Work Text:
It's going very well, right up until it - stops. Going well, that is. Windblade anticipated that Starscream would immediately start pressing for any advantage he could grasp, and the very instant they shove through the door of his quarters and start to dig into each other's seams, Starscream dips in and starts mapping her wires and major fuel lines. If she were dealing with anyone but Starscream, she might not have noticed, but Starscream is vicious, canny, and above all dangerous, and if she's not careful, he'll prod and needle and outmaneuver her so that he has the indisputable upper hand.
And that, Windblade can't allow. Not here, not if she wants an equal rival. She wants someone to challenge her in this, not a one-sided, unbalanced relationship that's an mutual homicide waiting to happen. Starscream no doubt already sees this as a power play opportunity - she can't let him see her hands tremble. Windblade can match him step for step, if only to prevent him from overwhelming her and counting it a political victory for himself, but the sooner she can break him of the bad habit of lording it over her in inappropriate settings, the better for both of them.
So she starts strong, and doesn't give him the chance to see her falter. She bites his mouth midkiss, but she barely makes enough of an impression to draw energon. Starscream's new frame is built to war specs, even now, and while Windblade might be able to make an argument that it's a sign of how Starscream doesn't understand how to live in peacetime, she has also seen how casually Cybertronians lash out at each other since coming here. A city full of war veterans and refugees, and it's not paranoia when all it would take is one mech with a long memory to make good on the permanent target that's painted on Starscream's back. He may have painted it there himself by earning a reputation for a cutting, selfish focus, mercurial moods, and a tendency to con his way into other's good graces with infuriating, seductive charisma before betraying them for his own ends -
But by this point, Windblade is too devoted to Metroplex's recovery and invested in the future of Cybertron to want to see it all fall to rioting chaos if Starscream's assassinated and his (sometimes democratic, sometimes underhanded, sometimes entirely fabricated) hold on the city fails. Losing him wouldn't mean the end of everything, but each time Cybertron teeters on the precipice, Windblade can feel the threadbare lifeline to the rest of the colonies wither further still.
Starscream kisses back, hard, and while Windblade has the momentum to keep backing him up across the room, she can feel him snort as he finds the seam at the base of her helm to crush their mouths closer. His other hand wanders between her wings, dragging light, sharp claws down along vulnerable wires to draw a shudder out of her.
(As if Chromia hasn't hammered it home a hundred times that Starscream spends most of his day plotting the most efficient way to stab people in the back.)
(As if Windblade wasn't already aware.)
Charge rolls down her spinal struts. Windblade keeps one hand planted over Starscream's cockpit glass and uses the other to clamp down on his throat, holding him just tightly enough to feel him snicker under her servos. They manage to reach the door to the habsuite without toppling over or murdering each other, and by the time Starscream remembers how to use his elbow to hit the access panel and open the door, Windblade has torn her mouth free, riled, to scrap her teeth along the energon line of his neck. Starscream actually starts and shudders when she bites down and sucks on the crimp she leaves, and Windblade slips one heel behind his to keep him off balance all the way to the berth. His wings flare out on instinct, but don't do much good.
When he gets his feet back under him, Starscream's hand twists, fast, and a throb this close to pain lances through the exposed blade her right fan. "Remember who you're dealing with, Windblade," he hisses, his mouth close enough to her ear that she can feel his ex-vent on her jaw, and Windblade snorts right back at him as she spins that ducted fan twice - just fast enough for Starscream to yank his hand back. She lifts her helm up to flash him a cocky, crooked smile. He can't see it if she crosses her fingers in her mind, praying that she really can hold her own, here. It's not as though trying for something less volatile would be much safer or certain, even if she could bring herself to contemplate it (dear Primus, she's not sure how Wheeljack handles being his amica without going mad). Windblade wants this like burning, an incensed, crackling charge that won't die no matter how much she tries to ignore it, and if she's going to be aggravated and frustrated and hopelessly turned on after every encounter with Starscream, there's no point in trying for anything but aemula, regardless of the risk.
Now, she needs to get Starscream on the same damn page. There'll be no living with him if she lets him run amok here and now, the smug fragger. "Drop the political grandstanding and focus, Starscream," she says, firm even though she knows he's not going to listen the first time around. Scheming is too much a second nature to him. "This is personal."
Sure enough, he bursts into a patronizing laugh. "Oh, please. The naïveté of someone who skipped most of the war," he says, scathing, but that sort of comment got old months ago.
Windblade rolls her optics and tips Starscream onto the birth, using her own weight to shove him over and grinding on him when he snarls and pulls her down for another sharp kiss. The bite crunches down on the near side of too-hard, and Windblade tastes her own energon smearing on his mouth. She presses down harder, hooking a leg over his hip and bracing herself. When he (predictably) tries to flip her so that it's her wings that are pinned against the berth rather than his, she's able to push his shoulders back and sink down to grind harder, smiling again as energon from her mouth drops on the dark metal of his face. "I'm serious, Starscream," she says, her internal fans working so fast to cool her down that her torso trembles in time with the rotation.
"Lord Starscream," he insists, glaring daggers at her, the fervent pride in his optics almost eclipsed by his petulance. Like Windblade could forget, when he's missing the point in such a spectacular fashion. Primus, he's infuriating.
"Yes, you got what you wanted," Windblade says, an edge of irritation clipping her voice. "May ruling be all you ever wished for, now that you have it." Starscream twitches, his hand groping for the pivot joints of her VTOL fan to either flip her or tweak the seams; she'd prefer the latter, but is resigned to the former. She flicks her wings out of his reach at the last second, arching her shoulders back and leaning back more, her interface panel hot on his as she leans a hand on his chest and laughs at his sulking expression. "You must be very proud, Lord Starscream," she says, modulating her voice so that it's softer and slightly less mocking than Starscream's. She'll serve Metroplex, and Cybertron, and the colony worlds, and she'll work with Starscream for the good of as many people as she can manage, but if he can't take off the mental crown and ease off on holding his political power over her helm, he's going to tramp all over her personal and political boundaries. This is going to take serious coaxing; it's definitely not going to be the work of one night.
Starscream's hand goes still, his face oddly slack and expressionless as his helm thumps back against the berth with a faint clang. He surveys her with that weird look, and then turns his head to the side. "Fine," he says, his vocalizer dropping to a bitter mutter. "Hurry up, then, I don't have all day."
