#i suppose they couldn't just hand the vista points to you without a fight

[hzdtrees]

Baseline, pt. 2

[grayseekerswritinglife]

Inevitabilities

Starscream was late. Very late.

When he alighted on the narrow ledge and peered into the murky depths of the cliffside cave, he expected to find it empty. It wasn't. Skyfire was there, sitting with his back against the wall. His optics were closed and his head lolled to one side in a posture of sleep. Starscream edged closer, the fingers of his still-functioning hand clenching indecisively.

Part of him—a large part—was telling him to leave. The howl of the wind and the crashing of breakers against the base of the cliff would muffle his retreat. Later, he could concoct an excuse for his absence—if Skyfire even asked, though he generally didn't. It wasn't exactly a rule between them, just an unspoken agreement to keep the outside world separate from their relationship.

It was better that way. Safer.

Starscream took a backward step, then another. He reached the rim of the ledge, one heel-thruster poised above the sheer drop. When he turned, everything beyond the cave was iron-gray. The sky, the rocks, the rain-swept ocean. The sun was hidden behind a mass of stormclouds that crouched on the lightless horizon. A salt-laden wind buffeted his chest and wings, pushing him back, and that was all it took. His legs went out from under him and he sat down, hard.

Only then did he hear a quiet sound from behind. The sound of a vocalizer being cleared. Glancing back, Starscream was unsurprised to find Skyfire watching him. Not speaking. Not telling him to stay… or go. Just leaving space. Letting him decide for himself, as he always did. Starscream turned his attention back to the cheerless vista, and waited. He didn't wait long. Skyfire's steps were slow and deliberately heavy as he came to settle on Starscream's right.

Of course on his right. Skyfire had a talent for that.

Starscream tucked his hand against his chassis where Skyfire wouldn't be able to see it. For a while, neither spoke. Eventually, Skyfire drew a small repair kit from his subspace and set it on the floor between them. Starscream stared at it, feeling stupid, ridiculous, exposed. Finally he reached across himself with his good hand, snagged the kit, and dragged it onto his lap. He fumbled with the catch, but the kit slid from his lap and popped open, scattering tools across the rock floor.

"Frag!" It was the first word either of them had spoken.

Skyfire shifted closer. "Starscream—"

Starscream cut him off with a gesture. Half a gesture, because he realized mid-motion that he'd been about to use his right hand. He twisted away, blocking Skyfire's view with a wing as he groped along the floor. He found a small precision-welder and fired it up. The spark flared blue. A brilliant, electric blue which he was able to see by without use of his infrared. His hand was worse than he'd realized. Much worse.

You're either lying or stupid!

Megatron's voice echoed harshly in his thoughts, along with the remembered humiliation of his own response:

I'm stupid, I'm stupid!

He had been. Incredibly stupid, and this was the result. His fingers were shaking. The welder slipped from his grasp and skittered across the cave floor, its spark flaring inexplicably brighter just before it was doused. A hand settled on his arm.

"Starscream."

Starscream tensed. It was automatic, a reaction programmed at the level of base-coding. To anticipate a fight because flight wasn't an option. Not for him. He wouldn't—couldn't—yield. But Skyfire wouldn't either. His hand stayed where it was until something in Starscream broke. He let his head fall to his drawn-up knees, and didn't realize how hard he was shaking until Skyfire's arms slipped around him. A soft kiss grazed the top of his head as Skyfire shaped himself around Starscream's form, great wings sweeping forward to shelter him from the gray morning light.

Skyfire said nothing. Starscream had half expected him to ask, but he didn't. Maybe he doesn't have to, an inner voice suggested, spurring a fresh surge of fury to cover his scalding humiliation. Everyone knows, everyone. Even the Autobots.

But Skyfire's knowing wasn't such a problem. Not really. In a way, it made things easier. It saved having to explain. Starscream hunched back against Skyfire's warm frame, listening to the hum of his engines and the indefinable, shimmering vibration of his life-force. His field was like the ocean. No, like space. Vast, deep and all-engulfing, but Starscream never felt he was drowning in it. Not unless he wanted to. Skyfire rocked him, big arms crossed over his chest, hands stroking his shoulders. Holding him without making him feel trapped. Starscream gradually unclenched, and Skyfire rewarded him with further kisses to his intakes and the top of his helm.

"Can I look?" came the inevitable question.

Starscream sighed.

