahead. Look. It's what you're here for, isn't it? It's not as if you or anyone else couldn't kill me right now. Look...:: Megatron's thumb stroked firmly over the linkages of Ratchet's throat. ::...satisfy yourself.:: A click between them, muffled between their frames, illustrated what his glyph choice did not.
Ratchet didn't argue, his own cable extending the inches needed to connect at Megatron's thoracic port.
Handshaking protocols, then...full medical access. Megatron chuckled at his surprise, and Ratchet huffed back, "You're enjoying this way too much."
::Yes,:: Megatron replied, the glyphs unspooling into Ratchet's buffer directly from the hardline. ::Odd, since I had little choice in the matter. Go ahead, look and see what our glorious deity can do.:: The glyphs he used were...conflicted. Annoyed, sarcastic, awed, but more resigned than angry.
Resting his forehelm against Megatron's collar fairing, Ratchet looked.
He breezed through the physical and autonomics scans. Megatron was in as good a shape as Optimus was and likely would be for the remainder of the ritual. Ratchet paged onward, to the processor logs that were his goal.
He knew Megatron's systems. Or HAD known. He had maintained Optimus and Megatron for vorn and knew first-hand what the Lord High Protector coding looked like. Then the war had begun and his access had been only in fits and starts, usually when Megatron had been captured and in need of repair. There had been one time when he'd had to repair a hard crash, when he'd seen what could become of the Lord High Protector code after millenia of perceived betrayal and hate and anger. He'd seen the tearing twists, the failsafes Megatron had unearthed for when the Lord High Protector might be called upon to protect the people from his Prime. He'd seen how Megatron had slotted himself into that role in code as well as rhetoric: a Lord High Protector rebeling against a dangerously unworthy Prime, a Protector of his people struggling in their name. It had been painful to see, terrifying in its sheer dedication to reforging one's very self through pain and rage and will.
Now, Megatron's code laid bare beneath his gaze again, Ratchet could only stare at the perfectly pristine Lord High Protector coding before his virtual eyes. Could only stare at the logs, at the endless lines of revisions, retractions, reversions that had happened within one, impossible nanoklik while Prime and Megatron had stood staring at each other.
::Now you understand.:: Megatron's commentary was wry.
Ratchet stared at the logs again. Impossible. It was IMPOSSIBLE. In that depth. In that timeframe. Without completely fragging the personality matrix itself. ::It...it would have been so easy to...::
::To scrag my personality matrix? To roll my memories back to that time? To make me a blissfully ignorant, perfectly compliant Protector of the Prime? Yes. Yes, it would have been. AND YET...:: Megatron's glyphs were complex: annoyance, outrage, admiration, wry amusement, awe, and the tiniest hint of humility. ::I must admit I wasn't exactly...expecting it. I don't suppose there's a chance of...?::
Ratchet slowly lifted his head, staring up into Megatron's face. The face of a mech who had been as touched by Primus as Prime had been. More, even. ::Of what? Getting your fragged coding BACK? No. No way in the Pit.:: It was even true. Even given the logs, the depth of the changes made them impossible to undo without damaging the neighboring code, even if Ratchet did have a backup of the coding Megatron wanted reinstated.
Ratchet reached up, arms winding around Megatron's neck and pulling him down. "No. You're STUCK with us, Lord High Protector."
Megatron's hydraulics whined as he bent, arms sliding under Ratchet's aft and lifting. He slid his lips along the point of Ratchet's chevron and SUCKED. That and the growl of his response made Ratchet's optics fritz, his vocalizer bleeding to static. ::Make it worth my while, Autobot.::
Ironhide had been one of the more skeptical of the Autobots about this whole business. Strip down, disarm, and leave the Prime out in the open like some kind of gift to the fragging Decepticons? Uh huh. Sounded like the universe's most terrible plan. Not like Ironhide had much weight to throw when it came to Primely ritual and such, but he'd tried anyway. He'd reasoned and cajoled and begged Prime not to do the ritual at the clearing, but in the end Optimus had just smiled and refused to budge.
So Ironhide had done the only thing he could short of contradicting a direct order from his Prime: he'd joined Red Alert and Prowl in making their perimeter as tight and formidable and VISIBLE to airborne Decepticons as possible, then carefully forgot to empty his subspace of weapons, resolving that any Decepticon that so much as made Prime FROWN was going to get turned into scrapmetal, holy rite or no holy rite.
He wasn't hoping for trouble. He was, in fact, very much hoping for the opposite. He'd just seen enough of this war to know that weaknesses needed to be covered or they got exploited. The fact that the 'Cons had flown in without a twitch of trouble only confirmed that he and the security mechs had done a good enough job.
Ironhide's skepticism had only spiked as Megatron had climbed the dais. He wasn't particularly worried about Megatron. He agreed with Prime there: Megatron was fragged in the processor enough to think he was still Lord High Protector, and he wouldn't disrupt the rite. No, it was Megatron's army of slagging psychopaths that Ironhide was worried about. Granted, Megatron seemed to have left some of the worst crazies at home, but still...there was always Starscream or some other ambitious idiot or just the whole thing cascading into the Pit because someone twitched wrong. Ironhide knew that he wasn't the only one who'd had visions of Prime dead on the dais, the whole valley turned into a killing floor.
And then all that...hadn't happened. Not only had it not happened, but the impossible HAD happened.
Ironhide wasn't a stranger to the impossible. He also wasn't a stranger to the firestorm that was Optimus and Megatron coming together, or that dual-note sparktone and what it meant. But still...like a certain medic he knew, he liked best things he could touch...or things mechs he trusted could touch.
And really, when it came to impossibilities like this, Ironhide liked hardline exams by the most skeptical medic in the universe best. Thus, when Ratchet embraced Megatron, Ironhide relaxed hydraulics he didn't even know he was tensing.
