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It was winter. Again.
Not only was it winter, but Starscream had been sent on an extended mission off base, in the freezing, frigid, hellscape of northern Greenland. He hadn't seen the sun in two weeks. And he hadn't felt his toe-pedes in just as long.
It was just as cold inside the temporary base they'd been abandoned at as it was outside. Not that Megatron would have cared. Leaving his airforce to freeze in the Artic North with nothing but mouldy old tarps and flimsy corrugated metal to protect them from the elements was exactly what Starscream had come to expect from his leader.
Ice had built up on his wings, weighing them down and stiffening him up. Frost had formed on the glass of his cockpit. He could feel the sluggish crawl of the energon in his lines struggling to stay liquid.
It was unbearable.
Storming through the base, he snatched a tarp off Ramjet’s shoulders, who jolted and squeaked at the sudden exposure to frigid air, and went stomping off through the temporary structure in search of a trine-mate to warm him.
It took him some time to locate them (almost as if they’d been hiding somewhere) but he eventually found them sequestered in a storage cupboard barely big enough for one mech, let alone two.
"There you are!" He exclaimed, shoving the rickety old door open with a slam, filling the dark space with light.
His trine cringed back with expressions of alarm, their servos flying up from whatever it was they'd been doing.
Which had been keeping them warm, somehow, Starscream noted, eyeing the flushes across their cheeks.
"Primus, Screamer!" Skywarp snapped, angry. "You can't just barge in on someone like that-"
"Starscream," Thundercracker was adjusting his armour awkwardly, trying to inch behind Skywarp despite the lack of room. "We- we were just-"
Starscream ignored him.
"Finally the pair of you come in use," in said, edging his way inside. It was beautifully warm in the enclosed space, both trine-mates running hot and filling the air with their ventilations. Starscream ignored Thundercracker's wince and Skywarp's cursing as he shouldered between them, wedging himself into the warm pocket between their frames and soaking up the heat.
He sighed, finally starting to defrost.
Behind him, Thundercracker fidgeted.
In front, Skywarp looked like he wanted to hit him.
"What?" He demanded, glaring at Skywarp.
"...Nothing." Skywarp grumbled.
Thundercracker huffed in what sounded like frustration. Starscream was beginning to get the distinct impression he wasn’t wanted here.
Spiteful and offended, he snuck a half-frozen servo behind Skywarp's back and slapped it on his wing hinges, where his armour was most sensitive. Skywarp jolted with a shout, spinning away and slapping Starscream across the face with a wing.
The resulting fist fight defrosted Starscream the rest of the way.
Getting away from Starscream wasn't an easy feat. They couldn't hide their location from him, couldn't mute his presence in their bond, couldn't block his spark from their own. Time away from Starscream was simply a matter of outrunning Starscream. Not an easy feat when you were trined to one of the fastest seekers to have ever flown.
Which was why if Thundercracker and Skywarp ever wanted a private conversation away from Starscream's eavesdropping audials, they had to have it at mach 4.
"He's gonna walk in on us if we're not careful." Thundercracker grumbled via comm.
He felt Skywarp’s annoyance through the bond. "He already has! Four times!"
"He hasn't seen anything-"
"That's what you think."
"You think he knows then? That's he's just toying with us?”
Skywarp thought for a moment. "Nah, he doesn't know. He's too self absorbed."
"...We should probably just tell him."
"No, fragging way! No! We're not telling him! He'll have a complete meltdown. At least this way he doesn’t know he’s a third wheel.”
“He’ll be angry we’ve been keeping secrets from him.”
“He’ll be angrier finding out he’s not at the centre of our universes.”
“Or maybe he’d be happy for us?”
Starscream!? Happy for them?! Skywarp loved Thundercracker and all, but Primus was he fragging delusional.
Starscream span and twisted, struggling to see his back in the reflection of Drag Strip's mirror. He had been tackled during their retreat and thrown down into the mud by that psychotic yellow grounder trash, Sunstreaker, and now there was a great big skid mark up his back, covering a good portion of his wings and aft too. With his shoulder towers and wings, he had no way of reaching back and getting it himself.
