Work Text:
Ratchet and Drift were both exhausted by the time they stumbled into their berthroom after they got Rodimus and his team settled in aboard the now-overcrowded shuttle. The Autobots were scattered all over the ship, sprawled over every space they could possibly get some recharge--the deck of the tiny cargo bay, the floor, benches, and table in the little room that doubled as makeshift medbay and energon dispensary, even in the pilots’ chairs in the cockpit--but Drift had flatly refused to allow anyone else to recharge in here. Ratchet was glad. The room was already too small for the two of them, small enough that they never even closed the door, and the berth had clearly been designed for one mechanism only. They made it work (oh how they made it work), but no matter how much Ratchet wanted to collapse onto that too-small berth and let recharge take him, he had been with Drift long enough by now to know better.
Instead, Ratchet braced himself for what he knew was coming as the door shut behind them.
A soft beep confirmed that the lock they hadn’t used yet was activated, and in the next instant, Drift’s engine snarled. The swordsmech’s field slapped him with rage/aggression/battle-fever as he grabbed Ratchet’s shoulders to spin him around. “You treated everyone but yourself. Where are you injured?” he demanded, hands insistent as he groped at the medic’s plating.
Ratchet made sure his own field replied with calm/unharmed/safe and allowed himself to be mechhandled. “Nowhere. I’m fine, kid.”
But he wasn’t surprised when his words went in one audial and out the other. Drift was too busy running his hands over every inch of his frame to listen, fangs bared in a snarl that would’ve terrified Ratchet not that long ago--with his recent change in appearance, it was a very Deadlock expression.
But it was Drift, not Deadlock, who snapped, “You’re a fragging idiot,” as he checked Ratchet's windshield for cracks, his chest plates for dents, hands rough with haste but somehow still so careful. “It was the slagging DJD, Ratchet! I told you to stay out of it!”
“And I told you to frag off. I’m not letting you fight alone, Drift, not ever again, not even the DJD. And you can knock it off with the fussing, I already told you I’m not injured,” Ratchet replied, making sure that his tone remained calm and still making no move to resist Drift’s furious inspection. The swordsmech grabbed first one arm and then the other, moving them to check beneath, making sure the new joints moved properly. When Drift dropped to his knees to do the same to his legs, Ratchet just sighed and rested a hand against the wall for balance and let him do as he would.
This wasn’t the first life-and-death battle they’d been in since Gigatron’s world and Ratchet had seen this mood before. He could tell his lover that he wasn’t injured until his vocalizer shorted out, but Drift wouldn’t believe it until he’d confirmed it for himself.
Drift stood abruptly and reached for his throat, wrapping both hands around his neck as his EM field crackled with fury. Ratchet sighed again and merely tipped his helm back to bare more of his throat, not hesitating to expose the delicate wiring bundles and thick lines pulsing with life to the ex-Decepticon. “See? There’s nothing there,” he repeated as Drift probed at the delicate structures, but he wasn’t surprised when his reassurances were once more ignored.
“I saw you take a hit,” Drift hissed angrily as he kept looking for a wound he wouldn’t find, fingertips searching relentlessly for an injury that didn’t exist. “I saw it when Vos…”
Ratchet knew exactly the moment he was thinking of. Glancing up to find himself staring down the barrel of the infamous DJD sniper’s rifle wasn’t anything he ever wanted to repeat, but somehow the shot had sizzled just beneath his jaw, missing him by millimeters instead of removing his helm from his shoulders. “He just missed me. Scorched me a bit when it passed, but that’s all,” he said, tilting his helm a bit more to show Drift the tiny burn beneath his chin. Drift’s fingertips ghosted over it, such a light, careful touch that it didn’t even hurt. “My autorepair will take care of it in a day. Drift, I’m fine.”
“Shut up,” Drift cut him off, catching Ratchet’s helm in both hands now and getting right up in his face. Fangs bared, optics blazing, he snarled, “It’s not fine, dammit! He nearly took your helm off and I told you to stay out of it!”
