Chapter 10: In Which Starscream Gets a Letter

Starscream got the all clear to return to work on Monday, Aerial having apparently satisfied herself that no one there was planning to bludgeon him with a stack of datapads at the first opportunity.

"Looks like it really was a clerical error," she told him over the comms on Sunday night. "I've had words with the responsible party, of course."

He could imagine, and felt a small twist of vindictive pleasure at the thought.

He was glad to be getting back to work, much as he loathed his current function. He and Thundercracker had parted under less than jovial terms and Starscream had not been looking forward to days of sitting alone at home with his thoughts while Skywarp was at school.

Over the next few days, he threw himself into his work with more gusto than he'd ever shown before. Glitterbug was pleased, to say the least, and if some of his colleagues sniggered behind their hands when he passed, he was able to pretend that he was too busy to pay them mind.

He did a case on some femmes in the lower districts of Vos who were developing some strange form of communal living, and he interviewed a couple of mechs who had been used as private transports for Quintesson officials once upon a time. It took them a while to recall the memory files on that one, but Starscream was patient for once; he had always been intrigued by any information on their former alien overlords.

No one said anything about going back to Kaon to finish his assignment there, and Starscream didn't ask.

At home, Skywarp was just as stubborn and ornery as usual, but Torrent reported that he was doing better in school, at least. Starscream supposed that his threat of homeschooling must have sunk in.

Between arguing with Skywarp about stupid things ("No, you may not feed the dogs your gem collection! Where did you even get those!?"), struggling to make sense of exactly what he was supposed to include in his reports for work, and Thundercracker's somewhat painful lack of presence in their bond, Starscream barely had a moment to spare to think about gladiators or any impending communication he might be having with one. So, he was momentarily confused when he came home on Friday to find an actual, physical letter sitting on the mat just inside the back door.

Well, it was Skywarp who found it really. The sparkling went bounding through the door and then pulled up abruptly at the sight of the vaguely shiny rectangle lying on their carpet.

"What's this, Star?" he asked, holding it up for his brother to see.

Starscream frowned and held out a hand for it, and Skywarp, who was apparently in a good mood today, skipped over and gave it to him.

On the front of the letter, his own name and address were written out in a small hand that was somehow both incredibly regimented and frightfully messy at the same time. Starscream didn't recognize it at all, but then he flipped the envelope over and saw the sender's name and address on the back.

The energon in his veins ran cold for a second. He'd said that Megatron could write to him, yes, but somehow he hadn't really considered what might happen if the gladiator actually made good on that promise. He could find just about anything in this letter—anything at all! What if Megatron had written to tell him in full elegance how much of a disgusting mess he was? Or what if there was nothing but shameless smut talk inside?

Oh.

What if there was shameless smut talk inside? With a wave of horror, he realized that he kind of hoped there would be at least a little bit of smut talk, shameless or otherwise.

"Star?"

Skywarp pulled him back to reality; the sparkling was looking up at him expectantly.

"It's a letter," Starscream finally answered. "From a friend."

He carefully tucked said letter into the pocket on the inside of his suit jacket and started proceeding into the house once more. Skywarp followed him, clearly dissatisfied with the conclusion of this event.

"What does it say?" he whined, grabbing onto his brother's hand and tugging.

"You're not allowed to know what other people's letters say," Starscream told him. "Let's go change and we can take Striker to the park."

The sparkling disappeared down the hallway with a whoop. Starscream followed after at a more leisurely pace, the letter burning in his breast pocket.

The Vossian Air Command was in a down time lately—no insurgencies to suppress, no Insecticons pressing their borders, no other city-states asking for extra security—and it was driving Thundercracker crazy. The new Air Commander, a mech by the name of Metalhawk, had ordered a full inventory of their assets when he took control of the force, and they'd been working at it ever since. Thundercracker's formation had spent the last three weeks counting and logging lug nuts. It wasn't the best environment in which to ignore the tentative proddings Starscream kept pushing at their bond.

It had been unbearably rich of Starscream to call Thundercracker's coping strategies into question when he himself had a multitude of diagnosable inabilities to cope with stress and trauma, starting with his panic attacks and moving on to full-blown memory repression and dissociation. To be fair, he was doing better than Thundercracker had expected, and he had a feeling that Skywarp had a lot to do with that, but he was starting to display a few worrying behaviors.

