#bumblescream

ft an old doodle i have of them

Occasionally, though, a glitch in the slapdash programming caused the system to reverse itself. His optical center would boot itself up first, supplied by a trickle of visual data as his optics powered up at the same rate as the rest of his sensornet. Instead of a barrage of miscalculated colors, his recharge was replaced with gently shifting hues, yellow meshing with white like looking through a tarp on a particularly sunny day. His optics dialed up, then dialed in, gradually differentiating the shapes until he was able to recognize a frame lying beside him, one with elegant wings stained the color of sulfur, and a proud helm, no less handsome for being deep in recharge.

Starscream would have complained that the splashes of yellow light clashed with his color scheme, but Bumblebee could have basked in the warm tones, in the transparent shadow that mimicked the shape of a cockpit, in the gentle curl of blue fingers resting over a still frame.  Recharge smoothed the space between his optic ridges making Starscream’s whole frame appear younger, less beaten. With this appearance, it was possible to believe that he was still the young jet who had volunteered himself for a revolution, rather than the weary lone ruler of Cybertron, who even in recharge clutched a datapad in one hand like it was the one thing left to shield him from the rest of the universe. Bumblebee’s spark spun until it ached, desire sweeping through him to take up the defense Starscream assumed he lacked, to protect him from his myriad enemies real, imagined, and remembered. The only things holding him back were limitations of the frame, even more noticeable at this time of day which left him waiting for his systems to come online, a procession of one by one by one.

He felt a wave of static electricity, starting at the area around his spark casing and moving distally to the ends of his servos, his tactile sensors firing at full capacity before settling within a more moderate sensitivity range. With that, he could now feel the pressure of the berth under his back, and all the points where the armor on his arm bumped up against that of Starscream’s. The supplementary thermometers within his plating calibrated themselves a moment later, calculating and confirming what his optics had already observed: warm rays of sunlight arching over their still frames, and a jet engine idling beside him, just active enough to raise the temperature of the air by a few degrees.

Easing his joints back to wakefulness, he leveraged himself into a sitting position and reached over Starscream’s still frame to extract the datapad, fingers careful to avoid the screen lest he accidentally turn it on again. The device felt heavier in his hand than he had expected. Like so much of their city, it had probably been built from salvaged parts, not every endeavor able to be resourced ideally like they had in a wartime economy. It was all part of the process, and despite Starscream’s frequent admonishments not to baby him with such talk, Bumblebee himself knew it to be true.

He paused after setting the datapad on a nightstand, nestled on top of a pile of similar devices, and looked down at Starscream, deep in recharge and unaware of any disturbance. Now that Bumblebee’s audial receptors were online, he could hear the gentle purr of an engine at rest, temporarily freed from the stress of always being the most visible target in the room. It was beautiful, in the way that it was only sad if one spent too much time thinking about it, rather than appreciating the moment. He reached a hand over, hesitated, then indulged, gliding his fingers along the edge of Starscream’s sun-drenched wing.

Bumblebee delighted in its warmth and smoothness, but even more so in its stillness. Whether he was smiling through a lie or unleashing a portion of his pent-up fury, Starscream’s wings constantly trembled, taking on whatever excess energy couldn’t be contained within the rest of his frame. Bumblebee doubted it was good for the delicate components’ structural integrity, but Starscream had made a career out of risking his health in one way or another, so Bumblebee contented himself with moments like this, when Starscream didn’t have to sacrifice parts of his frame to keep himself airborne.

He pulled his hand back after satisfying himself with his exploration, though he did not take any steps to rouse Starscream further. There was still work to be done, but the citizens of Cybertron would never know if they stole this one moment from them, Bumblebee awake and Starscream safely tucked into recharge. As a bonus, this angle made it easier to appreciate the sight of Starscream’s frame, and Bumblebee wasn’t bold enough to lie about how much he enjoyed it. He let his optics rove slowly, taking in the crystalline cockpit dome, the powerful thrusters, the elegant wings. A feeling of want gnawed at his spark, not for any individual part but for the masterpiece that was the whole. His processor was uninvolved in the decision to reach up and gently cup Starscream’s face, angling it so that Bumblebee could press a quick kiss to one shuttered optic, and then the other.

