"Infinities"

by Kyra Neko-Rei

Pairings: Starscream/Himself, implied Starscream/ pretty much everybody.

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: Actual: Self-pleasuring. Mentioned: BDSM, voyeurism, threesomes, all manner of slash.

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"Disobey: To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command."

---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"I must not use public masturbation to demonstrate a flaw in a command decision."

---213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed To Do in the US Army.

"COMMAND 310: Creative Obedience to Starfleet Orders."

---Course offering, Starfleet Academy.

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It was close to what the humans called midnight when Starscream coasted in for a landing on the deserted plateau. The stars were bright above him and the waning moon had yet to rise; there wasn't a major life-form, organic or otherwise, within sensor range. Nobody ever came here except Decepticons on their patrols, and only Starscream, presumeably, had ever thought to land.

Not that he was supposed to, mind you; Megatron had ordered him out on patrol, but Megatron could blow it out his exhaust port; Megatron wasn't here, so Starscream would do as he pleased. And it pleased Starscream to sit around and overload himself a few times rather than complete the patrol that Megatron undoubtedly meant as a punishment. Granted, Megatron wouldn't be too pleased if the Autobots came and attacked while Starscream was out not-patrolling, but Starscream was only one mech, thank you very much, and couldn't be everywhere at once. And Megatron was already not too pleased, as a leader only can be when his second-in-command has told him to suck slag in front of half the army---hence the patrol assignment, delivered in front of that same half of the army and meant to take Starscream down a peg; Starscream didn't care to be taken down a peg, and hence Starscream's creative obedience to the same.

But this musing wasn't getting him any closer to an overload.

Priorities taking effect, Starscream settled down to lie on his back, facing the stars. Arms moved up towards his head, fingertips twisting downward to caress his sensitive wings.

A moan, and he rubs harder, then softer; fingers scrape against the smooth metal and leave barely-there scratches in the paint, and then trail over the surface so softly he can barely feel it. The hard touches are satisfying, wonderfully pleasurable; the soft ones tease, throwing him into a frenzy of trembling need. Turbines and cooling fans spring to life, blowing up dust from the ground to swirl over his body as though the air has suddenly developed millions of tiny teeth; he cries out at the barely-tangible tingling sensation as the swirling dust gets everywhere, dancing across sensory nodes in his wings and lightly abrading sensitive exposed circuitry and wiring. The first overload comes on fast, and he shrieks to the stars as the cascading fire pours out from his spark to every last sensor and back.

He writhes, and the backs of his wings are abraded by the sandy ground; this hurts a little, and in the aftereffects of his overload everything is just a bit too sensitive; the pleasure is too much, the instinct is to stop, let his systems calm down; he doesn't. He forces himself to keep going, thinking of Motormaster doing the same to him, he himself tied up so thoroughly he's barely able to move, writhing against immobile bonds, unable to escape the pleasure that the other keeps inflicting him with, making him overload time and time again until he's exhausted almost into stasis lock and so sensitized that the slightest touch feels like a shockstick is behind it---and just like that the pleasure/pain of sand on his wings is bearable again, wanted again; Starscream arches his back and rubs harder, the gritty sand scraping away at the paint.

He arches differently, now, to press his aft into the ground, scraping skidplate and thighs against dusty earth, and thinks of Sunstreaker, that first time the Autobot had caught him and decided to play---remembers golden hands smacking his aft, himself arching against them without conscious volition, humiliation warring with desire, wanting to be spanked again and again . . . and the Autobot complies; back in the desert Starscream rolls over onto one elbow and grants himself the ridiculous indignity of spanking himself, wishing for the moment that he were armed with something other than null rays, something pain-causing that he could shoot at himself to inflame the sensors so that the continued self-applied spankings would have more effect . . . he knows he can overload from repeated spankings, as several lovers have proved, and his own touch feels wonderful, but he's sure he looks ridiculous, and that knowledge interferes with his arousal.

Rolling back over to lie on his back again and continuing to scrape his aft against the sand---it feels exquisite now that things are more sensitive---he spreads his legs and aims a few slaps at his inner thighs before delving beneath armor plating to caress the wiring underneath. This is simple, sheer pleasure, and Skyfire comes to mind, ages ago when they had entire planets to themselves, could spend hours or days flying about, interfacing with each other in midair. Skyfire was always gentle by nature, but every so often Starscream could coax a more mischevious mood out of him, and he'd smile wickedly, optics glittering at how Starscream could almost overload just from that, and then he'd crush Starscream to him, hard, smirking lips descending to kiss Starscream senseless, and Starscream would keep his optics online as overload swept through him, the perfect devious happy look in Skyfire's eyes prolonging it.

