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There were few things that made Skyfire feel small and insignificant like the vastness of space.
Though he was built for space travel, Skyfire genuinely hadn’t done much of it in his life.
He always found himself yearning for the stars, for the sky, for something far beyond. He couldn’t quite place what it was, but it gave him a sense of nostalgia.
After millions of years of ice, and far too many years of war, Skyfire found himself back on Cybertron, staring out at the sky and the universe beyond from a rooftop laboratory. Now that the war was over, that everything had shifted and changed, he hoped somehow, that he could get back to the stars.
“Why are you still out here?” Starscream demanded, emerging from the hatch from the floor beneath. “I told you not to work too hard, those reports can wait until tomorrow!”
Oh, and having Starscream back just added to the nostalgia.
Though Starscream had called him a traitor and vowed to destroy Skyfire during the war when they had taken opposite sides, he just as readily threw himself into Skyfire’s arms the instant the peace treaty was finalized. For all of their years apart, Starscream had finally decided exactly what he wanted, and it was Skyfire himself. Skyfire couldn’t complain about that. Having Starscream in his arms was a welcome memory, a welcome bit of nostalgia that revived embers in his spark for the mech he loved most.
“I’m not working on the reports, Star, don’t worry,” Skyfire called back without getting up.
“Well, it’s getting cold!” Starscream snapped. “And you shouldn’t work too hard. You’re always working too hard,” he huffed.
Skyfire couldn’t help but smile at that. Starscream really did have a protective streak sometimes, and it was adorable. Of course, that word was exactly what he wouldn’t want to hear, but that thought just warmed Skyfire’s spark all the more.
“I’m stargazing. I missed this view,” Skyfire answered.
Starscream grumbled to himself, and closed the hatch, only to re-emerge a few moments later with two large thermal blankets.
The shuttle concealed his smile. The city lights made it hard to stargaze from here, but they were high enough up, and close enough to the edge of the city that the light pollution didn’t completely choke out the view of the stars.
When Starscream sat down beside him, he let the seeker arrange himself first, draping the thermal around his legs and lower half of his torso.
Of course, Starscream pouted at first.
“This was for you, you know,” he countered, avoiding the soft gaze of Skyfire’s optics.
“I know,” Skyfire answered, planting a chaste kiss on the side of Starscream’s helm. “But I’m built for space. I’m well-insulated. Even absolute zero doesn’t feel so cold to me.”
“But it is.”
“Well, it isn’t to me.”
Starscream’s engine rumbled in annoyance. “It still is cold. Your build doesn’t change facts. And you still spent how long frozen on that infernal mudball?”
“Point taken,” Skyfire answered, weathering Starscream’s blistering with a small smile. “One moment.”
He went back over to his desk and retrieved the cubes that he’d left in the warmer, and pushed one into Starscream’s hands before he sat back down beside him.
“You knew I’d come up here to check on you eventually, you fragger. You planned this,” Starscream grumbled, but accepted the warm cube regardless, cradling it in both hands.
“Guilty as charged. I thought you’d like to spend a few moments up here reminiscing with me…” Skyfire admitted.
Starscream cycled his optics in a blink, his wings dipping slightly. “Reminiscing? But now we finally have a good future. Why do you want to waste time thinking about the past? Reminisce on what? The destruction of Vos? Being told we can’t be scientists because of fragging functionism? How about the war we were on opposite sides of? Or millions of years apart, thinking you were dead? Reminisce about that?”
Skyfire was unshaken by the venom in Starscream’s words, but that was partially because he was certain Starscream had misinterpreted him. “No, no! Not that… of course not that, and not reminiscing about bad times, I mean things that were small, things that made you happy that you miss? I was just thinking about space. I haven’t really had a chance to leave the planet since we got back to Cybertron. Perhaps I could take you somewhere. I hear Alpha Centauri is lovely this orbital cycle…”
“Alpha Centauri? Why? For conquest? Is there something you’d want to trade? Or some… research you want to do there?” Starscream asked, staring at him in confusion.
“What? No, no! I meant for a break! You know, like a vacation? A holiday?”
Another blank look.
“Star, don’t tell me you don’t understand what a vacation is!”
“I know what a vacation is! I just can’t fathom why you would want one!”
They stared at each other for another moment, each unsure how to answer the other. They had moments like this often in the days following the war, their conflicting viewpoints completely missing each other, but sometimes Skyfire just felt like he found himself struggling to reach across the gap for Starscream.
“What—what do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean?”
Skyfire floundered again. “Please, explain it to me. Why would you not want to go on a vacation?”
“Because we finally have a chance to be together and do everything we wanted? Why do you want to get away from that?” Starscream bit back, his words nearly a growl. “Are you unhappy here?”
