"Touch goes both ways."
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Title: Jezebel
Warning to Audience: Violating a cultural taboo, and vague interfacing.
Rating: PG
Continuity: G1
Characters: Starscream, Optimus Prime, Skywarp, Thundercracker
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation/Prompt: Stealth—or lack thereof. Also, a comment about annoyance with the fanon interpretation of Starscream the slut.
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A flicker of disbelief, red optics glancing at each other. One face, usually so mobile and frozen now in an expression of slack shock. A smug voice, delineating a plan that stunned an entire faction.
"I…cannot possibly be hearing this correctly." An appeal for sanity to the room at large. Disbelief deepening to pure unease, watching personal affairs bleach into nothing before an intrusion, a sickness, a perversion. Each of them witnessing what a war had degenerated to. Each of them wondering when it would be their turn on the chopping block.
Victorious, vicious smile, sweet and deadly as a cupcake to a diabetic. "Is there a problem, Starscream? Is the assignment too-difficult-for a warrior of your caliber?" A voice fine-tuned to goading, words exactingly cut to humiliate and corner and give no way out. "Perhaps you've lost your touch, hmm?"
Open, close, open, pause; the mouth ahead of a mind that stumbled on the details. An assignment meant for the universe's most lucrative professional, now pinned on and degrading a warrior's reputation. But to refuse would throw open an invitation for demotion, punishment, even execution.
No choice given, and the only way out…
"Touch is a weapon, Megatron, and I never lose those. You'd be wise to remember that."
Grim as ash, fierce as fire. Overtly gloating red optics around the room covertly flinched under the lash of his voice, and in the wake of his hissing exit lingered discomfort. In the triumphant sneer of their leader, doubt uncurled a testing tendril.
Verbally stung by Megatron's latest dismissal and accompanying laughter from all who witnessed it, the Seeker had railed for half an hour against the world in general before lapsing into a sullen pout. He'd collapsed into the chair behind the observation console and glared at the display. Arms crossed over his cockpit, lips set in a petulant frown, he'd willfully ignored the sole prisoner in the brig.
Guard duty, for the Second-In-Command of the Decepticon Elite. It was an assignment meant to puncture his ego, but Starscream responded by pretending the prisoner just didn't exist. He was at the observation console in the Victory's brig, but obviously he was there for his own purposes.
Optimus Prime did his best to muffle the wheeze of cracked air intakes and the plup plup of leaking hoses. The Autobots in general knew that remaining online required dodging Starscream's fickle attention. The Constructicons had slapped together a half-aft repair job on him after Megatron beat him almost to deactivation; while he wasn't going to go offline anytime soon, he certainly wasn't in good shape. If the Seeker was willing to ignore him, Optimus wasn't going to tempt fate. He'd survived one round with the Decepticons today, and living to see rescue required, well, living.
So he watched the Decepticon not-watch him, and a fragile silence ruled the brig.
In that silence, Optimus idly noted, once more, that Starscream was beautiful.
"Skywarp!"
"Guieeee!" A startled squawk, more showy alarm than actual fear. Real apprehension underlay false-wide optics that turned toward the SiC, however. "Don't do that to me! I'm supposed to be the sneaky one, Screamer."
Quick movement, as brutal and unstoppable as a tornado descending from the clouds. A faster stop, all before the black-and-purple flyer's warp drive could spin up to battle-ready and calculate an escape location. "Do not. Call me that."
"Uh. Yeah." An experimental swallow against pressure. Genuinely-wide optics face-to-barrel with a null ray. Today was the wrong day for harassment between wingmates. "Right. Sooooo…lemme go?"
An unspoken 'no,' tight and pushing on his neck. "I require your assistance."
"That's, urm, fascinating. Do tell." Placating, nervous, hands up and in sight as they backed down the corridor.
Unpredictable as he could be, his pointed absence had shot everyone's nerves. The assignment given, the gauntlet thrown down, and an invisible timer ticked. Throughout the base lurked the feeling of being locked underwater with a volcano. Megatron gloated but didn't leave his throne room. In the corners of all their optics, the tyrant's order glared—and regret smoked like weapons discharge across the floor. Once given, there were no options to retract. No weakness allowed on either side. Order given, implications slathered liberally, reputation smeared to a joke.
A joke no one dared vocalize. It had been funny until thought caught up with humor.