Today Skyfire is not here, however, and Starscream lets his optics go offline, his memory banks and imagination bringing up the memory, and it is almost as good.

Second overload over, Starscream relaxes a moment, air vents cycling the cool nighttime breeze; then he reaches up to caress his face, fingertips passing over cheekplates and optic ridges and nose and lips, arching his head back and thinking now of Skywarp and Thundercracker---wingmates in the sky and playmates in the recharge berth; one hand moves down to caress legs and codpiece, imagining Skywarp on his knees, accepting punishment for some prank or other, writhing against Starscream, pleasuring Starscream with his mouth and shackled hands as Starscream wields a multi-tailed electrowhip against his back or trails it lovingly across his wings. The other hand he wraps around his midsection, feigning an embrace; Thundercracker, so standoffish with everyone else, is wonderfully tactile with his trinemates, calm and comforting, and Starscream has recovered from many punishments at Megatron's hands finding comfort, overload and recharge in his wingmate's embrace.

The third overload is almost sedate, but now Megatron has come to mind, and Starscream knows the next one won't be.

He cocks his head, considering, and just for the hell of it, pushes his mind in another direction, tormenting himself ever-so-slightly (and amusing himself as well) by making Megatron wait. Rather, he brings to mind the Autobot Red Alert and their too-brief time together, Red trembling and frightened at first, then trusting, relaxing into Starscream, and then happily and enthusiastically participating in their lovemaking---it's one of Starscream's few regrets, the consequences of using him, and he thinks one of these days he'll go over and try to fix things---if he can figure out how. Primus knows he's far better at getting into relationship problems than he is at fixing them; for now he settles for imagining Red as he had been then, attentive and skilled and wonderfully sensitive, and he overloads hard to the image and remembered feeling of Red Alert writhing beneath him.

Something flickers in the heavens above him, and he starts, wondering for half a second if he's been discovered, or if Megatron's sent someone out after him, or gone himself.

Now that's an interesting idea; Starscream smiles and is immediately lost in a fantasy of himself flying out on patrol as he was supposed to, and Megatron setting out to follow. To hand out more punishment, Starscream supposes, and his own fingers dig hard beneath armor plating and scrape across sensitive metal skin, mimicking the rough touch of the warlord. He imagines Megatron bringing them down to the ground, pushing Starscream roughly to his knees, fingers tight on sensor nodes in Starscream's wings. The fiery caress of an electrowhip or the harder pain of a shockstick, as Megatron speaks of wrongdoing and punishment in loving tones and Starscream whimpers in pleasure and pain.

Megatron is a pain in the aft more often than not, and the fact that he outranks Starscream is most inconvenient at times, but when things are right between them, there is nothing that can compare. It's why Starscream has never made it a real priority to depose his leader.

The fantasy Megatron bares his spark to Starscream, something the real Megatron never does with anyone, and Starscream lies back down and lifts his hands above his head as though they were pinned there, and overloads from the imagined bliss of spark-to-spark contact with the Decepticon commander, not touching himself at all.

Even so, it is powerful enough to make him black out for a second.

He comes to and sighs happily, fingers gently tracing the outside of his spark casing. Hmmm, who to think about now? The humans have many terms for people such as him: stud, player, slut, Don Juan . . . people who thrive on intimacy and quite naturally fall into bed with anyone from old friends to complete strangers, on no more pretext than "it'll be fun;" he likes the sound of "slut" the best. There's no word for it in Cybertronian; outgoing and friendly more or less cover it, or perhaps "one who loves easily." He's had thousands, and for a moment he casts back in his memory banks, sorting them, choosing the very best to occupy his thoughts tonight.

Best brings his thoughts to Optimus Prime; the word is cognate with the Prime's name in Cybertronian. Yes, he's interfaced with the Prime. Not recently, of course, but long ago; Starscream was still an academy student and Optimus had come to speak at the graduation ceremony as he did every year; it was not Starscream's graduation year and he was engaged in playing a prank, as the underclass mechs did every graduation when it was assured that the graduating class would take the blame. He had miscalculated, nearly gotten caught, and was fleeing from both the scene of the crime and a dripping, furious, profanity-spewing Headmaster when the Prime entered the hallway and Starscream crashed into him.

Even then, Optimus had a warrior's reflexes, and he'd caught Starscream neatly around the waist and pulled him into the office he'd come out of without missing a beat---and proceeded to interrogate him with maddening gentleness about why he'd been running through the halls (as if he couldn't hear the old barge yelling about being doused in paint by a pit-fragged flyer), and then playfully ask "Pain or pleasure?" regarding which Starscream wanted as punishment. Starscream's curiosity regarding how pleasure could be used as a punishment had inspired him to choose it, and the Prime had held him down and then kept him hovering on the brink of overload until he thought he'd go mad with it.

