Archive of Our Own ^beta

Time loses itself when it has no space to anchor to, a stone spinning wildly in an empty room, and the mind stays with the body that will not walk. They knew these things, had felt them over the years as they weighed on minds and bodies and sparks, but when they encountered each other again for the first time, for the last, the tally marks appeared anyway, strips ploughed into tender plating. It had been so long.

Starscream was a mech walking in two worlds.

In one, he stood in the brittle shadow of an Omega Guardian. The great brute must have looked majestic at some point in the past, he assumed, but the trauma of being drawn into a monster-swallowing black hole had crumpled his heavy plating and shattered his crystal visor. Fluid sticky and dark purple, practically black except for the oily sheen, hung in static drops from the cracks in its armor, energon millions of years overripe and eating through the body that had so carefully contained it all that time. A couple more centuries in antespace and the whole thing would have crumbled, probably, brought down by its own grandiosity.

In the other, there was a little blob of sunlight that had apparently convinced himself he was a mech, walking at Starscream’s side through the dark and winding tunnels of Cybertron’s lower layers. There was probably an equal amount of decay here, he’d assume, sheet plating that had warped after spending so many years holding up the weight of an entire planet, stacked layers of metal likely full of life and other unpleasant things. Fortunately, Bumblebee’s headlights only illuminated things up to about Starscream’s waist, just enough to be able to watch out for danger on behalf of the corporeal among them without reminding Starscream too strongly of their increasing distance from the sky.

“Do you remember when we first met?” he asked, because, as it turned out, being a scout was boring when nothing worth scouting bothered to present itself. Despite their lack of caution, lights on full blast and no attempt made to hide the sound of Bumblebee’s steps, nothing had come skittering out of the dark to latch onto a fuel line the entire time they’d been down here.

“Maybe,” Bumblebee said. His voice was similarly removed from the present situation; lost in his own thoughts, likely, the way he’d been throughout this journey. “Was it before or after you took down the Senate?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, though it did. It was the difference between ‘murdering’ and ‘avenging,’ betrayal and sacrifice, all those big words the Autobots continued to insist had merit centuries after their war had ended. “Just wondering what you thought of me at the time.”

“Is this leading to a ‘did you ever imagine you’d end up in this scenario’ sort of question?”

Starscream could hear the playful smirk in Bumblebee’s voice, the invitation to play in a park known only to the two of them. Beside the Omega Guardian, he pressed his knuckles to his lips and allowed his frame to relax for a moment with this feeling: his fans running slow, healthy, shallow, almost like the pressing cold was another body, wrapped up beside him.

In Cybertron’s depths, he kept his backstrut straight, eyes pointed forward.

“Of course not,” he said. “I don’t intend to be boring, and what’s more pedantic than a question we both know the answer to?”

Bumblebee held out his hand again and forced himself not to take it personally when the armor-plated van now recoiled from his touch.

“Don’t you want to see the surface?” he asked.

He only needed a glance at Starscream in his peripherals to know that his optics were rolling. That, too, he knew not to take personally. He tried again, his hand open in honest offer.

“There’s a new world that’s been built while you’ve been hiding down here, forced to watch without taking part. You can tell yourself that you’re doing what needs to be done, staying down here, out of the light, but don’t your hands feel empty? Don’t you think it’s time you started building something of your own?”

Windblade was rubbing her optics in a way Starscream was immediately familiar with, but hadn’t seen aimed at anything related to him in far, far too long.

“That’s the best we’ve been able to do,” she said. “Reports suggest that we’re probably on the right track—same energy signature, logical timeframe for the displacement, expected location—but there’s no way to confirm whether it’s the Enigma until someone gets down there and retrieves it.”

Datapads and charts, arranged by subject and author, had been spread on the desk in front of her, disconnected from the planetary network to prevent a lucky hacker from stumbling across the First Delegate's secret pet project. Starscream had already been through almost all of the material, but he scanned over the array of titles in case anything new had been added to the search.

“How far down is it?” Bumblebee asked, picking up one of the datapads himself. Another, one that bore the mark of the lab Functionist Wheeljack was employed at, had gotten Starscream’s attention: most recent revision was from the day just prior. Without needing to be prompted, Bumblebee set down the one he’d been looking at and reached over, scrolling through at Starscream’s usual reading pace. A stilled hand would get him to pause and give Starscream time to observe a chart or diagram, while a quick wave could make him start again, all the while focused on his conversation with Windblade.

“Two layers down, too far for our drone signal to reach,” Windblade said. “And it looks like the neo-Functionist community is almost directly over the top of it.”

“Literally, or…”

“Literally.” Starscream recognized that tone; he glanced up, smirked at the exasperation, then back down to realize Bumblebee had continued scrolling along. He hurried to get caught up.

“We don’t know if they even realize what they’re sitting on,” she went on, “and they’re doing everything in their power to hide from our sensors. We don’t know how many there are, what their fighting power looks like, or even what they’re doing down there.”

“Reminds me of Norog XI; were you there for that one?” Starscream asked, this time without looking up.

Bumblebee shook his head. Shame. A waste of a campaign and arguably the reason Dreadwing was never made a lieutenant, but the stories to have come out of it were just the right shade of hopeless to be funny.

“Do we think they’re armed?” Bumblebee asked.

“We don’t know,” Windblade repeated. “I think they have something, after the two drones that came back with blunt force trauma, but the one we lost seems to have been put into manual shutdown, not an actual attack. If they have guns, they haven’t pulled them out yet.”

Starscream looked up, catching Bumblebee’s gaze.

“They have to be holding out,” he said. “They’re living inside a planet whose inhabitants were nearly ready to blow themselves up to get rid of the original Functionists. You can’t maintain order in conditions like that unless you know you have a way to defend yourself.” Years ago, he would have been talking about the Decepticons, but now his thoughts strayed to more recent, relevant examples of his claim: the Galactic Council members who had holed up in the dining hall for a week to avoid the bill regarding planetary maintenance, or even the several human coups that had taken place following the election of Australia’s first mechanical Prime Minister. When intelligent creatures felt that society had failed them, the first instinct was to congregate, and the second was to fight back. Just because they hadn’t reached the second stage yet didn’t mean they weren’t preparing for it.

“Starscream thinks the fact that they’ve survived this long means they probably have something,” Bumblebee translated; he never got it quite right, but Starscream had learned by now exactly how to word his thoughts to get across the relevant details.

“I’ve been hopeful that their longevity was due to some sort of non-violence, but if we’re really putting lives on the line for this mission, then we probably need to need to lean toward the cautious and assume as much,” Windblade admitted.

Starscream always liked the moments when he could get these two, specifically, to listen to him, but the good feeling was short-lived.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that,” Bumblebee said.

Starscream immediately knew what, and he turned on the grounder.

“Don’t you dare,” he growled, baring denta with no bite.

“Mm-hm?” Windblade hummed.

“We don’t need a lot of people for this mission,” Bumblebee said, his tone alone enough to draw her attention. His optics were set in that way that Starscream had come to despise over the years, a look so clearly stolen from Optimus Prime that he imagined even the Galactic Council must have noticed it. “Really just two, if we’re being generous: one to grab the Enigma, and another to watch his back while he’s doing it.”

The look Windblade returned, of course, was equally infuriating: understanding in a way Bumblebee hardly deserved for such a ludicrous idea.

“Stop it!” Starscream snapped at her, a habit evolved from long meetings spent critiquing other Councilors’ public speaking abilities.

“And if something happened to you, that’s all Starscream would be able to do,” she said, like all Bumblebee needed was a reminder, like the annoying, stubborn little bug wasn't already set in his decision. “We wouldn’t be able to help you if anything went wrong.” Like the seed of the idea hadn’t buried itself deep within his processor. Starscream knew this body language, had seen the little bot take it up whenever he’d convinced himself that something was Right or Good, and knew that no amount of actual logic would be able to break him free of this whim.

“And you would leave me here, alone, until someone else found the ball bearings to go in after you,” Starscream reminded him, jabbing at his own chest plates. In infraspace, he grabbed for the nearest object (a lump of charred metal that might have once been someone’s T-cog) and hurled it at a wall, resulting in a harsh clang that matched the tenor of his frustration.

Obviously, and yet unfortunately, neither Bumblebee nor Windblade heard the supplementary punctuation, the latter unaware that an argument had even been raised.

“I know I don’t need to remind you that I was once one of the most important scouts in all of the Autobot army,” he said, “and that since then, I’ve survived three separate terrorist attacks on the Galactic Council, and took that sabbatical to help out with the democratic Ixn uprising. I’m more than prepared to take care of myself.” His optics met Starscream’s, a satisfied look there confirming what they already both knew: he was getting his way.

“Besides,” he said, “we all know I’m at my best when I have someone else to be fighting for.”

The sound of debris crunching underfoot was all the warning they got before two blades and a blaster were all pointed at Bumblebee’s face, his attackers ghoulish against the harsh shadows of his headlights.

“Scrap.”

Bumblebee had spent enough time on alien worlds to see a wide variety of haunting night skies, but the fact that one could see the stars move across Functionist Cybertron was a revelation that still had not entirely settled with him. The planet’s violent birth into the universe had left it hurtling through the galaxy, but once measures had been installed to make sure it didn’t go bumping into anything on the way, it was left to go on its course, giving its inhabitants the unique privilege of a regularly changing night sky.

Bumblebee let his gaze travel with the heavens for a moment before it dropped back down to Starscream, still seated beside him.

“We should talk,” Bumblebee said, “about this.” He motioned between them. “If getting you back is going to change things.”

The look he got back was briefly confused, before it hardened into something nastier.