Thundercracker had never thought it fair that their parents had seemed to consider it his—the younger brother's—responsibility to monitor Starscream's mental state and keep him in check. It wasn't his fault people had kidnapped and hurt his brother. In fact, the worst of it had happened before he was even born. It was even more unfair that Starscream, determinedly ignorant of his own issues, always seemed to think that Thundercracker was the one who needed looking after.

Well, their parents weren't around anymore to blame him if Starscream went off the rails, and he didn't have the emotional energy to spare for him anymore. Someone else could have that job if they wanted. His only concern was Skywarp.

Thundercracker sighed and ran his hands through his hair, trying to focus back on the inventory datapad in front of him. He only had just this one bit of filing left to do before he could go home for the evening, but his processor felt like mush inside his skull.

If he could have raised Skywarp himself, he would have, but he often worked late into the night and rarely had weekends off and occasionally got shipped off-planet for several years at a time. It wasn't like he had skills that could transfer over to a more family-friendly function the way Starscream did, either. And so he was left stressing about Skywarp's well-being while simultaneously trying not to stress about Starscream's.

If there was any consolation in all of this, it was that Cardinal—the femme from the party—had commed him after all. They'd been communicating on a regular basis all week and Thundercracker had reason to believe that things were moving in a highly favorable direction.

Fortunately, the femme had proved just as engaging, and perhaps more so, when he was sober as she had been after a few high grades. She had a quick wit that could make him laugh like he hadn't in months, and he would have arranged to meet up with her in person days ago had he the time to spare to fly all the way over to Altihex and back.

He certainly hadn't been expecting her to make the first move in that regard.

"You've got a visitor, Thundercracker," someone called from the doorway.

"For the last time, Slipstream," he growled without looking up. "Will you stop visiting me at..."

He trailed off when he looked up and caught sight of the lavender-haired figure standing in the doorway, her eyebrows raised in amusement.

"Who's this Slipstream?" she asked in that musical lilt of hers. "Should I be jealous?"

"No," Thundercracker assured her hastily as he rose to his feet. "She's just... my cousin. What are you doing here, Cardinal?"

The femme gave him a coquettish smile and held up a basket of the sort one might carry fancy energon treats in for an outing. "You never have time to come visit me, but you get a dinner break, don't you?"

Thundercracker felt his face split into a grin.

"I can do better than that," he told her. "Give me a minute to finish this last form and you can have my whole evening."

"Your whole evening?" she asked, her face turning hopeful and suggestive at once.

"As much of it as you want," Thundercracker promised.

The park was probably Skywarp's favorite place to go and Starscream's favorite place to take him as it allowed the sparkling ample space to run around and do whatever he wanted while putting minimal stress on his caretaker. It would have been nice if he would play with the other sparklings in the play area (Starscream had read that it was important for sparklings to interact with those close to their own age and Skywarp's apparent lack of interest in doing so worried him at times), but Starscream didn't mind spending time in the quieter, more deserted areas of the park either—areas where he could let Striker off his leash and allow both sparkling and dog to romp to their sparks' content without worrying that they would cause undue affront to any other park goers.

Tonight, they were enjoying the area near the park's edge, where rolling greens dropped off at the rocky Vossian cliff face, providing a stunning sunset view. Starscream had initially been reluctant to let Skywarp play here in fear that the sparkling would tumble over the edge and he'd have to go catch him, but had since found that all he had to do was place himself as close to the edge as possible and Skywarp would play literally anywhere else because, surprisingly, he wanted Starscream to be able to see him.

"Star! Star, look at me!" he would call every five minutes or so, and Starscream would have to look up from his book to admire his brother's somersaulting ability or how fast he could run or some such for the hundredth time in a row. It got a bit tiring after a while, but it was cute and at least served to distract him from the thought of the letter that was sitting at home, waiting for him to find the courage to open it.

Skywarp was calling him now from the top of a nearby hill, doubtless either to show him his skill in rolling down it or to have his brother watch him jump off it and "fly."

"I see you, Warp," Starscream called back, turning his head without actually looking away from his book. "Very impressive!"

"No! Not me, Star!" the sparkling whined, running back down the hill toward his brother now. "T.C. is here, and he's with a femme!"

Starscream's head snapped up.

"He's what!?"

He let Skywarp pull him up off the bench he'd been sat on and start tugging him away across the greens to the crest of the hill. Striker followed after them at an excited loll. From their new vantage point, they could see most of the park, including the pair of figures reclining on a blanket in a grove of trees just below them.

