Archive of Our Own

There’s really only one single rule amongst the plethora written in the guidelines of the Vos’s Outlier Facility that requires complete compliance – beyond not trying to escape, of course, because that will get you fragged up straight into the seventh circle of the Pits. 

No fighting in communal areas. 

It’s mostly so that the Dean won’t find out about the abundant in-fighting that happens between inmates on the regular under his very nasal ridge. Roommates fight all the time, and killing for a single room isn’t all that uncommon when the organising staff members pair up unequal class-types into the same habsuite. The Facility garners enough enrolment – read: capturing convicted bots from the skies once they’ve been flagged as unregistered – that losing a mech or two once every sol cycle isn’t so bad. 

Primus knows where the stains on Skywarp’s mesh blankets came from when he got assigned to his living quarters. 

But regardless of the statistics, fighting can’t actually happen where the Dean can find out. The mech’s a pretentious glitch with wings dipped to the floor in reverence to the Windlord. Most likely, this just means that the Dean doesn’t want the even-more-pretentious Winglord frowning upon his work and replacing his position with a seeker that won’t allow fighting to happen between inmates. In public, anyway.

The guards are in on it too. Skywarp’s seen their bets in ultra-high definition live feed.

Whatever. Point is, usually fighting happens indoors. Inside habsuits, or the washwracks, or even a storage closet if your good at the game. Skywarp’s late roommate met a swift end via acid boiling into his processor when Skywarp accidentally misplaced his optic cleanser. Sorry sucker never even stood a chance, because unlike the rest of these insubordinate glitches, Skywarp is good at the game. 

He’s had a private room ever since. Not to brag, but Skywarp is pretty high on the tier list. Fighter class frame with a First Grade ability; not many can compare. His late roommate – bless his scattered spark – had been an acid spitter, ironically enough, but he hadn’t been the brightest bulb in the shed. It’s honestly a little insulting that he’d gotten roomed with Skywarp. Patrol frame with a Second Grade ability at best; Skywarp should’ve made it a public problem with that level of inconsideration for his reputation. 

Whatever. Whatever. The glitch is offline now. And Skywarp has a room all to himself. He’d pushed the two berths together to make a nest-like structure and has twice as many mesh blankets. It’s great. 

…or so it was. Until an intruder decided to ruin his vibes. 

“Uhm,” Skywarp cycles his optics upon entering his room. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Me?” The mech scoffs. “Who the fuck are you? This is my room.”

“Uh, no it’s not,” Skywarp states matter-of-factly. “It’s mine.” And then for good measure, because one can never be too careful. “Are you dumb?”

The mech gives him a contemplating look with slitted, red optics. Like a cybercat or something. Skywarp can practically feel his gaze burn his circuits.

“Hmm,” the mech finally hums after a few kliks, turning his frame to face Skywarp fully. He cocks his hip and rests a blue servo on it, raking those blazing optics up and down Skywarp’s own frame. He keeps from preening because, well, there’s a stranger in his room and he’s disassembled Skywarp’s berth-nest. “Right, I’ve heard about how this works.”

“You have?” Skywarp asks, cocking his helm. 

“It was an annotated sublink in the enrolment manual.”

“Really?” Skywarp tits his helm the other way. “I never read that thing. Hey, what are we even talking about?”

“Energon is such a pain to clean off.”

“I mean…” Skywarp squints. The intruder flexes his claws. “I guess?”

The mech – who is, upon careful deduction, his new roommate as of a joor ago, which he had received a notification about by the board that he’d conveniently ignored said joor ago – launches at Skywarp with unfounded speed. His battle protocols flare up a nanoklik too late, because he’s already barrelling into the floor with a resounding CRASH!

Oh, Skywarp thinks in the fraction of a time it takes for pain receptors to register the claws gouging his optic out, this is a rooming battle. 

A few kliks into being mauled and another realisation springs into his processor, along the lines of, hey, I can totally make this somebot else’s problem too. Because as much as Skywarp hates to admit it, he’s losing. Tragically. It’s almost as embarrassing as being roomed with a Second Grade ability, but at least now he knows that the Board is taking him more seriously. He’s been roomed with a bot who probably has shiny credentials. Like the bots who kill other bots like it’s a pastime hobby. Like the one currently strangling him. 

As suddenly as the thought thread appears in his tactical unit, the two of them – Skywarp and his new murder roommate – are tumbling against the ground along one of the main artery hallways just outside their living quarters, effectively breaking the sacred rule of No Bloody Murder in Public Spaces. 

Salacious affair or not, if the Dean finds out it’s game over for all participating members, idle guards and violent inmates combined. Probably not in the mood for a public flogging, the guards tear them apart and march them straight into the Section Head’s office for corporal punishment. They pass bets behind their wings, which Skywarp totally notices, and he feels like he should be slightly offended that those bastards are betting over Skywarp’s survival. But he’s also dismissing a dozen damage alerts and trying to clear the static out of his cracked optic, so priorities, he guesses.

Skywarp prefers corporal punishment over the literal beheading his roommate was trying to give him though. Unless the glitched Section Head cuts his flying time again. He will be so pissed if she cuts his flying time. 

His roommate doesn’t look too concerned about potential punishments though. If anything, he looks nonchalant. Cool and collected. Like he hadn’t just tried to tear Skywarp’s optics out for a single-occupant room mere breems ago. Not that…not that Skywarp can judge him much for it, considering that that’s just how things work around here, but still! At least have the audacity to look upset that Skywarp’s still around!

“Next time,” his roommate mutters, inspecting his long wicked-looking claws. They’re coated in a splashing of blue that highlights his natural paint scheme like some kind of sleazy hand-out bot’s decoration. He looks like one a little bit actually, now that Skywarp’s getting a good look at him. 

Sharp optics that slant up into slits, like a cybercat’s, with a dangerous red gleam that matches the bright crimson of his paint. He’s got dark faceplates, much like Skywarp, and he’s probably got a black protoform too, which just makes the angles of his sleek frame look thin and dangerous. Like a blade ready to cut through clouds. He’s probably fast. He’s probably almost as fast as Skywarp. Maybe even faster, as much as he hates to admit it. No wonder admin roomed him with Skywarp; with a frame built like that, for speed and strike, he’s definitely a Fighter Class on par with Skywarp. And that’s not even taking into account his unknown outlier yet. 

Beyond that though, he’s real pretty. Almost too pretty, like those royal pricks that belong to the High Palace under the Windlord’s wings. He’s not that much smaller than Skywarp, but his wing’s make up for it. Fragger. 

Next to him, Skywarp feels like a degenerate street criminal all over again. 

“You look better like this,” his roommate cuts through his musing. Skywarp quirks his helm, one optics desperately glitching out static from his feed as he turns to the red seeker. 

“Huh?” He replies. 

“You know,” the red mech waves a servo in Skywarp’s vague direction. “All busted up like a cube through a trash compactor. It’s exquisite.”

“Are you…” Skywarp squints his working optic. “What?”

“Hey, if I kill you, do I get to keep your frame?”

“Uh,” Skywarp blinks. “I don’t think so. I think I’d be donated in the name of science.”

“Pity,” his roommate sighs, dragging those sharp optics down Skywarp’s frame, tracking blazing trails in their wake. “I can almost get behind that obnoxious purple like this.”

And if there’s one thing that Skywarp will defend with every turn of his spark, it’s the colour purple. 

“Oi,” he hisses, widening his stance, completely ready to resume their in-fighting – potential consequences of ruining the Section Head’s ugly office floors be damned – when he’s rudely interrupted by the physical manifestation of the law bursting through the doors.

The long doors of the office open to reveal the Section Head briskly walking in. Skywarp’s aura is lost with each echoing pedestep that the old grizzly femme takes. Skywarp doesn’t even remember the large seeker’s name, except that she also sometimes runs flying drills and always docks Skywarp’s points whenever he teleports instead of barrelling through the walls like a brute.

“Skywarp,” she harps, probably reading his designation from the datapad in her servos. She barely spares him a glance as she strides through the short room and moves to stand by the utilitarian desk at the front. “Starscream.”

Skywarp does a quick search of his murderous nonchalant purple-hating roommate – designation Starscream – and scans through his file. Everybot’s got one, and everybot registered as a subject of the Facility can access it with the right codes. Starscream…Starscream…Star–ah! Found it. 

STARSCREAM, registered inmate as of the last three stellar cycles. He’s younger than Skywarp by a few vorns, but graduated from Central Vos Academy at the same time as him. He’s currently sitting at a negative tier right now – ha! How is that even possible? – and isn’t even allowed to access the flight deck. He’s got the fastest one-thousand hic and broke the Vos record for the one-hundred hic, which gives his profile a special little tag that reads Skilled at Flying. Skywarp hadn’t been wrong in guessing his frame specs; fighter class with a situational outlier that’s been labelled First Grade by the department. 

Oh, and most importantly, Skywarp hadn’t actually been that far off about his pretentious looks either; Starscream’s a fucking high-caste.

The Facility doesn’t believe in the art of privacy, so Starscream’s history is written out like an infopad below his accreditations – all science and politics and nerd related, boringggg – and academic achievements; forged in the High Palace and directly related to the Wing Lords. No wonder he hadn’t been enrolled into the Facility after second frame development; he had had figure-head protection against mandated spark inspection. 

Well, up until Starscream had been sent out on an envoy as a representative of the Vos High Science Division and got torn to bits and bolts by a strategically placed Sharkticon disguised as a Sharkticon-bubble-machine at the Vornly Invention Convention.

Now he’s here, in one piece, labelled as a Situational Outlier. Just another inmate of the Facility. If there’s one thing you have to give Vos’s Rehabilitation Facility for Outliers, it is the rejection of the caste-system in favour of re-educating a common enemy. 

He has to give Starscream some credit though. In the murder rig known as trying-to-get-a-room-all-for-yourself, Starscream would probably come out on top, considering he can’t die and all. 

(That’s got to count as cheating.)

By the sheen over Starscream’s optics, it’s likely that his new roommate is looking up Skywarp’s equally impressive credentials. Probably reading up on all the…all the stunts he pulled and… and cool stuff and shit. Yeah…

“You two have been detained for in-fighting within public space and the disruption of scheduling,” the Section Head states, standing ramrod straight, wings high above her helm. She’s got a stern look to her, one that never wavers no matter how many times Skywarp threatens to pop out her optics. “You have both lost the adequate amount of points, and must face punishment as a result of your actions.”

Skywarp rolls his optics, and Starscream simply continues to inspect his claws. They glint in the light, and are as sharp as daggers; Skywarp would know, seeing as it was his plating that got torn up by them mere breems ago. He almost lost an optic.

“This isn’t even lawful,” Starscream drawls. “In-fighting is a sublink in the enrolment manual. What kind of slag-hole is this?”

His wings are almost as high as the Head’s, which is insane work, because the Head looks like she’s this close to chopping Starscream’s offending wings right off and seeing how well his outlier ability works against Ground Sickness. 

“It is,” she scoffs out, narrowing her optics. “As a warning. Unofficial business behind closed doors is none of my business.”

“That is so sleazy,” Starscream snorts.

“Starcream.” The Section Head reads off her datapad, ignoring Starscream’s comment with practiced ease. “Your flying time will only be permitted in the Sky Vault until further notice. You are on ration distribution for the next two stellar cycles–”

Starscream scoffs, unimpressed. 

“–and,” the Head glances up, equally unimpressed but back with authority and the promise of pain, “for complete disregard pertaining to higher authority, any and all access to the Facility’s laboratories have been revoked until you’ve reached the third tier.”

Starscream loses his nonchalance at that, gaping up at the Head like she’s just taken away his wings for real. Skywarp snickers into his servo. Serves the glitch right for trying to pick bolts out of Skywarp helm three kliks into seeing him.

“You cannot restrict me,” Starscream scowls, getting up from his seat to stalk forward. The Head doesn’t flinch, and neither does her guard, because they are authority figures at the Facility for Outliers, and Starscream’s outlier is conditional. He’s just a regular seeker. Bit on the shorter side. Skywarp gives an appreciation once-over of those big white and red wings when they flick in irritation.  “Do you hear me, you wrench? I have critical research that needs to be–”

“I hear you,” the Head cuts in, almost bored, “and I’m ignoring you. Punishment isn’t supposed to be fun.”

“Unless you’re into that sort of thing,” Skywarp snickers.

“As for Skywarp,” the Head continues loudly, “you’re on canteen cleaning duty. First offence in four stellar cycles; your high score deserves a little treat.”

Skywarp preens at that, before realising that that’s not actually a compliment, and puffs his plating in sorrow. 

“But…but I’ll be there for cycles.” He mourns. 

“That’s the least of our concerns,” Starscream snarls, turning to pin his withering glare at Skywarp from over his shoulder before swiftly whirling back on the Head. “Do you know who I am? I’ll have your helm on a spike if you dare–”

“Is that all?” The Head drawls, shoving past Starscream’s bristling form and back toward the door. “These are your repercussions for in-fighting and disrespecting your superior officers. If you don’t comply,” she stops by the door to glance back at the two of them, “you will be grounded and muffled and thrown into the cells.”

The door slamming shut echoes in the following silence, deafening but for the heaving sound of Starscream’s growling engine. 

“That glitch,” he spits. “Once I’m out of here I’ll make her functioning a living Pits-fest.”

“That’ll go well,” Skywarp grumbles. He gets up and stretches his arms over his helm. Canteen duty takes cycles because bots, much like himself, love to throw shit at each other, usually half-full energon cubes chalk-full of sticky and border-line corrosive additives. If he gets started now, he can finish by his free slot and get some flying time in before recharge. 

“This is your fault,” Starscream cuts into his internal planning, throwing a dangerously sharp digit in Skywarp’s face. They’re not too far off, and though Skywarp’s taller, Starscream’s wings are broad and thick. Likely a sleek and powerful fighter jet capable of breaking the sound barrier. Skywarp tries not to ogle too much. It’s easier to manage when Starscream starts cussing him out. 

