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For whatever reason, Laserbeak had been begging to try whatever new frozen treat had caught her attention recently. She’d even gone as far as to bother Starscream about buying it for her, the little sparkling never stopping even once to explain why it was so important to try to find it, just that it was a need, not a want.
And when he tried to lecture her or claim they didn’t have time to make a detour from their normal errand run, the next thing he knew, there was a pair of beady optics staring back at him, chirping even, the sound so sweet it’s like metallic honey. He could almost taste it. A single blip of gray flew around after, and two red optics became ecstatic with joy.
They were standing in a grocery store, or it was supposed to be a replica of one from Earth on Cybertron; it was hard to tell sometimes. But it was easy to tell that Laserbeak wanted to try ice cream today even if it was cold outside and her frame wasn't built to consume the Cybertronian equivalent of the Earthen-born sweet treat—KnockOut said it would be fine. There was no harm in letting Laserbeak have something nice once in a while.
Starscream started to look around, catching his reflection against the tall frosty glass doors in front of him. Laserbeak was behind him—she zipped back and forth without hesitation or care around her carrier, while his wings raised every so often in response to the breeze that brushed past or in front of him.
“You haven’t even decided what flavor, let alone what kind of ice cream you want to try, and you’re already acting like this.” He teased her. Starscream reached a servo out and waited for Laserbeak to land. Patiently, the seeker began to look at the different kinds in front of them. Maybe there was a reason his sparkling had been unable to decide; there were too many options here.
While the fog against the glass still remains, it’s possible to make out cartons upon cartons of flavors labeled across them. There are even popsicles—either fruit- or milk-based—all bioengineered for Cybertronian tastes and systems despite the Earthen appearance and packaging.
Hesitant but intrigued, Starscream gave up waiting for Laserbeak to come back to him, realizing now she was far too busy and too interested in investigating the rest of the store. The majority of her attention had been stolen away from him because they apparently had those steel mallets she liked to snack on as a treat and the metal blocks Soundwave had gotten for her to chew on—if Starscream wasn’t around or busy with work.
Recently, her favorite pastime had become chewing on her carrier’s metal wings and servos. Maybe it was something inherited from Soundwave, but if not, then all the seeker could do was wait for her teething phase to end.
He knows Laserbeak won’t always be this clingy, holding onto her carrier with such interest. Soon she will wean herself from him, and the heavyweight he’s grown used to sleeping with will become more and more one with Soundwave’s tape deck function. Ice cream seems like a silly thing to give her, but it’s what his conjunx has insisted may soothe her need to bite him so much.
Or that’s what they’re hoping for. Starscream always found it hard to tell when it came to identifying the meaning behind Soundwave’s unspoken words or nonverbal gestures—a flick of his wrist or a simple nod; there were a multitude of things that could’ve been said with that.
So as a result, his conjunx had developed a habit of using his data cables or visor to tell him things, but by now the seeker had grown used to talking for the both of them when faced with Soundwave’s quiet presence—before it used to be the most frustrating thing to witness or try to translate.
Starscream used to pace back and forth, wondering why Megatron had insisted they get along, eager almost as if this was a new method to torture the both of them. The seeker hated the silence more than anything, but he couldn’t remember what it was like to not have someone standing behind him or the slinking sensation of a data cable around his waist—so he wouldn’t escape or think about it.
When it had first happened, Starscream could only recall the burning sense of shame that had washed over his frame. Soundwave, however, only pretended to ignore the seeker and bend his neck in the opposite direction, visor turned the other way—a thousand curses thrown in his direction and bounced off without question.
In his old dialect, Starscream would vent his anger until Soundwave looked back at him and played every swear, every vile curse, and every inherent insult for him to listen to—all of it in his own voice.
Millions of stellar cycles later, he still didn’t understand the fascination Soundwave had with him or the interest in keeping a data cable around him—waist, servo, arm, leg, wing—everything and anything was fair game, it seemed. The cable stayed there, but what followed was always the sound of a clack, the clack of something against his cheek or his servos, maybe a shoulder, because Soundwave preferred the silence. It was probably his favorite thing in the world if Starscream had to guess.
Because when the lights are off and they’re curled in their quarters together, instead of a visor or a data cable, there’s a nose pressed to his neck and something sharp dragging against his metal, Soundwave likes to take advantage of their sleeping positions because it’s dark and quiet. Because love to him means to no longer deny the self of what it wants, and the additional chirp of warmth that joins them later is proof of that.
When the silence is all they have—not even words are enough—there’s only a place to stay and enjoy the patience of ordinary things as they come. And one day, if it’s something they may not ever get again, the seeker decides to let them have this moment, trapped in a cycle, always scanning through a crowd until he can lock optics with Soundwave and Laserbeak, until the tension in his shoulders starts to finally relax and he finds where he’s supposed to be.
Maybe his trine and Skyfire were right. He was capable of love.
“This one?” Starscream asked, curiously gazing at whatever Laserbeak was eagerly pecking her beak at. She pecked at the opaque clear plastic cover, the only thing protecting the ice cream she’d finally decided on from being eaten or ruined. If only looks or pecking could melt plastic. “You might as well just buy every flavor here instead.” He laughed, trying to stop Laserbeak before she hurt herself or, worse, got frustrated enough to use her blasters on it.
It was an ice cream cone. Soft serve maybe, and the flavor she picked was rather basic. He couldn’t help but wonder why she was so happy about it. It was just a vanilla soft serve, but what must have brought her so much joy was the cone. Shaped like a fish with its mouth wide open as if it wanted to say hello or blow a bubble—the reality was that the opening served as the vessel for the soft serve swirl.
