#megopstar

Optimus picked Starscream up in his arms, holding him like something precious, and gave Megatron a calm, assessing look. Anticipation coiled through Megatron's tanks. Optimus clearly had plans. "We're out of coolant," he said. Megatron's tac-unit, which had been lovingly coming up with ways to insert himself into Optimus and Starscream's fragging, screeched to a halt. It was still back-tracking, trying to find the thread of information that led to this sentence, when Optimus lifted one hand from Starscream's hip and gestured to the door. "That means you need to get some," he said, clear and calm.

Starscream would probably need a refresh when he was done. His engine ran beautifully clean - more so than Optimus and certainly more than Megatron - but a few joors of Optimus' attention could clog up anyone's engine. "I'll get it delivered?" he suggested, even as the rest of this scene began to piece itself together.

"No," Optimus said. "Go get it. The blue one that he likes." The closest place to buy it was in the city centre. It would take all night.

Not for the first time, Megatron wished he had just a little more control over his tac-unit. It was working up momentum now that things had begun to make sense. He remembered what Optimus had said when he first saw this place: 'Is this an elaborate set up for a cuckolding role play?' It had been a strange assumption, unless Optimus had already been thinking about it. If perhaps he liked the idea of him and Starscream alone in a beautiful flat, all their own: everything shiny, with nice furniture, with high-class tastes. Somewhere that his indulgence of Starscream was never challenged. His tac-unit could follow a hundred battles spread out across a solar system: it had no trouble coming up with reasons that Optimus and Starscream would get along better just the two of them.

The rational part of him knew that this was just a game, but that part of him didn't control the hundreds of systems that found a microscopic gap in an enemy's guard and lunged before it disappeared. His engine, his fuel pump, his cannon and the strong arm beneath it, his armoured vents and the power cells they fed to, all of those things knew only about danger and weakness. He had spent his entire life fighting for what was his - fighting Optimus for it, no less - and he was only still living because his every reflex was honed to respond to a threat.

And Starscream was wrapped around Optimus so easily. He was relaxed between the support of Optimus' hand on his aft and the unyielding planes of Optimus' chest. When Megatron picked him up, he struggled and squawked.

Megatron turned and left, trying to wipe the image from his mind. At the end of the day, it was only fragging. They could do whatever they wanted to.

The lift took too long coming up from the ground floor, and Optimus caught him before the doors opened. "Come back," he said quietly.

"No." He jammed the Door Open button as if that would make it happen faster. "You have fun."

"Kaon. Nemesis. Stop, just stop." His hand wrapped around Megatron's wrist. "Please. Tell me what's wrong."

Megatron couldn't look at him. If he looked at Optimus now, he'd explode. If he tried to answer the question, he'd explode. He wanted, for a moment of perfect liberating clarity, to simply kill the both of them.

Optimus pushed in between Megatron and the elevator door. He put his hand on Megatron's chest. "At least tell me if you're coming back?" Megatron's helm snapped up to look Optimus in the optic, and Optimus shrugged helplessly. "Last time you left me, I spent days, weeks, hoping you would change your mind and come back. It wasn't the first time you'd been too angry to talk to me."

Oh Primus. He'd been holding out hope until now that at least one of them had some modicum of intelligence, but clearly they were both idiots. Did Megatron really need Optimus to remind him that he was the one who had left, last time? Did Optimus really think he'd make the same mistake twice?

He couldn't say any of that. He couldn't bring himself to say anything important, because any word might be the rock fall that started an avalanche. So instead he said, "You like me more than you like Starscream, don't you?"

"I'm not dignifying that with an answer."

Ah, but at least he was smiling now, and unlikely to try and make Megatron talk about his mistake. Megatron cleared his throat and held out a hand, imaginary microphone and all. "Optimus Prime, can you confirm that you have, at least, known me longer than you've known Starscream?"

Optimus snorted and pushed his arm away. "I'm going back inside before Starscream has a melt down."

Megatron followed him. "Prime, you are aware that the answer to this question is a matter of public record?" Back through the door, to find Starscream sitting on the back of the couch with his arms crossed and a thunderstorm slowly coalescing around him. Megatron held out his imaginary microphone. "Prince Starscream, can you confirm for the press that you first met Optimus Prime after the advent of the Great War?"

"What are you talking about, you old fool?"

The question had taken him off-guard, and therefore forestalled the coming hysteria, so Megatron persisted. "I remind you that this, too, is a matter of public record and that we the press are simply asking you to confirm or deny it?" He prowled forward as he spoke, until Starscream was within grabbing distance. Starscream stared at the loose fist in front of his face waiting for a response, and therefore missed the sight of Optimus coming around behind him to pick him up once more.

"Megatron has suffered a terrible processor crash," Optimus said, sitting down on the couch properly, with Starscream safely in his lap, "which means that he can no longer spoil The Bridge for us."

Starscream's wings stayed high and tight, and his optics only narrowed as Megatron came around the couch to sit beside them. "So I don't even get an explanation, is that it? Megatron storms out and I have to just go with the flow to avoid upsetting his imperial majesty?"

"We can talk about it," Optimus said, before Megatron could argue back. "If you want to."

The seeker looked at Megatron warily, and then craned his neck around to look at Optimus. Megatron could see words poised on his lips. His wings twitched once, and then he slumped down in Optimus' grip and twisted to kick his thrusters into Megatron's lap. "If he spoils the ending, I'm going to burn this place down."