shadow_vector | Blue Wings

PG-13
IDW Liberation AU
Springarm/Wing
shibari
this was supposed to be porn. LOL yeah. note to self: when your bitty baby is sick? you cannot write porn. SO, yup. Got angsty and a bit h/cish.

“I can show you.” Springarm felt a twinge of surprise hearing the offer from his own voice. But Wing had this kind of power over him, to pull him out of himself, to pull kindness and gentleness from where he thought he was merely a barren plain. It was a rare gift and one he found he needed. “If it would make you less afraid.”

“It would, but not if it would distress you.” Wing smiled up, shyly, from where he lay on the berth. Another curiosity: how Wing could be so open, so nearly wanton during interfacing but fold, like a beautiful flower, into this exquisite courtesy.

Springarm dropped down onto the berth, one knee next to the jet, bending over to find the mouthplates, in a tender, electric kiss. He’d ‘distress’ himself for Wing a great deal: the jet had been his salvation, all-unknowing, pulling him from a grey world of duty and obligation, showing him life again in all its glory and color.

And discomfort to alleviate the pain of a beloved, was an exquisite, tremulous color, rich and vibrant and delicate all at once.

The mouth parted against his, Wing’s glossa searching for his, seeking and teasing. He tore himself away with effort, wanting nothing more than to press his weight against the jet, bear him down to the berth, feel the strong black hands reach around him, knowing, instinctively, just how to touch his drivetrain tire. And then begin the elegant, arousing dance of decision, each yielding to the other.

But no. That was for later. Wing had asked his help, something the jet very rarely did, as though merely asking was imposition enough. His mouthplates tingled with the kiss as h pulled away, rising to his feet. He let his gaze wander over Wing, half-sprawled on the berth, optics bright, mouth parted and glistening from their kiss, before he turned to his storage closet, digging inside it for a length of cord.

“The color matters, normally,” he explained, holding the silken blue length between his hands. He held it out, letting Wing reach forward, stroking the shiny twisted rope as though it were a serpent, with the tip of one finger. Springarm fought a shiver of desire, watching Wing study the rope that would soon bind him, bring him pain and fear, introduce him, in its slim strands, to his own limits. A metaphor, really, that so many fine strands could twist together and become so strong, that something so small could cut so deep and hurt so much.

“Blue,” Wing murmured, as though the word itself were holy. “What does blue mean?”

“I could explain,” Springarm doubted, actually. “I could try to explain. But you learn, in the ritual.”

“Is this the cord used for yours?” Wing knelt, reverent, on the berth’s edge.

He nodded, solemnly, the memories washing over him: Wheelarch, the pain of the attack, the agony of waking up to find his twin gone, things he had carried in him, like poisonous stones, until his own ritual, wanting to hide from the knowledge of another’s pain and his own helplessness. The cord seemed soaked with meaning. And he could think of no better purpose for it than this.

His hands moved, fast, an old policemech’s speed, to trap the slender wrists in loops of the cord. Wing gave a startled sound, like a gasp, optics tipping up to him. Springarm stepped back, leading Wing by the binding. “Come,” he said, quietly, turning the order into an invitation. Wing followed, and the clumsiness of dismounting the berth sent shivers through Springarm’s frame, the graceful jet shedding his grace at Springarm’s control.

He pulled Wing in for a kiss, the hands pressed between them, his mouth hot on Wing’s trembling lip plates. He could feel the disturbed EM field, like fluttering wings, around him, as he tugged down on the cord, directing Wing to kneel. Springarm twisted the cord over one of his hands, freeing one to stroke over the helm, trace the elegant scallops of Wing’s audial flares. A soft noise, like a hum of desire, came from his vocalizer, unnoticed, that seemed to send a delicious tremor through Wing’s body as he knelt.

And for a moment, he hesitated there, Wing’s hands bound before him, the jet’s helm a handspan from his interface hatch, the gold optics tilted up at him wide and trusting and willing. He broke the moment, dropping down, taking more cord and sliding it, first, sensuously over the thighs, trailing the cord’s tasseled ends along the plates, up the bevels, flicking it teasingly against the interface hatch. Wing shivered, his hands clutching together helplessly, face upturned like a goblet, brimming with emotion.

“Afraid?”

“No.” A soft shake of the head.

Springarm nodded. “Good.” He dropped down to one knee, resisting the urge to sample that mouth again, bending over the jet’s legs. He slid the rope around Wing’s hips, before tugging at it, sliding it between the thigh and shins. Wing gasped at the sharp slide of the silken rope over his armor, arching up from his knees, beautifully responsive. Springarm dropped the rope holding Wing’s hands, sliding the back of one hand along Wing’s thigh, reaching between the legs to pull up a loop of rope, swinging the free end around. The blue end flew in an intricate dance, leaving a symmetric, tight, ornate bobble of rope in its trace, pinning Wing’s thighs together, pressing up against his interface hatch.