Starscream’s lips twitched, and the space between his optic ridges furrowed. For his reboot procedure, he had prioritized somatic motor controls, programming his nervous system to allow for full range of motion before even the true end of the defrag cycle. Although it occasionally meant flinging himself off the berth in a state of uncomprehending panic, the system had also rescued him from several assassination attempts, so Bumblebee didn’t try to debate its merits.

“Come on, Starscream,” he said instead, keeping his vocal synthesizer pitched low. His wasn’t powerful enough to mimic the rumble of Optimus Prime, but the tingle of remaining static tilted his voice further in that direction than he could normally achieve, and added a touch of vulnerability that only Starscream knew. “It’s time to come online. Your planet and I need you.” He rubbed his thumb over Starscream’s cheek.

Instead of responding, Starscream reached up with the hand further from Bumblebee and wrapped it around the back of his neck. Bumblebee allowed himself to be pulled down into a kiss, letting his optics shutter as he leaned his weight into it, enjoying the sweet pattern of gentle pressure and release. There was something thrilling in just how unexciting of a kiss it was; there was no desperation to turn it into something more, because both were secure in the knowledge that there would be more time for further exploration later.

“Mm, Bee.”

“That’s right,” he murmured to familiar lips, “I’m here.”

Bumblebee felt another hand take hold of his waist and drag him over so that he was lying on top of Starscream’s frame. Metal plates at first clanked together unpleasantly, grinding down their clear topcoats, but gradually they were able to configure themselves into comfortable positions, Bumblebee planting a hand beside Starscream’s helm to keep his balance. The other rested lightly over his cockpit, fingers brushing languidly over the crystal in thoughtless patterns.

When he did break off the kiss and raise his helm, it was just in time to see Starscream finally unshutter his optics, revealing twin spent embers. Adoration like arcs of electricity leapt from between Bumblebee’s seams, and it was all he could do not to lean in again for another round.

“Feeling awake now?” he teased.

“Unfortunately, yes, though I can’t imagine why,” Starscream said. His hold on Bumblebee was strong but passive, maintaining their position without demanding anything further.

“Probably because Cybertron’s most glorious leader has work to do,” Bumblebee said, only half joking. To mask his sincerity, he placed a finger on Starscream’s nose, laughing as it was swatted off and trying not to think about whether Starscream had noticed his falter.

“I imagine that by now, said ruler has probably earned a break,” Starscream said, “or at the very least a morning off.”

“Really now? How do you figure?”

“Common decency,” Starscream said, frowning at the scoff he earned for it. “I’m being honest, Bee.”

Bumblebee stopped laughing and forced himself to pay attention to Starscream. Without the easy guise of teasing to act as a buffer between them, it was plain to see the sincerity in Starscream’s eyes as he gazed up at Bumblebee. The level of trust sobered Bumblebee, and he leaned closer, offering a small, encouraging smile.

“I’m listening,” he said. “I’ll always listen to you.”

“Smart mech,” Starscream said, though it seemed more instinct than actual quip. He sighed, letting his vents release some of the warm air that had been gathering in his ducts. “Forgive me if this is not my most eloquent deduction, but no one can deny that Cybertron is better off now than at any previous moment in its long, fraught history. We eliminated factions, developed planet-wide infrastructure goals, and finally turned a Cybertronian alliance into something that other species are actually proud of, rather than forced to hide away.”

Bumblebee felt his optics flicker as his logic center produced an error message, but he dismissed it, intent on giving Starscream the attention he deserved.

“Right. No argument there.”

“I, myself, have not felt any resentment toward the labor of achieving these feats, either. Leading our people to peace has been my true goal since the days when Megatron was an actual revolutionary, and now that I’ve made that happen, I can honestly say that I’m… That I feel…”

Bumblebee waited patiently while Starscream tried to find the word he wanted. If it was an important one, he would find his way there on his own, and if it turned out to be superfluous to the rest of the narrative, he would likely drop the entire point rather than belabor one misplaced lexicon file.

