Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"There is poison in my soup," declared Megatron, sounding all together more disappointed than angry. His pout was really rather endearing, Starscream thought.

"Don't be ridiculous," was what Starscream replied instead, as he'd be more inclined to kill himself than admit anything about Megatron could be anything but awful. "How could you possibly know that there is poison in your soup?"

Megatron's frown deepened. "Tastes like poison." He dragged his straw around the edge of his cube. The only difference between energon soup and energon itself, the reader should know, is that energon soup is heated and occasionally flavored. This particular soup was flavored with bismuth, which Starscream enjoyed, and infectious rust, which Megatron did not.

"Well, it's not," said Starscream. "Not unless some other fool is trying to kill you."

"I don't want any other fool to try and kill me." Megatron glumly knocked his straw about the sides of his cube, staring into its pink hue as though it could save his night. "I might have to empty my tanks."

"That is improper behavior for a date," said Starscream.

"So is poisoning someone's soup," muttered Megatron, too quiet to be properly sarcastic. He was rather subdued tonight. It upset Starscream, not because of what it might mean for Megatron's emotional state, but because it was ruining their date. Starscream polished for this. 

"You hardly drank anything anyway," said Starscream. "If you don't want it you can go hungry for all I care."

"It's poisoned,” repeated Megatron. Then, "How about we trade. I want your flavoring."

Starscream defensively wrapped his arms around his cube and pulled it closer to his chest, away from the threat of Megatron's greasy servos. "No! I got mine and you got yours. I flavored mine perfectly. You poisoned yours."

"I didn't add the poison in with my toppings!" Cried Megatron, throwing his servos in the air. "Primus, seeker..." He brought his servos down and to his face, where they massaged his nasal ridge. "Why would you put so obvious a-"

"I didn't put anything anywhere," denied Starscream. It was so broad a statement that it must be a lie, which freed him of the responsibility of a real lie.

"I just," Megatron lifted his helm from his servos, defeated look adorning his ugly face. He appeared, to Starscream's great disgust, genuinely hurt. It was not as if the infectious rust had made it past his lips in a quantity enough to cause anything more than a fuel-tank ache, and then only if his fuel tank didn't properly activate its defensive functions. He hadn't hurt Megatron, had he?

Megatron's face looked hurt. Pathetically so. Starscream had a great desire to make fun of him, but his glossa was stayed by something. If he were the more romantic sort of mech he might call it a tingling sense of something to come.

Megatron had stopped after those first two words. His jaw clicked and clicked again, as if attempting to physically chew his own words. Indecisiveness, Starscream thought, was a sin meant for Autobots. But here Megatron was, playing it like the Prime himself. Foolish. 

Starscream busied himself with a mental catalog of the room, so as to avoid the embarrassment that welled in him when he watched Megatron's fiddling jaw. The room, being as it was before, was static, and therefore boring. There was the window which revealed nothing but dark ocean, a shelf of things Starscream had already read and deemed useless, a weapons safe that he had tampered with long ago and was set to explode, but which had never gone off because Megatron never bothered with anything other than his fusion cannon, which he was too paranoid to remove. 

The room's chairs and working desk were being used by the room's two most important features - its occupants. It was a dreadfully boring room because Megatron was a dreadfully boring person, Starscream thought. That was why he brought improvements, but those were all allocated to the berthroom portion of Megatron's habsuire, where Starscream had intended to spend all of his time. He had not anticipated dinners in the main room.

"It is only that-" Megatron cut himself off once more. A pity, since it had seemed as though he had finally dislodged whatever it was gluing his dentae together.

"Drink your soup," Starscream said.

"I will not!" Megatron pushed his energon away from him, almost angry but not Megatron angry at all. "It tastes terrible. It tastes obvious!"

Personally, Starscream thought he should be thankful. If the poison wasn't bitter he'd be heaving over the washrack basin by now and their date would be ruined.

"Then don't drink it," he replied, edging the line of taking responsibility and not. Megatron had left his soup alone on the counter for a solid 26 seconds, he can't possibly be mad even if Starscream had slipped in the packet of rust.

"I'm not mad," Megatron said, as if Starscream thought he was.

"Why would you be mad?"

Megatron's servos clenched and unclenched as if he were mad. "Are you angry with me?" he asked.

"Obviously not." They were in one of those rare periods when Starscream was not mad at Megatron, for the simple fact that nothing had happened. For a year! Nothing at all. There were no military plans or secret weapons to argue over, and so no need to build any proper Megatron-killing device.

"So then why?" Megatron pointed with an open servo towards his soup. "Why a simple poison?"