He knew Skyfire knew, but wished he didn't have to see. Especially since Skyfire must also know, by the mere fact that Starscream was hiding it, that this wasn't simply battle-damage. Yet he didn't resist when Skyfire's hand slipped down the length of his right arm, slow and hesitant, giving Starscream plenty of warning. Plenty of chances to retreat. When Skyfire's enormous hand finally cupped his, Starscream felt the reaction. A swift tightening in Skyfire's field; a storm-flash of anger; an ache of regret; a burn of recrimination.

Self-recrimination.

Starscream twisted around in Skyfire's arms. "It's not your fault!" he snapped, glaring—and Skyfire looked so sad. Starscream hated that. He wrenched free, thinking he should leave, just fly, but his spark was rooted here and he knew there was no point. He'd fly back again. That was inevitable. And he always made Skyfire sad. That, too, was inevitable.

Fingers brushed his shoulder and drifted down the length of his back. It was barely a touch, but Starscream felt Skyfire's field pull close to his body as he reached again for Starscream's hand. "Let me see."

Starscream didn't—couldn't—look as Skyfire drew the hand into his own lap. There was a clank of metal against stone as Skyfire leaned past him and picked up one of the fallen tools. Starscream didn't know which one. He kept his gaze firmly on a vein of pale quartz that cut, lightning-shaped, through the dark stone at the cave entrance, but the expected pain never arrived. Instead, the dull throbbing ache that had been with him throughout the afternoon suddenly drained from his hand. He glanced at Skyfire, startled, but looked away just as quickly when he saw Skyfire moving his broken, useless fingers, assessing damage.

"It's bad." Skyfire's tone was impassive, betraying nothing.

"Of course it's bad." As if Megatron did anything by half-measures.

Skyfire cupped the hand in both his own. He bowed forward, and Starscream felt lips brush against his palm. Part of his mind noted that if he could feel it, that meant Skyfire had disconnected the pain receptors without interfering with his tactile system overall. He suddenly remembered another time when Skyfire had repaired him. It had been so long ago, almost another lifetime, yet it had been a blustery morning like this and he'd felt, as he did now, as if they were the only two beings in the universe.

"Do you remember that planet with the pink sky?" he asked.

Skyfire was gathering the tools and arranging them in what was, Starscream knew, the precise order in which he planned to use them. He paused for a moment, thinking. "Binary star system?" he asked. "Planetary rings? High concentration of argon in the—"

"Yes, that one."

"You hated it there," Skyfire murmured,  mouth twitching into a smile.

"Well, we were stranded!" Starscream barked, then subsided with a small shrug. "It wasn't so bad."

"No?" There was humor in Skyfire's gaze, as well as affection. "I don't recall you thinking so at the time."

"I didn't know what I was talking about. Anyway, I went back."

"You did? When?"

"About a million years into the war. The place was gone."

"The whole planet was?"

"No; just the hab."

"Ah." Skyfire nodded. "I'm not surprised. The local geology would have changed, along with the atmosphere, climactic conditions—"

"There had been an ice age," Starscream interrupted. "A glacier had come through, and nothing was left but flat tundra. But I built another hab. It was like the one we made, only… smaller. I lived there for a while and it felt like you were there sometimes, and I could still—" he broke off "—still talk to you. And sometimes I thought you answered. I even thought of just… staying. There, with your ghost."

Skyfire paused his work, studying him. "But you didn't."

Starscream snorted. "The natives," he said, shaking his head. "There was this species that had evolved in the meantime. Small, furry, organic bipeds. Some with tails, some not. And these two groups, the ones with the tails and the ones without, they hated each other. They were constantly fighting and killing each other with their primitive weapons, and—Skyfire, I killed one."

Skyfire set down the welder. His hands curled around Starscream's, a thumb stroking his wrist where the damage wasn't as bad. "What happened?"

"He was going to die anyway!" Starscream snapped defensively, but Skyfire just kept stroking his wrist, waiting patiently. "He had a spear through him," Starscream continued. "Right through. In at the armpit, out just above the hip. I suppose he was looking for help when he came to my door. I…" Starscream averted his gaze.

"You shot him?"

Starscream didn't answer right away. Skyfire's hands were warm, and the unhurried glide of his thumb against Starscream's plating was oddly soothing. Not unlike the patter of rain and the rhythmic crash of breakers on the rocks below. "It was the first thing I thought of doing," Starscream admitted finally. "The only thing. I just did it, and didn't even consider anything else."