The hands on his cheekplates trembled violently and now Ratchet reached for Drift in return. He rested his hands on the swordsmech’s hips, not holding him, just letting him feel the weight of his touch. “I didn’t come out here to find you so I could stay out of it,” Ratchet told him softly. His voice seemed very quiet in contrast to the aggressive growling of Drift’s engine, but he didn’t let his mate’s anger stop him from leaning forward until his chevron touched Drift’s helm crest. “And I don’t plan to start now.”
Drift shuddered from head to toe. “I could have lost you,” he breathed, so quietly that Ratchet would’ve missed it if they hadn’t been so close.
Ratchet slid his hands up to Drift’s waist, stroking, comforting. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
He felt the shift in Drift’s field in the instant before he moved, fear/rage morphing into lust/need in the pulse of a spark, and he met Drift’s demanding kiss with equal passion.
It wasn’t gentle. It never was, not after that kind of battle, and right now Ratchet didn’t want gentle. Drift’s kisses were wild, desperate, and Ratchet’s response was much the same--after all, Drift had been in mortal danger today too, and Ratchet badly needed to feel his lover in his arms, whole and vibrant and alive. Ratchet wrapped his arms fully around his swordsmech and pulled him in tight, erasing any hint of distance between their frames, and Drift moaned into his mouth and grabbed his shoulders, shoving him against the wall with a reverberating crash.
Ratchet retaliated by spinning to pin Drift instead, a brief wrestling match before his superior strength won out and Drift’s back hit the wall with another crash, louder this time. All three of his swords clattered to the deck as he released the magnetic locks holding them--unneeded now, unimportant in this moment. Drift broke the kiss but Ratchet didn’t have a chance to catch his breath because Drift shoved his helm to the side and he found himself baring his throat once more, this time to Drift’s biting, suckling kisses as the flexible speedster wrapped one leg around his hips and pulled him in hard.
Drift ground his hips against Ratchet’s panel and Ratchet’s fans raced. “Frag, Drift,” he gasped, helm dropping all the way back, giving him all the access he could want as heat surged through his frame.
“That’s the idea,” Drift said, and Ratchet could feel the fierce grin against his plating.
He swatted his aft--no more tires there to squeeze, but damned if Drift didn’t still have the hottest aft in the universe, and he palmed and caressed those gorgeous curves. “Smart-aft,” he groaned, unable to put any heat in the reprimand while Drift was rocking against him and suckling at the sweet spot just beneath his audial like that. He shuddered and locked his knees to hide how they trembled. Slagging pit, Drift knew how to use that mouth of his, and he had spent the last several months using it all over Ratchet. He knew all his sweet spots by now and he took shameless advantage.
And Ratchet loved every damn second of it.
Drift nipped the tough cover of a nerve bundle and Ratchet moaned and didn’t even try to stop his panel from snapping open. “Spike or valve?” he gasped, because there were times when he could savor endless teasing foreplay and this wasn’t one of them. He didn’t care who did what, but he needed the connection to his lover and he needed it now.
“Your spike first,” Drift growled against his throat as he pulled himself up by Ratchet’s broad shoulders and wrapped both thighs around the medic’s waist. The heat of his bared valve against Ratchet’s spike cover burned in the best possible way. “Mine after.”
“Oh frag yes.”
Ratchet’s spike pressurized the instant his secondary cover spiraled open, pushing straight up into Drift’s ready and willing valve. The slick protomesh rippling around his spike felt good enough to send stars crashing over his vision and Ratchet had to close his optics and vent hard to keep from overloading from that alone.
Drift didn’t grant him much of a reprieve. His calipers clenched in a rolling wave, starting at the base of his spike and fluttering all the way up to the tip, dragging a groan from Ratchet’s vocalizer. Ratchet pressed even more firmly against him in retaliation, cupping Drift’s jaw to raise his helm so he could claim that mouth of his, kissing him just as urgently as before, rocking in tiny movements that rolled his anterior node against Ratchet’s spike housing. Drift gasped and let out a little whimpering moan into his mouth and that little sound was the last test his restraint could take.
