Chapter Text
When the war ended, it almost didn’t feel real to Skyfire. It felt like watching a movie montage, and he was only a bystander to the events following the war’s conclusion.
He remembered watching as the treaty was signed by the high commands of each army, which was then followed by the lengthy celebrations and parades. Gradually, his people gradually moved back to Cybertron, and soon they began to restore their destroyed planet one steel beam at a time. But during it all, he couldn’t shake the feeling of being a glacier stuck in a turbulent sea. He half-expected the dream to fall apart, but as time went on, he felt more grateful that it never did.
Not to say Skyfire wasn’t busy. With the war over, he had the impulsive idea to return to the ruins of the Academy and rebuild it. Even though he had good memories from there, he couldn’t forget how the atmosphere of discrimination haunted him and others during their tenure, which was why he quickly submitted plans to the new council before anyone else could. To his surprise, Shockwave of all mechs backed his reconstruction proposals, and together they spearheaded the renovations for a more inclusive Academy.
Skyfire knew he should be happy with the peace and his current project, and a large part of him definitely was. So why was he still unsatisfied?
There was a hole, he’d come to realize. A Starscream-shaped hole that the current Starscream didn’t cleanly fit into anymore.
Sure, they saw each other a lot. Starscream was just as much invested in the New Academy as the other scientists were, and he even managed to show up to the financial meetings despite his packed schedule. But whenever they passed each other outside of those meetings or on the Academy grounds, they barely made optic contact before Starscream ducked his helm and walked faster. In those moments, Skyfire felt too small to call after his old lover, as much as he wanted to.
They hadn’t talked one-on-one since Skyfire left the Decepticons, after he was first excavated from the Arctic ice.
Were they exes if they never technically broke up? Unless Skyfire counted the time Starscream shot him when he didn’t execute those Autobot prisoners. Skyfire wasn’t even sure if they were still friends at this point.
After one too many stilted interactions, Skyfire found himself in the renovated Maccadam’s, seated at the bar and downing his fourth cube of high-grade. It wasn’t a crowded night for once, the newly installed lights still flickered but in a warm, cozy way, and Jazz had set himself up in the corner, crooning a slow Earth song.
Skyfire hadn’t intended to drink the strong stuff when he came here—he wasn’t sure what he intended at all—but the minibot bartender had convinced him to try his experimental brew, and now Skyfire couldn’t stop thinking about how Starscream would’ve loved how terrible this high-grade was. Maybe that was why he almost missed the flicker of a yellow spoiler before Hot Rod jumped into the seat right next to him.
“Hey, big guy!” Hot Rod cheered, holding his own cube of neon-green high-grade. He finished it off quickly and threw the cube over his shoulder. A loud bonk sounded somewhere behind them.
“You didn’t tell me you were gonna be here! How’s it going, Skyfire?”
Hot Rod was a good friend. A great one, even. Right after Skyfire had moved back to Cybertron—but before he thought about rebuilding the Academy—they had bumped into each other at the local energon dispensary. Literally, Hot Rod ran into him and immediately bounced off, and Skyfire was extremely apologetic for knocking him flat on his aft. But eventually they learned that they were neighbors in the same apartment block, and ever since then, Hot Rod had managed to become a regular fixture in his life. They even watched Mythbusters on the weekends when neither of them were busy.
“It’s really, really bad,” Skyfire bemoaned. He tried to say it as a joke, but he realized he said that more genuinely than he meant to. Skyfire tried drinking again to hide his embarrassment, until he noticed his cube was already empty. He awkwardly set it back onto the counter.
“Whoa, what’s wrong?” Hot Rod made a concerned noise before reaching up to pat Skyfire on the arm. “I’ve got time, why don’t you lay it on me?”
Skyfire put his head in his servos and slumped over the counter. His wings jerked down even lower, and his engines let out a quiet whine.
“Earlier at the Academy,” Skyfire began, “Starscream and I passed by each other at one of the new labs.” It was the perfect opportunity to finally say something, Skyfire thought to himself at the time. Then he opened his mouth and utterly ruined his chances.
“This is so embarrassing. I told him that the weather was nice today.” Skyfire wrung his servos in exasperation. “Cybertron doesn’t have enough of an atmosphere for weather!”
The strange look Starscream gave him was enough for Skyfire to wish he could fly back to the Arctic on Earth and freeze himself again.
Hot Rod grimaced. “Yeesh, that sounded real rough. But, did he say anything?”
Skyfire shook his head. “No, he left rather quickly too.” Sighing, Skyfire slumped even lower into the bar counter. He didn’t care how sticky it was. “Star usually tries to avoid me anyway. I just don’t know how to talk to him anymore, after everything.”
“Dude, I don’t know how to say this any more eloquently, but that sucks ass.” Hot Rod drew some imaginary squiggles on the counter for several seconds before he snapped his fingers. “Clearly, you need to do something.”