Optimus tipped his helm back, his field pulsing reassurance, and Ironhide's own took it, gratefully. Took it and pulsed back wonder, joy, reverence, and desire. The desire only deepened as Ironhide settled solidly on his knees, Optimus' larger frame kneeling over his lap, leaning back against him. Ironhide was smaller, but he was strong enough that Optimus' weight, especially lacking the better part of his plating, just made Ironhide dearly wish that he'd taken Ratchet up on his offer to strip him down to ritual specs, so he could feel that bare form against his own with no armor or kibble in between.
Ironhide dared, in the smallest corner of his processor, to hope that he'd get another chance.
The angle was awkward, but neither of them cared overmuch as Ironhide stretched up and Optimus leaned down, lips meeting in the middle. Optimus' panel was still open, his valve a wet, inviting heat circling over Ironhide's interface panel. Ironhide groaned. It had been a long time. Too long. His spike was painfully pressurized behind his panel, and he let it free with a groan of relief. Optimus hmmmed with him, hips rising and tilting and descending with an instinctive, knowing grace to take Ironhide in and in and IN, until he had nothing left to give and he pressed his hips up desperately in a futile attempt to give Optimus more.
Primus, Ironhide thought, the word more prayer than it'd been in many, many vorns, and something answered him. Something like the sun that had long since set. That light/heat/hand fell upon his spark and Ironhide welcomed it as easily as Optimus' valve welcomed him.
Yours, Ironhide replied, and didn't even know who he was addressing. Yours.
A sound from the other side of the dais drew Ironhide's attention, and he looked up just in time to see Ratchet lowering himself onto Megatron's spike. The Lord High Protector had knelt in much the same position as Ironhide was in, his partner held in his lap and...Primus, did Ratchet sound happy to be there. Ironhide's hips jerked instinctively at the demanding SOUND Ratchet made as Megatron's spike slid into him.
Ironhide nudged Optimus' face forward. "Watch. Y'don't want to miss this..."
"This" was Ratchet and Megatron driving each other insane with fingers and glossas. Megatron sucked on Ratchet's fingers while Ratchet's other hand stretched up to rub against the base of the cranial panels spread tall and wide and shivering oh so slightly with the attention. Every now and then one or both of them would stiffen in reaction to some unseen stimulus. Ironhide suspected the cables still linking them. The very idea of Ratchet and their Pitspawn Lord Protector surging pleasure through each others' processors while putting on such a SHOW made Ironhide groan and thrust. Optimus rumbled an answering sound of pleasure and placed two shaking hands on Ironhide's thighs for balance as they started to move.
And watched. Primus, the entire valley watched, and Ironhide could hear the roar of cooling fans from there. Not that he could blame them one scrapping bit. Ratchet was no fragile crystal, and whatever he'd seen in Megatron's helm had made him fearless. He rode Megatron's spike with an eagerness just short of predatory, and Megatron responded to that with all the fierceness Ironhide would have expected. Sparks flew between them, their charges crawling from internal to internal.
Ironhide groaned at the show, hands holding Optimus' hips so he could thrust, long and deep and steady. He let Optimus set the pace and was unsurprised that that pace was the same one Megatron was using to make Ratchet writhe and cry out.
Right until the moment that Megatron's head fell back and, with one final thrust, he stiffened, growling out his overload as it limned both of them in blue-white crackles of charge. Ratchet's cries morphed into curses, clearly annoyed at the Lord Protector's timing and the fact that he'd STOPPED. Megatron just chuckled darkly, hands holding Ratchet's hips down on his lap as he smirked and sent a charge through the cables connecting them that made the metal connectors visibly SPARK. Ratchet cried out, hands scrabbling for Megatron's shoulders, and then Megatron did it again and AGAIN, and Ironhide lost it. The mental image of a Protector-grade battle processor overwhelming a Tower-grade medical computer and SWAMPING it with charge was more than any mech could be expected to take.
Ironhide groaned as Optimus obviously agreed with him, valve clenching hard around his spike, fingers clenched against his thighs as he rode Ironhide's thrusts. Ironhide felt a bit bad, having been so caught up in watching that he hadn't been giving due attention to the Prime writhing in his lap. (Not that Optimus would see it that way, but well wasn't THAT just part of the problem?) Ironhide banked his own charge as much as he could, letting Prime balance in his lap while Ironhide ran his hands over Prime's bared protoform, his servos trailing sparks in their wake.
Prime groaned as Ironhide's fingers found the sensor clusters in his abdomen and traced them one by one, slowly, then slower, harder still. His helm fell back, barely touching Ironhide's shoulder. "I...Ironhide..."Appreciation-admiration-affection-love...
"Let it go, Optimus," Ironhide murmured into Prime's audial. Loyalty. "Let me take care of ya." Devotion. "Let me make it good for ya." Love.
Optimus cried out as Ironhide's fingers slid down, down, until the components under his fingers were slick with lubricants. The external valve sensors were hot and staticky with use and charge, and Ironhide stroked in a hard circle over all of them, one after the other. Prime's small, helpless sound of pleasure shot heat through Ironhide's frame right down to his spike. He pressed the heel of his hand down, hard, on the ventral sensor cluster as he thrust hard into exquisitely lubed tightness. Prime's backstruts arched, his frame a perfect bow of pleasure, every linkage drawing tight in overload. His valve clamped down hungrily on Ironhide's spike, and Ironhide's optics fritzed to static as the pleasure dragged him under like a riptide. He rode through it, hands clamping Prime to him, pressing tight and as close as he could get, every sensor alive with the thrum of Prime's spark.
When he onlined his optics again, Ironhide nuzzled into Prime's shoulder and could tell his optics were white by their reflection off Prime's protoform.