Ratchet gripped his lover’s hips and pulled back, his spike sliding almost all the way out of that gripping heat, before he thrust back in hard. Drift threw his head back and shouted as his field pulsed with ecstasy, and it felt so amazing, so incredible, that Ratchet didn’t even try to resist doing it again, and again, and again, both of them mindless of the way Drift’s shoulders banged against the wall with every thrust. The noise wasn’t important, barely even registered.
What mattered, the only thing that mattered, was the pleasure in Drift’s field and the way he went from biting his lips to hold back his cries to unrestrained sobbing and begging and moaning, Drift’s fingers digging into the tires on his shoulders and the way his lithe frame rolled into his thrusts, lifting and sinking in perfect counterpoint, giving every bit as good as he got, demanding and desperate and so fragging perfect--
Ratchet’s overload hit him seconds before Drift’s, charge crackling between them as their engines revved almost hard enough to drown out Ratchet’s rough shout and the way Drift cried Ratchet’s name to the ceiling. As soon as his vision cleared, he pulled Drift tight against him again, resuming those tight little circles over his node and watching Drift’s face as his pleasure built again right on the heels of his overload.
His first overload of the night. Ratchet had no intention of it being his last.
“You are so damn gorgeous,” he said hoarsely as he felt his lover’s valve tightening around his half-hard spike again as he worked to push the swordsmech to a second overload. Drift gasped and bit his lip, a hint of fang visible, trying and failing to stifle a moan as his charge built again, climbing closer and closer to the peak. There was no sight in the universe that could compare to the sight of Drift undone and lost to the pleasure Ratchet gave him, and dammit, his own overload had kept him from seeing it.
This time, however, he was going to watch and savor every second of it. He gripped Drift’s hips tighter, rocking against him, his repressurizing spike rubbing against internal nodes as his spike housing stimulated his external ones. Drift’s optics shuttered and he groaned, his thighs tightening around Ratchet’s hips. “Come on, love, come on, so fragging good, overload for me again, sweetspark, let go,” he purred as Drift’s fans roared, his armor flared to full extension and his mouth dropped open, his frame seeking every way to dispel the rising heat. “So beautiful,” he whispered as his own pleasure built, but he resisted the call of his own overload--he would much rather watch his gorgeous lover overload than have another of his own. “So damn beautiful, Drift, let go, oh love, let go for me…”
Drift’s hands tightened on his broad shoulders as his moans increased and his frame trembled on the brink. Ratchet pressed out with his field in a surge of love/ecstasy/admiration/joy and that pushed him over. “Ratchet--oh Primus, Ratchet!” Drift cried as the pleasure crested again, his optics and biolights flaring almost white as lightning chased over the sleek new plating of his armor.
It wasn’t easy to resist joining him in overload but Ratchet managed it. Instead he savored the sight and sound of his lover’s climax, the wash of ecstasy in his field, the way that Drift clung to him when it was over. Nothing had ever thrilled him more than this, and as Drift panted and trembled in the aftermath, he turned and crossed the tiny room to lay him on the berth.
Then he fell down beside him, venting just as hot and fast as Drift. “Frag,” he gasped, slinging an arm around the speedster. His charge was still high but he was more than satisfied to hold his mate and bask in the afterglow. “Oh, that was good.”
Drift surprised him by rolling on top of him. “Why are you talking like we’re done?” he said, arching that flexible frame in a sinuous wave against him. “Your spike, then mine--that was the agreement.”
Ratchet groaned as the movement ground Drift’s spike against his, jolting pleasure through his lines. His valve cycled down on emptiness, definitely interested in another round, but his frame had other ideas. He’d been rebuilt, yes, but that had still been one hell of a fight, and he was beyond exhausted. “I’m an old mech,” he said sadly, as though they weren't damn near the same age. “And fragging you through the wall there burned up all my energy.”
