The excerpt I selected was a little long, but this passage from Dance for the DVD commentary meme: "As they dipped and tumbled through the air ... he started to get the feeling that training was supposed to have been some kind of euphemism. This was exactly the sort of thing that Starscream told him not to engage in ... But it was pretty, he thought ... It was uselessly dangerous, a risk to limb and life, and it suddenly struck him that perhaps that was exactly Starscream’s point."
Full excerpt:
As they dipped and tumbled through the air, the rushing fuel giving Carrion a giddy buzz, he started to get the feeling that training was supposed to have been some kind of euphemism. This was exactly the sort of thing that Starscream told him not to engage in, unworkably complex maneuvers that looked pretty but did nothing but distract you from your goal.
But it was pretty, he thought, especially when his mate shed his alt mode; his long limbs forced back by gravity as he turned a neat flip and plummeted toward the ground. The view was gorgeous, yes, enough so that it sent a shiver of delight from his processor to his spark as he dived down after the other, still in jet form.
Tumbling through the air with the earth swelling faster and faster in view was exhilarating, the sort of pleasure he engaged in when given time on his own. It was uselessly dangerous, a risk to limb and life, and it suddenly struck him that perhaps that was exactly Starscream’s point.
Oh boy, this fic.
Well first of all, my thoughts writing this were basically ‘fliers are super definitely flamboyant bird brains, and they do dumb show-offy flight things to impress each other.’ I was also thinking ‘how can i convey how especially gay for Starscream Carrion is?’ with a smidge of ‘Carrion is young and easily impressed so Starscream doesn’t have to go all out except he totally would.’
Carrion is thinking exactly what I wrote him thinking; very gay thoughts about the love of his stupid life.
Starscream, however, is thinking more calculated thoughts, assessing Carrion’s interest and how to keep him enraptured, how to best make him realize that he’s the best damn flier there is and that he could have picked anyone for a mate, but he picked Carrion, and drive home exactly what that means, what Carrion means to him, so he never ever ever has to utter the words.
Carrion sort of gets it, but is a dense little fucker, so mostly thinks Starscream is kind of jabbing at him, ‘I’m better than you’, yeah?
I originally wanted to have them lock hands during free fall, but decided against it because I wanted to focus more on Starscream being so beautiful and out of Carrion’s league (in his mind).