Starscream imitates this now, getting himself aroused quickly and then drawing things out. Fingers trail gently over wings, then dig into the sensitive metal; in less than half a breem he's at a point where he could make himself overload, but he doesn't. When he gets close, he takes his hands away for a few seconds, holding still; as soon as his systems calm down slightly he scrambles up to a standing position; he thinks that trembling against the sand might push him into overload, and he doesn't want that.

Standing, he applies his hands to his wings again, flicking fingertips against them harder this time; again, he gets to the brink of overload and stops. Waits. Caresses the wingtips ever so slightly, just short of pushing himself over the edge, and fights with his willpower, moving his hands away again. It takes longer to calm down this time, and as soon as he thinks he can stand it he touches his spark chamber; his fingers tremble, and slip, and one of them brushes his spark itself, and it takes everything he has not to touch it again; he hovers on the brink for what seems like forever, and it occurs to him as he finally wins the battle that this is much easier to do when the mech doing the teasing and the mech feeling it are not the same person. Self-denial is hard, and arousing in its own right.

He stubbornly keeps at it for close to two breems, thinking of Optimus way back then, the sudden grace with which he'd caught Starscream and the playfulness evident in his seduction. Speaking of lovers he'd like to have again; in the meantime, Starscream decides that he's going to request this treatment from whomever he interfaces with next. Buoyed by that thought, he holds two fingers still against his spark, rubbing ever-so-slightly, for a full minute, making himself wait until finally he just can't deny himself any more, and edges himself oh-so-slowly into overload with the same agonizing, inexorable slow touches that Optimus used, and lets out a keening whine as the pleasure overtakes him and he offlines again.

It takes him quite a bit longer to reboot from that one; once online, his thoughts drift in the direction of who he'd like to have.

A small, black-and-white form edges into his consciousness. Prowl, the Autobots' second-in-command. Their tactician and executive officer; logical, calculating, brilliant, and allegedly quite severe where rules and protocol are concerned.

Starscream has, tucked away safely, a piece of footage from the spycam network they'd recently snuck into the Autobot base. It features Prowl disciplining the twins, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, in a most pleasing fashion, and Starscream has brought himself to overload many times over the twins' part in it, imagining himself in Prowl's position, but Prowl himself has caught his attention as well. The stolen security footage shows him to best advantage, dominating two mechs who are both bigger than he is, calm and commanding and perfect, working the twins over spectacularly, and Starscream would give quite a lot in order to obtain such treatment from him. At present, he cannot mimic the sensations of either the shockstick or the electron paddle that Prowl uses, but he scrapes and slaps at already-tender wings, pretending Prowl is behind the contact, remembering Prowl's voice in his head as he chided the twins and kept prompting them towards confessions and apologies, and overloads to the memory of the severe look on Prowl's face, blue optics aglow with more than anger so that he reminds Starscream of a tiny, Autobot Megatron.

The Aerialbot he didn't have comes to mind after the overload haze clears away from Starscream's processor. Combative, edgy Slingshot, a match for Starscream if there ever was one, flighty, dreamy Fireflight, daring Air Raid, and quiet, contemplative Skyfire he'd all had (and enjoyed thoroughly)---but Silverbolt had been suspicious of Starscream while the rest had been admiring, and Starscream has never gotten a chance to seduce him since then.

Motormaster has, several times, and Starscream has listened to Motormaster go on at length about how wonderful the Aerialbot leader can be at interfacing once you persuade him to let loose a little. Motormaster, to Starscream's audials, sounded more than a little bit besotted, the way he seemed to relish every moan and whimper he'd coaxed out of the Autobot flyer---things he took for granted from everyone else. With Motormaster, there was always a lot of moaning and whimpering, and Starscream wondered what it was about the Aerialbot's responses that was so special. It made the Autobot that much more intriguing---like an encrypted datadisk, or a puzzling scientific theory: a challenge to unlock, and a joy to discover.

Starscream's fingers find his spark again as he considers Silverbolt, Motormaster, watching Silverbolt and Motormaster, and arranging a threesome with Silverbolt and Motormaster. By the time he reaches his eighth overload, he's contemplating an orgy with every flyer on Earth, plus Motormaster, fingers spasming on his spark chamber as the energy cascades through him. Motor control fails him at this point, shorting out for a few seconds, and he sort of spasms against the cool earth, air catching in his intakes.

