CHAPTER 13: In Which Starscream Gets an Unpleasant Surprise

Over the years, Starscream had had considerable opportunities to witness his cousin in action as she roped any number of mechs (and the occasional femme) into her net of gossamer charms. He had asked her once why she felt the need to completely change everything about herself when she was talking to someone she liked, and she had responded that the people that wanted someone who looked like Slipstream did not want someone who behaved like Slipstream. Apparently, they instead wanted someone who listened intently to their every word with big, liquid eyes, laughed at every single ham-fisted attempt they made at humor, and didn't have an opinion of her own about anything. There was an awful lot of body language involved, too, like constantly fixing one's hair and tossing one's head in certain ways... Not to mention all the random casual touches. It was a complex net that his cousin wove.

Starscream had tried it out exactly once in his life, just to see if he looked similar enough to his cousin that it would work for him as well. The results had been somewhat disturbing, and it had taken him three months to get his guinea pig to stop trying to contact him. He had never tried it since then because... Well, mostly because tonight was the first time that he had gone into an interaction with the express intention of trying to get the other mech to sleep with him. He was going to have to be fantastic in every way.

At least Megatron had good enough taste in restaurants; Starscream found himself carrying out his act in one of the nicer fueleries in Iacon's central district, rather than the hole-in-the-wall dive he had mentally prepared himself for. Not that the location mattered too terribly. If they were in a substandard place, then it would only make Starscream's charms stand out all the more, he reasoned. He just spent far too much time eating cheap, stale energon on missions to put up with it at home.

"So," he began as they settled into their booth, "what does a big ole mech like you get up to all week?" He flashed a winning smile and a quick but suggestive raise of the eyebrows as he said it.

On the other side of the table, the gladiator's own rather impressive eyebrows hitched their way up his forehead a bit.

"Hitting people with blunt objects, mostly," he replied. "And occasionally some sharp ones."

Ah, that would be a joke. Starscream forced a light laugh.

"What a brute!" he giggled, tilting his head down to look up through his lashes at the other mech. "All those muscles have to be good for something, though. Bet you're the best around."

Being one himself, Starscream didn't need an advice blog or his cousin to tell him that mechs loved when people made space in the conversation for them to brag.

Megatron was giving him an odd look, though.

"People seem to want to give me that label, yes, but only because I am still alive," he said. "You will find, Starscream, that there are plenty of gladiators other than myself who have managed that feat. Survival is something of a habit, and once you've walked out of three or four fights in the pits, you tend to keep doing so. I just happen to do it with a bit more flare than some of the others."

Ah, of course. Starscream had momentarily forgotten that his date was a philosopher as well as a warrior. In that case, perhaps there was a slightly different strategy that he could employ here.

"And between all that surviving, you manage to find time for plenty of other things, don't you?" he said, leaning forward coquettishly to rest his chin on one fist. "Something of a wrench in the system, aren't you?"

"Not that the system needs one," Megatron replied, still giving Starscream that weird, almost concerned look. "The functionists practically built it out of wrenches and loose gears."

"How's that?" Starscream wanted to know.

"Well, look at you, for example," the gladiator started, waving a hand at the Seeker's general person. "You get stuck planetside for too long to continue performing your original function, so the council reassigns you to what—another scientific function? No, they give you something you're utter rubbish at just because you can fly to the different locations they want you at easily enough."

"I am not rubbish!" Starscream protested, sitting back and glaring indignantly at the other mech.

Megatron's expression shifted into surprise for a split second, and then a smile started spreading across his face.

"No, you're just the sort of cultural investigator who manages to get himself beaned in the head with a paving stone before he even gets to the event he was supposed to be observing," he said.

Starscream's jaw dropped, but only for a second.

"That had nothing to do with my ability to perform my job, and you said so yourself!" he snapped. "In fact, I probably learned more sitting in that pathetic excuse for a doctor's office than I would have at your rally."

"Ah, yes," Megatron agreed, his smile broadening. "Especially while you were unconscious."

