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Starscream landed with a heavy thud. His processor was crowded with errors and notifications, and he looped through them, unable to focus on a single one for long enough to resolve it.
He felt the impact referred from his landing, right up his heels and back. His wings jolted with it. It wasn't really a graceful landing. He'd have reprimanded one of his own subordinates for the display.
But he was alone, and nobody was watching, so he landed heavily and grunted with the impact and took too many steps on the platform.
(Soundwave was probably watching. But among the Decepticons, that was basically like nobody watching at all.)
The Victory’s entry closed above him with a metallic rasp, and then receded beneath the salty water of this vile little planet's ocean.
Underwater and enclosed by metal on all sides, the Victory was quiet, and the faint rushing of the waves at the topmost reaches were virtually inaudible against the hum of the ship. Although it was kept in power saving mode by the grim necessity of their resources, a few low-output wall lights flickered on automatically when they sensed Starscream's movement through the echoing corridor.
They mostly just illuminated the scrapes and dents on his frame.
It had been a long, cold scouting run. The Autobots were up to something in Siberia and for once their intel team had managed to keep what that was relatively quiet. Soundwave hadn't plucked anything useful out of the airwaves, and it was too cold for small frames like Laserbeak to get a look in.
Too cold for Starscream, too. He knew better than most how the cold could get on this forsaken little mud ball.
The oils of the wash racks got him clean, but they weren’t warm—another power saving measure.
The disgusting nature of Earth’s atmosphere was that it contained water and salt, among other corrosives, and Decepticons who were not rigorous with and committed to their bathing and polishing routines had soon found rust in unexpected places. It had been something of a crisis when they’d first woken after all those millions of years.
Most Cybertronian comforts were aimed at cooling them down, not warming them up. But Starscream wanted to be warmed up. The cold made him remember the first time he’d been on this little planet, back when it had seemed interesting to him to explore and discover. A younger and stupider time.
He didn’t want to go back to his own berth. It would be just as cold there.
But Megatron always ran hot, processors overclocked and huge engine chugging away beneath a powerful spark.
There was always a certain physical danger in proximity to Megatron—and proximity to his temper—but since Starscream lived with and worked beneath him, that was an ongoing calculation, running in the background of his processing. It took up a fraction of spare capacity, ticking away at all times. Presently, irrelevant. But there were other dangers: How it would look? Would Megatron throw him out? Worse, would he view it as weak, as some… admission of vulnerability?
He would, probably.
Starscream’s internals shuddered, vibrating suddenly and annoyingly to try to stir some heat in him. It didn’t help.
...More fool Megatron, then! He clenched his teeth.
The walk to Megatron’s rooms seemed to take forever. His thrusters hurt, and he felt each step all the way up to his head, a dull and unhappy throb. The whole world seemed muted by exhaustion.
He knew the code to Megatron’s rooms—but even if he hadn’t, he’d have bypassed it.
Megatron was a huge inky shadow on the berth. He seemed relaxed: gears and cables soft and loose on the padding, fans a soft hum low in his frame. But the moment Starscream crossed the threshold his optics flared in the dark, bright like hot coals in the shadows.
"You've returned," he said.
His voice was for once not raised in some outburst, but instead a low, sleepy rumble. The cables responsible for the tight lift of Starscream’s wings relaxed slightly, and then they drooped in an attitude that looked exactly as weary as he felt.
"As you see," Starscream muttered. Some of his internals were still wet, dripping the oils he’d bathed with into a faintly sweet smelling puddle upon the floor. He ignored them entirely. That would be Megatron’s problem to clean up, if he even noticed.
“Siberia?" Megatron grunted. He stretched with a hydraulic hiss. Shifting metal caught the dim light from the hallway and the soft gleam behind his optics, glowing dully as he moved over, creating some extra space in his berth.
...Starscream supposed that meant he didn't mind, after all. Weirdly, he felt a little warmer already.
The word finally registered. Siberia. Right, the scouting mission.
“Ungh,” said Starscream, disgusted all over again. “It's an aid project."
“‘Aid’?" The word sounded rusty in Megatron’s vocaliser.
"Autobots, ah… helping… humans?" He dropped his aft onto the berth. Megatron was so heavy that the padding barely even sagged beneath Starscream’s weight. "Some vapid… outreach thing."
"...You can give a full report later," Megatron said, sounding like he was struggling to muster even that much interest in such a banal project. Starscream could hardly disagree. Autobot intel was important, but why did they have to be so boring?
Starscream didn't have anything rude to say about the delay. He was too tired. He just grunted and slumped into the berth padding.
His frame was sore, aching from his thrusters all the way to the tips of his wings. Everything in between had been buffeted by the planet's appalling weather on the way.
A second later, he heaved his thrusters onto the padding, too. It seemed like a gargantuan effort.
The padding beneath him was cool and firm. He could already feel the energon moving in his thrusters, now that the pressure was off them—they throbbed in time with his fuel pump. Ugh. Horrible.
"Nmghn," said Starscream, plaintively.
Megatron sighed a deep, vent-rattling sigh and threw an arm over his hips. It was huge and blessedly warm.
"Recharge," Megatron said.
Starscream felt the powerful and immediate urge to do anything but recharge.
"You recharge," he hissed, although he was glad when the heavy warm arm didn't retreat at his knee-jerk contrariness.
"I will," Megatron agreed mildly.
He smooshed his big face into one of Starscream's tower vents, which was all closed up to avoid losing heat. When Megatron’s own vents blew air out, they left a trail of heady warmth in their wake.
Starscream shivered. Oh, yes.
A moment later Megatron fell right back into recharge, exactly as promised.
Starscream listened to the soft noises of his internal mechanics: a quiet engine idling peacefully, the dull hum of his fans set low. Megatron radiated warmth from his plating out. It soaked into Starscream’s cold frame as fast and easy as an oil bath.
At last Starscream sighed deeply through a tiny crack in his vents, and relaxed back into the warmth and comfort of Megatron’s huge, humming frame.