“But it’s exhausting, Bumblebee,” Starscream said, choosing to move on. “I know you feel it, too. All the hours spent solving other people’s problems, trying to get the colonies to put up with one another: they take a toll on the frame that no amount of recharge can fully make up for. I can’t risk letting my helm bow from the weight of my own crown, not if I intend to be an effective leader, so sometimes I need to take it off for a morning.” His grip tightened, pulling Bumblebee down to capture his lips in a brief kiss. “Does that seem so unreasonable?”

“Of course not,” Bumblebee murmured, at the same instant that uneasiness caused his spark to accelerate. He couldn’t remember at what point in their shared histories Starscream had become so persuasive, but now he was finding it a challenge to argue with his berthpartner, or even find fault in his reasoning, despite knowing intuitively that it was far from a perfect argument. It was almost as though he felt a compulsion to agree with Starscream, and the idea made his frame run cold as his processor tried to avoid calculating the implications.

His logic core pinged another error message at him, and he brushed it off again, trying to reorient himself within the present moment.

“You’ve earned so much more than this one planet could ever hope to provide,” he said, in between laying a trail of lazy kisses down Starscream’s neck. The action felt rote, preprogrammed, and he tried not to dwell on the sensation as he let instinct lead the way while he started to flick through their shared calendar. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to give you the reward you deserve. What if, after you’re done with your work, we go down to Maccadam’s and—”

“Don’t have any.”

Bumblebee’s movements halted.

“What?”

Starscream laid a palm on his helm, a gentle pressure urging him to continue.

“There’s no work,” he said. “No meetings, no paperwork, no impending deadlines. There’s no one breathing down our backs, just waiting for me to make a wrong move and screw things up. It’s just us here, Bee.”

Bumblebee would have thought he was being facetious, were it not for the terrible realization that Starscream was right. Their calendar, normally cluttered with reminders and sloppy, last-minute notes, was blank, more than a lifetime’s worth of free time stretching out before them, static and cyclical all at once. It would have been easy to pin it on Starscream’s tampering, try to drag an explanation out of the wayward ruler until he finally acquiesced and got back to his responsibilities, but a part of Bumblebee knew that it wasn’t the case this time. It was the same part of Bumblebee that recognize he could no longer ignore the mounting list of warnings building within his logic core.

Not giving himself the opportunity to hesitate, he opened one at random.

His arm buckled.

[[Error: Extrasensory data exceeds acceptable threshold.]]

[[Error: Core personality components misaligned.]]

[[Attempting soft reboot of interpersonal relations core: 17%]]

[[Error: Unable to justify extrasensory data with preconfigured storage data.]]

“Bee?”

[[Checking for infinite logic circuit.]]

[[Error: Infinite loop detected. Attempting hard reboot of logic core: 3%]]

[[Logic core reboot: 3%]]

[[Logic core reboot: 3%]]

[[Error: Logic core reboot failed.]]

He was aware of Starscream’s voice, of touches against his frame, of being moved, but he couldn’t process it. He couldn’t process anything. Opening the warning message had given CPU priority to his overloaded logic core, and now more and more of his memory was being hoarded to calculate solutions for all the impossible problems it was being faced with. His vision started to swim with black spots as resources were diverted away from other parts of his processor to try to make sense of all the conflicting data he was receiving, while the reduction in sensory input triggered a panic response as his processor became convinced that it was shutting down, resulting in an increase in fuel pump efficiency and additional power being supplied to his overwhelmed cores, which in turn—

Splash.

Bumblebee blinked as his vision briefly returned to him. Starscream was leaning above him, gripping an upturned bottle leaking its last drops of fluid. Coolant rolled down his face, snaking uncomfortably into his vents, but when he tried to cough it out, he found that his fans were already running at full power. For a moment, their roar was the only sound in the room. Two pairs of optics stared at each other, as though both were no longer sure where else would be appropriate to look.

“What was that for?” Bumblebee asked. He wasn’t sure if he meant it as teasing, but if he had, the wispy tone of his vocalizer caused it to fall flat.

“You were overheating,” Starscream said. Bumblebee’s exhausted processor didn’t have the energy to identify his tone.