"I didn't poison your stupid soup!" Starscream cried, standing to prove his point. He shook a finger at Megatron. "You dumped something bitter in your soup and now you're blaming me-"

"Oh please!" Megatron stood. "Be real for once in your insipid, traitorous little life!"

There, Starscream thought. That was much better than the moping of before. He preened. "I would never sink so low as to put bad poison in your soup," he argued.

"That is ridiculous!" And Megatron's voice was getting a desperate tinge to it. "That is ridiculous. Would you tell me what's wrong? I thought everything had been going well, but here you are with obvious poisons-"

"Well?" Starscream cried. "We haven't done anything in months! This is the most boring war I have ever participated in!"

"I can give your seekers more air time. Is that what you want?" The thought, while pleasing in the logical sense, did nothing to soothe Starscream's annoyance, which he didn't quite understand but knew existed.

"To see what?! The ocean?"

"Are you not-" Megatron paused again, his arms falling to his sides. His voice fell in volume. "Is your discontent with the current pace of the war or with me?"

This bordered on an emotional conversation and so made Starscream distinctly uncomfortable, but retained just enough of a war-related cover to allow him to say: "I am always discontented with you. Now I am discontented with the war."

"I am being serious," Megatorn said.

"I am too!" cried Starscream, waving a pointed finger. "You are making a mess of the night. This is supposed to be a date. I am supposed to end up very satisfied."

"But you aren't!" Megatron gestured once more to his poisoned soup. "You made it obvious."

"Would you shut up about the stupid soup!" Confounding, dense Megatron, always ruining everything. Ruining a fine dinner date with his obsession over poisoned soup. "Just pour the thing out, refuse to purge your tank, go white in the faceplate, throw up anyway, feel better, then threaten to throw me out! You don't have a difficult responsibility here."

"You gave me bitter poison!" Megatron repeated, as if the act of telling Starscream the story over again would provide him with any deeper an understanding of the idiotic, stalled clogs of his leader's processor.

"And you didn't drink it." Starscream crossed his arms and, pointedly, returned to his seat. He doubted Megatron would understand this communication - that he had failed to express a proper show of anger and had therefore bored him. Sure enough, Megatron only fell back into his own chair, staring into his cube like a fortune teller into an orb.

Then he finally became angry, a wry and twisted snarl forming on his face. "I do not want your games, seeker," he declared. "This-" he pointed at the cube, "is unacceptable. I have not given you half an effort. I have given you more than enough. I have spoken with your trine-mates - "

Megatron had threatened his trinemates, which had of course been fine with Starscream. Why he had felt the need to extract permissions from them before kissing Starscream senseless in the empty war-room was beyond his understanding, but he had appreciated the attention to detail, the forethought, the terrified recounting from his trine-mates, and the kissing most of all.

"- I have orchestrated all our outings -"

Megatron had, over the course of their new kissing-included relationship, occasionally dragged Starscream halfway across the planet to see large waterfalls (which were mildly intriguing only as potential energy sources in need of engineering), and a variety of wildlife (which were squishable but left gross residues underfoot), and sunsets (which they could have seen from the top of the base). Starscream had thought these outings annoying and mildly embarrassing for Megatron, who seemed to think great amounts of water and little animals were the sort of things one should spend time looking at and not engineering and/or squishing.

"- I please you -"

Megatron did please him. 

"- I listen to your ridiculous critiques of sound strategy -"

Sound critiques, Starscream thinks. Not that they've had to do much strategizing at all, lately. Or perhaps they had had to do so little strategy because they never attacked, and perhaps that was because all of Megatron's ideas were ridiculously stupid. No, Starscream thought. It was definitely the Autobots who had stopped attacking their energon raids. Of course, their raids had been dropping drastically ever since Starscream proposed and installed those hyro-electric power stations...

"-I just don't understand what problem you could possibly have with me," Megatron concluded.

"I don't," Starscream said, before the words could travel through his logical processor. "Well, not any more of a problem than I always have with you."

"Then what," Megatron gritted out, "Is this?" He once again gestured towards the soup cube.

"Poison, apparently," said Starsceam.

Megatron cried out in frustration. "You are being purposefully obtuse." He crossed his arms and leaned back against his seat, fixing Starscream with a petulant glare. It was an odd reversal of positions, one that left Starscream distinctly uncomfortable and, more embarrassingly, confused.

Of course, he could not say that he was confused. But he could still salvage the night, if only he took a risk.

"I poisoned your soup," he admitted. Paradoxically, Megatron's face did not contort in anger. There was no more yelling, despite Starscream's intentions. Their night was not salvaged.