It's - that's wrong. Something's perceptibly off. Windblade's optics dart from Starscream's face to follow his distant stare; he's staring at some fixed point on the floor to the side rather than registering her presence. He draws her down with still, mechanical motions, like he's so far gone in his thoughts that he can't properly calibrate his grip. Her hand slips down the side of his cockpit and her knee grazes a gap in his armor plating above the crook of his hip as she hesitates, and this time she feels Starscream's deep, silent flinch for what it is. The sense of wrongness spikes, a sickening lurch in her tank that deepens when she sits upright and Starscream's stilted attempt to drag her back down feels more like she's watching a drone or an automaton operating in a simulation rather than reality. "Just do it and get this over with already," he snaps, flat and resigned and so coldly bitter, a far cry from his usual acidic, quicksilver tongue.
"Starscream," Windblade says, her lip trembling a little as she pushes back and gives his hunched shoulders a tiny shake. He bristles at the touch, which is better than flinching any day, but his optics skitter past her face without looking at her. She enunciates as clearly as she can, pitching her voice to carry. "Starscream, are you alright?"
He's clearly not - Starscream's not engaging with her at all and she doesn't know what could have triggered such an abrupt shutdown, but it can't be pleasant. All the pending charge in Windblade's system fizzles out. He laughs, high-pitched and harsh. "What is this, pity?" he says, his crooked smirk aimed somewhere over Windblade's helm. "Hurry up, we don't have all day." He folds one leg so that her thigh presses along his panel again. She shouldn't be able to feel lubricant leaking through the panel over his valve like that - Starscream looks like he's cringing in anticipation of some kind of ordeal, he's not charged up anymore in the slightest, and that's -
Windblade jerks back and rolls off the berth, landing on deft feet but stumbling as she straightens. She feels horribly cold, a tight fist clenched around her spark casing as she struggles not to purge her tanks. "No. No, I think we need to stop," she says, the faintest quiver breaking into her voice at the most awful moment. Instinct urges her to rush in and offer comfort, rivalry or no, but that seems like a quick shortcut to a blade through her stomach. "Starscream, are you listening? What can I do to help?"
"'Help?'" he repeats, mostly to himself. He scrubs his forehelm with the heel of his hand and stares at the ceiling instead of looking at Windblade. Usually, Starscream tracks whoever's in the room as though he suspects every single mech on the planet of wanting to pull a weapon on him at a moment's notice. He'll snub someone to prove a point, or flounce from conversations due to some perceived slight (he's very...slight-able), but this sudden detachment pings Windblade as unintended.
Wheeljack. Whatever has happened, Starscream should have a friend here.
Windblade puts three deliberate steps between the two of them, torn between comming Wheeljack and trying to snap Starscream out of this fugue, first. Suddenly hyperaware of the energon smeared on her mouth, Windblade wipes it off on the side of her hand, staring at the pink smear for a long, faltering moment before turning her attention back to Starscream. "Should I call Wheeljack?" she asks, swallowing past a thick lump in her throat. It feels like clotted energon choking her vocalizer; between that and the faint ache in her mouth, and the discomfort of residual charge attempting to ground itself throughout her frame, she feels awful. When Starscream finally rolls his head around and focuses his red optics on her for the first time in too long, she repeats the question and adds, "What would help you? Something's not right."
He sneers at her, an ugly expression that twists his face, and props himself up on an elbow. "Oh? Problem, cityspeaker?" he says, silky and mocking, and Windblade would respond with more irritation if he hadn't just been on the edge of some sort of serious breakdown mere moments ago. She can't tell whether he's trying to cover for the break with over the top posturing, or if he's ignoring that it happened at all.
"You were not talking to me," Windblade says, squeezing one hand into a fist by her side and then spreading the servos out - it helps stop a faint shiver that wants to run through her. Starscream's eyes narrow in a deeply suspicious scowl, and she gulps but forges on. She has to stay calm. "You seemed distressed. I don't know who you were thinking of just now, but you were afrai-"
That's the wrong thing to say. He doesn't even let her finish vocalizing before he sits bolt upright, eyes burning with sudden, malicious fury. He slashes an arm at her; he's not armed, but it's a warning that sends Windblade stumbling back, raising her hands as she gives him more space. "Oh? Finish that sentence," he says, seething, his pedes slamming on the floor as he perches on the edge of the berth as he glares at her balefully.
"Distressed," Windblade finishes instead, an alarm going off in her processor at the animosity boiling off Starscream in waves. She needs to deescalate, now. "Something went wrong, and whatever it was, I'm sorry. I can stay or go, whichever you want." Another step back. Careful, careful. Conversing with Starscream's always a minefield, and she's already set something off. "I can call Wheeljack -"
Starscream erupts, wings flaring out as he lunges off the berth and stalks toward her. "Oh, of course! I should have known! Trying to use him against me - how long have you two been conspiring?!" He laughs, and it's wild and on the edge of hysterical, instead of just harsh. "It's always adorable when you people try to act clever. You think you can outplay me? Exactly how long do you think I've been doing this for?!"
Windblade drops into a bow, the one of most respect, her back a perfect line even while her processor drops into survival mode. She holds it longer than she would if she were just bowing to Starscream as ruler of Cybertron, long enough for an apology on Caminus - long enough for the back of her neck to feel exposed. Chromia would kill her for it, but leaving without making some gesture to Starscream would be worse still. He'd take it as an insult on top of whatever injury started this mess. "I am loyal in my service to Cybertron," Windblade says, steady, as she rises up and starts taking calm, measured steps back toward the door. Starscream has halted; he still looks livid, but he's not advancing on her anymore. "Please, call Wheeljack. I mean it sincerely."
Starscream vents air in a hiss, his vocalizer cracking sharply. "Get. Out."
She does.
-
Windblade comms Wheeljack herself. Starscream might not thank her for it now (or...ever) but she can't leave him like that and do nothing to help. Rattrap's skulking down at the exit and opens his mouth as though he's about to comment; she holds up hand to stall him, power walks out the door, and performs a vertical takeoff as soon as she's clear of the entryway, her lift fans spinning up smoothly in a way that's completely at odds with her aching processor. Camera lenses wink up from the shadows of Metroplex's streets as she arcs up over the city, because everything with Starscream has to be a publicized ordeal. Starscream storming out of Metroplex's processor chambers and Windblade storming out of his quarters in turn isn't exactly news, by now, but that won't stop the rumors. She cycles out stale air in a long ex-vent as she skims under the limits of the restricted flight zone that Starscream's been enforcing as a security measure, and by the time Wheeljack responds, she feels somewhat less shaky.
WB: Wheeljack? Are you there?
WJ: yup. what's up? metroplex bust another heat sink or something?