“Of course, it will,” Starscream said. “That’s why we’re out here, isn’t it? To ‘change things?’”

Bumblebee swallowed down a grimace of his own. He thought it would be obvious what he was referring to, but it was always difficult to tell with Starscream whether he avoided the topic intentionally or was that obtuse.

“I mean us specifically,” he said, “like…”

But that was the problem: he didn’t know the words to describe what he meant. He could picture the two of them in his processor, side by side almost like they were now, but any attempt to translate that to something that could be communicated was thwarted. All along this road, starting before Unicron, before Shockwave, there had been signs and suggestions pointing to a Something Else growing between them, and yet so much had stayed the same that he still did not know exactly what he was supposed to call it.

To illustrate the point that he could not make with words, he reached across the space between them, mimicking what it would be to lace their fingers together. Starscream’s hand tensed, and then jerked back; their optics were wide when they met each other. Bumblebee looked away, staring down at the smooth metal ground.

“Sorry,” he said.

Starscream reset his vocalizer, another function Bumblebee assumed was only made necessary out of old habit.

They needed to talk about this: about things said, not said, and done, usually all at the same time.

The purity of moment: it gave them something to hold onto in that place without time, a changeless space where the afterthought became the self and the self immortal.

They could fall there and it was not like the falling they’d both known, when the ground was still there but was not ground and the world shrunk back from the most delicate touch, the harshest observance, the meandering loop of a logic processor misplaced. They fell into each other, out of, back. No time passed.

No moments wasted.

Cybertron was not a dry planet, relatively speaking. Structures referred to as energon “wells” generally comprised mostly of fuel in its solid, crystalline state, the liquid contained to pockets where unusual heat or pressure had broken it down to its more volatile form. The next most common fluid was the acidic byproduct of rancid energon, which mixed with the various metals of the planet to produce every other naturally occurring liquid.

All of which was to say, there was no reason for the tunnels to feel this damp. Bumblebee could feel the humidity working its way into his seams, bringing up a memory file that had gone untouched for some time.

“Hey, remember Unicron?” he asked.

The look he received was sharp enough to sever a spark cable without a mech ever noticing.

“Specifically,” he went on, “I mean, do you remember when we first arrived on Earth, and you immediately started complaining about the humidity?” He waved his hands around the space, as much as he was able to: the hallways were becoming more cramped, and he knew that soon they would have to go single file if Starscream wanted to avoid clipping through the wall. “That’s what it feels like right now.”

He’d expected a laugh, maybe the familiar chuckle that accompanied their usual fond reminiscing. When that didn’t come, he knew immediately to look up, but was not fast enough to catch more than a flash of Starscream’s expression before he had turned away, facing the wall. It was one of the more annoying habits that Starscream had picked up as they’d gotten to know each other: once Bumblebee had learned to see through his masks and obfuscations, he’d taken to simply avoiding being seen if there was something he needed to hide.

“Starscream?” Bumblebee stopped walking, stepping out of the way of a loosened pipe that was dripping more wetness into a puddle on the floor. Time was not a resource they were in excess of, but he’d learned how to portion out bits of it to check in on his unpredictable companion.

The flier finally turned to him fully, and Bumblebee realized where he’d seen this body language before.

“Oh.” The memories resurfaced, sludgy like energon from a neglected pipe. “I said that, didn’t I?”

“And then stood by as… yes,” Starscream said. His vocalizer clicked, and he shook his head.

Bumblebee stepped in closer, looking up to try to catch Starscream’s expression. Personal space had taken on a different meaning between them after all this time, and what most friendships would have expressed with a gentle touch or brief squeeze around the shoulder, they reproduced with moments like this: getting close enough to see the minute changes in body language, show their own efforts to understand the unsaid.

He saw the pinching tension that formed around Starscream’s optics, always the clearest indication that he was trying to hide the extent to which something affected him. The armor on his shoulders was also flaring, automatic processes shielding his inner joints even as he desperately tried to control and relax the delicate mechanisms.

“I should have said something,” Bumblebee said. It was something he’d thought before but had never thought needed saying. “It doesn’t matter that Arcee is my friend, we were all stressed and the fact that you were expressing it didn’t give her a right to hit you.”

“And I’m sure that’s exactly how you were thinking about it at the time,” Starscream snapped, grasping for the sarcasm that acted as his defense ever since his null rays had been rendered void. “The psychological effects of the apocalypse and the rights of mecha to express them, you were just too afraid to bring the point up, right? Certainly, you weren’t standing there, agreeing with everyone else that Starscream just needed to shut up?”

Bumblebee backed off. It wasn’t something they had formally discussed, but by this point he knew: those words were a condensed way for Starscream to demand space, time, or some combination of the two. They were a reminder that, though years together had brought them to the point of mutual support, there were still many aspects of their past that remained unmentioned. Each had his own, long list of conversations that needed to happen at some point, and it occurred to Bumblebee that beyond the running timer of their current mission, aspects of their longer journey were counting down toward a moment of irreversible change.

“I was wrong,” he said, a desperate attempt to fix that damage before it could further erode the foundations of the future they’d been trying to construct.

Starscream, a shell of hurt, of armor built up over unhealed wounds, shook his head.

“Were you?” he asked.

“Yes!” Bumblebee insisted.

There was a sound of something crunching underfoot, and then both mechs jumped as two wicked blades pierced through Starscream’s cockpit and stopped just short of Bumblebee’s optics. He heard a soft click and felt the nudge of a gun against the back of his helm.

“Scrap,” he muttered.

The shuttle was able to drop them off in Protihex, but after that they would have to travel the rest of their way on their own, to maintain the secrecy of their mission. Bumblebee promised it to be a fun road trip, a quick break from the constant workload they endured while at the Council. Starscream surrendered to the lack of other options and took off, transforming midair to start flying in lazy circles around the slow car.

One of his greatest frustrations of being trapped in infraspace, and the only one he could not commiserate over with Bumblebee, was the way it entirely diluted the experience of flying.

In life, Starscream had never been the most impressive jet. He’d been able to lead well enough to become commander of Megatron’s aerial forces, but at an individual level, he simply didn’t have the means to stand out among the other Decepticon Seekers. Even Skywarp and Thundercracker, a couple of nobodies he’d convinced to borrow his own face, had outlier abilities that could have allowed them to outmaneuver him with little effort, had they ever had the drive to attempt it.

That hadn’t made flying any less enjoyable to him. There was really nothing like it, no other activity he knew of that engaged and coordinated his systems so perfectly. Using his thrusters to maintain momentum while his ailerons adjusted for altitude and windspeed, the constant alertness for changing air currents and other hazards: everything came together, a synchronicity of being that converged at his spark, spinning so fast its chamber might have sung.

Infraspace took that away. He could still go through the process of engaging his transformation cog, powering up his thrusters, snaking his way through the airflow, but none of it was necessary anymore. His sense of self in antespace (because to call it a body at all was incorrect) was not beholden to the laws of physics. The only requirement to being in a certain place was to wish it, and then he was there. It wasn’t even like Skywarp’s freakish ability; at least that involved math, some effort put in to ensure he didn’t get trapped halfway through a wall again.

He’d figured out, over time and observation, that even a straightforward action like walking was, in reality, a series of such desires spaced and framed appropriately to mimic the movement as he had performed it in life: he’d taken a recording of himself and slowed down the playback, able to pick out the frames of his own momentum while the universe continued to move naturally around him.

Within infraspace itself, the experience was only marginally better. The atmosphere was odd, being a mixture of several incompatible planets as well as the void of space, but there was a pocket of air about halfway to the space’s upper limits that seemed to have come from Cybertron and could provide a lower density version of the drag he was used to. Of course, he could only go in one direction for so long before some overwhelming force started pushing him back again, which meant lots of going in circles, winding around and over the same obstacles, no variety to differentiate one day’s flight from the next.

It had been several centuries since he’d last experienced true flight, that final, one-way mission to Unicron, and he could feel the ache for it in every nonexistent wire of his photonic body. It gave him a distraction, a reminder of why they were doing this as he doubled back again to let Bumblebee catch up.

Even without the physical changes imparted by the restrictions inherent to infraspace, Functionist Cybertronian airspace was still a foreign place to Starscream. The Cybertronian city-states were still standing, their skylines ever present on the horizons, and the major roadways were predictably congested with grounders and mass transports for those with non-vehicular alt-modes. The skies, though, were empty, and unlike every other space on Functionist Cybertron, most of the mecha Starscream saw up here were people he already knew. They tended to be surviving Decepticons or neutrals, individuals for whom the insult of living on an organic world was too much to pile on top of the recent destruction of their home, and even a few Autobots had been drawn to the promise of smooth metal landing strips and decent energon. Functionist natives, though, were a rarity, and those few he did encounter tended to stay away from the major roadways.

Starscream knew why. The thought haunted him, and he dove low, close enough to almost skate across Bumblebee’s roof, to distract himself.

Bumblebee flashed his lights, questioning if Starscream needed to stop. There had been many efforts to establish a working comm line between infra- and antespace, culminating with a secret mission to launch a specialized communication device into Earth’s black hole, but they had all ended with disappointment. In absence of that, they had developed their own ways to communicate with each other, and while not always the most efficient, it was better than what they’d had when their roles were reversed.

Starscream touched down further along the road, giving Bumblebee time to slow down and pull over. Like all flight maneuvers, the process of putting down landing gear and raising his ailerons was entirely unnecessary, but he went through it anyway.

Bumblebee rolled to a stop and hopped up into his root mode. Even after all these years, there were still moments when Starscream expected to see him pull a cane out of his subspace, but he’d finally gotten to the point where he didn’t have to remark on it every time the thought cropped up.

