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Skyfire swallowed hard when they told him he'd be swapping lab partners.
Apparently, Starscream, the "problem student" as Professor Ratchet described him, had tormented his poor lab partner near the brink of insanity. So Ratchet was left doing his level best to plead with Skyfire to swap.
His reasoning was that Skyfire was a flier, and could probably read Starscream's body language better than this previous lab partner.
While Skyfire wanted to be insulted that Ratchet assumed seeker and shuttle wing languages were identical, he had a point. Starscream's former lab partner was a grounder, and Skyfire could recognize a "get out of my bubble" wing tilt a mile away.
...Also Ratchet promised extra credits, and Skyfire's trigonometry grade was abysmal last semester, so he really didn't have much choice.
Starscream was a decent student, but could not be made to work in a group. Skyfire had heard that most professors that were astringent about group assignments would let him work alone if they could finagle an "odd number" of students.
However, this was a lab course, and it was mandatory.
Which is why Skyfire walked into class and prepared for the worst.
While shuttle and seeker wing language did have different dialects, there were some base similarities. So when Starscream's wings flared out and hiked high, in what was frankly a ridiculous dominance display for someone so small.
Skyfire tucked his own wings low and folded in a submissive position. He kept an annoyed expression, but hopefully Starscream would get the picture that he just wanted to get this over with.
Starscream eventually flattened down his plating, lowered his wings, and hopped into Skyfire's seat.
"...That's where I sit."
"It's where I sit, now."
Ordinarily, Skyfire wouldn't argue, but his seat had...adjustments, to fit a huge shuttle.
Starscream's wings flared back up and Skyfire debated if he was going to get into a huge fight with his lab partner right before class started.
He decided no.
Skyfire lowered himself into the other chair and felt a little better when it didn't immediately bend or whine under his weight.
Starscream took up practically the whole workspace; his datapads everywhere.
Skyfire had no choice but to keep his own things in his lap.
When Ratchet came in, Skyfire was both relieved, and ready to strangle his teacher.
Today's assignment was a mineral study, particularly how nutritional minerals responded to the Cybertronian body. They'd be subjecting a few different materials to heat, solvent, energon, and a change in pH. They'd have a report on this at the end of the month. Simple enough stuff.
"Here's how this is going to work," Starscream finally spoke when they'd been given their samples and supplies. "I'm going to do this, and you're going to watch. I am not getting anything less than 100 on this because you don't know how to do this right."
Starscream shoved all his datapads back into his subspace, and set up their station.
Or, rather, his station.
Skyfire was swiftly deciding that he hated this. If this was going to be standard for the course, Ratchet had better have more credits to give him.
Believe it or not, he actually wanted to learn this stuff.
Since he was not allowed to touch or even say anything, he grabbed a datapad for one of his other courses and got to work on that. He wondered how his old lab partner was doing; probably getting on great.
Skyfire was sufficiently distracted enough that he didn't notice the sudden bow in his chair. So when it snapped beneath him and he fell backwards onto his kibble, the yell he let out was definitely loud enough to draw the attention of the other students.
Anything that was not the assignment was of great interest, so Skyfire couldn't really blame the staring, or even the snickering.
That still didn't make it hurt any less.
The hot wash of embarrassment only spread when he tried to right himself but found his kibble prevented him from moving. He wished he hit his head when he fell, so he wouldn't have to hear the class clowns commenting on how big and bulky he was.
He hated this class. He hated his professor, he hated his lab partner, he hated being sprawled on his back with no way to get up. He shut his eyes and wished he was back in his dorm.
It took him a moment to realize the fire alarm was going off.
His wiggles to right himself became frantic. Everything felt like a blur; the screams of the other students scrambling out the door, the flashing lights, the wailing sirens.
The...sight of Starscream unscrewing the smoke detector....?
The cry of the alarm stopped, and Starscream hopped down from the table. He mosied behind Ratchet's desk and swiped the fire extinguisher.
Skyfire then noticed the Bunsen burner that Starscream had set to max, right before it was smothered in cooling foam.
Starscream walked around him, where he couldn't see, but he suddenly felt something rolling him off his kibble.
He hobbled to his feet, looking around. The room had been totally evacuated, save for Starscream, who had put the fire extinguisher back, pulled up another seat, and sat there instead of in Skyfire's chair.
And had the absolute nerve to go back to the assignment.
Skyfire glared daggers at him, wings up, fanned big and wide. He was angry, and he wanted Starscream to know it.
"...Look, I'm sorry, okay?!" Starscream snapped. "How was I supposed to know that'd happen?!"
"Because I told you it was my seat!!" Skyfire's voice cracked, but he was not backing down "Don't you know how hard it was to get that accommodation?! Ratchet's one of three teachers who even reads my 504!"
Starscream looked surprised, but at least he had the sense to not get angry.
"At least nobody's laughing at you now..." he finally grumbled, before returning to the assignment again.
Skyfire was mad, and he wanted to pursue this further, but he didn't know what more he could say without crying. He sent Ratchet a text saying he was okay, and went back to his assignment for the other class.
Eventually, he was poked in the side.
"Watch this,"
Starscream held up a crucible.
In it, he'd put what looked like a piece of green energon gummy.
He set it over the now clean Bunsen burner, and turned on the flame. In the crucible, the gummy lit up, burning with a violet flame.
It was hard to resist a chemical reaction like that.
...He was still mad though.
"You sure you should be burning food in there?"
Starscream snorted, pointing at the assignment.
"I can't be too hard on you since I've been doing all the work, but this is how Potassium nitrate reacts to heat."
"Did Ratchet give you the gummy or not?"
"He gave us powder...but the gummy looks prettier, right?" the stupid little jet's lips quirked into a smile.
"So you do know how to work a Bunsen burner." Skyfire avoided the question.
Mostly because the answer was yes.
"Of course I do; that was on purpose"
"...you deliberately started a fire?"
"Hey, you falling on your aft is no longer the craziest thing that happened today. You're welcome."
"I'm still mad."
"I said sorry."
That didn't make Skyfire less mad.
...But it did make him more curious.
"...Why did you do that?"
"To get attention off you."
"...Why?"
"Fragging," Starscream shut down his data pad and turned to Skyfire "Because I messed up? What do you want me to say? I didn't know your chair had supports in it. What else was I supposed to do?"
Skyfire thought for a moment.
Starscream got the attention off him immediately, helped him up, acted like it didn't happen, and then showed him a cool chemistry trick, in what he was realizing was an attempt to cheer him up.
He couldn't imagine even his bratty lab partner doing all of that for some ulterior motive.
Especially melting that gummy; candy was a luxury to broke college students.
"I guess...I don't know what else you could've done." Skyfire finally sighed.
Starscream smirked and held out a datapad
"Here's your copy of the notes."
"...What?"
"If you work with me, you get my notes. Enjoy your first 100 of the semester," Starscream started to pack up for his next class.
"Next time, I'm helping."
"And let you mess up my perfect grade?"
"Potassium chlorate is what causes that chemical reaction; potassium nitrate wouldn't need the glucose of a gummy." Skyfire didn't even stifle the smile on his face as he circled the error and got ready to head to his next class.
Starscream was left sputtering in the lab.
And far more intrigued by his new lab partner than he was this morning.