WB: Nothing like that. I'm not sure, but you should probably check on Starscream. Soon.
WJ: I can make it to his place in a coupla kliks, but what went down?
WJ: weren't you going to - oh for frag's sake, did he try to kill you? you okay?
WB: I'm fine. Shaken, but fine. And no, he didn't, but it was something serious. I don't know if it was something I said or did, but he stopped looking at me and just...stopped.
WJ: could use a little more to work with than that.
WB: My apologies, I'm trying to figure out the words for it.
WB: He didn't seem to be aware of me anymore; he'd answer me, obliquely, but it felt like it was all directed at someone else. One second he was with me, the next he seemed to be adrift.
WJ: okay, that ain't normal. I'm headed over now. you still there?
WB: No. I meant to stay, but when he regained awareness he became vehemently opposed to my attempts to discuss the incident, and ordered me out. I'm worried about him.
WB: You may want to be careful; he accused me of trying to use you against him when I asked if he wanted to comm you.
WJ: oh, that's gonna be fun.
WB: Do you have any idea what could have caused this?
WJ: I barely have a handle on the mech on a good day. his processor's a snarly mess.
WB: An educated guess?
WJ: it's hard to tell when he's overthinking everything and upsetting himself over something dumb, and when he's upset about something that's legitimately, y'know. upsetting.
WJ: sounds like this was the second. he gets vicious when he thinks he's shown a real weakness. doesn't handle it well at all.
WB: I've noticed. And this was unsettling. I think he expected me to...hurt him, and keep going. He wouldn't even respond enough to do anything but taunt me.
WJ: I'll try to figure out what pinged him, but I mean.
WJ: sometimes I think the Decepticon side of the war was just one massive, cascading failure of unfathomable proportions as far as trust and safety and other scrap goes.
WB: It was really that bad?
WJ: let's just say that rival makeouts have got some pretty dicey connotations, depending on who you talk to, who they ran into during the war...stuff happened.
WB: They can't have simply dropped rivalry wholesale as a relationship model in favor of assault! I - that's -
WJ: the whole thing had four million years to go sour, is all.
WJ: wasn't so bad if you wound up in rivals with someone on our own side, but I know some Decepticons got creepy intense. heck, some of our side was just as bad. lotta frontliners who won't talk for scrap when people ask what went down behind enemy lines.
Starscream's quarters are close enough to the heart of Metroplex that Windblade can cover the distance far too quickly; with each message from Wheeljack, her spark hurts a little more. She sets down on the edge of a building that has gone dark to conserve power for repairs in the night, her heels scraping under her as she skids through the landing. She can't go back to Chromia like this, she thinks, feeling woozy.
WB: That's horrible. I shouldn't have - I didn't know. I wouldn't have pushed him if I'd realized. I thought we were both -
WJ: oh no, he's been coming at you strong, it's been mutual. plus he's a total aft; if you're not pushing him, he'll trample you.
WJ: if some old scrap got dredged up in his processor, though, the only mech I can think of who'd have fragged Starscream over enough for it to throw him that badly off his game is, uh, Megatron. those two were just fucking awful for each other. on multiple levels.
WB: Well. That's torn it, I suppose.
WJ: you can make it work, probably. 'cept Starscream's a dipstick who won't let on when he's hurting, which means you kinda have to read his fragging processor half the time to get where you're trying to go without him going all defensive on you. it's pretty inconvenient.
WB: That's...urgh. I need to think about this.
WB: Are you there? I'll try something different on my end tomorrow, so that hopefully this won't get any worse. We need to be able to work together, still, and I know he's going to overcompensate if -
WJ: yeah, m'here. Rattrap's being a cagey little shit, though.
WJ: was he throwing things around and getting all screamy when you left?
WB: No, but he didn't seem far from it. Will you be alright?
WJ: I've been in a room where someone forgot to secure the tables before giving Prowl bad news. unless he's got the swords out, there's not much he can throw that's more deadly than a table launched at mach Prowl speeds.
WB: I can't help but think it would be preferable if he didn't throw things at you at all.
WJ: hey, he hasn't thrown anything at me, and I'd rather he tear up the room to work out whatever's bugging him than have him do something stupider.
WB: Like try to reflexively assassinate me?
WJ: pretty much. gotta go. I'll keep you posted.
WB: Good luck.
Wheeljack's end of the comm link clicks off, and Windblade is left with the wind and the distant sounds of Cybertronians passing through the streets below. Underneath that, she can make out the faint, resonating whirr of Metroplex's systems - even in cityform, he's never completely silent. It's not possible to hear Starscream from here, no matter how shrill his yelling can be or how she strainers her audials, but she imagines she can half-hear him shouting, like a phantom voice in her processor. She sits, shoulders slumped, with her legs hanging over the side of the building, trying to collect her thoughts. After a moment, she bites her lower lip and replays her memory of the last twenty minutes. The shift in Starscream's demeanor is just as jarring the second time around, and it starts almost immediately after she made sardonic comments about his rule over Cybertron. More daring and skating closer to an outright jab than she usually permits herself, but at the time, she was trying to point out the line between Starscream's lordly ego and what she would be willing to put up with in the berth. Nothing strikes her as especially cruel in context.
She doesn't know what raw wire she struck in the process of bantering with him, but it was still tactless. Her usual impression of Starscream is not that he'd be hurt by such comments to the point of shutting down, but that as a touchy mech he'd be quick to snark back and try to pull a reversal...but she's missed something important here. If Wheeljack is right, she doesn't have the full context for Starscream's stressors - sometimes she thinks she'll never have enough context to understand just how horribly wrong the war went - and while Wheeljack may calm Starscream and get some kind of explanation out of him, there's no guarantee that Wheeljack will share the details with her. A full, formal, public apology might be in order, if she wants to salvage whatever is left between them, as well as another one in private when Starscream is in a better head space.
Barring the possibility that Starscream might never want to take things in that direction again, however, Windblade left with exactly the same dilemma as before. She must apologize, and the instant she does so Starscream will take that as an invitation to extract concession after concession from her until he's satisfied, and Primus only knows he already holds enough blackmail material on Chromia and herself to bury them. If she doesn't have a way to hold and enforce her boundaries, none of it will matter. On Caminus, there are several different forms and dynamics that all fall under the heading of aemula apart from the traditional rivalry, but how is she to adapt one that suits her and Starscream without potentially provoking another flashback? With someone like Starscream, she can ill-afford to make mistakes; she doesn't know how Wheeljack manages it, even if he's aiming for amica instead of -
Oh.