Starscream gaped as he realized that he recognized both of the figures. One was, of course, his younger brother, propped up on his elbow to lean fliratiously over a purple-haired femme who was most definitely the same one who featured briefly in Starscream's muddled memories of the previous Saturday evening.

Striker also recognized his original master lying below them and Starscream just managed to grab hold of his collar before the dog could take off to greet him. As he was pretty sure he had called the femme pretty several times and then shouted about Thundercracker wanting to frag her, he wasn't eager to run into her again, especially not while accompanied by his still-ignoring-him grump of a little brother.

"Are they gonna kiss?" Skywarp leaned in to whisper.

"Why would you think that?" Starscream demanded, thinking that Skywarp was far too young to be able to recognize such a situation.

"They look mushy," Skywarp said, making a face. "Like Mommy and Daddy."

"They are not like Mom and Dad," Starscream disagreed. No one was like his parents.

"I'm gonna go say hi," Skywarp announced.

"No!" Starscream shot a hand out to grab the sparkling by the back of his shirt before he could get any farther down the hill and lost hold of Striker's collar in the process.

Starscream held his breath as he watched the faithful canid go bounding down the hill and straight for the unsuspecting couple. Thundercracker looked up just in time to receive a faceful of dog, his date jumping up with a cry of surprise.

Maybe Starscream could run away and pretend that Striker had gotten out of the house by accident? But Thundercracker would probably be more annoyed by that than by his presence right now. Probably.

It was too late anyway because his brother had just looked up and seen them standing at the top of the hill. Starscream couldn't see his face clearly from where he was, but the bond that had been closed between them all week crept open enough to let through a wave of annoyance. Starscream scowled and sent the most unrepentant feeling he could muster back. It wasn't his fault the idiot had chosen to bring his fling to their park.

"Now can I go say hi?" Skywarp wanted to know.

Starscream gave an exasperated sigh and released his arm. He followed at a more careful speed, watching as Skywarp slammed himself into Thundercracker's knees. The femme, whose name Starscream could not remember if he'd ever known, gave him a knowing smile that made his skin crawl for some reason.

"How's, uh... How's it going?" Thundercracker asked when he reached them.

"I'm fine," Starscream replied, a little too quickly. "Everything's fine. Skywarp made a painting at school."

"Yeah, he was just telling me about it," his brother said.

"Are you gonna come see it?" Skywarp wanted to know.

"Maybe in a few days," he assured the sparkling, trying to avoid getting muddy hand prints on his uniform. As he already had muddy paw prints up his legs, Starscream wasn't sure what the fuss was about.

"Hey, so, do you remember Cardinal?" Thundercracker asked, finally indicating his companion.

"I wish I didn't," Starscream replied, and then quickly amended with, "I mean, not that there's anything wrong with you. Just... you know."

Cardinal laughed. It was a warm sound.

"Don't worry about it," she said, waving their previous encounter aside. "We've all been there at some point or another."

"Been where?" Skywarp wanted to know.

"Never mind," Thundercracker assured him. "Warp, this is my friend Cardinal. Can you say hi?"

This was the part where Starscream or Thundercracker as sparklings would have instantly shrunk behind one of their parents and refused to interact again until the stranger had left, but Skywarp walked straight up to the femme with his pudgy hand extended and announced, "Hi, I'm Skywarp! I'm almost six years old and I have a warp drive!"

Cardinal laughed and took his hand, bending down so that she could speak to him on his own level. While she was listening to his story about how many somersaults he could do in a row, Thundercracker nodded at his older brother to step aside with him for a moment.

Starscream hesitated before complying.

"What's up?" he asked when they'd gotten more or less out of earshot of the other two. He'd barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Thundercracker rounded on him, face far darker than Starscream had expected.

"What are you doing here?" the younger Seeker demanded in a low voice.

"Walking the dog," Starscream replied.

"I meant why would you interrupt this?" Thundercracker clarified. "Clearly I'm not in the mood to have my brothers come visiting right now."

Starscream sneered at him slightly. "Well, maybe if you'd trained your dog better, it wouldn't have been a problem."

"What are you even... I can't talk to you right now," Thundercracker said, shaking his head as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Would you just take Skywarp and get out of here?"

The annoyance and frustration pulsing through their bond was starting to hurt, so Starscream amped up his own in retaliation, fixing his face in a scowl.

"Why would I want to hang around to begin with?"

"You've always hated that I have a love life and you don't."

"I have not!"

"Then why do you keep hounding me about it?"