“How is any of this my fault?!” Skywarp gawks back. “You’re the glitch that attacked me on sight!”

“I wanted the room to myself!”

“And you know what?” Skywarp pauses for a moment before nodding. “I can respect that actually.” Then he flutters back and flings an arm out at Starscream. “But that doesn’t mean you can blame me!”

“Watch your thrusters, Skywarp,” Starscream snarls, “There’s time to achieve my solo room yet.”

Then Starscream’s stalking out of the room too, as if, out of all the misfortunes to have befallen them in the last few breems, Skywarp’s continued functioning is the worst of them all. 

There are ways to get out of the Facility in functioning order. 

For one, you can reach the top tier and get hired by the rich high caste bots in Vos looking for a special case that can entertain them and/or kill their enemies. Flame affinities typically do well in such cases, because they’re usually built thin and fast for quick in-and-out jobs like assassinations. Rainmakers too, because Vos’s weather is volatile and crystal farmers are always looking for a bot to blame. 

So one can climb up the ladder of good behaviour and sucking-up-to-superiors until they scramble right out of this place. 

Or they can trine up. 

Or they can escape. 

And, listen, Skywarp’s tried escaping more times than he’s willing to recount. A First Grade ability like his is perfect for things like escaping prison. You’d think that all he’s got to do is memorise the guard rotations, map out the detectors posted around the area and high-tail it out of here with one nice vop. 

And he really did try that. Several times. But that had been in his first few vorns of captivity, back before he’d realised that it’s not called Vos’s Rehabilitation Facility for Outliers for nothing. Specifically the outlier part. Teleporting is rare, but not unheard of. And these bastards have measures set in place for special bots like him. 

They move the damn detectors. Or, well, the detectors are automated. Even better. 

So escape, which isn’t off the table just yet. Or trining. 

That’s how most bots get out of here. Trine two suckers and then get sent to the Battle Corps, which is just a glorified boot camp for Vos’s highly esteemed army of seekers-with-powerful-abilities. If you don’t have a regular civilian job – hard toss on the name though, because grounders think all fliers are fighters, which complicates things if you live beyond Vos. Most don’t though. Most stay. – you end up in the Corps. It’s not too bad, all things considering. Were Skywarp not an outlier on the run for cycles post-graduation, he would’ve considered willingly enlisting. 

Whatever. Too late now. And trining isn’t all that bad. It’d make the standard untrined spark pain go away, which would be a plus. But then again, most bots in this lot of outlying stir-crazy fliers are all, well, stir-crazy. Trining one or, Primus forbid, two of them would be like asking to be bonded to wildings, or fritzfoxes, or something unpleasant (plural for two). 

It’s whatever though. It’s whatever! Skywarp’s already got the best plan of action for any sensible mech trapped in this Primus-forsaken Facility. It’s the only way to get out of here without losing his wings (again) or selling his spark to some greedy motherfucker up in Starscream’s caste. 

He’s going to find a trine, and he’s going to use them to escape, and then he’s going to kill them. 

Or as he likes to call it: Trine and Dine. 

Seeker’s, unlike grounders, have sickening spark reverence. Beyond what should probably be considered normal. They teach seekerlings early on just how important and sacred sparks are, especially those of fliers. Bigger, stronger, brighter; the only downside to having a seeker spark is the part where, at some point, you’re susceptible to spontaneous offlining via your spark, quite literally, burning out, if you don’t bond to not one, but two other fliers. 

That being said…

Skywarp’s been desensitized to the concept of having others see his spark. It’s not like inmates of the Facility are granted the same reservations as regular seekers of society. 

Half of his schedule is labelled under TESTING. Not that it’s anything out of the description. He goes in for his allotted slots like a good bot, because he likes his additive privileges unrevoked, thank you very much. The slaggers usually just get up close and personal with his spark, so he spends most of his tests lying on his back, wings limp on either side of him, with his chest plates pushed as far back into his chassis as they can go to reveal his precious spark to the world. 

It’s not too bad. It’s really the boredom that gets to him beyond anything else. Sometimes the scientists working on him tell him he can be offline and, yeah, maybe a normie bot would get concerned. But hey! It makes the cycles go by faster. 

So that’s how he spends his allotted research time. 

Then there’s the fun activities, like flight pattern tracking, battle simulations, endurance for his spark resonance ability; tests that let him go wild. Poor suckers like that moron Sunstorm get shoved into an isolation pod for cycles on end, poked and prodded with wires like some sick battery pack installed into a living device. Sucks for him; Skywarp’s ability is too sporadic for him to be strapped down. The worst that happens is when they blast him with pure frequency. Messes with his gyros, calculation unit and spatial awareness until he’s crashed into so many walls he’s more dents than smooth plating. 

But it’s still fun. He prefers it over the spark readings or the new cleaning duty he’s been assigned. The rest of his schedule is pretty standard. Physical training, open spots dedicated to studying history that he usually spends not studying history, all that cool stuff. It’s great! 

…riiiiight up until Star-fucking-scream gets assigned to the exact same blocks as him. 

Imagine that! Skywarp’s just minding his own business, skipping into the open-air flight space and joining the rest of the first class fliers at the take-off deck. Sentries are posted around the skies, creating a not-really-there outer wall that acts more like a warning than anything else; Do Not Cross Unless You Wanna’ Die, sort of message. 

Most seeker’s here are fighter class like himself, sharp angles and sleek builds. Bots are usually put into blocks with like-framed individuals, to make objectives easier, or whatever slag they had stated in the Enrolment Manual. He doesn’t mind though. If anything, it makes for a good show, watching First and Second Grade abilities go apeshit in semi-open skies. Fire affinities are always a treat, but there are a few others that Skywarp likes watching. 

Like the dainty femme who can form energy spikes that she hurls at the sentries, creating a series of explosions before being shot down by one of the onlooking guards. Or the other femme who multiples herself with hard-light and then also shoots them at the sentries and also gets shot down. It’s a slagfest. Skywarp loves it. 

His ability isn’t naturally destructive, but he can definitely make it destructive. Usually he settles for teleporting half a bot and watching the semi-sentient sentry realise it’s missing half of its frame right before exploding. Either that, or it’s an escape attempt. Usually. But right now Skywarp’s just come back from cleaning duty in which he’d scrubbed energon-dried splatters from the floor (despite this place having cleaning drones, for fucks sake) for cycles, missed his free flying slot, and had to deal with spark resonance testing in a closed room. He wants to fly. 

So he puts on a show. The open air observation has a preset obstacle course of sorts, hovering platforms and sloping walls creating an intricate maze-like feel that bots are instructed to fly through. This kind of set-up would never pass for a bomber class, but Skywarp isn’t some clunky transport plane. 

When it’s his turn to fly, he gets a running start off of the take-off platform, shrieking in delight as he plummets right over the edge. Wind batters at his frame, whipping past his face as he free falls. Tucking his wings tightly against his back, Skywarp’s engine rumbles as he warms his warp drive. It’s a little thing, stuck between his internals, but it runs hot. Makes the energon in his system boil over and turn molten right in his lines. The frigid wind feels good in comparison, brushing him up like a sultry pleasurebot. 

The sentries posted at the bottom of the observation area light up in warning at his oncoming approach, bleeping red and white and gearing up their shields and blasters. Skywarp doesn’t spare them a glance, because he’s already activating his warpdrive, inputting coordinates, and vanishing in a flash of purple and a vop!

He appears in a flurry of light and displaced air right above the obstacle course, arching his frame in a back-flip and enjoying the sensation of weightlessness. He does this a couple more times, freefalling, teleporting, floating, rinse and repeat. It’s like throwing a ball, except he’s doing it to himself. It’s so fun. And he hasn’t even started flying yet. 

T-cog already warm, transforming into his jet mode is seamless. He does so right before twisting through the slit between two shifting walls and blasting right past them. A fraction of a nano-klik too late, and his thrusters would’ve been clipped. But he doesn’t worry about the close calls. 

Shooting through the maze of platforms and walls and spirals, Skywarp races with no one. He’s sure somebot up in the sealed plexiglass vault high above is recording his probably stellar stats, but that’s not something he cares a whole lot about. What does capture his attention is the amount of G-force he can exert in a tight barrel-spin through a rotating ring of solid metal. Or how sharp he can angle up the inclining slope to keep from crashing. He cheats too, because why would you not use your warp drive to dodge the incoming missiles that suddenly fire out from the platforms? Or use it to weave between massive blades three times his size swiping at him from above?

It’s exhilarating. He’s disappointed when the tell tale shrill of a buzzer announces his time is done, and he’s threatened with deactivation if he doesn’t comply. 

Landing with a twirl, Skywarp blows off the steam wafting up from his seams and relishes in the high-fives and impressed crooning he receives. 

Up until Starscream shows up. 

He hasn’t been at the Facility for too long. The Vornly Invention Convection had only been a few stellar cycles ago, and Starscream’s enrolment had followed not too long after. Still, for a bot that’s basically a newbie, he’s sure wracked up quite the reputation. 

Shrills and revving engines erupt from the platform as Starscream saunters through the parting crowd. He must have polished recently, because he gleams like crystals up here. Skywarp can’t take his optics off of him, as much as he loathes to admit it. He’s all crisp lines and his wings are angling to catch the sun, and it’s so Pits-damned hot that Skywarp thinks this kind of display should be against the rules. 

Starscream doesn’t do anything fancy for take off, because by the time he’s in the air, he’s gone. 

He’s broken the sound barrier quicker than anybot Skywarp’s seen, stark white smoke trailing past his thrusters and painting the air like a canvas. He’s basically a blurry blip amongst the obstacle course, and it shouldn’t be possible to go that fast and dodge all those projectiles. It should be impossible to slope that incline fast enough that sound chases at his wings. One wrong move, the slightest angle canted in the most miniscule way off course, and Starscream’s as good as scrap metal. The speeds he’s flying at would make even slowing down a dangerous bargain, because his thrusters would probably burn up.

Starscream shoots right into the sky and past the wall of sentries like a bullet. The sentries respond with a delayed reaction, because Starscream is just so fucking fast, and by the time they activate and give chase Starscream is barrelling back down in a tight spin that has Skywarp’s own gyros twinging. 

Starscream lands on his pedes, having somehow transformed at that unbelievable speed and…and somehow, by fuck all, slowing his fall with his thrusters that glow a hot orange from his display. Steam wafts from his plating in sensual wisps, curling over his armour. He catches Skywarp’s optic then, as he’s sauntering down the platform. Amidst all the whistling and cawing from the other seekers, Starscream looks at Skywarp and, to his utter horror, brings his servo up and blows a wisp of steam right in his direction him. 

A cloud-chasing kiss that barely makes it a few inches past his digit.

It’s then that Skywarp realises he’s gawking like a moron, and snaps his intake shut. Fuming and running hot – under-fucking-standably – Skywarp responds in the only way appropriate to the situation. 

In public optic, he launches himself at the fragger. 

Cleaning duty sucks aft. 

He’s been scrubbing this dried puddle for ages and he swears his struts are starting to creak. Skywarp’s been tempting with the idea of just leaving, but then he’d get muffled and grounded, and then he’d go crazy and then the Head would deactivate him for being a ‘stain on society’ or some pompous shit like that. 

So here he is, scrubbing away like a cleaner drone. Which they have in stock, by the way! This is just cruelty!

Huffing angry steam, Skywarp scrubs at the stubborn orange spot harder. 

It’s already the dark cycle, and most seekers are happily recharging. Some junkies are littering the area, talking in low voices and walking through the halls, seeing as flying during the dark cycle is forbidden. Stupid slagging rule in his opinion. And here Skywarp is, scrubbing the floors like an idiot while Starscream gets the room all to himself. He’s probably burning Skywarp’s shit in a garbage canister or something. He swears that if Starscream’s touched any of his stuff, he’s going to pull the fragger’s helm off and see if that blasted outlier ability works with no fucking cranial unit.

At least he’s not here on his own though. Cleaning tacky dried-energon stains off the floor by himself would take the entire dark cycle, because the rec area is massive and also, bots like to throw shit for fun when they’re not on cleaning duty. Skywarp would know, considering the fact that he used to do that. Key words being used to. He’s a changed bot now. Cleaning duty will do that to a mech. 

Which, in case anybot forgot, this blasted facility has drones for in the first place. Who even runs this junk schedule anyway? Skywarp has glyphs to say about exploiting mechs under duress–

“Uhm,” a soft voice breaks through his murderous musing, “hey, I think you got the spot.”

Skywarp snaps his gaze up. He is met with a tall blue flier. 

“Uhhhh,” looking back down, it seems that the flier is right; the spot Skywarp’s been angrily scrubbing is now spotless. “Right, yes, I know that.”

“Right,” the blue bot nods along. “Of course.”

“Of course,” Skywarp agrees, sitting up on his knees. When neither of them move, Skywarp tilts his helm and asks, “did you need something, or…?”

“Uh, I was wondering,” the bot waves a servo toward the floor, “I swear I saw drones cleaning this last cycle. Is this part of enrolment?”

“Part of enrolment?” Skywarp echoes, frowning. “Mech, this is penance for shit I didn’t even do.”

The bot frowns, and if Skywarp were delusional, he’d call the look worried. 

“They can do that?”

“I mean,” Skywarp wags the rag in his servo. “Clearly they can. Since I’m doing it.”

“Oh,” the blue bot says. Then, after a klik, “hey, do you know if this place has a library?”

Skywarp shutters his optics once, then twice. 

“Uhh, I dunno’. Check your map.”

“Right,” the blue bot nods, slowly inching away. “Well, good luck scrubbing.”

“Wanna’ do me a solid and take my place?”

The blue bot wrinkles his nose at that. 

“No?”

Skywarp’s lips curl into a smirk. 

“Wanna’ frag?”

The mech’s vents glow amber in the low light, and he quickly shakes his helm back and forth. 

Skywarp shrugs, and goes back to scrubbing. 

“Worth a shot.”