Skyfire groaned in exasperation, and then immediately felt bad. Normally he was much more polite to his friend, but he was too moody and drunk to think straight. “What could I possibly do?”
“Uhhh, move on?” Hot Rod suggested. “There’s tons of mechs on the market now,”
Now it was Skyfire’s turn to cringe. “Sorry. I can’t, I just—I can’t,” he mumbled, and his seat jittered as he bounced his leg.
“Even though we’re not together anymore, and even though Starscream has certainly moved on by now, I don’t think I can.” Skyfire laughed mirthlessly. “Isn’t that kind of pathetic of me?”
“No!” Hot Rod protested, slapping a servo down on the counter. “Man, you’re one cool bot, you know that? You’re not pathetic at all.” He paused when he realized his accidental faux pas. “Uh, pun not intended.”
Despite himself, Skyfire let out a small chuckle. “It’s nice of you to say that, Roddy.”
“Never mind, you’re my lamest friend and I don’t know you anymore.”
They looked at each other at the same time before sharing a quiet laugh. But even after settling back into a more comfortable silence, Skyfire still couldn’t completely shake off his gloominess. If he did try to talk to Starscream, how would they even talk about what happened between them? They both shot at each other, for crying out loud.
Skyfire didn’t want to find out if they were incompatible in every way now.
Suddenly, and with great determination, Hot Rod clambered onto his bar stool, until Skyfire was forced to look up to meet his optics. There was a dangerous glint in there that Skyfire couldn’t help but compare to his friend Wheeljack. Which wasn’t really a favorable comparison at all.
“Okay, so you want to get him back then, right?” Hot Rod asked.
“Maybe? It’s, um, complicated—“ Skyfire said haltingly, unsure of where this conversation was going. The high grade was making it hard to think. “I don’t know how to even start talking to him, much less how to start fixing the issues between us.”
Hot Rod poked him between the optics, and Skyfire had to stop himself before he could tumble off his seat in surprise.
“Listen, listen—” Hot Rod slurred, even though Skyfire was already listening. He waved his servos around. “I hate seeing you mopey. You’re a great guy and I think you deserve to be happy, so I’ve got this totally awesome idea for you. Are you ready?”
“Roddy, I don’t think that’s necessary—”
Hot Rod loudly shushed him, going so far as to press a finger against Skyfire’s mouth. Then, he flashed jazz hands and a million-shanix smile.
“You and me: let’s pretend to date!”
A long, long silence stretched between them. It didn’t help that Jazz had taken a quick break from singing, so the bar was quiet. Skyfire almost wanted to laugh, but that would’ve been rude.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Hear me out,” Hot Rod started saying, climbing even higher onto the bar top to make his point. He artfully dodged the cleaning rag thrown at him by the bartender, ignoring his shouts for him to get off.
“I got this idea from TV, okay? We pretend to date for a little while, and it’ll get Starscream like super, mega jealous. So then he’ll start talking to you first. Then you two can talk some more, bada-bing bada-boom, you reconcile! It’s simple and genius, right?”
Hot Rod bowed dramatically. “By the way, you’re welcome for having such a great wingman like me.”
He didn’t dodge the next rag thrown at his helm in time, and he toppled off the counter until Skyfire, panicking, barely managed to catch him in his arms. The whole scene was so bizarre, Skyfire couldn’t help but let out a loud laugh.
“Okay, you’re definitely drunk,” Skyfire said, placing Hot Rod back on his seat and dusting his magenta helm off. “And ridiculous, and a million other similar words that I can’t think of right now. But, I think it might have a chance of working?”
At least, Skyfire hoped so, knowing Starscream. He’d made the first move after all, back when they were still friends during the Academy and he thought that someone was flirting with Skyfire one time. Jealousy was an easy motivator for him.
“Now I know what you’re thinking—” Hot Rod began to protest, until he halted abruptly. His optics grew comically wide and he leaned closer into Skyfire’s space. “Wait, you really wanna go along with my plan? Like, really really?”
If Skyfire had been thinking clearly, he probably wouldn’t have listened to Hot Rod’s insane idea. People didn’t solve their problems like they did in the movies. But Skyfire was tired, wasted, and maybe a little delirious, but most of all he wasn’t happy.
“I’m at the end of my wits,” Skyfire admitted, “and I’m not brave enough to confront Starscream first. I’d honestly love your help, my friend.”
Hot Rod cracked a marvelous grin, and Skyfire felt his own smile matching that energy. Hot Rod tended to have that kind of effect on people.
“By the way,” Hot Rod said excitedly, pulling Skyfire away from his thoughts. He pulled out a personal datapad from his subspace and quickly logged in to an app that Skyfire had never seen before, but it had a lot of photos of other mechs and humans.
“We need to come up with a ship name for us.”
