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Their first Earth Year stranded on this dustball was eventful in more ways than one. There were of course the semi-regular clashes with Autobots, and Megatron’s inane schemes, and the scramble to figure out how to fix their sunken ship every time some new place sprung a leak, but on top of all that... Earth was an alien planet, with alien life and alien seasons. They’d woken in one called Summer by the locals, and more than once returning to the Nemesis’s cool halls after a raid had been a relief from fighting in blistering heat and scorching sun.
The shift to the next one, called autumn or fall, was gradual. Starscream himself didn’t even notice until he returned to his room one morning to buff out scratches and dark paint transfers before his shift and found Thundercracker in his berth, a few desiccated leaves stuck in his seams and more scattered over the floor. Skywarp had, in a moment of either brilliance or insanity, decided to steal all the leaf piles he could find and dump them not only all over the air force barracks but also in his and Thundercracker’s room. The brilliance of it being, of course, that Skywarp hadn’t ‘pranked’ Starscream himself in such a way, and so was allowed to teleport the leaves out rather than remove them by hand.
Winter, on its outset, seemed the most favourable of Earth’s seasons yet. The ambient temperature was lower, nearer to Cybertron’s baseline, and the majority of plant life seemed to have died, though Starscream didn’t doubt it was a temporary thing. It made the precipitation even more annoying than it already was, turning rain into something called sleet that got inside seams and sucked heat like nothing else, but watching the Autobots skid all over the road when they hit patches of ice was just as funny in battle as it was coming out of Reflector’s projector in the rec room. In retrospect, the ice should’ve been the first warning sign. It wasn’t a week later that their latest battle with the Autobots, this time over an oil field that really the humans should thank them for appropriating since the squishy little idiots had no idea how to use it safely, was interrupted by the heavy clouds overhead unleashing a torrent not of liquid water, but of near-microscopic frozen flakes.
Even now, back on the Nemesis and hogging the hot solvent in Megatron’s washrack, Starscream found himself shivering. He’d nearly been shot, when the first flurry drifted past his optics and he froze in place. Had actually gotten hit when he finally shoved old memories back where they belonged and threw himself into the sky. The wind as he shot through the clouds had battered him from all sides, confusing his gyros, but he was too heavily armoured now to be thrown around as he had been back then. Not that that fact had helped much when he was fighting his way through the storm in root mode. At least none of the others had been able to see him once he hit the clouds, so the only witness to his blind panic had been himself.
He wished that made him feel any better.
“Move over.” Megatron grumbled, and Starscream jumped at the presence suddenly at his side, radiating arctic chill in his space. Megatron’s washrack was bigger than his, but it still wasn’t sized for two grown warframes, and he quickly found himself caught between Megatron and the wall under the shower head.
“Wait your turn, you oaf.” he snapped, but the washrack door was already shut.
“If I waited any longer, you’d use up all the hot solvent.” Megatron huffed, his ex-vent shockingly cold against Starscream’s wet wings. This was far from the first time they’d been in this position, or one near to it, but unlike every time previously Starscream couldn’t muster up any interest in the frame behind him. Megatron, oblivious as ever, rumbled his engine appreciatively and leaned forwards, letting solvent stream down his back as his front pressed against Starscream’s back, cold hands stroking at his cockpit and hip.
“Get off me!” he snapped, shoving against the wall to ram himself into Megatron, sending him careening backwards, crashing against the far wall of the washrack. He was out the door and into Megatron’s quarters before the big idiot had picked himself up off the floor, and slipping back into his own habsuite took no time at all. He dried off quickly, but now that he was out of the hot stream of solvent the chill was back, sunk deep into his struts, a bitter, frigid ache around his spark.
He threw himself on his berth, setting a reminder to refresh his polish before his next shift, and burrowed under the blankets, curling into a ball and tucking his wings close to his back the way he’d been taught to do in exoplanet survival training. His hinges ached at the contortion, but at least that was something to think on other than the memories of the last time he’d been caught in a snowstorm.
At least Skyfire hadn’t been there at the oil field.
“Starscream.” Megatron’s voice filled the room as soon as the door opened. Starscream tucked himself into a tighter ball of armour and cold, but Megatron wasn’t dissuaded. The door shut with a quiet, familiar sound and locked a moment later, then Megatron’s heavy tread approached him. “You left in such a hurry, you didn’t grab this.”
Starscream tensed, but all that happened was some extra weight joining the soft fabric mound on top of him. His insulating blanket, the one he kept at the end of his berth. Skyfire had loaned it to him, when they landed here so many millions of years ago. Had teased him for being able to handle deep space but not a little bit of a breeze. He’d never meant to return it, really, but back then he’d thought it wouldn’t matter.
“Come here.” Megatron murmured, and Starscream yelped as he was lifted from the berth like an errant sparkling.
“Let go of me!” he demanded, but Megatron ignored him, tucking him close to now-lukewarm plating and caging him there with strong arms. One lifted momentarily, stretching out to grab the heavy blanket, and Starscream hid his face in Megatron’s shoulder with a low whine as the fabric settled over both of them.
“We won’t be doing any more winter weather raids.” he said after a moment of almost-comfortable silence.
“I’m not a weakling.” Starscream snapped, pushing himself up off of Megatron’s chest to glare at him. “I was just-”
“Please, not everything is about you, Starscream.” Megatron scoffed. “The cold makes my joints ache, is all, and we were forced to retreat due to low visibility. We won’t have either of those problems with more equatorial targets, and the Autobots will have a harder time catching up to us there.”
Megatron’s field was perfectly controlled, a professional balance of indignance at being questioned, confidence in his decision, and authority to back it up. His face, however, was an open book to Starscream’s trained optic. “You old softy.” he muttered, letting Megatron ease him back down to lay against his chassis, their frames heating the confines of the insulating blanket to something almost cozy.