A delicate treasure, collecting the eager and rowdy excitement that came from Laserbeak, looking more at the shape, she must have chosen it because the cone was fish-shaped. Her sharp chirps only prove Starscream’s theory even more.
They took her to an aquarium a while ago for fun, and there bloomed a fascination with fish and their swimming scales of silver.
Laserbeak liked the fish there. She liked how they swam; some fish were slow, some fish were fast, but she loved them all the same. She loved how peaceful they looked, even if the tank they swam or stayed in was only a fraction of the ocean they were supposed to have come from. Where survival is quiet, sometimes low, but if it isn’t, then it’s bountiful and full of sunshine, with only a passing ship or sinking cage to greet them.
Or maybe she loved how the aquarium’s interior had looked that day. The room’s lights were dimmed to near darkness, the silence of the exhibit was all that filled the room, and the ocean floor in front of them was filled with organic life—teeming with it—maybe Soundwave loved it too.
He’d had his visor and servos pressed against the thick glass, the only separation that marked the beginning and end of where the fish swam and where he stood. And if he stood still and long enough, a fish would swim to silently greet him, but so would the hovering weight of a shadow from above—more fish, more life, more genuine wonder at how they communicated without speech, just movement.
It lingered in the reflection of Soundwave’s visor, or so the data cable around Starscream’s waist had hinted, pulling him toward the glass, so together they could stare at the almost endless dark sea, all of their attention drawn to a pair of fish swimming together in the background as if they were playing.
“Faster! Faster! Faster, Care!” Laserbeak squealed. She was currently sitting atop a perch, something built so she could have an easier time finding a place to eat if not with Soundwave or Starscream. “I want to eat it now!”
Starscream chuckled. His servos pressed around the slippery plastic material that barred him from freeing, or rather, opening the soft serve. Laserbeak had been desperate to get a taste of, “I’m trying, little one. Give your car another click.”
Eventually, he had managed to free it, but to his surprise it had melted a little and started to drip down his servos. Starscream sighed and moved to get a wipe, anything to at least remove the cold and sticky melting soft serve, but stopped when he saw Soundwave approach him. His head tilted to the side, and a data cable stretched out to greet him in the same breath.
“Ice cream?” Soundwave rasped.
Starscream almost smiled hearing Soundwave so willing to use his vocal cords every so often in front of him, glad his conjunx had taken his previous words to heart. “Laserbeak wanted to try it. I’m sure you can guess why she picked this.” He showed off the soft serve in his hand with joy. “She likes fish.”
“She does?”
“Yes.”
Soundwave nodded, clearly interested as well as he leaned in to look at it, but what happened next had shocked Starscream—barely able to gather a few moments of composure or hide the hitch in his vocalizer.
Sometimes Starscream wonders if everything in front of him is a hallucination, a joke that forgot to end. He forces himself to hold still as Soundwave starts to eat the ice cream in his servos; the tip of his glossa drags across it, slow and steady.
There’s a glimmer of amusement that darts across Soundwave’s gaze when he meets Starscream’s optics and licks his digits. Faceplate tilted towards it while his mind rested elsewhere, so teasing. But it doesn’t last long, and Soundwave, as if a creature of liminal spaces, starts to pull away, but not before taking another bite of the now more-than-melting sweet treat, finishing it off with ease.
“Soundwave wanted to try some too.” He said after, tilting his head to the side again, but this time, he gives way by licking the rest of it off his lips. “It tastes sweet.”
Starscream raised the half-eaten soft serve to his optics and squeaked. This was the last thing he expected to have witnessed, let alone in front of Laserbeak. The feeling of guilt stunned him for a moment. Maybe he’d been reading too much into Soundwave’s actions, and tried to tell to himself that it would have been awkward to assume Soundwave had been acting rather suggestive in nature just now. However, it would have been a lie to say that the seeker didn’t drink in the sight of Soundwave licking his digits a little, alongside the soft serve itself, before eating more of it in one bite.
After thinking about it more, Starscream decided it was safer to not say anything and to ignore it. Force himself to not ask Soundwave what that was all about. His conjunx was probably just being weird again—he always was.
“My ice cream!?” Laserbeak wailed. She had been looking down at them in horror, watching as her beloved soft serve had mostly been eaten by her sire and then promptly abandoned as if he hadn’t done anything. “He took a bite of…my ice cream…”
“I’ll get you another one…” Starscream tried to say, but the vague and sneaking sensation of a data cable started to loop around his waist and quickly pulled him through a space bridge; however, to where, he wasn’t so sure, “...and make your sire come with us too.” He finished, but instead of finishing his words in front of Laserbeak, it was Soundwave instead.
There they stood in a vaguely familiar-looking and dim room. When Starscream confirmed his earlier suspicions had indeed been semi-correct and that he was probably in more danger than he realized, he could only raise an optic bridge and look at still-melting soft serve in his servo.
“Can I help you?” Starscream asked. “Or can I go? You do owe our sparkling a new ice cream after all.”
“Soundwave wants more.”
“More?”
“More.” Soundwave’s mouth raised as he said that and leaned in to lick at Starscream’s servo again, a few data cables making their way towards the seeker as well, both knowing very well where they’d be best used and soon. “Soundwave would like more ice cream, please.”
The words made Starscream start to shudder as he nodded and offered it to Soundwave with a smirk. “Go on, it's all yours.”