A/N: People who know me in real life have heard me talk about a lot of this stuff. But I wanted to record it all, because the things I worked through with Starscream were important in my growth as a person. So, here you go.

Filling in the Holes: The Chamois of Love

All right. All right! I'll tell you about the time I licked Starscream's eyebrow. But you'll have to let me start at the beginning...

First off, you need to understand that, like Megatron, I hate Starscream irrationally because he is all of the things about myself that seem to make me weaker. And yes, I do have a problem with him being 'gay,' – as much as such a thing is possible among robots who don't "work that way." But, like all my head crew, he refuses my control. I cannot make him into anything but what he insists he is.

The other thing that you should know about me is that I haaaate "being just like everyone else." So I did not want to write gay-Starscream-with-a-crush-on-Megatron. It's already been done ad nauseum in fanfiction. But slaggitall, he wouldn't let me write him any other way.

So I hated him. I hated him because the more I got to know him the more twisted he became. I hated him with stomach-clenching guilt.

In some sense, I have to become characters before I can write them. I have to get inside their heads and understand them, so that I'll know what they'll do. Thus, I tend not to plot as much (or as well) as many other authors. I have an idea of where the story's going, but in the end I simply turn the computer keyboard over to the robots in my head. Grapple laughs at me, because I'll say things like, "Oh, dialog is easy – I just put these guys in a room and let 'em at it." But it's true. Once I know a character, they write themselves – often to my complete surprise. There have been many instances where someone will say or do something that causes me to exclaim aloud and laugh, marvel at their wisdom, or just sob.

Usually I love getting inside characters' heads. It's awesome to really get to know them. And I love finding out things about them that I previously hadn't suspected. But I hated going into Starscream's head. Megatron, back in the bad old days, was evil and cruel and manipulative. But he was my imaginary best pal, and I knew what he'd become. So although I did not like what he was doing – not at all – I did not truly hate him for it. It was uncomfortable, but wickedly exhilarating, too, sometimes. Starscream did not offer the same kind of sick reward for swimming in his filth. I just felt filthy.

I hated to write him. I hated to deal with him at all. So I avoided him. I even went so far as to have Megatron kill him off early in my story arc. I could not see any possible way for him to be anything but a liability to my Happy Little World, and I did NOT want anything to jeopardize the fragile, wonderful thing that I was building. It was one of the few times I pushed the plot.

And then Madeleine L'Engle showed up to chastise me.

I was re-reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet, but this time from the perspective of warring robot armies. (There are few things in the real world that cannot be related to my Imaginary one.) Well, that story was a real slap in the face for me, because I saw that Madeleine, one of my childhood heroes, wrote even the most unlikable of her characters out of a deep well of love and forgiveness for their failures. She understood them, and she loved them, without trying to gloss over the bad things they'd done. She wrote no one out of hatred. And that made her story much, much better.

I had been writing Starscream out of hatred. And it was ruining my story. Under Madeliene's stern rebuke, I realized that killing him off to suit myself was a far more surefire way to undermine my happy world than letting him wander around loose in it ever would have been.

So I invited him into my room (where the head-crew usually resides), and told him I was sorry for writing him in hatred. I looked – really looked – at him for the first time. And I let myself love him, even as he was. I let myself see past my personal dislikes, and love the mech he really was, not the construct I had built to keep him at a distance. I stopped being afraid to accept him.

And...

There's no way I can write this so that you'll know how significant it was. After all, it was all in my head. But as Dumbledore says (bless him!) "Of course this is all happening inside your head! But that doesn't mean it isn't real!" Perhaps you'll understand a little how profound it was if I tell you that I actually emailed my family about it, even though they'd be confused as heck. It was important to me.

What happened was that after I out-loud told him I was sorry, I reached out my hands, and took Starscream's spark into my own small human chest. I took him into myself, claimed him, 'named him me,' as Madeleine would have said. I let myself love him with my whole heart.

After that, things changed a great deal.

I was deeply-enmeshed in writing Entr'acte, the story about Megatron and Starscream. It was my offering of penance, my effort to make some small recompense for thrusting him aside. It was me facing all the horf that was in Starscream and Megatron's sick games they played around each other. It was me dealing with all the grunge that had built up along the bottom of Decepticon-dom. It was me facing all the gunk that had to be cleaned up before a 'Happy Little World' was even possible. And the whole time I was writing it, Imaginary Starscream sat at my elbow.

It wasn't all pleasant. The first thing that happened was that Imaginary Megatron up and left. It wasn't malicious. It's just that he and Starscream really are incapable of occupying the same space for very long without contention. But I missed him badly. He's in many ways the rock on which I lean.

But in some ways even worse still, I somehow got booted out of living in Prime's head. That was harsh. I love being Prime! It's... It's who I am! But I could not be Prime around Starscream. To this day, he and Prime keep out of each other's space. There is a kind of terminal awkwardness between them.

So for many months, it was just little human me, and Starscream.

So we talked. What else was there to do?

I never slept on his chest, the way I do with Megatron. For one thing, Megs's chest is flat, whereas Starscream has absolutely no comfortable sleeping area. But mostly, Starscream was always just smaller in my head than Megatron is. He could sit cross-legged in my bedroom, and fit fairly comfortably in the corner. He had certain places where he'd simply sit and watch what I was doing.