"It's a temporary reassignment, anyway," the Seeker sniffed. "I don't have to be good at it."

He could feel his face starting to heat up and grabbed his menu to hide behind for a minute. This conversation was taking a strange turn, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something here.

"So, what exactly did you study at the academy, anyway?" Megatron wanted know.

"Oh, I would hardly expect you to have any interest in all of that," Starscream sniffed before he could stop himself.

"Try me," the gladiator prodded, now leaning across the table himself, his face fixed in amusement.

Starscream observed him critically over the top of his menu for a second.

"My first certification was for non-military chemistry with a specialization in theoretics and the mass effect sector, not that I imagine you know what that is," he started.

"Not a clue, but go on," Megatron prompted.

Odd. Mechs weren't supposed to encourage you to insult their intelligence, but Starscream continued anyway.

"I went on from there to earn a doctorate in deep space navigation with a focus on xenocartography and macro energy current analysis. I also have master's certifications in celestial biology, geology, metallurgy, nebulonics, cosmology, and technical writing. Oh, and I'm a certified trauma surgeon."

"Why the surgery?" Megatron wanted to know.

"Because there aren't any hospitals on the majority of alien planets, and even if you do manage to hit a civilized one, they might not know Cybertronian biology," the Seeker scoffed, feeling that this should have been obvious. "I had to sew my own leg back together once after fending off a herd of savage organics with tusks the size of your arm."

He hadn't actually done the sewing himself. He'd mostly just screamed a lot and passed out while Skyfire did it for him, but Megatron didn't need to know that. And besides, he had managed to bandage it out in the field and then drag himself to somewhere he could get enough reception to radio for one of the other crew members to come get him without bleeding out. He deserved at least some credit for that, he felt.

"So, tell me about deep space navigation, then," Megatron prompted, bringing the Seeker's attention back to the present.

"That would take the whole evening," Starscream muttered.

"Well, then I suppose it's a good thing we have the whole evening," the other mech pointed out.

Starscream opened his mouth to ask him what he wanted to know, and then caught himself. This was not what he was here for. Lectures about warp engine calibration and celestial energy fields could wait for another day. Tonight was supposed to be about seduction, and he found it hard to believe that any mech would find him attractive while he was rambling about quantum causation theory and the flow patterns of non-specific planar quarks.

"No, you don't want to hear about all that," he said, waving the topic aside.

"I do, though," Megatron insisted. "I would very much like to hear you talk about it."

"Why?" Starscream asked, eyes narrowing slightly in suspicion.

"Because," the gladiator said, the corner of his mouth quirking up mischievously, "I happen to like watching your mouth move when you say words like 'xenocartography.'"

Starscream made a slight choking noise, but was saved having to reply to that comment when a waiter appeared at their table. Having been too distracted to actually study the menu, Starscream just ordered the first thing on it containing capsaicin and then fiddled with his napkin while Megatron made his order.

It seemed that there were some variables in this situation that he had not accounted for. Megatron was being... unpredictable, and Starscream wasn't sure how he felt about that.

"Starscream?"

He looked up to find the gladiator staring at him expectantly. Perhaps it wasn't too late to salvage this, he told himself, and then slipped back into flirtatious mode, leaning forward to rest his chin on his hand again and fluttering his lashes up at the older mech.

"I'm sorry, I was lost in my thoughts for a moment there. What was that?" he simpered.

Megatron reached over and knocked his hand out from under his chin. The Seeker gasped in shock and offense as his cheek smacked into the glass that would have held some kind of fancy energon wine had he been brave enough to try and drink tonight, toppling it over into his plate.

"What the Pit!?" he demanded as he hastily corrected his place settings.

"Stop," Megatron said simply, not yet releasing his hold on the smaller mech's wrist.

"Stop what!?"

"The pretending," the gladiator explained. "If I'd wanted to spend an evening with your cousin, I would have asked her out."