Instead Megatron looked half-relieved. "Yes," he said. "Did you simply mix up the powders? Was this unintentional."

The fool, Starscream thought. "Obviously I poisoned you on purpose," he said. "Can we have a regular fight now? One without your idiotic ramblings."

Megatron knit his fingers together on the table. "Obviously you poisoned it on purpose," he replied. "But did you poison it so blatantly intentionally? What was this supposed to be?"

Starscream opened his mouth to rile Megatron up some more, only he couldn't decide what a proper “rile-ing” would entail. How should he answer this question? Why had he picked the bitter rust?

So that Megatron would not drink so much their night would be ruined, obviously. But he could not say that.

"I thought your aging tanks would fail with only a sip," he settled on eventually. 

"That's a lie," said Megatron, unhappily, as if expecting truth from their table. "Do you intend to..." he sighed. "Never mind." He stood again, picking up his soup as he went, and headed for the washracks.

With their night clearly in the process of being ruined by Megatron's nonsensical tirade, Starscream felt a sudden onset of hurt to add to his frustration. "I don't understand you," he called, rising to his own pedes. "Are you angry? Because I poisoned you? You aren't even pale on the faceplate. Your old tank is probably so rusted over it can't tell the infectious stuff from its normal state."

"Exactly!" replied Megatron from the washrack. There is the sound of energon being dumped down the drain. "You clearly don't care. That's fine. You can leave."

"What!" cried Starscream. "I don't want to leave!"

"It sure seems like it." Megatron's voice is muffled by the washrack.

"Oh, come out here you stupid lout!" Shouted Starscream. "You are mumbling."

"I am not," replied Megatron, but he was. Starscream marched over to the washrack door and shoved his helm in. Megatron, faced towards the opposite wall, watched the last of the tainted energon swirl down the drain.

"I don't want to leave," repeated Starscream petulantly. 

"Then where is the effort?" Megatron turned to face him then, looking somewhere between upset and resigned. "Bitter poison?"

This resignation startled Starscream, and he came to the disturbing realization that Megatron might be asking him to leave forever. Faced with this reality, and desperately wanting the conversation to be over, he replied "I hate the sound of you purging."

"Then use an axe!" Megatron shouted. "Electrify my seat!"

Starscream hated his own confusion with a burning passion. It had, over the course of their dinner, become harder and harder to cover up. "You make no sense," he said.

"And you make no effort!" Megatron dramatically threw his cube to the floor, where it bounced off the metal, hit his own pede, and then slid off to the side. Starscream stared at it. "Did something change? Are you now too bored to reciprocate?"

"I can electrify your chair if you want," Starscream said lamely.

"I want you to want it," replied Megatron.

All at once, things clicked in Starscream's processor. "I made the war boring, didn't I?" he asked, looking up from the cube. Megatron's face was set in a state of frustrated hurt.

"Yeah," he said.

"Your plans aren't all stupid." Starscream stepped forward, just half a pede. "We can go back to some raids. Maybe we…reduce output from the hydroelectric dams."

"Alright," said Megatron lamely.

"And-" Starscream attempted a genuine smile, which felt horrendous on his lips. He reverted to a smirk. "I can push you into Prime's blaster fire."

"Would you mean it?"

Starscream shrugs. "I never mean it," he said. "Long live Lord Megatron, may he rust in peace. And when he is fully rusted I, Lord Starscream -"

Megatron cut him off with a kiss. He kissed Starscream as senseless as he had in the empty war-room, only Starscream would never be caught senseless in his life, so his processor spent his senseless kissing time arriving on his next scheme, just as he had in the empty war-room. Back then, his next scheme had been to pour acid into Megatron's washrack tank -

Starscream looked up anxiously as they kissed, to ensure no stray droplets were set to come down and ruin his paint job -

This time, his brilliant scheme was to pull back and say "I got you a present tonight. I'd have given it to you earlier if I knew you had lost a processor cell."

"Oh?" said Megatron, peering down. Starscream reached into his subspace and pulled out a knife, at the site of which Megatron naturally retreated backward. But Starscream only presented the knife - and it was a simple, basic little knife, of course - handle first, and Megatron took it cautiously from his hand.

"It's for your empty weapons safe," said Starscream. "Because I think it is embarrassing that the Autobot spy comes into your room and finds it empty."

"The Autobot spy does not come into my room," replied Megatron, being delusional. He inspected the knife with care. "You come into my room."

"It is plain, since you'll never open that safe anyway," Starscream said. "But a knife in inconvenient places is always good to have."

"Thank you." Megatron kissed Starscream again, then stepped past him and out of the washracks. "I will put it there for the Autobot spy," he said.