“You’re supposed to put coolant in an energon line, not just splash it everywhere.”

“It worked, though, didn’t it?”

It had, and the realization caused Bumblebee’s logic core to shriek with another barrage of errors and incongruities. He grabbed at his helm, too in pain to be bothered by the way the plating heated his fingers.

“Bumblebee!”

He groaned, shaking, terrified that he was about to go into a full systems reboot.

“Something isn’t right here,” he ground out. “It’s not computing, it’s—”

“A dream. This is a dream.”

Bumblebee gasped. The new input was plugged into the infinite loops, disrupting them, and one by one the error messages cleared as his logic core was finally able to justify the data it was being supplied. No longer trapped within impossible equations, processing power was returned to the subroutines and maintenance protocols it had abandoned, repeating the sensations of rising out of recharge without any of the peace or safety he had experienced prior. The irony of it was not lost on him, but he wasn’t ready to dwell on it just yet, more focused on all the previous inconsistencies, each problem added to a queue that his logic core was able to process and solve in an organized system.

[[Input: Cybertron at peak prosperity.]]

[[Logic core error: Input conflicts with storage file 109178.A3.]]

He received a brief playback of the file, needing to only glimpse the flashes of Combiner-wrought destruction and growing unrest in the streets to understand why that discussion had caused an error.

[[Input: Currently engaged in defrag protocols.]]

[[Logic core error resolved.]]

It worked through the rest of the inconsistencies in the same way, taking apart each piece of the morning, comparing it to established memory files, and then quietly shutting them down without any further struggle.

Starscream didn’t have any work to do. There was always more work. This was a dream, so the logic was moot.

Bumblebee and Starscream had a vague relationship that existed somewhere in the realm of lovers. Bumblebee and Starscream could barely function together as colleagues. This was a dream.

Bumblebee could touch, caress, kiss, have weight. Bumblebee was incorporeal

A dream, his processor contentedly supplied. All a dream, a fantasy, unable to harm his logical understanding of the world and how it was meant to function. Each observation was made in turn and then placed in short term storage, to be transferred to his permanent storage later if his subroutines categorized it as valuable. Though, now that he was aware that said processes were taking place in the middle of his defrag cycle, he knew that it was unlikely any of his logic core’s hard-sought solutions would be maintained once he was brought back online.

As the number of logic circuits dwindled, the strain on his processor lessened, and his fans were able to keep up with the rate of heat production, pulsing cool waves of air throughout his frame and easing away the aches of locked joint mechanisms.

He blinked again. Starscream hadn’t moved. His optics were locked onto Bumblebee's, but his expression revealed nothing of his current thoughts, assuming he had any.

“This is a dream,” Bumblebee said. It felt wrong, to accept an absurd idea so easily, but something originating outside of his logic center insisted that it was true. Even believing that was a stretch, of course, but he was Bumblebee. The only mech more likely to pay attention to innate feeling was probably the matrix-chosen Prime himself.

Starscream nodded. Although there was no physical contact between them now, Bumblebee lying on the berth and Starscream kneeling at his side, the simple gesture brought them much closer than they had been before. It was an acknowledgement not only of the reality of their situation, which both were in undeniable agreement of, but also the inevitable conclusion that had to come from it: they, together, were one individual, a processor distanced far enough from reality for the moment that it could turn in and have a conversation with itself. They were in this nonplace together, and as a result, terribly alone.

Bumblebee sat up. They were still in the berthroom filled with spilt sunlight, but the distant edges had lost focus, most of their shared processing power now going towards generating each other and the berth they sat on. He wasn’t surprised that it had taken him so long to recognize the dream for what it was, given how well it was being rendered. Starscream looked like Starscream, all his transformation seams lined up and his colors perfectly swatched and lacking that shimmering vitality that always seemed to hover in the air around dreamt figures. There were even details Bumblebee knew to be accurate that he wouldn’t have thought to notice in waking: the covers over the bolts in his shoulder plating, and the one helm vent that was still slightly bent after getting a pebble jammed into it, little imperfections that Starscream was careful to hide so as not to detract from the quality of the whole.