Starscream's jaw dropped, and he felt energon rush to his face. Had he been that obvious?

"I don't know what you're talking about," he sniffed, tugging on his captive wrist. He may as well have been pulling on a brick wall, and Megatron just smiled at his efforts, holding him just tightly enough not to hurt.

"I told you that I like you, Starscream," he said. "So be yourself for me, would you?"

"And what would you know about me, you self-righteous boob!?" he snapped, and then instantly wanted to bite his own tongue off. Who cared if the gladiator was being a bit more troublesome than Starscream had expected? All he'd needed to do was keep his mouth shut long enough to get himself fragged, and then he would have something to show to prove he wasn't jealous of his brother. Apparently, even that had been too tall an order for him to fill.

But Megatron, who he had fully expected to scowl and throw back something equally insulting, just grinned and shifted his hold from the Seeker's wrist to twine their fingers together instead.

"Just like that," he said. "No need to worry about impressing me, niblet; you've already done that."

The energon was rushing to Starscream's face once more, and he squeezed Megatron's hand back as hard as he could, out of both irritation and nerves.

"Call me that again and I'll rip your fingers off," he hissed with a sickly sweet smile.

Megatron just laughed, his thumb caressing the smooth skin on the back of Starscream's hand. The gesture sent an electric thrill through Starscream's body, one that he hadn't felt many times in his past.

This was... weird. It was almost like the more filters he took off his personality, the more Megatron was enjoying it, and that was wrong. Nobody liked Starscream when he wasn't filtering himself. Even Skyfire, who had practically worshiped the air he flew through, had always been telling him to tone things down. Was Megatron some kind of masochist, perhaps?

"With that kind of spirit, I'm surprised you didn't make it into the Air Command," Megatron continued. "Did you fail the flight test?"

Starscream scoffed. "Please. I can outmaneuver any Seeker in Vos."

"Oh? Even that one guy—what's his name? He took first in every category of Aerial Maneuvers at the last ten Praxus Games?"

"Zipline?" Starscream rolled his eyes. "He's just lucky most of the best fliers do get assigned to the Air Command and not athletics. I was trained by the best of the best, and outstripped them all before my alt mode had even fully settled."

"You'll have to show me sometime," his date purred.

"You wouldn't even be able to see most of it from the ground," Starscream pointed out.

"Who said I'd be on the ground?"

Starscream blinked. Low-casters weren't allowed to have alt modes. It was one of many ways that the council kept them where they were supposed to be, but... His eyes flicked up to Megatron's own crimson ones, which were crinkled in amusement. He never had gotten around to asking him about his heritage. Was he... He couldn't really be a Seeker, too, could he? There was a certain tilt to his features that certainly suggested it, but how would that even work? Starscream supposed if he got the gladiator to take his shirt off later that evening and found wings on his back, then that would answer that question at least.

Suddenly, he was hyper aware of the sensation of Megatron's hand on his and the fact that there was something bordering on affection in the other mech's eyes along with the amusement. Despite the strange turn that this date was taking, Starscream was still thinking about having sex with Megatron, and it had just occurred to him that the gladiator was likely thinking about the same thing.

Was Megatron wondering what his wings would look like, too—folded and compressed securely into the lines of his back? What would the hand holding his now feel like on his wings? Would it just be the same as when his father or brother helped massage the kinks out for him, or would it somehow be more? What would Megatron's touch feel like on his stomach? His thighs? His...

The arrival of their fuel saved Starscream from his dangerously spiraling thoughts and the warmth that had started gathering between his legs. He shifted awkwardly as Megatron released his hand, surprised to find that he felt a bit... damp. He knew that was a thing, but couldn't remember the last time it had happened to him.

Starscream busied himself examining his fuel and deciding that it did not have enough capsaicin in it. He asked the waiter to bring the bottle from the kitchen. The mech barely concealed his surprise before disappearing and returning only a moment later with a bottle of thick, reddish-orange sauce. Both he and Megatron's eyebrows went up as the Seeker pulled off the little plastic ring that allowed only a few drops to leave the bottle at a time and upended about half of the bottle's contents over his plate.