“All good?” Bumblebee asked, moving away from the road to avoid the attention of other motorists. Most mecha left Bumblebee alone, but neither was very fond of well-intentioned, overly curious busybodies interrupting their conversations.

“Of course,” Starscream sniffed, crossing his arms. One of the benefits of infraspace, at least: very little opportunity for his state of being to move beyond the equilibrium.

Bumblebee looked around them, then pointed out, further still from the main road.

“Want to walk for a while? Looks like there’s a trail over that way.”

Starscream the First, former Ruler of Cybertron, did not sag in relief, but some of the tension in his infraspace wings released as he coasted through the dreadfully familiar airspace. His projection for Bumblebee simply shrugged.

“Whatever you’d like,” he said, turning to lead the way.

Infraspace took, and

Bumblebee forgot                           Starscream forgot
missing space                           presence        
                secret glances                           overwhelming sensitivity
           the falling                           the grind of heels
a hole of longing                           spinning sparks  
                  songs without notes                           dropping temperature of sunset
skidding through space                           smell of organics          
         silent shouting                           heavysparked whims
the empty world                           motion              
                       sifting                           memories left behind
memories like houses                           nonsilence                 
     a sea of shattered glass                           the impossibility of escape
nothing instead of hunger                           the touch of the world      
being alone                           being alone

But their minds, combined under
a bulging red eyed gaze,
remembered.

Years spent drafting bills, sitting in council chambers, and meeting with dignitaries over subsidized lunch had clearly taken their toll on Bumblebee’s scouting prowess: the neo-Functionists had been aware of his approach before he’d even started to descend.

Now, he was just trying to remember everything he knew about maintaining composure while one stranger held a blade to his throat, another a blaster to his back, and Starscream provided a running commentary on the proceedings.

“The motorcycle’s long gone now; probably going to make it back to the compound with enough time to send back reinforcements. If you weren’t so high-profile, they might not have assumed you needed any, but they said your name earlier, so we know that somehow news about you got down here. They must have contacts up on the surface—Windblade should have investigated that more before she let you come out here. Really, just a few more weeks of scouting and I’m sure she would have caught someone trying to sneak down here without attracting suspicion.”

Both of them knew why that wouldn’t be an option, and Bumblebee knew the only reason he’d brought it up was to take another crack at their argument while he knew Bumblebee wouldn’t be able to disagree. He glared nonetheless, hopeful that his captors would assume the ire was directed at them.

The one holding the blade growled and briefly dug the weapon harder against the back of Bumblebee’s intake, the edge of it just gracing the thick cable connecting brain module to spark.

Bumblebee was pretty sure it was an empty threat. He’d had four million years to acclimate himself to war, and especially to its practice, but there was something about that particular method of offlining a mech that most found distasteful. Certainly, there were plenty among both sides (though he suspected it might be more prominent among the Decepticons) who could sever that sacred connection without hesitation, without stopping to think about what it meant for a processor to be separated from a spark, but that sort of coldness took time to cultivate.

The neo-Functionists who had dug themselves down into the underlayers of their planet following The Business with the Lost Light, as most events surrounding Rodimus’ quest had come to be known, had not experienced violence to such an immeasurable degree. They had known death, of course, but there had always been a distance between themselves and the victims, had never experienced the moment of visceral connection between the killing and the dying, so intense as to be almost like the twin opposite of a hardline. Or, as Starscream was putting it—

“—hand is shaking, he’s never held a blaster before in his life. Or, if he has, it was with a terrible teacher. Can’t imagine they get much opportunity for practice down here, unless the entire commune or whatever is happy to listen to the echoes of blaster fire all the way down the tunnel. Assuming you could make a move before he had time to remember where the trigger is, I know you have the protocols to get his feet out from under him while also getting out of the way of number two’s blade.”

Bumblebee just allowed himself to be guided down the tunnel, his captors getting him fully turned around as they ducked into side tunnels he hadn’t even seen buried in the shadows. Starscream continued to come up with potential escape routes, but it was clear that he was becoming more frustrated as Bumblebee continued to refuse to enact them.

“—and pull it, that whole overhang will come down. If you roll away at the same time, you’ll be out and away before they’ve even managed to find their own—”

“—won’t even expect it. What idiot would be dumb enough to make a grab for a weapon he can’t even see? You can just reach behind you, and I’ll—”

“—but forget that. Why not ask them to let you go? That’s just as likely to work as anything else you’ve tried so far.”

Bumblebee flashed his headlights.

It was a risky move, as was immediately illustrated by a shove from the gun at his back, while the mech in front leaned close and snarled.

“No funny ideas,” he said, the strangely low tone of his voice offset by an odd clicking in his vocalizer. Bumblebee suspected a botched self-mod, something that should have been easily repairable. “One more thing I don’t like, I have permission to bring you down, got it?”

Bumblebee nodded once, sharp, allowing some real fear of the weapons being pointed at him to appear in his expression. A gun in the hand of someone with no intention to use it had the potential to be even more dangerous than the reverse, given the proper circumstances.

His captor gave Bumblebee one more nasty look before he turned and started them moving again. Once he was certain that neither of them was watching, Bumblebee allowed himself to glance to the side.

Starscream had followed along, and his wings, harshly erect behind him, called out the anxiety he was feeling over the entire situation. He wasn’t making any further attempts to dictate Bumblebee’s moves, though, which meant he’d gotten the message.

“I think we’re not far from their base now,” he said. “I’ll scout ahead, see if there’s… anything useful, I guess.”

The most Bumblebee could do to answer was look forward, in the direction they’d been heading for some time now. The sound of Starscream’s t-cog activating made him immediately regret that choice, but Starscream was already piloting straight through the snag of debris by the time he’d risked another glance over.

Starscream leaned in close to Councilor Bey’lasell of Orimort, staring into xeir sixth eye. The Orimorins were famously good at lying, gambling, and selling overpriced junk, due to reportedly possessing no facial muscles whatsoever. What other species had never bothered to realize, and what Starscream had picked up within the first week of Bumblebee’s term, was that the iris of the tiny sixth eye lodged in their foreheads was wonderfully receptive to every fabrication and avoidance to come out of their impressively large mouths.

“Xe’s an idiot,” Starscream reported. “If this is the best Orimort has to send, it’s no surprise the Gerps managed to buy up half their planet without their government even noticing.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Bumblebee said, doing his job and politely nodding along to the Councilor’s story. “But, on the subject of trade deals—”

Bey’lasell seemed to be excited simply to have something listening to xem and immediately launched into xeir long, meandering ideas for new trade routes between their planets. Starscream watched the sixth eye all along, noting the same pattern of fluctuations that had taken place the last time xe went through this explanation.

“Lying about almost all of it,” Starscream said. “Orimort does need new trading partners, but you can ignore everything about wanting a Cybertronian alliance specifically. My guess is they’re desperate: they’ll take anyone or anything, and xe happens to know that you’re equally desperate for good relations. I won’t be surprised if their economy crumbles in a few years and takes down a few weak links with it.”

“I understand,” Bumblebee said, nodding along to the new story the representative had just started weaving. “I’m sorry to have to wrap this up, but I’m getting a comm right now—yes, I’m sorry, they labeled it urgent, so I’m not allowed to dismiss it—yes, terrible programming, I know.” He stood while Bey’lasell continued to talk at him, not stopping as Bumblebee made his way to the door. “I’ll speak to my colleagues and get back to you soon, does that sound alright? Great, okay, see you.” He wasn’t sure if the speaking had stopped even after he’d closed the door, so he quickly made his way down the hall to his own office, not pausing until he’d locked the door behind him.

“Okay,” he said as Starscream stepped through the wall at his side. “So, that was a bust. Good to know.”

“I expect you’ll have a draft of the agreement prepared for the next time you meet,” Starscream said, smirking as Bumblebee whirled on him.

“Excuse me?” the little Councilor demanded. “Weren’t you just saying it would be disastrous for the Earth-Cybertronian economy? Why would I ruin my reputation like that?”

“One,” Starscream said, counting on his fingers, “I said it would be a problem for minor economies. Earth’s not great, but we’ve got enough of our old partnerships intact that we would be able to weather the inevitable recession. Windblade would just have to find some way to convince her constituents to go without high-grade for a few months, not your problem. And two,” he leaned down at the waist, meeting Bumblebee’s wide, confused optics, “it’s not ruining if we’re just maintaining the reputation you already have.”

Bumblebee’s optics narrowed, and his whole frame tensed. For a moment, it looked like he might lash out at Starscream, but then he turned his back and stalked over to his desk.

“Frag you.” He dropped into his chair and leaned forward on one elbow, posture defeated like they were already half an hour into a five minute meeting.

Starscream stood by the door, simultaneously smug and not sure what was being expected of him. Bumblebee waved toward the chair across from him.

“Well? I’m tired of guessing whether or not you’re trying to overthrow me. If you’ve really got an idea, then get over here and lay it out for me so we can at least be on the same page when you rise from the dead and seize control.”

Starscream grinned, and in his excitement accidentally forgot to walk over to the desk: one moment he was by the door, and the next he was sitting across from Bumblebee, hands already raised like he was mid-explanation. He saw Bumblebee jump a little, and the sudden change in perspective was a bit of a surprise for him, also, but since he’d already started, he saw no reason to interrupt himself with transient things like formalities. He went ahead.

“Bumblebee, you have a reputation.”

“Not a great one, if the rumors are to be believed,” Bumblebee said, trying for a wry smile.

Starscream ignored it, more intent on the point he was actually trying to make.

