Chapter Text
Megatron would object to being called an eavesdropper. All he was doing was sitting at his desk, writing poetry, when he happened to overhear the beginning of an argument outside his door. He rolls his optics. He would love to have an entirely uneventful night but his co-captain attracted drama in quantities that rivaled Starscream. Megatron would be generous enough to admit that Rodimus was far better company than Starscream, even at their most combative Megatron rarely worried Rodimus would make an attempt on his functioning.
He continues listening, because really, if you're going to be this loud, this late at night in a hab hallway then you should expect to have an audience. The conversation continues and it becomes clear that this was less of a disagreement and more of a breakdown. Megatron hadn't realized just how damaged Rodimus's self confidence was. He was used to seeing through the Prime's various obfuscations, but somehow hadn't seen through his cocky veneer.
The clash ends when Rodimus retreats, which is followed shortly by Ratchet's exclamation of some Earthen swear and the sound of him resuming his way to his shared hab, thus leaving Megatron alone with his forgotten poem. He stares at the handful of trinkets on his desk gifted to him by members of the crew, mostly Rodimus who seemed to make cluttering Megatron's hab and office with souvenirs of their travels his personal mission. Thinking more in depth on his co-captain’s self-esteem or lack thereof, now that the commotion was over, Megatron decides his earlier thought wasn't quite accurate.
He had known that Rodimus's confidence wasn't as real as he made it out to be. He had assumed that it was closer to being the usual egotistical all talk no action Autobot leader he’d been contending with for four million years combined with the ego of a mech that was chosen by the matrix. It was a common target of his campaign to undermine Rodimus as captain when Megatron first arrived on the Lost Light.
At the time, the last thing he cared about was trying to figure out any reason for why the Prime was the way he was. Later he had assumed that anything he'd said had been shaken off long ago. Megatron leans back in his chair and folds his servos in his lap; focus on his writing lost entirely.
He supposes it had only really been long ago for him. He'd spent over eight hundred years in the Functionalist dimension and when he had time alone to think over his tenure on the Lost Light he regretted his attempt at driving Rodimus out of his position through social manipulations and directly insulting him. He shudders to think of it as such, but he had incorporated a not insignificant amount of Starscream's playbook into his own.
Lately, he'd been trying to subtly make up for his past actions through his support for Rodimus's more eccentric ideas, things like meteor surfing detours or recreational trips planetside. Judging by tonight's outburst however, he'd need to be more direct, perhaps he could point out that he had succeeded in retrieving the matrix and having it choose him to be a prime; clearly he was doing something right.
Shifting to lean forward on his desk, resting his elbows on its surface, he recalls that Rodimus must have been incredibly lucky to find the matrix at all after the first would-be rescuer had the misfortune of arriving on the day he'd woken from Shockwave's reformatting and had been blasted into space. Finding the matrix after that would've been impossibly difficult. Megatron pauses, it really shouldn't have been possible at all, finding such a small object floating through space would require some kind of miracle. It wasn’t as though that pesky Autobot had enough time to send off any kind of signal to narrow the search; not when their encounter had been so brief that Megatron is certain that the Autobot only had a servoful of seconds to react before being hit point blank with a shot from his cannon.
Furrowing his brow, Megatron tries to recall what the mech looked like, pesky Autobot was too dismissive of a description for someone that had been so brave if foolhardy. His memory banks from immediately after waking weren't the clearest but with a little focusing he recalls the Autobot being quite small, though most were in comparison to himself, and very red. They'd been quick to hold the matrix in front of their face, perhaps betting that he wouldn't shoot such an important artifact, as such he can't picture their face from the split second they'd faced one another but he does remember them having bright yellow wings.
Megatron goes very still, not even venting. Ah. A small, red Autobot with yellow ‘wings’. One that would be bold enough to break into a Decepticon base and steal the matrix from around Starscream's neck. He knew someone that fit that description very well, someone that had just implied Primus had brought him back to life.
He had killed Hot Rod.
