Chapter Text
Tarn comes back to his quarters to find his liquor cabinet cracked open and Starscream so overcharged he can’t sit up straight.
Starscream squints at Tarn from where he slumps against the side of the cabinet. Black smudges his lips. Tarn plucks the bottle from Starscream’s hand and examines it: Tarnian bunker fuel, low-grade, pre-war, half-gone. When it was made, it would’ve been cheap. Tarn had to pay an obscene sum to get ahold of one bottle, and he wouldn’t have bothered, except it was rumored to be Megatron’s drink of choice in the gladiator pits. It’s probably not even true. Lord Megatron isn’t known to be a fan of altered states.
Starscream makes a protesting noise and grabs for the bottle. He misses. Tarn holds it out of reach.
Tarn’s face throbs. He has a trench full of Nickel’s nanite goop in his cheek, Starscream’s been ignoring him for ages, and now that Starscream’s finally deigned to look at Tarn for more than two kliks at a time, this is what he comes back to?
“What are you doing?” Tarn asks.
“I should think that’s obvious,” Starscream says. “You owe me for your—for your crew of pitslag degenerate runoff-licking rustfraggers. Not Nickel. Nickel’s a delight. Vos is passable. The rest can get smelted.”
Starscream’s voice is… Odd, soft and rasping, like he can’t raise it too high or it’ll glitch. Never mind sitting up, he’s so overcharged he’s inventing obscenities. Tarn grinds his teeth. His patience is at an all-time low. Whatever this is, he doesn’t want to deal with it. Maybe it wasn’t traitorous behavior that landed Starscream on the list; maybe Megatron just got tired of hitting his second’s personality landmines.
The bunker fuel sloshes stickily in its bottle. The fumes are dizzying. Tarn’s HUD flashes hazmat warnings, and he holds it farther away. Starscream’s black fingerprints are all over the label.
Tarn’s grip tightens. “This was manufactured four million years ago, on Cybertron. They don’t make it anymore.”
“They don’t make anything anymore. Not engex. Not poetry. Not us.” Starscream rolls to his knees. He reaches for the bottle again and almost overbalances. “Give that back, I need it.”
“This was part of the collection,” Tarn growls. His engine throbs in irritation. “It was irreplaceable, Starscream!”
At the sound of his name, Starscream—flinches.
It’s there and gone so fast Tarn almost misses it. Tarn’s optics narrow. Before he can ask questions, Starscream rocks forward. He fetches up with his cheek warm on Tarn’s thigh, arm wrapped around the back of Tarn’s knee. Starscream’s wingtips flutter. Suddenly, Tarn can think of very little else.
Starscream meets his gaze, optics half-dimmed. “I thought I was part of the collection?”
A decision Tarn regrets more with every passing moment. “What?”
“Wasn’t that the point of the paint?”
He’s walked into a parallel universe. It’s the only explanation. Everything he’d been about to say escapes him, and he’s left wrong-footed and staring. What game is Starscream playing? It must be a game. Tarn doesn’t have the faintest grasp of the rules.
“You made it clear what you thought about that,” Tarn manages.
“Surely I’m more valuable to you than some old bottle of gutterswill engex—which is as vile as the day it was distilled, by the way. I did you a favor getting rid of it. Didn’t Megatron have some things to say about attachments to material comforts?”
“I’m fairly sure the engex of the masses was metaphorical.”
“Yes, yes. Comfort, crutch, and weld patch to the wounded spark. This vintage is more of a shock-stick to the back of the helm.”
“That doesn’t mean you can go and—Starscream.”
Starscream’s nimble fingers dance up Tarn’s treads. His thumb teases the rollers beneath. Tarn’s plating tingles in its wake. Starscream reclaims the bottle before Tarn realizes what he’s done, downs a mouthful, and wipes his lips on the back of his hand. When Starscream kisses the armor at the top of Tarn’s thigh, it leaves a black imprint.
Starscream’s voice is a throaty, static-edged purr. “Much more valuable.”
The decking under Tarn’s feet seems suddenly uncertain. Is this what Megatron saw? This seeker kneeling before him, lips parted, optics strange and dark? If so, Tarn understands exactly how they fell into the berth; his processor floods with fantasies featuring white wings and a mind sharp as razor wire. The first editions hang close by. Their big, blunt hands make a dizzying contrast to Starscream’s aerodynamic frame. Even as a miner Megatron’s grip would’ve encircled Starscream’s entire waist. As a gladiator and a warlord, he’s larger still.
