Mama Miyamoto's Spaghetti in a Bucket

Tokusatsu: I already have a post about this, and it's pretty long, and I'm just going to keep maintaining that instead of reposting everything here. Suffice it to say if it's Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, Ultraman, or Garo, then I am very likely your girl. (I've also watched shows that aren't in any of those franchises, but they're the bulk of it.) Do note, though, that I won't write for a show until I've seen at least half of it.

Danmei: My current grand passion! I mostly read danmei with wuxia/xianxia settings, because I love martial arts and fantasy stories, but eventually I'll branch out. However, I will not write for a novel that I haven't finished reading, because I prefer to know the entire story before digging tooth and nail into writing more for it. Currently I can/will write for:

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/Módào Zǔshī, Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System/Rén Zhā Fǎnpài Zìjiù Xìtǒng, Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù

Heaven Official's Blessing/Tiān Guān Cì Fú, Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù

Thousand Autumns/Qian Qiu, Meng Xi Shi

Lord Seventh/Qi Ye, priest

Faraway Wanderers/Tiān Yá Kè, priest

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish/Canji Baojun de Zhangxin Yu Chong, Xue Shan Fei Hu

Currently I'm reading Peerless, and I have a TBR list of probably unhealthy length; if you're curious whether I'm planning on reading anything particular, the answer is probably yes, but feel free to ask me anyway. Hell, maybe I haven't heard of it yet, I love getting book recs.

Dramas: Some of these are based on novels which I've also read, or am reading! But obviously they have their continuity differences.

The Untamed

Word of Honor

Til the End of the Moon

Love Between Fairy and Devil

Mysterious Lotus Casebook

Meet You at the Blossom

KinnPorsche

As Windblade follows Starscream through his apartment, she finds that she still doesn't know what to make of his invitation to refuel with him. It had come this morning, at the end of a conversation only slightly less antagonistic and frustrating than most of the others they've had, thrown out so casually that she would have thought it an afterthought except for the strange look in his optics. She finds herself suddenly missing Nautica, who'd probably be just as confused and suspicious as she is but hopefully more optimistic, and hopes her excitable friend is having a good time exploring the universe with the strange crew she's joined.

Starscream keeps glancing back at her as they walk. She attempts a friendly smile, unsure if she's succeeded. "Concerned that I might wander off?"

"I'm never entirely sure what to expect of you, Windblade." Starscream stops and gestures elegantly. "Here we are."

"Over—oh."

"I thought you'd like this view," Starscream says, sounding incredibly pleased with himself. "This is one of the highest points in Metroplex."

Wide-opticed, Windblade steps out onto the balcony, staring at the view. She's flown above it before, of course, has seen Metroplex from all manner of angles in her explorations, but it's different now, looking down at busy early-evening streets, a glittering veil of lights draped over the city that is her friend. It's such an unexpectedly enchanting sight that she nearly steps off the edge of the balcony and into the air, until Starscream catches her elbow. "I hope you're not planning to fly off and skip out on the meal."

"Oh! No, sorry." She pulls her arm away from him, feeling her face heat with embarrassment. "I suppose I was expecting there to be a railing here."

Starscream visibly stops himself from rolling his optics. "If there was a railing it'd be a terrible landing platform, and I'm certainly not going to take an elevator to my own home."

Windblade, who did take the elevator up, has to stop from rolling her optics. "Of course you're not."

He smirks at her, having definitely caught her catching herself. "Here, why don't we sit down."

The seating area on the balcony is almost as surprising as the balcony itself and its grand view, a pair of low, backless couches placed on opposite sides of an equally low table. When she sits, though, the reasoning behind the setup immediately becomes clear. "There's so much space for my wings!"

"It's a Vosian style, from before the war." Starscream sits down across from her and immediately picks up a carafe of engex from the table, swirling it gently before beginning to pour into a pair of cubes. "I commissioned them from a NA—from a neutral who's still making furniture in the classic modes."

"I think this is the most comfortable thing I've ever sat on."

"Isn't it? I find furniture designed by grounders never sufficiently accounts for the fact that some of us can fly and have frames intended to facilitate that."

Windblade laughs despite herself. "That's…that doesn't feel fair, but you're not wrong. I guess I'd just gotten used to being a little bit uncomfortable in chairs. There are plenty of flyers on Caminus, but most of them aren't designing furniture—oh, jellies."

"Yes." Starscream pushes a dish of variously-colored energon jellies across the table to her, along with one of the filled cubes; there's a similar dish in front of him. "You seem surprised, do you not have them on Caminus?"

"Not often. You're aware that our energon supplies are very limited, of course, so jellies like this are only for very special occasions." She reaches for her dish and then hesitates. "You don't mind if I—"

"Go ahead, of course."