Rodimus stumbles into his hab, the sudden rush to get back wasn't agreeing with the high grade in his tanks and he crouches low just behind the door of his hab and puts his head between his knees and breathes through his nose until the wave of nausea passes.
It was a surprisingly comfortable position and he was finally alone in his quarters with no one to perform for so he remained crouched down while he went over the last ten or so minutes of his night. Maybe it hadn’t even been that long, though it felt like an eternity. Rodimus groans, how the Pit did he lose his cool like that. All he needed to do was keep it together while assuring Ratchet he would back off and leave him and Drift alone. Primus knows every relationship he tries to keep blows up sooner or later. He'd mostly figured it out as Hot Rod: working alone was better for him; he couldn’t get anyone else hurt like that.
He wasn't able to resist befriending Drift though. He'd just looked so lonely back when he'd first been assigned to the Wreckers.
Most Autobots tended to be from midcaste backgrounds and had difficulty picturing why any mech would ever join up with the Cons and even those that could would usually end their limited sympathy with some version of ‘not me though, I never would've signed up.’ Hot Rod could understand the draw though, after all he almost had joined up with Megatron four million years ago, probably would've if Bumblebee hadn't been tortured in front of him.
So Hot Rod didn't have a problem with Drift back then, sure he'd give him some Pit for having stuck around the Cons so long but he kept it light like he'd tease any other teammate’s dumb mistake, sure that Drift had heard it all before and didn’t need anyone else riding his aft about it. It didn't hurt that Drift looked like a discdeer in headlights from something as simple as Hot Rod offering to swap rations when Drift clearly hated the kind he'd been given.
Millennia later and Rodimus still thinks it would be impossible not to love Drift. Which is why he’s glad he found Ratchet, who was smart and reliable and would be able to help him after Rodimus inevitably fragged everything up again.
One day he'd run out of whatever it was that was keeping him online, hopefully doing something worthwhile, saving his friends or something sappy like that, and Drift would have Ratchet to help keep him together while he mourned and remind him that there were actually a lot of pros that came from Rodimus dying. Things like how there'd be way fewer instances of: Drift getting his feelings hurt, crew members suffering from impulsive decision-making, Drift getting dragged to events to please Rodimus, the list goes on.
Rodimus gets a ping.
He really doesn't deserve Drift. It’s the middle of the night, he'd just finished freaking out in front of Ratchet, and having heard all of what that entailed, Drift was still messaging him to see if he's okay. Rodimus let out another groan, his processor was starting to ache and the crouch in the doorway had stopped feeling good several minutes ago. He stands, stretches gingerly, and flops onto his couch. He tries to think of something a well adjusted mech might say to their friend in this scenario. No dice, well adjusted mechs don't end up in these kinds of situations. If he knows Drift, and he does, then he's rapidly running out of time before Drift assumes he choked on his own vomit and died. He crafts the most normal response he can, a single glyph confirming his status, and sends it. Rodimus then grimaces; he never sends single glyph pings, or if he does it's a series of pings to emphasize whatever point he's making. If he's lucky it'll be late enough that Drift doesn't think too hard about it.
How does a mech end up with Primus's favor and no luck whatsoever. Rodimus pulls the throw cover from the back of his couch to cover himself completely and despairs over immediately getting another ping asking for a spar tomorrow. Rodimus gives up any pretense of being normal and pings back an affirmative. He tells himself he'll just play it off as a helmache driving him to keep his responses short. He just has to find a way to spin this by tomorrow so Drift doesn't feel like he needs to keep wasting his time scraping him back together. Maybe even a totally average, forgettable death would benefit his friends more than this.
…
Rodimus rolls his face into the back of the couch. Yeesh, it was definitely time to recharge, things were getting overly morose even by his high standards for what a drunken pity party should be.
He comes up with a rock solid plan of: recharge, shower, refuel, work. Somewhere in there he needs to come up with a plan on what to say to Drift and Ratchet so they move past this whole incident. Right as he starts the first step of his plan, however, there's an urgent knock at his door.