Drift chuckled, clearly not buying it--and honestly, Ratchet’s fully-pressurized spike was fairly compelling evidence that he wasn’t quite as tired as he was pretending to be. “Well, I’d hate for you to strain yourself, old mech,” he purred as he slid down Ratchet’s frame, scattering kisses and caresses in his wake. “How about you just lay there and I’ll do all the work, hmm?”
Ratchet groaned again but he wasn’t about to protest if Drift wanted to pleasure him. He spread his arms and let his thighs fall wide, opening himself to anything his lover wanted to do to him. “How could I refuse such a lovely offer?”
Drift smiled against his abdominal plating, clever fingers finding sensitive seams and sensory wires that soon had Ratchet arching on the berth. He slid further down, kissing along the line of his hip seam toward his thigh, when Ratchet’s spike bumped against his cheek. Drift suddenly looked up as though surprised. “Oh dear, what could this be?” he asked in mock concern as he wrapped one hand around Ratchet’s spike.
Ratchet vented in sharply and couldn’t have stopped from thrusting up into that warm grip if he’d tried. “You know damn well what that is,” he said, but the static in his voice robbed the words of any real reproach.
Drift’s optics narrowed wickedly and his smile broadened, fangs fully on display now. The sight sent an erotic shiver down Ratchet’s spinal strut. “Mmm, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I do know what it is,” he murmured in a tone that slid through Ratchet’s lines like molten metal. “Such a lovely thing for me to play with, but just now my interest lies a bit… lower.”
“Oh slag,” Ratchet gasped, and that was all he had time to say before Drift slid further down and swept his glossa across his valve in one long, smooth, hot, incredible glide that ended with a slow swirl over his anterior node. Drift had never done this in the months they’d been together and Ratchet hadn’t asked him to, wouldn’t ask him to, but Drift didn’t give him any time to protest. Drift hummed thoughtfully as though considering the flavor before he winked at Ratchet and went back for more, this time suckling his node between his lips at the end. “Oh slag, Drift!”
The swordsmech looked up, glossa still teasing his node, optics sparkling as he watched Ratchet clawing at the head of the berth. “Hmmmm?” he purred low with his mouth still pressed to the hypersensitive metal.
Words vanished from Ratchet’s processor and left no forwarding address. “Ahh!”
Drift chuckled against his valve and now Ratchet forgot everything --the battle they’d narrowly escaped, the mecha they’d saved who were now crammed into this small shuttle, the uncertainty over where they would go next.
The only thing that existed in his universe was Drift, and the pleasure he gave him, and how amazing they were together.
Drift flicked the tip of his glossa around the rim, teasing the nodes just inside his valve as his field filled with both pleasure and surprise, as if he hadn’t expected to actually enjoy this. Ratchet gasped and tightened his grip on the metal bar at the top of their berth and reached for Drift with his other hand, curling his fingers around one of his graceful finials--not restraining, not even trying to guide him, only caressing the audial flare the way he knew his mate loved. Drift moaned and rolled Ratchet’s node on his glossa, and the vibrations had Ratchet choking out a curse that made the speedster chuckle again. He could feel Drift’s lips curving in a smile against him, and the sensation shot pleasure through his lines. Ratchet caressed that beautiful, sensitive flare again, which made Drift moan again, and the cycle repeated.
And then Drift slowly pushed his glossa inside him, pressing the tip against every node he passed, fritzing Ratchet’s optics with feedback from how amazing it felt. He tried to praise Drift, to tell him how much he loved this, how good it all felt, but when he opened his mouth all that emerged was static.
He pressed out with his field instead, letting the energy communicate what he couldn’t say, awe/gratitude/amazement joining the love/joy/passion already saturating his projections. Drift shuddered between his thighs, breathing his name with something near reverence.
And then he lifted Ratchet’s hips and buried his face between his thighs, now devouring him in earnest.