He decides to go slow with the next one, and lets his thoughts drift back through the vorns, back to his academy days again. Before Optimus; before Skyfire, even; he'd been very popular the first couple vorns of his adult life, surrounded by admirers. It is never quite so easy to get laid as it is in those early vorns of adulthood, desires running high and surrounded by mechs of a similar persuasion, everyone young and beautiful and spectacularly uninhibited, and Starscream had been going home from the room of his fifty-third partner the third orn of classes when he first ran into Perceptor.

Perceptor, who had never interfaced even once. Had never even overloaded himself.

And it took Starscream, who could (and did) have everyone else in the new class, almost a quarter of a vorn to coax Perceptor away from his studies and into Starscream's recharge berth. But when he had . . .

Oh, Primus.

That first time had been just about perfect. Cuddling Perceptor in his arms, Starscream had very slowly progressed from light touches and chaste kisses to an overload that had knocked Starscream out for five breems and Perceptor out for twice that. But it wasn't the overload that made it spectacular for Starscream---it was the amazing combination of nervousness, trust, curiosity and pleasure in Perceptor's optics, how he'd relaxed, shivered, and writhed against Starscream as Starscream's attentions grew progressively more arousing---and it was the moment he'd come online again afterwards, optics shining up at Starscream like a pair of brilliant blue suns, and asked in a shaking voice, "Can we do that again?"

Perceptor's optics had been the same color as Perceptor's spark at that moment; the color was seared into Starscream's memory, and he overloaded with his arms wrapped around himself, the memory of Perceptor's chassis snuggled against his own, sinking happily into the darkness that followed. His processors rebooted, sluggishly this time, and he pulled a cube of energon from subspace with shaking hands, sipping at it while he considered the smaller, still-shy scientist.

They'd never fought, never even had discourteous words pass between them, even when they'd wound up on different sides in the war. They'd never even acknowledged being on opposite sides, in fact; Perceptor nodded to Starscream whenever their optics met, and Starscream would nod back. He wondered why it had not yet occurred to him to go over and invite him out for a quick interface.

Yet another thing he'd have to do after he was done with Megatron's little patrol assignment.

Speaking of Megatron . . .

Starscream smiles, thinking of how his commander no doubt expects him to be cooling his processors up in the stratosphere, still smarting over being sent away. Not so, dear leader. No, he is lying on his aft out in the desert, on his, what, tenth overload? He's lost count. No matter. He is lying on his aft out in the desert, pleasuring himself; he's outsmarted Megatron but good, and what better way to end his impromptu vacation than to imagine what things would be like if he succeeds in becoming the Decepticon leader, and has Megatron as either his second in command or his personal slave. He hasn't decided which yet.

Regardless, it involves a lot of Megatron kneeling at his feet. Bowing, displaying obedience or loyalty, begging mercy, begging forgiveness . . . Starscream's smile grows wider and he passes the palms of his hands gently over his now-greatly-oversensitized wings. Yes . . . all of those things, and more. He'll make Megatron proud to kneel at his feet. Proud to sit beneath him on the throne in the command room, making a more comfortable seat for Starscream to sit on; proud to spend every moment focused on Starscream's comfort and pleasure.

Happy to look up at Starscream with pleading optics, begging for mercy or release. Craving Starscream's touch, light and teasing or heavy and painful, the way Starscream craves Megatron's---and the way Starscream craves the ability to make Megatron whimper and beg shamelessly.

Wings twitch against the sandy earth, and Starscream writhes. His turbines and cooling fans are hardly necessary in the cold desert night, but he activates them to swirl up the sand again; it dances over his frame and he shivers. He hasn't closed his spark chamber since about his third overload, and it shines, pulsating, glowing against the darkness. He closes his fingers over it, imagining that they are Megatron's---a Megatron he trusts with his spark, either a perfectly devoted subordinate (fat chance), or else, perhaps something else---his bondmate, his lover, with fights and betrayal and questions of rank all banished; Starscream thinks this might be better than even to have his leader kneeling willingly at his feet: to trust him and be trusted, and it is to this thought that his spark seems to convulse within him, and all the pent-up energy discharges through every circuit; he is on fire, lost in the fantasy of love and trust and domination and surrender and punishment and pain and pleasure and release all rolled up into one, and he floats on the verge of stasis lock, wondering vaguely if the chance of getting at Megatron's spark is worth all the behaving he'd probably have to do to get it, and when he comes back to himself again he shrugs, feeling every single grain of sand that scrapes against his oversensitized plating.

He'll work on it, a little. Think on it. Plan. More teasing, less backstabbing, maybe. More companionable closeness. Less treason.

A little less treason.

In the meantime, he's going to report that there's nothing important out here and then he's going to go and recharge, and tomorrow morning he's going to seduce someone. Megatron . . . Perceptor . . . Optimus . . . maybe someone entirely new.

Maybe more than one.

Starscream smiles, and takes off into the night.