"Thank you, it's been some time since I got—"

"Will it change your opinion if I tell you that Rattrap made them?"

Windblade freezes with a jelly halfway to her mouth. "He did?"

A long pause, and then Starscream cracks into laughter—not the mocking giggle that seems to be his standard, but something more genuine. "Of course not, I wouldn't let him handle my food. No, I ordered them from Maccadam's."

"All right, that, that makes much more sense." Windblade relaxes, pops the little purple jelly into her mouth and shutters her optics with delight at the sharp magnetic snap of neodymium on her tongue. "Oh, this is delicious." She chases the jelly with a sip of engex, shivering delightedly at the twin realizations that it's a very fine distilled blend and that it's been mixed with gold dust. "Mmm. Oh, I wish Nautica were here to try some of this."

Starscream doesn't reply right away; when she opens her optics he's just looking at her, the hand holding his cube hovering near his mouth. When their gazes meet he shakes himself slightly and says, "I'm pleased to hear that you like it. Nautica?"

"My amica. Well, not formally my amica, Chromia's my amica, but we're very good—anyway, Nautica loves good engex. And she can tell you all about the distilling process, it's fascinating. She joined the crew of that ship, the Lost Light, she's not on Cybertron right now. Is something surprising?"

"I—not exactly, I simply. Hadn't realized that you and Chromia were amica." Starscream pauses, frowning. "I'd say I'm sorry that it didn't work out the other way, but it strikes me that you Camiens might handle the whole thing differently."

"The other way—oh, yes, right, someone was telling me about that the other day. No, she and I were never, you know, romantically involved. Camien society is just…extremely intense about friendship." She makes a face into her cube. "It can be very stressful."

"Sounds it."

There's an awkward silence. It's hard, somehow, trying to talk to Starscream like he's a person and not just a…a political opponent, especially given that he'll definitely go back to being a political opponent as soon as Windblade's out the door tonight.

Then she eats another jelly, a silvery-green one, and is immediately distracted by the sweetness of chrome and the crunch of tiny flakes of mica. It's incredible. She says, "So Blurr made these? Why hasn't he got them on the menu at the bar?" as soon as she's swallowed the last trace down.

"No, he doesn't make them, he's got some source that he refuses to share with me." Starscream eats one of his own jellies. "You actually go to Maccadam's occasionally, is the entertainment there any good or is it all just Sky-Byte inflicting his poetry on the unsuspecting masses?"

Windblade stifles a laugh. "You say that like all of his poetry is bad."

"So you admit that most of it is bad."

She does laugh. "I will admit nothing. No, there's live music sometimes, last week there was a trio of performers from Eukaris—"

And…they talk for a while, actually talk, like normal mechs, like they've never threatened to kill each other or arrested each other's best friends or had shouting matches in the holy halls of a titan. They talk, and eat more delicious little jellies, and drink fine engex. They have a fun argument, about a novel that they've unexpectedly both read. The constant guardedness Windblade feels in Starscream's presence doesn't exactly go away, but she's able to push it into the background for a bit.

Then she looks up and out over the edge of the balcony again and says, "Oh," which it seems like she's been saying a lot this evening, but it's definitely called for here. "Oh, look at the sunset." Starscream starts twisting in his seat to look, and she waves to get his attention, "Here, I'll move over, you can sit next to me, it's the perfect view."

He eyes her suspiciously but does get up and move around the table, and she shifts over on her couch so that he can sit with her. It's only just big enough to fit both of them, thighs pressed together and wings bumping each other; if Windblade weren't very slightly tipsy she'd probably be uncomfortable. As it is, Starscream's frame is pleasantly warm, and she is very slightly tipsy, so instead of being uncomfortable she leans against him a bit and they watch Hadeen set behind the Sea of Rust in a blaze of wild color.

"It's so bright," she murmurs. "Even going down, it's so bright."

There's a beat before Starscream says, "Mm." Another beat. "When I was young, in Vos, some acquaintances and I used to race the sunset. We'd find a starting spot, pick a location far from that starting spot, and see if we could reach that end point before the sun went down."

"Did you ever beat the sunset?"

"Oh, frequently." He reaches for his dish on the table and stops, frowning very faintly. "Damn, I've eaten all of the chrome ones."

"I've got one left, you're welcome to it." Windblade plucks the jelly from her own dish and turns to offer it to him, startled by that motion into a reminder of how closely they're sitting together even as she's holding it up for him to take.

He peers at the jelly with narrowed optics and then, slowly and deliberately, leans forward and takes it from her hand with his mouth. For a moment she can feel his tongue flicking over the tips of her fingers.