“You’re not very good at seeing the big picture. You get distracted in the details, in figuring out what’s going on with that one enemy soldier who’s got a sad glint in his optics, so you don’t notice the whole army coming to back him up. Does that sound right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “We’re going to work with that. It’s going to raise some suspicions if plucky little Bumblebee—” (“Plucky?”) “—is suddenly able to see when he’s getting a slagged deal. But, if we spin this right, we can keep ourselves one step ahead of all the con artists inevitably going to come after you.”

Bumblebee looked like he was having some trouble fully processing all of this. Starscream wasn’t surprised.

“That sounds kind of nefarious,” he said, and oh, Bumblebee didn’t know the things he could do to a mech’s spark, “more like something, you know, you’d do. I’m not sure if I’m up to it.”

“You just have to follow my instructions,” Starscream said, “and the first ones are very easy: just do what you would if I weren’t in the room with you.”

“I’m still not sure I would go for the deal, xe rubbed me the wrong way.”

“Then imagine a worse version of you,” Starscream said. “Imagine a new Councilor, anxious, desperate to find allies, terrified of making more mistakes. Imagine him open, vulnerable, available to the very vilest of politicians to come from between the plating to get at him.”

Bumblebee’s brows furrowed.

“Hang on—are you saying I use myself as bait?”

Starscream bit back a grin.

“Not quite,” he said, but this was a good development. Bumblebee was starting to think the way he would need to survive in this world. “We’re creating a persona for you, one that will give you the greatest possible advantage for having someone like me on your side.”

“A secret agent?”

Starscream shrugged. Not the worst title he’d ever taken.

“That, rolled up with the greatest political mind Cybertron had ever encountered,” he said. “We’re starting you off small, so no one knows I’m here. By the time the big guys roll in and start trying to take a piece out for themselves, we’ll be tying them in knots around their own failed strategies.”

“That sounds pretty ambitious,” Bumblebee said, but he was leaning back in his chair, the same grin on his face that he’d been wearing the evening he’d invited Starscream along on this ridiculous opportunity.

“The two greatest rulers Cybertron’s ever had?” Starscream said, in a unique moment of fondness. “I think we’ve earned the right.”

“Sorry,” Bumblebee said.

He saw Starscream glance down, at the place their hands had almost met. Though, that wasn’t exactly what had happened: there could be no ‘almost’ between them when the distance was so immeasurable, broken through with endless void and shattered fragments of space itself, a gap that could only be realized by the way Starscream’s hand had been yanked through his own, the untangling of their fingers imperceptible.

“I’ve given it some thought, and it should remain possible for me to remain as your political advisor, provided we take a few necessary steps.”

Bumblebee glanced over at Starscream. He knew this tone of voice. It was one he’d come to rely on after all these years, a signal that Starscream had a grasp on the situation and had come up with what he saw as a competent solution. As a rule, Bumblebee didn’t generally agree to this first draft of a plan, but the solid base gave them something to work with, instead of wandering through a mess of possibility and risk.

“The first step will be mollifying Windblade. She might be soft-sparked enough to have allowed you to lead this mission, but that doesn’t mean she’ll just let me back into politics. I can give you some pointers for that, but most of the wording will have to come from you, otherwise she’ll hear my influence and not go along with any of it. After that, forging a new identity for me should be simple. I’ve drafted a few names and backstories to pick from, depending on how my new role will be most useful.”

With the decision they were about to make, though, Bumblebee felt like a little more collaboration was in order.

“What if—”

“Installing me as your new assistant shouldn’t be an issue either, though that will again depend on what we decide me new function should be.”

“—you stayed—”

“The other Councilors will likely have questions, since you’ve been so steadfast in your position not to take on extra help in the past, and there will likely be suspicion from Cybertronians who won’t have heard of me before.”

“—Starscream?”

His name got his attention. It always had.

“I can’t,” he said mildly, maintaining the same untroubled expression. “Everyone who knows that name either wants me dead, or in a cage. Even if they don’t know it, they have both right now, and that’s the only reason we’ve been able to do any of this.”

Bumblebee didn’t know exactly what ‘this’ meant. It could have been the progress they’d made restructuring the appearance of Cybertronian society in the eyes of the Galactic community, or their current project, seeking to free a convicted criminal from the one cell that could have possibly held him in.

Or maybe it was the partnership itself: moral compass of the Autobots collaborating with one of the most infamous, ruthless egomaniacs of the Decepticon army, working together and learning about each other and watching each other’s backs…

“Not everyone,” Bumblebee said, laying a hand over his chassis.

Starscream’s smile was fond and sad all at once. Bumblebee once more wanted to reach for him, but he held himself back.

“Even if you were influential enough to change what other Cybertronians thought of me, the Galactic Council will never allow me to enter its solar system,” he said. “My influence would be rendered null, and you would eventually become useless without my help. We would be a couple stalled ships, floating out in the expanse, and what would be the point of us then?”

Bumblebee glanced down, ignoring the insult. Starscream was trying to make a bigger point, the kind of thing he couldn’t do without tossing in something derogatory to act as a buffer. Bumblebee would bring it up later, but in the moment, there were more important points that needed his attention.

“This isn’t the kind of decision that just rests on what’s most useful to other people,” he said. A thought came to him, one that he couldn’t help laughing at even before he’d managed to fully vocalize it. “I absolutely can’t believe I’m telling you this, but you’re allowed to be selfish, Starscream.”

They were light, a wave: highs making lows, the differences between them the space where color could push through and life blossom, the updraft that carried both the wings and the burden to fall.

Once, they had tried to fit in the footsteps of giants, only to find that they overstepped, sprinted, tripped, kept going on hands and knees, a new set of tracks for the new age.

Now, they slid into each other: not a perfect fit, snug in a way that tilted the balance between comfort and suffocation. They held.

Starscream had spent enough time spying and exploring to be familiar with the feeling of being alone in antespace, but he still didn’t like it. Without Bumblebee’s headlights, there was no way for him to see in the darkness of the tunnels, so he was useless until he was literally inside the compound, with no concept of escape routes through the surrounding area.

More frustrating was the way his perception of antespace started to change in Bumblebee’s absence, in a way that he’d never been successful in putting into words. Everything seemed further away, but not physically, and colors started to turn inside out, overlapping while pulling away from each other at the same time. At this distance, luckily, the effects were only barely noticeable, just enough to give him a sense of how close Bumblebee was.

Once he got over the initial systems shock of arriving in an unfamiliar location, he immediately noted how dirty the compound was. It was more than just the general grime that came with too many mecha living in a confined space, though that was undoubtedly part of the problem: it looked as though they had made an effort to drag every part of their former lives down with them, garbage included. Plating broken off homes, shattered pieces of fine crystal cubes, melted chunks of old racing treads, furniture that had been used to the point of obsolescence, empty bottles, cracked screens of datapads, torn wirewoven mesh, and cogs and gears of every size filled the narrow walkway, piles that the living literally had to step over in order to get through. Starscream had nowhere to go as an approaching mech with no discernable kibble walked through him: he hated the sensation of overlapping with another living creature, but the thought of wading through garbage was even more humiliating, so he offlined his optics and froze in place until the stranger had lumbered past entirely.

As soon as it was over, he hurried forward, trying to find a more open space to explore and exploit, but there was none: narrow passages simply branched and twisted, corridors splitting off that would eventually lead into rooms never big enough for more than two of Starscream’s frametype. The little civilian frames he saw walking around were probably able to make better use of the space, but he still rarely saw many of them together at a time. They rushed by each other, spoke in low tones, avoided optic contact that took longer than the time required to acknowledge one another’s existence.

Even unseen, Starscream felt out of place. Bumblebee wouldn’t need an escape route once he got down here: as with the guards, quivering as though they were afraid of the weapons they themselves held, he would be plenty capable of getting himself out of this place, if only he chose to do it.

Starscream stood in the entryway of one of the rooms and watched mecha walk by infrequently. He knew that look in their optics, the vanishing sense of self that came with never knowing the difference between day and night. He was starting to feel it a little bit himself, after just a few hours underground and a quick wish away from the surface, but that was only because he’d lived with it once.

Megatron’s campaigns had taken them all over the cosmos, onto an abundance of unknown planets, and occasionally into them as well. Starscream had sat, huddled among the other Decepticons, waiting for word of their next move, for weeks at a time. He had stared up at the ceiling, dreaming of what the sky would look like when he next encountered it.

Now, he looked around, wondering how deep the hatred ran within these mecha that they would subject themselves to such an existence indefinitely.

Make no mistake, this was hatred, that which led these people to distance themselves from anything that truly made life worth living, to survive off of objects long since deemed useless and the occasional promise of violence. Starscream had known it under Megatron’s leadership, had festered in it and used it to drive himself up through the ranks. Megatron’s hatred was also Starscream’s, and it remained with him still, as much a part of who he was now as the useless wings attached to his back.

He leaned in close to them, and through the haze of off-right colors could see faces marred by the intensity of their vitriol. He knew, then, why Bumblebee would not fight back. He knew that it would be the wrong choice, but that it also would work, and that was what caused his spark to ache the harshest, reeling back, away from a creature whose expression mirrored his own.

“Don’t you want to see the surface? There’s a new world that’s been built while you’ve been hiding down here, forced to watch without taking part. You can tell yourself that you’re doing what needs to be done, staying down here, out of the light, but don’t your hands feel empty? Don’t you think it’s time you started building something of your own?”

Bumblebee didn’t spend much time alone these days. Between the Council and Starscream, almost every moment of his day involved other people, with the exception of the early morning. For whatever reason, Starscream never wanted to be around when Bumblebee was recharging. He doubted it was out of any concern for Bumblebee’s privacy, particularly because he, admittedly, hadn’t shown any such behavior when he was the one in infraspace. Starscream, predictably, avoided the subject whenever it was brought up, so Bumblebee could only assume he was getting up to something in the intervening hours.

