Sky and Ground 34: Intrusion
Apr. 21st, 2010 07:20 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
niyazi-a.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
shadow_vectorBayverse AU
PG-13
Skywarp, Thundercracker, Barricade
Warning: Violence
INTRUSION
Barricade had helped Skywarp crawl up onto his berth before he’d left for the Seeker’s quarters to get him a cube of the right kind of energon. He was unsettled at how weak Skywarp was. Even more unsettled at the sight of the jet sprawled on his berth—too many memories from before, clashing with the now and echoing against all that had come between. He’d rushed off, with a haste driven just as much by his desire to get away as the need for Skywarp’s energon. He wasn’t ready for that yet. Part of him had wanted to lie next to Skywarp, twining his arms around the jet’s neck. Yet part of him, numb, was afraid Skywarp would want to interface and…he afraid of his own fear. Ridiculous, he told himself. Skywarp wouldn’t push him. Not weak as he was.
He juggled three cubes against his chassis—he wanted no chance that Skywarp would be undercharged—as he headed back down the corridor to his cube. He froze outside the door, hearing voices within. More than that: Thundercracker’s voice.
A white rage built in him. He coded the door, bursting into the room.
The blue jet loomed over the low berth, Skywarp propped up on one elbow beneath him.
“And so you chose to come here,” Thundercracker was saying. Hostile, like an accusation.
“Yes,” Skywarp said, quietly defiant. “I had something I needed to do.”
“Ridiculous.”
Barricade glared, pushing past Thundercracker, one of his shoulder-tires whacking callously against the blue jet’s rib strut. “Energon,” he said, briskly, extending one cube to Skywarp. He turned to stack the others on a shelf near the berth. Skywarp took the cube gratefully, cupping it in both hands, his long metal claws trailing along Barricade’s smaller talons. A deliberate gesture. Barricade’s spark warmed and chilled at the same time.
“Thank you,” Skywarp said, trying to catch Barricade’s gaze, and failing.
“Why did you not come to us?” Thundercracker pushed. Barricade could feel his glare like a targeting laser between his wing fairings. He didn’t care.
“I told you,” Skywarp said. He paused, raising the cube to his mouth, his optics closing as he drank. The clean Seeker energon raced through his systems. The mauvy groundframe sludge had kept him going, but this…this was better. He pulled Barricade near the dented edge of the berth, his mouth seeking the smaller mech’s, glossa probing gently. Demonstrating possession, defiance, bond in front of Thundercracker. Thin courage, but a start.
Barricade could feel the higher grade energon tingling on his lip plates, his glossa. Pink and effervescent. He remembered when it had made him so desperately happy.
He pulled away. He couldn’t…not right now.
He saw the pain of rejection naked on Skywarp’s face, and wished he could explain. But even if Thundercracker weren’t here, Barricade wasn’t sure he could find the words. His spark ached. I love him, he thought, but I …just can’t do this right now. I can’t.
“Did you even think,” Thundercracker said, his voice a tight thin blade, designed to cut, “of Starscream? He’s paralyzed with worry.”
Skywarp’s optic shutters clapped together, wincing in guilt.
Barricade turned to the blue jet. “Get out,” he said, plainly.
“You do not tell me what to do,” Thundercracker made a show of tilting his head down, emphasizing his greater height. As if Barricade were literally, beneath his notice until now.
“It’s my recharge,” Barricade said, looking up, just as defiantly. His talons bunched into fists.
“This is a Trine matter,” Thundercracker countered.
Barricade growled, throwing out his spoke weapon as he dropped into an attack crouch.
“Thundercracker,” Skywarp said, “Leave.”
“Skywarp,” Thundercracker said, his tone admonishing.
Skywarp sat up, the almost empty cube clattering to the berth, the pink liquid spilling across the worn metal. “Leave,” he repeated. “Barricade wants you to leave.”
“I do not take orders from grounders.” The optics rolled to Barricade and then to Skywarp, bold in their insolence. “And neither should you.”
“I’m not taking orders. I’m respecting another mech’s wishes.”
“Another mech.” Thundercracker snorted. “A grounder. With whom you’re interfacing.”
“Yes,” Skywarp said. “To all.” He swung his legs off the berth, his black footplates clacking against the floor.
Thundercracker took a step back, holding out his hands, placating. “It’s just that…we’re worried about you. Since you got involved with this grounder, you’ve changed.”
