shadow_vector | Pre Commencement

PG-13
G1
Skyfire/Starscream
for

snowcouger's request: It's only one but it's fluffy? But show back up on the 26th because I have a springkink of this pairing due. :D

“I tell you, I’m fine,” Starscream said, but the tone was less acerbic than it might have been, the optics slightly bleary. His blue thrusters rang out slightly unsteadily on the night-cool pavements.

“I didn’t mean to imply—“ Skyfire cut himself off, throwing out one arm to catch Starscream as he stumbled forward.

“I can walk,” Starscream said, haughtily. “Graduate of the Science Academy,” he continued. “Certainly, I can manage basic locomotion.” But he didn’t thrust Skyfire’s arm away.

“Almost graduate,” Skyfire corrected. They still had their final project review. In the morning. It was no night for Starscream to have gone drinking. And as a faithful lab partner, Skyfire had come along. And good thing: Dawn was beginning to crest over Vos. And the way Starscream was moving, Skyfire didn’t trust he’d find his way home.

“All right. Almost graduate.” Starscream scowled. “If you must be so precise about it.”

“Science is about precision.” And Starscream could do it…when it suited him. He was the most thrilling and exasperating lab partner Skyfire had ever had. But Skyfire supposed a brilliant mind was just…prone to boredom in a way that he figured his own wasn’t.

An impatient sigh, the kind Skyfire had learned to associate with Starscream. He would recognize that sound anywhere, at any time, that rattling huff of air. “But not everything is science.” The red optics whirred into focus on Skyfire’s face.

“Everything is science,” Skyfire argued. “Even the overcharge you’re feeling is science: hyper-ionization of the feedback conduits—“

“Yes. I know that,” Starscream said, sharply, supraorbital ridges knotting. “But what science doesn’t say is what feels good.” His smirk softened, letting his weight lean more onto the shuttle’s arm, his blue fingers tracing a seam.

Skyfire felt a shiver travel through his sensory loops at the touch—warm and cool somehow both at the same time.

Starscream’s optics studied his face, with a scientist’s precision, even bleared with overcharge. “Does that feel good?” It was a tease, a challenge…and a question.

“I…suppose….?”

“Scientists,” Starscream said, tartly, “should be precise.”

“Yes,” Skyfire corrected himself. “Then. Yes.”

“Yes…what?” The fingers continued up his arm, flirting with the side of his chest plating, Starscream’s dark helm separated from Skyfire’s lasercore by a single piece of armor. Skyfire wondered if the other could feel its quickening pulse.

“Yes. It…feels good.” Another shiver through his frame, one that seemed to come to rest on his lip plates, tingling and alive.

Starscream stepped closer, his glossily polished armor hard and silky against Skyfire’s. Skyfire’s hands—a reflex, he thought—wrapped over the broad wing panels, feeling the buzz from their tuned flight sensors. Against him, Starscream purred.

Skyfire took a startled step back, until the pack of his back kibble struck the plascrete of a wall. “Starscream…I…,”

“You….?” The blue hand snaked up between them, curling over the rounded mass of Skyfire’s shoulder. “You look lost, Skyfire. Science not helping you, here?” The mouth curled into a grin, less overcharged than before, but lit with some brilliant inner light. Skyfire felt his own lip plates tingle again, his own red optics fixed on the rich swoop of the Vosian tetrajet’s mouth.

“We have…the review…?” He sounded helpless and lost, even to himself.

“I know,” Starscream said. “You think I’d work this hard on this degree and miss the last requirement?”

Yes, Skyfire thought, and then realized how unworthy the thought was. He needed more faith. Especially if they were to be partners. Starscream was irresponsible, but never, Skyfire had to admit, when it mattered, when Skyfire himself couldn’t pull it through. “No.”

The fingers slipped from his shoulder, feathering against the cables in his throat, and Starscream rose up on his toe plates, the grin growing larger, nearer to Skyfire’s optics, until the satin finish of the sleek metal brushed against Skyfire’s own. Skyfire’s laser core throbbed, a pulse almost like pain, and his hands clutched at the wingpanels, mouth quivering and shy against the kiss.

Starscream pulled away, just enough to part their lips. Skyfire could still taste the energon of Starscream’s overcharge, tangy and sweet, as the tetrajet smirked up at him. “Oh, look, Skyfire,” Starscream said. “Something you know nothing about. This clearly calls,” he leaned in, bumping his lower lip against Skyfire’s, “for research.”

Pre Commencement

no subject