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Starscream had grown a bump.
It was kinda cute, this little curve beneath his cockpit, the armour rounded and smooth. It stuck out a little when Starscream placed a servo on his lower back and cocked a hip.
Skywarp had noticed it last week. And the week before. And the week before that. It had started as the tiniest curvature, only visible when the light would hit it just so and disappearing again when Starscream moved or changed his posture, snarling at Skywarp to stop staring.
Skywarp thought it had been his imaginable.
But that was back when it had been subtle.
It sure as Pit weren’t subtle now.
Skywarp stood alongside Starscream and put a servo to his own chassis, comparing the difference. His own waist was flat and cinched, like he was pretty sure Starscream's was supposed to be.
Starscream was scowling at a map hologram, trying to match it to the terrain on the horizon. He'd said something earlier about a Quintesson ship and Megatron had taken a bunch of newly christened Decepticons and gone charging off after them.
Weird he'd left Starscream behind.
Weird that Starscream hadn't thrown a screeching hissy hit about it.
Weird that he had that little bump under his cockpit.
Frag it. He moved in front of Starscream and grabbed him about the waist, measuring with his servos. Even looking down from this angle he could see it. A bump.
"What the Pit are you doing?" Starscream snarled in his face, bared denta seconds away from biting Skywarp's nose off.
Skywarp didn't let go. He moved a servo to Starscream's front, palm sliding over the mesmerisingly smooth armour to cup it from below. "What's this?"
Starscream immediately slapped his servo off, optics darting around, paranoid. "Don't draw attention to it!"
"Why? What is it?"
Starscream hissed at him to be quiet, then looking around to be sure no one had noticed, grabbed Skywarp's wrist and towed him away from their encampment.
Once alone, Starscream stopped to face him.
"Fine ...It's a sparkling."
Skywarp thought his optics were going to blow they grew so bright.
He pointed. "That’s a sparkling?!"
"What else is it going to be?!”
"I don't know. I thought maybe you were hiding something in there?!"
"I am. A sparkling."
Skywarp cringed, "Why?"
"I didn't choose to-!" Starscream cut himself off furiously. "I had... a mishap. There was a misunderstanding."
"You misunderstood someone leaving their code inside you?"
Starscream’s face had taken on colour. He had a servo under his bump now, stroking it self-soothingly, "I didn't realise!"
"...You didn’t realise they'd overloaded inside yo-"
“Not what I meant!” Starscream snarled. "I don't know why I'm explaining this to you!"
"Neither do I." Skywarp stared at his tummy again. Enraptured by it. He wanted to touch it again. Starscream slapped his servo off.
“Ow,” Skywarp shook the sting out of it. "Who sired it?"
Starscream didn't answer.
Skywarp grimaced. “It wasn't Shockwave, was it?"
"Don't be disgusting!"
"It was someone embarrassing." Skywarp insisted, "Or you'd just tell me."
"It wasn't supposed to happen!" Starscream burst out. "He- it was an experiment gone wrong. The stupid fool didn't realise he could-"
He stopped, then started again.
"He didn't know his coding was active. I didn't either, until I'd already kindled."
Skywarp wrinkled his nose.
"So someone here’s just walking around with coding-active transfluid?! Do they think this is some kind of High Guard harem? Who else have they sparked!?”
Skywarp’s servo fell to his own chassis in a panic.
"No one." Starscream snarled. "I told you. They didn't know until they’d already kindled me."
"How can they not have kno-ohhh." Skywarp realised, mid-sentence, how someone might not have known. And who that someone might be.
Like someone who had only recently received their t-cog and may have never interfaced with one before? Someone who had never any need for contraceptive software because although cogless bots could 'face, their coding was dormant. Sterile, essentially.
Starscream was glaring at the horizon.
Skywarp shifted his stance, feeling awkward.
"...Don't you think he's a little young for yo-"
"I'm not that old!" Starscream snarled.
"You're telling me. You're carrying." Skywarp agreed, still a little amazed. "Thought you'd be all dried up and dusty in there by now. Did he have to blow off the cobwebs first?”
"Speak for yourself." Starscream was obviously seething.
Skywarp wondered what would send him over the edge. Some mechs said carrying mellowed bots out. Others said it did the opposite and turned them into big, round rage monsters. Skywarp wondered which Starscream would be.
“And Megatron?” He continued, tone dripping with judgement. “Really?"
Starscream said nothing. His servos had curled into fists.
"...Were you overcharged?"
"No."
“…Did you… you know… finish?”
Starscream stared at him, optic twitching. His lack of response was answer enough.
Skywarp just glanced at the roundness of his belly again. So all this, and he hadn’t even gotten an overload out of it? But that’s what you got when you putt out for younger mechs. (Skywarp would know, he’d been one once.)
"...You must be so embarrassed."
Starscream finally hit him.
Which meant yeah, he was definitely embarrassed.
Both with that cute little bump of his and how it came to be.