Luckily, there was nothing he could do about it right then, and he allowed himself to online slowly, his systems booting online and revealing to him the expectedly empty berthroom. Representatives for the Galactic Council were granted surprisingly comfortable quarters, despite most not living there fulltime. Bumblebee guessed it was due to the fact that they had to be custom made for the individual species: his own included a berth with recharge cables, an energon dispenser, private washracks, and a computer terminal with multiple ports for direct connection. Everything was a little bit larger than he would have preferred, since the measurements they’d used hadn’t been based on a minibot, but for alien construction it wasn’t that bad.

Bumblebee got up and went through his usual morning routine, flicking on the energon dispenser while he retrieved the datapad he used for official communication. Originally, he’d wanted to use his personal channel to keep things simple, but when notifications started to get in the way of simple functioning he’d relented and switched to the system used by most other members of the Council.

The first messages to appear were the typical bulletins: general news about the Council, reminders for meetings he had scheduled later in the day, and a few updates from Windblade about the goings on back on Earth. He was about to start drafting a response when a new message appeared at the top of his inbox, from Prowl.

That gave Bumblebee pause. He heard from his former advisor very infrequently and knew where he was even less. As a result, the contents of these messages tended to be wildly unpredictable, ranging anywhere from a simple greeting to news of an interplanetary war taking place a few solar systems away.

The energon dispenser made a proud beep and Bumblebee picked up the fresh cube. He scrolled back up the list to Prowl’s waiting message; whatever it was, it was likely Prowl intended for it to be read promptly.

Bumblebee opened it up and let his optics scan over the words.

In his hand, the cube crumpled and dissipated, gushing warm energon over his fingers.

Megatron’s sentencing in two weeks. Official announcement to come later today.

“I absolutely can’t believe I’m telling you this, but you’re allowed to be selfish, Starscream.”

Moments like this were prime reminders of why Bumblebee could not have made it as a Councilor without Starscream’s help: when he was being sincere, he showed it with his entire body; you only had to experience it once to make any of his attempts at lying or manipulation appear dreadfully dull in comparison.

His optics lit up, his biolights shivered. His smile was so timidly hopeful, so sappily caring, that a lesser mech than Starscream would have had no choice but to reflect it back at him. And the way his systems jittered, fans hiccupping as he tried to hold his hope together against what he knew could be a tidal wave of disappointment: that was what always got Starscream in the end. If a mech was really willing to risk that much, put out so much hope into a universe that would always so gleefully crush it, what could Starscream do but join in?

“I’m being entirely selfish, Bumblebee,” he said, twisting his own expression into a smirk. “You think I would have put up with the Council and its endless, circular arguments if I hadn’t wanted to? I could’ve spent the last few centuries exploring the galaxy,” never mind that it would have been a very warped and unfamiliar galaxy. “I’m impressed by your confidence, I’ll admit. Convincing yourself that you were able to mold me into the type of mech who denigrates himself for the greater good is quite impressive, compared to where your self-esteem used to be, but you definitely don’t have to worry over whether I’m still considering my own self-interest.”

And there: the hopeful smile pulled into something a little harder, a little stronger. Not cruel, though Starscream knew for a fact Bumblebee was capable of such a look, but prepared to stand in the way of Starscream’s assault.

“You like working with me,” Bumblebee accused.

Starscream’s wings ruffled in amusement.

“Is that what I said? I don’t actually remember processing those particular words.”

“No, Starscream, no taking it back now. You had centuries all to yourself, and you chose to spend it with me.”

Starscream glanced away, over the barren landscape of an unfamiliar Cybertron. He idly wondered if another Bumblebee was out there somewhere, living an unfamiliar life. It was hard to picture.

“Wasn’t a choice,” he pointed out, but it didn’t have the same teasing bite as his words had before. He wasn’t sure what his purpose had been in saying it, besides correcting the logical fallacy Bumblebee’s processor was leading him down.

Bumblebee’s response was not immediate, which could have meant any number of things. Sometimes it meant Starscream had pushed him to a limit deemed unacceptable, which meant pulling in on himself the way he had as a ghost and refusing to acknowledge the jet in the room. It was a habit he’d managed to break around any other company, but with Starscream, their dynamic hadn’t actually changed that much from the days when their positions were reversed. Bumblebee was their voice to the outside world, now, which meant Starscream’s thoughts were getting forced through a filter, but the collaboration remained the same.

Other times, Bumblebee’s silence was because he was afraid he was the one about to cross that border, say something that shifted the careful balance they’d built between them, and it was that attempt at sensitivity that raised Starscream’s caution more than anything that could have followed it.

Bumblebee moved closer to him. At one point, he would have been able to sense the rise in temperature and disturbed air currents with his wings, but now he had to go by the movement in his peripherals to get a sense of it. Not liking having the one person who could see him too far out of sight, Starscream turned back to look at him. Their optics met.

“There’s always a choice,” Bumblebee said. So soft, so open. Starscream could have found any number of ways to take advantage of that, had them lined up in his processor.

He didn’t move.

“I would know better than anyone,” Bumblebee said.

“When I first arrived in infraspace, I thought I was stuck there. Then, I thought I was stuck with you,” Bumblebee said.

“But the truth is, I chose you,” Bumblebee said.

“There’s no doubt I’m always going to need help dealing with the Council. But, if you’ll let me have any say in my advisor, I’d like to keep choosing you. The real you.”

How many centuries had they let those words slip by, unspoken for fear of the multitudes they contained, out of the respect for the yet very real possibility that Starscream flee from them, take off into the night and never return? As it stood, his defunct survival protocols were queuing up, pinging his thrusters to engage while his wing sensors started gauging wind speed and atmospheric pressure: 0 mph, 0 lbs.

Starscream stared into those optics that could not lie. He’d made a choice earlier, and here Bumblebee was offering to let him choose again.

Frag it, he thought. If he could convince himself this wasn’t anything binding, that imagining himself without Bumblebee by his side was anything other than deeply, disturbingly wrong, then it became easy to reach across the open space and overlap Bumblebee’s hand with his own.

But what if, when we come out the other side, you can’t see me anymore,
            he asked.
What if the light that shines on me now grows dim.
What if your optics clear and the smudge I left behind leaves with me.

            And he replied,
You are the light.
You are what I was built to see and if I cannot have your colors in my life,
            your chaos,
            the calamity of your wonderful being,
then I will rebuild myself, reignite my spark, until you come back to me.

And they said it together, and they said it alone.

The entrance to the tunnels was hidden behind a natural rise of metallic buildup, born underneath an overhang likely constructed by nimble hands. Bumblebee stood just outside the entrance, looking down into depths like a black wall of darkness underneath the constant night of Functionist Cybertron.

He had a map of the tunnels as laid out by Windblade’s drones and rations to last a few days, more than enough for the few hours trek they were expecting. He’d had a grappling hook installed into his right arm, a compartment full of spelunking gear, and four reinforced tires that could act as either armor or flotation devices, depending on the situation.

Still, that solid darkness warned him off, made it a great challenge to step down into those impressive depths.

“Good sense finally catching up to you?”

Bumblebee looked up at Starscream, whose ever ghostly glow could not light up the path ahead of them but could at least serve as a reminder that there were things more powerful, more unknowable than the deepest depths of this uncanny planet.

It was on Bumblebee, still, to remind himself why he was doing this. To look up at Starscream, who seemed to be growing more uncomfortable under the unexpected attention and tell himself that there was a point to this journey. There was something lying for them at the end and it was his mission to find out whether that was to be an end in itself, or a new beginning.

Other lives were still happening millions of miles away: Windblade was delegating and legislating, working to build upon the futures they were all living out; Megatron was sitting in a cell, staring at a wall, staring at his past and future coalescing; Prowl was finding new problems to build into unsolvable conundrums. Here, though, in this place, things were just as they had always been: Bumblebee was with Starscream, and they were about to try something arguably good that would get them in trouble, nonetheless.

This was what he wanted, he realized. They’d trekked all this way to unbury something that would change it, and yet in the most selfish place in his spark, he wanted things to remain exactly as they were.

“Think so,” he said.

The Engima was smaller than Starscream remembered. Its broadcast prongs had been removed, exposing a surface pockmarked with a variety of ports, all of which were connected to cables leading back into the walls, into Cybertron itself. Its light was also dim, barely a spark to contend with the constant darkness of the hole it had been drawn into.

He went forward himself, intent to inspect the surroundings first, the way they always did, but Bumblebee stayed at his side, leaning just as near so they could observe the little thing together.

“What do you think?” he asked, quietly, reverently.

“It’ll do,” Starscream said. If his voice produced soundwaves, it would have echoed all the way back to the compound.

The gate appeared so unexpectedly that if Bumblebee had been alone, he probably could have walked straight into it. As it was, all that saved him from doing such now was a particularly aggressive thrust from the blade-wielder, followed by a shout of, “Hey, open up!”

There was some shuffling in the darkness beyond, and Bumblebee was able to just make out a sliver of light, made more noticeable by the way shadows fluttered across it, causing it to blink in and out of existence.

Then the gate swung open and he lost all sense of space as his optics took a moment to recalibrate. When they had, it still took him a moment to really understand what he was looking at.

Garbage, piled all over the floor, illuminated by lights that seemed to be clinging to life like the malnourished mecha sitting under them. The people who stared out at him had none of the anger displayed by those who had dragged him here: the people left behind were tired, clinging on through means he could not begin to fathom.

Starscream appeared in jet mode through one of the walls. He transformed back, then stopped in front of Bumblebee, expression difficult to parse.