Out of curiosity, he joined their hands again, and was surprised to find even that to be realistic, his processor-generated sensors able to detect the subtle ridges of Starscream’s knuckle joints. He turned their hands over, watching their fingers slide into place, and only became distracted when the weight of the room’s silence started to press down on him more forcefully. He glanced up and once more met Starscream’s gaze.

“Well, this is going to be awkward when I come online, huh?” he said, cracking out a smirk. “Just, you know, two mechs with histories like ours, this kind of thing has definitely got to be a bad idea.” When Starscream didn’t offer a response, Bumblebee waved toward their joined hands, physical evidence that their processor had not yet forgotten the way the dream had started. “You know? Like, between me stabbing you, and you firing at me, none of it seems like a healthy basis for a real relationship.” He didn’t like the way his vocalizer shaped the words like excuses. “And then even after the war ended, and we had an opportunity to treat each other with some civility, we still were still working in secret and coming up with ways to undermine each other’s successes. That was probably the closest we ever came to actually working as partners, and we were awful at it. We’ve both been through a lot, and a good chunk of it was at one another’s hands, so I’m kind of hoping that all of this just gets wiped before I wake up. It’s too much to be thinking about right now.” He didn’t want the soft touches and genuine concern for one another to come to an end, but he was also lucid enough to realize that what seemed so natural in a dream was susceptible to rust and decay once brought into the harsh elements of reality. He didn’t want to be aware of it when it happened to this one bright thing.

Starscream’s lip trembled, and it took Bumblebee a moment to understand what was happening: he was being laughed at.

“Yes, Bumblebee, please tell me more about what you’re going to do after you ‘wake up,’” he implored. “You can spend a cycle worrying over the moral ramifications of falling for the leader of a free Cybertron, and then, what? Usurp me? Maybe you can find some way to contact our dear friend Nighthawk, too. I’m sure the two of you are quite cozy together right now, recharging somewhere down within Cybertron’s seams.” He shook his helm, gaze drifting around as he observed their room, the walls of which were becoming more indistinct by the moment. “I have to admit, it is humorous, to think that this is the kind of thing Bumblebee could ever dream up.”

Bumblebee didn’t need the error message.

“It is,” he said. “This is my dream. I would know, I’m the one dreaming it right now! You’re just—you’re a figment of my imagination.” That just earned him a burst of exhaust as Starscream continued to revel in glee at his expense. Bumblebee hated that he knew the reason for Starscream’s amusement: both had heard those words spoken aloud before, but not by him. “You’re not real.” He understood why Starscream would get so frustrated having to bite out the words, but he couldn’t tell whether it was a new revelation.

“Well, you’re right about that,” the Starscream said. “I haven’t got any more agency than the berth we’re sitting on. You could do whatever you wanted to me right now, and I would beg or fight you as much as your spark desired.” He batted his ember-like optics at Bumblebee, who felt the wave of desire at a distance, like he was audience to someone else falling for Starscream’s flirting.

“But then this has to be my dream,” Bumblebee said, hoping simple steps of logic would get him through this nightmare of a conversation. “If I’m the only one in control, then that has to mean that it’s my processor generating this reality.”

“Wrong.”

Bumblebee wanted to yell with his frustration, but instead he shuttered his optics and forced himself to cycle a ventilation; his core temperature had started to rise again.

“Why don’t you just tell me what you think is going on?” he suggested. It shouldn’t have mattered what Starscream thought. The mech had already confessed to having no will of his own, which meant that anything he said was coming out of some shared subroutine and should have been available to Bumblebee already. And yet, no warnings popped up as he struggled to understand what wasn’t being said.

“Please, if you’re really intent on ignoring everything that I’ve said, you should at least listen to your own vocalizer every once in a while.” Starscream looked utterly at ease, and in a move that did not entirely comply with Bumblebee’s understanding of physics, leaned back on the berth while keeping their hands securely entwined. “The look is good, I would know that disappointed glower anywhere, but Bumblebee would have had at two or three more denial programs kick in before he gave in and asked for help.”

“So, who am I, then?”

