Chapter Text
There was a faint crunch as Megatron rolled over onto his side, scattering another layer of rose petals across the berth. The ambient red glow of his private quarters flickered as if even the ship’s lighting system was embarrassed by what it was witnessing.
In his claws, a datapad. Illuminated on the screen—bright, noble, infuriating—was his face. That accursed, righteous smirk. The gentle arch of a blue optic ridge. The noble virtue practically radiating from the very pixels.
Optimus fragging Prime.
Megatron exhaled in a long, exaggerated sigh, one servo raised to his forehead like a dying starlet on the stage of Iacon’s Grand Amphitheater.
“This day. This... capitalist charade,” he muttered bitterly, dragging the back of one clawed digit across the frame of Optimus’s photo. “What madness possesses our kind to honor emotion with confections and flowers?”
He curled in tighter. A chocolate-covered energon cube rolled off the berth and plopped onto the floor.
There was a shuffle at the door. Then, a quiet ping.
“Soundwave: requesting entry.”
Megatron stared at the door for a long moment. Then back at the datapad.
Optimus’s photo remained silent, judgmental.
Megatron turned over sharply, shoving his face into the petals.
“Denied.”
There was a beat. Then the door hissed open anyway.
Soundwave stepped inside without comment, sensors humming faintly, the rhythm of his footsteps unobtrusive. He stopped at the edge of the berth and tilted his helm. The entire room reeked of synthesized floral perfume and despair.
“Observation: Valentine’s Day behavior anomalous.”
“Perhaps you’re anomalous,” Megatron growled, rolling to face him, still draped in scarlet petals like some sort of tragic romance holo cover model. “Is it so wrong to—sulk, in the privacy of my own quarters? To mourn what could never be?!”
Soundwave did not blink. Literally. But he did pause.
“Clarification: Mourning… Optimus Prime?”
Megatron growled low in his throat and dramatically swiped a small bowl of heart-shaped energon supplements off the nightstand. They clattered to the ground like broken promises.
“Don’t tell me how to live my life, Soundwave.”
Silence.
“…Understood,” Soundwave said flatly. “Recommendation: hydrate.”
“I am hydrated. With my tears!” Megatron barked, flinging himself back into the berth with enough force to scatter petals into the air. Several clung to his armor, one tragically fluttering onto his faceplate as if to spite him further.
Soundwave’s visor blinked in a slow cycle of pure audio judgement.
Megatron swiped the datapad open again, tapping at the photo until it zoomed closer. Prime was smiling, damn him. That soft, noble look in his optics that made Megatron's core temperature rose and his temper short-circuit.
He began to monologue. Again.
"Look at you. All self-righteous and glowing with your damnable inner light. You think you're better than me, don't you? Just because you have... ideals. And shoulders broad enough to park a shuttle on. And that fragging voice—" he choked for a second, "—you think I miss you, is that it?"
He paused. Swiped to the next picture. It was grainier, from some old Decepticon surveillance feed. Optimus was lecturing a group of Autobots. Megatron scowled fondly at it.
"Well you're right," he whispered furiously, curling tighter into his pillow. “You glitch.”
Soundwave slowly backed out of the room, pausing only to shut off the auto-petal dispersal system that was still, inexplicably, going strong.
He exited without another word.
The door hissed shut.
Megatron sighed again, long and loud, then curled around the datapad like a lovesick teenager.
“…Happy fragging Valentine’s Day.”