With no more malicious feeling than normal, he'd nearly destroyed a planet and them with it. He'd had nothing but a crippled human and his own hands. Now he had motivation. Resources. An order and an insult taunting already epic brilliance to new heights of hate and plotting.
Nothing to gain, nothing to lose. The wildest and most uncontrollably able among them forced to play a game with no rules. Theory could not substitute for experience. Only an order existed to guide him.
An entire faction feared his silence. Seeing him, caught by him, enflamed the fear.
"I require you to seduce Thundercracker."
That statement addled even Skywarp. "You…what? Why?"
"Research, of course. Surely you're familiar the concept?"
Crazy logic, the kind that made anyone dangerous. His wings flattened against the door to the bridge, and the threatening grip lightened to a caressing fingertip. It felt as sharp as a blade passing through vital linkages. "But he's on duty!"
"I'm aware of that fact."
"But-!"
Slitted optics. A narrow smile. Nothing, absolutely nothing, left to lose. Perhaps that included sanity. Wingmates might be included as well.
Starscream had the kind of looks that, in a way that war often made everyone forget, surpassed handsome to claim true beauty. Silent and busily trying to forget everyone else in the whole world, the Seeker's self-centered focus made his every movement grace incarnate. A hundred tiny shifts as he changed positions in the chair, little flutters of wing flaps, the slow slide of his hands along the console; they all became a nonstop ballet of movement that silkily contrasted against the dank brig like the glittery facets of a jewel displayed in a corroded metal necklace around a whore's neck. Starscream was a single perfect flower blooming in a nuclear waste.
The flyer drew attention by his existence, inviting the viewer to touch and pluck, but at the same time…there was something fundamentally wrong with his allure. Like the flower or the jewel, there was something off about his placement. Temptation shouldn't come striding into the Decepticon brig. Machines of war shouldn't be works of art.
Now bored, the jet glanced over in his direction. Their optics met; pain tempered by caution meeting anger tempered by arrogance. A brief expression of interest crossed the jet's face, and Optimus found himself analyzing that expression as if it held the key to his cell. It flickered out like one of the human's lighters on a windy day. Self-assured beyond caring what the leader of the opposing faction could possibly think, Starscream turned back to his own activities. Apparently deciding to use his free time—no one but Megatron would dare intrude on Starscream's guard shift, so it was free time—Starscream pulled out a polishing cloth.
Somehow, it wasn't surprising that the Decepticons would unashamedly steal humanity's varied ways of making metal shine. Optimus suppressed a moment of amusement as he imagined the offhanded comments he could now make in the hearing of Sunstreaker or Tracks. They would have fuel pump failure if he compared their vanity to certain Decepticons'.
The ballet of fidgeting began again, this time a slow dance of circular movements. The cloth moved in circles over dull armor, bringing out a glowing shine with each pass until Starscream moved to the next portion. The motions were unhurried but intent, natural as the gentle eddy of air on a summer day, as open to outside interpretation as the flow of shapes in the clouds. Starscream never looked up, his fingers playing along the corners of his own armor in a search for scrapes or imperfections, the cloth following along to erase them as if they'd never been. If it had been intentional, the deliberate exploration could have been frankly erotic, a measured display of a body that deserved further study.
There was nothing else to watch in the Decepticon brig. It was either watch Starscream or dwell on his own pain. So Optimus Prime watched the subtle elegance in motion, polishing an already attractive mech back into clean, careful beauty. He watched, and he noticed, and at some point, the brief look of interest returned to spark between them. A spark that burnt small-red optics bored and blue optics half-mesmerized through pain and repetitive movement—but somehow white-hot for all its tiny start.
The heat turned Starscream's slow dance into a smoldering tango.
Nervous looks across the bridge, anxious and not understanding. Veiled threat scissored through their curiosity, hard-edged as an insincere smile. Wandering optics snapped back to what they were supposed to be doing. Uneasy glances continued to be exchanged under the radar. Soundwave openly retreated from the bridge. Reporting to Megatron, or just fleeing before the storm? No one had the ball bearings to call him on it, in any case.
