For the Director's Cut meme, Sometimes I Wish for Falling, the scene where Starscream catches Cyclonus' injuries and orders him to Flatline? If not, whatever you like about that story.
OOOOH, THAT SCENE. That was an interesting one. And actually, that was a nice candidate for this, because there were a lot of important pieces that went into that scene XD
I knew I wanted to jump pov with that fic, because from a purely practical perspective, Cyclonus needed to be the one narrating when the story drifted into somnophilia land for the first time. Which was important, because somnophilia is going to be an important Thing for them, especially in the ways it’ll tie back to disordered sleeping and trust issues and service. But, there was some emotional stuff that was important for Cyclonus to take the lead on too.
And one of the big, BIG things I wanted to get back to was Cyclonus’s self-harm predilections! Because he sure keeps going for the self-mutilation thing when he’s feeling too much, and this is despite his religious views being like ‘yeah, don’t repair purely cosmetic damage’. He still goes straight to clawing up his own face. And the first time in canon that got fixed because Tailgate got better, but the second time? At that point in the story, Cyclonus’s emotions re: tailgate are MUCH further along, this isn’t that he’s dying, it’s ‘he broke up with you, told you to go away, and tried to return your innermost energon.... and then also died horribly’.
SO. I wanted to circle back round to that, but the way this story is shaped... Cyclonus and Starscream are both really tangled up in their own issues. It’s hard to even write them when they’re just in their own heads, because it’s a gridlocked snarl of misery. The story progresses when they interact with each other, but giving them those interactions also lets me pick away at the issues going on in their heads. Here, having Starscream notice the self-harm isn’t essential to plot. It would have been possible to quietly have Cyclonus move along to the point where he’s like ‘hey, awesome, I don’t need to do that thing anymore’. But that wouldn’t be nearly so satisfying!!
Here, just from a Cyclonus’s character perspective, that scene lets me tie together all kinds of important pieces. He’s still in such a bad state that he’s hurting himself. He’s got a strong and persistent urge to hurt himself. He’s got feelings about how his emotional pain should be expressed physically. He’s got religious feelings about having had that damage repaired once when he feels he should have refused treatment. He’s got more religious feelings about agreeing to have the damage repaired when he feels he should refuse treatment He’s desperate enough to find someone to serve that he’s willing to compromise those religion/grief emotions to make himself a more appealing servant, and he’s willing to compromise those religion/grief emotions for the thrill of having orders to obey. There’s a lot of under-the-surface emotions happening in there about how his confirms that he didn’t... deserve Tailgate in the first place, that his emotions and convictions are cheap, nothing so overt that I would outright describe it as self-loathing, but... basically that thing.
And. Change of direction. Starscream. Now, Cyclonus knows that Starscream doesn’t want him there. He probably isn’t as aware that part of why Starscream allowed him to stay is that Starscream is worried about what revenge Cyclonus might take if he was turned away. Because Cyclonus wouldn’t do that, it’s not his jam. But Starscream feels extremely trapped into doing this, and is bitter and angry and feels forced into keeping someone he aggressively does not trust right in close to his side.
So letting Starscream realize about the self-harm does a little bit to advance things on multiple fronts. Starscream already knew Cyclonus was having some kind of crisis, but now he’s getting a better picture of how much of a mess Cyclonus really is. Cyclonus usually has rock-solid self-control, so getting that kind of look at him isn’t easy. It’s giving Starscream’s paranoia a little room to wind down, because after seeing that, it’s a lot harder to believe that actually this is a complicated plot to overthrow the government or assassinate him or whatever. Not enough to ease the worries, but enough space to believe that something else could be true. If the worries were eased, he probably would have booted Cyclonus out the moment he realized how much of a mess he was. So he’s got a little bit of fresh bitterness that he has to give Cyclonus that second chance. BUT. On the flip side. Cyclonus sees Starscream giving him that unearned second chance and letting him stay, and Cyclonus is building up a lot of very genuine gratitude towards Starscream very quickly.
BUT. Final piece, I think. The piece I’m the most proud of. There’s a third player in all this business, who Cyclonus doesn’t realize is even there. BUMBLEBEE. Originally, my approximate plans for this fic were to write it as though it was just Starscream and Cyclonus, nobody else, but I managed to slip in bits and pieces of Bumblebee as I went. Some of that is in Cyclonus catching the edges of Starscream speaking to him, or looking at him in the middle of conversations, or reacting to things he says. But that’s a gradual build of ‘huh, that was weird.’
Some of this is going to come up in the next fic in the installment, but Starscream is angry at Cyclonus for shoving his way into his life, and angry at Bumblebee for being a bit judgey about how Starscream handled the whole thing and accidentally tripped into sex. He’s still suspicious that there’s something Cyclonus isn’t telling him (there isn’t, really, he guessed that this was a grief thing, and cyclonus isn’t really thinking much further ahead than ‘please distract me’ at this point). That’s a lot of words to circle back around to this scene. Basically, Bumblebee went out to spy on/check on Cyclonus during that one meeting, and saw Cyclonus going to town on his plating. He came back to tell Starscream what was up, or Starscream probably wouldn’t have noticed, at least not yet. I was really pleased with how that all fit together! Working ghost!bee into stories can be tricky even when it’s a starscream pov, making his presence felt is even trickier without that XD
I don’t think it’s really much of a spoiler at this point that the direction I’m taking this series in is that Starscream and Cyclonus are good for each other. There’s at least one big plot Development in the future that complicates that a bit, but overall, they are going to do each other a lot of good. And part of that is going to tie back to the ways where from a purely physical point of view, they take care of each other. Apart from the sex, which is not exactly this thing (yet), this was the first time I got to touch that directly. Cyclonus feeding Starscream was the first detail I was able to include in the one direction. And Starscream telling Cyclonus to stop hurting himself is the first detail in the other. And that physical caretaking will feed into their emotional needs, and lay groundwork for more openly emotion-related caretaking in the future.
I’m sorry, that is SO many words, but hopefully it’s got interesting information XD That was actually one of the more logistically complicated scenes I’ve written in a long time, just from all the character and plot pieces I had to coordinate into a single scene together. It was one I was really, really pleased with, so thank you for asking about it! It was a lot of fun to talk about it!! :D