Chapter Text
“Are you sure this is alright?”
Optimus smiles, his faceplates even more inviting.
“Yes. If you are in need of a fresh painting, I encourage you to have one,” he says, nodding to the paint cans he placed down on the floor of the washracks. “You do not need to renounce that.”
“Not…” Starscream tightens one side of his mouth. “Quite renouncing…”
More like saving on resources. As is common sense to do in their time.
Optimus shakes his helm, a gentle admonishment to his protest.
“I prefer to see you content with your frame than save on resources. Please, take care of yourself now.”
Starscream scoffs. As if it’s that easy to resign himself and embellish and stick out like an eyesore, after he struggled to accept a more ragged appearance to blend in.
“I thought all of this was for you,” he says, throwing the grounder an accusing look.
Optimus’s smile feels mischievous now, despite not changing in its soft quality.
“It can be for you.”
“Both of us,” Starscream decides on a whim, then clears his vocalizer to regain a respectful tone. “It can be for both of us.”
He isn’t going to be the only one flaunting around a fresh paint job.
Optimus’s optics cycle twice, his lips curving up.
“If you are comfortable with this.”
“I am.”
Even when he feels the most exposed, a persistent voice reassures him: Optimus is safe. That internal certainty makes it possible to trust, despite discomfort. It’s already a miracle in itself that someone as huge as him grew to be a source of comfort.
The wash racks are soon filled with the white noise of sanding their plating from the dirt and impurities of the desert, scratching that allows systems to slow down and sensors to feel the caress of the sanders over scuffed plates. With such a controlled and neat space, Optimus’s quietness and focus on the task stand out. Even though he despises feeling needy, Starscream wishes that any kind of conversation would happen. Yet, nothing outside of silence.
More silence.
Even more silence.
“Optimus,” he calls, feeling… ignored. Unwanted. He knows what it’s like when others pretend he doesn’t exist; it’s a familiar ache, settling in his chest. “Why do you seem so afraid to want me?”
The look on the taller bot’s faceplates is one of oh so quiet, nearly invisible surprise. It’s a fortunate thing that Optimus’s emotions are this quiet, this invisible to anyone who insists on searching. Starscream never searched for something else, he never wanted emotions he couldn’t discern, just avoid disappointment, anger, warning looks directed at him. Optimus never looked at him as if he saw someone whose existence was insulting, someone to fool to keep sated.
It’s his most glaring weakness – his most precious, life-saving quality.
Optimus is holding the sander through the plates of his middle, chipping away at the crusted paint.
“It is not fear.” The grounder steals a glance at him. “I wish to be cautious with you.”
“Can you look me in the optics while you say that?”
Optimus does look at him, but this time only without a lie on his glossa.
“Fear is an emotion I could never feel toward you,” Optimus says, teal blue optics steadily finding their way back to his faceplates. “I am… grateful, for you.”
Despite the warmth that makes his spark ache, Starscream takes notice of the stilted speech, how it’s an indication of something even more profound than treasuring his presence.
Optimus signals for him to turn so he can tend to his back more thoroughly than he could.
Starscream does admit he feels uncomfortable with the soft accusation he’s about to make, especially when Optimus is moving the sander over his back plates, indulging him when his engines hum at the massaging sensation.
“I feel your fear, Optimus.”
The Prime’s movement of the sander slows in response. As if to offer an apology, Optimus tends to the underside of his wings, turning his engines’ hums into content purrs, his wings fluttering on their own.
“I am afraid,” Optimus confesses, hidden behind his back. “To lose your trust.”
If he wasn’t falling into a proper state of relaxation, Starscream would have sputtered.
“How can you lose it?”
There are hundreds of ways to lose trust, but none of them applies to Optimus, who just sighs and falls quiet.
The massage to his wings lasts a while, soothing, cleaning vibrations have him squirming at times from how comforting, pleasurable it all feels.
Finished with his frame, it’s Optimus’s turn to have his plating tended in its most difficult-to-reach parts. Starscream takes the sander from the reluctant grounder’s servos and gestures Optimus to sit down. He starts easy, cleaning Optimus’s shoulder blades, over the delicate seams of his armor and the expanse of each plate, trying to get the Prime to settle down as well.
“I am not infallible,” Optimus says after a minute or two. “I am still learning, many years from the beginning of my function.”
He sounds wistful, remorseful for something that brought no harm at all. Merely a few thoughts more than… than usual. Sometimes, Starscream catches himself feeling weird by deeming this routine “the usual”. Perhaps the feeling will disappear over time. He certainly would like it to.
Only when Starscream reaches the pauldrons and focuses on one shoulder joint he sees Optimus’s finials lower, an unconscious display of ease. Truck engines growl subtly, almost timidly, spurring him to continue.
“I don’t see you as infallible. You are a naïve fool who chose the most difficult path,” Starscream retorts, moving to the remaining stiff shoulder, rotating the flat head of the sander to loosen up the tension, one brush after another. “And… you could say, I’m glad you did.”
Only a naïve fool would have given him something, anything at all to pull himself up from the misery in which he sank beating after beating, betrayal after betrayal, every time cowardice and pride and paranoia won over.
Only a naïve fool would have had the strength to promise him more…
He turns off the sander, setting it aside to reach in between the cables of Optimus’s neck, delicately digging through the cables and the little nooks and crannies to reach the insidious dirt stuck in there. When the purrs of engines respond to his doting, he can’t help the proud quirk of his lips.