He moves to the next bright orange stain, and the blue bot meanders out of the room. 

Skywarp returns to his habsuite to find that yes, Starscream burned all of his shit in a garbage canister and threw the remaining ashes under his berth. As if he wouldn’t notice all of his belongings missing from his shelving units. As if he wouldn’t notice the smell. 

He throws the ashes over Starscream’s perfectly lined shit and then does a solid by throwing the ash-covered shit all over Starscream’s berth. Then, as an afterthought, rummages through Starscream’s ash-covered shit for all of his polishing equipment and then empties the bottles onto the ash-covered berth. Satisfied, he returns to his own berth and falls into recharge. 

He wakes up to Starscream trying to strangle him. 

Since Starscream has so obviously pulled the first move off twice now, it only makes sense for Skywarp to finally get his helm in the game and start on his rightly justified path of retribution.

Starscream doesn’t have free slots for flying because his only flying time happens in the Sky Vault under strict super vision. They can’t simply ground him, because then admin might as well kill him, and for all intent and purpose Starscream is immortal. But that means his free flying slots are spent on ration distribution – which is just glorified slave work and just a sliver more entertaining than canteen cleaning.

Point is, Skywarp is sacrificing sacred flying time for this stunt, and he’s only got so many joors before Starscream comes back and catches him in the act. 

But it’s all going to be worth it. His tenacious will for skipping free flying will be worth it, especially if it means using that time to weld all of Starscream’s hidden glassware into one huge test tube sculpture. Starscream’s been procuring glassware and bubbling multicoloured liquids and other lab equipment ever since he’d been banned from the labs. It’s all most definitely stolen, and Skywarp might actually achieve a single room if he were to go and tattle. 

But that would be a lame victory. If anything, it would be a stain of embarrassment; the masses who say, oh, that Skywarp couldn’t even shake off Starscream without the big bad Section Head. What a loser. 

And then operation Trine and Dine would be a complete failure because no bot wants to trine a loser. 

It’s tedious work, using Starscream’s complicated burner machine to melt down the glassware into something malleable, especially because halfway through Skywarp develops an artistic vision and begins slowing down the destruction to properly assemble an abstract piece of work. The glass reflects the light streaming through their single long window, casting splashes of iridescent rainbows along the wall. Plus, Skywarp also manages to dig out some copper wiring from within Starscream’s Forbidden Inventory Of Illegal Stuff, which he uses to hang his little project right at the centre of their ceiling. When all is said and done, he takes a step back to admire his work.

He’s really outdone himself this time. It actually looks kinda’ good. 

(When Starscream returns, he, of course, readily disagrees.)

The medic’s hinge oil is conveniently replaced with undiluted acid during Skywarp’s routine check-up. It hurts like slag, and the medical staff isn’t due for another shipment of spare parts until the next stellar cycle, so Skywarp’s stuck with a busted wing that can’t support anything more than flying in a straight line. 

Which sucks aft! He’s (forcibly) exempted from drills but (forcibly) instructed to participate as an observer in the sidelines regardless. His high spirits post Starscream-throwing-a-fit-and-trying-to-kill-him plummeting down to the bottom of his tank. No aerial stunts for a whole stellar cycle. This blows.

Starscream has the audacity to smirk at him when he finally decides to grace their drill group with his insufferable presence. Skywarp’s one functioning wing springs up in bristling anger, but there’s not much more he can do if he doesn’t want to extend his recovery time. Snarling like a rabid animal is currently one of the few options left in his arsenal of retaliation, and it’s infuriating, because Starscream knows. 

The only teeny tiny little sliver of a plus-side in all this is that Skywarp won’t miss the new batch of fliers that recently enrolled. Admin rolls them into the Facility in batches, which means that if you’re a flier detained early in the season, you sit in a damp cell for stellar cycles. 

But every dual new moon, a new batch of outliers will join their ranks. They’ll be forced to put on a show, which is just the easiest way for admin to categorise them into classes and assign them a functioning schedule. Skywarp doesn’t actually remember seeing Starscream perform in this little introduction ceremony, but then again, Skywarp doesn’t usually bother showing up to watch them. 

This new batch is probably almost done with their try-outs. Only three more fliers stand in line awaiting the signal to go and show off. Skywarp perks up when he notices that one of the bots in said line is the same one that had approached him a few dark cycles ago, asking for the library. 

Skywarp watches, half-interested as the two fliers before him go and fly in boring, unconfident loops. One’s got the ability to glow like a lightbulb and the other can make sparks from his thrusters, but it’s nothing impressive. They’re probably a patrol class with slow-burning thrusters like that. Lame. 

Then it's the library-lover's turn. In broad daylight Skywarp can appreciate the things he’d missed about his frame in the dingy dark light of the canteen. For one, he’s a pleasant shade of blue that blends right in with the cloudless sky. Light silver chrome underneath his armour gives him a sort of clean look, which matches his big blue optics when he glances around and catches Skywarp’s gaze. He gives a little wave. Skywarp waves back. 

Skywarp’s jaw drops alongside his servo when the blue bot meanders over to the launch pad and gets ready for take-off. 

He’s got four wings. Four! It isn’t obvious until the bulky panels on his sides that Skywarp had assumed were some strange heavy-hitter covers fold out into a second set of wings. Smaller than the first set, these ones have small floating bits of metal that seem to activate upon unfolding, which is so mouthwatering that Skywarp has to take a second to compose himself. This is so unfair! Four wings. Four wings. That’s two more than the average seeker! He must be a rainmaker, with that kind of make. Only rainmakers have hot anti-grav components to their frame. 

Which sucks, because he’s a smokin’ hot flier too. Real fast, for a taller build. He’s sleek and swift and he blows up half the court with a deafening sonic boom on accident when instructed to use his ability to the fullest extent. 

Skywarp mourns over the fact that he hadn’t been pushier about fragging all those dark cycles ago. 

Blue bot puts on a bashful show after that, mostly because there’s not much of the obstacle course left once he’s done with it. He loops back to the landing pad and transforms, his four-winged jet unfolding into a tall four-winged bot. He keeps his second set out as he joins the rest of his little group. Skywarp wonders what it would be like to swap cables with a bot who can manoeuvre four wings. 

It’s only when the new batch is ushered away and blue bot waves Skywarp good-bye that Skywarp realises he isn’t the only one staring. 

Because when he turns back around, he finds Starscream’s blazing red optics trained on blue bot’s retreating back.

Skywarp has a… not so great history when it comes to courting. 

It’s no secret that outliers only really trine to get clearance to leave the Facility. It’s probably the only reason why a bot would tie themselves to two batshit crazy bots with powers. Courting isn’t really anything more than an invitation to ditch the Facility together and maybe get free frags out of it. Seekers are easy like that. Trines aren’t hard to find more than they’re impossible to break. Sure, you can be stuck with a loser (method of how best to tolerate a broken bond via trinemate deactivation pending) but it’s better than being stuck in here. 

But the thing is, despite having been enrolled in the Facility for vorns now, he hasn’t had a single successful courting experience. 

It’s probably because his courting usually devolves into humiliating pranks because it’s funnier to see a bot plastered to the wall with adhesive than give them his additives – let it never be said that Skywarp isn’t self-aware – and by the time he’d realised that escape isn’t as plausible as he had hoped, his reputation was already down the drain. 

Blue bot isn’t the first new batch that Skywarp’s shown interest in. Plenty of hot bots roll in through the Facility. The only problem is that rumours fly faster than Skywarp can, and it’s a totally unfair shot to his rep when he doesn’t even get the chance to pull some cool moves before bots are already steering clear of him. 

It’s okay though. His affinity for trouble-making doesn’t seem to extend to fragging, which is great. He loves fragging. Almost as much as he loves flying. And swapping cables with blue bot will be a great way to distract himself from the fact that his next escape attempt will likely land him with his warpdrive muffled. Again.

Though with the way he’s essentially been grounded – flying in a straight line slower than the speed of sound does not count as flying, and any self-respecting seeker would know this – it’s going to be a little harder to woo blue bot into opening his panels. Skywarp’s usual method of flying sultry circles around a jet until they swoon will have to take a backseat. 

It definitely puts a damper in his mood, because Skywarp doesn’t really have any other front seats when it comes to courting, even if it's just an excuse to swap cables. All of his shows are airborne and flashy, but currently he’s only got the flashy part down, and it includes visible acid burns that’ve peeled away at his precious paint layer to expose the sensitive protoform beneath. 

When he enters the cafeteria for fuel the cycle following this tragic revelation, his negative aura chases away any bots who’d normally linger to chat, because Skywarp is usually a social kind of mech. But he’s been reduced to a flightless bag of bolts thanks to some pretentious seeker who shall not be named (STARSCREAM STARSCREAM STARSCREAM). 

So he stalks through the halls like a lone loser, one wing hanging loose behind him while the other twitches high above his helm. He practically throws the doors to the rec room open when he arrives, grabbing his cube (without any fragging additives, because he’s still under corporal fucking punishment after his latest stunt) before slinking into the darkest corner this room has to offer. 

It gives him the perfect vantage to stalk the rest of the bots milling about. He’s not the only social recluse hiding away in the corner. Practically every corner has some loser outlier with a few loose screws rattling around in their logic matrix. Skywarp is a recluse by choice. There is a very important difference there. Him and Starscream are totally not the same kind of recluse. 

Starscream usually sits alone because he’s so mean and annoying and rude that nobot in their right processor would want to spend more than a klik in his presence. Skywarp knows this personally, because he has to sleep in the same slagging room as the fragger. He’s onlined from more recharges choking on his inner energon in the last few stellar cycles than he’s ever had running from authorities as a wanted criminal. 

So, to point, Starscream sits on his own in the corner, as per usual, and Skywarp would’ve made fun of him, as per usual, except there’s something not so per usual here, and it’s that–

Blue bot is sitting by Starscream. It’s the same flier that had asked for the library a few cycles ago. The same one with those four wings and blue optics. Said four wings are tucked neatly against his back, all of them out on display. His anti-gravs aren’t around, which is a bummer, because Skywarp’s mouth waters just thinking about those delicate pieces of tech floating inside the curve of his big wings. 

He’s pretty even in the low lights of the cafeteria, which is a given to any mech flashy enough to catch Skywarp’s optics. He’s a bot of taste, after all. Skywarp can almost appreciate the angle of his back plating from his vantage, optics tempted to rove over the detailing along his spinal strut, except…

Except blue bot is chatting it up with Starscream. Well, ‘chatting up’ is a generous way of describing it. It’s more like Starscream and blue bot are kind of just vibing in each other’s company, with blue bot offering snippets of conversation and Starscream seemingly humming along. But the real kicker isn’t the fact that it seems like blue bots managed to melt Starscream’s ice cold walls and obtained the right to sit next to him without being mauled – story for later, but Skywarp feels bad for the sorry sucker who thought Starscream’s table was an open vacancy – or even the fact that Starscream’s willingly listening to blue bot’s stilted conversation without complaint. 

It isn’t even a conversation, because blue bots chatting and Starscream’s just kinda’... staring at him with half-lidded optics, not a single thought thread running behind that look. He’s got his face leaning up in his servo, tilted just so, and his wings are, for once, relaxed and loose, hanging by his sides like some… some love-sick fool with the hots for blue fliers. 

Skywarp’s processor comes to a screeching halt. His optics widen. He’s sure he’s catching dust mites with how low his jaw hangs open. 

To his credit, the blue bloke doesn’t seem to notice Skywarp’s staring nor Starscream’s blatant fucking flirting. He’s waving his arms around and talking in earnest now, and he seems really excited, which is cute. What’s not cute is the way Starscream totally fakes paying attention to laugh at something the blue bot’s said. 

He’s got moves, Skywarp has to admit beneath his seething, and smooth moves at that. Just as the blue bot nearly knocks his half-filled cube, Starscream – instead of being normal and pointing it out or, equally as normally, moving the cube aside in a show of care – curls his long talons around the blue bot’s wrist, gently lowering his arm until the blue bot’s servo lands beside his cube. 

Skywarp can see his burning vents from here. 

He thinks that if somebot were to show him an image capture of himself, he’d looked fritzed and half-mad. Glaring daggers at the grossly cute couple-y nonsense happening in front of him. Starscream’s never mentioned anybot, but then again, Starscream only ever talks about Skywarp’s soon-to-be demise, if not his accession to Winglord of Vos (and isn’t that just another can of scraplets Skywarp isn’t willing to pry into). Still, Skywarp thinks the whole principle of having a roommate means sharing information like this. 

Not that it would even matter, because blue bot is a new batch! He just got here! How is it that Starscream’s already calling dibs?! Did he see the way Skywarp was eyeing him? Was this all just some elaborate ploy to aggravate Skywarp into losing his cool? But, wait, no, that doesn’t make much sense. Starscream’s obnoxiously prissy, and within the span of the last few stellar cycles he’s made it apparent how refined his tastes are. He wouldn’t stoop low enough to flirt with some random rainmaker just to piss off Skywarp, unless…

Unless he really is into rainmakers and aesthetic blue paintjobs and big blue optics and gorgeous wings that come in fours. 

Holy slag, Skywarp thinks. Starscream’s… Starscream’s into him!

Skywarp feels a little betrayed that Starscream hadn’t even mentioned some inkling of affection for another bot. Their roommates. It’s in the writing, or something. If Skywarp had acquired a good frag between the time of Starscream rooming with him and his wing hinge being sizzled to wires, he would’ve shared the raunchy details. So much for roomie solidarity.

Well, no matter. He clearly knows now. And so does, it seems, every other seeker in the room trying to subtly stare at the couple. Skywarp can’t really blame them. If his own reputation is in the muck, then Starscream’s is dragging itself through the Pits. He wonders if the two of them are trine somehow. Skywarp doesn’t see a third anywhere, but then again, maybe they’re not around. But it’s way too early for that, because again, this new batch just got here. Or maybe they’re still looking. Or maybe…

Maybe Starscream’s courting right now. 