Hm.
There's a thought.
-
She doesn't see Starscream for two days after that. Wheeljack comms her the next morning when Chromia drags her out for combat practice at dawn, but it's a short message that boils down to Starscream being marginally less likely to shove Windblade through the space bridge the first chance he gets. Which is, well - progress. Chromia chastises her for acting distracted after staying up all night, and Windblade spends the rest of the morning performing pattern dances with different weapons to placate Chromia's sadistic streak. Afterward, she stays sequestered with Metroplex, sifting through more data to see which of the many, many necessary repairs can be moved to the top of the priority tree, and which of them Metroplex lacks the resources to complete on his own. Windblade can never quite glimpse the whole picture - Metroplex's mind is just too vast - and so every day it feels like the accumulated list of repairs gets longer. Just as Metroplex finishes healing in one section, another will start to crash because Windblade didn't translate the relevant damage report in time. If they were on Caminus, she would have long since called another cityspeaker to assist with communication lapses so severe, the two of them working synchronously to filter through more of the titan's scattered thoughts. But there is no one to help her, here.
Thankfully, nothing blows up before Starscream storms in on the evening of the second day, and Windblade cautiously marks the internal repair of Metroplex's labyrinthine arteria complete; with luck and one last push from the mechs manually repairing part of the titan's vestibular system, they might be able to clear kinesthetic sensors from the list. It's a huge step forward. "You should announce it yourself," Chromia says, drumming her servos along her folded arms as she watches Windblade from the far wall.
Windblade rolls her optics to the ceiling, easing her helm to the side as she massages a crink in the back of her neck. The only times that she has held a press conference or otherwise contacted the Cybertronian media were either unmitigated disasters, ineffectual, or met with continued demands that the city's ongoing energy grid issues be resolved. Most mechs aren't interested in the thousands of things broken in Metroplex; they want to hear about what affects them directly. Letting Starscream have his spotlight and get credit for the announcements about major repairs means that all the ensuing petitions and blame get directed at his office, and when Windblade isn't vexed by Starscream's outrageous obsession with being the center of attention, she's perfectly happy to dump all that in his lap. The attention puffs up Starscream's ego, a pleased Starscream signs off on more of Windblade's requests for materials to speed along Metroplex's repairs - Windblade's happy to make that trade. "Half the city doesn't know or care what a labyrinthine arteria is," she points out, touching Chromia's arm as she passes her to reach the door. "We know how important this is; let Starscream decide whether it's worth telling everyone."
"Telling everyone what, Windblade? Do tell me."
Starscream barges in with no other warning, Rattrap darting in after him and almost ramming into Chromia's elbow when he tries to scuttle into the shadows along the wall. Starscream's polished to within an inch of his life, every highlight in his paint glistening like it's been recently repainted, and he stomps past Windblade and stalks toward the center of the chamber like he owns the place. Windblade, caught mid-step, has to turn and hurry to keep pace with him. He puts on a pompous show of inspecting the room with a critical optic, while Rattrap's eyes gleam as he does his own eager scan, eager to find something awry or easily sabotaged.
If Rattrap ever tries to sabotage or prod at anything in here, Windblade will kick him through a window herself. "Good news, Lord Starscream," she says, in her most agreeable, professional voice, her servos folded together in front of her. "Metroplex has completed a major sequence of repairs to his internal energon lines, and we should finish restoring the damaged portions of his kinesthetic sensors within a week. With that resolved in his priority tree, he'll be able to spread his auto-repair to cover more of the non-essential sectors, including the energy grid. It won't be instantaneous, but it is very promising."
"Unless something goes wrong - as usual," Starscream says, dismissively waving a hand. He spins and Windblade has to quickly sidestep to avoid being jostled by the edge of his wing as he sails toward the exit without looking at her. "Carry on, then."
Chromia stiffens, jaw clenched with resentment, but Windblade bows her head. It's the brutal, honest truth. Something will go wrong again - Metroplex will get worse before he gets better. Starscream is perfectly right to anticipate that.
Even if he is insufferable about it. Windblade allows herself a short grimace, directed firmly at the unflappable, ever-stoic floor, before lifting her head. She starts a little when she realizes Starscream has stopped in the doorway to glare at her. "I want to see you later for an...important discussion, cityspeaker." He pings her a timestamp so forcefully that Windblade's left momentarily baffled that a comm ping can even feel forceful, and then stalks away down the hall.
She and Chromia stand in frozen silence for a solid klik before Chromia opens and closes her mouth, and says, "You're not going."
Windblade sets her jaw. "Yes. Yes I am." While Chromia gears up for a proper argument, Windblade ex-vents deeply, and comms Wheeljack to make absolutely, positively sure that Starscream isn't plotting her demise or setting her up. Windblade has had two days to prepare and gather what she needs and rethink her approach, but Starscream is...Starscream.
-
Starscream pushes her through the door this time, and Windblade scrambles to keep her footing as he barrels straight past the main room and shoves through the door that they struggled with last time. Two days have passed, which is long enough for any damage Starscream might have done to his quarters to have been cleaned up and for broken furnishings to be replaced; Windblade doesn't have time to catalog what seems out of place apart from a small figurine that usually sits on Starscream's desk, which appears to have gone missing. They're kissing - by some definition of the word - but Starscream keeps up a steady stream of vicious mutters instead of paying attention to what they're doing, and his words gouge right into Windblade's audials. "So, you think it's acceptable to bring Wheeljack into this? Really, I didn't think you were that stupid. 'Oh, poor, pathetic Starscream, what a spark-quenchingly wretched mess he is, Wheeljack, you just have to hurry right on over and -'" Starscream uses the highest, screechiest pitch his vocalizer can emit, far higher than anything Windblade's has ever produced, and she actually thinks it makes her audial sensors bleed a little. "Did it make you feel good? Vindicated? You all have this frankly ghastly obsession with 'doing the right thing.' Let me guess, he told you allll about it afterward. Tell the truth, Windblade, or are you a liar on top of everything else -"
Windblade slips her hand up between them and covers his mouth. "You're babbling, Starscream," she informs him. A snarl rips out of his vocalizer and he bites her thumb, which is exceedingly immature. Windblade hooks her thumb around into his mouth, pressing down on his glossa and leaning up to stare Starscream dead in the eye. "Wheeljack didn't tell me anything. You can believe me or not, whatever you wish, but shouldn't you trust him that much, at least?"
