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Pharma's eyes lingered on the decanter of particularly thick. luminous energon as Tarn returned to his desk and set out a cube of engex for each of them. "Not the innermost?" the jet asked innocently, running a finger along the edge of his cube. "Is that reserved only for you and yours?"
Tarn lowered his head, the hint of a frown visible through the slit of his mask. "Innermost is, as you would expect, rare. I reserve it for team bonding."
"How did you come to develop such an interest in it anyway? Is it a Decepticon thing?"
"No, I simply..." The tank took his cube and swirled it meditatively, gazing into it, as if considering whether to go on. "...Sparks fascinate me. I hear their pulses with my gift. But more than that, they are the essence of a mech. Regardless of whether the brain module is mutilated by shadowplay, or the body loses itself - through empurata, for instance—" and here he flexed a hand with strange concentration, "—the spark always holds the purest version of a person. And there, surrounding the spark, nurturing it, is the innermost energon. I imagine that the particular flavor of a vintage comes from the resonance of the spark lingering in the fluid. Why else would the taste differ so greatly between donors?"
"The taste is unique, you say?" Pharma asked. He was feeling his way toward a place inside of Tarn where it seemed that a hook might catch. "And you have known this for all your life?"
"I rarely had opportunities to taste it earlier in my life. I only...imagined. Only later was I able to confirm my suspicions."
"The diversity of flavors must be fascinating, I would imagine."
"It is." Tarn sipped his engex through a straw, though he eyed the decanter of innermost with clear longing.
"Do you like the act of draining it?"
Tarn sniffed. "With victims, the process is regrettably...clinical. We string them up and empty them like primitives cleaning a mechanimal."
"I wonder what it would be like to have a willing donor." Pharma incidentally stroked along the edge of the armor plates near his wrist and didn't miss how Tarn's eyes immediately darted to the movement.
"I wouldn't know," the Decepticon said softly, turning as if without volition to gaze more openly at Pharma's wrist. "I have never experienced such a thing."
"Perhaps I could provide such an experience," Pharma said, with equal softness, so careful of the moment. Armor rearranged itself and a small tube protruded - the channel that could draw directly on the innermost energon reservoir, used to pull it out by the drop for distribution in the delicate vials used for well-wishing and conjunxing ceremonies.
"You wouldn't," Tarn said. His eyes brightened and his fans sped up as a hint of pink light began to well up inside the tube and Pharma extended his hand gracefully, displaying it, just short of offering it.
"I seem to be surprising you," the jet said with a smile. "Would you like it? I'd hate for it to go to waste—"
Two cubes of engex spun away, spilling their contents, as Tarn vaulted over the desk and caught Pharma by the throat, bowling over the guest chair and laying him out on his back on the cold metal floor. The Autobot's turbine rolled uncomfortably underneath him, but Tarn held him in an unbreakable grip with one hand while the other kept tight hold of his prey's wrist with its precious droplet of innermost. "I know what you're doing," the tank grated.
"Do you? Is it working? Do you want what I have?" The droplet swelled up further, hovering at the end of the tube, almost at the point where it would fall free and be lost. "I just want to see you satisfied. I suppose that it might incline you toward goodwill in the future."
"I promise nothing." The red eyes were piercing, fixed entirely on the drop, even though the Decepticon was clearly struggling against himself.
"It matters, doesn't it?" Pharma whispered. "That it's offered freely? That it comes right from the source?"
"Yes," Tarn murmured hungrily. "It matters."
"Take it. Taste me. Taste my spark."
Tarn's body literally shook with the effort of his holding back for long moments, and then, with a ragged snarl, he released Pharma's throat to lift up the faceplate of his mask and shoved the jet's wrist underneath it. His tongue sought out the tube and licked it clean, and he moaned as he held the fuel in his mouth and savored it before swallowing it down. A stillness came over him as he let his eyes close, as if sinking deep within himself in the wake of the fuel. When the moment passed, he licked at the tube again and gave a frustrated growl as it withdrew under the armor. "More," he demanded.
"No more innermost," Pharma stated, firm even in the face of Tarn's wrath. "But I might let you drink from my lines. I imagine that that tastes special too, the fuel that powers a mech's life."
"Yes," Tarn breathed. "Yes, that too. The taste, the smell, never the same—"
"This is sexual for you, isn't it?" Pharma whispered. "Pull back your panels." Tarn snarled at him again but kept the wrist up under his mask, where his lips brushed the metal as they peeled back from his teeth. "Pull back your panels and let me see what it does to you, and I'll give you the lines in my wrist."
