Seekers are a bit like organic birds, in a sense. They often communicate via chirps, whistles and trills to convey joy, distress or to simply get attention.

Skywarp and Thundercracker often do it, but Starscream seems to refrain as much as he can.

He always says it is because he's far too superior to communicate in such a primitive way, but sometimes, while in MedBay because of a beating from Megatron, or through the walls of his Hab-Suite, you can hear soft, broken trills coming from his vocaliser in the place of sobs.

When you'd carefully brought it up to him, he'd flown into one of his trademark tantrums and stormed off, muttering under his vents about how nosy the disposable Decepticon grunts are becoming. You're far from disposable, but Starscream had probably picked that word just to hurt you.

You'd brought it up again in private after he'd calmed down and had a vial of Engex, and this time, the proud Seeker just broke down, burying his helm in his servos and trembling.

"You want to know why I don't chirp like the others? Do you want to know why I can't? Why my Trinemates only chirp when they're alone? Megatron. It's always fragging Megatron, isn't it? The bane of my existence!" Starscream laughs humourlessly, scraping his claws on his helm subconsciously and scratching off his own paint job in stress.

Starscream downs another vial of Engex, before breaking the vial between his shaking digits as optic lubricant begins to gather around his crimson optics.

His vocaliser is almost as shaky as his frame, "back at the start of the war... Megatron decided that Seeker chirps were annoying and distracting, so he forbade me from making them. Every time I did, he'd break a wing, or tear off a limb and I'd be left to crawl to MedBay alone."

"I can't. I can't go through that again, so no more... No more Seeker-only communication... Maybe Megatron thought I'd be conspiring against him in my own language? But chirps are purely emotional. Maybe he'd know that if he cared to check."