Starscream glowers, his teeth tight on either side of her servo. "Don't be ridiculous. Trust doesn't keep you alive," he says. And that's...depressing and pretentious at the same time. Windblade doubts a gag would go over well under the circumstances (Starscream does love to listen to himself talk), but she does run her servo over his mouth with a deliberate caress on the way out, and files the thought away for later. She sways backward toward the berth, but her processor kicks into high gear looking for an opening to switch them around. She might - emphasis on might - be flexible enough to manage this with Starscream on top, but he'll fight her for every inch and he would have a definite weight advantage no matter what. He walks almost in lockstep with her, his smile widening with a biting, vicious edge that makes Windblade shudder. Calm, calm. She has control. As long as she has control of herself, she can control what happens here. If her approach doesn't work this time, then - well, they'll see how it goes from there.
Before they reach the berth, Starscream tries to grab for her waist. Windblade spins into it and uses her hand against his face to turn his helm; the rest of his frame twists to adjust, and he doesn't catch the mistake in time. She doesn't try to trip him - she doesn't know exactly what to avoid to prevent another mishap, but she doesn't want to repeat too much, regardless. Starscream snakes an arm around her with more success this time, and this time she steps into it to nudge him back. He drops onto the berth with sudden grace, reeling her in like he planned for this to happen. She follows obligingly, swinging one leg up to better straddle his lap, and only then, once he yanks her down for a biting kiss, does she tip his torso over with the weight of her frame, her legs squeezing his sides as they drop.
He jams a foot against the berth and flips them, hovering over her with one hand crushing hers so that she can't shove his helm to the side to throw him off balance again. Windblade tenses at once, baring her teeth when Starscream's grin transforms into a victorious smirk, and then braces herself to try to flip them back over. She has something in her subspace that should help her keep him pinned, but only after he's down.
All of that hinges on her being able to kick a heavy frame over without dislocating a strut or something. Starscream's not that much taller than her, but Camien frames are built sparingly to conserve scarce resources, and she by no stretch of the imagination has anything resembling a weight or height advantage. Thank everything for Chromia, and her devoted persistence in teaching Windblade self-defense for fighting larger mechs. Windblade snakes a hand around to find a leverage point, but Starscream catches it and pounces on her arm to pin it. "Hm? And what now, Windblade?" he taunts; when Windblade grimaces at him, he looks smug. "Is that the best you've got?"
She tucks the heel of one foot underneath her, as close to her as she can manage, and while Starscream's busy gloating, rotates her right arm around so that his hand gets twisted at an awkward angle, weakening his grip. When he tightens his hand rather than fixing his hold, she uses her tucked foot to shove her hips up and the other leg to push them both over. He's heavy, but not heavy enough, and he sprawls out up against the wall with a curse as Windblade steadies herself. There's not enough room left on the berth to keep rolling unless they start to head back the way they came and fall off onto the floor. Starscream lets go of one of her hands completely to try to overturn her, and she reaches into the back panel of her subspace and lunges forward at the same time to pin him against the wall. It's not ideal, but the wall's made of metal so it'll work just fine. He crushes her other wrist and refuses to let go even when she pushes both their arms up over his head - perfect. Starscream tilts his head forward to kiss her, and she seizes his free hand to bring it up alongside the other, the stasis cuffs hooked on her smallest two servos. They clack against her forearm and Starscream's head jerks away from hers. She slaps the cuffs around his wrists before he finishes looking up, and they magnetize to the wall with faint thunk. "Not quite," she says, smiling against his mouth.
Starscream stares at her, one eye slightly brighter than the other as he sits slumped against the wall. Windblade backs off a little, letting her hands trail down his arms as she straightens. He tries to shift just his hands, at first, and when that fails, his whole body lurches up under her in a sudden yank. Windblade nearly falls off - at this angle, there's not much space between their legs and the edge - and catches herself on his shoulders as he writhes to try to jerk his wrists free of the cuffs. Or maybe to try and pull them off the wall manually; she's not sure exactly how strong he can be if he applies himself, but the magnets are supposed to be strong enough to hold a mech. Hopefully. With a hiss of fury, Starscream tries to bite her again - this time, with enough force that Windblade dodges out of fear for her faceplate. He thrashes against the restraints again, and then, without warning, sags against the wall, teeth gritted as he gives her a sullen stare. "Ha. Really, then? Well, well, maybe you'll actually have the stomach to go through with it, this time," he says, wry, his eyes starting to track over her shoulder instead of looking at her.
"Go through with what?" she asks, struggling not to let a ripple of panic edge into her voice. What did she do that set this odd mood off now? Now she's left wishing Wheeljack really had given her something more to work with; is there really no approach to this that won't set off Starscream's alarms? He doesn't answer except to laugh, so Windblade snaps her fingers right in front of Starscream's eye, since his audials don't seem to be working. He twitches and scowls at her; he's not all the way gone yet, then. She needs to keep his mind here, not lost in whatever thoughts keep stealing over him. "It sounds like we are still not on the same page, here. What do you think I'm going to do, Starscream?"
His optics flash. "Don't play - coy!" he says, and this time he jams a knee under her and tries to kick her in the panel. Good grief. "Let's go already. I'm waiting!"
She raises her hands to the cuffs without thinking - but - "I'm not going to hurt you," Windblade says, her voice level. She tries rubbing her thumbs into the divots of his wrist, dipping into the tense cables there to try to help them relax. He keeps clenching and flexing his servos into fists, and the claw-like tips dig into his own palms to leave silvery scrapes along the paint. "I mean it, Starscream. It'll be alright." This isn't working. "Do you want me to take them off?"
He looks at her like she's insane, but he looks at her. While she waits, she strokes her palms down the grey of his inner arms and into the open space where his armor gives way to the elbow joint, digging her servo into a wire and skittering further in until she hits the underside of the armor plate. Starscream squirms and spits, "Wh- now you're asking?" That's fair, and jolts Windblade sickeningly, but Starscream's rolling his optics at her before she can yank her hands out of his armor to uncuff him. "Ugh, don't. Do I look like I care? Do you think I can't still kill you, like this?"
That wasn't the point of the cuffs - she wanted to pre-empt Starscream's attempts to flip her, because that wasn't a battle she was going to win if it dragged out too long - but cutting down on the number of methods he could use to try to stab or shoot her would have been nice. (She should have asked first; she can't get so caught up in this that she forgets basic courtesy like that again. Dammit.) And now she can't read whether he's bluffing or not. "I believe that you can. I would rather prefer that you not," Windblade says, settling for tact rather than trying to call the bluff. She frames his face with her hands and lets her servos trace the smooth edges. He squints at her fingers with deep suspicion, right up until she kisses him. She keeps it firm but doesn't use teeth; she's not trying to soften this down to conjunx or amica levels of gentleness, but he needs something to keep him grounded here, and she needs to apologize and make up for her own slip. Ask and listen, don't assume. "If you want me to take them off at any point, or just stop entirely, tell me. Is there a word you prefer to use?"