Tarn’s cooling fans kick on.
Starscream smiles like the pitspawn he is. He mouths Tarn’s interface panel, tongue hot and wet up the seams. His fingers slot into the gap at Tarn’s hip to toy with the wires there. Tarn groans and leans into it before he can help himself. Starscream’s hideously talented with his hands.
“Where is this coming from?” Tarn asks, “you told me in no uncertain terms you were… How did you put it? Disgusted to share a universe with an oblivious, over-privileged, sub-literate sadist who’d better serve the Decepticon cause reformatted into a garbage scow?”
“I say a lot of things,” Starscream says. Muffled against Tarn’s plating, near-inaudible, “no one listens to most of them.”
Starscream licks a thin trail of wetness up the edge of Tarn’s panel. Any resistance Tarn might’ve put up fades in the face of the slick tease of his mouth. Tarn’s engine revs. He forgets about making conversation. This time he doesn’t even try to stop his panel opening. Tarn’s spike pressurizes; it leaves a smear of pink fluid on Starscream’s cheek.
Starscream looks up, vaguely reproachful. Their colors make a pleasing contrast: Tarn’s dark grey, veined in deep purple biolights; Starscream’s mouth painted like a target. Their frames are on different scales, but the magnitude’s no greater than between Starscream and Megatron. Starscream could swallow Tarn’s spike, just barely. Heat shoots through Tarn at the image of Starscream’s lips stretched around it, throat straining.
Starscream leans in and sucks Tarn’s node.
Tarn’s knees nearly buckle. He groans. Sensitive mesh burns with the residual bunker fuel on Starscream’s tongue, just the right side of painful, and Tarn braces himself on the wall to keep from collapsing. His spike rubs the side of Starscream’s face. Starscream pays it no attention.
Tarn archives that image in long-term internal memory. A seductive little impulse tells him he could start a second collection, one of footage just like this. Starscream’s never been shy. There must be orns upon orns of surveillance video floating around the Decepticon networks, waiting to be found.
Tarn curls a hand around Starscream’s helm. Starscream tenses like he expects to be crushed to Tarn’s plating, but Tarn isn’t so rude. He pets the graceful seam down Starscream’s cheek, under his jaw, and back again. When Tarn makes no move to steer him, Starscream tilts his head and gives Tarn’s valve the filthiest kiss imaginable.
Tarn’s neural net lights up. His fans roar. His hips jerk but Starscream moves with him, giving Tarn only as much pressure as he allows. When Starscream sucks on Tarn’s valve lips, Tarn curls around him and nearly overloads on the spot. Lubricant slicks Starscream’s mouth. He hums against Tarn’s node. Tarn clenches his teeth to keep from saying something he won’t be able to take back, later.
“How are you so good at this?” Tarn gasps. “There, yes—”
Starscream’s known for his clever tongue, but Tarn’s never thought of it in this context. He feels he should reciprocate but isn’t sure how. He’s not totally inexperienced—he’d had the youthful fumblings of his academy days—but against Starscream he’s lacking. After the academy, no one had wanted to touch a mech with no face or fingers. Later still, when he’d had them back, it’d all seemed… Unimportant. What use was love against the fire of the revolution?
Starscream’s clearly never limited himself. Tarn wishes he had been there in the earliest days, instead of stumbling along feeling sorry for himself. If only he hadn’t wasted the time on making nice with respectable people, the ones who’d recoiled at the brush of his mutilated form. What a picture they could’ve made, the three of them, overseeing Cybertron’s rebirth.
Starscream’s tongue curls deep inside him. It’s a struggle to keep his voice under control. Pleasure builds in waves, his body’s sweet release inescapable as the desire to transform. Tarn shudders with the effort of stillness, of not crushing Starscream to the wall and riding his mouth to completion.
The ridge of Starscream’s helm catches Tarn’s node as his tongue writhes. Tarn overloads with a shout. Starscream keeps moving, all merciless pressure on the edge of too much.
