Chapter Text
The first thing Starscream registered was a tight, heavy sensation around his neck. It was snug enough that when he exvented, it dug against his throat cabling. Starscream tried to reach up and remove the object, except he couldn’t. Chains grated harshly when he struggled with his bound arms.
He booted up his optics.
Fluorescent lights blinded him immediately. Starscream grimaced, blinking away the feedback. Weirdly enough, he found himself kneeling on a plush berth, his legs sinking into atrocious magenta sheets. Just as he surmised, the chains were wrapped all over his frame, crisscrossing in ways that framed his tight waist and chest turbines, thighs splayed to reveal the still-intact lingerie that rested over his interface panels. Not that the rest of his lingerie was better—his stockings had holes in them, and the robe had slipped off a shoulder, the rest of the tattered fabric pooling around him.
So he wasn’t just a prisoner. He was a prisoner tied up and displayed like a sex doll.
Aside from the tasteless furniture, the rest of the room was remarkably barren. Wires crossed over each other on the steel plates that made up the ground, connecting a simple camera rig to a series of screen monitors against the back wall. It depicted what might have been labs, but were now in various states of ruin.
Starscream suddenly realized he wasn’t alone.
A familiar, hulking figure stepped into view from behind the glare of the light. Starscream couldn’t help the sardonic smile that crossed his face, even as his processor tried to frantically analyze the situation.
“You know, if you really wanted me to star in this shitty porno so badly, you should have called up my agent, Tarn.”
Tarn stalked around the berth until he was looking down at Starscream, his optics burning with malice. He was missing chunks of his kibble and his twin fusion canons, and his paint job was scraped badly, but somehow he had acquired another Decepticon mask to hide behind. Seeing it almost made Starscream roll his optics.
“I don’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted by the way you managed to slither your way into ruling Cybertron,” Tarn said, ignoring Starscream’s jab. “But you’ve always had your schemes, haven’t you?”
“What can I say? I’m an accomplished mech.” Without breaking optic contact, Starscream kept trying to struggle with his chains. He realized a length of it trailed away from him—likely chained to the berth itself. “So, what’s with the set? You’ve always been theatrical, but this isn’t your usual kind of snuff film.”
“Do you like it?” Tarn reached for him, and Starscream barely stopped himself from stiffening. But Tarn only rearranged part of the robe that fell from his shoulder, as if smoothing out some unseen error. “I thought it would be fitting for such a vain seeker like yourself.”
Starscream shrugged, putting up a nonchalant attitude. “Fitting? Maybe so, though I’d always thought that if my death was going to be recorded, I’d go out with some dignity.” Not that he planned on dying, of course.
“Oh, Starscream,” Tarn tutted. He grabbed Starscream’s chin and tilted it up in the mockery of a lover. “We’re not doing a recording.”
Starscream tried not to bristle with the contact. The words did surprise him, though. “You’re...not.”
Suddenly, Tarn gripped Starscream’s throat. Starscream choked as Tarn squeezed the collar tighter against his energon lines. “No recording. First, you are going to remove this damn inhibitor chip they installed on me–and I know you have the codes for them. Spare us both the pretense that you don't.” There went Starscream’s plans to bluff his way out of that one.
Tarn leaned closer, until his mask nearly touched Starscream’s nose. “And then, when it’s time for that little opening ceremony of yours? Then, you are going to beg to this camera like the sniveling coward you are. Live. ”
Genuine unease crawled up his spine. Tarn wanted to livestream this to the Expo opening ceremony? Starscream’s PR was bad enough–the rest of Cybertron didn’t need to see him as a scantily-clad hostage. He’d never live it down.
“Beg—ngk, for what?” Starscream managed to spit back. This is why he hated dealing with Tarn, back when the war was still happening: he just had to draw things out.
Tarn released his throat, and Starscream gasped as energon rushed back into his head. Tarn loomed over him. “Beg for your master to come back. For Lord Megatron to drop his foolish charade.”
This time, Starscream didn’t stop himself from laughing at Tarn’s face. He really couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry? You want me to reach out to Megatron—who’s gallivanting with the Autobots now, by the way—and beg him to retake leadership? To start the war again?”
There were so many things wrong with that statement. Starscream had always thought that Tarn was a self-righteous idiot, but this was sinking to new levels.
“Sorry to break the news to you,” Starscream drawled, leaning forward with a smirk. “But get your head out of your overblown aft-pipe and face the facts: Megatron is not coming back for you.”