"I'm not! I told you one time that I'm worried about your recent habits."

Thundercracker worked his jaw back and forth, looking like he wanted to find more to be angry at his brother for but was struggling. Starscream was more than happy to give him something.

"I hope she chokes on you," he hissed before setting his face into something more presentable and turning back to the other two.

"Kay, we gotta go, Warp," he said, stepping forward to take the sparkling's hand. "You can see T.C. later."

"NO!" his brother instantly whined. "I wanna stay and play with Cardinal!"

"I'm afraid I'm going to be busy, bitlet," the femme said, making it sound like it was the most tragic thing in the world that she was probably going to spend her evening getting fragged by Thundercracker instead of playing in the park with his younger brother.

Skywarp's face started to darken, and Starscream could see a tantrum coming on.

"Hey, Warp," he said quickly. "If we leave now, we'll have time to stop at the store on the way back and you can pick out anything you want."

All sign of tantrum instantly disappeared as Skywarp started pulling Starscream back up the hill.

"Bye, T.C.! Bye T.C.'s friend!" he called without looking back.

Starscream paused just long enough to grab hold of Striker's collar and pull him along with them before submitting to his brother's pull, slamming his and Thundercracker's bond shut spitefully as they went.

When they got home, Starscream shoved some fuel at Skywarp and told him to go play somewhere while he himself made the trek up to his bedroom, his spark set in determination. He was jealous of Thundercracker's love life, was he? Well, he would show his brother something to be jealous of. Hopefully. Provided this letter's contents met his expectations and it wasn't just Megatron telling him that he had some serious issues.

He'd left his suit jacket on the back of his desk chair, and he almost pulled the chair over in his haste to get the letter out of it. Once it was in his hand again, he hesitated, running a finger over Megatron's handwriting on the envelope. Was this a good idea?

He called to mind the slightly hazy image of the gladiator's scarred face inches from his own, his red eyes hooded and searching... and he had pulled back. He also vaguely remembered Megatron setting him down in his parents' bed and... not trying to touch him. At all. Not even to caress his hair or "loosen his clothes." There was a good chance that he could trust a mech like that.

Finally, he slid a shaking finger under the envelope flap and ripped. As he turned the envelope upside down to shake the letter out, a smaller, thicker slip of paper fell into his hand. He examined it and discovered that it was a ticket to the opera, a showing of Song of Solus scheduled for two weeks out at the Iacon opera house. Box seats.

His mouth dropped open. Not only did he get the romantic implication of the choice in show, but... How in Cybertron had Megatron managed to get box seats in the Iacon opera house? Even if it was in one of the secondary performance halls. One thing was for certain; Megatron had not written to mock him.

Starscream set the ticket down carefully on his desk and tugged the actual letter from the envelope. It took him a moment to get his processor to calm down enough to register the words on the page in front of him.

"Dear Starscream," it began, and he felt a smile creep across his face.

Dear Starscream,

I hope that this letter finds you in better health than you were on our previous meetings; I have found my mind occupied with little besides your radiant smile these past few days and I fear the world would be darker by degrees without it.

The memory of our first meeting is likely one tinged with discomfort for you, but I intend to cherish it always. It struck me then that here was a jewel that not even the degradation of Kaon could tarnish, for hard as our city had striven to beat you down, you appeared before me as though crowned in sapphires, the fire in your eyes declaring defiance to the world. That same fire has burned in my spark ever since.

You are by far one of the most scintillating mechs I have met in any sense of the word. Your quick wit and disregard for those regulations of society which hold so many of your caste captive have served to ignite my admiration, while the self-sacrifice you have displayed in choosing to care for your orphaned brother has inspired my affections. Furthermore, if I might be so bold as to voice my opinion on the matter, there is an exquisite elegance to your form which I find so alluring as to be nigh unto criminal. How any mech could continue to draw air through his vents with such a paragon of perfection before him remains an enigma to me. As for myself, I feel that every cycle of air I take is tinged with greater meaning simply from knowing that you are also in this world.

Perhaps you will find me excessively forward, but I wish to leave you in no doubt of my intentions from the beginning of this interaction. After all, a mech who risks nothing is a mech who gains nothing.

If my feelings are reciprocated in even the least degree, then I would be honored to have your company at the opera on the enclosed date. I have secured tickets in a private box with respect to your social status. I fear that every minute will seem more bleak than the last until I receive reply from you.