He’s pulling all the stops, being all gentle with a bot who's easily a whole helm taller than him. Letting his wings sag, his plating nearly glowing. His docile image is blatant propaganda, Skywarp knows, because underneath all the fake-ass swooning he’s a glitch-and-a-half. But damn, if he’s not putting up a good show. Skywarp’s engine warms just thinking about being in the direct line of that undivided devotion. He pities blue bot. It must be intense. 

Skywarp watches Starscream snicker and sigh and smirk and do all these little things, and he watches most of it go over the blue bot’s helm, and he watches this all happen, and suddenly an idea curls around his spark like a little ember. 

Huh, he thinks, settling into his recluse corner with his cube and one functioning wing. Huh.

Skywarp opens up his internal map and, for the first time since he’s been enrolled in the Facility, looks for the quickest route to the library. 

To be honest, Skywarp didn’t even realise they had a library until blue bot brought it up during his cleaning shift. 

It’s located in the far east wing of the premise, in a little cavern-like room right at the top of a spiralling tower. Secluded and very much out of the way, Skywarp’s not surprised at how empty it is when he arrives. Barely a servo-full of bots mill around, picking at datapads and browsing the abstract shelves. The ceiling overhead is a convex dome made entirely of thick plexiglass, decorated with steel support beams that bend like crescents at each junction. There’s no visible clerk desk, though there’s probably no need, with the solid five bots loitering about. Skywarp eyes the two that are not-so-subtly fragging each other's lights out in the gloomy corner. Yeah, no need for a clerk desk at all. 

It’s a wide space, with lots of room to fly. Several swing-like seats hang from hover-clips that float around beneath the ceiling, casting soft blue light down below that mixes with the harsh white of the natural sunlight outside. And it’s just his luck that that’s where Skywarp spots his target seated leisurely in a swing with his wings hanging loosely from his frame. Framed against the dual lighting, his plating nearly glows like chilled crystallised energon.

Skywarp shakes his helm. Stay on task. Stay on task. 

He flies up as quietly as possible. Mr. Shiny And Blue spots him. 

“Hey,” Skywarp greets, setting his systems to hover. It really is a nice view from up here, with the looping, strange shelves creating a maze of walls beneath. The view is even better when he looks up and sees the blue flier painted in morning light, without a care in the world. Starscream definitely has taste. Even Skywarp can admit that, considering this was Skywarp’s taste first. 

“Hey,” the mech replies, sitting up and closing the datapad in his servos. His wings are still behind him, dipped just low enough to be respectful and unproblematic. All four of them. Skywarp is so tempted to touch them. He idly wonders if losing a servo would be worth it. He wonders who would rip his servo off for that kind of stunt; blue bot, or Starscream. 

“Watcha’ reading?” Skywarp asks, hovering closer. 

“Oh,” the bot pauses, surprised, before he holds up his datapad for Skywarp to see, as if it’s any different from the countless other datapads down below. “Chronicles of the Primes of Old.”

“Oh,” Skywarp wrinkles his nose, “that’s, like, history and shit.”

“Yeah,” the blue bot tilts his helm, “it is. It’s interesting.”

“For nerds maybe,” Skywarp snorts. “Scooch over, will you?”

“What?” The blue bot bawks, despite complying when Skywarp crowds closer. “What are you doing? I… you were cleaning the other cycle, right?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me, don’t remind me. Now move over.”

“There are other seats!”

“Yeah, but you’re here,” Skywarp huffs. “Say, was there ever a seeker Prime?”

“Uhm,” the blue bot tucks his wings close, giving Skywarp some more room. He nudges himself closer, because he doesn’t want the extra room. “Well, some of the older stories are just legends, so I don’t–”

“Who cares? Do I care?” Skywarp quips, raising an optical ridge. The blue bot shrugs. “Well, I don’t. I just wanna’ know if they ever thought a seeker got to be blessed by Primus’ Iron Will. Hey, did they blow slag up? That’d be so epic.”

“Not a seeker,” blue bot shakes his helm, and after a moment, seems to accept Skywarp’s presence and relaxes his armour, wings dipping just the slightest bit. Skywarp’s grin grows. “He’d been a flier. Not from Vos, but everybot thinks he’s from Vos. He doesn’t even have a name. They just refer to him as the Prime of the Skies.”

“That’s so corny,” Skywarp snorts. 

“It’s history,” bluebot points out, unbothered, and opens his datapad back up. Skywarp moves to peer closer. “It’s just corny because your circuits are fried.”

“Ouch,” Skywarp pouts. “Sorry I don’t fill my memory logs with rust and dust.”

The blue bot rolls his optics and goes back to reading. 

“Hey, hey,” Skywarp pokes the bot. “What’s your designation? You’re all blue. Lemme’ guess. Bluefire. Skyblue. Bluesky–”

“That’s,” the bot snickers, “that’s so dumb. These aren’t even good guesses.”

“–Fireblue, did I say Bluefire? Bluefire. Bluewing. Bluefire. You’re giving me Bluefire vibes.”

The bot snorts, swatting at Skywarp with his datapad. 

“And what about you? Should I start guessing?”

“If I show you my outlier you might get close,” Skywarp grins. “Say, what’s yours?”

“You already saw it, don’t you remember? I haven’t even answered your first question. You’d make a terrible enforcer.”

“I’d make a smokin’ hot enforcer. I’d mod up my wings. You wouldn’t need to,” Skywarp drags his claw through the air, tracing the outline of the bot’s four long wings. “Yours are delicious.”

“Thundercracker,” the bot sputters, vents turning amber. He turns back to his datapad. “My designation’s Thundercracker.”

“Skywarp,” he grins, twitching his wings up in an enthusiastic sign. “A pleasure. Say–”

Thundercracker sighs. 

“–you been here long? I swear I’d remember a mech like you.”

“I’m new, remember? You watched my entrance exam.” Thundercracker explains, turning to Skywarp with those wonderful round optics. They’re lighter than his armour, an almost delicate baby blue that reminds Skywarp of a winter sky. “Transferred here from up north.” A small pause. “One of the mining colonies.”

“Oooh, fancy.”

“Not really,” Thundercracker shrugs. “A blew up mountains and made messes in the Sonic Canyons and turned hail into rain for a living. Got outed as an outlier and sent here. I didn't know they trained outliers in central Vos.”

“Meh, it’s less training and more…” Skywarp waves his servo around, “taking us prisoner. You’d think with the number of outlying seeker’s popping out of the Well, they’d make a better system. Did you know that seekers are forty-percent more likely to have outliers than grounders?”

Thundercracker shutters his optics at it. 

“Uhh, no…I didn’t.” And then, after another pause, he whispers, “we’re prisoners?”

“Basically,” Skywarp shrugs, snuggling closer. Outlier’s typically run warmer than regular bots, but Thundercracker is basically a furnace on wings. Four wings. “Do you think I like scrubbing the floors?”

“Right,” Thundercracker coughs out. “Well, uh…” he looks around helplessly before gesturing to his datapad. “Wanna’ hear about Prime of the Skies?”

“Sure,” Skywarp grins, letting his wings dip to rest beside Thundercracker’s. His grins wider when the other mech doesn’t pull away. “Why not. So… are there any explosions?”

Skywarp is in high spirits when he returns to his habsuite, wings so high that they nearly brush against the door as he enters. 

“And, Unicron strike me down if I regret asking, what’s got your thrusters all hot?”

“A hot bot,” Skywarp smirks. Starscream narrows his optics at him. 

“You’re courting?” He asks, incredulous. “You?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Skywarp scowls. “I can court like any other seeker, you Pit-spawned glitch.”

Starscream eyes his up and down. 

“Right.”

Bristling, Skywarp throws his cleaning rag at him. Starscream, oddly docile, simply tears it to shreds. 

“You’re probably just jealous,” Skywarp huffs, plopping down next to Starscream on the floor. The red seeker hisses at him, knocking his elbow right in Skywarp’s vent, but his servos are currently holding two (new) test tubes full of bubbling liquids. This little science experiment of his is definitely illegal. He wonders how Starscream even got these chemicals if he’s banned from the labs. 

“Me? Of you?” Starscream scoffs, slowly pouring one liquid into the other. Skywarp is tempted to jostle him, but then one of the liquids splash onto the floor, sizzling the metal panels, and he thinks better. “Please. I feel sorry for the poor spark that’s caught your affections.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Skywarp sighs, tracing invisible patterns in the air. Starscream thrusts a test tube in his servos. It’s warm to the touch. “He’s a real charmer. Likes to read.”

Starscream freezes, halfway through pouring one of his bubbling liquids into the bigger jar cooking above the most-definitely-illegally-owned burner that’s different from the probably-illegal-burner-Skywarp-used-for-arts-and-crafts. He slowly turns to Skywarp, blazing red optics narrowing down at him. Skywarp grins back. 

“You need this yet?” He asks, holding up the test tube. 

“Is your little lover-bot blue?” When Skywarp opens his mouth to answer, Starscream sneers, “you’ve got two chances to answer. One for each optic.”

Skywarp feigns hesitation, tapping a digit on his chin. 

“A sky blue, with optics like Vos in winter. He reads about history. Oh, and check this,” Skywarp leans in, conspiratorial. “He’s got four wings. Real pretty.”

Skywarp has seen Starscream seeth. He’s seen him so angry – after the test tube decoration piece had been a particular moment of reflection for Skywarp, seeing as he almost rejoined the Well that cycle – that his optics blaze red enough to resemble gates to the Pits. 

If looks could kill, Skywarp would be rotting in Unicron’s tailpipe right now.

As it is, Starscream simply glares, servos shaking where they clench around his tube of bubbling liquid. His engine growls like an angry beast, revving so hard his wings, usually stoic and still and high above his helm, quiver like a sparkling’s.

He’s so so mad. 

“You rusted pipe-licking Pits-spawned glitch,” Starscream seethes, hazardously dropping his materials and rushing toward him, talons outstretched. Skywarp drops his own test tube, stumbling back when Starscream shoots forward. Shoving his arms out of the way, Starscream snags him around the neck, sharp claws digging into the sensitive wiring beneath. Skywarp chokes, laughing. 

“He–” his intake clamps against the pressure of Starscream’s servo. He’s tempted to warp them both outside again, but the absolute fury painted on his roommate's face is too sweet to pass up just yet. “I’m gonna’ courrrr–”

His voice box glitches when Starscream slams him into the floor by the grip on his neck. He’s seeing static when his optics online again. Starscream could give Unicron a run for his shanix with that look.

“I got to him first,” Starscream practically, well, screams. He gets in close to spit right in his face. “I got to him first, so don’t you dare fuck this for me. I’ll make you regret it. I wouldn’t even kill you. I’d rip your plating, piece by piece. I’ll pull your optics out and make you eat them so you can watch while I tear into your cod piece. Once I’m Winglord I’ll have you hung above the streets!”

“Keh-” Skywarp coughs up energon. “Kinky.”

Starscream blindly makes a grab for one of the test tubes behind them. Skywarp uses the slack in his grip to buck his hips up, knocking Starscream loose enough that he can elbow the glitch right in the face. Starscream shrieks, stumbling back as he clutches at his fritzing optic.

“What the fuck is your problem?!” He yells, swiping at Skywarp with his free servo. 

“My problem?” Skywarp asks incredulously. “You’re the one who tried to kill me first!”

“Not about that, you idiot,” Starscream seethes, letting go of his glitching optic to glare at Skywarp properly. He thrusts an accusing digit at him when he says, “you’re doing this on purpose! You lying piece of shit, you’re courting my mech!”

“He’s not yours,” Skywarp bristles, despite the accusation being totally, one-hundred percent true. “How about you go get your claws on another pretty flier. This one likes me better anyway.”

“Did he say that?”

“He will,” Skywarp harrumphs.

“He won’t,” Starscream hisses. “He won’t. He’s mine. I got to him first. He’s going to me mine and I’m going to find another competent flier and get the Pits out of this fuckass Facility.”

“You’re just upset that he’s probably the only bot nice enough to deal with you in the first place,” Skywarp mocks, dodging another sinister attack and scuttling all the way to the door. “Bet you can’t find another flier even if you tried.”

“I’m not moronic enough to let you believe you can win anybot against me,” Starscream scoffs, crossing his arms. His wings are so high, the angle spelling nothing but seething hatred, that the tips almost touch. Skywarp licks his lips. “Thundercracker will choose me, as he knows he should. Who wouldn’t want to be my trinemate? I’m going to be the Winglord of Vos–”

Skywarp snorts.

“And anyway,” Starscream snaps, “he’s probably just entertaining the likes of you like a good civilian. He seems like the pitying type.”

“I ought to kill you,” Skywarp growls. 

“You’d lose,” Starscream even has the audacity to turn his back to him, bending to collect his broken glassware. Skywarp knows better than to go near him though. He’ll be picking shards from his wiring for cycles. He turns around to smirk over his shoulder. “I’m conditional, remember?”

“There are worse things than offlining,” Skywarp points out, and against his better judgement, relaxes his stance. 

“Yeah, I agree,” Starscream drawls. Skywarp had been right to be cautious. Glass sinks into his joints from where Starscream’s embedded them, sticking his palm-full of glass shards right into Skywarp’s elbow juncture. How he moved so fast, Skywarp will never know. He hisses, yanking himself back and hitting the door. Starscream doesn’t follow. He’s got energon dripping from his digits, a shattered optical lens and scrapes all over. 

Skywarp’s engine rumbles. 

“Pit-spawned cog-licker,” Skywarp spits, clutching his arm. “I’ll kill you!”

“There are worse things,” Starscream shrugs, smirking. He looks at Skywarp like a scraplet in a graveyard, eyeing Skywarp up and down. “Rooming with you, for one, you bolt-headed moron on wings.”

Despite the multiple damage reports popping up red and angry in his HUD, Skywarp launches himself at Starscream with a battle cry. Starscream laughs the whole way down. 

Thundercracker’s personal file is almost tragically unremarkable. 