“When whatever you’re planning inevitably fails, I’ve found three escape routes and ranked them based on how much destruction you can cause on your way out,” he announced.

Bumblebee tried to school his expression, but by the way Starscream’s impassive expression morphed into a glare, he wasn’t successful. It didn’t really matter, though. The neo-Functionists were busy yelling at each other, something about security and monitoring systems and energon consumption, the same things Autobot officers once would have been up in arms about concerning encampments and temporary shelters. It was so familiar that Bumblebee almost didn’t notice as he let the argument slide into the back of his processor, focused more on Starscream, the way he was still looking for escape opportunities, even as Bumblebee settled in and let himself be captured.

“Just, give him here!”

With a surprising show of strength, Bumblebee was ripped from the hands of his original captors and restrained in the grip of a large armored truck. Not the usual crowd for Functionist ideology, Bumblebee thought, but everybody had to find a place to belong somewhere.

The mech had no weapons on him, but it quickly became apparent he didn’t need any, as he grabbed Bumblebee by the collar faring and lifted him up with one hand. He thought he heard Starscream yelp in surprise, but he was more focused on the dirty fingers pressing into his plating while he grabbed for the mech’s arm, trying to hold himself up.

“How many of you are there?” he demanded, and from this angle Bumblebee was able to see denta worn down to nubs, an obvious sign of overly acidic energon sources.

“Just me,” he said, wincing at the combined pressure of the mech’s grip and the strain it was putting on the mechanisms around his head. He’d never had an overt issue with the form of his alt-mode, but Starscream had frequently gone on about the way it dangerously exposed delicate internal structures, and in this moment, he had to admit the jet had a point.

“Pit slag, you signaled to someone out there,” the truck said, “both of them saw you do it. Now, tell me how many more there are, or I’ll crush your tiny little helm with my own hands.”

“Just lie and tell him there’s another patrol,” Starscream said, wings shivering as he danced around the larger mech, keeping in Bumblebee’s line of sight. “He doesn’t care about the truth; he’s just trying to make sure he’s scary enough to make you do what he wants!”

There was desperation in his voice, Bumblebee realized. Starscream was much more afraid than Bumblebee was, which was funny in a way, since he was the one in the least amount of danger.

Or, no, wait. Hm.

Maybe it wasn’t funny.

“I came with three other mechs,” he said, avoiding optic contact in what he hoped would be taken as a sign of submission. “I was sent to explore the lower layers, but they’ll come looking for me if I don’t make it back to them.”

The armored truck smirked. He lowered Bumblebee just enough that his pedes could touch the floor, easing a little bit of the strain on his collar: not enough to be comfortable, but enough that he wasn’t scared of something imminently snapping. He spoke to someone over Bumblebee’s shoulder.

“Three patrols: flood the upper levels, flush them out. Make it fun. You,” he turned back to Bumblebee, “are coming with me.”

With no further ceremony, he started dragging Bumblebee deeper into the compound, Bumblebee tripping over his own feet trying to keep up. The piles of garbage grew shallower as they moved in, the mess shuffled aside in places where mecha walked frequently, but it remained a constant feature of the area even when they turned off the main path and ducked into a small room formed by three walls leaning together.

The junk remained, but there was a different pattern to it in here, less random, more collected. There were a few stones and stable Cybertronian crystals, and a number of nonfunctioning guns surrounded by pieces that looked like they went to other models. If Bumblebee had to guess, he would assume that this was the mech’s home, though there was no recharge slab to confirm it.

Bumblebee was thrown to the floor, landing hard enough that it jostled his sensor suite. After a moment to recalibrate, he looked up to find a gun pointed directly between his optics, and old instincts had self-preservation protocols activating even as he realized it was one of the broken ones.

Starscream was standing behind the mech. Bumblebee risked a quick glance in his direction, just to let him know he was alright, before focusing on the heavyset mech. Even without the farcical show of force, the pure mass he had over Bumblebee was enough to make him a substantial threat to the minibot.

“You the ones that have been spying on us?” the mech demanded, jerking his gun in warning.

“He already knows the answer,” Starscream said.

“Not me,” Bumblebee said, “but someone I know.”

“Now be careful, don’t give him too much information. And get your head down, can’t you Autobots at least act like you’re afraid of getting your helms blasted open?”

Bumblebee did not duck his head, not now that he was alone with the mech. Before, there had been acts on both their parts, the neo-Functionists looking to their leader (Was he a leader? Did they have one?) to determine what to make of the intruder. Now that the two of them were alone, the dynamic had shifted, and Bumblebee could focus on the big mech individually.

“Why?” The mech leaned close, his snarl revealing his rotten denta. “What’re you planning to do with us?”

“Nothing,” Bumblebee answered honestly. Windblade was understandably worried about the surviving neo-Functionist presence on the planet, but this mission had taken priority, and its aftermath would likely be none of Bumblebee’s concern as a Councilor. “We’re looking for something.”

“And your little drones couldn’t pick it up for you?” the mech demanded. “Had to keep sending them down here? Spying on us? Hunting us down?”

“He’s already convinced himself,” Starscream said. He wasn’t looking at Bumblebee now: his focus was on the larger mech, the stronger one, who had somehow convinced these people they were better off toiling under him than pursuing lives of their own design. Bumblebee knew who Starscream was seeing.

Surrender was the safe option. Tell him the truth, get a pass to go back to the surface, and report back to Windblade knowing that the Enigma would get buried even deeper in the meantime.

But to give up now would mean allowing them to get beaten by this mech, to repeat a cycle that both of them, but Starscream especially, had been suffering under for millions of years. The point of this journey, the ultimate goal in everything they’d been through together, was to bring change, and Bumblebee knew that would not be possible unless he broke the wheel here, stopped the churning violence that had always carried them from one crisis to the next.

He sat up, staring into optics that burned with their starving fury.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said.

“You’ve lost, Bumblebee,” Starscream snapped, turbines coming online.

The muzzle of the gun pressed against his forehead. It was clearly missing an ammo chamber, but the weapon was still warm with active energon. If its internal well was ignited, it might be potent enough to set off a bang that would knock Bumblebee out of commission. The gulf would only last a second, but he had a feeling that’s all the time this mech would need.

“You don’t know who I am,” the mech growled. “You don’t know what we stand for. If you really wanted to come get us, maybe you should’ve figured that out first.”

“We weren’t planning to even come by here, the map—”

“Ah-ha, you have a map, that’s interesting.”

“Oh, slag it all, Bumblebee,” Starscream said, wings flaring in agitation as he dropped down between the two. He leaned so close that all Bumblebee could see of the other mech was the muzzle of his gun, pointing out of Starscream’s helm and nuzzling against Bumblebee’s. “If you have to do this your way, then at least do it right, and ask the fragger his name.”

It was like a shock went through Bumblebee’s spark, as Starscream shifted out of the way so he could make optic contact against the wild, furious gaze of the mech standing over him. He let his ventilation system release some of the hot air that had been building and relaxed his plating, then gathered his courage and stared up at the mech holding a broken gun.

“I really don’t know you,” he said, quietly, earnestly. “Can you tell me your name?”

“So you can arrest me?” the mech demanded, and Bumblebee shook his head.

“I’m a representative for the Galactic Council,” he said. “I am surrounded, every day, by species who can’t change their form or their frame, like we can. The body they’re born in is more or less the one they die in. When creatures like that meet Cybertronians, the most important thing to them is always learning our names, and it’s made me realize that they mean a lot to me, too. We define our names. We decide what the world thinks when it hears them, or if the world even hears it at all.” He stared up at the mech, almost begging to be heard. “I’d really like to know yours.”

The blaster against his helm was shaking, the same way the one at his back had earlier.

“The pit are you talking about?” the mech demanded. “You trying to stall or something?”

“No,” Bumblebee said. He thought about admitting there was no one waiting for him, but one glance at the anxious seeker hovering above him made him realize it was a lie, and that Starscream would never forgive him for saying it. “I’m down here for the same reason as you: I’m trying to protect someone important to me.” He placed a hand on his chassis, over his spark. “My name is Bumblebee, and his is Starscream.”

The named mech was glancing between them now, optics tight in scrutiny.

“Stand up,” he said.

Bumblebee did so, slowly. The gun followed him but did not go off.

“What are you doing?” the one holding it asked.

Bumble bridged the space between them, offering his hand.

“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” he said, “but if you would like to tell me who you are and what this place is, I would be willing to listen.”

He told them his name, and then the names of his compatriots. He told them about their lives under Functionism, about their own Council and laws and bureaucratic structures and history and propaganda. He told them about the security job he’d had: he’d been good at it, the best, highly sought-after. He understood the things he was assigned to guard but never asked for more than was necessary, never tried to learn more. He’d been trusted. He’d had a Function.

Megatron’s Revolution (Starscream guffawed) happened. He did what he’d always done: watched over the artifacts, kept them safe. When the institutions fell and the laws became meaningless, when the people shot their leaders, shot their Functions, shot him, he gathered whatever tatters he could find (artifacts, objects, people) and gathered them in a safe place. A protected place.

Bumblebee listened, of course, but Starscream didn’t need to. He’d heard this story before, and he knew he would hear it again in the future. The mech’s words were so saturated with hatred that it almost became possible to miss it. Starscream still saw it, and once they were out of here, he would be sure to remind Bumblebee of it as well. Kindness had its place, and in this case would keep Bumblebee alive to fight another day, but forgiveness for those who did not ask for it was dangerous in ways that put all the rest of this venture to shame.

Bumblebee held out his hand again and forced himself not to take it personally when the armor-plated van now recoiled from his touch.

“Don’t you want to see the surface?” he asked.