Until then, I remain your most ardent admirer,

Megatron of Kaon

Starscream was quite certain that every bit of energon in his body must have rushed into his face. He stared at the signature at the bottom for a moment, and then read through it again to make sure he hadn't hallucinated the whole thing. It was just as embarrassingly glorious on the second read through. No mockery, no sexy bits (unless you counted the part where Megatron had called him criminally shapely), only honest and ardent admiration.

Megatron liked him.

Megatron liked him. Like, a lot, if this letter was to be believed.

Starscream smiled and spun his desk chair round in a circle as he read the letter a third time. This sounded like it was going to be more than just a fling. They would see who was jealous of whom in a few months.

At the moment—sated, sticky, and wrapped around a beautiful femme—Thundercracker wouldn't have thought to be jealous of anyone. That was, until she nuzzled up into his jaw and murmured, "So what's up with your brother?"

"Is that what you were thinking about while we were 'facing?" Thundercracker demanded, pulling back so that he could see her better.

"No!" she protested with a bit of a giggle. "I was just listening to your sparkbeat and thought about bonds. I always wondered what it would be like to have a sibling."

"A pain in the aft," Thundercracker grunted, rolling over onto his back.

Cardinal followed, climbing half on top of him so that her breasts were pressed rather fetchingly against his bare chest.

"You two sure don't look much alike compared to most Seeker siblings," she murmured, dragging a fingertip along one of his collarbones.

Thundercracker snorted.

"There used to be rumors that our mom had an affair and he was the product."

"Really? Do you think it's true?" Cardinal sounded more intrigued than Thundercracker would have expected, but then, femmes did tend to enjoy gossip.

"No," he sighed. "I mean, I did when I first heard it—it would explain a lot, to be honest—but then I got old enough to see just how much like our dad he actually is..."

Cardinal hummed thoughtfully and Thundercracker stared at the dark ceiling of his barracks room, tracing a finger up and down her spine as he thought about that. He'd never known how much his father and brother were alike until he'd entered the Air Command and seen his father at work firsthand. The first time he'd seen that cold, calculated look in his father's eyes as he pored over strategy charts with his officers, it was like millions of years suddenly left him and it was Starscream standing there instead.

After that, he'd seen it more and more: in the way they both cocked their heads to the side when they smiled, their tone of voice when they were excited, the awkward way they tried to talk to you if they thought you were upset, and that stupidly soft expression on their faces when they were having their more mild-mandered interactions with Skywarp. They used to look at Thundercracker like that, too...

The Seeker turned his attention back down to Cardinal again and forced a smile.

"He's definitely my brother," he assured her.

"Hm. Pity he got everything," she sighed, resting her cheek against him.

"Tell me about it," the Seeker grumbled. He didn't so much resent Starscream inheriting all of their parents' worldly goods as he did the unparalleled amount of attention his brother seemed capable of commanding simply by existing. Even now, when he'd been having a delicious evening with a ravishing femme, Starscream was somehow managing to get involved.

"You two get along pretty well?" Cardinal wanted to know, and a suspicion crept into the back of Thundercracker's mind.

"Neither of us would ever be interested in a threesome, if that's what you're after," he said, trying to make it sound like a joke in case he was wrong.

Fortunately, she burst out laughing.

"A threesome? With... What on Cybertron made you think that?"

"You wouldn't have been the first to ask," he grumbled.

"Oh, dear Primus!" she giggled. "Wouldn't that be incest?"

"Yes! Thank you! That's what I keep trying to tell people!"

They both laughed now, and Thundercracker wrapped an arm around her waist, giving her a squeeze.

"Anyway, there's a reason he's still sealed—no one wants an aft quite that tight in bed with them." It was a vastly unfair thing to say about his brother and he knew it, but right now he mostly just wanted to hear Cardinal laugh some more.

She did laugh, and then crawled up him a bit to nibble at his jawline so that she was now straddling his middle. He moved his hands to rest on her hips, running them around the smooth curves and down to more supple areas. She left off his jaw and moved to kiss his mouth instead, running her own hands through his hair and then down to his throat. She didn't squeeze, simply rested her thumbs on the front of it while her other fingers traced the curve of his jaw and the lines of veins and muscles.

And then she pressed her cheek to his and murmured something in his ear that made his spark spin dizzily and the heat start to build in his lower stomach once more.

"You," he said, sliding a hand down between them, "are going to have to come over more often."

A/N: Yes, this chapter has a tiny bit of edited content. Like, 50 words, maybe. It's on my AO3, if you want it.