Again, there was a handful of moments as Tarn hesitated on the precipice, fighting to hold himself back from his downfall before he failed under the pressure. A fang scored the blue paint of Pharma's armor as the tank's panels snicked back. Pharma chuckled softly as he looked down to see the spike half-extended and the valve half-unfolded just from the taste that Tarn had had already. As he had promised, he folded back the armor from his wrist and stifled a cry as his captor's fangs immediately severed a tube and the mouth closed over the upwelling fuel.
Tarn moaned again and again as he nursed from his victim's lines, both hands gripping Pharma's forearm to prevent his escape. His spike stretched forth and hung almost fully hard in the air as his valve continued to spread, his mind too transported to restrain himself. Pharma gasped from the pain, but despite the distraction, he lifted a thigh between Tarn's legs and slid it hard against the tank's valve. As though unaware of himself, the Decepticon began to grind against the sleek metal, copious streaks of oil following him as he dripped with lust and his movements sped until he was shamelessly humping the jet's leg, nodes dragging wetly over the plating. His fans reached a roaring peak and then his valve contracted again and again in a brutal overload that dragged his entire body into hitching waves. Fuel ran down Pharma's forearm as Tarn's mouth loosened, gasping for air. He licked a few more drops from the torn line, moving slowly in the wake of his great exertion, and then he lowered his faceplate.
Just when Pharma had thought that his sensual ordeal might be over, Tarn slid his masked face under Pharma's chin, forcing his head back against the floor. The tank drew in a long breath through his nose, taking in the smell of the jet's throat tubing. His engine rumbled in an eager purr.
Pharma couldn't resist seeing how far he could pull the Decepticon down the path of his own uncontrolled craving. "The fuel would be more pure from the neck, don't you think? Closer to the pump."
Tarn said nothing but pulled in another long breath, nuzzling against the cables and the fuel lines hidden just behind them.
"Only you'd have to take your mask off to drink, wouldn't you? Do it, and I'll let you have what you want."
Tarn pulled back with another angry snarl, his bright fangs bared behind the slit of his mask as he hovered over his prey. Pharma stared fearlessly into his eyes, watching him struggle, watching as his resolve eroded under his hunger and then finally collapsed. "Very well," Tarn spat. "But only if you promise to kiss me."
Pharma could not suppress his triumphant grin as he saw his enemy laid low by his own weakness. "Of course." He tensed as Tarn swooped down on him, lifting him up and sweeping him back into the tank's bedchamber.
Tarn made love like a storm, giving up more and more of himself until finally he was thrusting helplessly between the jet's thighs, his cheeks and mouth and breast smeared with life-fuel as excitement overtook him. His spike was almost too much for Pharma to take, the girth stretching him nearly to the point of pain, but he smiled at the feel of it, devouring the sight of Tarn's naked face with wide eyes, tasting his victory as he saw the DJD commander unmade by need. Tarn's kisses were lonely and desperate, drinking in the taste of Pharma's welcoming lips even as he milked spurts of fuel from wounds all across the jet's body. His prey licked his own fluids from Tarn's mouth and savored the way the predator trembled in the wake of the tenderness. Pharma bore up underneath the painful affections and felt power heavy in his hands even as he offered himself up to the savaging fangs.
"Are we lovers?" Tarn asked him breathlessly, his expression dazed as if he were overwhelmed by his own intensity.
"Not yet," Pharma told him, his voice weak but steady. He'd been shoved down hard into the mattress, still bleeding from his wrists, his throat, his lips, his inner thighs— "You've drained me down to twenty-three percent. I think you owe me a drop of your own."
A strangely vulnerable look swept fleetingly over Tarn's face as he averted his eyes, lifting a wrist almost shyly and rearranging his armor to extend his own innermost energon channel. He watched Pharma's face as a droplet welled up inside of it and he lowered it to the jet's lips. Pharma sucked it down without hesitation.
"What do I taste like?" Tarn asked him, voice thick with hunger for a response.
Pharma licked his lips and rolled his tongue, swirling the drop around inside his mouth before finally letting himself swallow. "Strong," he said. "Suffering." The words seemed to float up out of him, out of his fuel-starved mind, as if they were suspended in the droplet that he had just consumed. "Burdened. Pained. Loving. Loving enough to die from it."
Tarn closed his eyes and lowered himself down, wrapping himself around the injured jet and nestling his face close against Pharma's breast, ignoring the Autobrand under his cheek. "You know me," he said gently. "You know me more deeply than anyone else. You've tasted all that I am."
"Now...," Pharma breathed as the darkness of shutdown began to flow up over his vision, "now we're lovers."