Chapter Text
Every now and then, Rodimus awakes with a certain need.
An ache that tackles him just as he wakes from recharge, beset by a profound feeling of emptiness. Like something stolen from him in the night, a restless sleep that brings abstract forms of wet protomesh, glossa and teeth in tow, rattling around in his mind. Disjointed impressions feel like they dig itself into his chassis, deep enough to feel like hands phase right through his chest into his spark chamber, and they grip.
Jerking bolt upright in berth, spending little time basking in his confusion before he's swinging his legs over the side and standing. Unsteady legs tremble beneath him with the exertion of keeping his body upright, joints tight as his optics flicker. Doesn't know what time it is, nor does he have the bandwidth to go and check.
He feels hot. Unbearably hot. It's unusual for Rodimus to believe that this is an unpleasant sensation— heat has never troubled him, despite how others on the ship would complain about the temperature. Primus, he's held the Matrix and even that had felt more pleasant than this, how it had burned was nothing that could match the hot, wet agony that clings in every crevice of his panelling.
No, something inside him feels as though it's irrepairably snapped— his wiring feels crossed, a dreadful heat radiates from his spark that trickles down his backstrut, weighing heavily in his hips, concealed beneath his skirt plating.
Something is wrong. With his systems or with his body, he doesn't know which.
Rodimus knows what he needs.
Unsure exactly when he'd stepped out of his habsuite, he finds himself on a wild and instinctual march to his intended destination. His focus is narrowed until it tunnels out completely, a fierce need overtaking every other rational, coherent thought. The corridors of the Lost Light blur as he stumbles through them, unsteady and most certainly driven.
The ship's public hotspots are mercifully empty, baring no one that'd dangle this over his head later. The overhead lights feel like thumbs pressing into his optic sockets— everything is so sharp, too overwhelming and, at the same time, not enough. His systems scream for excess and his body yearns for something to fill the gap that grows larger with every passing klik.
And he knows where to get what his body aches for.
A brief knock on the door sounds, and before Rung can answer with a sorry, not now, I'm busy, session hours are over, the door slides open anyway.
There stands a woeful looking Rodimus, frame trembling as he steps into Rung's office. He's too on edge and waiting for refusal isn't an option. Rodimus' optics fix onto Rung, who's already gone still— a concerned look pulling at his expression.
"Are you alright?" Rung fixes him with a raise of a brow, as he rises from his chair, hands raised in some sort of defensive grasshopper position as though Rodimus might pounce on him. "Do you need any—"
"Help, yes. You. Need you." Rodimus manages, rudely cutting in.
"Oh," Rung says, shifting his glasses upwards with a digit. Peers at the Prime who is, plaintively, hovering halfway out of the door and inside of it, looking like a lost puppy. "Well, is this urgent, do you—"
"Hurts," is all Rodimus offers as an explanation. Notably, not an untrue one— though it explains very little.
The evidence is there, regardless of how willing Rodimus is to put his exact predicament into tangible words. Rung would have to be (more) blind and deaf to miss the roar of Rodimus' overactive cooling fans and the condensation that clings to the front of his mid-section plating. Rodimus wordlessly side-steps fully inside the office, the door transforming shut with a click beside him.
Recognition flickers across Rung's open expression as his arms softly drop to his sides. It's hard not to let a knowing smirk tug at the corners of his intake, even as he stares at a very despondent Rodimus dead on. That'd be adding insult to injury and, in the interest of making this easier for Rodimus, he keeps his expression vague.
Once he's certain that he won't be interrupted yet again, Rung settles on the office chair, crossing one leg over the other and picks up the model on his desk. Rung returns his gaze back down to the object as he slots two pieces of, what Rodimus assumes, is a miniature combustion cannon together before he says anything else.
"I see what this is."
Rodimus feels a wash of refreshing hope slide over his frame for a nanoklik before the warmth returns, creeps up his backstrut and swaddles his processor. See, Rung finally gets it, this torture will be over soon, and—
"Didn't you already have one of these… episodes, the other day?" Rung asks, almost unamused, attention still on the model in his hands.
Those hands. Rodimus can't stop looking at his hands. He wants those hands around his neck, plucking at the cabling. Around his spike.
Rodimus shrugs simultaneously the thought away and answers Rung's question. Swaying on the heels of his pedes, his verbal answer comes out more like a meek mumble. "Two quintuns. I think."
"Two whole quintuns," Rung parrots, tone clipped. What he really means is, wow, that's a long time for shareware like you to go without. The implication, still, is that Rodimus is whorish, at best. Despite how delicately Rung words his sentences, the edge is ever present. "Who helped you then?"
Rodimus frowns. What an odd question. "None of your business."
(Truthfully, he doesn't remember. Could've been anyone's lucky day on the Lost Light, besides Magnus.)
Rung lets the answer pass without comment, despite having asked the question. Setting the model aside, Rung leans forward slightly, resting his elbows on the desk. When he speaks again, his tone is measured, restrained.
"Have you not thought about discussing … this," he waves a servo up and down in Rodimus' general direction, "with Ratchet?"
"Primus, no. That's worse than this." Rodimus answers, snappy. Taking a step closer to the desk, no longer hovering near the door. Committed, even though his quivering frame would give the opposite impression. "Look, do you want to help me or not?"
