Chapter Six

Megatron glared at the house in front of him — all hand-laid brick, white picket fence, and blooming pink rose bushes. That irritated him more than anything else so far: how were the roses even blooming? It was winter. This whole place belonged on a postcard, or worse, a government housing brochure. Not on the contact list of a warlord.

The silence of the gated community pressed in on him, dense and suspicious. Even the wind was polite here.

A curl of smoke traced the air as he exhaled, holding open the door of the Nemesis — his custom Maserati, all matte obsidian and chrome accents, purring low as it powered down. The car had been built for him and Starscream alone. It growled in protest, as if the machine itself disapproved of their destination.

"My Queen," he rumbled, his voice like gravel caught in a turbine. "Are you certain this is the correct address? Because I cannot… imagine Optimus Prime living here."

Starscream sat poised in the passenger seat, elegant even in frustration, glaring at the invitation in her claw like she could will it into flames. The script was so bubbly and perky it looked like it had been written by an overcaffeinated kindergarten teacher.

"He's as big as me," Megatron muttered, louder this time, smoke hissing from the side of his mouth.

Starscream smoothed a wrinkle from her black-and-white dress, every movement precise, practiced. Her wings twitched behind her, restless.

"The address is correct," she said at last, though unease tugged at her voice. "Perhaps this is Elita-One's home. Some couples live apart. For space. Or sanity."

Megatron snorted, taking another slow drag. "Then what's the point? The reason I married you is because I want to be around you."

Starscream blinked. Her spark fluttered — traitorously — at the blunt sincerity of it.

"You got that right," she murmured, reaching to adjust his lapel, claws brushing the cool edge of his armor. She pretended not to notice the heat blooming under her plating.

Normally Megatron wouldn't allow her to fuss with his appearance. This time, he couldn't bring himself to stop her.

Together they stared at the front door like it might open its wooden maw and devour them both. Somewhere inside, muzak played. Megatron winced.

The dress suited her — off-the-shoulder, sweetheart neckline cradling the gleam of her plating like moonlight on a blade. But it was the choker that always caught his optic: obsidian steel, flush against her throat, a ruby large enough to have been pried from a noble's crown. The clasp snapped perfectly into the latch on his own platinum chain. His chain never came off. Her choker didn't either. Welded to their neck cables. No one had to know that.

"Is the house even reinforced for our kind?" he asked, cigar clenched between his fangs.

Starscream's optics swept the human-sized door, the delicate porch, the soft pastels of a world not built for beings like them.

"I am unsure," she said finally, voice tight. "The Autobots didn't specify." There was offense in her tone — as though being forgotten was worse than being snubbed.

"Thirty minutes," Megatron growled. "An hour, at most."

"We will do what we must." She stared once more at the robin's-egg-blue door. "Oh, this will hurt."

With matching dread, the two of them began the miserable process of folding their towering warframes into their smallest, most socially acceptable forms. It felt like crawling into a suit three sizes too small — if that suit were made of bone and steel. Joints groaned. Wings retracted with reluctant hisses. Armor folded in with the grinding click of centuries-old vaults being sealed shut.

Starscream grimaced as her stilettoed foot crunched into place. "If I sneeze, I'll decapitate someone."

"It would be the highlight of their lives," Megatron muttered around his cigar. He crushed it out on the porch's roof tiles with a contemptuous twist. "Fragging dollhouse."

Starscream knocked with practiced poise, as if it didn't feel like a war crime waiting to happen.

The door creaked open on a human maid dressed in full nineteenth-century cosplay — navy gown, starched apron, ruffled cap. She looked up. And up. Her mouth dropped open as she took in Starscream's gleaming armor and towering, otherworldly beauty.

"Ohhh my god," the maid breathed.

Starscream leaned down slightly, optics glowing. "I know," she cooed.

"Th-this way, please. You are expected." The maid stepped aside so fast she nearly tripped on her hem.

The hardwood floor creaked beneath Starscream's weight as if whispering its last rites. "Oh no. Elita-One likes antique floors," she whispered to herself, eyeing the polished boards like they were glass. "Low entryway. Tight walls. Fragile, my king." She held out a claw to guide Megatron in behind her.

He hesitated. His shoulders nearly touched both sides of the hallway. His crimson optics narrowed at the ceiling beam above his helm, a glare that could peel paint.

"I swear," he growled, "if this is a prank, the war is restarting." He stepped through, armor brushing the walls. "And I will make it my personal mission to punch Prime in the spike at full strength, every single time I lay optics on him."

A guest gasped from the parlor. Another ducked behind a curtain, clutching a drink like it might defend them. The walls trembled with each step. The chandelier quivered. Floorboards groaned like tortured souls. A server in a tuxedo scurried past clutching a tray of finger sandwiches like it was a bomb, whimpered audibly, and kept moving.

Starscream's optics caught a china cabinet full of crystal teacups arranged with religious devotion. "And they call me vain," she said, rolling her optics.