I'd just had Magnus then, and Starscream was fascinated by the tiny human baby. But more than that, he was envious of the parent-child bond he watched in action. He would have done anything (and tried) to have somebody hold and love him, the way I held and wibbled over Magnus every day. I understood that longing, being a hug addict myself. So I'd actually let him plug into my head when I was snuggling Magnus, just to let him have a vicarious taste. It wasn't much, but it was something. And Starscream's catch-phrase in my world seems to be "I'll take what I can get." I've never let Megatron plug in like that, not let him feel what I was feeling. He wasn't really interested (and he seems to be able to read my mind in any case). But I gave Starscream full access. And it actually was really nice. Who knew?

I enjoyed having Starscream as a friend and companion. He made me look at humanity in new ways. He helped me to appreciate things I'd never even thought about before. Like skin. Starscream would have killed for skin, and an organic's flexibility. His sensors are more finely-tuned than other mechs'. But he's still a giant robot made of metal, and thus unable to wrap around another being the way we are. Too clunky. Yes, even Starscream is too clunky for some things, and they happen to be the things he'd love most to be able to do.

I've always been jealous of the spark-bond. But Starscream made me appreciate human bonding much more fully than I ever had. (And I'm not just talking about sex. That's only one small part of it.)

I did kind of have to kick him out during those "marital moments," though. He just got a little creepy with his avid watching. Megatron, when he was there, would kind of roll his eyes and leave – he simply didn't care about this strange human ritual. But Starscream was hungry, and he'd watch with a clinical intensity that creeped me out. So he got booted from the room.

There was a time during all this that I realized that of all the mechs of Cybertron, Starscream would be the one best able to invent a machine that could facilitate a human-to-human spark-bond. He even indicated his willingness to try, in return for all the access I had given him, all those times I'd let him plug into my head and fill his empty bucket with vicarious snuggling. But also around that time, Ironhide said something that surprised me, and I realized that I needed to appreciate the process of communication, all the struggle and misunderstanding, because it allowed for those kinds of surprises. I realized I liked the fact that there were still things about Ironhide left for me to find out. So I thankfully rescinded my request, and we canceled the imaginary project. (Which was a good thing, since it was, you know, imaginary, and could never have worked in the real world in the first place!)

I still wanted to do something for Starscream, though. I knew that I was coming to the end of his story; and that at its ending, he would go. And by this time I was really close to him – in some ways closer than Megs and I had ever been. We'd just spent so much time talking about ourselves and how we felt about various things, comparing notes as equals. Working out our issues together had really made us close. I did not want to send him out into the next dimension with his love-bucket still empty. I mean, I knew that Megtron would have learned a little bit how to take care of his Second, but I still wanted to do something.

So while Starscream sat beside my bed in the mutable space of imagination, with his head going clear up through the disappearing ceiling because he was finally almost at full size, I got out the semi-official Chamois of Love from the TF: Armada series. (Don't ask. Hey, at least they tried.) And then I clambered up his drawn-up legs, barefooted so that I could feel where I was climbing (and so that there would be no separation between us), and went to work with that big checkered rag.

Because giant robots are tricky to clamber around on – even the imaginary ones – I mostly stayed on his shoulder once I got there, and focused on his face. It just seemed right.

I wanted to try everything, anything that might in some way "work." I just wanted him to feel the kind of love we humans are lucky enough to feel every day if we are blessed with family and friends who give us hugs. So I tried dry. I tried wet. I even got out Ironhide's and my special massage oil. This wasn't a car wash. This was snuggles. So yes, I kissed his face the way I kiss my babies' faces. And I even ran my tongue along his eyebrow and along his cheekplate-edge. I honestly did not mean anything sexual about it. But I did pull out all the stops in the sensuality department. I just wanted him to feel good, dang it!

Starscream just sat there, sucking it all in like an empty vacuum. He was holding himself together tightly, trying not to lose it. He was keeping himself separate from me. But every so often, a little tremor would go shivering down his frame. And if giant robots could cry, he might have. I know I was. Because dang it all, I love Starscream.

I still pretend not to love him – and feel like a traitor to my friend each time I do – but now that he's gone, I miss him mightily. It's awkward. On the one hand, we were really tight there, those few months. But on the other, he does still squick me out a little. I mean, I understand him a lot better. But he's not right – even he'll freely admit it once he trusts you (which is rare). He thinks Primus fragged up when he made him, and resents the brokenness of his programming. I think, however, that it was circumstances that fragged up, not Primus. If Starscream could have found a companion to love him the way he needed; if there hadn't been a huge big slagging war; if Megatron had not been such a complete, total &^%$# … Maybe Starscream could have been quite happy and content.

But that's not what happened.

So I wrote Entr'acte for them; and at least they understand each other now.

And I climbed up and licked Starscream's eyebrow. I didn't even think to be ashamed about it till I thought about the next day. After all, didn't it make me just another silly Starscream fangirl, out to invent carnal escapades? But although I was intensely embarrassed for a long time, I still don't think I did anything I ought to feel badly about. There was a hole in his heart. And I was there with a chamois. We each do what we can to stitch up all the holes left in the turning world.