"Why do you-" his optics narrow. The look on his face is pure, undiluted, concentration. "-why do you all look the same?"
Skywarp laughs.
"What?"
Bumblebee turns to him, swaying where he sits, and his expression is, decisively, cute. The way it scrunches up. The way his optics burn, over-bright. Skywarp could pinch him, or maybe mark him up, just a little.
"You all-" he gestures, wide, and nearly tips over with it. "-Seekers! You all look the same!"
Skywarp gasps. Puts a servo to his chassis, dramatic, and would swoon if it weren't for the cube in his other servo. "How dare you! I'm much prettier than Thundercracker."
He is.
"You are," Bumblebee echoes, which makes him crackle, especially because Bumblebee does not seem to have realised he said it. "But you all-"
His face screws up again. He pauses in place, perfectly still, and Skywarp takes another swig of Energon, tastes the buzz of it, sharp. He's not as charged as Bumblebee, but that doesn't mean it isn't getting to him a little.
(A lot, maybe. He's not been shy about flirting with Bumblebee, because Skywarp could never be that, but the way he's staring is maybe just a bit bolder than usual. Maybe.)
"Your frame," Bumblebee says, after a moment so long Skywarp has perhaps forgotten the conversation, a little. "It's all the same."
He's staring at Skywarp intensely, now. At some point, he got like that- like the world was a puzzle he had to solve, instead of a party to celebrate, and it makes a part of Skywarp itch.
"It's not," Skywarp says, frowning. "Ramjet-"
Bumblebee waves a servo. Which is fair, actually, because Ramjet is a joke, but still-
"Why?"
It's so genuine.
Skywarp groans. Sits his cube down, and scratches at his cheek, turning his head, chewing at the question. It's not an answer he wants to give, which doesn't feel fun, and maybe that's why he should, because slag that, but also-
Bumblebee is looking at him. He's not just asking, Skywarp thinks. He wants to know, genuinely, and he wonders, with something that feels to fragile to be named, if Bumblebee had been thinking about this before now.
If he had wondered about this, about him.
He groans. Louder. "It's not a fun conversation," he says, and a part of him wants to reach for the rest of his cube, but the other part- the part that knows this story too well- knows better. It's never a pretty story to tell, and no prettier overcharged.
Bumblebee sits upright. Leans forward, and despite the brightness of his gaze, the way Skywarp can just-about taste the charge on him, he looks attentive.
"Are you even going to remember?" Skywarp asks, and Bumblebee nods.
"I will," he says, so very certain.
(He probably won't. He's such a kid sometimes, and Skywarp still remembers the way he had stared down at the high grade, expression so doubtful, but maybe that's for the better.)
"Ugh-" he tilts his head back, rolls it, and then stares upwards, at the stars, at the place where Cybertron could, maybe, be. "Vos sucked."
It's easy to say. Harder to peel back up, the truth of it, because it's been so long, not just the millennia spent asleep, unaware, but just- the war. If it did nothing, it did at least eat those memories up.
"Vos?"
"Prime, you're such a baby!" he looks back at Bumblebee, cracks a smile- reaches out, because he can, because he wants to, and tugs at a horn, giggling at the way Bumblebee scowls at him, yet doesn't move away at all.
"One of the cities near Iacon," he explains, and maybe lets his servo stay on Bumblebee's horn for a bit longer than he should. "It's basically Seeker city."
Bumblee raises a servo- and then, like it's very easy, he reaches up and lifts Skywarp's, and tangles their fingers together. Lets them drop between them, and Skywarp's spark seizes in his chest, burns white like it might explode. Bumblebee's servo is warm in his.
Skywarp looks away.
"I grew up there."
He looks out at the horizon. The night, dabbled in stars, in dark colours. It's not Cybertron, but it's pretty, in its own right.
"We grew up there," he corrects, because that's important. They're important. "Most Seekers are born there, pretty much all of us, and it's-"
How does he say it?
It's hard to put to word. To pack the whole of it into a sentence, to deliver it out in the open like it isn't still, in a way, a wound in all of them. Like it isn't the reason Starscream is like that. Like it isn't the reason Thundercracker is like that. Like it isn't the reason Skywarp is like that.
"We were built."
He shrugs. Bumblebee's servo is, still, warm.
"Made, and then raised to be Vos' own little army, their perfect clutch of soldiers."
Bumblebee squeezes his servo. Skywarp doesn't squeeze back, but he clings to it, keeps the memory of it tight.
"Weren't just being forged- always raised us as soldiers, taught us all you'd ever know to run warfare. Remember when Screamer started experimenting with science, nearly got him killed-"
He laughs. He knows he laughs, because that's what he's always done, when he thinks of that memory, but Bumblebee leans close, touches their shoulders together, like Skywarp needs it, and-
He clicks his mouth shut. Holds Bumblebee's servo, and feels the touch of his shoulder on his, and stops picking at a wound he long thought healed.
"That's why you get it."
Bumblebee's voice isn't soft, or quiet, or gentle. He doesn't say it like a revelation, but like he's stating facts, and Skywarp shrugs.
"Well, kinda."
It's not the same. Not just because he had Starscream and Thundercracker, and Bumblebee only had a bunch of idiot Autobots, but also because, well- it's not the same.
Vos sucked, yeah, but it was, it is, home. A part of him, a huge part, still longs for that city. Bumblebee doesn't have that.
"Still," Bumblebee says. He taps their shoulders together, and then just leans in, a heavy weight at his side, and Skywarp looks at him, then. "Pretty close, huh?"
There's something soft, there. On Bumblebee's face. In his optics, dimmer than they were, but still so very bright. The blue fits him, Skywarp thinks.
"Well," he says. "Closer than your dorks, at least."
Bumblebee giggles. And when he leans even further into Skywarp, Skywarp leans back, and it's not the warmth of his trine, but it's something like it, and Skywarp- Skywarp doesn't regret telling Bumblebee. Even if he should.