"Explain, 'Tarscream."

"This whole place is Elita-One's personality, bottled and painted pastel. Filters on every light. Everything symmetrical. Controlled." She gestured at a side table with color-coded books and one offensively quaint doily. "It's not a home, it's an aesthetic. A shrine to her own brand."

Behind them, someone sneezed violently, in terror. Whispers followed. "Are they here to kill us?" "I think that's Starscream." "Her wings just flexed again — move—"

"True, I'm high glam and annoying," Starscream added, tone flippant, optics sharp. "But our home looks like our home. Not Starscream's Ego Palace, guest-starring Lord Megatron."

Megatron chuckled — the sound rolling out of him like distant thunder, not cruel, just real. "I don't need much."

Starscream stopped mid-step. Turned. Pointed a claw at his chest with pinpoint accuracy, like she'd found the soft spot between armor plates.

"Yes. Yes, you do." Her voice dropped, soft and serious. "We fought and bled and built our lives from nothing. Just so we could take. Up. Space."

The words hung there. True.

Then they stepped into the parlor — slightly more spacious, no less cluttered. Blush wallpaper, carved furniture, dozens of framed influencer-tier stills of Elita-One laughing in slow motion, possibly blinking in Morse code. A grand piano gleamed in the corner, repurposed as a drink station, delicate flutes of high-grade energon filtered to look like champagne.

Humans in formalwear filled the room, all caught between politeness and primal survival instinct. A servant bot short-circuited quietly in a corner. One guest pulled out a phone to record and was immediately elbowed by another.

Megatron and Starscream traded a glance — equal parts suspicion and shared pain. Where were the other Cybertronians? Only the chandelier, still trembling, seemed to be waiting for them.

"Hello, old friend," a voice cut through the tension.

Optimus Prime stood near the fireplace, shoulders hunched, helm lowered, trying to fold himself down to human scale. It wasn't working. A priceless floor vase leaned slightly, visibly stressed by his presence.

"Orin," Megatron growled. "What is this place?"

Optimus blinked, genuinely confused — a man who'd brought aliens to Thanksgiving and didn't understand why everyone was uncomfortable. "This is my home."

"This?" Megatron repeated, the word thick with contempt.

Starscream took a careful half-step forward, wings held close, tone diplomatic with strain creeping through the seams. "I'm struggling to move without damaging the décor — and I'm not even your size, nor Lord Megatron's." She fluttered her wings slightly, a show of restraint and subtle warning; three humans scrambled for the far side of the room. "Do you sleep in the piano bench? Or did Elita-One install a crawlspace for you under the dining table?"

Megatron's optics never left Prime. "Let me guess. You compress. For them."

Something old and worn flickered across Optimus's face — not shame, exactly.

Before either of them could press further, Elita-One glided into the parlor like she'd been waiting for her cue. Heels clicking like punctuation on polished marble. There was room for her here. She belonged to this world of delicate lights and perfect symmetry, and that fact alone made Megatron's optic twitch.

"Lord Megatron! Starscream! You came!" She pressed a flute of champagne into each of their claws with the mechanical grace of a pageant queen turned politician.

Megatron accepted his like it might explode.

"Thank you for inviting us," Starscream replied smoothly, smile gleaming like a forged credit chip. "We are always delighted to promote unity. Together." She lifted the glass, optics unblinking, even as her sensors hissed red alerts at the chemical breakdown of the liquid. Sugar. Ethanol. Traces of organic skin oil. Disgusting.

Elita-One had already turned, gesturing toward the buffet, mid-sentence about something neither of them heard or cared to. Starscream leaned close to Megatron, clinked her glass against his like a toast — and in the same motion tipped both flutes into a potted plant by the window. The soil fizzed. The leaves wilted. A man nearby clutched his own glass tighter, as if she might come for his next.

Megatron's optics glinted with something that was not entirely warlike. He had never loved her more.

Then — Groooaaaan. The floorboards beneath Starscream whispered their last prayers.

"Maybe we should spread out," she whispered.

"We fall through the floor together," Megatron said firmly.

"Oh, Starscream! You must see this," Elita-One called, grabbing her claw like they were old friends at a garden party. "Come, the photo wall—"

Starscream barely took a step.

SHINK.

Her stiletto heels punched clean through the floorboards to the subfloor. The hardwood cracked around her like a shattered halo.

She froze. Squeaked. "Ah — one moment, Elita-One dear. It seems I've gotten my heels caught."

A woman shrieked softly. Near the buffet, a server dropped a plate of hors d'oeuvres.

Starscream bent to free herself, careful — too much force and she'd tear the floor out entirely — and her wings flicked back on reflex, straight into the chandelier overhead. The whole fixture swayed, releasing a burst of light and sound like a temple bell struck by divine punishment. The room gasped. Literally gasped. One crystal snapped free and hit the floor with a suicidal tink.