For long, blissful minutes, the only sounds in the room were those of pleasure--revving engines, blasting fans, Drift’s moans and Ratchet’s steadily intensifying cries. Ratchet wished it could last forever, but there was only so much pleasure his frame could take and only so long he could resist his overload. “Drift, Drift, please, oh frag, Drift please,” he cried, trying his best to be still but unable to fully stop his hips from rocking in time with the movements of Drift’s glossa inside him and the incredible, suckling kisses he pressed to his exterior node.
But right as Ratchet’s overload neared, Drift pulled away.
“Drift!” Ratchet shouted, trying to pull him back as his abruptly-deprived his valve cycled down so hard that it neared physical pain.
But Drift just smiled that wicked, sexy smile and shook his head. “Ah-ah, what was our deal again?”
Ratchet spread his thighs wider in blatant invitation. “Then spike me already!” he demanded, his entire frame throbbing with charge, and if demanding didn’t work, then he was fully prepared to beg. He was burning, desire churning his spark into a hot ball of energy that felt too big for its chamber, his frame desperate for the release he’d been denied.
Drift didn’t make him go that far, though. “How could I refuse such a lovely offer?” Drift said, echoing his own words. Before Ratchet could react, he’d rolled off the berth, grabbed the medic beneath the knees, and pulled hard.
Ratchet yelped in surprise as he slid, coming to a stop sideways on the berth with his hips right at the edge. Drift pressed between his thighs and rocked his spike against Ratchet’s valve. “How are you this fragging sexy?” he murmured almost as though to himself, optics half-lidded as he rubbed against the slick entrance, the raised bumps on the underside of his spike catching on the medic’s throbbing anterior node, each one sending shockwaves of pleasure racing along his neural pathways. “So soft, so wet, and Primus, I didn't know you tasted so good…”
It felt so incredible and it was nowhere near enough. “Dammit, you sadist, stop teasing and frag me!” Ratchet snarled, half out of his mind with desire and the need for a closer connection to the mech he loved. His chestplates twitched with a rapidly-aborted transformation sequence that would have retracted them--Drift had never shown any interest in sharing his spark, and Ratchet wasn’t going to rush in asking for that, not until he knew his lover was ready. Instead he pushed out with his field, need/passion/desperation/please, and Drift vented in sharply at the intensity of his projections.
“Easy, Ratch, I’m here, I got you,” Drift murmured, dropping the teasing at once. “I got you, lover.”
Ratchet moaned with relief and ecstasy as the tapered head of Drift’s spike finally, finally pushed inside him. “Oh yes, oh yes,” he groaned when the swordsmech was seated fully, because while his glossa had felt amazing, this was even better--such a perfect fit, stretching him just right. He wrapped his legs around that gorgeous slim waist and braced both hands on the wall behind the berth as Drift gripped his hips tight and fragged him hard and fast, exactly what he needed, each thrust sparking pleasure through his entire frame. “Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes…”
Drift hooked his arms under Ratchet’s knees to change the angle and now each thrust met his ceiling node, firing off the pleasure sensor in a dazzling burst of ecstasy again and again. Ratchet couldn’t keep from crying out every time--he knew he was being too loud, that the others could probably hear this, and he didn’t give the slightest hint of a damn. Drift, this connection, this affirmation that they were both alive and together and whole, this was all that mattered. “Oh yes, oh Drift, oh yes!”
Overload hit him like a lightning strike, sending such a powerful wave of energy crackling through him that his frame arched completely off the berth. Drift held on tight and never stopped moving, pulling him in to meet every thrust, moaning Ratchet’s name over and over as he joined him in ecstasy. Charge leapt between them in bright flashes as their biolights flared in time, a lightshow Ratchet would never tire of seeing.
And when it was over, Drift gently eased his hips back down onto the berth and lowered his legs to a more comfortable position, but he didn’t pull away. His slowly-softening spike still inside Ratchet, he bent to press a soft kiss to the center of Ratchet’s chest, right above his spark, making the medic wonder if he'd noticed how close he'd come to baring his spark. “I love you,” he whispered against the glass, his voice still breathless and staticked, before turning his head to rest the side of his helm on his chest where Ratchet knew that the powerful sensors in his finials allowed him to feel the pulse of his spark below. Drift’s arms tightened around him. “Please let me do the fighting, Ratch. I need to keep you safe, I love you so much. Please.”