She stares at him, frozen, and then her engine revs abruptly. She wants very badly to kiss him. In fact she's fairly sure she's going to, despite the little Chromia voice in the back of her processor saying, "Windblade, no, you can't," which she's ignoring in favor of the little Nautica voice that's saying, "Hey, what are you afraid of?"

It's a surprisingly difficult angle. Starscream is only barely taller than her, but sitting side by side like this means their wings keep banging together when they lean closer to each other, and then whenever one of them tries to turn there are wings bumping into the arms of the couch instead. Neither of them can really figure out what to do with their hands, either, until finally there's a sort of moment of coordinated frustration wherein Windblade reaches for Starscream and he reaches for her and then swings one of his legs over hers and thus solves the whole problem very neatly. Now Windblade has a lap full of Starscream, which is not something she'd thought she wanted until just a few kliks ago, and his mouth is on hers and her hands are on his waist and this is definitely something she wants. She's allowed to want things! She's allowed to be a little bit selfish occasionally!

She also wants to run her fingers around the edge of one of his turbines, so she does, and he shudders and makes a mostly-suppressed noise into her mouth and then pulls back, looking and sounding desperately suspicious. "What's your play here?"

Windblade stares up at him, not releasing her one-handed grip on his waist, and says, "I'm being selfish for the first time in my slagging life," and then pulls him back down into another kiss before she can start feeling embarrassed about having cursed.

He blinks, says, "See, that I can respect," into another kiss, and reaches past her head to stroke along the top edge of one of her wings.

By the time the sun's gone down completely and the light over the balcony doo has come on they're both crackling with it, any buzz from the engex burned off in a continuous surge of charge. She's on her back on the couch now, wings hanging off both sides; he's on top, still straddling her. They can't stop touching each other. She wonders if he'll let her spike him, and then thinks, maybe next time, and then has to contend with the idea that she's even contemplating a potential next time. She's got her mouth on his throat and she wants to bite him, to shove her hand between his legs, to ask him to be good while she teases him through an overload—but she can't possibly say that, because as far as she can tell "good" just means "vulnerable" to Starscream and if she asks him to be vulnerable he'll freeze up completely.

She does get her hand between his legs, though. He whines into her mouth and in response she says, almost reflexively, "Can I, please," and his panel snaps open and she slides two fingers up into him and presses her thumb against his anterior node and murmurs, "Oh, gorgeous," with a feeling like her entire reality matrix has come unmoored. And for a moment it's just that, he's riding her hand and making little noises against her lips and then it's too much, she wants too much, she says, "Oh, here, here, come here," and coaxes one of his legs between hers and opens her own panel so they can rub together and their hands and mouths on each other make a complete circuit or possibly several of them, the whole evening dissolving into the sweet build of charge as they move against each other. She's fairly sure she's still talking, quietly, she can't stop telling him how beautiful he is, how sweet he's being, things she's thought about before but manifestly refused to acknowledge until now, and he just keeps making those noises.

They overload in near sequence, Starscream first with a little cry that sounds like music to Windblade's audials and then Windblade just after that, watching him, their completed circuit sending his charge into her and tipping her over the edge, and there's this serene moment after that she wishes could go on forever. She goes for one more kiss, just to draw that serenity out, and he kisses her back and then pulls away with a little engine cough and says, awkwardly, "Well."

"Well," she says, a little dazed. It's very much nighttime now; the edges of the balcony are set with little runway lights that make the shadows into odd shapes. "That's, I—"

"Perhaps…washracks."

"Yes, right, that's an excellent idea."

She decides on the balcony to be reasonable about things and take turns. Then, when Starscream leads her to the private washracks in his apartment, she drags him in with her and presses him against the wall, overloading him again with just her hand this time and her mouth back on his throat and his whining echoing off the polished walls, and after that he drops to his knees and hooks one of her legs over his shoulder and buries his face in her valve and—

It takes them a while to finish up.

Eventually they do get out of the washracks, and once they're standing in the front room of Starscream's apartment Windblade finds that she can't quite meet his optics, not that he's exactly trying to meet hers. A long, awkward pause—

"Thank you," she says, "for the, the meal. This evening's been, ah, really wonderful."

"Yes, well." Starscream brushes nonexistent dust off of his cockpit, not looking at her. "Even I can't spend all my time plotting and scheming, sometimes I do relax."

She stares at him and then lets out a hysterical little giggle. "That seems fair, yes." Beat. "I should, ah—"

"Yes, we'll both get a good night's recharge and then go back to plotting against each other." He moves toward the door, presumably to open it, and then stops. "But perhaps we can give it a rest for a bit the next time you're feeling…selfish."