The first hits come hard and fast, and Starscream’s not sure where they land or where he lands, but he does land, flat on his back just like always, wings twisted beneath him. Megatron looms over him. Starscream gets his arms under him, tries to get away, but then Megatron’s full weight is on his chest, knee on his cockpit and hand around his throat.
He tries to cry out, to yell, scream for someone to save him or just to be able to say he did, but his vocalizer’s glitching and all that comes out is a half-whispered, “Stop.” No, no, no, this isn’t right, this can’t be happening. “Stop, get off of me.” Come on, he’s Starscream, Pit damnit, he’s Screamer, this is what he does best. Megatron presses down harder with both the knee and the hand and his cockpit starts to creak ominously. Come on, just got to reset his vocalizer, take a nice deep vent, and scream. “Get off me!” There, that was almost a shout. Not what he’d hoped for, but something.
Megatron just laughs. “Oh, Starscream. You never learn, do you? No one is coming.” He leans closer, and Starscream struggles harder. He sucks in a vent to yell again, but the hand from his throat comes up to cover his mouth and nose and he can’t move, can’t breathe, none of his systems are responding and his spark is spinning out of control fuck fuck fuck fuck. “Don’t bother with that. It’s just you and me here, after all.” Megatron’s free hand comes up and Starscream has just enough time to tense his whole frame before—
“Starscream!”
His cheek slips off his hand and before he can catch himself he bashes his face against something hard. Crackling hot pain spreads from his nose through his head and he jerks upright, crying out.
“Starscream?!” The call comes again, this time accompanied by knocking, and as the static fades from his vision, he realizes he’s in his office. He’s fallen asleep at his desk again, Windblade’s knocking at his door, and Bumblebee’s in the middle of the room chattering his head off and wringing his hands.
“Starscream? Are you alright?”
This time, he calls back before she can knock again. “Primus! Give me a minute, I’m coming.” He pushes himself to his feet and his vision fritzes out again, just for a moment. Must have knocked something loose in the disconnect from Windblade and Carcer. He’ll have Knockout take a look sometime soon.
He pushes past Bumblebee, ignoring the indignant, “Starscream!” He keys the door open, sighing, “What now? It’s practically the middle of the—”
“Holy shit!” Windblade gapes at him.
“Excuse me?”
She looks inappropriately distressed, especially considering Starscream’s the one being intruded on. “Starscream, what… Are you alright? What happened? Your nose is bleeding.”
He brings a hand to his upper lip. “Oh.” He supposes he is.
Windblade advances on him, chivying him back into his own Primus-damned office like she owns the place. “Come on, sit down, let me get you a tissue or something.” It’s only the lingering dizziness from hitting his face and the disorientation of recharge that lets her push him down. “What happened? I wanted to check on you, and Rattrap told me you were up here, and when I came up I heard you scream, and you look terrible, Starscream.”
“I’m fine,” he snaps just as Bumblebee says, “He fell into recharge at his desk and started screaming in his sleep and then hit his face when he woke up because he’s a glitch.”
Starscream opens his mouth to lecture Bumblebee on privacy, but Windblade doesn’t react. He’s abruptly reminded that she can’t see or hear Bumblebee. At the same moment, Bumblebee’s face falls. Windblade’s still looking at him, clearly expecting him to say something, so he repeats, “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.” She pulls a cloth out of her subspace and shoves it into his hands. “Here, hold this to your nose and tip your head back.”
He snatches it and begins mopping the admittedly copious amount of energon off the lower half of his face. There’s even a smear on the desk. “I’m not a sparkling. I’ve had nosebleeds before.” More than his fair share, he’d say, especially in the last four million years. A surprising number of them aren’t horrible to think about. He and Thundercracker would both get nosebleeds if Skywarp dragged them around too many times in too short a timeframe. Suddenly, he remembers the argument Thundercracker and Warp had gotten into once, about whether or not energon could really come out of Thundercracker's optics if he tipped his head back when his nose bled.
He presses the now damp cloth to his face. It stings, and his optics water.
“What happened?” Windblade asks for the third time. “You screamed.”
He gestures blindly to the desk next to them. “Clearly, I hit my face on the desk when you startled me with your banging.”
“Twice?”
“Pardon?”
“You screamed twice, Starscream. The first time, you sounded… I thought you were being attacked.”
Lovely. Her voice drips with pity, and he doesn’t need to look to see the face she’s making, that faux-concerned one she’s been flashing him more and more lately. Digging for emotional weaponry, he’s sure.
On the other side of the desk, Bumblebee makes another futile attempt to join the conversation. “He had a nightmare. Tell her,” he advises. “She knows now.”
Starscream snarls. For all he hates it, the Autobot is right. Windblade has been in his mind now, or at least a representation of it, seen his humiliation in more clarity than he cares to think about. He’s going to have to think about it, though, if he wants to play this right, come out of this intact. At least, he thinks, she only saw part of his mind, only saw Megatron. And heard him, and saw Starscream’s reaction, and held some strange representation of his fucking spark before she—no. That’s enough for now. He takes another deep vent just because he can, relishing the freedom of it like he so often does after those dreams, and wipes his nose one last time before sitting back up.
Windblade’s still right there, hovering with a hand on his desk and her head tilted to the side. He holds the energon-soaked cloth up between them and says, “I’m assuming you’re not going to want to this back?” She grimaces. “Thought not.” He throws it in the bin under the desk. “As for the scream,” he begins. Bumblebee stands up straighter, giving him one of those stupid hopeful looks. Unfortunately for his delicate hallucinated Autobot spark, Starscream isn’t an idiot. “Clearly, aside from unexpectedly energon-thirsty desks, I’m unharmed. The rest is none of your business.”
It’s almost comical, the way Windblade and Bumblebee sag in unison. Such bleeding hearts, the two of them. Bumblebee disappears with a frustrated huff, and Windblade peers down at him with more of that grating concern. What does she care?
“Starscream,” she begins.
He stands, shooing her out from behind the desk. “Alright, you’ve done what you came for. You’ve checked on me, I’m in one piece. Now, if you would be so kind as to leave me alone?”
She acquiesces, rolling her optics at him. Right in front of the door, right when he’s almost rid of her, she pauses and turns around. “Starscream?”
“What now?”
“Don’t forget that we’re here for you, alright? If you ever want to talk.”
He blinks, and has to reset his vocalizer to respond, “Get out of my office.”
“Okay!” she cries. “I’m going, I’m going!”