“No—I’m very happy! I just thought you’d like to go somewhere. See the expanse of space. Be together, surrounded by stars. Just you and I. Aside from our secret trysts during the war, I barely got to spend any time alone with you.” Skyfire attempted, a bit of his exasperation leaking into it.
Starscream stopped. “Oh. Well. That sounds. That’s fine. That’d be fine. I suppose.”
The shuttle was hesitant, but he reached forward, taking Starscream’s hands in his own. “You know, you don’t have to say yes to everything I want to do. Do you recall our first expedition together? Our first real, off-world expedition?”
“I do… it was terrible.”
“Terrible?”
“Yes, terrible. Awful. I hated every moment of it,” Starscream pulled his hands away, crossing his arms for emphasis.
“I remember… flying through space, just the two of us, and we finally had some time to compare our notes. It was quiet, peaceful, and we saw some beautiful shards of ice in that solar system’s outer edges,” Skyfire answered, pulling Starscream into his arms despite the seeker’s hiked-up wings and pouty demeanor.
Starscream avoided his gaze, even as he continued.
“I remember… sharing fuel with you and hearing you go on and on about how much better the jet-grade was in Vos. Upon admitting I’d never been to Vos, you went on about how much more suited the Vosian infrastructure was to fliers, the differences between the typical Tyrestian and Vosian calendars, and how I must come visit during the solstice festivals.”
The seeker’s wings relaxed slightly, and the tightness of his plating loosened. “You bothered to remember all that?”
Skyfire smiled, but didn’t point it out. “It was a precious memory to me. I wanted… I did genuinely want to go visit Vos with you someday. It sounded quite different from Altihex. It was nice to bond over our differences. Our classmates may have seen our wings and forced us together, without realizing we were from opposite sides of the planet, and thus had little in common, but I still liked hearing you speak so passionately about your culture.”
“It was still a terrible trip,” Starscream grumbled.
“Was it? I recall arriving on a planet that was incredibly lush and green. A new world, with brilliant purple oceans, and a sky with so many more moons than our own. It was thriving with life. So many oceanic vertebrates.”
“And mud. My landing gear got stuck in mud,” Starscream shot back.
“But I carried you back to the beach, and we washed off together,” Skyfire answered.
Starscream huffed a little through his vents, but Skyfire could tell that this time, it was more for show than out of actual, genuine irritation. “Fine, maybe that part wasn’t the worst.”
“And the locals were quite kind,” Skyfire added. “Our first interaction with offworlders. They even showed us where to find the plants I wanted to study, as well as the rocks you wished to investigate.”
“You mean the same accursed plants that attempted to bite my servos off? Those wretched things?”
“Well, we learned that their primary source of food was an insecticon-like organic species that was primarily blue in color…” Skyfire smiled, nuzzling his helm against the side of Starscream’s. “And they gave you samples to bring back to Cybertron.”
“And our professors did not believe that planet was inhabited by intelligent life, so we nearly failed the entire project because you wanted to include them in our report!” Starscream grumbled.
The first answer was a small sigh, then a chaste kiss to the top of Starscream’s helm. “Perhaps. But perhaps we would have gotten a terrible grade on that project either way. You had a habit of correcting our professors and getting under their plating, and my choice to focus my study on extraterrestrial ecology, rather than Cybertronian, diminished the value of my work to them.”
“So why look back on such a miserable, futile effort so fondly?” Starscream asked. Despite the irritation of his words, he was relaxing into Skyfire’s embrace now, and Skyfire resisted the urge to nuzzle his helm against Starscream’s, opting instead to just lean his against it for a brief moment, before turning his gaze back to the stars.
“To be honest, Star, to me, no time spent learning was wasted. It was education. It was fun. And it was time spent with you. You, who I was growing to love, was learning to understand. Washing ourselves off in the surf, carrying you, flying through space, alone with you, the excitement of such unique discoveries, they were all memories of you. Memories that I held onto in the cold and the dark, little moments that comforted me in the thousands of quiet, solitary dreams that stuck me in the ice.”
Starscream lowered his arms, and then slowly took one of Skyfire’s servos in both of his hands. “You’re such a fragging sap. I love that about you.”
He blew out some hot air through his vents in a small huff, and relaxed into Skyfire’s arms, gazing back up at the stars. “Fine. You’ve convinced me.”
It was Skyfire’s turn to stare at Starscream blankly, cycling his optics in a blink. “Convinced you of… what?”
“To go on that vacation,” Starscream answered simply. “That was what all of that was about, right? Making precious memories with me, because I’m so special to you? The expanse of space, just you and I?”
Skyfire laughed. That wasn’t his intention at all.
“Fantastic. I would love to.”