This time, it's not that he looks like her as though she's insane - it's a look of total and all-encompassing incomprehension. "Something you wouldn't say normally when you're talking to me," she says, trying to prompt him, but he shrugs impatiently and tests the cuffs again like he's bored. "So that if you need an out or feel like it's too much, you have one. Starscream, really, you don't have a safe-word? Are you even listening to me?"
"No, I'm too busy being stuck to a wall while the person who should be taking advantage of her free hands to overload me is blathering on about ridiculous alien customs," he retorts, jamming his leg up under her panel again and rubbing hard.
"There is no way that is a purely Camien custom because it has ancient historical precedent and if you don't know to use one, then -" Windblade shuts up. She shuts up, and the fact that Starscream expects pain, and doesn't know (or want to use) a safe-word, and has apparently spent the last few million years in a relationship infamous (at least to Wheeljack) for being a complete and utter trainwreck -
She's feeling ill again. Starscream's insistent grinding keeps sparking off arousal low in her belly, but her tank is tying itself in knots. "If something is wrong, you have to tell me, or I'm uncuffing you and leaving right now," she says, her vocalizer strained. Wheeljack said that too, though, didn't he? Starscream hates exposing weakness, Starscream doesn't let on when he's hurting because that's a weakness...
"Fine," he says, like she has personally extracted the word from him with a hook, and he huffs and wraps a leg around her back to drag her closer. "If I start yelling for Rattrap, assume it means get off, or I'll have Rattrap make himself useful and shoot you as soon as he stops spying and gets his incompetent aft in here."
Windblade wrinkles her nose. "Really...?" She'd prefer not to think about Rattrap listening in at all; it's an unpleasant fact of life around Starscream, but really. "Why do you put up with that?"
"Because that way I know where he is," Starscream says, with the air of someone explaining things to a fresh protoform. "Now hurry up and impress me with whatever you've been plotting, since you've got what you wanted. I'll have you know I have very high standards."
That's the Starscream she expected to hear, last time. Snooty, self-assured, and exasperating beyond all reason. Windblade still feels like she has to stay on high alert, because like frag is she trusting him to say something after having him shut down on her two times already. But the comment about standards sparks an irritating burst of arousal that creeps down her plating, and she keeps her face wrinkled with disgust as she dips down and kisses him. What you are is incorrigible, she thinks to herself, rather than saying it aloud. Her original plan going in tonight was not to voice every gibe she can think of, although needling a rival seems like it should be par for the course - she'd rather take Starscream down a notch in a way that won't break him. Despite getting terribly sidetracked, she thinks they're back to the point she'd like to have started from.
She starts by adjusting her position so that there's no point of contact over his interface array. There's not much she can do to dislodge the leg he's got wrapped around her, but she sits back on the other; halfway down his thigh she stops and settles herself in place so that her weight holds that leg still. Not the most efficient solution; Starscream pauses to stare at her watchfully, and the grinding against her own panel slows to an agonizing crawl. But this is a better vantage point, and if he becomes too much of a distraction, she can change it around later. Nodding to herself, Windblade starts rubbing her hands in circles under the gap in the armor of his arms again, picking up where she left off. She tries to keep the touch firm, scraping the tips of her servos along wires only every three or four passes. Starscream clucks his vocalizer at her with disdain after a klik elapses with her going no further than that. "Windblade -" he begins to say with a note of impatience, his shoulders rolling to compensate for his pinned hands as he leans toward her. Windblade slides her servos up there instead, dipping straight into the seams where his arms meet his torso, and teases the cables and wires there until she feels sparks start to shudder and crackle under her fingers. Starscream doesn't tilt his head to the side or loosen up to give her better access; he keeps forcing his torso forward while his arms strain. She honestly doesn't know what he's hoping to accomplish with that, apart from causing himself discomfort.
All it takes is a small push in the center of his chest and he slumps back against the wall, his wings scraping along the metal with a petulant skreel, but when Windblade gives him a look Starscream just rolls his optics and doesn't offer an excuse or explanation. He's tense again, and she doesn't know why. As much as his self-absorbed talk exasperates her sometimes, she needs to keep him talking. "Lean your helm back a little for me?" she asks, tapping a finger under his chin. He tosses his head and jerks his face up and away, which. Well, it accomplishes basically what she was asking for, but his attitude is - as ever - supremely unhelpful, and she tells him so.
"So what are you going to do, hm? What ingenious punishment have you devised for me?" Starscream drawls. Windblade kneads the lines of his neck with her knuckles, digging in a little at the point where she bit him the other night and feeling put out when she can't find even a trace of a dent or scrape. It hadn't been that hard a bite, but still. Starscream's auto repair must have wasted no time. After enough of a wait, Starscream glares at her accusingly, tapping one heel against the berth as though impatient for a response.
She doesn't know what answer he's expecting, but she lets him wait for it regardless. She pushes up on her knees and kisses him so shortly that it's the worst kind of unsatisfying, and then goes back to working her fingers into the transformation seams that frame his shoulders and torso. His hips rock up under her, but she's got her weight balanced at the widest point of his thigh, so he can't get far. "Punishment isn't the point, Starscream," she tells him, her tone a little too dry to be called patient. She lets her soft, skimming touches trail off on either side of the cockpit glass, and then winds her arms around his neck for a proper, sharp kiss. His frame jerks against the cuffs again when she bites down on his lower lip; it jostles her off balance and she presses all along his front for a brief moment - just long enough for him to cinch his leg in tighter around her waist. She tries to pull back and sit down again, but he catches her lip between his teeth before letting go with a smug cackle, and she finds that no, actually, she can't sit back down. Starscream's locked his free leg in place and propped the one under her up so that she's stuck wedged in the angle between his thigh and his torso, her lower body pinned against his, while sparks starting to arc and prickle from his frame to hers. His interface array presses, warm and insistent.
He's shameless about trying to rush this, and her sour grimace meets a wall of raw, ungracious smugness. Windblade gathers up her dignity and pushes with her arms so that there's space between them again, and room for her to see what she's doing as she starts to stroke and tease his arms again. She traces long lines down the thinner armor of his inner arm, and then runs her palms down all along him to his narrow waist in one go, her touch too gentle and light-handed for him to do more than squirm and spark.