Skywarp’s own file is practically bursting at the digital seams, though most of it is legal jargon to make it seem like enforcers caught some high-value target and not a homeless jet with too much time on his servos. Sure, he may have blown shit up here and there, but really, who hasn’t? He’d been a law enforcement nightmare. What a time to function. 

But anyway. This isn’t really about Skywarp, who, if one were to read his file, would immediately recognise that as long as there’s a thrill, Skywarp is locked in. But Thundercracker isn’t really on the same datapage when it comes to thrills. Honestly, if he’s still going by that example, Thundercracker wouldn’t even be in the same library. 

His file is kind of boring and its length of detail is giving side-character. Harvested spark slapped into a cold-construct model and then used for mining expeditions up north. Unregistered but not at fault, because he’s only been online for a measly few vorns. His existence was tattled on by a patrol league that caught wind of unregistered outliers being used for energon harvesting and now he’s here. A registered inmate of Vos’s Rehabilitation Facility for Outliers. 

Ok, so not much to work with, but that’s alright. Skywarp just needs to get a little creative. He loves getting creative. Just look at the test-tube decoration piece that’s still hanging from their dorm ceiling. 

“Okay,” he murmurs to himself, scrolling through Thundercracker’s specs – geez, did nobot care a scrap about privacy? – and class distinction. After his audition stint the admin decided to label Thundercracker as a first grade ability and, apparently after some heavy consideration, a high rate patrol class. It doesn’t make much sense to Skywarp. Sure, Thundercracker’s tank capacity is pretty hot and he’s got the wings for long distance, but really? Something like a boring patrol label? What a waste of potential. 

But it’s whatever. It’s whatever. Patrol schedules tend to run longer allotted flying slots because admin likes running them through territory patrols – something something free corporate slaves equals free manual labour – but that must mean that Thundercracker gets longer rest cycles in between. It’s fine. It’s perfect even! More time spent with Skywarp, one on one, where he can pull some smoking flying manoeuvre and sweep Thundercracker right off of his four wings. 

No, wait, he needs to start things slow. One can’t just rush into courting! He needs to get his gears together and make things nice and smooth. Really put on his charms. If he can somehow convince Thundercracker to trine with him – and really, it shouldn’t be too hard, considering he was giving Starscream the time of day – then it’ll be like trapping two scraplets with one bolt. Not only will he be one step closer to finally leaving this damned second-rate prison, but he’ll get to rub it in Starscream’s smug faceplates. 

Oh, he can already imagine the look on that obnoxious bolt-fuck’s face when he realises Skywarp’s courted up the only damned seeker patient enough to deal with him. He can kiss his stupid dreams of being Winglord right up Skywarp’s thrusters. 

He grins to himself, rubbing his servos together excitedly. If he can pull this off, it’ll be the revenge of the vorn. Starscream might just spontaneously explode. It’ll be great!

Opening up a blank file in his HUD, Skywarp diligently starts typing out his to-do list. 

[1. | ]

His blinking cursor stares back at him in judgemental silence. 

What… what is the first step to courting even? It’s pretty nuanced, from what he remembers during his Academy cycles, but there hadn’t been specifics. He knows the basics, like how seekers like shiny things and quality flying time and big shows of strength, but that’s pretty generic, and Skywarp has a feeling it won’t bode well for him if he tries to apply the same strategy on Thundercracker. The mech likes to read, for one, and there’s nothing in the handbooks that talks about reading. 

This is fine though! He can get creative. He can think outside the box. Okay, so Thundercracker likes to read, and he… uh…

“What the slag,” Skywarp mutters. “Do I really have to get to know the bot first? This is so fucked.”

This… might take a bit longer than he’d originally planned. 

Skywarp decides to start nice and easy. 

After observing – read: spying – Thundercracker’s routine, Skywarp’s managed to figure out that the mech has pretty open high-sun joors where he either a) lounges around in the cafeteria where he’s seemingly too shy to get in the middle of the brawling that usually happens during high-sun joors or b) reads in the library. 

Skywarp knows slag about reading, but energon? He can mix a killer drink, which is saying a lot, because the Facility’s additives suck bolts on the best of cycles and he can still dish out a stellar cube. 

So he does just that. Every bot’s got limited additives, but Skywarp’s been on his best behaviour since his latest stint with Starscream (two cycles ago; but his additive privileges were returned to him when Skywarp polished the study hall as an apology) so he goes all-out with his concoction. He hopes Thundercracker doesn’t have any unorthodox mineral reactions, but really, only losers would burst a capillary ingesting third-alloy zinc shavings, so this is kind of like a candidate test for Thundercracker too. 

That glitch better be grateful for all the work Skywarp is putting in for this courting business. 

By the time he’s done mixing, his energon cube is an iridescent pink-purple colour that actually looks kinda’ nice. He takes a tentative sip – for trial purposes only, of course – and finds that it doesn’t take like rotten motor oil, so there’s that!

Thundercracker isn’t in the cafeteria today, so it’s likely he’s in his secondary hiding spot. Skywarp hums all the way down the artery hallway connecting the main building to the east tower. Bots give him and his glowing cube strange looks. He gives them all strange looks back. 

The library is, as always, barely occupied. The hover seats float lazily above, and Skywarp scans through them until he spots Thundercracker’s unmistakable blue plating and red wing tips. 

That’s when he pauses. 

Because Thundercracker doesn’t have red detailing. He’s got pretty orange lanes going down his wings, but not red. Not this familiar crimson paintjob that Skywarp’s started seeing in his recharge fluxes and first thing when he onlines. 

He narrows his optics with a frown. Now that he’s zoomed his feed, he can make out white thrusters too, and a jagged side vent painted in deep grey. and blue servos tapping an inaudible pattern on the armrest. No way, Skywarp thinks, realisation settling into his spark as anger boils up his tank. He grips his cube tighter. No fucking way. 

Thundercracker is idly reading his datapad, wings folded neatly against his back and his second set nowhere to be seen. What is to be seen is Starscream, the slagging fuck, also lounging beside Thundercracker with his own datapad. Skywarp knows for a fact that Starscream doesn’t do idle reading, because all his datapads are industrial course manuals and experiment notes and all that other boring academic stuff. Skywarp can’t believe this. Starscream is faking a hobby just for a chance to woo Skywarp’s mech! No fucking way!

Skywarp grits his dentae so hard he hears the gears in his jaw click. Apparently, so does Starscream. 

Feigning a stretch, the slagger bends around Thundercracker just enough to catch sight of Skywarp from over the curve of the hover seat. He has this infuriating smirk on his faceplates, one that Skywarp just wants to bite right off. His optics are squinted into satisfied little red crescents, and by the Pits, he’s practically glowing with smug fuckery. 

Skywarp can’t let his stupid roommate get away with this… this injustice! He’s cheating! This was never written in the rules! Starscream isn’t supposed to be competent in his courting! How is this fair?!

No, he can’t let Starscream get a victory over him. He’ll corrupt Thundercracker with false promises of his stupid Winglord delusions and Thundercracker is probably naïve enough to believe them. No, Skywarp needs to do something. He needs to do something now. 

It takes all of a fraction of a klik to teleport above the two lounging seekers, and another half a klik to accidentally drop his energon cube directly above Starscream helm with such precision that most of it lands right on his face. 

Starscream starts shrieking immediately, clawing at his optics as if Skywarp poured acid instead of flavoured fuel. He thrashes around, wings batting precariously in uneven angles and even flinging right at Thundercracker, who yelps and tries to keep Starscream from falling off the hover seat. 

“Oops,” Skywarp chirps, hovering down to Thundercracker’s unoccupied side and watching as Starscream threatens to break the sound barrier with his voice. “Teleporting is such a hazard.” And then, when Starscream’s voice box glitches in between his screaming. “That cube was for you by the way.”

“Skywarp!” Thundercracker exclaims. “Thank Primus! Go find towels or something!”

“What? Why?” Skywarp tilts his helm, looking over Thundercracker’s pauldron to get a good look at Starscream’s spasming form. He’s managed to gouge deep claw marks in his helm where he’s scratching at his optics, and he’s still screaming bloody murder, and if Skywarp looks really closely he can make out smoke beginning to seep past his seams. Skywarp turns back to Thundercracker. “He seems fine to me.”

“What are you–?!” Thundercracker grunts as one of Starscream’s wings clips him right under the chin and sends him sprawling back into Skywarp. Skywarp does not feel up Thundercracker’s wings. He doesn’t.

“He’s honestly so dramatic,” Skywarp sighs, propping Thundercracker back up. Starscream is still yelling. For Primus’s sake. “What, is he allergic to third-alloy zinc or something?” He snickers. 

“You FUCKING IDIOT!” Starscream, well, screams. He flips up to clutch at the hover seat with both hands to keep himself steady, and poised like this, he looks very much like a rabid felinoid. Steam pours out of his cracked optics, and the dark grey of his faceplates sizzles like boiling water vapour from where he’s scratched it all up in grotesque slash marks. He snarls right at Skywarp, who, understandably, has stopped snickering. “I’LL KILL YOU. I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU YOU PITS DAMNED FUCK!”

And then before he can formulate a reply, Starscream’s launched himself at Mach speed 10 across Thundercracker. Skywarp hears the impact before he feels it, and by then the two of them are brawling it out on the library floor. Well, it’s less brawling and more Starscream shrieking like a creature from the seventh circle of the Pits while he claws at Skywarp, who is also screaming, but he’s screaming because his spark is on the line, so it’s valid. 

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” Skywarp yells, barely dodging a vicious blow from Starscream’s vicious talons. Seriously, this mech needs to file those things down. “IT’S JUST SOME ENERGON.”

“YOU CORRODING GLITCH SPAWN!” Starscream shrieks back, and then he’s going at it again, this time aiming for Skywarp’s throat. 

From above them, leaning over the hover seat and watching them with optics blow wide in worry, Thundercracker helpfully points out:

“He’s allergic to third-alloy zinc!”

And amidst being publicly mauled in front of the a growing crowd of bystanders and fast-approaching angry enforcers and, most importantly, the mech he’s vying for trine, all Skywarp can think to say is–

“Who the fuck is allergic to third-alloy zinc? That’s so embarrassing.”

That’s about when Starscream manages to bash his thruster right through Skywarp’s cockpit.

Additive privileges re-revoked, Skywarp’s bar for creativity’s gotten a lot higher now. 

He’s also back on cleaning duty – those fuckass mopping drones better be so grateful – with Starscream, of all mechs. Section Head had claimed it’s to mimic exposure therapy in hopes for near-future collaboration and, more importantly, a lack of in-fighting under her duress. Skywarp is convinced that she’s just hoping one of them kills the other and cuts her helmaches by half. 

Even Skywarp’s wing-hinge repair got booted to the back of the list because of his “insurgence and lack of discipline.” As if Skywarp wants to get caught mid-throttling (as in, being the member that is being throttled in said throttling) in public. Mid courting. That’s just so sick and twisted! 

At least the floors will be a slaggin’ mirror surface by the way he’s been scrubbing them. He’s got all this extra energy and nowhere to let it go because this stupid mess hall is so slaggin’ huge and also Starscream is using the cleaning detergent to polish his claws instead of being helpful. 

Not that his polishing job is doing much. Starscream’s repairs were functional at best – and mostly so he could see through his fritzing optics – but aesthetically? His finish is deploring. It’s the most unstately Skywarp’s ever seen the mech. His paint is chipping from the gouges Skywarp managed to make in his armour, and his faceplates are peppered with scorch marks that kind of resemble stars in the sky if one were to squint and really indulge in delusion. The golden four-pointed star embedded in his crest is tarnished with smudged oil and scratches, and Skywarp can appreciate that despite the symbol supposedly signifying his status as a Vosian royal, Starscream looks like slag. And, in the more private sector of his cranial unit, Skywarp can also appreciate the fact that like this – with battle marks and uneven paint and chipped armour – he looks slaggin’ good. 

Of course, he’s not just going to just admit that sort of thing. And bloat Starscream’s already soaring ego? Pits no. He’ll never hear the end of it. He can already hear Starscream’s grating voice sneering at him with his stupid royal accent; glad you’ve learned your place, snivelling at my thrusters. Of course I look good. I always look good. Make sure to stay in your lane, two-bit. 

“Think any harder,” Starscream drawls from across the mess hall, idly floating on a hover with his arms clasped behind his helm, “and you might just fry the last little circuit in that thick helm of yours.”

Skywarp scowls at him, but doesn’t move from where he’s scrubbing at a stubborn patch of dried… something from between the table legs. 

“Shut up, Screamer,” Skywarp grits out. “You know, if you’d help out, we’d be out of here a lot faster.”

Starscream bristles at the name, and turns his helm to bare his fangs. 

“It’s practically sacrilegious to have a bot of my status conduct something as filthy and undeserving as polishing the floors.”

“It’s called community service, moron,” Skywarp rolls his optics. 

Starscream scoffs, flicking his wings. 

“I do not serve any community. I’m the future Winglord. The community serves me.”

“Right,” Skywarp snorts, drawing back to sit on his thrusters and finally look up at the other flier. “After how many removals? Last I heard, the heir prince was designated–”

“Don’t even start with that blasted prince,” Starscream spits, expression souring. He flicks his gaze back to the ceiling, optics a blazing crimson. “What an imbecile. An utter fool. He’ll have Vos corroded to a second-rate Kaon if he can even figure out which port to stick his cable in.”

Skywarp snickers. 

“Let me guess; pretentious of aft runs in the family.”

Instead of blasting him to bits, Starscream just scoffs again.

“Do not make the hazardous mistake of comparing me to the likes of my distant kin. If I had my way, they’d all be smelting in the Pits while I–”

“Ruled over Vos, yes yes,” Skywarp mocks. 

“When I’m Winglord, I won’t even offline you,” Starscream threatens, turning his fiery optics to Skywarp. “I’d parade you through the air currents and make you watch as I return Vos to its rightful glory. I’d make sure you go out knowing I was right, and you were wrong.”