"What is that?" Megatron wanted to know, and Starscream realized then that the gladiator had probably never seen the stuff before. After all, it was something that one of his colleagues at the Altihex corps had discovered on some organic planet only a million years ago, and it was only within the last couple centuries that anyone outside the corps had started eating it.

"Oh, you wouldn't like it," he assured the other mech, shaking one last blot into his fuel before handing the bottle back to the waiter. "It's like if pain had a flavor."

"He's not wrong," the waiter put in.

"So, why do you eat it?" Megatron wondered.

Starscream shrugged, scooping up a bit of red-topped energon suspension and popping it into his mouth. "Because energon that's been in a storage hold for five years tastes like scrap and this stuff masks it," he supplied after he'd swallowed. "It's good, but you have to build up a tolerance."

The gladiator studied him for a moment before turning to the waiter.

"Can I see that?"

Starscream watched with mounting anticipation as Megatron piled the oil onto his own fuel. The waiter walked off with the now-empty bottle, muttering under his breath about fools.

"You aren't really going to eat that, are you?" Starscream asked, quirking one eyebrow at him.

For answer, Megatron scooped up a large bite and maintained full eye contact with the Seeker as he put it in his mouth. He paused, one eye twitching slightly, and then coughed, keeping his mouth clamped firmly shut over the spoon still protruding from it.

"I warned you," Starscream sighed, taking another bite of his own fuel.

There was sweat beading on the gladiator's forehead as he slowly pulled the spoon out, chewed, and swallowed.

"...good..." he gasped.

"If you say so."

The rest of dinner progressed in a similarly confusing fashion. They argued about politics, Starscream called Megatron's intelligence into question no less than five times, and also spent a full twenty minutes rambling about the Relative Warp Paradox. The more blunt, scornful, and generally obnoxious he got, the more Megatron seemed to enjoy him. It was uncanny, but also strangely satisfying. It was like the relief he got from letting go of his inhibitions when overcharged, only he was completely lucid and wasn't going to have a headache in the morning.

Megatron paid for dinner (Starscream was really starting to wonder just how much gladiators made), and the two of them headed for the opera house.

Starscream was almost as nervous for this part of the evening as he was for what might come after it. He and Megatron had already been in the tabloids together once, and he could just imagine what was going to come out about them tomorrow if anyone who cared happened to see them walking into the opera house together.

But that was good, he reminded himself as they arrived at the opulent building. This was all to prove a point about himself, and having it splashed across the tabloids would only help. In fact, he wished he could see Thundercracker's face when his brother found out important personal information about him from a newspaper instead of his own mouth. That would teach him not to respond to his comms.

That was what he told himself as Megatron questioningly offered his arm at the base of the opera house steps, his eyes glittering splendidly in the lights from the domes of the building. He certainly didn't take it because the warmth of the gladiator by his side made his stomach swoop like hitting the downdrafts on the far side of a mountain range. And Megatron's obvious approval of his defiant streak definitely wasn't his motivation for pretending he didn't care about any and all of the whispers that might have been about them. Oh, no. It was all just a highly calculated act.

"Iacon's opera house certainly lives up to its fame," Megatron remarked, his eyes turned upward as they passed into the main entrance hall. "We don't have any chandeliers that big in Kaon."

"Do you go to the opera much in Kaon?" Starscream wanted to know.

"Every now and then," the older mech confessed. "Wouldn't have dreamed it when I was your age, but I have always been a patron of the arts in some form or another."

"What did you do before you went into the pits?" the Seeker suddenly found himself wondering.

"Mining."

"A lot of art in the mines, then?"

"Only as much as there are artists."

Starscream wasn't sure what to make of that comment and so let it be. They had to focus on finding their way to the correct box in the correct performance hall then anyway. As he had only ever been to his parents' box in the main hall, Starscream was almost as lost as Megatron in navigating the seemingly endless sequence of staircases, lifts, and side halls that eventually deposited them in the narrow corridor running behind the private boxes on level four of the left balcony.