"Maybe it was the only thing you could have done."

"That isn't the point!"

"Then tell me what is." There was no trace of anger in Skyfire's tone, nor of judgment.

Starscream searched his face. "You can't go back," he said. "I'd been fighting, leading a squadron. We'd driven the Autobots underground, we were winning! And I wasn't the same anymore; that's the point."

"You left when the Decepticons were winning?"

"I had to see who I was without the war. But I couldn't hold on to the past, Sky. I couldn't be who I was then, and I couldn't hear you anymore! After the day I shot that creature, you… you stopped answering. I couldn't even remember the sound of your voice. So I went back to Cybertron. What else was I going to do?"

"And… they took you back?" Skyfire's tone was cautious, as if he was unsure of where this might be leading.

"I didn't expect them to, but Megatron was surprisingly… welcoming. Almost as if he knew where I'd been, or at least why. I fought harder than ever after that. Fought my way to the top; became his Air Commander, and then his Second-in-Command." And more. Of course there was more, but Starscream left that part unsaid.

"Did you... do you... love him?" Skyfire asked, proving that he'd read between the lines with his usual ease.

Starscream observed him in the half-light. The great, white shape of him. His big hands, clasping Starscream's damaged one so very gently. He owed this mech an honest answer, but he didn't know the truth anymore. Maybe he never had. "I don't think I can love," he said eventually. "I buried that when I left that place, that planet. The skies weren't pink anymore. They'd turned gray, like here, and… I just. Everything I ever was, with you, I left back there. And I can't go back. We can't."

He withdrew his hand and tucked it against his belly, curling around it. They sat, the hiss of rain forming a backdrop to their silence. The sky grew brighter, the iron clouds on the horizon warming to a bruised shade of copper.

"Will you at least let me finish before you leave?" Skyfire asked.

Starscream pretended to consider, but finally placed his broken hand back in Skyfire's. "You aren't going to tell me not to go back?"

"I want to," Skyfire said as he resumed, the welder's blue spark casting his face in flickering shadows. "But…" his wings sagged. "I know better."

Starscream returned his gaze to the dull sweep of ocean. As he watched, a ray of light broke through the clouds and silvered the wave-tips.

"There." Skyfire deactivated the welder. "Try making a fist."

Starscream was pleasantly surprised when his fingers moved the way they were designed to. His hand still looked nearly as bad as it had before, but it was at least functional.

"That's good," Skyfire said, satisfied. "I could repair the external damage if I had time, but at least you can use the hand now." He gathered his tools back into their kit, then rose and went to the back of the cave where he began getting his things together.

"Are you... leaving?" Starscream asked.

"I should get back," Skyfire replied without glancing up. "I'm supposed to make a run to Ganymede Station to pick up some supplies, and then—"

Starscream scrambled up. "Sky."

Skyfire lifted his head, but Starscream couldn't meet his gaze. Outside, the sun had broken through; the quartz lightning-bolt at the mouth of the cave had taken on an eerily pink glow. Red sky in the morning, sailor's warning. It was a human aphorism Starscream had picked up… somewhere. He had no idea where. But it seemed entirely appropriate for what he was about to say. "Can we stay here? For a little while longer?"

It was a bad idea. Terrible, in fact. Starscream would eventually be missed, and Skyfire had some pointless errand to run. The world expected things of them both. But Skyfire didn't point any of that out. He sank down where he'd been sleeping before, his back against the wall, and patted the ground in front of him in wordless invitation. Within moments Starscream was curled between his legs, his face pillowed against a snowy expanse of chest.

"You're right," Skyfire said at length, his deep voice vibrant beneath Starscream's cheek. "We can't go back. But maybe we'll find a way forward, if we look for one."

Outside, the rain had settled in. The fitful light of dawn had seeped away, leaving the sky a dismal shade of ash. "Not seeing one yet, Sky."

Those powerful arms gathered him closer. "Yet," Skyfire echoed, for emphasis. "But you can stay as long as you want. And I'll stay here with you."

Starscream twined his battered fingers with Skyfire's, and smiled. It was the most intimate gesture he felt capable of, and the shift in Skyfire's field told him that he was understood. Starscream closed his optics, listening to the rain, and pondered this new inevitability.

Written for SkyStarWeek 2020. This story is for Day Four: Intimacy and Vulnerability. Many thanks to @overlordraax​ for organizing this wonderful (and much needed) celebration of my OTP!