“Wow,” Skywarp clutches his canopy. “You’d really do that for little ol’ me?”

“What a waste of alloys,” Starscream seethes, throwing his rag at him. Skywarp dodges it, cackling. 

“Be careful, you never know where the next batch of third-alloy zinc is at.”

Whatever strange introspective spell Starscream has been under for the past few breems melts away, and the Starscream Skywarp’s come to find familiar bristles at him, wings canting in insulting angles that just make Skywarp laugh harder. 

“It’s only the powered form, you thoughtless brute!” He shrieks, throwing another cleaning rag at him. Skywarp throws his wet detergent bar back. 

“That’s so embarrassing! What’s next, you’re sensitive to getting laid?”

Starscream tackles him. 

Manual self repair doesn’t do that great of a job, but at least he doesn’t look like a piece of scrap straight out of the trash compactor. His wing is something to pray for, but it’s okay, because a shoddy patch-and-paint combo has left it looking… mostly intact. At least the hinge isn’t visible now. The rest of his frame leaves things to be desired, but he can’t be picky. 

He has a mech to court. 

Flying still not a viable option – thanks for nothing, stupid Screamer – Skywarp tracks Thundercracker down during the dark cycle for none other than–

“Painting?” Thundercracker cocks his helm, his wings (the two big ones, because the other two are folded up and stored away, unfortunately) quirking up in curiosity. 

“Yup!” Skywarp says, popping the last syllable. He shimmies forward a little, arms full of sizable tin cans and bundles of brushes. “Let me in, will ya’?”

“How did you find my room?” Thundercracker asks, sliding out of the way. Skywarp shuffles in after him, fanning his wings to take in his new surroundings. 

“I watched you,” Skywarp explains, optics roving over the minimally decorated walls. “Walk back. After your patrol.”

Thundercracker looks vaguely uneasy. 

“Your specs are up on the datanet?” Skywarp offers consolingly. 

“My what?!”

“Uh…” Skywarp curves his wings up in what he hopes looks placating. “It’s an open-floor concept.”

“Holy slag,” Thundercracker murmurs, optics flickering as he, presumably, scours his public profile and all of his aired-out private information. “This has got to be illegal.”

“Hey mech, I’d kill for a engine size like yours.”

“Not helping.”

“Right.” Skywarp dumps his canisters of paint and untangles his brush sets before laying them along the floor. Thundercracker is either new enough to haven’t been assigned a roommate or said roommate is out participating in delinquent activities. Regardless, the room is theirs, and Skywarp isn’t about to waste his precious time. “Well, anyway, wanna’ paint?”

Thundercracker reluctantly resets his optics to live feed and cycles them onto Skywarp.

“Uh,” he glances around at the supplies now cluttering his floor. “I have southern border patrol at first light.” And then, after a small pause. “Wait, we haven’t even addressed the stalking.”

“And we probably shouldn’t,” Skywarp scratches under his optic. “It’s very much a live-love-laugh kind of vibe around here. If you’re not living and loving and laughing you’re probably offlining, which sucks. Hey, can I paint your wings?”

Thundercracker, bless his spark, seems too dumbfounded to do anything but nod. 

Detailing is one of those things that admin thankfully doesn’t give two slags about. The mecha behind monitoring the public datanet are usually pretty on top of updating personal profiles (probably because they don’t really have a whole lot else to do) so their Section Head’s given then full clearance to fuck around and find out. Except the only thing bots tend to “find out” after a self-inflicted paintjob is public humiliation. 

That being said, Skywarp isn’t out here trying to give his trinemate-to-be paintjob induced trauma. Known for his pranks, bots tend to forget that Skywarp used to vandalise property with his art. He’s an artist. He’s got vision. See: the test tube creation hanging from his dorm ceiling. 

Thundercracker is honestly a little too trusting for Skywarp’s datapads. It only takes the wing-speak promise that Skywarp’s intentions are demure for Thundercracker to give a little resigned sigh and turn to sit facing the opposite wall, back to Skywarp. Like this, Skywarp can appreciate the sharp juts of his spinal strut braced with silver chrome that trails all the way down his back, ending at the sharp curve of his hips. His paintjob is pretty simple though, if a bit of a drag. The only exciting detailing is the orange stripes going down his wings. And speaking of wings…

“Mind letting out the other two?” Skywarp asks, tapping at the folded panelling at his sides. It makes him look bulky, a little bit like a tanker class, that is until he complies and unfurls his second set of wings. The antigravs aren’t activated, which means they rest comfortably in the small curvature of his armour. Skywarp reaches out to touch them, and Thundercracker shivers. 

“The paint?” He asks. 

“Right,” Skywarp hums. “Yeah. Doi.”

He’s picking out a suitable range of deep blues and bright oranges that won’t look too shabby compared to Thundercracker’s plating when he begins talking conversationally. 

“So… you do this often?” He asks. 

“What?” Skywarp picks up a paintbrush, inspects it, and then puts it back down. “Detailing? Yeah, I guess you can say so.”

“That’s not really reassuring.”

“Bots get real sensitive about their paint, so I don’t get the chance to shine,” Skywarp explains, picking up another brush. This one is acceptable. He starts mixing it through the blue. “But I’ll make you real pretty. Well, more pretty. Pretty-er”

“Alright,” Thundercracker coughs out. Skywarp grins. “You know, this is my first paintjob actually.”

“Really?” Skywarp indulges, drawing his brush over Thundercracker’s right wing. It quivers under his ministrations before stilling. “What’s this then?” He traces the lines of orange with his clawtip. 

“For work,” Thundercracker explains. “Couldn’t see me all that well in the sky. Was an occupational hazard.”

“Do you like the colour?”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Thundercracker considers. “I guess? I don’t know.” He glances over his shoulder to meet Skywarp’s optic. “I like your combo though.”

“As you should,” Skywarp snarks before he can think better. But Thundercracker doesn’t seem too put off, so he continues. “Purple is obviously the superior colour of choice.” And then, as an afterthought, “red is definitely the worst.”

Thundercracker snorts at that, straightening back out while Skywarp works to paint dark blue swirls along his other wing. 

“I don’t know…” Thundercracker muses, staring at the ceiling. “There’re some nice reds out there. How do you feel about Starscream’s paint?”

Skywarp’s face sours. 

“I feel like it’d look better grey.”

“Don’t be like that,” Thundercracker laughs. “I kind of like it. It’s unique.”

“‘Cause it’s royal,” Skywarp stresses. “It’s pretentious. Let’s not ruin our good mood by talking about Starscream, actually.”

“It won’t ruin my mood,” Thundercracker snickers. “Can I…? Well, I’ve never painted a bot’s wings before, but do you think I can try on you?”

He’ll probably regret this decision come morning, when he’s the new laughing stock of the Facility, but for now, Thundercracker’s asking real nice and polite and when he glances over his pauldron his optics are big and round and really really blue. 

“Sure,” he replies. Thundercracker’s bottom wings twitch in happy little angles for breems.

Skywarp is the laughing stock of the Facility. Starscream makes sure to lead the company as points and laughs as loudly as possible over Skywarp’s “fuck ass paint.”

Then Thundercracker comes barrelling through the mess hall doors with his wings in haphazardous positions, all of them dripping with apologetic angles. He looks downright remorseful, with his big blue optics spiralled wide and droopy while his derma wobbles. 

“I’m so sorry!” He nearly cries, canting all four wings as low as they can go. In the broad daylight streaming through the open ceiling, Skywarp can appreciate the storm cloud patterns he’d painted over Thundercracker’s armour to match his seams, traced with swirls of orange and white. The paint isn’t anything fancy and will probably chip away in the next few cycles thanks to his long patrol schedules, but right now he looks gorgeous.

But wait, no, he can’t get distracted by Thundercracker’s dazzling paintjob. Right now he’s got a blubbering blue seeker begging for his forgiveness for…

“For what?” He asks, cocking his helm. 

“I–” Thundercracker glances around before brandishing an arm out into a wide sweep, gesturing to the laughing crowd around them. “I made you a laughing stock! You should’ve told me you didn’t like it!”

That gets most bots to shut up. Well, it works for a few kliks before they start laughing harder, now pointing at Thundercracker in tow. All except for Starscream. 

Because instead of laughing, Starscream’s jaw hinges so wide open that Skywarp swears he can see the beginnings of his tank down his throat. He’s still somehow pointing, his limp claw directed right at Skywarp but now lacking the malicious bite. In fact, all of him is lacking the malicious bite. 

“You?” Starscream croaks, then clears his voice box before shrieking at a much more inappropriate volume. “You did that?!”

Thundercracker winces, and turns around to dip his helm to Starscream instead. 

“I’m sorry!” He pleads, clasping his servos over his canopy. “He said he’d liked it last night and I’ve never detailed somebot before so I wasn’t sure but he insisted it was but now that I’m seeing it out it looks–” he throws a betrayed look over his shoulder to Skywarp, who waves at him. “It looks like slag! It looks so bad! Why didn’t you say anything?”

Skywarp glances at his wings; purple base colour with what he assumes are attempts at lightning bolts, though they resemble multicoloured swirlies drawn by uncoordinated sparklings without supervision. It’s… yeah, it’s kinda’ horrendous, but it’s okay! It’s… it’s not that bad!

“Liar,” Thundercracker sniffs before turning to cant another apology to Starscream with his wings. Why Starscream of all mechs is getting an apology, Skywarp can’t begin to understand. 

“It…” Starscream takes a few kliks to compose himself, which include hastily lowering his arm and straightening out, wings flaring into a neutral angle behind his back. He coughs into his fist once, twice, voice box audibly clicking as he resets it before turning to Thundercracker and saying “it looks… nice.”

Silence reigns. Starscream coughs again, as if the very glyphs hurt to get out. Knowing the prissy jet, it probably had. 

Thundercracker deadpans. 

“Don’t you go lying too.”

Starscream bristles. 

“I am not!” He seethes, claws clacking as he clenches his servos into fists. He starts stalking over to Skywarp without warning, and Skywarp yelps when Starscream darts forward and grabs a servo-full of Skywarp’s wings, dragging them out from where he’d tucked them away from open view. “See!” He grits out. His smile looks borderline painful and not a little bit psychotic. “It’s… it’s really… uh… unique! Yes, this blend is… tasteful! And unique!”

Starscream smiles with too many teeth, his claws digging pinpricks into his metal. Skywarp makes a swipe at him that is deftly ignored. 

“Yeah right, Screamer,” Skywarp snaps, trying to tug his wing back. “I know exactly what you’re playin’ at, you fake-ass glitch–”

“Oh my!” Starscream gasps, yanking Skywarp’s wing closer. His optics are overbright. “Is that Hadaen? An aurora? Clouds? Mountains?”

“Are you ill?” Asks Thundercracker. 

“Are you high?” Asks Skywarp.

“I love it!” Starscream announces loudly. At this point even the garnered crowd is confused on whether to laugh or flee. “Paint my–” Starscream visibly shudders as he forces himself to keep speaking. “Paint my wings next!”

“By the Pits…” Thundercracker murmurs into his palms, mortification leaking from every seam in his frame. “I think he’s glitched.”

“Oh he’s glitched alright!” Skywarp snaps, finally managing to free his wing via fist in Starscream’s face. The tri-coloured flier goes stumbling back, clutching at his high cheek ridge and cursing up a storm. Not that Skywarp particularly cares. “He’s a slaggin’ liar! These are ugly as shit and he’s just playing… at…”

Skywarp trails off when he sees Thundercracker’s kicked robohound look. 

By the fucking Pits indeed, he thinks, wings lilting as he glances between Starscream’s seething form and Thundercracker’s pitiful sparkbreak. 

“Uh…” he tries, tapping his claws together. “We can… try again?”

“Pits no!” Both Thundercracker and Starscream exclaim. They exchange looks before Starscream clears his vocaliser and tries again. 

“That is, Skywarp should be the last mech you go for painting lessons. Just look at him!” He brandishes a servo at him. Skywarp snaps at his digits. “He’s got this optic-sore purple theme going on that looks like more rotten tar picked straight out of the third circle of the Pits. If anything he needs lessons.”

(“We can all go take lessons,” Thundercracker tries to amend.)

“As if he should be taking advice from you!” Skywarp growls back, fanning his wings into a defensive stance. Starscream eyes him with disdain. 

(Thundercracker is dutifully ignored.)

“You picked the three ugliest colours I’ve ever seen in my functioning!” Then, realising that Starscream’s blue paint is actually really similar to Thundercracker’s, retraces his steps and reiterates, “well, maybe not the blue. The blue is nice.”

“Holy Primus,” somebot in the crowd whispers none-too-gently. “They need serious cranial reconfiguration. What the fuck am I even looking at right now?”

Skywarp tries a whole plethora of courting tactics over the next stellar cycle, each one (in his humble opinion) better than the last. Orchestrated to show that he is the correct option between him and his psycho roommate, Skywarp has shown considerate care in his attempts to woo the blue seeker into trining with him. 

Unfortunately, Starscream is a stubborn, greedy little glitch who, once he latches onto something, refuses to let go no matter how hard Skywarp shakes him. 

Another attempt at sharing morning fuel together? Starscream is somehow already there with two cubes of his own. They end up fighting in the library again, four cubes of untouched energon held in Thundercracker’s arms. 

Starscream trying to take Thundercracker on a flight? Too bad, because Skywarp had the same idea and intercepted them midway on the flight deck. The three of them are forced to fly in trine patrol formation to avoid collision, and Skywarp’s gears grate when Starscream needles his way into the leading position. 

Skywarp offering Thundercracker some homemade art? Well, the art in question was made from remnants of science-y equipment Starscream no longer had any use for, once Skywarp had been done away with them. But that pain-in-the-aft must have predicted Skywarp’s move set, because between the carefully crafted bottles hid a tiny little homemade explosive that detonated just as Skywarp hands the gift off to Thundercracker. 