Once he’s done, squared digits take his servo into a reverent hold. Optimus is just as reverent as he looks up at him, as if his being is something sacred to him, something he could possibly desecrate, ruin.
“Would you be happy?”
Optimus’s question is vulnerable, open to rejection, accustomed to letting go, to not having anything for himself.
This won’t do, not for the quiet knot of anxiety he might get later on without a clear-cut answer.
He reciprocates the hold by taking the bigger servo in both of his own. “Would you be happy?”
Optimus’s intake curves up into a light, soft smile.
“Yes.”
And there was no hesitation.
Starscream smiles almost too fiercely, almost too wide at that.
“Have me, as I had you,” he says – urges.
Optimus squints his optics in that touched, sincere way that reframes every behavior not as “too much” but as “exactly enough”. Optimus lifts his helm to allow their crests to touch, nudge affectionately, Starscream’s spark beating faster, warmer. Optimus’s thumb strokes his lower lip and he skips a beat, a small shiver runs down his spine.
“My happy seeker…” Optimus murmurs, with those shiny, calming teal optics that make his wings flutter unabashedly.
When Optimus leans to press a kiss over his cheekplate, lips skim over his mesh and leave his waiting intake for last. Starscream all but lets his strong arms hold him, his knees touch the floor so the Prime’s huge form can envelop him in affection. Their chestplates share warmth that feels like belonging, like finding the gift of a lifetime of weariness.
He is enough for Optimus.
He truly is.
They had taken their time applying the fresh paint to their frames, enjoying the shared company, enjoying presence and the newfound understanding of what their relationship was shaping out to be. As such, repainting took a while longer than anticipated. But that didn’t matter to Optimus and neither to Starscream: there should be no schedule in mind when encouraging the smaller bot to receive a much-needed comfort. It had been soothing for Optimus too, incredibly so, he was already looking forward to making a similar offer sometime in the future.
Walking down the halls of the base, his team seemed particularly interested in them. The children too.
It’s only when they pass the med bay that he feels Ratchet’s optics on him, his old friend’s resting expression softening with stupor.
“Look who’s finally showing himself around,” Ratchet teases in his characteristic grunt, to which Optimus smiles. Ratchet softens further upon seeing Starscream behind him. “How is your wing? All good?”
Starscream sends him the tiniest look, to double-check if Ratchet can be interacted with before clearing his vocalizer. “Yes, it is.”
He was scolded for going so long without a medical check, Optimus can’t blame him for the overcautious behavior.
With the cans of paint secured in one arm, Starscream moves past him to store them.
“Starscream…” Ratchet calls, causing the seeker to actually pause this time. “You can visit me whenever you need.”
Starscream smiles despite trying to contain himself. “I believe you made it clear last time.”
“And perhaps this time will stick in that thick processor of yours,” Ratchet says, causing Starscream’s lips to tighten into a grimace, wings twitching. Ratchet’s disgruntled optics land on him next. “Both of your processors.”
Optimus answers his friend with a sheepish look, which has Ratchet wave warmly at him before focusing back on the files he was logging in the database.
“Hey,” a femme’s voice calls next. Arcee and Bumblebee are coming over, with Bulkhead lagging behind them. “Nice makeover.”
“Thank you, Arcee. Indeed, it was needed,” Optimus says, feeling the shift in Starscream’s field the moment the femme gets closer. He places a servo on the seeker’s pauldron, offering support and a place to stand beside.
Bumblebee chirps in agreement, round optics cycling from awe at the bright colors on both their frames.
“New paintjob?” Miko perks up from where she’s tuning her guitar, the couch in the human living area crowded with her, Jack and Rafael. “Maybe I can add an artistic touch? I promise to make you look cool and intimidating!”
“Miko,” Bulkhead says. “I don’t think Optimus and ‘Scream would want human bands' logos on their plating.”
Starscream’s optics narrow.
“Very much not.”
“And here I was about to volunteer you,” Arcee teases, with a malicious yet harmless glint in her optics that has Starscream grimacing good-naturedly.
As if she reaches a realization, Miko places the guitar down and runs over to the railings.
“Arcee, you’d be perfect. Motorcycles are so much cooler with sick logos on!”
“No, you’re not putting anything on Arcee,” Jack says, even locked in a round of intense “gaming” with Rafael. The boy’s answer mirrors the unconvinced look on Arcee’s faceplates.
Optimus looks over his team, reasoning that some of them may be looking forward to a bonding activity and could be waiting for his approval.
“Maybe allowing you a small area can be arranged.”
“On everyone?”
“Now you’re pushing it,” Ratchet jumps in from the med bay.
“Agreed,” Starscream says.
And while negotiations proceed, coming back to a familiar scene – a scene of day-to-day conviviality instead of Decepticon activity – keeps Optimus’s joints lax, wrapped in the mild numbness settling in after care, his plating feeling rejuvenated.
He skims his digits down from Starscream’s pauldron to his arm, which has the seeker looking up at him, questioning, still unsure.
Optimus nods for him to act however he’s the most comfortable with, nothing imposed, only offered. The casual touches are a steady part of their relationship that needs no changing, no matter the insecurity they both might feel.
The wide-eyed look on Starscream’s faceplates mitigates a notch as Starscream reaches up to his servo to keep it there on his arm, where it offers support and acceptance of him – of them – for anyone who looks close enough to see.