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niyazi-a.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
shadow_vector2012-05-09 08:25 am
Confessional
PG
IDW Forlorn Hope AU
Jetfire, First Aid
angst?implied pnp, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
nan00kwrites
First Aid waited for his own mortification to pass. He’d avoided Jetfire ever since that terrible, awkward trip home, where he’d steeped in the horrible feeling that he’d ruined something beautiful.
It weighed on him still, both his shame and his ignorance. He wanted to speak with the shuttle, to apologize, to understand, to somehow make things right. Even though he was losing faith that an apology could fix anything. First Aid screwed up his courage, one night, and found himself outside the shuttle’s door, feeling impossibly self-conscious in the alpha-scale quarters corridor: self-conscious, alone, and very, very small.
The door opened to Jetfire, huge and white, his face its usual impassive calm. “First Aid.” The voice gave away nothing, courtesy, and nothing more. Which might have been a hundred different meanings.
“I…uh…can we talk?” First Aid shuffled his feet: it occurred to him what an imposition this was—his need to talk, inveighing on Jetfire’s privacy. But his guilt compelled him, the sense that he had broken something beautiful. It had to at least be acknowledged, admitted. And if Jetfire scorned him, dismissed him, he would accept that as justice, or at least the start of it.
Jetfire stood aside, gesturing for First Aid to enter, saying nothing, waiting.
“I wante to apologize,” First Aid began, sucking in a breath. “For, you know, that whole….” That whole…what? Intrusion, invasion, jealousy, ruination. He wrung his hands. “I had no right.”
“You were concerned.” An understanding nod, that somehow hurt worse than if Jetfire yelled at him. Then again, First Aid couldn’t remember Jetfire yelling, ever.
“I…I ruined everything.”
A deep sigh, the blue optics dimming. “It was bound to happen, First Aid. Secrets cannot be kept forever.”
“But…,” First Aid frowned, frustrated at himself, at Jetfire’s calmness. “I don’t understand. Any of it." A plaintive sound, pitiful and hurt. And he was supposed to be a medic, to make things right.
“I don’t, either.” Another enigmatic smile. “It seems to me the most powerful forces in the universe defy understanding.” Jetfire moved to sit on the edge of his berth, bringing his optics closer to First Aid’s.
“I think,” First Aid mumbled, looking down at his hands, “I think I was jealous.” No. I know I was. I still am, he thought. Jealous and confused: why not him? Why not? It wasn't rejection, but it was.
“Jealous.” Jetfire shook his head, disbelieving. “There's not anything to be jealous of, First Aid.”
“Of…you.” There. He’d said it, and he wrung his hands, small and isolated in the middle of the class alpha sized room. "Him. Not me." There. He'd said it, as petty and pathetic as it was. He'd come to lance the wound, to clear the infection. His pettiness stank, seeming to fill the room. He felt...contaminated and vile.
A long pause, the silence yawning around them. And First Aid decided that there was something worse than holding onto a secret, and that was letting it go.
Then Jetfire moved, and First Aid felt the large arms around him, the plush fuzz of the shuttle’s EM field enveloping him. He trembled, unable to do anything other than be held, nerveless, as Jetfire pulled him back to the berth. “Don’t be,” Jetfire said, his voice soft, shaky. “Don’t be.”
[***]
Jetfire sighed. Against him, First Aid rested, face buried in his chassis, burrowed under Jetfire’s leg. First Aid was small, and fragile and so easily, easily hurt that even Jetfire’s attempt to be gentle had backfired. So they’d lain there, the rest of the night, knotted in a ruin of good intentions.
Why must the beautiful always hurt? He was not a philosopher: the answer was beyond him, and he longed for science, to bury himself in, like a coward.
And even so, Jetfire felt like a thief, a criminal, when he activated his comm, calling out to Sixshot, a comm that hung, stretched through space, unanswered.
[***]
“You sure about this?” Ratchet frowned looking at the screen.
First Aid nodded. “I can be useful there.” He wasn't sure. But he knew it had to happen. His life had become a world of paradoxes.
“DJD is active out there.” At attempt at kindness, First Aid supposed. An attempt to back out.
First Aid frowned. He was tired of everyone presuming he was weak. He was a pacifist. That didn’t make him fragile. “All the more reason they need medics,” he said, quietly. And all the better reason to get away from the command hub, from Jetfire and the wreck of what could never be.
A long, measuring glance, the one Ratchet used like a laser scalpel, and then a shrug. “All right. Delphi. I’ll put in a good word to Pharma.”
"Thank you," First Aid murmured, his voice barely audible around the sound of his world falling apart.
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I third the opinion about the last line. Just...wow. It's just perfect. Powerful, dramatic and poetically positioned. Thank you so much for writing this!
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But then but then! First Aid goes and finds a sexy bad boy helicopter to console himself and Jetfire finds Sixshot again and they all go to a really cool moon and have a hot foursome!*runs*
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(though I can't see this First Aid with Vortex: that's someone else's ship who writes it far better than I)
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