"You want me to get it?" Drag Strip offered 'innocently'.
Starscream would be grey and rusting in the ground before he let a Stunticon touch his armour. He turned to give him a withering glare.
Drag Strip turned his mirrors away and stomped off grumbling about stuck-up seekers.
Starscream pretended to have not heard and headed to the wash-racks, where his trine had disappeared off to upon arrival at base.
The racks were filled with mechs showering out in the open, scrubbing themselves down with little to no care or modesty. Starscream kept his chin up and optics above shoulder height to avoid getting a glimpse at anyone's ugly low-caste equipment.
For those with a sense of decency, private stalls existed. He had to kick three of the doors open before he could find his trine, and was still shuddering in revulsion when behind one of the previous ones he'd caught Blitzwing cleaning his nether regions a little too thoroughly.
He received the typical greeting he'd come to expect from them- alarm, surprise, and annoyance.
"The door was locked!" Thundercracker yelled over his shoulder where Skywarp seemed to have him pinned him to the tiles.
"Of course it was, with those degenerates out there," Starscream strode into the stall and shoved Thundercracker aside to present his own mud streaked wings in his place. Thundercracker slipped and stumbled into the wall, shocked.
"I require more urgent attention," Starscream told him, flicking his wings at Skywarp. "Hurry up. Before the hot solvent runs out."
Skywarp didn’t say anything. Scowling, he rung out a wash cloth and slapped it against Starscream's wing to start scrubbing carelessly.
"Ow!" Starscream flinched away. "You weren't that rough with him!"
"Quit whining," Skywarp growled, scrubbing harder.
"We've got to tell him. We should have told him millennia ago." Thundercracker whispered, staring at the ceiling of their quarters.
"I'd have thought he'd have figured it out by now, him being such a genius and all." Skywarp said from the other side of the berth, tone dripping with sarcasm.
Between them, spreadeagled and snoring, after storming into their room and throwing himself across their berth, Starscream kicked the covers he had stolen further down himself.
Skywarp lifted his helm, watching their unwanted visitor twitch and shift in his recharge.
"We could just kill him?” He suggested after a while.
Thundercracker rolled onto his side with a sigh. "We could," he agreed, less defensive of Starscream now that his chances of getting laid that night had sunk to zero. "Or..."
"Or what?"
"We could distract him?
"With what?” Skywarp snorted, “A chemistry set?”
"His own relationship."
"Are you joking? No one's gonna wanna take on Screamer." Skywarp grimaced in sympathy for this hypothetical boyfriend. "They'd be miserable."
Between them, Starscream snorted and rolled over, wing swinging dangerously close to Thundercracker’s face.
“...It’d have to be someone that deserves to be miserable,” Skywarp amended.
“And someone that’d last,” Thundercracker nodded. “Sturdy. Not easy to kill.”
“Someone he won’t get bored of,” Skywarp added. “Someone just as big a drama queen.”
“That likes to argue,” Thundercracker was beginning to smile.
“And won’t lose easy,” Skywarp was smiling back.
“And of course,” Thundercracker adjusted his pillow, “They’ll have to be someone of high rank. He’d never settle for a grunt.”
“There’s only one mechanism ranked higher than our dear Screamer.” Skywarp said, knowingly.
“Good thing it’s Megatron then, huh?”
“And you know what the best part will be?” Skywarp whispered excitedly, optics bright in the dark.
“What?”
“How many times I’m gonna walk in and spike-block him for a change.”
Thundercracker’s smile became unsure, “You’d be walking in on Megatron too, you know?”
Skywarp shrugged, “Pretty sure a warp drive can outrun a fusion cannon.”
Thundercracker hoped he was right.
Between them, Starscream grumbled in his recharge, blissfully unaware of plots to spitefully entrap him into a life of domestic ‘bliss’.