Tarn lashed out, striking Starscream’s cheek with the back of his servo. One of his clawed digits scraped against Starscream’s cheek, cutting it slightly. At the same time, the camera behind him fell over with a loud clatter. “Lord Megatron would not just abandon the Cause!” he roared.
Hot energon ran down Starscream’s cheek as pain bloomed through sensitive circuitry. The light behind Tarn made his face hard to see, but those optics shone with the fury that only a psychotic mech would have. Or a desperate one.
Whipping around, Tarn stalked back towards the camera. He propped it up again, and it turned back on with a whirr.
“Great,” he muttered. “Now the focus is off.” Tarn glared at Starscream as if he was the reason why everything went wrong with the Decepticons. Which Starscream felt was unfair; at least sixty percent of that was Megatron’s fault too.
As Tarn began to angrily re-focus the lens, Starscream worked his jaw before throwing out: “So you think I was responsible for his defection?”
“There’s something more going on,” Tarn said. “Something which only the likes of a traitor would concoct.”
“Oh yeah?” Starscream snorted. “So fine: you kidnap me and set me up for a livestream, I guess. Then what’s with the kinky slag?”
Tarn straightened up, and he almost seemed to radiate smugness. “Lord Megatron’s whore would convince him. After all, why else would he never put you on the List? Why else would he keep you as his precious Second in Command?” He gestured grandly with his servos. “Why, he would want his pet safe and sound, of course!”
Starscream reset his optics. He almost didn’t believe he heard him right at first. Was this what Tarn had come up with while he was in prison? This sounded like a conspiracy that would be better left to the depths of The Big Conversation. Maybe his inhibitor chip hadn’t just affected his outlier; maybe it affected his brain module too.
“Okay,” Starscream acquiesced. “So we had a thing during the war—” hate sex was hot, what could he say? “—but we were not, and definitely are not, attached to each other. So go make your own simpering livestream, okay? And pick better upholstery—these pink sheets are awful.”
Tarn sputtered before launching into a tirade, going on and on about Starscream being a liar and having no taste whatsoever. It was pathetic, really, so Starscream found his thoughts wandering to Megatron again. That pompous old fool.
Though, Megatron did want something more, once. Tarn had that right, even if he didn’t realize it. Except there was too much bad history between them for anything to work out, and towards the end of the war, it had fizzled out. Just like him and Skyfire—
Skyfire would have found his trashed room by now. Oh slag.
Was he safe? He would’ve gotten help, would he? Wait, duh, Skyfire was a big soft marshmallow, of course he’d get help. But he wouldn’t be dumb enough to come along too, would he? Although Starscream would be flattered, he would murder that shuttle himself if he even got a scratch—
Starscream’s thoughts were cut off when Tarn grabbed the sides of his head. His vents creaked from the strength of his grip. “Ignoring me, wench?”
Starscream couldn’t help the next jab. “Oh, don’t worry: Megatron did it too.”
Tarn growled and released him. Starscream braced himself for another hit, but it never came. Instead, Tarn smirked underneath his mask. “Let’s see how Lord Megatron and the rest of Cybertron will react when they receive my other surprise, hm?”
A terrible feeling coiled in Starscream’s tanks. “What did you do, Tarn?”
“I haven’t done anything yet,” he said, stroking his chin. “But if you don’t remove the inhibitor chips from me and my mechs before the livestream…” Tarn let his sentence trail off, and he stepped out from the light to fiddle with his audial. A quiet buzz indicated a comm. line activating.
“Vos, tell me, what’s the status of the bomb?”
No .
Starscream’s casual facade completely dropped. “Fuck. You,” he growled.
He strained against his chains again, but they refused to budge, and Starscream’s fans kicked up with fury. He didn’t care if he lost face to Tarn. Hell, he didn’t even care if Cybertron saw him play a hooker. But if Tarn was going to threaten his planet, he had Starscream’s full attention.
Tarn looked at him from the corner of his optics, looking even more like the bastard he was. He listened for a moment to whatever Vos had to say. “Good. And I agree—the science hall at the Expo would make for an excellent explosion.”
With all the inventions in there, an explosion wouldn’t just wipe out the hall. It’d take out the nearest city blocks too.
“You’re fragging lying,” Starscream hissed. “You expect me to believe the delusional psychopath?”
Chuckling, Tarn turned his back to Starscream. As he began to walk away, Starscream wished he could wrap his chains around his stupid, arrogant neck. To pull him back and murder him on this ridiculous berth. But Starscream couldn’t. He was trapped, and Tarn knew it.
“You have six hours to decide if you do.”