Title: Of Secrets And Seekers

Verse: G1

Author: Chi Shiro

Rating: T (for FFN), eventual M (M will only be posted on AO3)

Warnings: See footnotes for warnings/spoilers.

Pairings/Characters: Starscream/Megatron

Summary: It's hard to be a secretkeeper. Harder still to be found out.

Prompt: An answer to a prompt on the kinkmeme. Megatron has been keeping secrets.

Notes: I was going to wait to post this until it was finished, but my wonderful soms, Dellessa, encouraged me to share. This is dedicated to her and Camfield. You both make fandom fun.

OoOoOoOo

She didn't know how the sneaky seeker had figured it out. She'd been so careful to hide what she was. She had ridiculed Starscream for his reputation, claiming an officer should be focused more on the war effort than fragging. She had two sets of medical files; one with a security code the seeker could easily hack, a more thorough one in a safe hidden under a panel in her quarters that only saw light when Hook absolutely needed it. A false vocalizer set in place made her dark purr into a masculine rumble. Her sire had even gotten armor, custom fitted and something she never knew how he had acquired, that slipped over her frame and made her look every bit a mech.

Not that it was excessively hard to hide her frame. The femmes that came from miner and gladiator stock were much bulkier than the soft femmes that came from Iacon, Vos, and Praxus. They had to be. Their mechs were studier, harsher, larger, and stronger than any found in the cultured cities during the golden age. A gladiator mech would have ripped a pretty femme like Moonracer to bits. It took a certain stout breed of femme to deal with those mechs.

Yet they had never been respected. They had to work twice as hard for a twentieth of the respect. A femme who was still of a prime breeding age could expect just that; relentless breeding and the expectation that they would be the sole caretakers of whatever resulted. The mortality rate was criminally high among their frame type. Miners were lost to accidents frequently, if they did not starve on bad rations or glitch from poor conditions. Those who found themselves in the fighting pits were often badly injured and would later succumb to their wounds. Because of this a femme with good coding, who could produce healthy mechlets, was in high demand and would fetch a high price for the one controlling her "services".

She growled, hitting a bulkhead as she passed it by. How had that sneaky little glitch figured it out? She had covered every track that might have indicated what she was. Yet she had still received a datapad earlier this cycle telling her that he knew, that he would attend his shift as always, but that he expected her to be in his quarters when he was relieved from his duty.

Slagging Starscream!

She rubbed a servo over her helmet in agitation. It was quite obvious what the seeker wanted. When he believed her to be a mech he had done everything in his power to keep her out of his private quarters. Now that he knew her to be Lady, instead of Lord, Megatron he would most likely lock her away in there. A frightened tremor rattled her protoform at the thought of bearing a mechlet with wings. Did newsparked seekers have wings?

Why bother thinking about it. She would know soon enough.

She could deactivate the seeker. He couldn't breed her like organic livestock if he were offline. But he was tricky, trickier than any other mech she'd ever had the displeasure of meeting. He had most likely told his trine. They would know the moment she offlined him through their bond. Even killing all three of them did not guarantee their silence. They could spread the word around before their deactivations. Or, and it would be so like him to do this, Starscream could rig up a code in the Nemesis' main systems. If he didn't check in every so often it could broadcast whatever evidence he'd used to come to the conclusion of her femmedom. He had done similar things with other issues in the past. It was not out of the realm of possibility.

Besides, there was the matter of her own coding. She was not sure if it was something she had been sparked with, or if it were something that was added directly after delivery of the frame, but all femmes of her frame type had trouble resisting the orders of mechs they had imprinted on as being above them. It was that, and not the fear of being a breeder, that had made her comply when her sire wanted to pass her off as a mech. Along that same path Starscream had laid a claim that marked her as his when he'd called her out. She could no more deny him now than she could deny the energon in her lines.

It infuriated her. She was the high commander of the Decepticons. She was the slagmaker. She was feared throughout the universe. To be treated as being only worth the gestational chamber in her chassis was an indignity beyond all others.

It was a shame Hook had no knowledge of coding. He could weld them all back together but he was no scientist. To have her base code overwritten like this she'd need a scientist of great renown. Perceptor. Wheeljack. Skyfire.

Starscream.

As if the traitorous glitch would give up the one thing he now held over her.

She groused when she finally arrived at his door. Whether by accident or design, her second had acquired the quarters farthest from her own. She would bet her spark it had been purposefully done. It would be easier for him to scheme if he were far away from her and the prying optics of Soundwave. The cassette carrier and his symbiots had the quarters closest to her own, those that should have rightfully gone to Starscream.

Soundwave. She should have bonded to him when she'd had the chance. While he had never approached her in any romantic capacity he was her most loyal officer. He was also the only mech, before this day, outside of Hook to know her secret. If she'd ordered a betrothal she very much doubted he would have fought against it. Starscream couldn't have laid claim to what already was owned by another.

She fought back the whine that lay low in her vocalizer as she punched in the code the seeker had given her. She was Megatron. She did not whine. She hadn't whined when she had worked in the darkness of the mines alongside her sire. She hadn't whined when she had escaped into Kaon and found herself risking deactivation every cycle in the arena. She would not whine now.

Okay, maybe a little.

The seeker's outer quarters were deceptively cheery. The lighting was brighter here than any other part of the Nemesis. It made sense, seeing that his lab equipment was set off to the side on a table of its own. The desk was neatly arranged. In a space nearest a door that had to lead to the dreaded berthroom sat a low slung table and a trio of backless chairs. Again, it made sense. He would have his trine over frequently enough to need a place to entertain them, and chair backs would interfere with their wings.