The wing panels shivered, betraying tension and he felt a nervous gust of air from the other’s vents, the body shifting, testing the confines.

Another length of rope, around the chassis, and Springarm absorbed himself in the task of binding the wing panels, tight and constricting, creating a butterfly of rope, using all his skill to make the binding symmetric and beautiful.

He could feel the tension, now, an electric thrum through the EM field, like a long, soundless whimper. He stepped around, and Wing’s optics were hungry for the sight of him, needing reassurance, needing comfort. Springarm smiled, his hands soothing over the armor of a shoulder nacelle. “Brave,” he murmured, bending to plant a kiss on the jet’s crest, “very brave.”

“You’ve done it. Every Knight has done as much.”

“That does not diminish the courage it takes,” Springarm said. He knelt by Wing, cupping the face in his hands. “Every mech’s pain is unique, and terrible. And yet facing that is what binds us.” He saw the optics shimmer, on the brink of comprehension, as he deposited another soft kiss, this time to the mouth, sealing the truth of the words between them, as he reached for the bound wrists, and slipped the short loose end from that binding under a strand over Wing’s chassis, fastening the hands, almost as if in prayer, against the chest.

He stepped back, lacking words to describe Wing in these moments: beautiful, the beauty born of vulnerability and trust. He could feel the fear radiate from the jet, and Wing’s struggle to keep it under control. He brushed a soothing hand down a shoulder nacelle. “Don’t fight it, Wing. Don’t worry about what I might think.”

A nod, vague, the optics already dim and distant. And he could only imagine what Wing was seeing, though he knew the feeling all too well: no escape. No movement, no distraction from your own thoughts, your own memories, other than pain. Forced into a choice of the body and the mind, two different confrontations.

A whimper, the optic shutters twitching, Wing’s body rocking, gently, like a tree buffeted by winds. The mouth tried to shape words, but none came out, just a river of sound.

Springarm steeled himself, wanting to stop it, wanting to release the fast hitches, to free Wing, It was just a test, just enough to give him the idea, find his boundaries. And another’s pain was the worst thing one could watch, especially knowing he had the power to end it.

But he held himself back, watching Wing tremble, twitch, and then thrash, falling backwards onto his bound wings, hands clawing at his armor, body arching and writhing on the cool floor.

Springarm moved forward, dropping his weight onto Wing’s body, feeling the heat from the stressed joints, the taxed circuitry. Wing struggled, then stilled beneath him as he murmured, softly, the jet’s name, over and over. “You’re here,” he said. “Here. With me.”

“Springarm,” Wing whispered, the word sounding cracked and dry.

“Yes.”

The optics cleared, the trembling stilling a bit, or at least lessening in amplitude. “Altihex.”

“I know. I remember.” And the memory haunted him, of finding that crushed, charred frame under the collapsed wall, and the pitiful gold optics, spider-web-shattered. He nuzzled against the heated helm.

“I can’t do this, Springarm. I can’t remember. I don’t want to.” The hands wormed, pitifully, against his chassis.

“You can. You have to.” He soothed his hands over the armor. “It’s memory. It’s the past.”

“It’s my whole world!” The optic plates ground together, aware of how pitiful he sounded. “It was, I mean.”

Springarm tipped the face to him, brushing a series of kisses along the cheeks. “Don’t, Wing.” He straddled the other mech, pushing up onto his elbows, feeling the bound hands clutch against his chest. “It was your whole world, the one you knew.” He knew what it was like to mourn that: sometimes the loss of Wheelarch still ached, a cold, hollow burn. “It would be awful of you not to miss it, not to mourn it. Your sorrow shows your strength.”

“It doesn’t feel like strength.”

“And violence, which often feels like strength, is weakness.” He felt the shivering quiet beneath him. “You can endure this, Wing. I know you can.” Even so, his fingers hovered around the quick-release knot around the wrists. He had faith in Wing, but Wing needed to believe it himself.

“Just…a bit longer,” Wing said, uncertainly. “It will be worse in the ritual.”

“It will be the same,” Springarm said. And if this could give Wing any confidence, he would endure it.

“Can you…this time…touch me?” Wing ducked his head, embarrassed.

Springarm nodded, his spark seeming to swell at the shy question, the honor of the request.

Wing sucked down another breath, letting himself sink back down into the silent battle, memory rising like a dark, oily tide, to pull him under, the sharp lines of rope confining him, constriction building to pain, sharp whiplines of white hurt.

“Wing,” Springarm murmured, settling back, resting one hand on a knee.

“It’s just,” Wing said, voice vague and distant, “it’s just so much. I don’t want to let go. I don’t know…who I am without it.”

“That’s the challenge,” Springarm said. “That’s what Knights must do: find out.”

And the words shivered over Wing, like a beat of the blue wings of Truth.

Blue Wings

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