A/N: Shameless canon-whoring here. Idea stolen with equal shamelessness from Pinkuh, who has an awwwwesome picture to go with it, look her up on Deviantart.
Characters: Starscream-centric, brief Megatron
Pairings: harassy-cute MegatronxStarscream
Notes: snippet-type piece, gag-worthily artistic
Blue
Everyone had to do something to keep their figure.
Starscream was never too thrilled about anything that promised sweaty bodies crashing into each other, or the occasional black eye. Nor was he particularly excited about a sport that didn't offer an outlet for his ambition, like recreational jogging, which had to be the single-most painfully dull thing on earth. Luckily, Iacon Academy had every kind of sports team known to man (and some invented just for bragging rights), but only one, in the end, made it into the Seeker's heart.
It was perfect. Graceful, powerful, controlled. Solitary. It offered not just a 120-by-53 yard patch of turf but a completely different world.
He relished the soundless glide of clear water over his shoulders, dipping down his narrow back and cresting over his butt and legs. He loved the mobility: the quick rush of silky force against every inch of his front as he somersaulted in the water and kicked against the side of the pool, speeding off again with his arms raised like a knife—or the nose of a jet—in front of him.
He even loved the pleasant airlessness. If there was anything he had learned in microeconomics, it was that anything that was limited was special. The laws of supply and demand made him re-appreciate both the healthy pressure in his lungs and the blue bowl he could only be in for a minute. Both were needed: both were rare.
This, he sometimes thought, was how it was to fly.
The air would be a medium, crystal blue and hyper-responsive, all around him. There would be currents: natural highways that spoke to his naked skin. The high quietness of the atmosphere mirrored the low peace of the deep sea and blue silence filled his ears, wonderful and thick, insulating and protective. Lulled by the paradoxical sense of complete freedom in his closed little fishbowl, Starscream swam and flew in turns, barrel-rolling in the warm pool only to cleave the surface with methodical slices of his arms, gaining speed only to coast again. Flying.
It was his exercise, his escape, and his dreaming time all in one—and every ounce of that grace and subtle wonder disappeared in a single second when Starscream broke for air at the end of a lap and saw two black Italian leather shoes on the edge of the pool, smack in front of his nose.
Starscream jerked away with a messy gasp, oh-so-precious water rushing into his mouth. His feet wind-milled helplessly in the deep-end as Megatron simply watched his previously graceful Second turn into a floundering imbecile with the simple addition of a superior officer.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he shrieked at last, hacking the chlorine away and popping off his dark goggles to glare up at Megatron.
"I missed your melodious voice," Megatron drawled, more than slightly amused by the puffy pink goggle-rings around the young man's eyes. It made him look younger than he already was, which Megatron couldn't decide whether he liked to chortle at or just liked. "I called a meeting ten minutes ago. You failed to answer your phone."
Starscream's phone lay back in the locker room of the downtown private gym he used to exercise—just where it should have been, locked away and unheard for twenty-four hours.
"It's my day off!" he protested before he could stop himself, grasping the edge of the pool and gaping up, very up, at his boss.
"And?" Megatron prompted him glibly, a fluffy white towel already draped over one arm. He looked the very image of some sort of old, expectant butler and Starscream took a moment to spitefully cherish that image—the President serving him tea and crumpets before assuming a kneeling position so Starscream could comfortably rest his feet on his ridiculously wide back--before sullenly knocking his head against the side of the pool.
"And why didn't you send one of your drooling lackeys if your meeting was so goddamn important?" Starscream muttered to himself, knowing the answer well enough. Heaven forbid Megatron dismiss a chance to torture him. The old man was sniffing out his every hiding place, one by one: now even the gym wasn't safe.
Resisting the urge to splash sour chlorine water on those perfect Italian shoes, the Seeker heaved himself out of the pool with a slight grunt, unconsciously pleased by the instant contraction of his narrow muscles as the forgiving buoyancy of water left him. He felt tight and warm and slim from the swim. The second his wet feet slapped down, however, he was reawakened to the gritty artificial atmosphere of all pools, public or private: the heater flipped on somewhere in the cavernous building and the smell of chlorine hit him again, clinging to the clammy concrete. His little haven sloshed away below him, blue as ever.
His President handed him the towel, which he snatched without honoring the other man with as much as a glance. Frowning into it, he rubbed at his chest and tangled hair. Starscream's face puckered when he turned and caught the old man staring—rather, observing in that intensely-intrigued, one-brow-raised Megatron way—his skin-tight speedo, which was a shade of maroon (cut with imposingly mod geometrical lines) that only he could pull off.
"Impressive," Megatron offered as he looked up, brows high.
It could have been about anything: his skillful swimming, his impertinence at failing to answer his phone. Therefore it was a mark of character—and vanity—that Starsream immediately assumed the old man was referring to his ass.
"Do you want me to hold a bowl underneath your eyes when they pop out, or just rip them out myself?" he hissed, snapping his towel for emphasis. Megatron gave him a look that was borderline fond and turned to walk toward the exit.
"Get dressed," he sighed, then looked back, grey eyes sly once more. "Or stay as you are. Your choice."
"Go to hell," Starscream huffed into the towel, hiding his obstinate and very un-adult pout. He waited until the door to the pool closed, leaving him alone in the echoing landscape of concrete and water. As awful as a meeting sounded right then, with all its stiff suits and tense silence, the Seeker couldn't resist slipping his feet back into the pool for another minute, as if to soak some of the calm blue into himself.
He sat and leaned back and breathed in and out, simply feeling the content burble of the cleaning jet against his bare feet, and thought about slicing through endless blue skies and leaving the sound-barrier behind.