"Good." Starscream watched him walk to the safe from the washrack entry, placing himself just far enough away to save him any troubles.

He alerted the medbay too. He wouldn't want his dinner partner unable to participate in after-surgery activities.

Megatron keyed in the safe code. Starscream watched with delight as he pulled the door open, and even more delight as the entire room was rattled with the force of the explosion by Megatron's chest.

When the dust had settled, and the rattling table had ceased to be an annoying ruckus, Starscream walked over to Megatron's fallen frame. Megatron looked up at him with the sort of genuine smile Starscream could never hope to pull off himself.

"I can't feel my legs," Megatron said. "So you have a head start."

"I will make sure you catch me in a bedroom," replied Starscream, and he kneeled and kissed Megatron upside down on the lips. Then he stood and fled, cackling at Megatron's joyful cursing.

Chapter Text

It was his fault, as it usually was. Optimus had gotten himself shot by a fusion cannon. It was not the first nor, he'd imagine, the last time he would be in this particular circumstance - laid out on the ground with a hole through his abdomen. Anyway, it was his fault that Ratchet was on the front lines, and Ratchet made that very clear.

"I don't see why you can't just dodge," Ratchet griped. One of his servos held Optimus down by the ventral plating and that, combined with the high that naturally comes when one's body is in shock, sent a thrill up Optimus's spinal strut.

"Wasn't my fault," Optimus denied, though it most certainly was. "Starscream was being distracting."

"Starscream is always distracting." A stray shot of phaser fire flew past Ratchet's helm as he spoke, but he continued sautering the weld patch to Optimus's as if he hadn't noticed. "Normally he's distracting the Decepticons. Look at him now."

They were sheltered behind some fallen trees and an expanse of shrubbery, but Optimus craned his helm over one lower-laying log to see Starscream and Megatron, locked in verbal battle while the physical battle rained phaser fire around them. Starscream jabbed at Megatron's chest as Optimus watched. A moment later, Megatron reached about to take a phaser shot to his arm, protecting Starscream's vulnerable wing armour. Starscream jabbed him again.

The hard press of Ratchet's servos brought Optimus back to their little den. "Well," he said, "He was distracting me , at the time. I think Megatron iss used to him; when he starts screaming he gets all of my attention and none of Megatron's. Then I get a fusion cannon blast to the stomach."

Ratchet snorted. Sparks flew from Optimus's plating and arched past his face. "What was he yelling about this time?"

"Megatron is supposed to be dead, apparently. And Starscream is mad at him for not having his morning cup of energon, which I assume was poisoned." It had felt a bit surreal to Optimus at the time, which is probably why he hadn't reacted to the sudden firing of a disturbingly large weapon.

Ratchet snickered. The sparks continued to fly in what Optimus considered to be an overly dramatic show of things. He didn't mind, quite the opposite - they floated up and about like shooting stars. It was rather romantic. Ratchet's servos pressed hard against his plating, and the torch tickled.

This beautiful moment of silence was broken by Starscream's screaming. "- because you aren't supposed to be here!" Optimus lifted his helm once more to spy on the couple, just in time to hear Megatron's reply.

"I am perfectly healthy. If you didn't notice, I just shot Optimus Prime. And if you were capable of giving me a moment of peace I would be finishing him off right now."

Optimus wasn't particularly concerned about this threat, and neither was Starscream.

"Like slag you would," he argued. "You've never been capable of killing that cockroach. And you are injured . You need to be in the medbay."

"I am not! I am perfectly fine."

"This is why I spiked your energon, because you are such an imbecilic, egotistical slagaft, you are - you are - incapable of listening to medical advice!"

"Would you rather I'd come out here poisoned?"

"I'd rather you were puking your guts up in the medbay, you stupid piece of slag!"

Optimus turned back to Ratchet, who shrugged. The movement had no effect on the welding taking place on Optimus's abdomen, which continued to tickle and apply pressure in all the right places.

"Well, at the very least they are devoted to each other," Ratchet said. "Devoted to killing each other too, I suppose."

"It's a little romantic," said Optimus, because the shock had made him delusional.

"No it's not." Ratchet shifted then, pausing his welding momentarily. The sparks disappeared, which Optimus thought was a terrible, terrible shame. He reached out and patted Ratchet's helm, just to ensure that it, too, would not suddenly disappear.

Ratchet rolled his optics but otherwise permitted the petting. He did, however, move his body forward so as to place even more of his weight on his hands, still pressed to the sides of the weld on Optimus's ventral plating. Optimus groaned.

"I'm almost done," Ratchet told him.

"No, that's alright," Optimus smiled. "Please continue."