Around the third careful, patient pass, Starscream starts to get agitated. Windblade's nothing but careful, sucking perfectly exact points along his neck, her servos massaging circles in the plating of his waist and stomach but never falling lower, and sometimes lifting her hands up to massage the trembling tension out of his trapped arms. Soft touches that barely registered before now draw tiny, angrily stifled noises out of him whenever he's caught off guard. "What are you doing?" he demands, after his next attempt to get more friction on his array ends when she slips her hands dips down into the exposed nook of grey metal where his red chest armor frames his collar. Starscream arches into it with a frustrated groan, his legs clutching her close. "Why are you doing this?" he says when she goes and sucks the now-over sensitized cable on the side of his neck, his vocalizer cracking ever so slightly. "Hurry - up!"
"I'm taking my time," Windblade says, her smile beatific as she spreads her palms across the concave dip in his armor and allows herself a moment to rock on his leg to relieve some of her own pressure. Her fans are holding at a regular, consistent speed, but only because she's paying close attention to her vents so that she doesn't start to outpace them. "Do you want me to stop?" she asks; a quick check-in can't hurt. "But you're doing so well, Starscream."
Starscream almost crosses his optics, twitching back to stare at her. "Well?" he repeats, incredulous, arousal forgotten.
"Yes, very well," she says, inching one hand lower while Starscream's taken aback. She palms the panel of his array after skipping past the last stretch of his torso, spreading her servos to apply pressure, and he smacks his helm against the wall as he keens. "Make that sound again?" she asks, one part amused and two parts reveling in the moment. Starscream emits another garbled noise when she leans more weight on her palm, but it's not quite the same.
He opens the panel over his valve. She's not expecting that - she really should have, but she still blinks and finds herself pressing a hand to a warm, wet valve instead of armor with no prior notice, and yanks her hand free on reflex. Starscream shrieks at the sudden loss of contact and jams his heel into the small of her back. "What do you want?! You want me to beg? Frag off!" He thrashes, and lubricant from his valve starts to seep onto Windblade's thighs. With the way he has her clamped close with one leg, she can't help but feel it.
Oh, right, and there go her fans, spinning up to the highest setting so fast they start to thrum. Windblade receives no less than fifteen urgent pings from her interface array informing her that her spike is going to pressurize or so help her, Primus, and she's shuddering by the time she dismisses the last of them in a daze. Not yet, she thinks. Instead, she licks the lubricant smear off the center of her hand and then holds Starscream's waist so he can't grind against her leg with total impatient abandon. "You don't have to beg if you don't want to," she says, her vocalizer now seriously impeded by the hitch of her struggling internal fans. Her servos start to glide up Starscream's back; she needs to hover over him, her face shadowing his, so she can reach around for the lower edge of his wings. "All I ask...is that you stay with me. Present, in this moment. What do you say, Starscream?"
She teases the underside of Starscream's left wing, and misses whatever happens next. It feels like slamming into a wall and then being yanked to the side, and when her processor catches up to Starscream's speed, Windblade has two legs wrapped around her neck and Starscream's red optics are sharp and clear with sudden, vicious intent.
...He was absolutely not bluffing about still being able to kill her like this. Urgh. Windblade raises her hands, resting on Starscream's shin without trying to pull it away from where he slowly applying pressure to her neck. "Ghh. No wings?" she says through gritted teeth, though it's strikes another weird, discordant note in her processor to even suggest such an odd thing. Wings are - why would that set Starscream off? That's part and parcel of having an airborne altmode -
"I'll rip your head off, first," Starscream says, his voice full of venom.
Oh, the curiosity is going to eat her alive. She's not dumb enough to pry into Starscream's oddities and personal traumas when he has her entire helm held hostage, though. "Alright. No wings," she says; she would incline her head to back it up, but, well.
Her easy capitulation earns her a sneer. "Just like that? And when should I expect you to conveniently forget that?" Starscream asks, lounging back against the wall and using his legs to hold her off at a precarious angle. Windblade's wings feel nothing but air when she flares them out, and her jumbled legs are right on the edge of the berth.
"I won't," Windblade says, simply. Starscream's skeptical look is telling her...a lot of things. He might think that constant conniving and aggressive suspicion keeps his vulnerabilities guarded, but what she's reading between the lines just makes her spark hurt. He looks a hundred times more dangerous reclining against the wall than she would have thought possible. "If wings are a hard no, I respect that."
She endures the wary glare for a moment longer, and then Starscream reels her back in, the pincer grip around her neck easing off so she can support herself without falling aft-first over the edge. He lets his legs fall on either side of her with twin thumps on the metal, and then stares at her from under his forehelm with goading eyes. "What will make you stop with this charade?" he wonders aloud, idly; Windblade freezes with her hand halfway to her neck. "Waiting for the other pede to drop is annoying, and the fact that you think any of this has fooled me is insulting. I told you to get it over with. I order you to -"
No. Absolutely not. Windblade forgets about checking her neck cables for crush damage and glares right back at Starscream. "I want a rival, not a superior, here. That's my line," she snaps, and then continues on when Starscream opens his mouth to counter her. "And one isn't a condition for the other, before you get that in your processor. I'm not going to cross your boundaries or hurt you out of spite, but if you try to hold politics over me here, I'm done. Are we clear?"
"Ugh," Starscream says. It's a complete non-answer, but he goes on talking as though that counted as a 'yes, of course Windblade, that was a totally reasonable request you made and I agree to the terms without an obscene amount of arguing for argument's sake.' Sometimes Starscream is just...obnoxious beyond words. "Well. We'll see how long that little resolution of yours lasts," he says, bitterness threading through his words. "Now, if you don't mind - either do something or uncuff me so I can finish things myself."
"That stop was all you," Windblade points out.
Starscream scowls and spreads his legs wider, raising his chin imperiously. She finds the inner transformation seam of his thighs and resumes the soft caresses. It isn't the deeper stimulation Starscream wants, and he pouts and rolls his optics like a spoiled brat. Ah, the duality of mecha. Despite the momentary break to threaten to snap her spinal struts, Starscream's still crackling with as much charge as before, enough so that Windblade's servos start to buzz and tingle when she finds the deep seams and buried cables on either side of his exposed array and strokes long and slow. He shudders under her touch, and when Windblade takes her hands away he looks incandescent with rage. "Ngh. Am I being too subtle?!" he asks.