He only needed a glance at Starscream in his peripherals to know that his optics were rolling. That, too, he knew not to take personally. He tried again, his hand open in honest offer.

“There’s a new world that’s been built while you’ve been hiding down here, forced to watch without taking part. You can tell yourself that you’re doing what needs to be done, staying down here, out of the light, but don’t your hands feel empty? Don’t you think it’s time you started building something of your own?”

The movements were slight, at first: the former-security-guard-turned-dying-ideology-preacher let his optics flicker toward the outstretched hand. Bumblebee felt hope warm his spark for just a second before the mech shook his head, standing up.

“My function is to protect,” he said, “and I can’t do that in this new world, where they insist that function itself is something harmful.”

“That’s not—”

“Give it up, Bumblebee,” Starscream said, a glare aimed at the other mech. “We have other problems to worry about.” He glanced outside. “Let him be his own lost cause.”

Bumblebee followed Starscream’s gaze, to the few civilian frames who had gathered at the entrance of the small home, staring in with wide, fascinated optics. When they realized themselves found out, they did not run away, but continued to watch Bumblebee, see what he would do next.

He turned back up to the van.

“Fine,” he said, “but at least realize that protecting something doesn’t always mean keeping it.”

Words had rarely done them any good, but they were saved form the inadequacy of language by that space. There, they did not need to speak to be heard, but nor could they speak to conceal. Who they were, the lies they’d told themselves, the secrets they’d kept, the fountains of inspiration that four million years later still bubbled with hope, all of it was twisted into the knot where their selves clawed into each other. They could neither ask nor take: the words were theirs.

“the love of my life,” Bumblebee bled.

They were stitched too well together: Starscream could not flee, just cling tighter and suffer the terrible agony of being known and loved regardless.

Starscream flew directly above Bumblebee, keeping just a few meters between the little car’s roof and his landing gear. Normally, flying this slowly would have been too harsh a reminder that it wasn’t really his engine keeping him aloft, but in that moment the higher priority was staying close. There wasn’t much he would be able to do if the neo-Functionists changed their minds and decided to take back the Engima, but he could be close.

Bumblebee seemed content with that. He drove across the empty stretch of Cybertronian landscape that would take them back to the main road they’d followed out here, his engine puttering along. Would probably need a tune-up soon, Bumblebee had mentioned the tunnels being humid and just seeing the state of the mecha living down there told Starscream the exposure couldn’t have been good for his systems—

He was going to have his own engine to worry about soon. The thought caused him to wobble in the air.

He tilted to the side and sped forward, touching down several hundred feet ahead of Bumblebee. The bug stopped beside him, leaping up into his transformation sequence and landing on both feet, hands immediately moving to his chassis like he was making sure it was still there.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Starscream shook his head but didn’t know what to say in accompaniment. Something about getting tired of the weird atmosphere, or something. Instead, he let his optics travel down to Bumblebee’s splayed hands and nodded at that.

“Can I see it?” he asked.

Bumblebee nodded and transformed his chest open. There, in a little hollow compartment he’d had prepared just for this trip, the Enigma faced out, gentle pulses of light the only indication that it was still functioning after being disconnected from the nest that had been its home all these years. Starscream remembered holding the other Enigma in his own hands, harnessing its ancient powers for his own modern machinations, and seeing it in this diluted state was overwhelming.

He reached forward, let his fingers dip into the artifact’s plating. Distantly, he thought he heard the high-pitched whine of an overworked engine, but he knew they were the only two out here. He retracted his hand, and the noise stopped.

Bumblebee closed his plating, optics pointed up at Starscream. Then, with a happy plop, he settled himself on the ground.

“What are you doing?” Starscream asked, receiving an annoying smile in return.

“Taking a break,” Bumblebee answered. “I’ve been moving around all day, and I think I’ve earned some time off my pedes.” He knocked his chest for emphasis.

Starscream glanced around.

“You should be careful with that thing,” he warned. “One wrong move and you’ll be stuck combining with some mechafauna.”

Bumblebee waved him off.

“Join me?” he invited.

Starscream didn’t need to sit, rest, or refuel. His body always functioned at optimal capacity, and even if it didn’t, he didn’t have the sensors anymore to tell him that something was wrong.

He settled down, leaning back so they could look at the stars together. Neither of them was used to how different the universe looked nowadays, how empty, but they were getting there.

Thoughts of that brought Starscream back to their earlier conversation, the one that had been so rudely interrupted by greasy little nobodies leaping out of the dark. In the scant moments he hadn’t spent worrying for Bumblebee’s life since then, he’d had some time to think about it, and figured now would be as good a time as any to get a last word in.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Starscream said. “I have a reputation for only shutting up when people force me to, and I’ll admit that I was asking for it when Arcee—”

“No,” Bumblebee said, putting up a hand, “stop that. You’re not allowed to say that about yourself.”

Hypocritical, Starscream thought, but Bumblebee was in the sort of state that he would probably agree if it meant making his point, and that wasn’t what Starscream wanted.

“I’m not wrong, though,” Starscream insisted. “It wasn’t your issue to worry about. The entire universe was on the brink of collapse.”

“I don’t care,” Bumblebee said, which was a lie. “You matter to me, Starscream, and I let myself forget that somehow. I forgot, and then Arcee punched you, and that was the last time you…” He put a hand over his mouth. Starscream found himself frozen, unable to look away, even as Bumblebee dropped it and started up again. “I think about that moment every day, of floating out in space, gun in hand, and looking up just in time to see you breaking open the universe. And every time, I have to ask myself…”

He looked at the ground and shook his head. Starscream continued to stare, horribly curious and absolutely dreading the end of that sentence. In infraspace, he was surprised to find himself kneeling on the ground, armor rattling as he shivered.

“Stop,” he insisted, trying to sneer without any idea whether he was successful, “I don’t want your Autobot guilt.”

They didn’t mention factions often, but it was still a reality that existed between them. A few hundred years of constant companionship still only made a dent in their relationship, compared to the four million years of war. These things would take time, Bumblebee like to say, because he was kind and patient in that dreadfully boring, Autobot way.

“Then, what do you want?”

Now, wasn’t that a question. Years ago, Starscream’s entire life was driven by desire. For power, prestige, fame. He wanted to be respected by other Cybertronians, so he had raised himself up as Megatron’s second in command, then convinced an entire planetful of them to elect him as their leader. Following that, every step had been to maintain the power he so desired, but it was from there that the distinction became less clear. Did he ignore Windblade’s plight because he wanted to keep himself safe, or save her to maintain order? Survive to see to the future of his species, or crack open the Talisman and let it decimate a body he wasn’t sure he’d wanted?

As a Decepticon, the things he could want were narrow. Most opportunities inevitably just led to power, so he decided to aim for accruing as much as he was able. Now, though, when the opportunity was existence and the possibilities limited to what he could experience with a body once more woven into the fabric of space? What did he pick from that?

Bumblebee spoke up again, drawing Starscream out of his thoughts.

 “We should talk about this. If getting you back is going to change things.”

“Do you remember when we first met?”

Are you glad it happened?

It was and wasn’t an embrace. The plating of their minds transformed into one being, and the new One released a long-held sigh.

I'll be here. I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise,

I promise, I promise, I promise, 

                                                            I promise, 

      I promise, I promise, I promise,                     I promise, 

    I promise,                               I promise,                I promise, 

  I promise,                                          I promise,          I promise, 

 I promise,                                           I promise,          I promise, 

I promise,                             I promise...                    I promise, 

I promise,                                                    I promise, 

I promise,                             I promise, 

I promise, I promise, 

The official story was a research shuttle heading out to check on the black hole and make sure it remained stable, no risk to the lifeforms living underneath it. Bumblebee didn’t understand any of it, but he was able to follow the instructions they gave him, offering his back for the rope to clamp onto so they would be able to reel him back in after he’d done his part.

“We’ve already tested the minimum distance for the singularity’s gravitational pull to become inescapable, and we’ll have you out at three times that, so don’t worry about getting pulled in,” Functionist Wheeljack explained again. He hadn’t had the option to go to the Science Academy until a few hundred years ago, so he still didn’t have the clearance to work with the more volatile substances and thought faceplates were kind of weird looking, but the helm fins and voracious appetite for the unusual made it clear it was the same mech. “We don’t have instructions for how to make the Engima work, but most sources say it’s pretty easy to figure out. If you don’t get it the first time, we’ll pull you back in and you can try again later. Sound good?”

“Yep,” Bumblebee said.

“You’re nervous.”

Bumblebee glanced up at Starscream, still hesitant to talk directly in another mech’s presence. All of the scientists aboard were aware of the mission’s true purpose, but being open about Starscream’s presence with anyone but Windblade was still a novelty. The fact that other people would be able to talk to him soon would also take some getting used to, he guessed. They wouldn’t be able to have these semi-private conversations whenever they liked, and the thought of it made him surprisingly sad. He wanted Starscream back, for both selfish and unselfish reasons. Changes meant loss, though, and even being prepared didn’t necessarily mean he was ready to face this particular loss.

“Just a little,” he said.

Starscream huffed a laugh, the sound just as complicated as all the emotions Bumblebee had swirling around in his own systems.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m trusting you with my life. Doesn’t that say something about your competence?”

It did. Bumblebee smiled, grateful.

“Shuttle is in position,” the loudspeaker announced, causing all three mechs to look up. “Systems ready to deliver package.”

“Okay,” Bumblebee said, stepping up to the airlock. A white briefcase sat beside it, the final piece they’d needed to bring this whole thing together. He held it reverently, fingers twisted tight around the handle.

“Good luck, Bumblebee,” Wheeljack said.