It was the table that made her whine in spite of herself. Neatly arranged on the surface were a few datapads, some holovids, and several cubes of highgrade the seeker must have set aside from their last victory. There was none missing from their inventory. She had checked the Decepticon store room while stalling for time. It had to be his personal supply then and it was an almost flattering gesture now that she thought about it.

If she didn't know better she would say Starscream was attempting to woo her. Please Primus no. This was bad enough without the added humiliation of him treating this like a date. She shook her helm, it was foolish to believe the seeker was attempting actual courtship. It had to be some new trick of his. He would get her to drop her guard so she wouldn't put up as much of a fight when her next heat cycle came around. That was all, nothing more.

Megatron grabbed a datapad off the table in an attempt to distract herself. A history of Vos under the rule of Starscream's ancestors. How typically narcissistic of him. The next was no better. An essay, replete with images, about the role of femmes in Vosnian society. Seeker femmes were all so lithe and graceful. Even the larger flying frames like shuttles were downright willowy in comparison to femmes like her carrier. Like herself.

She felt a niggling of self consciousness as she tossed the datapad to the side. It was squashed ruthlessly. So what if she wasn't like the delicate frames she had seen in the images. Too bad. If Starscream didn't like it he could go back to Cybertron and reawaken some of the Vosnian femmes that were in stasis. It wasn't as if she wanted this. That she needed to impress him. She would be much happier back in her own quarters indulging in her own datapads and her secret fondness for music.

As if summoned by her thoughts, a tune began to softly play from speakers hidden in the walls. Not the rigid, perfectionist tones so popular among the elite in the golden age. This music was light. It flowed. It caressed her armor like a soft wind pinging against her sensors.

"Do you like it," the voice behind her rasped in amusement. He was close, too close. She'd let herself become so distracted that she hadn't even heard his door sliding open. If he'd noticed her startled expression he gave no indication. "It was one of my carrier's favorite pieces. It was penned by a femme whose work was very well known inside of Vosnian circles. Meant to exemplify the feeling of the rites of passage. The first flight as a recognized adult."

Megatron expected the seeker to reach for her as soon as he was within touching distance. Instead he bypassed her, heading for the odd chairs and the glowing energon. He leaned forward to grab a cube from the table before straightening himself to look over at her once more.

She would have had to have been blind to miss the glimmer in his optics. Something unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was not the barely contained malice that was normally there. Nor was it the sinister curiosity he barely kept in check when he had a new weapon to test or a new experiment to run. The closest she could come to placing it would be to call it a look of respect.

Which was nonsensical. If the flier hadn't bothered to respect her when he believed her a mech, why would he do so when he knew she was a femme? Viewed as weak even though she could tear most mechs in half? Lesser even though she commanded them all?

The flier took a deep gulp from his cube before continuing his lesson in Vosnian music. "It was also a piece that was favored for bonding ceremonies. The rites of passage gave young fliers cart blanche to interface with whomever caught their fancy. That first flight was as like as not to end with a mech and femme following each other home. Or a mech and a mech. Or a femme and a femme. Or, really, just a group of them would find an out of the way place to break in their adult frames. I personally have never heard of a femme from Vos making it to a bonding night with her seal intact."

"You act as if that's something to be proud of," Megatron spat. She couldn't hide the disgust in her voice. Femmes interfacing with femmes? She had known that fliers held little shame but that was too much. In Kaon the only femmes who interfaced with other femmes were the lowest of pleasurebots.

"And you act as if that's something to be ashamed of," Starscream shot back. His previously amused mood had obviously soured. "I will never understand you groundcrawlers and your ridiculous hangups. Why any of your mechs would think a femme should be ashamed of her own plating is beyond me. Did you even read the datapads I left you?"

"I..."

"Of course you didn't," he growled. "You wouldn't be acting so foolishly if you knew what this was all about."

She returned the growl, brandishing the fusion cannon even as warnings popped up in her HUD that demanded she put it down. Her coding had decided that he had a claim on her and was acting accordingly to her frame type. She fought against it, charging the weapon several times in an attempt to fire a shot. Each time the cannon fell back to her side without being discharged. She paced the quarters angrily, making sure to kick his desk with each circuit.

This was ridiculous. He had yet to make a move to solidify her coding. As long as he didn't ask anything of her she was free to leave. She should leave. She should blow a hole in his wall, since she couldn't seem to put one in his wings, and storm out with a flourish. His calm demeanor was grating her wires more than anything.

She couldn't take it any longer. "Whatever your plans are, you insufferable glitch, let's get this over with so I can return to my own quarters and wash the scent of yours off my plating."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like a drink," he brandished his own cube at one of the untouched ones still sitting on the table. "Not that I'm not enjoying your charming personality just as it is, mighty Megatron."

"I'd like to rip your wings off and shove them so far up your waste port that you would be coughing up bolts for the next lunar cycle, but I'll settle for getting this over with quickly," she bared her denta and stormed past him, hitting the release on the berthroom door. She stomped inside with all the indignity her coding would let her muster. After a few kliks it slid shut behind her with an ominous clack.

She was not there to see the sad look cut across his optics. The forlorn shake of his helm as he quickly drank down the rest of his cube. Perhaps if she'd known the state of his own coding she would not have been thrashing the berth as she waited for him to join her.

"Primus," he sent a prayer to a god he didn't really believe in. "Help me make her understand. Help me help us both."

OoOoOoOoOo

Warnings: Body issues, dub-con, implied familial ties, implied/future mind games.