Rung gives a lengthy ex-vent, gaze dropping to the half-assembled Ark-1 before lifting again, meeting Rodimus'. There's a pregnant pause, as if he's weighing the interruption against whatever he had planned to be doing instead of… this.
He sighs. "I have work to do, Rodimus."
"But you don't want to do it," Rodimus leans in, pressing the palms of his servos flat on Rung's desk, leaning over the smaller bot. "You want to help me. You don't want to do your work, now, do you?"
"No," Rung says, slowly, as if he's processing this at the same speed Rodimus is, "I don't."
Rodimus smiles, an unconvincing display of gratefulness with how forced it comes out. Leaning forward, he lets his hips pop sideways as he bounces his leg, restless. Rung's optics shift between the decent head-on view of Rodimus' aft and his face, so close to Rung's own that the heat of Rodimus' venting brushes against his faceplate.
"Have you self-serviced?" Rung asks, a little blunt.
"Yet? No," Rodimus replies, an uncharacteristically timid tone laying thick in the back of his vocaliser.
It's a special thing, almost, to see his Captain, his Prime, become so inhibited. Ever the confident type, enough to dive in headfirst to most situations underprepared armed with nothing but the half-clocked ideas of hope and prayer being enough to carry him through most situations grossly unqualified— reduced to this.
Not his real self by a long shot, as Rung finds it altogether too Freudian to suggest that the default state is a mask— but thoroughly entertaining nonetheless to see him so unlike… well, himself.
And the need to tease him is overpowering. Rung is a reader, that's his job, his duty. And while he does use that ability for good a solid ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, it's so easy to prod. Poke and rattle his superior just a little, for the sick and twisted sense of enjoyment he gets out of making Rodimus desperate.
This is inappropriate.
Rung finds it hard to care, anymore.
"Aching for it," Rung says, plainly, no room for Rodimus to interpret his statement as a question. He lets a servo trace along Rodimus' chin, up his mandible and lingering by the shell of his finials, drawing circles into the metal. "I bet you are."
Rodimus jumps, though doesn't stop him. His expression turns a little frantic. "Not here."
"Why not?" Rung asks, as his hand trails lower, dancing around the firm cabling of his neck. Rodimus doesn't need to see the psychologist's optics behind his glasses to know the look they hold is mischevious. "You're dripping that bad, you need to go back to your habsuite?"
The veneer of frustration cracks apart in an instant, and Rung watches as Rodimus' gaze sharpens, optical ridges knitting together.
"Take me back to my habsuite."
"Won't you last here?" Rung says, letting the smile that's been tugging at the corners of his intake spread across his faceplate. His hand drops past Rodimus' chassis, past his midsection, to hover over Rodimus' modesty panelling.
Rodimus' fans are well and truly screaming, making an unpleasant grinding sound as his frantic expression grows more hurried. His body instinctively presses his hips forward into Rung's hand, despite how his processor would protest.
"Take me back," Rodimus begs, vocaliser trembling and static-drunk, "you're— it's not gonna take much."
Rung starts a gentle, circling rhythm with two digits against the front of Rodimus' modesty panel, slow and teasing. The choked out noise it wrings out of Rodimus' throat sounds wrecked.
"You think you could make it back to your habsuite without overloading now?"
Embarrassed and ashamed, Rodimus says nothing, but hangs his helm and shakes his head.
"Relax, please. Let go and overload for me, once, and I'll take you back and give you a reward. Won't that be nice, Captain? Be a good bot and I'll frag you like a bad one."
Rodimus whines at that and the dam feels well and truly broken as he lets his hips buck against Rung's hand. Primus, his modesty panel isn't even undone. So pathetic that in no way could he justify it as anything else considering how little time has passed. His spike lays heavy and pressurised, trapped behind the panel as he squeezes his thighs together. Slag— they feel wet, slick.
He's going to leak all over the floor and Rodimus wants to cry.
Rung slides a digit between those clenched thighs and Rodimus all but howls, too close to his impending overload and his moans are drenched in static as they're torn from his processor. Pressing harder, threatening to leave dents, Rung does not pause his ministrations even for a klik and Rodimus can't help himself.
Tears threaten to spill from the corners of his optics as Rodimus' body goes stiff, overloading with a deliciously hurt moan. The noises come louder, more distressed, when he realises he's doing exactly what he swore he wouldn't, feeling the transfluid slide down his legs onto the floor below him through the wedged-open gap in his panelling.
Rodimus is making a poor attempt at hiding his burning face, mewling through the aftershocks that ripple through his frame. Rung can see how ashamed he looks and, with a sickening sense of satisfaction, Rung fights the urge to bend him over the desk, then and there.
"Not enough," Rodimus admits, looking wrecked as his helm is laying heavier and heavier against his own palm.
"It's okay," Rung says, soothingly, letting his servo run up and down Rodimus' backstrut. "You did good. More than good, even."
"I made a mess," Rodimus rasps, voice little and hurt. "All over your floor. I'm sorry."
Is it strange that the polite, sheepish tone his voice takes on makes Rung adjust himself in his chair? A rarely shown gift, such transparency, that Rung wonders if he treats as a rather taboo approach.
Rung smiles, unable to resist.
"After I take you to your habsuite, we can come right back and I'll make you lick it up myself."