Tarn rides it out. His need only burns hotter. He wants more. He wants Starscream completely, in all the ways Megatron ever had him, inside and out. Tarn tugs Starscream backwards and Starscream doesn't fight him. His tongue slips from Tarn’s valve with a last flick over Tarn’s node. Starscream looks up like a golden age courtesan, mouth and chin smeared in Tarn’s fluids. Tarn almost overloads a second time.
Starscream’s jaw flexes. “What, not up to your high-class standards?”
“No.”
Starscream stiffens in affront.
Tarn corrects himself. “That’s not—what I intended to say was, it’s in abysmal form of me to keep enjoying these one-sided arrangements. I’ve been a poor host. I mean to remedy that.”
Tarn crouches. His fingers trace Starscream’s face, his sticky mouth, the line of his major throat cables. He moves on to the pale expanse of Starscream’s wing, with all its delicate hinges and sensor telemetry. Seekers’ wings always surprise him with their resilience. They seem fragile as crystal, but they’re tougher than they look. He digs his thumb into a sensory cluster meant to measure atmospheric composition. Starscream’s fans hitch.
Starscream looks at Tarn like it's a trick. “A poor host. That is a strange way of putting it. Do you climb under all your guests’ plating, Tarn?”
“Only those who are clever, beautiful, and as deadly as they are well-read.”
“How many is that?”
“One.” Tarn’s thumb wipes a black smudge from the corner of Starscream’s mouth. “I’m not much of a poet, myself. Doubtless there’s little I can say that you haven’t heard before, but you are beautiful, Starscream.”
There’s a passage of Megatron’s that’s always stuck with him. In context it describes the inexorable process of the slave rising against the master, but it seems appropriate here. Tarn pulls it up and rereads it to be sure he has it right. In his internal displays, the words burn with all the power Megatron put into them.
“As dawn, as dusk, as the fall; as light and time, in the gravity well—”
“Stop,” Starscream rasps.
Tarn stops. “Doing what, exactly?”
“Don’t say things you don’t… Don’t pretend. Don’t make this…”
“The future bursts from us, too bright to look upon.” Starscream tries to turn his face away. Tarn catches his chin. “If hardship has tempered us into blades, then let us be blades. They say: be what we tell you to be. Rather: be what you know yourself to be. You are the righteous nemesis. You are what rises from the ashes.”
Starscream stares. His arm inches up, ferrying the bottle of bunker fuel.
Tarn intercepts it. He takes a mouthful and almost chokes. It burns. His hazmat warnings flare more urgently, toxic long-chain chemicals scouring his lines and seeping into the spaces between his teeth. Whether they’ve developed during the bottle’s storage or were there from the beginning, he doesn’t know. When Tarn stops sputtering, Starscream snickers behind his hand.
Starscream was right. Collectible value be damned, it’s the worst thing Tarn’s ever tasted. “That’s foul.”
“Poor Tarn, with his refined palate,” Starscream sing-songs, “that wasn’t even the lowest grade on the market. The cheapest stuff was so thick it’d coat your intakes. Getting the taste out of your mouth was impossible, and forget flying on it. It didn’t burn clean enough. I did it once, and I was picking vulcanized tar out of my thrusters for decacycles—”
Tarn shudders, shoves the bottle as far away from himself as he can get it, and kisses Starscream to shut him up.
Starscream makes a soft, surprised sound. He tastes of ozone, interface, and more of that pit-damned bunker fuel. Tarn doesn’t care. Starscream’s mouth is hot and wet but slack; after a klik, Starscream kisses back. It’s oddly tentative. There’s none of the aggression Tarn expected. When Tarn’s teeth graze Starscream’s bottom lip, Starscream’s vents stutter. His fans spin up. He clings to Tarn’s treads like a lifeline.
The world spins softly around Starscream. He’s long since stopped being able to make sense of his own system information, and the strobing stripes that are probably warnings are reduced to pretty lights. Bunker fuel, besides getting him cratered, makes him an idiot; its seductive burn turns everything slow and uncomplicated. He’d forgotten. The sludge that lies heavy on the bottom of the distillery barrels burns unpredictably, speeding some pathways and blocking others. Chemical impurities spark in his circuits. It’s poison, but in Starscream’s experience, all good things are.
He can’t feel the mess of his own internals at all.