Ratchet looked up at Optimus with a humorous, knowing look. He opened his mouth as if to speak, only to be shouted over by a still-irate Starscream, who seemed to be much closer to their hiding spot than before.

"Oh sure!" He said, sarcastically. "Limp on over to the bushes. You won't be ambushed, of course not. Intelligent generals like yourself have never been killed behind some trees."

"Silence, Starscream," replied Megatron, uselessly.

"And what am I supposed to say at your funeral? "My brave, stupid leader walked into an Autobot trap, injured and unfueled"? It's embarrassing. You embarrass me."

Ratchet had frozen in place, still applying that tantalizing pressure to Optimus's lower abdomen. Optimus, having found it increasingly difficult to care about the internal fighting of his generally confusing enemies, sagged back into the brush beneath him and waited for a sweet release, be it by death or Ratchet's servos.

"Well, considering it's your fault I didn't fuel this morning..." Megatron's voice came from even nearer, and Optimus heard his pedesteps crush over the fallen branches that surrounded their little hiding spot.

"I try to do something nice, and look what it gets me," bemoaned Starscream. 

"Nice? You poisoned my breakfast!"

"Why are we even here? Prime is going to jump out of these trees and slit your throat, and then probably my throat, and all you can do is complain at me for poisoning your energon, which I didn't even do."

"You just admitted to doing it!"

At this point, Ratchet had given up pretending to be a statue and resumed his work, unconcerned about being heard over Starscream's complaining. Optimus smiled dumbly and listened to the searching pedesteps of his potential future murderer, unbothered.

"Let's go home, and you can live to fight another day, when your stupid old knees are fixed up."

"My knees are fine."

Starscream performed a poor imitation of Megatron for his next argument. "'Oh Starscream, why don't you try to kill me anymore?' Well, this is why. You ignore my nice little murder attempt and run off to let the Prime kill you. The Prime! It's like you don't even care."

"Primus help us," muttered Ratchet, with the voice of exasperation he usually saves for when Optimus escapes getting his vaccinations.

Megatron's pedesteps have paused. "I'm not going to get killed by Prime," he said. "I shot him through the stomach. He's probably bleeding out in some weeds."

" Sure ," said Starscream, sarcastically. "Because you are going to magically win a millions of years long war on a TUESDAY!"

"Not magically . I'm going to shoot Optimus Prime through his irritating, peace-adoring head."

Ratchet snickered. The act made his mouth twist upwards in something that was not quite a smile, but was very attractive. Optimus reached over and poked him on the cheek.

"Hi."

"Shush. Or you'll die."

The pedesteps started back up again, and so did Starscream. "Anyway, I didn't poison your energon ."

"You just said that you did!" Megatron snarled. Then, having processed the stressed word: "What are you blathering about."

As Megatron approached, Optimus began to make out the odd pattern of his steps. He hadn't noticed it during their admittedly short fight, but now they were distinctly lopsided.

"He screwed up his knee," Ratchet muttered. "You should've kicked him there."

"The energon had the slow-acting antidote to the poison I put in your transfusion bag. I knew you'd try to leave the med-bay too soon, didn't I? I did, so I ensured you'd be back for the proper treatment."

"For the love of Primus!" shouted Megatron. "You idiotic, traitorous-"

"Let's get out of these woods before you topple straight over," said Starscream, the most calm he'd been that entire day. "Because if you fall over I won't stop Prime from shooting you."

"I hate you!" cried Megatron. "You sorry excuse for a seeker. You are fired."

"You can fire me from the medbay," promised his idiotic, traitorous, sorry excuse for a seeker.

Megatron's shouting quieted into dissatisfied grumbling, but his pedesteps began to retreat nonetheless. Optimus's processor was clear enough to inform him that he'd just survived a threat he hadn't quite computed before, which was quite a relief.

After several minutes of listening to their would-be killers retreat, Ratchet lifted himself off of Optimus. Optimus groaned his protest.

"Shush," shushed Ratchet. "They had the right idea. We are going to a proper med-bay."

"Mm," said Optimus, intelligently. "Take me home." Ratchet stood up, checked the woods around them for dangers, and then hoisted Optimus up by the shoulders and began to drag him out of the woods. It was not very romantic at all, and Optimus missed the sparks.

"Those sparks were your plating being melted back together," Ratchet informed him. "It wasn't nice at all."

"You melted my plating," replied Optimus, dreamily. Ratchet sighed. In the distance, Starscream's shrill voice called:

"Megatron has fallen! I, Starscream, am now leader of the Decepticons."

"I have not fallen!" comes Megatron's voice. "But I am calling a retreat. Everyone go home!"