Starscream flashed him a smirk, and his familiarity with it wasn’t the kind that came from seeing it every day. He knew that look because he’d practiced it.

“I could call you a figment, maybe, but an avatar would probably be more appropriate,” Starscream said, claiming a form of delight that he knew only when he was absolutely certain that he was right. “Either way, you’re no more you than I am me. Think about it, and not that automatic process you’ve been leaning on this whole time. I mean actually engage with your logic core and look at the facts. Bumblebee wouldn’t have wanted any of this. He would have questioned what was going on the moment he onlined and fought me when I tried to drag him around a berth with no warning or consent. You’re an avatar, bug, just a convenient fantasy about a mech actually enjoying my company. And anyway, logically, even if you did somehow manage to hijack our processing power and use it to generate your own pseudoreality, the fact that you are a figment of my own fraught imagination means that anything you create automatically falls within my domain. This is my dream, whether by creation or by right.”

“But…” The world was twisting around Bumblebee, in the most literal sense, colors wrapping into each other like distant dying galaxies. “But I’m dreaming right now. I’m aware of it, I know that.”

“Sure,” Starscream said, optics pulsing with a brief cant of his helm, “but that doesn’t mean you’re Bumblebee. You already figured out that we’re from the same processor, so why is this part so hard for you to grasp?” His face was suddenly much closer, and Bumblebee had no way of knowing which of them had been the one to move. “Let me phrase it a little differently for you, so we can get out of this dreadful limbo: between Starscream and Bumblebee, whose psyche is self-destructive enough to realize the logical inconsistencies of its own defrag fantasy?”

All of Bumblebee’s need to fight left him at once. Not because his logic processor had stopped sending him alerts of any kind, or because of some indescribable feeling lodged within the crystal walls of his spark, but because he was finally able to read the calculations that had led to such conclusions, and knew that it was his own processor that had generated them. He had been wrong in his earlier assessment of the situation. He and Starscream were not two halves of an individual. They were just inconsequential shards Starscream’s dormant processor, a miniaturized personification of the bickering he engaged in with himself throughout the day and well into the night. They were less than alone. They were incomplete.

He would have chided himself for falling into his own trap of comfort and security, had he not done it while dressed up as Bumblebee, one of the most gullible bots known to Cybertron. The dream’s ability to slip past the protocols that normally fueled his distrust and suspicion was merely a testament to the perfection with which he executed the ruse, he decided, rather than a symptom of anything like desperation or weakness, though he would have to be on guard in the future in case any of his enemies attempted to employ a similar tactic against him.

He had to look away from the Starscream sitting next to him on the berth, an idol he’d forged in a testament to his own vanity. The walls of the room had regained their crisp appearance, even adding in a few embellishments to improve the appearance, and the sunlight outside suggested early morning rather than late, the perfect time for flying. Without their processor expending energy on maintaining partitions between their systems, now it was able to devote memory space to the things that really mattered to Starscream, like making sure the space around them looked stunning.

For the first time, he looked down at the body he was inhabiting. It was round and yellow, exactly as one would expect Bumblebee to appear, and he was certain that if he didn’t think about it for long enough, a cane would inevitably work its way into his grasp. The plating was smooth, free of imperfections, and he was able to find some small comfort in that. If this dream had been intended to reveal some deeply held feelings toward his deceased colleague, then it would have tried to construct Bumblebee the way he appeared, something for Starscream to properly fantasize about and enjoy. Instead, it had constructed a Bumblebee-shaped frame for him to slip inside, something that he could use to pretend at what it would feel like to be wanted.

The whirring in his chassis sped up and he resisted the urge to place a nonexistent hand against it. The corresponding Bumblebee-shaped spark was announcing its displeasure, it seemed, activating whatever coding was left after its unmasking to insist that he try to comfort himself.

It was an unpleasant feeling, as well as unnerving, to be able to feel his processor trying to mend its own psychological damage. Certainly, this was one of the least self-destructive ways it had gone about accomplishing the task, but it still wasn’t something he had any interest in watching unfold.