Skywarp’s optics widened as if at Thundercracker’s audacity. “Really.” His voice was tight and cold. Still in his attack crouch, Barricade risked a glance. Skywarp looked…tight. Wound up. He’d been more open when it was just Barricade. Was this what a Trine was like? Barricade had the briefest thought that all of his earlier envy had been misplaced. Maybe it was better to be alone—and suffer the worst torments of loneliness—than to have to belong.
“Starscream says so.”
Barricade felt a brief flare of rage, that guttered almost instantly. No. Starscream did not believe that. If that’s what he’d truly believed, he’d lied to Barricade. And who would stoop to lie to Barricade? He hoped Skywarp knew that, too.
“You know what?” Skywarp said, his hands jumping, agitated, almost like they were trying not to make fists. “For once, leave Starscream out of it.”
The pain on Skywarp’s face Barricade didn’t understand, but he knew Thundercracker was causing it. “LEAVE,” Barricade growled. He revved his spoke weapon in an unmistakable threat.
Thundercracker burst into an ugly laugh. “You think you can frighten me with that pitiful weapon?” He lunged forward, striking Barricade with the full force of his forward momentum. Barricade staggered against the shelves, datatracks and other objects crashing to the floor.
Barricade’s audio was filled with a roar, and he saw a black blur as Skywarp threw himself at Thundercracker. Barricade had seen Skywarp fighting with Starscream, once, that rough horseplay in his work-cube. This was…as Starscream would say, not that. This was vicious and intending to hurt. And Thundercracker struck back in kind.
Barricade struggled upright, his feet slipping on the spilled objects, more shaken by the sight of their violence than Thundercracker’s actual assault. The blue jet had merely intended, he knew, to put him in his place: shut him off, shut him down. Nothing he hadn’t felt a thousand times. But…no one had ever stood up for him. No one had ever…gone against his own Trine. He’d never been worth the effort. He still wasn’t.
“Stop!” he yelled, helplessly rushing to the two grappling jets, their limbs screeching metal-on-metal against the walls of his cube, one fist denting at his berth. He couldn’t get any closer, couldn’t find a way to separate them. Pink energon and yellowgreen lubricant spattered from them, one of them? Both of them? Someone was getting hurt. Barricade couldn’t bear it. “Stop fighting, please!” He winced as one of them got the back of his helm slammed into the partition for the maintenance facility. Oh frag, what was he going to do?
He threw himself onto them, not to attack, but just to try to tear them apart, get between them. So they wouldn’t hurt each other. It struck him as a physical metaphor of what he had done—come between them. But right now, he just wanted them to stop.
He tried to wrestle one of Skywarp’s arms away from hitting Thundercracker. That wouldn’t solve anything. It would only make this Trine thing worse.
Skywarp roared, his red optics tight, tiny circles, zeroing in on Barricade’s face with an expression of cold rage Barricade had never seen before. “Stay out of this,” Skywarp snarled, bodily throwing Barricade aside. He had never felt his smaller size and weakness quite as much as right then, slammed against the side of his berth, one of Skywarp’s talons gouging in under his chassis armor. He saw Thundercracker take advantage of the opening in Skywarp’s guard, and claw at the black folded wing.
Stay out of this. It echoed in Barricade’s cortex, throughout his whole frame, which suddenly seemed hollow and numb. Stay out of this. You don’t belong. Not one of us. Pushed away.
He gathered his shaking legs under him, and bolted from the room, burning with fear and rejection.
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Date: 2010-04-21 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 09:34 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading!
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Date: 2010-04-21 12:07 pm (UTC)Great job, as always
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Date: 2010-04-21 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-22 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 09:38 pm (UTC)(thanks for your wonderfully kind PM, btw--when my internet is acting stable, I'll reply at length!)
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Date: 2010-04-21 03:52 pm (UTC)They... They were just starting to get things on a better track and now.... D: *wibbles more*
I really wanna hug 'Cade now. And maybe yank the seekers apart by whatever counts as an ear.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 09:39 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 04:16 pm (UTC)Please don't ask if that's a good or a bad AHHHH because I honestly don't know, it's just AHHHHHHHH.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
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Date: 2010-04-21 09:40 pm (UTC)Next week it'll definitely be 'bad ahhhhh'. :CcC
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Date: 2010-04-21 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-22 12:39 am (UTC)BTW, I'm
probably rather obviouslyjoining the camp of those who want Barricade to run right into Starscream's (horrifically angsty and trembling) arms. ;)no subject
Date: 2010-12-01 08:12 am (UTC)