"They certainly don't want anyone wandering in casually, do they?" Megatron commented when they'd finally found their seats.

"Well, duh," Starscream snorted. "What would be the point of paying for them if just anyone could find their way up here?"

"You'd think with the amount we do pay for them they might bother to include a map with the ticket," the other mech muttered as he settled into the red plush upholstery of his seat. "Oo, this is nice, though. Definitely better than the ones in Kaon."

Starscream just snorted again at his obvious lack of experience and sank gracefully onto the edge of his own seat, folding one thin leg daintily behind the other.

"The femme singing the part of Solus tonight is actually from Kaon," Megatron commented after a moment. "I saw her in Razoredge a while back. Did a stunning rendition of 'Razoredge's Lament.' Hardly a dry eye in the house."

"You truly are a mech of many surprises, Megatron," Starscream told him, and this time the coquettish smile and tilt to his head were entirely genuine.

"Because I enjoy opera?" he wanted to know.

"Among other things."

The gladiator smiled back and reached for the hand Starscream had lain on his arm rest, carefully folding the Seekers' delicate, narrow fingers in his own rough, blunt ones. Starscream felt that swooping sensation in the pit of his stomach again, only this time, it tapered off into a strange, cramping.

"You alright?" Megatron asked, his grip loosening, and Starscream hastily grabbed his hand back, schooling his features once more.

"Nothing for you to worry about," he assured the gladiator.

The house lights flashed then, announcing the imminent start of the show, and the two of them lapsed into silence.

Starscream was not sure that he had ever experienced anything quite so agonizingly tantalizing as trying to sit in the dark beside Megatron for a full three hours of theater. The other mech kept hold of his hand the whole time, but he didn't just hold it—oh, no. He stroked it, he squeezed it, he ran his fingers along Starscream's fingers only to delicately pinch the tips of each, sending little shivers down the Seeker's spine. And every now and then, he would lean over and whisper some comment about the show in Starscream's ear, his warm breath tickling the hair on the side of the Seeker's face and his voice managing to sound low and intimate even for sentences like:

"The sound technician just dropped his pen into the orchestra pit!"

With each passing minute, Starscream could feel the tension in his stomach building higher and higher. It had passed the swooping stage long ago and was now more of a constant dull ache that he didn't think was normal. And then there was the wetness.

At first, he had just been mildly annoyed by how easily Megatron was able to coax that particular response out of his body when his struggle to achieve it even under appropriate circumstances in the past was just one of many reasons he was still a virgin, but it had moved past that by now. This was no longer damp and just straight up wet. It was most uncomfortable, and he was starting to worry it was going to be enough to soak through his pants soon, and... no. Just no. He wasn't that desperate for sex.

They were only about an hour into the show when Starscream realized that he was too physically uncomfortable to enjoy any of this anymore and that he was going to have to do something about it.

"I'll... be right back," he promised, slipping his hand carefully out of Megatron's and getting to his feet.

"Don't fall in," the gladiator teased, and Starscream hurried away before he could see the flush that colored his cheeks.

The bathroom was two floors down and, thankfully, deserted when Starscream got there. He cautiously poked around the stalls, trying to decide which one felt the most secure, before finally deciding on the one second from the end.

He paused for a moment after locking the door behind himself and doubled over as his stomach cramped again, far worse than it had thusfar. The pain seemed to be migrating around into his back and hips as well as his stomach now, and that couldn't be right. For one thing, he wasn't the least bit aroused right now.

When the pain subsided a bit, he went ahead and dropped his pants, fully expecting to find them embarrassingly soaked in pearlescent lubricants. The actuality was worse.

So much worse.

The crotch of Starscream's underwear was completely covered in energon—dark, cobalt energon of the sort that a body leaked on the tail end of a fertility cycle.