Freed but definitely not free, Skywarp perched on the back of a chair and jittered in place. Fingers here, fingers there. Stroke a wing edge just so, and didn't that look nice? Kick up a leg and inspect the inside of a turbine. Mmm. One hand rested on the crease where the hip joint hid. The middle fingers dipped inside to tease the pelvic joint. From further away, he looked like a jet in the seize of restless energy. Too long underwater, Skywarp? Fingers moved, hands endlessly gestured. Optics brightened and dimmed. The happy murmur of gossip, with the purring undertone no one who wasn't right there could pick up.
The jet actually in the chair suffered in silence. Protests died mid-sentence. Heavy weight, his wingleader's presence, smothered them.
Flitter, flutter, pitter, patter, hummmm. Fleeting touches that barely grazed; longer, seemingly innocent brushes of a wing, a hand, the outer edge of a thruster. Nothing that gave a clue what was going on. Not a whispered comment on their observer. Just the blatant intrusion on Thundercracker's duty shift, and the insidious, never-ending hints of interest and arousal and what other things they could be doing if only they weren't on the slagging bridge. Stroke, coax, flirt. Coy as a prostitute working a high-end ball; knowing the way the floor lay, aware of how to skirt protocol, and taking comments and body language just a hint too far to be innocent. A skill to highlight the absence of subtlety. Skywarp spelled out how very in reach he was, all while being very unavailable.
Advertisement and enticement, mating dance behaviorism under close observation. And Thundercracker had been teased almost to the point of not caring who watched.
The game was one Optimus was unfamiliar with. Starscream knew he was watching by now, but the expected contempt, even dismissal, didn't come. Instead, the Seeker watched him in return. Touches that had been casual maintenance became a deliberate turn-on, rubbing the polishing cloth across gleaming armor while red optics blatantly imagined other hands making the motions. This is you, that look said in the language of whirring fans kicking on and the strangely self-satisfied expression dawning slow and molten.
When Starscream leaned back in his seat and brought out a tin of wax polish, it was almost too much. Injured or not, enemies or not, there was little the Autobot could do but respond to the show. Revulsion or attraction, he was a captive audience, and none of the regular cues were in place. The shrieking voice hadn't mocked; the repulsed sneer failed to appear. It felt like new territory, as if they were cautiously edging out into a neutral zone they'd never explored. Inside the closed room, they were both behind locked doors. Assigned punishment shift or chains and energy bars, neither guard nor prisoner could leave.
The silence in the room built up, an invisible heat haze that layered on as thickly as Starscream applied the wax. They regarded each other with the steady, wary gaze of those sizing up-or recognizing-potential. The wax layered on, circles and detail work, and the slick smell added yet another layer to the spell Starscream wove. Optimus found himself dipping his head just a tad, seeking out the trace, waxy wafts working its way through the humid, damp air of the brig. Sensuality through the senses: sight, smell, even the absence of sound.
He was, as Optimus had noted and noticed yet again, beautiful despite his faction. Or, oddly, because of it.
"Everyone out."
A curt order, but not entirely unexpected. A relief, to be honest. Decepticons fled; birds released.
Black hands grabbed the console, grounding self-control in solid handholds. The thoughtful pause at Thundercracker's back somehow spiked anticipation higher. A previously unlooked-for voyeur fetish, or simply driven beyond control?
Skywarp gave their wingleader a curious, anxious look, only to receive a slight frown, a smaller gesture of permission in return. Uncertain, he laid his hand on Thundercracker's wing as if to ask what his wingmate wanted. A whole hand, flat and inviting. After an hour of taunting, tantalizing traces, the faint brushes of fingers that left systems yearning, it was an invitation as blunt as a slap to the face. The courtesan hitched up her skirts and bent over the refreshment table. Who in their right mind passed that up?
Two bodies tumbled off the chair. A meep! of surprise became a moan. Rough, incoherent words rumbled, then ceased abruptly.
Red optics, troubled but determined beyond the hallmark of mere hate or planning, dispassionately took notes.
It took time to finish, as all real polishing jobs did. Dull but clean armor glossed mirror-bright, catching the few lights in the brig to sparkle. It seemed an act of methodological madness, burnishing a sophisticated weapon of mass destruction into someone so gorgeous in a place so horrible.
Layered up from the floor, the silence had taken on a semi-solid consistency that resembled the wax Starscream stowed out of sight again, finally. It made the jet's movements strangely relaxed; the usual rapid-fire restlessness of a Seeker trapped underwater gentled to a sleepy leisure. Repair systems had kicked on at last, numbing the worst of the open wounds and spinning Optimus' mind into a false sense of wellbeing. They regarded each other through the energy bars, and there was so little they could say. Words seemed inadequate. Worse, to say them would break this delicate truce of mutual foolishness.