Starscream shot both claws up to steady the fixture, then smiled tightly at the panicked room. "Ha! Thank Primus, I thought I'd broken it. Imagine the scandal."

A woman in green murmured to her husband, "She just headbutted a Swarovski chandelier." He whispered back, "She's trying to kill us with fashion."

Behind her, Megatron's plating shifted. The room got a little colder. "Starscream," he said — low. Not yelling. Worse.

"Just a moment, Lord Megatron." With a mechanical hiss of retracting latches, she disengaged the heel servos and stepped barefoot out of her ruined shoes, retrieving what was left of them with regal grace, as if they weren't embedded in the floor of an antique war crime.

That did it. Megatron set his empty flute down on the piano's silver tray — not hard, but with enough force to declare war on the furniture. The tray jumped. The flutes rang out like alarm bells. And then—

CRRRREEEAK.

The piano groaned one last, mournful note and collapsed in on itself with an aristocratic wheeze — a final TWONK echoing through the parlor as champagne sloshed and crystal tipped in a slow-motion cascade onto the marble.

A woman screamed, "MY EARS!" as though Beethoven himself had been personally insulted. A man near the fireplace fainted with the dramatic flair of a Regency ghost.

"PRIMUS!" Megatron barked. "Is everything in this fragging dollhouse made of spun sugar?!" He stepped back and shattered a side table with one heel, seemingly by accident, though nobody in the room quite believed that.

"M-my floor?! My piano—!" Elita-One's diplomatic tone cracked, faceplates flushing furious red — the mask gone for the first time all evening.

Starscream straightened, chin high, barefoot, optics glowing with polished detachment. "I'm afraid Lord Megatron and I must be leaving," she said coolly. "I fear we are—"

"Disgusted," Megatron finished.

"—incompatible with your lovely home." She pulled a gleaming credit chip from her clutch and pressed it into Optimus's unresisting palm. "But I am a femme who cleans up after herself."

Megatron leaned toward Elita-One, voice a low, lethal purr. "Spend it wisely." He turned for the door. "Let's go."

Starscream lingered half a second, glancing down at her heels still embedded in the floor like fallen warriors. She'd liked those. She'd worn them for him.

"Yes," she murmured. "Lovely party."

She followed him down the hall — and then:

CRASH.

A thunderous, house-shaking noise tore through the foyer. Glass rattled. A vase gave up and toppled. A distant scream rang out somewhere.

"FRAGGING BILL ME!" Megatron roared from the front door.

Guests scattered like birds in a thunderclap. A waiter ducked behind the piano's remains. Someone shrieked, "He's going to bring the house down!" — and they weren't entirely wrong.

Outside, the night air was cool and quiet, sharp after the wreckage. Starscream's feet were bare on the porch stone. Of course they were. The final indignity.

She'd made it three steps toward the long, barefoot walk of shame back to the Nemesis when she let out a small, startled sound.

Lifted.

Megatron had scooped her up, effortless, like she weighed nothing — cradled against his chest, not just carried but claimed.

"Megatron?!"

"I'd rather take a blast to the spark chamber," he growled, "than let you walk to the car like this."

No theatrics this time. No diplomacy. Just conviction.

She hesitated — claws trembling — then wrapped her arms around his neck.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

Click. The magnetic latch snapped, her choker locking to his chain. A perfect connection. Instant. Silent. Sacred. Her vents slowed. Her optics dimmed at the edges. The house behind them — the chandelier, the humans, the pastel warzone — blurred into insignificance.

"You're mine," he said. Not a boast. A vow. "And you don't have to shrink. Not ever."

Her purr started low, then bloomed.

Inside, no one moved. A single crystal from the shattered chandelier spun slowly on the marble floor, catching the light like an accusation.

"My… my home…" Elita-One said faintly.

"Did he actually say 'fragging bill me'?" someone whispered.

"I think he stepped on a piano."

"No — the piano collapsed on its own. Like it sensed them coming."

"They didn't even try to fit in!"

"They did try," someone else cut in. "I watched them come in — tiptoeing down the hallway, practically holding their breath. The house doesn't fit their size. How Optimus Prime lives here at all is beyond me."

Optimus stood frozen by the fireplace — not in embarrassment. In revelation. His optics had gone distant, unfocused, as if reviewing a century of movement logs all at once.

"I wasn't clumsy," he said quietly, mostly to himself. "I was always so careful." He looked around at the cracked molding, the tipped vases, the guests blinking through a pastel warzone. "It's not just me."

No one corrected him.

Near the buffet, a teenager stared slack-jawed at his phone. "Yo," he whispered, turning the camera on himself. "Autobots Unlimited Unity Party. Live. We are so cooked." The stream had been running since Starscream first knocked on the door. Thousands watching. Tens of thousands.

Comments rolled in faster than he could read them:

The teen grinned, stunned. "...Yo, this party just got historical."

A soft alert pinged from a nearby datapad.

Trending #1: #DollhouseDiplomacy
#FreeTheFloorboards — climbing fast.