Skyfire sputtered and his face heated up. He resisted the urge to cover his face. “Huh? Why?”
“Just cause!” Hot Rod exclaimed. He leaned out and snapped a quick selfie of the two of them. Skyfire was pretty sure it was a terrible selfie, he had blinked when the flash went off.
“What about HotFire?”
“Absolutely not.”
“C’mon, it’s great!”
“It’s terrible!”
In the end, Hot Rod got his way, and Skyfire had to suffer the rest of the night. But, it was the first time in a long while he didn’t go to berth feeling sad about Starscream.
It took four tries before Skywarp finally found Starscream and Thundercracker. He was nearly ready to give up after warping in on Megatron and Optimus Prime showering together (ew), but it turned out that his errant trinemates were at Swindle’s pop-up store in Iacon, arguing over rings of all things.
Maybe Starscream was in the mood to shop for tiny crowns to wear on his fingers? Weird, but Skywarp tucked that bit of blackmail material away for later.
Thundercracker and Starscream stopped talking immediately when they saw Skywarp shake off water from his plating, but Skywarp didn’t think about it for a second longer before speeding over to them.
“Starscream!” Skywarp pushed Thundercracker aside—his partner almost crashed into a display case of tacky sunglasses—and he shoved his personal datapad into Starscream’s face. “Holy slag—sorry babe—but Star, look at this!”
Starscream looked nearly ready to explode on him, until he saw what was on the cracked screen.
It had his social media account pulled up, and on his timeline were two very familiar mechs. Hot Rod’s face was partially out of focus in the corner of the picture, but his arm was wrapped around the blindingly white arm of Skyfire. It seemed like Hot Rod hadn’t edited the photo’s color correction before posting it.
Skyfire looked like he was either pleased or got caught mid-blink, Skywarp couldn’t really tell. But the two of them were leaning close to one another in the photo, and underneath the post caption read:
First date with total hot stud!! Fire in the sky more like fiyah in my heart 😳❤️🔥🔥 #HotFire #cutepic #dateideas #couplegoals
Starscream’s face went through several strange emotions before he settled on a decidedly neutral face. Which was honestly kind of a let down, Skywarp thought he would’ve had more of a reaction to the news. Thundercracker peered over Skywarp’s shoulder and lifted both optic ridges in surprise, wings perking in curiosity.
“Hot Rod and Skyfire? Never would’ve seen that coming,” Thundercracker remarked.
“I know!” Skywarp exclaimed. He began to scroll through the comments on the post, many who echoed Thundercracker’s surprise. “Like, who would’ve thought those two would get together, right? But I guess if you think about it, Skyfire’s taste does lean towards the small, spitfire types—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Starscream suddenly snapped. He quickly cleared his vocalizer and wiped the stormy look off his face, but there was no disguising the prickliness in his EM field.
Skywarp smirked and waved the datapad tauntingly. “Are you jealous or something? I thought you were over him—”
Starscream smacked the back of Skywarp’s helm before snatching the datapad back.
“Hey!”
“I’m not jealous and I am over him! I’m—” Starscream crossed his arms with a decisive huff. “I’m just—surprised. It’s about time Skyfire moved on and found some…companionship. I’m happy for him.”
Skywarp and Thundercracker exchanged dubious glances with each other, and Starscream bristled.
“I am!”
“Really?” Skywarp asked. He leaned against the display case of rings that Thundercracker and Starscream were arguing over earlier. “That’s not what you said last night. Remember how mopey you were after you ran into Skyfire the other day?”
Starscream’s face took on a decidedly darker hue, and his claws scraped the display case glass. Oh boy, Swindle wasn’t going to be happy. “That interaction didn’t count! What the frag was I supposed to say to him? You know Cybertron doesn’t have an atmosphere for actual weather, I couldn’t tell him something so obvious like that!”
Actually, Skywarp didn’t know that, but Thundercracker butted in before he could tell Starscream to shove his nerd talk.
“Okay, let’s not fight,” Thundercracker said. “As much as I like gossip, it’s clearly making Starscream upset to talk about his old, uh, Skyfire like that—”
“I’m not upset! And he’s not my anything!” Starscream threatened. “He’s a strong, independent mech who might need a little bit of social help, but that’s fine! You know why?” He slammed a fist down, which startled several shoppers in their vicinity.
“Because I’ll fragging help him!”
Sensing a budding scheme in the making, Skywarp leaned in and grinned mischievously. It was getting too boring in peacetime, anyways. “Oh? What are you gonna do? And do you need assistance?”
Thundercracker groaned and reached out towards Starscream like he wanted to restrain him. “Star, no, we have plans already,” he began to protest, but it was too late.
There was a familiar, frightening look to Starscream’s optics, much like the countless times he planned to murder Megatron.
Starscream rubbed his servos together in glee.
“We’re going to make sure Skyfire seduces that racecar.”