Somewhere along the line, the Autobot had ceased trying to conceal his open admiration. Like a tame falcon, Starscream had allowed the visual pressure to stroke him like an actual hand down his body. He preened, pretending to be docile in order to serve his own ego as blue optics-one spiderwebbed with cracks, but both appreciative-traveled an entire holiday vacation tour up and down the shining lines of perfectly buffed armor. He returned the interest, red optics surveying Optimus' broken, fractured armor with the frank appreciation of one who'd seen too much war to mind brutal injury. There was still defiance, even a strange magnificence, in the Autobot leader's chained body.
Across the dank saltwater air of the brig, the exhalations of their intakes traded. Twists of heated air curled, wisps of vapor twining until they kissed a thruster here, trailed beads of condensation on a windshield there. Optimus' intakes rattled loudly as the water drops fattened, loosened, and slowly dripped down shattered glass. It was an odd substitution for actual touch, yet more intimate for how unstoppable it was. Inevitable, and a harbinger for the real thing.
Starscream's optics unfocused as he silently rose and moved to the cell bars. The hesitation was so slight it was almost nonexistent, and then even the air pressure changed as the Seeker entered the cell.
The whisper of the bridge door closing went unnoticed in the aftermath. The whining sound of systems winding down filled the bridge until a voice broke the near-silence.
"I wouldn't do it."
One red optic onlined. Skywarp shifted until Thundercracker looked up at him, and red optics met. "Do what?" Wary, pretending ignorance against a conversation half-started and aborted since that order. A conversation no one wanted to have, no one more than these two.
"If Megatron had ordered me…" Guilty and uncomfortable, but determined. "I wouldn't do it."
They knew why the order had been given. Many reasons, actually. Discipline, humiliation, even war tactics. They didn't want to talk about it. Maybe they had to, anyway.
Reaching for nonchalance, a flippant answer off-the-cuff: "Why not? It's just interfacing."
Wrong answer. One Seeker stiffened, indignation and real anger zapping like electricity over his armor and culminating in a conflicted expression. One Seeker looked down at it, honestly confused—except for the dishonest, nagging part he willfully ignored. "What?"
Thundercracker pushed as if the whole issue could be forced aside, but mostly it just tumbled Skywarp off him. A pause, trying to catch logic searing at opposite ends of the spectrum. Guilt against shame, ingrained culture against the imposition of new thought, anger and—anger. Pushing aside a wingmate, or pulling the blade out of his back?
"So interfacing doesn't mean anything?" A level monotone, confirming what had already been said.
Even Skywarp's infamous, intentional ignorance faltered. "Aw, come on. Don't be like that-it's so old-fashioned, Thundercracker!"
No answer. Just the rasp of armor as one Seeker climbed to his feet, and the measured footsteps as those feet walked away.
It meant nothing, or it meant everything. The special could be made mundane, and in its reduction, mean nothing. Walking away, like many mundane things, was unimportant until it was not.
"Thundercracker?"
The whisper of a door, the closure of a relationship. Important only if it meant something in its opening.
"I…shouldn't."
Starscream smiled, something lopsidedly vulnerable in the curve of his lips. "I'm nothing that half the Decepticon army hasn't had, Prime." Blue, strong and whole, folded slowly with chipped, dislocated blue, missing fingers acknowledged but un-pitied. The Seeker settled gradually onto the Autobot's outstretched legs, letting damaged pain receptors adjust to his weight. "You're not special."
Rumor had it, true…but so far as seduction went, it was a surprisingly effective method. It wasn't that opportunity had never come knocking for Optimus. He would simply never take advantage of any of his Autobots that way, giving something to a mech that could not be committed. His spark belonged to Elita-One, and without that, what Autobot would accept mere interfacing? This wasn't the first time lust had flared, but…it was the first time Optimus did not feel that he had to stop. The fact that he was not special, he was not Starscream's one and only-and wasn't that idea ridiculous now that he thought it?-made it acceptable.
