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“Starscream!” Windblade’s voice was just shy of yelling. She, after all, was at least trying to be civil. Unlike somebody. “This is--! We’re in the middle of a discussion! You can’t just walk away!”
The aerial-mech stopped just before passing through the doorway, pulling up to his full height, wings stretching to make his silhouette bigger. He glanced back toward her mutinously, head at an angle that only left the tip of his nose and a mean sliver of red optic to peek past his helm.
“Yes I can!” His chin lifted stubbornly, his wings flickered agitatedly. “I’m doing it right now!” And with that, he made his exit.
Windblade likely should not have been surprised that he had made that his argument, and yet, she was. She could only stand there in furious silence, her mouth open in shock and rage, staring at the doorway in disbelief. Her internal cooling system was running wildly, vents expelling the heat raised from her anger, a common result when she found herself conducting business with Starscream. He hadn’t made her this frustrated in at least a week.
She closed her mouth, tried not to grind her teeth in irritation instead, and ran a systems check to calm herself. Then, she sent a comms ping.
WB: Wheeljack? Are you free at the moment?
“He! Is so! infuriating! ” Windblade’s pedes fell heavy on the floor as she stormed through the entrance to Wheeljack’s lab.
Wheeljack looked up from his project - a scattered collection of metals and wires that Windblade wouldn’t be able to make sense of if she tried - and sent a silent greeting in a brief expansion of his electromagnetic field. She sent one back herself, because she was happy to see him and rather grateful that he was allowing her to yell at him about Starscream for a bit, before continuing on with her tirade through her vocalizer.
“He refuses to listen to me! About anything! It’s like he can’t just do something, he has to make a point out of it. I don’t understand why he always has to make everything so difficult for no reason!” She threw herself down onto one of the spare chairs around the workshop, her arms crossing and wings twitching. Her vents were running loudly again; she huffed, scowling, and turned her glare to melt through a random spiral of wire left on the floor.
“Mmn. He does like to do that.” Wheeljack agreed noncommittally.
“He does.” Windblade said. “It’s so! Urhgh!!” She made a staticky sound of aggravation. “It’s like he doesn’t know the definition of the word ‘easy.’ And Primus forbid he agree to anything that would actually help him.” She had noticed that more and more, how he refused to consider help from another mech in any sort of way. She frowned. “Especially if it’s from me.” She regretted the words leaving her vocalizer almost immediately, felt a light embarrassment creeping up her plating now along with the anger.
Still, they weren’t untrue of her feelings. She knew that the sort of relationship she was trying to build with Starscream was one built on competition and a constant push and pull, that the rivalry and combative nature was an essential component. But that wasn’t all there was to it, right? Perhaps softer moments of vulnerability and such were more suited to the relationship Starscream had with Wheeljack, but it wasn’t an impossibility for them to occur in the one he had with her. Right?
“You think so?” Wheeljack had turned to face her fully, away from his project, though there was still a small bit of wire he was twisting between his servos.
Windblade, pushing herself as far into the chair as she possibly could in an attempt to hide herself, nodded reluctantly.
Truthfully, Windblade worried on and off that her feelings were more one-sided than she thought, that she was just imagining things. This thing she had with Starscream was new and fragile - much as he would protest that anything involved with himself could be labeled fragile - but it was. It was still developing, still waiting to settle into a comfortable rhythm between the two.
Yes, she and Starscream had kissed. Passionately. With her back and wings pinned against his desk. And they had ventured further than that, even, more than once, the interactions leaving them both with scratches on their plating and scuffs of paint between their legs more often than not. They had gotten very close, physically.
Emotionally, though, Windblade felt that she was floundering. Starscream was a brick wall, in terms of emotional vulnerability. He was a master of deflection and lies, and any sort of well-meaning nudge to have a conversation about feelings was, to him, a declaration of sinister intentions at best and an admission to an assassination attempt at worst. Windblade was fairly certain that if he and a psychiatrist were to have anything resembling a session, Starscream would grow so paranoid and uncomfortable within the first five kliks that he would attempt to launch psychological warfare upon whichever poor mech was in the room with him. And he would probably win.
“Hm.” Wheeljack’s hum brought her back out of her thoughts.
“What?”
“What was your argument about this time?” He asked instead of explaining.
Windblade sighed. “It was nothing big. Or, it started as nothing big.” She tapped her servos along her folded arms. “It hardly even matters anymore. I was suggesting that we arrange a time to properly discuss our next moves with the council; we’re trying to set up trade between Devisiun, and there’s a meeting we’re meant to have with leaders on Eukaris within the next orn. I feel it would be best to present our thoughts as a unified front instead of debating it between ourselves in front of everyone else. So we were arguing about that for bit, you know, and then…” She trailed off distastefully.
Wheeljack nodded encouragingly.
“And then somehow it turned into how I don’t trust him or his choices as leader. Which is not true! Not entirely, at least.” A healthy sense of skepticism and a critical voice of reason was necessary, but that didn’t translate into not trusting him. She snorted. “Not in so many words, of course. He’d never admit something like that got under his plating.”
Wheeljack’s optics gleamed: a small smile. “That he would not.”
“And it all ended with him storming out and both of us yelling at each other. And not in a good way.” She ran her hands over her face, one servo rubbing at her temple.
“I see.” Wheeljack nodded. He shifted, cables creaking slightly, fixed her with a neutral expression. “You lookin’ for advice, or just someone to rant to?”