It lands them both in the medical ward, where Thundercracker receives treatment for his blown-out helm vent first because this is Skywarp’s, like, eighteenth time visiting the medic and she’s sick of him now. 

Soon enough Skywarp retaliates by teleporting Starscream into the boiler room the moment he tries offering Thundercracker a new datapad. His goal had been to throw the red seeker into the small smelter, but Starscream had already been touching Thundercracker by the time Skywarp got to him, so all three of them ended up hovering just above the smelter, all in varying degrees of horror and screaming for Primus’ intervention. Thundercracker, in his panic, let out a sonic boom so powerful it blew the smelter up and shot the three of them through two levels of ceiling. 

Later, Starscream “spills” vials of acid all over the hallway of their dorm pocket. The medic complains about the five cases of acid burns she had to treat in one single cycle. 

Skywarp times a massive bucket of oil to drop right as Starscream opens the door to the flight room, except it backfires because a group of haggling seekers push past him and rush into the room first, resulting in a huge mess that he’s forced to clean up. 

Starscream blows up the flight deck thinking it was Skywarp’s turn to fly. He deactivated a bot, but Skywarp came out pretty much unscathed. The damages ended up being worse because the explosion startled Thundercracker into releasing another deafening sonic boom at full blast, effectively destroying the recently-repaired obstacle course. 

For another ploy, Skywarp steals Starscream’s burner and, when he’s sure Starscream is amongst the few stragglers wrangling the professor for answers in the lecture hall, tosses a burning canister of oil into the room. When Starscream walks out of the lecture hall online and well and already moving to attack Skywarp, it’s only then that he remembers that Starscream is, effectively, immortal. 

Starscream pulls another illegal explosive experiment and takes out half the damned mess hall with him. He blows a massive hole near the canteen and the fire catches on several of the more flammable additives stored away in the kitchens. Skywarp mourns their kitchens, but Starscream, the fritzed freak, just cackled like a maniac. 

The Section Head puts her pede down after that. 

“I don’t know what kind of twisted courting ritual is going on, but this ends now!” She fumes, slamming her thick servos over the desk. Skywarp, Starscream, and Thundercracker are on the receiving end of her vicious glare. The only one who looks remotely guilty is Thundercracker. 

“Why is he even here?” Starscream scoffs, angling his wings to indicate Thundercracker. “He didn’t even do anything.”

“Every single incident these last few stellar cycles have had your designations written all over them!” The Section Head continues, ignoring him.

“We’re sorry, ma’am,” Thundercracker tries. 

“Shut up!” She snarls back. Thundercracker meekly complies. “Clearly you three think this is all just some funny joke–”

“I mean, the flight deck was pretty funny,” Skywarp points out. 

“–and I’ve already gotten several warnings from the Dean to get this problem under control before we encounter even more outlier casualties. I refuse to let my authority be questioned by three psycho-fritzed Pit-spawned scraplets.”

“Is this a promotion?” Starscream asks. “Fucking finally.” Thundercracker buries his helm in his servos.

“This is a deployment announcement,” she states. 

“Ha, that’s funny,” Skywarp chuckles. 

The Section Head ignores him again and rounds the table to pin the three of them beneath her harsh crimson stare, assessing them each from pede to helm. In that moment the muffler stuck between his wings feels heavier, as if making its importance known. 

“Admin has cleared you as a trine–”

“Wait,” Thundercracker says. “I’m sorry. What now?”

“–and you will be sent to the War Academy for further training and battle assessment. Within the next vorn you will either be placed within the internal Vosian military force or advanced into high ranking positions, depending on how your assessment reads; those will be based on your outlier abilities and effectivity as a trine.”

“Absolutely not!” Starscream shrieks, and his bound wings twitch up in outrage. “I’m not trining with–with him!”

He points an accusing claw at Skywarp. Skywarp tries biting it across Thundercracker, who wisely holds his helm back. 

“This is an outrage. This is practically illegal!”

“Everything here is practically illegal,” Skywarp mutters. 

“It’s either this,” the Section Head continues briskly, glaring at Starscream, “or its deactivation. Your frames will be recycled for parts. Maybe we’ll get some use out of you yet.”

“When I’m Winglord–”

“Oh, shut up already,” Skywarp groans, earning a spiteful look from Starscream. 

“You never know,” Thundercracker muses. “He’s twenty-third in line.”

“Thundercracker shall be my right wing.”

“I usually fly left.”

“Left wing.”

“Hey!” Skywarp pouts. “I wanna’ be left wing!”

“You, my dear idiot scraplet-spawned roommate,” Starscream croons, “shall be smelting in the pits.”

“Hey, don’t talk to your trinemate like that,” Skywarp snickers at Starscream’s full-frame shudder. “Say, are your ports red or white?”

“About that…” Thundercracker says quickly. “We three aren’t actually–”

“You will be deployed in two cycles,” The Section Head announces, slapping the datapad in her hands onto the table with a loud clang! “Collect your belongings. Anything left behind will be redistributed among the other inmates. You will be scanned for a premature bond before deployment; failure to procure a bond within the available timespan will result in grounded quarantine until your parameters are met.”

“I knew this slaggin’ Pit hole was a prison!” Skywarp caws. “Rehabilitation my aft.”

“Your aft indeed,” the Section Head grimaces, giving the three of them a sweeping sour look, like she’d rather be anywhere else than here. “Clearly our efforts did little to cure you.”

“Cure?” Thundercracker asks incredulously. 

“We put functionism to shame, actually,” Starscream muses. “Modern-day slavery.”

“It’s free!” Skywarp points out. 

“Yes, you idiot, that’s the whole point of slavery.”

“Get out,” the Section Head demands. Skywarp and Thundercracker skitter away, but Starscream saunters out like he won something back there beyond deployment and, apparently, an exclusive self-chosen brand new–

“Trine?!”

Starscream paces the length of their dorm like his thrusters are on fire. His wings, finally unbound, flare out violently, angled deep in anger and contempt as he marches this way and that, fuming so hard steam pours out of his chassis vents. 

Skywarp watches half-interestedly, because he’s still trying to figure out how to fit his test tube decoration piece into his designated box of belongings. 

“I can’t believe this!” Starscream fumes, throwing his arms above his helm before clenching at his optics. He lets out a frustrated hiss. “This is all such bullslag. They can’t coerce me into a trine I don’t want!”

“I mean,” Skywarp muses absentmindedly. “They kinda’ did.”

“Which is ridiculous!” Starscream shrieks. Skywarp’s surprised they haven’t had any neighbouring complaints. “Blasphemy!” Then he shrinks in on himself, clutching at his side vents and ducking his helm between his knees. For the first time since Skywarp’s met him, Starscream looks… defeated. Like all the fight’s been drained out of him. Like he’s met a wall too high for him to fly over. 

“I’m never going to become Winglord now..”

“I’m actually offended by that,” Skywarp scoffs, dropping his decoration piece to fold his arms over his chest. “You’ve got twenty kin-sparks between you and leadership but that’s no problem, apparently, because you’ve got this whole plan for that. But the moment your trine isn’t who you want, it's game over?”

“You’re worse than a commoner,” Starscream spits, glaring over his shoulder. “And honestly? I never gave a frag about who I trined so long as I got to choose.” Then he’s shooting to his pedes and stalking over, a dark glint in his red optics that dims them to a dangerous maroon. Slitted gates to the Pits, sitting right on his face. “Ever since I onlined snivelling imbeciles have been dictating my function. Did you know I was supposed to enter the War Academy before my last upgrade? They wanted me as a leader of the militia. That’s not even how militia works. And for what? To negotiate with the stuck-up slag-fucking ground pounders down in Iacon. To kiss the pedes of the Senate. What a fucking joke. So I said no, and they didn’t care, so you know what I did?”

Starscream’s real close now, nose to nose, and even though Skywarp’s marginally taller Starscream has this presence to him that demands a bot’s attention. Skywarp wouldn’t have been able to tear his optics away even if he’d wanted to. 

“I tried blowing up the Vosian convoy during the Vornly Invention Convention. It was supposed to be glorious, and everybot was supposed to think I was dead so I’d be able to fly off and do something useful. Something worth the weight of its title. But no! That didn’t work either!”

Starscream abruptly turns around and resumes his pacing. Skywarp is rooted in place, unable to move, unable to speak. He is but a bystander to Starscream’s fury. 

“I died! The explosion went off early because some sick glitch caught wind of my plan and tampered with it.”

“I thought you got mauled by a Sharkticon?”

“And what a stupid fucking lie that was!” Starscream rages. “The Winglord tried having me deactivated. In the most embarrassing headline this planet has ever read. Vos has been made a pitiful joke. Did you know he’d already replaced me? Silverflash has been head of the Vosian militia for a vorn now. I never even knew.”

When he turns back to Skywarp, his fury is still there, but it mingles with the heavy resignation, something dark that twists around Starscream’s expression and keeps him grounded. Defeated, but ripe with injustice. Contempt. Disapproval and anger. Skywarp will probably never understand, because he’s been a bottom feeder his whole functioning. But there’s something there, beneath the layers of complex resentment, something that Skywarp recognises, despite it all. 

“I wasn’t joking when I said we’re worse than Functionists,” Starscream barks a bitter laugh. “I survived. The Winglord found out. Sent me here. I know he doesn’t plan on letting my designation run past the mud he’s buried it under. War deployment means settling far away from him and his placemat at the pedes of the false Prime.”

“Why’d you want to trine then?” Skywarp can’t help but ask. The air is taut with tension, and he knows one wrong glyph will send this precarious net crashing down on his shoulders. He needs to be careful. And yet. 

“Who, Thundercracker?” Starscream scoffs, as if he hadn’t been fighting for the blue bot’s attention for nearly half a vorn. 

“Anybot,” Skywarp wisely doesn’t elaborate. 

“I don’t even know, to be honest,” Starscream admits. He settles down on his berth, wings drooping on either side of him, his erratic flame once again burnt to mere embers. “A chance to choose? To prove something? What’s it matter anyway. It doesn’t.”

“It doesn’t,” Skywarp agrees, settling down on his own berth opposite to Starscream. “Clearly. We’re gonna’ trine tomorrow. At least you got Thundercracker. Hey, what made you wanna’ lick his ports anyway?”

Starscream chuckles, and it’s a rough sound, strained around the edges and just this side of Starscream to sound a little psychotic. 

“Four wings,” he shrugs. 

“Fuck yeah,” Skywarp cackles, clapping his servos. “Anti-gravs!”

“Sonic boom.”

“Holy slag, don’t even get me started. Did you see his specs?”

“His engine?” Starscream presses, grinning. 

Skywarp groans in appreciation.

“Your specs are… honestly pathetic in comparison.”

Skywarp freezes then, turning to Starscream with wide optics. 

“…eh?”

“Not an ounce of efficiency. Half your processing power goes to displacement calculations.”

“Yeah, and?” Skywarp sniffs, digging up the memory files of Starscream’s specs. “Way to ruin a moment, afthole. And like you’re one to talk. Your wings aren’t proportional to your engine. You need so much more coolant to compensate.”

“Your warp drive drinks your energon reserves dry.”

“You’re literally conditional, remember? Boring ass seeker until a Sharkticon sent by dear old daddy-o blows you to bits.”

“Oi, you piece of scrap,” Starscream glowers, wings snapping up. “I told you that in confidence!”

“You were confident alright!” Skywarp cackles, jumping up and out of his berth when Starscream launches at him. “Oh no, poor me! I grew up loaded and I didn’t wanna’ play rich and famous anymore so my uncle twenty times removed blew me up–”

“I do not sound like that!” Starscream shrieks in offence. He dives for Skywarp, but he teleports out of the way and watches from their window as Starscream scrambles through their packing boxes. “Shut up!”

Skywarp teleports again, but Starscream’s fast, and he’s either really good at guessing or he’s already figured Skywarp out, because when he reappears in a flash of light Starscream’s claws are around his neck. They both tumble through the half-packed boxes and straight into the side of Skywarp’s berth. Skywarp tries bucking his hips to dislodge him, but Starscream’s learned his lesson from previous spats, and adjusts his wings so he weighs heavier on Skywarps’s neck cabling. 

“Ack–” Skywarp chokes, clawing at Starscream chassis to no avail. His talons aren’t nearly as sharp. They barely draw energon. “F-fragger–”

“Some trinemate you’ll be,” Starscream seethes, leaning close enough that the heat pouring from his intake fans over Skywarp’s faceplates. “Do you even have enough room in your cranial for me? For a third?”

Skywarp’s spark flares at the thought. He hasn’t suffered the same kind of spark pain like other seekers. The horror stories he hears sometimes make him grateful that his own pain isn’t so bad. But it’s there, always, a lingering emptiness. Skywarp has never had any sort of bond. Not a creator, not a mentor, and honestly, not even a friend. To jump past all of those and trine? That’s… that’s a lot. Starscream’s a lot. 

“You can kill me,” Skywarp croaks, encircling Starscream’s wrists with his servos. “Find another right wing.”

“I could,” Starscream says. His blazing red optics trail over Skywarp’s face. Skywarp wonders what he sees. Dented dark grey protoform perhaps? A cracked left optic. Gouges in his lips from their latest squabble. Acid stains on his wing hinges. Chipped paint. It’s been a rough half vorn. “Find somebot smarter. Prettier.”

“I’m plenty pretty,” Skywarp snarks. “Honestly, if you were purplier, I could even see the appeal. Purple looks good on everybot. Ask Thundercracker.”

“Holy slag, shut up.”

“Again, three colours, and none of them–”

Starscream kisses with his teeth, and it actually hurts a lot. He doesn’t even give Skywarp the chance to brace to impact before he’s practically eating away at his faceplates like a starved scraplet. He tears chips in his lips and energon pools between his fangs and its stings. It hurts. And there must be loose wiring in Skywarp’s processor, because it feels so fucking good. 