"No, you're doing perfectly." Not touching his wings means that a significant chunk of Windblade's plan of action just got cut, but she can improvise. All this has worn at her own self-control; when she ghosts a servo over his anterior node Starscream makes another desperate noise and the heady rush of more notifications from her interface array leaves Windblade dazed. "You're doing such a good job," she says, and it comes out half praise, half wondering.
"What are you even talking about?!" Starscream demands, hoarse and staticky. The sound he makes when she slides a finger into him is gorgeous. Wrecking his vocalizer like this might be an alternative to gagging him; maybe some other time, when he's less obviously bewildered by the fact that she's praising him instead of hurting him, and she can trust that he'll tap out if he needs to even with his vocalizer muted. They're not there yet, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Until then, she'll just have to be mercilessly, cruelly gentle with him, and hope that she makes an impression through his furious haze of arousal. His valve parts for another finger with no trouble, so over-lubricated and overheated from lack of attention that the excess drips down along the sides and palm of her hand, and he clamps down with both legs to hold her there and thrust down on her fingers with shuddering calipers. "If you can come from just this, I will be happy to keep going," she promises, laughing, and Starscream's valve convulses so hard on her servos that she almost thinks he's overloading. But the charge doesn't seem to have finished building yet, though he radiates heat like he's about to blow a fuse, and Windblade uses her free hand to raise his face so she can get a better look at him. His optics have gone a dim, hazy red, but he still has the presence of mind to glower at her, his vents streaming short, ragged bursts of warm air out as he struggles to ex-vent.
The third servo needs more pressure before his valve stretches to accommodate her, and Starscream kicks out with one foot, his head rolling back toward theg wall. Windblade catches him before he slams it, and cradles his face as she pulls his head back toward her. He tries to angle so that he can grind his node on her hand where it presses up against the warmth of his valve, but she contorts her arm so he can't quite reach, crooking her fingers inside him to feel out internal nodes. "You -" he says, his vocalizer now hitching and skipping completely out of control, "- are the most infuriating mech I have ever - hk -"
Windblade has time to catch his mouth in one last kiss as Starscream starts to spasm, and he tears open a new split in her lower lip so that she swallows a bubble of her energon along with the electric burst of charge that overloads his system. His shout cuts off into a blur of static, close to a sob, and she struggles to drag her servos out to thrust back in twice more while he rocks under her, his armor plates clicking as they reflexively tighten down against his frame. Once the bright shock of overload ebbs away and Starscream starts to subside and sink back, his arms too limp to support his weight, Windblade slides her fingers out and wraps her arms up under where his torso meets his shoulders to keep him from dislocating something. She twines her arms up under and hits the release button on the cuffs so that Starscream can slump down if he needs to. "There. I've got you." She stops herself short before she starts murmuring soothing words into his audials - she's really not interested in waxing that soft on him - but she does press a kiss to his cheek, rubbing a slick thumb over his mouth. "You did excellently," she says, with the faintest, playful hint of teasing in her voice. Just enough to make Starscream bristle at her, her smile impish when he brightens his optics to squint at her.
He takes a solid klik to formulate his reply. "...Frag you," he says, grumbling, and then with a huff he slumps all his weight on her. Windblade stiffens and has to scramble to hold them both upright so they don't flop off the berth under his weight. Starscream is the epitome of unhelpful as she struggles to arrange him in a way that lets her sit flat on the berth, doing his best to sink into her lap and cling to her like a greedy limpet.
Her spike pressurized at some point during the proceedings and the excess charge from Starscream's overload only left it aching. If Starscream weren't determined to treat her like a convenient lap to melt on, she might be able to pay attention to herself, but he rubs up on it without any apparent regard for actually getting her off. "Do you need a break?" Windblade asks, because communication needs to be a thing that she trains Starscream into doing, apparently.
Another disgruntled huff. "No," he replies, indignant. Windblade manages to adjust herself just in time; Starscream flops the last of his weight on her all in one go, pressing her down against the berth. She can feel his engine and fans rumbling in his frame with interest, and the fragger may be too lazy to hold himself up, but he lifts his hips and sinks down on her spike with his valve wet and open. He sinks his teeth into the cables of her neck with a tiny crunch and starts gnawing, while Windblade arches under him into the sudden heat. His internal calipers still twitch with the aftershocks of his overload, and she digs the tips of her servos into his back and drags them down the armor without touching the underside of his wings. Belatedly, he starts to rock with her, and she sinks deeper into him with a jolt. Windblade overloads with a shout, and Starscream rides her with an off-kilter rhythm, his valve pulsing around her while he bites a spot on her neck just below her jaw, her head tilting back to make room as she shudders with roiling charge. She brings shaky hands up to sling around the back of his neck; this time, she's prepared for the heavy weight of his frame sprawling all over her, and vents in careful cycles to keep her processor from spinning off into warm stupor.
"I suppose you think you've won, now," Starscream mutters into her neck. There's no bitter malaise; he just sounds...resigned, under the post-overload satisfaction.
Windblade needs an extra vent to sigh properly, but it's worth it. "It's not about winning. It's about balance. An equal challenge," she says, the energon on her lip already drying and turning sticky when she opens her mouth to speak. Starscream raises his head to roll his optics at her, then flops it down on her shoulder again. "Somehow, I don't think you want me to download a Camien treatise on rivalry to round out the evening."
"Do not," Starscream says immediately, grimacing into the crook of her neck.
"Then I'll explain later." Sometime soon, when it's most likely to vex him. She can claim it's a document of absolute vital importance if Starscream wants to reel in the colony worlds, and then unload a brisk lecture on the nature of rivalry in a society that hasn't spent four million years shredding it in a blender. Who knows, maybe some of it will even penetrate his paranoid processor and help him realize she's not stringing him along with some pretense of sensibility and respect. If she can pull it off with a straight faceplate and find a suitable audience to invite along for the lecture, Starscream should be annoyed, bored, furious, and/or mortified, possibly all at the same time. It'll be lovely.
For now, she has a little while longer before she needs to extricate herself from Starscream's gratuitous lounging and either determine whether he's interested in another round, or fly home for the night. Windblade squirms so that her depressurizing spike can relax, and Starscream stretches and makes himself more comfortable squashing her. Windblade flexes her wings out until they're almost out from under their combined center of gravity, then bites the tip of his nose. Starscream snorts and startles, staring at her with bulging optics as Windblade, pleased with herself, settles her arms around his back and dims her optics a little. "Let me know when you're ready to go," she says, smirking. Starscream looks outraged at this slight to his person when she turns her attention to responding to Chromia's check in ping. If nothing else, this is going to be interesting.