Windblade leaned back in her seat, crossed her legs along with her arms. “I certainly won’t say no to any advice you have to share.”
“Mkay. Well. Starscream’s prickly. You know that.” He turned back to his project, facing away from her but still keeping several sensors tuned into her direction.
“Of course.”
“So what’s the actual problem here?”
“Just…he doesn’t trust me.” It was what he was saying, behind all the threats and posturing and insults. She shook her head.
“Starscream doesn’t trust anybody.” Wheeljack replied.
Windblade knew he was joking, but she still had to answer with, “He trusts you,” because he did. It was said pointedly, admiringly, and, yes, she had to admit to herself, a bit jealously. “So how’d that happen?”
Wheeljack paused at his work table. He tapped a wrench against the table surface thoughtfully. She couldn’t sense any sort of offense from him, and she hoped he wasn’t too insulted by her frankness. Solus Prime, she really had been spending too much time with Starscream, hadn’t she?
“It wasn’t easy.” Wheeljack said. He’d continued his work, as evidenced by the movements of his shoulders and arms. “Starscream’s a piece’a work.”
Windblade’s lips twisted into a smile at that. She was well aware.
“The war was-- hm. It happened, and we both knew that, but neither’a us really held onto those allegiances too hard. I was pretty neutral the whole way through, chose t’work with the Autobots ‘cause they had better equipment, mostly, and I knew the people who joined a lot more. And I don’t really think Starscream has had any sorta loyalty to anyone but himself. ‘Specially after ‘e became emperor. I think we were just lonely. A couple’a lonely bastards with no friends around t’keep us company and an old planet with history none of us wanted t’remember.” Wheeljack shrugged.
“We talked pretty frequently due to me bein’ chief engineer, there were tons a’things to work on. A lot of workload builds up after several so vorns of disrepair. It made it easier to become what I woulda called friends, and then after that, well, you know Star, he likes gettin’ touchy, so it wasn’t long after that that we coulda been called fragbuddies,” He shook his head, laughed a little. “Entirely impersonal, a’course. He insisted. Ah well. It went on like that for a good while, I was fine with it.” Wheeljack turned his upper chassis to face her, a smile in his optics and affection in his voice. “Did you know he likes physics?”
“No,” Windblade said, echoing his smile. Wheeljack nodded.
“Astronomy, physics, chemistry, ‘e loves all’a that.” He turned back to his project. “Made it easier for us to get along, when we got t’talk about our science field’a choice.”
“Adorable.” Windblade teased halfheartedly. She hadn’t known he liked astronomy. She cherished the small fact gifted to her, kept rolling it around in her mind, polishing it and admiring it like it was a pearl.
“Mhm. Anyway, we only started getting closer after we had shared cables a few times. It’s…” He sighed. “Windblade, I’m not one to go ‘round sharing other mecha’s personal business without their permission. It isn’t fair.”
“I understand.” she said, trying not to sound disappointed. She agreed, doing something like that wasn’t very considerate, and in Wheeljack’s position she’d be reluctant to give anything away that she knew was private information as well. It was just…Starscream was so hard to crack. It was practically impossible to learn anything about him if he didn’t want her to. It made it all… so difficult.
“But I will tell y’this,” Wheeljack continued, and she sat up. “He’s had bad stuff happen, a whole lot of it. Trust is hard. You know how he is already. To be honest, I think you’re on a good track with each other now. You challenge each other to think different all the time. I think he needs that. But given how you’re both so confrontational, he’s not gonna take to any sort of feelings talk well.”
“That’s the issue.” Windblade agreed ruefully. She tried to contain the burgeoning elation and pride she felt rising at Wheeljack’s words. “You think we’re good for each other?”
“I do.”
A flutter of anxiety whispered through her inner cable-cords. “So he does like me, then?” she asked hesitantly.
“Seems like he does.” Wheeljack said. It was enough to keep her from worrying at her chipped servo paint, so she took it. “If the way he’s been ranting to me about you tells me anythin’.”
“He is?” It made her pleased, of course, the thought of him ranting frustratedly about her to his amica, the thought that she had taken his attention enough for her to think about him as much as she thought about him.
“Ohh, he is. I think you’re doin’ somethin’ right.”
And that was reassuring. “Thanks.” She told him.
“Anytime,” he said, and he meant it genuinely, as far as she could tell.
“We need to go to Maccadam’s together,” She said. “Just you and me.”
“Like a date?” Wheeljack asked cheekily.
She smiled back, standing up out of the chair to stretch. “Well, there’s no way I could say no to those wheels.” She responded goofily. The easy humor in the air was clear to both of them.
Wheeljack laughed.
“Really, though. I enjoy you for more than your amica.” She walked over to join his side at the worktable. “I consider you a friend, Wheeljack.”
He hummed, happily. “I do keep gettin’ told I need to spend less time workin’,” He said.
“And I would agree with that.” She bumped shoulders with him, placed her hands flat on the table, tilted her head. “So. Maccadam’s? A cup of energon, some supplementaries. We don’t even have to talk about Starscream.”
He chuckled at that. “Alright, alright. Just name a time.” There was a ping in her comms line from him: his schedule for the next orn.
“Excellent! Now,” She nodded to the mass of machinery in his hands. “Tell me what you’re working on?”
Wheeljack smiled and launched into an explanation, and Windblade could only smile back, leaning into his field.