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Ultra Magnus roused himself from a haze of data-crunching only long enough to take a sip from his favorite solar-brew energon before sinking back under again. Powerful processors ran information storage and retrieval subroutines at a rate far higher than most other soldiers, Autobot and Decepticon alike, could sustain for long. Connections between disparate bits of information were forged and catalogued. Reports of his own were created and filed automatically. Magnus had not been built as an information-processing model, but he'd had himself upgraded for it early in the war and now he took to it like it was his primary function. He found it restful, meditative as the humans would say, processing the reports. Just him, his fuel, and a web of data to impose his own order on.
"Ugh! What a bore! If that Sky Lynx talked about anything besides himself it'd be a minor miracle." Starscream, what was left of him anyway, flounced into the records room through the wall and hovered over Magnus's shoulder, striking a pose that was all legs and attitude. "I know you Autobots are desperate for wings, but have some taste."
Starscream would not be sorted. Starscream would not go docilely into a carefully-labeled box. Starscream wouldn't even recognize the solid boundary of walls. He went where he willed, sowed chaos on a whim, and gave no thought to what or who he damaged in the process. Magnus decided, still in information-sorting mode, that wherever Starscream's place was, it wasn't here in his sanctuary. He refocused his attention on his reports.
"Oh, ignoring me, are you? You won't get away with that for long! I've been ignored by a far better class of mechanism than you'll ever be, you hulking upstart." Something about Starscream's voice made him impossible to shut out completely, his words slicing through the protective half-sensory-deprivation that usually accompanied such intense recordkeeping sessions. Magnus held back a sigh and tabbed over to the next page, refusing to give Starscream the satisfaction of a reaction.
"And don't even pretend you don't want an opticful of this, either. I know you're a contrail chaser. Though really, Cyclonus? That brainless knockoff wouldn't know true grace if it shot him in the aft."
...That was it.
"...About all of the things that I long to believe, about love and the truth and what you mean to me..." It was the first snatch of lyric that came to his lips, his processors bringing it up from information storage without conscious direction. He hadn't even realized he'd known the song, but he was crooning it to the console - with no particular skill, but that wasn't his goal.
His goal, watched carefully out of the corner of his optic, was Starscream's face slowly going slack in disbelief. "What on Cybertron are you-!" he spluttered.
Time for the second salvo. "And the truth is," he crooned, not raising his voice one bit, "baby, you're all that I need..."
"Is this your way of annoying me? Well, I can be way more annoying than THAT-"
Third salvo; Magnus cranked the volume. "I want to lay you down in a bed of roses! For tonight I sleep on a bed of nails...!"
"That - you - augh!"
"I want to be just as close as the Holy Ghost is..."
"Forget it, you're a boring conversationalist anyway!"
"And lay you down..."
Starscream disappeared the way he came; Magnus smiled and delivered the last phrase to an empty room.
"...On a bed of roses."