Which is as good an excuse as any for why he doesn’t pull away when Tarn kisses him. It’s a bad idea, but he’s full of them. He’ll regret it later—but not worrying about later is the whole point.
Tarn kisses him again. If it’s clumsy, it’s earnest. There’s something perversely charming in a mech of Tarn’s age and size not knowing what to do with his mouth. Starscream lets out a sound that'd embarrass him at any other time, rolls his hips into Tarn’s grip, and relishes the rush of pleasure that washes everything away.
Hands that have wrung the life from more people than Starscream can count push his thighs farther apart. Tarn’s fingers settle between Starscream’s legs, and Starscream’s spike pressurizes into his grip. Tarn gives it a pump. Starscream makes a half-glitched sound against Tarn’s mouth. His fans speed. Tarn squeezes the base of his spike, fingertips glossy with his own lubricant. Starscream leans in, loses his balance, and falls against Tarn’s front.
Tarn takes it for enthusiasm. Starscream can’t say he’s wrong.
“Wreck me,” Starscream gasps, against the crook of Tarn’s neck. Tarn shivers all over but keeps being gentle. A single finger pushes into Starscream’s valve, thick as three of his own. Starscream clamps down on it as sluggish pleasure radiates. “Come on, h-harder. Make me feel it. Do I… Do I have to tell you more war stories? Megatron was never soft. He always knew what he wanted. One time in Polyhex he didn’t even say anything, just ordered everyone else out of the room and bent me over a table—”
Tarn’s fans click higher. Starscream's sure he has him, but Tarn’s still not pushing. All Starscream has to do is keep talking until Tarn loses control and he’s back on familiar ground. He knows how this goes. He’s danced this dance a hundred million times. Starscream hardly understands the words coming out of his own mouth, but Tarn must; his plating heats.
Tarn grips Starscream by the hips, hoists him into the air and pins him to the wall. Starscream gasps at the impact. His displays bloom white static. When Tarn pushes two thick fingers up Starscream’s valve, Starscream groans and clings to him. The burn edges on pain. He’s hot and slick, dizzy and aching. His fans roar. The bunker fuel makes everything hard to hold on to. Sensation comes too fast to process and his HUD seethes with error messages he hasn’t seen in decavorns. He never wants to think again.
Tarn’s fingers withdraw. Starscream whimpers. His vocalizer glitches halfway through and turns it into a clicking hiss. Tarn grips Starscream’s thighs and the blunt tip of his spike nudges Starscream’s valve.
Tarn seats himself in Starscream with one brutal thrust. It knocks the breath out of him, no finesse, as if Tarn’s never done this before. Maybe he hasn’t. Finding someone who’ll put up with Tarn’s personality defects is a tall order. Starscream moans, pleading in Vosian. It burns in the best way, too much, too fast. His valve clenches. Then Tarn moves. All thoughts flee Starscream’s head.
Starscream doesn’t know how he got here. He doesn’t know anything, except that he’s burning from the inside as he clings to the bigger frame that traps him against the wall. Blunt fingers bend his ailerons. Pain mixes with pleasure. He hangs on as another body rocks against his, valve stretched almost beyond bearing, charge crackling under his plating like dry lightning. For a second he’s at the arena in Kaon, then the Nemesis, then a room full of dead frames, statues, and an executioner. None of it feels real. His body runs on autopilot. He’s not sure he exists.
Starscream tucks his face against tank treads, panting. His ventilation system isn't working right. His fans whine. A hand as big as his head fists his spike. Starscream’s cockpit scrapes a broad, flat chest and he lets out a ragged cry. He tries to beg—for what, he doesn’t know—but what comes out is glitchy nonsense: not Vosian, not Neocybex, not language at all.
Starscream drives himself onto that spike as much as he’s able. Every thrust sends blinding pleasure up his backstrut; each aches in his spark chamber in a way it shouldn’t. He nearly sobs. His hips grind downward ruthlessly. The frame wrapped around his slams into him harder. He’s so close, so close—
“Megatron!” Starscream gasps.
Tarn convulses in overload. He drags Starscream down with him, all crackling charge on oversensitized plating as he pumps deep into Starscream’s body. Hot fluid smears his thighs. Starscream shudders as he comes, his mind full of blissful, hissing silence.