PREDATORY (Megatron x Starscream)

Chapter 1

Starscream stormed out of the throne room. The tips of her claws left the edge of the door purposefully, letting it slide closed behind her, drawing the cautious eyes of antsy cadets and watchful guards. They followed the glowing blue ember of her cheeks and the telltale twitch of her wings.

It wasn't a new sight. Her jaw clenched firmly, plated knuckles moon white, optic ridges furrowed into a metal canyon at her brow: she said nothing, but the click of her sharp heels on the cold floor spoke volumes more, and her acutely pursed lips sang with shivery breath. It wasn't surprising or unordinary to see Starscream angry.

That two-timing scrap heap, she thought. The picturesque tapestry of Jetfire's commanding gaze and the mocking assuredness of his patronizing smile burned craters into the back of her optics. There was something salacious about the way he reveled in her frustration, chuckling self-importantly at her irrational outbursts, lusting after her indignity. He took a troubling gratification in seeing her struggle. It was narcissistic. Suggestive. Only he had that kind of control over her, and he knew it.

There were two types of lust, Starscream believed: the kind you felt for a friend or acquaintance, and the kind you felt for an enemy. One was shameful, but passive and impersonal. The other was more than just pleasure. It involved draining every ounce of energy from your body, working your hydraulics until they popped and left you feeling sickened with aches and immobile. It was a feeling that consumed you either until the recipient died, or you did. It was a necessary part of the never-ending cycle of abuse—the psychosexual, biological need to go back to someone you despised fervently with every gear in your being. That was the competition part of love. And for every time Jetfire tried to objectify the pressure of leadership, danced along in their masochistic ritual, pursued her adamantly and unendingly through the trials of time, she pushed back. It was just typical that she was the one who ended up cornered.

"Get me some energon, stat!" she shouted to the first vehicon who caught her attention. "Primus knows I need some... 'me-time.'"

His reddish visor lit up and he nodded with feverish glee. Accepting her unceremonious announcement, it was off he went, like a bot possessed by some spirit of servitude, pedes clanking dissonantly on the polished metal floor. Starscream grabbed the edge of a resting bench and sat herself down with a grace and theatrical allure only she could muster. She swung her legs back and stretched her dainty wrists. She got looks. She was used to looks. She loved the looks.

Starscream's wings splayed out on either side of her chassis. Her back arched like a cougaraider's, clawed digits scraping deep gauges into the flimsy metal, chest poised upward, hips down, heels kneading. The conservative ensemble of her vehicons ogled as she shut her optics tight and puffed out a breathy sigh, exhaling a tired, quaky moan. Helms turned shamefully at her subtle immodesty. Cooped up on a ship with mostly mechs, Starscream reveled in her control: both formally, through the political implications of her granted superiority, and personally, via the unspoken laws that governed the depravity of a planet strongarmed into modesty. On Cybertron, it was unthinkable to concede with a mech who wasn't your conjux—purity was the incontestable rule, and it was accepted, entirely too eagerly, that to even think of swapping fuel with someone you couldn't bind your spark to was horrifying. Starscream didn't hold much stake in this ideology. That was something Jetfire had always hated her for, her unabashed sensuality and confidence.

She finally collapsed onto the bench, dramatically draping her narrow limbs across the edges of the metal slab. The eager cadet raced back to accost her. He waited until she had extended her servo to deposit the small blue cube, a tiny tessera of  energy that bashfully glowed and pulsed. Starscream tapped her claws on the thin, glassy shell, and raised it to her lips.