“I’m going to wake up now,” he said. If he was lucky, the code that ran this version of Bumblebee in his dreams was distinct from whatever corruption generated his hallucinations during the day, and that Bumblebee would have no recollection of this conversation, or the events that had preceded it. They spent enough time introspecting on his political motivations; trying to factor in his chronic loneliness would just be a complication that neither had the time for.

Starscream knew he was already on the floor before his optic sensors came online, but that didn’t make it any less demeaning when he unshuttered them and was assaulted by the sight of a curious yellow bot peering down at him.

“Morning,” Bumblebee said. “Well, almost morning, I guess. It’s still dark out. You doing alright?”

“Fine,” Starscream bit out, leveraging himself up by grasping the edge of the berth. Bumblebee stepped out of his way, though both knew it wouldn’t have made a difference if he had stayed. “Where’s the datapad I was working on?”

“Other side of the berth. You sure you’re alright? You seemed pretty upset when you came online.”

There was a decent chance he had been, but an old notification on his HUD indicated that he had performed a purge of his short-term memory some time in the space between when his motor functions were activated and when his optic center came online. Whatever data had existed in said memory banks was gone now, which meant that trying to figure out logically what might have had him shooting off the berth would just be an exercise in frustration. Besides, if prior experience was any indication, he was better off ignoring it. There was one face in particular that Starscream had come to associate with corrupted memory files, and the entire planet tended to be better off when he didn’t spend too much time thinking about that one.

“Did you have another nightmare?”

“Yes,” Starscream lied, knowing that it would get Bumblebee to drop the subject. Despite being a manifestation of corruption within his own processor, his hallucination never seemed to know how to respond when such damage was brought up, either growing angry or timid, depending on some pattern that Starscream had yet to fully calculate. This time, the reaction tended toward the latter, and Bumblebee stayed silent as Starscream retrieved the fallen datapad and scrambled back up onto his berth.

He had already gotten all of the recharge that he cared to for that solar cycle, and though his battery was pinging him with suggestions to plug back into the slab, he dismissed them, trying to lose himself in the spreadsheets and reports he’d been studying the night before. They were boring, unsurprisingly, but relevant to at least one of the meetings he was holding that day, and it was always a worthwhile effort to be the most knowledgeable mech in the room, even on topics so monumentally unimpressive as Devisen energon refiners’ compensation. His optics scanned through a large spreadsheet detailing benefits packages in relation to combined experience between pairs of workers, then jumped back to the relevant block of text within the body of the article. As he did, he briefly caught sight of Bumblebee, who had shuffled off to one side, silent as a vigil holder. At one point he would have found the awkward hovering on the edge of his vision to be diverting, but he told himself that the slight pout and big, worried eyes had become familiar enough to no longer pose a distraction.

Even if they were, Starscream knew that his hallucination cared about the progress and development of Cybertron and its colonies to the same extent he did. If Bumblebee ever did become a distraction from those goals, which he wouldn’t, all it would take was a word from Starscream to have him knock it off and go back to being an annoying political advisor, rather than a mopey would-be therapist. That way, they could focus on issues that mattered, and not transitory things like the latest of Starscream’s many woes. It was unbelievably frustrating to finally have someone take a passing interest in them, only to use it as a distraction from one of the few good things Starscream had worked at in his life.

He squinted, then frowned, realizing that he’d read through an entire paragraph and absorbed none of the written information. His vents released a frustrated huff of hot air, and he finally looked up to Bumblebee in exasperation.

“I don’t know what it was, and I can’t tell you,” he said, “so stop looking at me like that.”

Bumblebee perked up.

“Like what?”

“Don’t be cute,” Starscream snapped. He was used to running on 50% battery power, but that didn’t mean he had to be pleasant. “Just, come over here. Then at least I won’t have to see you.” He indicated the spot beside the berth where they’d found the datapad. It was just near enough to the edge of his vision that he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of that damnable frown every time he happened to look up, but he would still have a streak of yellow in his peripherals.

Bumblebee crossed his arms and leaned back.

“Or, if I’m such an eyesore, how would you feel if I came back later, when you’re actually in the mood to talk?”

Starscream scoffed.

“You care how I feel?”