The softness of his lover’s plea and the lingering fear in his field stole any anger Ratchet might have felt at Drift’s repeated insistence on trying to keep him out of the battles they faced. “I love you too, Drift, more than anything in the universe,” he murmured, stroking the swordsmech’s back, cradling him close. “And that’s why I can’t make that promise. If you’re in danger, I need to be there. I need to do everything in my power to keep you safe too, sweetspark.” He caressed the finial not pressed to his chest. “And I’m not that fragile, kid. I can hold my own.”
Drift sighed and hugged him tighter. “I know you can,” he whispered. “I just wish we could find a place where you didn’t have to.”
“Same here, love, but until we do, we’re both safer if we fight together. My blasters keep me away from the melee, which is where you excel. It makes us a perfect team--I watch your back and you watch mine.” Drift was quiet for a long moment but he finally nodded, and Ratchet breathed a silent sigh of relief that maybe they’d finally reached a compromise in this long-standing argument.
They held each other in silence for a long time, but eventually Ratchet couldn’t ignore the awkward position or the stickiness on his plating any longer. “We need to hit the washracks before we recharge, love. We’re a mess.”
Drift’s field was a low thrum of comfortable/sleepy/don’t wanna and he grumbled but finally nodded a very reluctant agreement. “Um, Ratch… do you think the others heard that?” he asked as he stood and offered Ratchet a hand, sounding like he’d only just now thought of the possibility.
Ratchet chuckled and let his mate pull him to his feet. He loved it when Drift abandoned his reservations about making noise during interface and let himself react freely, and honestly, Ratchet hadn’t even been trying to be quiet. “I think beings in the next solar system heard that,” he said, grinning. “Now ask me if I care that the others know that we just had a very nice time.”
The swordsmech’s finials heated in a blush that was adorably clear in infrared. Ratchet resisted the urge to kiss them, but it wasn’t easy. “I was wondering how to tell them that we’re… not just friends,” Drift said, biting his lip and glancing over his shoulder at the door.
“I think us sharing a berthroom might’ve already clued ‘em in,” Ratchet teased, but gently, not wanting Drift to think he was making fun of him. “Anyway, I suspect that Rodimus figured it out before that, and I’m pretty sure Rung did within about five minutes of our arrival.” He was damn sure, actually, seeing how the little psychiatrist had sent him a private message that consisted of just three words:
It’s about time.
He shrugged and took Drift’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “If you’re worried about their reactions, don’t be. Or were you intending to kick me out of your berth to keep up appearances?”
Drift’s helm snapped back around and his optics narrowed. “It’s not my berth,” he growled, squeezing Ratchet’s hand tight. “It’s our berth, and if you tried to move out of it, I’d drag your aft back.”
Ratchet raised the hand he held and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “Our berth,” he murmured against Drift’s plating as his other arm slipped around his waist. He bent and kissed the side of his throat, slow and lingering, feeling Drift shiver in his embrace. “Our shuttle,” he whispered, and finally brushed his lips ever so lightly over his lover’s. “Our rules.” Another kiss, barely longer than the first. “I have no plans to stop making love to you just because we have company now, Drift. You’re not some disposable fling to be put aside to make them comfortable. You’re my lover and my future conjunx and they can either deal with it or get the hell off our ship.”
Drift groaned and cupped the back of Ratchet’s helm, pulling him down for a long, passionate kiss. When he finally pulled away, his fans had clicked back on and were blowing hot once more. “Damn, old mech,” Drift whispered through the static clouding his vocalizer as he rested their forehelms together. “How can you make me want you again already?”
Ratchet chuckled and caressed the curve of his hip and aft again. “Talent,” he said smugly, and Drift laughed. “And this talented old mech really wants to hit the washracks and then recharge for a week. You?” Drift nodded and let Ratchet lead him to the door.
And he didn’t let go of Ratchet’s hand as they walked through it.