Work Text:
It had been Earth months since Starscream had heard anything from Optimus. He’d gone for so long without hearing a damn thing that he eventually stopped paying attention to the passage of time; it was driving him mad with frustration and something that felt like hurt, though he would never admit to such. It was much easier to just be angry, furious that Optimus dared to simply forget him or – worse – replace him.
That’s why he had half a mind to ignore the communication request when it pinged through his processor; if it weren’t for the urgent tag and the curiosity it elicited – a sensation he refused to call concern – then he probably would have waited for a third or fourth request before replying.
‘Kind of you to reach out,’ he replied tersely, less than ten seconds after the communication had been accepted. He couldn’t help himself.
There was a startled silence on the other end for a moment, as if Optimus hadn’t been expecting him to answer right away. Confirmation that he had made the right choice in replying immediately, he told himself. He’d caught the Prime off guard at least. ‘I apologize for not contacting you sooner. I can explain everything, if you could—‘
Starscream snorted. ‘If I could what? What could I possibly—‘
‘Starscream, please,’ Optimus said, interrupting him. Starscream stopped, huffing indignantly. ‘If you could just meet me at these coordinates. It won’t take more than a few breems of your time and we shouldn’t be discussing over these communication frequencies at all, never mind about this. Just meet me there, tomorrow,’ the Prime implored before the communication line went dead.
Starscream stared, promptly closing the line with a scowl. How dare he! Who did he think he was, disappearing for months and only reaching out long enough to demand an in-person rendezvous?
Well, there was no way he was going, he was certain of that.
.o.
Starscream landed as hard as he physically could once he reached the coordinates pinging in his HUD, leaving a crater in the ground beneath him; he stepped out from it with a scowl, not feeling any better despite his effort at breaking the planet. He looked about the clearing Optimus had dragged him to, not seeing the Prime anywhere.
“If you stand me up, I swear to—“ he started to grumble, looking around the evergreen trees, scowling as his thrusters melted through the icy snow-covered floor of ground beneath him.
“Starscream?” a voice said behind him.
Optimus pulled up, reverting to root mode and depositing his truck’s trailer, taking a cautious step forward. Starscream glared at the mech, optics narrowing; something about him seemed different. He seemed more tired, the vibrancy of his coloration duller, the bend in his shoulders more pronounced as if they were carrying more weight than usual now.
“I’m glad you came,” he said carefully, taking another measured step forward. “I was worried you wouldn’t, after it had been so long.”
Starscream snorted, staying still and refusing to meet the Prime halfway. “You were right to be worried. I almost didn’t come,” he said, lifting his chin defiantly. “We start this—this thing and we get to a certain point and everything seems grand, and then you go silent?” he ranted. “What am I to make of that?”
Optimus’ posture seemed to sag more, if that was possible. “I know, I did wrong by you,” he said, though Starscream found no satisfaction in the admission. “Something … unanticipated occurred and I didn’t want to reach out to you until now. And if anyone else knew, I don’t know what they would do—”
Starscream’s optics went wide at that; had Optimus foolishly divulged the details of their thing to anyone else? Surely he wasn’t that stupid. “Something unanticipated? Someone had better died or something,” he spat.
Optimus sighed through his vents, looking to the trailer behind him. “The opposite in fact. I can show you,” he said, gesturing for Starscream to follow.
The seeker squinted – show him? Show him what? He took a step forward finally, scowling as that seemed to gain some amount of relief from Optimus. He followed as the Prime approached the trailer, undid the lock and lifted the door.
He peeked over Optimus’ shoulder until the mech moved so he could see though his optics had to reset twice when he saw. “What on Cybertron—” he started to ask, the question catching in his vocalizer as he caught Optimus watching him, gauging his reaction. “What did you do?”
Optimus hummed, optics brightening. “No, it was something we did,” he said with a chuckle.
Resting in the back of the trailer was a small mechling, wrapped up in copious amounts of blankets and nestled into a soft bed of sorts. The soft materials took up the volume of the entire trailer, seemingly to prevent the little one from dislodging and rolling around in transit. It had the telltale beginnings of a flight frame, the wing nubs poking from its spinal strut particularly damning; its helm was remarkably similar to Optimus’, though it lacked the distinctive faceplate of course, and its colors were bright – stark white, accented with red and blue.
Starscream stared, the magnitude of the small thing dawning on him slowly. “What did we do,” he repeated, though he didn’t have to be reminded of what exactly they had done that had likely resulted in … this.
“This is why I haven’t reached out to you,” Optimus said after a moment, reluctant to say so. “I didn’t know how you would react to the news but I couldn’t keep him from you forever.”
Starscream nodded slowly, comprehending, but then shook his helm as something inside him snapped, reminding him that he should be angry. “Why did you keep him from me at all? What did you think I’d do?” he demanded, rounding on Optimus.
He stopped short as he caught sight of the Prime’s expression, that feeling that he didn’t want to call hurt earlier blazing up inside him again. Optimus truly hadn’t known how he’d react; the uncertainty evident in his optics now showed that he still didn’t know, was still worried about what Starscream would say or do.
You don’t even know what you would have done, a small voice in his head said.
“Well,” he sniffed, crossing his arms across his canopy. “Why bother calling me at all then? Why not keep him safe from the likes of me?” he asked with a scowl.
“Starscream,” Optimus intoned, going for conciliatory. “That is exactly why I called you. I had to give you a chance to know—”
The little one made a sound in the trailer, a yawn through his small vents as he stretched in the blankets. Optimus stopped short in what he was saying, making sure the mechling was okay, sighing when the movement turned out to be nothing.
“I don’t want to fight about what I told you and when,” Optimus said, shoulders sagging in exhaustion. “He is as much yours as he is mine and I wanted to let you make a choice,” he said, looking at Starscream, his tone grave.
Starscream blinked, surprised. “A choice? Between what, letting you have him or what, I take him back to the Nemesis?”
“I would like you to be a part of his life, as much as you can be,” Optimus said. “We can make it work,” he murmured, looking back to the small one.
Starscream thought about it for a moment though his spark gave a jealous pulse as Optimus looked down at the mechling as though it were something precious, a gift all the more important because it had been unexpected.
Did he want to make it work? What would he gain from it? He thought for a moment; there were certainly ways he could spin this to some sort of advantage. His processor immediately started producing schemes, many of them too far-fetched even for his liberal standards, but there was enough of something here to make it worth it. Not to mention Optimus had clearly bonded with it; he’d be more malleable if Starscream did the same, and less likely to disappear for months on end again.
The seeker sighed, sitting down in the snow beside the trailer with a grumbling sigh. ‘“You asked me to make a choice but I need to know more,” he said, looking to Optimus and gesturing for him to sit down. “I need to know more about how this happened and about who he is.”
Optimus nodded, sitting down cross-legged across from him, faceplate parting to reveal his tired smile. “That is fair,” he said. “About how this happened…”