As acceptable as interfacing with a Decepticon could ever be, anyway. But not even rumor of their illicit activity would reach outside this damp, enclosed room. Rumor of his multiple partners had been enough to make Starscream the laughingstock of the Autobots; confirming it would ruin the Air Commander. And no one would believe that Starscream hadn't forced Optimus. That would turn things, among Autobots and Decepticons alike, ugly.
Old standards died hard, even in war. Or perhaps especially then.
He had to admire the Seeker's skill, however. The Decepticon explored him as if he'd never touched another mech this way, playing the part of an innocent flawlessly until Optimus' heated systems, thoroughly tricked, were burning. When the connection was finally made, Starscream's fingers fumbling with just the right level of inexperience, it sent a thrill of forbidden, untouched fruit through the Autobot leader. His spark jumped, throbbing in an explosion of sensation that bypassed injuries, erased damage reports, and came out of Optimus in a high-pitched, strangled cry of pleasure. Starscream buried his face in the Autobot's neck and keened, shivering.
Underlying the streaming, snapping datastream, emotions crackled in a complicated read too tangled for Optimus to understand. It enhanced the pleasure, pushing against Optimus as if Starscream were searching for something, straining with all his being for a handhold just out of reach. A Seeker seeking.
There was no time to wonder what Starscream was looking for. There was nothing but the push and pull of interface, the fluid eddy and flow of another mech connecting to him, flooding in and out of him, circling and spiraling and spilling over and through until everything built up and up higher and higher and-
Starscream threw his head back and shrieked. If Optimus had been able to hear over his own shout, he might have thought the Decepticon sounded more anguished than pleased.
But by then, it would have been too late to do anything.
"Mission accomplished."
An announcement loudly made, as if the order hadn't hung like a noose around the base's collective neck for weeks. Decepticons jolted in their seats. A dozen heads swiveled. Just as quickly, swiveled back. Avoiding looking, avoiding thinking, but too late for that. The black-and-purple Seeker didn't move at all, just staring with unconsciously pleading optics at the blue Seeker who finally, in the presence of their disgraced wingleader, looked back.
The atmosphere felt claustrophobic. Tense to the point of illness. Red optics met. From one side looked a question. From the other side came no answer; just an unforgiving, narrowed glare, unreadable and flat. Pushed too far, past the edge.
Orders received, implications given. Words spoken that couldn't be taken back, no matter how they were later regretted. Megatron and Skywarp shared more than they knew.
Thundercracker turned back to his work. Starscream turned on his heel and left without waiting for or asking leave. There seemed little point in discussing the obvious, or trying to repair something destroyed.
"I thought I'd feel something."
Starscream sounded blank, as if even disappointment required too much effort. Optimus stirred under him, responding to the indirect insult with muzzy amusement. "I apologize for not having your proficiency. You blew my circuits." He tilted his head to focus his intact optic on the Seeker, who was looking at their entwined fingers as if they would speak. "You don't feel accomplished?"
The Seeker turned to study him. "Because you're the Prime?" He shrugged. "I suppose. I just…nevermind. It hardly matters." He shook his head, fitting haughty arrogance over his features like a bad mask, and drew up his knees in preparation to stand.
On impulse, Optimus tightened his weak grasp as much as the damage allowed. "Why not try again? I've got time." He had a little pride, after all. Elita-One had never complained. And it was either this, or going back to the numbing pain of self-repair while he waited for Megatron to return.
That gained another studying look, like Starscream wasn't sure how to handle the offer. Either the Seeker was quite a good actor, or his previous partners never cared for his satisfaction. Optimus was leaning toward the acting, as Starscream was typically the kind of mech who took what he wanted. The innocent act really was a turn-on, however, and Optimus' managed a little pull on the captured hand. Starscream, surprised, returned to straddling him. "I…"
"Let's see if we can't make you feel something this time," Optimus said, dented engine already purring, and he freed his other hand to touch.
That earned another one of those adorably vulnerable smiles, but Starscream suddenly looked aside. "Just…be careful. Who knows what my databanks have picked up over the vorns."
A good thing to remember. Optimus idly made a mental note to have Ratchet run a virus check on him when the rescue party eventually came. No need to tell the Ark's medic that he'd been interfacing with the enemy, but one could never be too careful. It was only appropriate that he, hmm, show his appreciation for the warning. It was actually rather endearing.
He pulled down, and this time the Seeker followed. After that, they were too busy for other thoughts.
Optimus would never know why Starscream warned him.
Megatron never knew he did.