You scratch my back, I scratch yours.

::You do know that the war is over, right? Megatron is on our ship and everything.::

secondin-command started following you

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he asked, sidling up to his Second and resting his bulk against the station nearest. It groaned beneath his weight, but held firm, anchored to the floor like the last working piece of machinery in the whole ship.

“Big, directionless army, all to yourself? Exceptionally loyal metrotitan to command? My throne, still warm from the last time I took a break?”

He was careful to keep his servo from touching Starscream’s, but the bond was adamant that he establish contact. It needed something from them that it couldn’t extract on its own, that little spark of connection, the single focal point where their frames touched and the spark flowed through them as if they were one.

The tyrant sighed with his entire frame, metal groaning and shifting like the piece beneath his aft, and he wondered if it weren’t ironic that he and Starscream, relics of a world long past, were the only working pieces inside their decrepit old ship.

“As for the Decepticons, you can keep them.” His wings fluttered at his back, a visible signal of his contentment at the idea. A few eons ago it had been all Starscream wanted, all he fought to take from the other, something he’d regularly attempted to kill and betray for. Now, ruling their ragtag army felt like a consolation prize.

“I’ve got a city waiting for me,” he said, smirking in the dark at his bonded, smiling in a way to remind Megatron what the cost would be for breaking their deal. It had been the foundation for all they had built upon since, and whether or not it all came crumbling down depended on what would happen after Cybertron was restored.

A part of Starscream would have taken a dark pleasure in seeing Megatron fulfill his expectations; in seeing him prove that nothing had changed, that he hadn’t changed. That part of him was ready to fight again, lash out and rend them both until they were just as they’d been before, when violence had been easy and promises were pretty words. 

The rest of Starscream soundly beat it into silence. What they had now, it was good. It was right. It was how equals functioned. How bonded functioned. Things could and would stay this way, and the Seeker was selfish enough to guarantee it. The memories of his past self demanded retribution from Megatron and fought in his processor to play again and again, to keep him angry, hateful. Starscream’s present self was less and less interested in dwelling on all that had come before, when when so much was cresting on the horizon.

He leaned into Megatron’s arm, engine idling comparable to a purr. It echoed in the vastness of the bridge. Carrying from station to station, up the vaulted ceiling to the dusty floors, it eventually settled back on the two of them. Hearing it, Starscream’s expression became distant, and he curbed the noise of internal mechanisms until they were soft and only he could hear them. Still, the vibrations shook them both.