Bumblebee glanced back, grateful for this opportunity to say a proper, temporary goodbye to his friend. Then the security doors shut behind him, and he was alone as he ever was these days, though not as much as he would be very soon.

“Air lock opening in 5…”

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Starscream asked.

“4…”

Bumblebee looked up at him. Untethered, unbothered by the oncoming weight of space.

“3…”

The hiss of the cabin depressurizing caused him to jump, just a little, before sounds started to fade entirely.

“2…”

“Of course,” he said, voice a mumble in the airless room.

“1…”

Always, he mouthed.

He saw Starsceam smile.

And then, soundlessly, the airlock opened, and they were out in space.

: :You can go ahead,: : Wheeljack commed.

: :Got it.: :

Bumblebee leaned down and then sprung, launching himself out of the shuttle. Starscream stayed at his side, gently gliding through no apparent effort of his own.

The black hole was much larger up close, Bumblebee noted. He’d always seen it from far away, when its might paled in comparison to the much more ominous silhouette of Unicron bearing down on them. Even from this distance the enormity of it was almost overwhelming, save for the fact that Bumblebee knew, somewhere in those churning depths, Starscream was waiting.

: :You’re at distance,: : Wheeljack informed him. : :Drop the first package.: :

: :Opening it.: :

Bumblebee took the briefcase in both hands and fiddled with the latches before popping it open. A single datapad was nestled inside, protected and held in place by gray foam. Bumblebee pulled it out and turned it on, the screen coming to life immediately, a sign of its recent fabrication. He showed it to Starscream, as if seeking final approval.

“It’s no Matrix,” Starscream said, optics unimpressed, “but I’m sure he’d be proud to know he had a hand in breaking the universe once more.”

Bumblebee nodded and opened his hand. Drawn in by the gravity of the massive thing before them, the datapad drifted gently forward, Sentencing Order: Megatron of Tarn traveling into the endless expanse. Across the universe, billions of creatures were waiting to find out the words tucked into an identical datapad back at the Galactic Council. With everyone theorizing, debating, and wondering at the same time, it was the single most powerful idea they knew of, and it carried that metaphysical weight with it deep into the depths of the singularity.

Bumblebee watched it go for a while, but not long enough to see the light of the screen disappear. Instead, his attention was drawn to Starscream, on keeping him in Bumblebee’s sight for as long as possible.

It’ll be okay, Bumblebee mouthed. I’ll be here for you.

Starscream frowned and tilted his head. He’d never been very good at reading lips. But when Bumblebee smiled at him, he smiled back, and both knew they would not be alone in their quiet hope.

After several minutes, he turned to the singularity.

“I found it,” he said.

Then, Starscream flickered. He glanced at Bumblebee once, optics set in an expression only ever shared between the two of them.

And his light went out.

Bumblebee stared at the space Starscream had been, like the void itself had blossomed a pair of wings, an unabashed smirk. There was no time to worry, no time to wonder if he was the right mech to be doing this. As it stood, he was the only one who could, so he, too, turned to face the black hole, sending the command to transform open his chest.

The Engima was secured just by a couple safety latches, nothing to truly integrate it with his systems. Bumblebee reached in and unhooked it, the way he’d practiced in the lab, and then held the Enigma of Combination out in front of him while his plating shifted back into place. It was glowing, though the light didn’t seem to land anywhere, the black hole taking that red beam and devouring it hungrily, just like it had Starscream, those centuries ago.

Come on, Starscream, Bumblebee thought. If anyone can do this, it’s you. If anyone could have made all this happen, it would be us.

The black hole writhed and twisted, its mass unfathomably deep, like the space between stars in a cloudless Earth night. Bumblebee held the Engima firmer, pointed it with more force. It felt like every moment since this thing had taken over the sky, since Bumblebee had landed back on Earth to find himself so dreadfully alone, had been building up to this.

The black hole didn’t care. Space itself didn’t care, and infraspace might even laugh in their faces, but Bumblebee knew that he and Starscream had earned this, that they had been through enough already. It had taken a few years too many and probably caused some unnecessary grief, but he knew now what he wanted, and that whatever Starscream’s desires, he was ready to do whatever it took to get both of them their wishes.

Come back to me.

Before anything else, he heard it: the sound of jet engines.

Bumblebee had no way to prepare as the force of the Decepticon army, all of Cybertron, the Seekers, unburied lies, unacknowledged grief, a fledgling of something like affection, hope, betrayal, pain, joy, vanity, charisma, confidence, and Starscream all slammed into his processor at once. His entire body shook, he let go of the Engima, and the darkness of the void wrapped around him in an embrace like he had not known for centuries.

In Bumblebee’s mind, they reached for each other.
Hand holding hand. Optics leaking naked hope.

“You’re here. You came back. You listened.”

Crystals blossomed in that place,
emerald hyacinths dripping over their fingers
as their tears fell and turned into frosted bluebells.

They were not one: they were everything,
the entire universe compressed to a
point,
a sinkhole of understanding.

This was love.
This was the end worth fighting for.

◅✩▻

[[Downloading personality core files…

               Memory backup download complete.

               Lexicon download complete.

               Self-diagnostics download complete.]]

[[Initializing online protocols.]]

[[Optical center at 73% capacity.]]

Starscream’s optics came on first and fast, the shift from idle nothingness to awareness so jarring that his first reaction was to immediately shut them back off. He watched the systems notifications pop up from the safety of darkness, feeling like the whole universe was coming online for the first time. His optical center had been active long enough for him to understand he was in some sort of lab, though not one that he’d seen before, and his system initiation preferences were all out of whack, putting short term memory behind communications array in the queue. Weird.

Nudge that up to the front, and…

“Bumblebee!”

The memories hit and his optics flicked back on, wide with awe. The procedure had worked. He was in a body, and he could feel the berth beneath him. Where was Bumblebee? They’d done this together, he needed to—

“Starscream, sh, it’s okay. I’m here.”

At his side. Bumblebee was standing there, hands resting on the medical berth. He was smiling, a softness that reminded Starscream’s still-booting memory cores of something very distant, soft and warm in a way his life had not allowed for since, but there were also tears gathering in his optics. Like the last time they’d seen each other.

Starscream’s hands were new and a little stiff, but he made do as he reached toward Bumblebee, only to still. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do next, what was allowed. Normally, he would have blasted through such uncertainty with a trick of false confidence and self-importance, but Bumblebee had just seen him. All of him. That the Autobot was still standing by his side was the final proof Starscream needed that his friend was a truly deplorable judge of character.

Any further judgements were subdued, however, by the way Bumblebee carefully moved into the waiting space made by Starscream’s hands. He pushed his arm into one of them, letting Starscream hang onto the seams, while he intertwined his own fingers with the other, more a tangle than an actual grasp.

Starscream feared this whole construction might go to waste: he felt like his new spark was about to fall out of his body.

“Go slow,” Bumblebee said. “The technology’s definitely improved since I went through this, but it’s still a lot. Take your time. There’s no rush.”

Starscream, though, shook his head. What had they ever done but taken their time? Waited for the next opportunity, put off a conversation to happen another day? It could have been just because his self-preservation protocols hadn’t come online yet, but there was an urgency in him to say something now, a certainty he would always regret it if he didn’t.

“Did you mean it?” he asked. “The love of your life?”

Bumblebee’s smile turned wobbly, intake working a couple times as his ventilations stuttered. Tears beaded, then flowed, landing with little plips on the berth between them. His fingers tightened and Starscream’s mimicked them.

“Yeah, Starscream,” he said. “I was trying for so long to find the right word, and… yeah. That’s it.”

Starscream sat up, using Bumblebee as leverage—he’d always suspected the little bot was solid, but now he knew, could feel it—and looked into blue optics more familiar than his own.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “If you say those words, you’re stuck. You’re never going to be able to get rid of me.”

Bumblebee nodded. The tears were still flowing, but the smile was stronger, and he raised his own hand to brush the delicate cabling on the side of Starscream’s intake.

“I made my choice,” he said. “I lo—"

Starscream was already diving forward, pressing their lips together in a way he’d been wishing for longer than he felt like he knew, kissing his Bumblebee. A glossa slipped into his mouth and he quickly reciprocated, licking his way inside and tasting for the first time in centuries. The hand on his neck wrapped around further, a gentle pressure urging him closer, while Starscream dropped his own to Bumblebee’s waist and held him there, steady, already making good on his promise. Their other hands, apparently, could not be convinced to let go of each other, but Bumblebee seemed not to have a problem with it, and Starscream knew he definitely didn’t. When he felt his hand squeezed, he squeezed back, a pulse as steady and regular as their lips against each other.

Time melted away as they kissed, taking in each other’s smells, tastes, the feeling of one another’s plating, until an incredibly polite sound from not-Wheeljack had them pulling away from each other to look to the engineer. Bumblebee glanced. Starscream glared.

“Hi, Starscream, nice to meet my patient, finally,” he said, laughing in a way that triggered old memory files. “Sorry, but I’ve got to run a final system diagnostics scan. Pretty simple, and you two can feel free to talk while I’m doing it.”

Starscream grumbled but allowed the scientist to take one of his arms to access the medical port, staring at it balefully until gentle fingers on his cheek drew his gaze back to Bumblebee. He’d stopped crying, the look on his face more serious now.

“I just want to tell you,” he said, “that I know this is new for you, so don’t feel like you have to say anything you’re not ready for. I love you, and nothing you say or don’t say is going to change that.”

Starscream opened his mouth but realized he wouldn’t be able to get anything out without sobbing. Telling himself he just didn’t want to incur the wrath of the mech who’d brought him back from the dead, he instead leaned forward to rest his helm against Bumblebee’s, relishing the tiniest tink made by their plating connecting.