Chapter Text
Soundwave’s visor flashed, indicating an incoming comm. He looked away from the many screens in front of him for a moment to listen, then turned to Starscream.
“Starscream’s presence: requested in hall 4B,” he relayed.
The Second in Command turned to him, raising an optic ridge in annoyance. “What’s the issue?”
“Can you tell Starscream I need him?” Soundwave replayed the clip of Skywarp’s voice. “Tell him…” a pause, then a string of vocalizations that Soundwave knew he could never hope to replicate. Starscream seemed to understand their meaning though, and he offlined his optics with a weary ex-vent.
The few Seekers scattered around the room glanced at each other, making half-hearted attempts to hide their snickers behind their servos. They quickly turned back to their tasks when Starscream shot them all a death glare.
“Tell him I’ll be there in a klik,” he replied to Soundwave.
Starscream left the Command Center and headed down the halls of the Nemesis. As he approached hall 4B, he passed a vehicon coming from that direction.
“He’s that way,” it said simply, pointing back behind him. Starscream nodded his thanks, withering a little bit internally at the realization that this was such a common occurrence that even the Grounder troops could guess his business.
“Starscream!” he heard Skywarp call moments later as he rounded the corner and came into view. “I knew you’d come.”
“Yes, well, I should have left you here for a joor or so; give you a chance to think for once.” He studied his trinemate’s predicament. “Slag, you’re really stuck in there. How did this happen? You’re smarter than this.”
Skywarp shrugged as well as he could with half of his body implanted in the wall. “You know I’m impatient.”
Starscream pinched his temple. “It takes less than a nanoklik for you to perform warp calculations. You can’t wait that long?”
“Not usually.”
“Of course not.” A heavy sigh. Then, “Let’s see if we can’t get you out of this.”
It was never as simple as simply ‘warping out of the wall.’ In these cases, Skywarp’s mapping system was thrown off by a logical error— Skywarp shouldn’t be in a wall, therefore he shouldn’t have to warp out of a wall— so it usually took some failed attempts to teleport and bypassing of error messages, coupled with a few good tugs from another mech, to free him.
“Why didn’t you call Thundercracker?” Starscream asked as he positioned himself to attempt yet another yank on Skywarp’s arm.
“He’s not as good at this as you are,” he replied, grunting as Starscream tugged. They managed to release another few inches from the wall’s grasp. “He always pulls at the wrong angles.”
“Yes, well, he also isn’t as busy as I am.” He took a step back to study the situation again. Skywarp was mostly out by now– all that was left in the wall was his left calf and part of his forearm.
“Okay, that’s true. But he doesn’t know how to look at all the angles and calculate the best option, or whatever. Like you’re doing now!”
Starscream didn’t respond aloud, but Skywarp saw the way his wings fluttered and could feel him preening at the compliment through the trinebond.
“This one should do it,” was all he said instead, readjusting his grip for another pull. “Three, two, one.”
A hard tug and a half-teleportation later and Skywarp was standing beside his trinemate, fully freed from the wall.
“That was a close one,” Skywarp said with a grin as he sent ~thanks/affection/relief~ through their trinebond.
Starscream rolled his optics but couldn’t quite hide his smile. “Just don’t do it again, alright?”
“I’ll try,” Skywarp promised.
(They both knew he wouldn’t– the only thing more certain than the fact the Autobots were their sworn enemies was that Skywarp was the most impatient mech to ever exist.)
“If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the Command Center since someone dragged me away from my work.” Starscream spun on his thruster and began to walk off, but his step faltered when he felt a snag in their bond, almost as if he was being held back. He turned back around with an optic-ridge raised, noticing the expectant look on the Skywarp’s faceplate, and sighed.
“You’re so needy,” he complained, but his optics offlined with contentment as he rested his forehelm against his wingmate’s.
Skywarp could sens e the flicker of amusement accompanying his words. “Thank you, Star,” he trilled teasingly in Vosian. He knew his trineleader didn’t often like to do this in public– it was a Trine thing, and though he’d never say it aloud, Skywarp could tell he felt uncomfortable doing it where Grounders could see. But there was no one around, so Primus be slagged if he wasn’t going to take the opportunity.
“Now go, get back to your drills,” Starscream said after a moment, pushing him away.
Skywarp shot him a fanged grin and a sloppy salute before vwopping away.
Starscream turned to walk off again, until a brief moment of ~panic/embarrasment~ surged through the trinebond. A nanoklik later, he heard a familiar voice call from the next hall over.
“Uh, Starscream? A little help?”
Soundwave swore he could hear the trineleader’s exasperated groan from the control room.