Calligraphy of the Spark

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

G
TFA Inamorato AU
Dai Atlas, Drift, Wing, Blackout
schmoop
Been since March since I posted Inam stuff? 

“Drift.”  Dai Atlas’s voice, already thick-edged with disapproval, rang through the evening darkened dojo.

“Yes, Master.” Drift turned hastily, hand bumping the inkpot, accidentally sloshing ink over the creamy metal meshplate he had been slaving over for the last cycle and a half. And for all that, only half the poem he had composed was done, his penmanship nervous and slow.

“Drift.” Dai Atlas in the library’s doorway, the hard edge melting off his voice, replaced by cold confusion. “You are writing?”

“Trying to.”  Drift’s mouth pinched, sullenly. He could read just fine but making words come, much less making them look graceful and elegant, was a lot harder than he’d thought.  He looked down at the mesh platen as if with Dai Atlas’s gaze, and saw the wobbly scrawl with contempt, and the puddle of ink with downright disgust.  What was he even thinking?  Other than that he’d give anything to have that beautiful white jet talk to him again, look at him again…notice him. 

Stupid, he thought.  It had seemed like such a good idea the night before, lying in his barren berth: write a poem, just for Wing, compose it and send it like the samurai he was training to be, court the jet with all the weight of tradition. Since…that was all he had.

“Hmmph.”  Dai Atlas picked up the platen with some distaste. “Execrable poetry,” he said, thinly. “If you want to write, copy something with some merit and not this…trash.” 

“Yes,” Drift said, his voice the hiss of something cut to the quick.

“And your hand.” Dai Atlas frowned, the one that seem graven on his severe face. It  was impossible for Drift to imagine Dai Atlas ever in love, ever hopeful, ever dashed.  He found a solvent cloth, wiping the platen clean; all of Drift’s laborious letters gone in an instant. Drift yelped to see it go. 

Dai Atlas set the platen before him. “Let us see.”

Drift took the brush up, sliding it over the edge of the inkpot, as he’d read in the manual.  He began writing his name.

“No.”

He froze accustomed to that harsh negative from the sparring floor. 

“From the spark, Drift.” He felt a tap on his chassis. “Like a sword, every movement should be centered here, each stroke a commitment of your whole being.”

Drift bowed his head, venting with the technique Dai Atlas had trained him in, ages ago, to find his center.  Carefully, he moved the brush, its soft fibers tracing a clearer, surer line. It looked…better.  He gave a huff of satisfaction, even though, well, what was it?  A line of ink on paper. 

A grunt. “Like that. Yes.”

He nodded, and bent to finishing the glyphs of his name. It was better, and that was the hardest part to accept: Dai Atlas was harsh but right. Always right.

Dai Atlas nodded to himself, as if making a decision. “We shall add calligraphy to your regimen.  It is a good focus for you. Reading as well.”  He sniffed at the platen, as if still horrified by the scraps of Drift’s erased poem.  “The classics; training for the mind.” 

Drift nodded refusing to allow himself to feel happiness.  Training he thought.  He would get better. He would improve. And then he would have earned happiness, then he would be smarter, wiser, more worthy of a mech like Wing.

[***]

“Please.”  The word sounded clumsy and unfamiliar on Drift’s glossa, lilting and formal.

Blackout frowned, looking at the message cylinder dwarfed in his huge hands. He’d seen one kind of like it in the Cultural Museum when he’d gone there with Barricade last decacycle.  A message cylinder, with the long colored cord tied around it in some secret symbolic knot thing or something.  “Just don’t know why you don’t want to give it to him yourself and stuff.”

Drift stammered. “I-I can’t. I just can’t.”  There was a nervous energy radiating from his frame, almost worried.

Blackout narrowed his beady optics. “Why not?” He looked down at the tube, suddenly dubious. And aware that if he were Barricade, he’d be grilling Drift like an exhaust pipe and examining the cylinder for explosives. “This gonna make him cry or something? Cause Wing’s a nice mech and stuff.” Blackout nodded at his own truth.  Wing was a nice mech: all he wanted to do was serve drinks and smile. That seemed good sense right there. 

“No!” Drift said quickly.  “It’s just…I mean it’s nothing bad.” The blue optics flicked to the chrono. “Look I have to go.” There was a hint of the alarm Blackout remembered from before, when Dai Atlas had picked him up. “Can you? Please?”

Something in the smaller mech’s facial expression, mixed with that memory from last time, tipped his thinking. And Madam Arcee was always saying to give mechs a chance.  “Yeah, all right.” He turned, lumbering off a few steps before stopping. “Hey you wanna wait for the answer…?”

But Drift was already gone.

[***]

Wing sat in the break room, his gold optics scanning the poem on the flexible white metal.  The calligraphy was tense, tight, and the poem, in all honesty, was awful.  But through that, he could see, like a fire burning through fog, an ardent, sincere spark, the wild innocent passion behind the clumsy imagery, the stilted letters.  He could feel the vulnerability of an offering laid out before him. 

Drift. His first admirer. And the first to send him something so sweet, so personal. Wing had been given money before, presents, coins, invitations.  But this was special.  He clutched it to his chassis, mouth shaping awkward words, his optics brimming with tears, blind to the worried outrage of the huge copter in front of him.

“He said it wasn’t gonna make you cry,” Blackout said, angry and apologetic all at once, his huge hands fluttering.  “I wouldn’t have done it if I knew it would upset you.”

“No, it’s all right,” Wing said, sliding one finger under his optics, wiping away the pooling fluid. “This is the good kind of crying.”

“Didn’t know there was a good kind,” Blackout said. 

“There is,” Wing said, smoothing the silky metal of the platen under his fingers, like a mirror of the brushstrokes now curled in the sheet’s interior, like a lover around his beloved.

Comments

[wicked3659.livejournal.com]

I think this is so sweet. Drift and his nervousness are adorable and heart wrenching when dai rebukes him. I hope wing goes to drift, let him see he is so very worthy. Love this.

[ravynfyre.livejournal.com]

*wibbles* omg, this is... *wibbles more* so sweet and terrific and adorkable and omg, going to cry now!

after I stab Dai atlas in the spark. And cuddle Blackout. And Drift. And Wing.

[tainry.livejournal.com]

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

[eerian_sadow]

Dai Atlas is a jerkface. Drift's poem may have been bad, but it was his. *stompyfeet*

Drift was so sweet and so adorable. and Wing is just too precious. they have just got to get together soon or all this sort-of courting may kill me with sweetness.