He surges up to apply pressure, biting back just as hard and earning a filthy moan right out of the tri-coloured seeker. Starscream’s long claws grip at his neck so hard he gets an alert for constriction, for cracking plating and strained lines. He dismisses them all and instead grasps Starscream’s helm just as tight. Enough to bend the delicate lines of his vents, enough to feel the gush of hot air roll over his frame as Starscream flares his plating. 

“Shut–” Starscream breaks away only to dive back, a Sharkticon in his own right, ravaging the plains of Skywarp’s mouth with his fangs and his tongue and his thirst for energon. “Up.” He tears another chip in Skywarp’s lip, and the pain sends heat sprawling through his frame and down into his panels. 

“Holy slag,” Skywarp pants. He grips Starscream’s helm harder and drags him back for another kiss. He feels Starscream’s tongue scrape along the roof of his mouth, and he bites it. Energon floods in his mouth, and it’s so sweet, the sweetest tasting fuel he’s ever had. He could get addicted to it. He already is. He already wants more, wants to bite and scratch and drink up every last drop Starscream has to offer. 

“Fragger,” Starscream seethes, energon splattered against his chin and dripping down his chassis. It glows in the low light of their room, a thick pretty pink against his red and white paint. “I’ll kill you.”

“Heh, you have the hots for me, actually,” Skywarp gloats, his modulator full of static. “Coulda’ just admitted it. Coward. Was that your way of courting?”

“No, you imbecile,” Starscream’s talons leave blazing hot trails where he traces them down to his waist. “That was my way of trying to kill you.”

“Heh,” Skywarp grins. “Kinky.”

“I can’t believe this,” Starscream mutters, and his vents hitch and glow amber when Skywarp digs his digits into the seams of his panels. “W-when I’m Winglord, I’ll have your frame pinned to the wall of my throne room.”

“Oh, you’re back on that now?” Skywarp croons. Starscream ducks down to gnaw at his abused neck cables, and it hurts just as much as it feels so slaggin’ good. “Winglord. Only, what, twenty next of kins?”

“Twenty-three,” Starscream mumbles into the underside of his jaw. Skywarp shivers, even though his plating blasts hot air from between his plates. “And the Winglord himself.”

“I call left wing,” Skywarp says, then lets out a whine when Starscream’s claws find a particular bundle of wires and pulls. “I–”

“You can call whatever you think you can have,” Starscream gloats, an infuriating look as he watches Skywarp squirm. Skywarp wants to bite that smirk right off of his face. “As your trineleader, it doesn’t matter. You are what I say you are.”

“Of course you have a fucking complex over this kind of thing,” Skywarp snorts, pulling Starscream’s wing until it creaks. Starscream snarls at him, but then Skywarp’s lurching up to kiss him again, all teeth and claws and tongue, thick rivulets of energon splattering between their mouths, so he thinks he’ll probably live to see another cycle. 

“Holy slag,” Thundercracker gapes at them, servos hovering over his mouth. His optics rove over the two of them, jumping from point to point as if trying to catalogue which injury is the worst one. “Holy slag.”

“Sure felt holy,” Skywarp grins. Starscream cuffs him over the helm. 

“I–” Thundercracker cuts himself off, shakes his helm and then tries again with marginally better success. “You guys weren’t trine?!”

It’s funny that the thing bothering Thundercracker the most isn’t the state of absolute disrepair he found his to-be-trinemates in upon meeting them at their dorm. It isn’t even the fact that they're being deployed, or the way mechs court for his affections involve blowing things up and getting mecha offlined. 

No, it’s apparently the fact that Starscream and Skywarp had never actually been trine in the first place. Where he got that idea from is Primus’ best guess. It’s the only thing he’s been lamenting about since he showed up. He’s got one single box for his belongings, most of which are datapads. What a nerd. Skywarp wonders if, after they’ve trined, Thundercracker will still like him enough to keep reading to him. 

“I would never willingly attach myself to such a disgrace,” Starscream tuts. 

“Cable not included,” Skywarp adds unhelpfully. 

“So then what was–” Thundercracker gestures to them in a vaguely concerned manner. “All that?”

“A courting,” Starscream says. “Obviously.”

“Right,” Thundercracker repeats in disbelief. “Right. Is there a handbook for this sort of thing?”

“What, courting? Mech, come on now. We’re about to bond. Get with the program.”

Thundercracker’s vents begin glowing, but he nods anyway. 

They’ve been given a few joors to at least facilitate a fledgling bond before the deployment shuttle comes to claim them. Skywarp would rather rust away than be stuck in grounded quarantine, promise of company be damned. His spark gives an excited little jump. He pretends he doesn’t share its sentiment. 

“Trining,” Thundercracker muses quietly, settling his wings more comfortably on his back. All four of them on display. Compared to the two of them, Thundercracker’s frame is spotless and his paint clean. The detailing Skywarp had done has faded, but it doesn’t make him any less alluring. 

“At least you’re not ugly,” Starscream fusses, optics scanning Thundercracker up and down. “We’d have a problem if you were ugly.”

“Uh…” Thundercracker eyes Starscream in return. The scratches and marred paint and splatters of energon that hadn’t been cleaned off and the cracks in his armour. “You too?”

“Don’t even try.”

They sit in companiable silence for a few kliks before Thundercracker’s tentative voice asks:

“After all this, after trining… do you think we’ll make it?”

Skywarp really lets the question sink in, despite the answer already teetering on his glossa. Unsuccessful trines aren’t unheard of, and aren’t even that uncommon. Problems arise and spark dissonance occurs and usually, if unkempt in such a state of disarray, the bond will unalign so severely it will snap. Some seekers offline. Others get sick. Most survive to complain about the pain afterwards. 

But outliers are different. Spark resonance is more permanent. More binding. Unstable sparks that cling too quickly and too violently to detach ever again. There isn’t getting out of this once they’re in it. This is for life. For function. Till all are one. 

“We don’t really have a choice,” Skywarp starts slowly. “But…”

“I’m going to be Winglord,” Starscream announces. Skywarp rolls his optics. Thundercracker humours him. “I’ll kill every last idiotic next of kin if that’s what it takes. I’ll serve vorns of military service. I’ll climb the ranks. I’ll do whatever it takes. That seat is mine.” Starscream’s optics blaze a fiery crimson. Gates to the Pits. Endless fire. “I’ll make it mine. I’ll make you mine if I have to. You will be mine first. And then the seekers. And then Vos.”

“That’s… that’s some wishlist you got, Star,” Thundercracker nervously laughs. “You’ve got, what, twenty next of kin–”

“Twenty-three,” Skywarp corrects. 

“–and a Winglord that apparently hates your spark and a country that doesn’t even know your designation and a trine you didn’t even want.”

“Yes,” Starscream concedes. He slowly opens his canopy, lets his chestplates slide back and fold so reveal his blazing red spark. It spins violently, deadly, like a blazing hot sun ready to explode. Skywarp can’t look away. Apparently, neither can Thundercracker. “And my wishlist isn’t going to fulfil itself.”

“There are vows for this,” Thundercracker protests weakly. He’s already transforming his chestplates out of the way, his icy blue spark clashing with Starscream’s to create a cacophony of purple. Skywarp has to appreciate it all for a moment, honestly, because purple is his favourite colour, and right now, his whole world drowns in it. 

“Bonds are for life,” Skywarp says. “For function. Some stupid vow isn’t gonna’ change that. Say, when Screamer’s Winglord, what does that make us?”

“Next of kin?” Thundercracker tries. He’s smiling though. A bit nervous. They can work on that. 

Starscream scoffs. 

“Of course not. What a stupid grounder notion.” Skywarp opens his spark, bathing their red and blue in a blaze of gold. “You will be trine.”

Trine, sings two blips of life in Skywarp’s spark, tethered threads that lead this way and that, that lead right back to himself. His processor comes alive when they lean in, when their sparks synchronise and start spinning like one unit, for the first time in his function Skywarp feels… completed. Thoughts that aren’t his own seep into the nooks of his processor he didn’t even know he had. Somebot tugs. He tugs back. It feels like tugging himself. Huh, so this is what it feels like to be whole. 

“Trine,” Skywarp muses, blissed out. Starscream swats him lazily with his wing. Thundercracker’s optics fritz. “I like that. I think I’ll like it a lot.”

“Say, TC, who did it better?”

“What?”

“You know,” Skywarp waves his servo in lazy circles. “Courting. Who’d you fall for first?”

“You are so presumptuous,” Starscream snorts. “To think you stood a chance against me. Of course Thundercracker liked me better. He likes me better now, as he should.”

“Hey, I didn’t say that,” Thundercracker placates. Skywarp sticks his glossa out at Starscream. Starscream tries to bite it. “I mean, to be honest, I thought it had been a group effort.”

“Eugh, don’t pair me up with him,” Starscream sneers. “I beat his aft at least three times in the library alone–”

“You did not!”

“–and you thought that was regular trine behaviour? Zero critical thinking skills.”

“Be gentle with him,” Skywarp croons, flitting to Thundercracker’s side and brushing his claws up his canopy. Thundercracker shudders, vents glowing. “He doesn’t even know what courting is.”

“I’m pretty sure trying to kill each other doesn’t constitute courting. Like, at all. You guys are fritzed.”

“Starscream is a biter,” Skywarp points out. “He likes to bite.”

“Like you’re any better!” Starscream snarls, brandishing his wings out, where the scratches Skywarp left still linger despite buffing them out for breems. “Look at what you did to me, you animal!”

“By the Pits,” Thundercracker mumbles, mortified. “I can’t believe I thought you guys were hot. I’m leaving.”

“Wait!” Skywarp snaps his helm up, and Starscream’s engine audibly restarts. “No, wait, you can’t just say something like that and leave!”

“Where would he even go?” Starscream gestures to their dingy encampment quarters. There’s one huge berth and that’s about it. Thundercracker’s vents glowed red at the implication. 

“Anywhere but here!”

“Daww, don’t be like that,” Skywarp snickers, warping so he’s wrapped up behind Thundercracker, servos already trailing over his cockpit, down the sharp cut of his vents and deceptively narrow waist. “I think you’re smokin’ hot too.”

“He drooled over your specs,” Starscream attested. He’s got his clingy claws scraping over Thundercracker’s front. Thundercracker makes an interesting little noise, and Skywarp instantly wants millions more. 

“That had to be illegal,” Thundercracker’s voice box hitches. Skywarp feels it in his own voice box, a phantom glitch. Can feel shadow claws pinching at his seams the same way he plays with Thundercracker’s. His energon goes molten in his lines at the thought of feedback. This is going to be so hot. 

“Don’t you think of anything else?” Starscream complains. It’s funny, because Skywarp hears the glyphs before he even says them. 

“Sometimes, in my fluxes.”

“Insatiable.”

“I’ve never…” Thundercracker pauses, nervous, and Skywarp can feel it in his spark. It’s going to take some time to parse through where he ends and his trine – trine! – begins, but that’s not a problem right now. If anything, he can get used to this real fast. He’s already efficient and dousing Thundercracker’s liquid fears with his own confidence, can feel Starscream’s particular brand of crazy settle between them. What a time to function. 

“Good,” Starscream sneers, his hot breath fogging up Thundercracker’s plating. His wings are at such a sultry angle that Skywarp’s fangs ache to bite them again. “You’ll never know anything better.”

“Insatiable,” Skywarp parrots. He bends down to bite at the thick cabling of Thundercracker’s neck juncture. “Wonder who tastes better.”

“Hey, woah, wait–” Thundercracker’s voice box gives out when Starscream kisses him. Skywarp thinks they look so good. He takes an image capture and doesn’t even bother trying to hide it. 

“Mmm, definitely TC,” Starscream murmurs into his mouth. He presses close and yanks Skywarp over Thundercracker’s shoulder. His kisses aren’t any less violent, and Skywarp yips when Starscream bites his lip hard enough to scrape the metal. “You’ve got this idiotic stench to you.”

Skywarp bats Starscream’s helm with his wing. Thundercracker opens his mouth, probably to try and play peacemaker, but Skywarp is more interested in the non-communicative sounds he’s able to make, so he does the logical thing and drags Thundercracker down for his own kiss. 

Starscream’s right, and he can feel his smug satisfaction curl around his own spark. Thundercracker’s got this sweet taste to him, high octane fuel and a functioning spent up in the mountains will hail and snow. 

Thundercracker offers all these little hums and hitches and his vents blast loudly. Skywarp is so addicted to it all. 

“Like this, you two look halfway decent,” Starscream notes. Skywarp breaks the kiss to glare at him over Thundercracker’s pauldron. 

“Aft,” he scoffs. “Jealous?”

“Immensely,” Starscream tuts. He crowds against them, wings batting impatiently and claws already touching, seeking, hot and sharp.

“This is so provocative,” Thundercracker says in a daze. He’s the first to land on the berth, wings fanned out beneath him and his vents all glowing red. Skywarp’s spark sings at the sight, but more than that, his panels go blazing. Starscream’s already crawling over him, licking his lips, optics roving over his blue frame and drinking up the sight. 

“For function,” Skywarp reminds, shoving the two of them over and slotting himself in the remaining space. He doesn’t think about how well they fit. That’s Thundercracker’s thought. 

“And this,” Starscream taps at Thundercracker’s canopy, where the blue jet obediently opens his chest plates to reveal his steady blue spark. Skywarp can feel its pull, can feel it searching already, can feel his own spark begging for connection. Starscream leans down until his face is painted in blue. “Is mine. For function.”

“That was actually so hot.”

“By the Pits, do you ever shut up.”

“Sometimes. In fluxes.”

“When I’m Winglord I’ll hang you by your wiring above my throne.”

“That’s so kinky, actually.”

“Only twenty-three next of kin to go.”

“Twenty-two actually. I met one last cycle.”

“Starscream…”

“How else do you expect me to become Winglord?”

“Wait, was that what that lump under the berth was?!”

“You found it already? Fuck, that was supposed to be a gift, you nosy glitch.”

“It’s a grey frame! A GREY FRAME!”

“It’s called a trining gift, you moron! Go read a manual!”

“I’m leaving.”

“For function, remember! Trine is for life!”