Resist

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

NC-17
Bayverse AU (Interrogationverse)
Flatline/Barricade
sticky, dom/sub, fairly hard dubcon, repairbot

A continuation of Shadows Without Light  until I feel mean enough to interrogate...I think Springer's up next? 

 

Barricade was torn between relief at finally, finally getting out from under Vortex’s…special attentions and a nagging suspicion that this would not last long.  Which made him, if possible, even more desperate to hang onto even this possibly illusory moment of freedom.

Barricade moved through the corridor with a sense of freedom he had not felt since falling under Vortex’s…control.  An errand, a mission Vortex sent him on, but it got him away from the psychotic copter long enough to remember the taste of freedom.  He knew it was all illusory—in a few cycles at most he’d be back and Vortex would doubtless have a true-to-form debrief set up for him.  Does freedom matter less if it’s only in small, delusional portions?

He chimed at the door to Flatline’s lab, balancing the box of components against one of his hip skirting panels.  His mission was to upgrade several of the memory components on the computers. A simple enough job. Too simple. Tedious, in fact. A droneling could do it, and Barricade knew he ought to be insulted by the lowness of the task but all he could feel was relief. And at this point, many of Vortex’s attempts to humiliate him weren’t working. He’d gotten so used to being called stupid, and useless, so accustomed to being railed at for minute flaws or pretend missteps, that part of him had gone numb. He wasn’t sure if that was Vortex’s plan, but he clung to that numbness as a hard-earned victory.  Numb was better than pain.

The door coded open remotely and he stepped through to a massive chamber of monitors. The room was full of strange noises: clickings and beepings and whirrings of machinery.  Repair bots curled into their storage balls, a few white optics popping online to look at him.  One chittered, unfolding itself, ambling toward him along its storage shelf. 

He took an appraising look at the row of consoles. Oh, this would…take a while.  Oh well. More time without Vortex.  Unless, and the thought was disturbing, Vortex decided to come by and check up on his progress. Which no matter how fast wouldn’t be fast enough. 

Do not, he growled to himself, let that bastard’s future actions ruin the now. 

Flatline nodded at him, looking up from a datapad as though he were merely another repairbot, and pointed to a series of darkened monitors. “Begin with those.”  Yeah, Barricade thought. Thanks for the obvious, there. He dropped the box of components on the floor next to him, kneeling down. 

The repairbot wiggled, lining up, and pounced on Barricade as he settled onto the floor, its small pincer-like limbs clinging to his armor, clambering across his frame, clicking happily.  Yeah, at least someone’s happy, Barricade thought, but part of him relaxed as the non-sentient little mech settled into repairing a damaged and frayed control cable in his neck. Yeah, one guess how that happened….

Another reason this job sucked—the access panels were under the consoleboards, so he had to cramp himself down, folded so that his chassis bumped against his thigh plates, to reach them.  And, seriously. Eight screws to keep the panel closed?  Huh. Vortex thought he knew everything about torture. Nope. Eight tiny screws in an unreachable access panel. 

He worked his way through four of the consoles, scooting along the floor, pushing the box next to him.  The old processing components he’d slapped up on the consoles above him, so he could sweep by and pick them up all at once.  The repairbot shifted around him, clicking happily to itself as it patched damaged lines or straightened bent cables.  It had been…remarkably peaceful, though his doorwings kept twitching. Paranoid, he told himself.  Yeah, this is vulnerable, and maybe that’s the point of this whole exercise.  Barricade was under no delusion that this wasn’t part of his ‘training’—however Vortex justified half of his methodology. 

He tried to peer behind him, as he worked, trying to catch a glimpse of the scientist between his shoulder fairings and doorwings.  Flatline seemed…supremely disinterested, absorbed in a datapad, or inputting data.  As if Barricade didn’t exist at all. 

Not-so-strangely, Barricade did not mind that.  He remembered the strange dark amusement with which Flatline had patched his punctured tire after Vortex had plunged the drill into it.  He’d rather not get that kind of attention, thanks.

He came to the end of the row,  and shoved back, stretching his cramped leg servos for a handful of kliks before rolling to his feet. The repairbot clung to him, climbing down to his pelvic frame as he stood, beeping.  Excitement? Distress? Who knew. Plenty of both down there for you, little weirdo, he thought.  It tapped insistently against the panel.  He pushed it aside, giving a short denial in the machine language they spoke. Primitive. No. Override. Don’t touch. 

It bleeped unhappily, but stopped, muttering to itself as it settled for a dented servo-housing with a damaged seal. 

Time to make sure the new components worked.  He flicked on the monitors, waiting for them to boot up. He heard Flatline moving behind him, probably to input more data. He bent low over the console, tapping out the codes that would get the system to recognize the new component and integrate it.

A hand landed next to his on the console.  “Progress?” Flatline’s voice had that same strange note of amused detachment he remembered from before.

Barricade shifted, uneasily. “Yes,” he said, curtly.  He glued his optics to the monitor, radiating concentration and focus.  When Flatline reported to Vortex, he’d have to say that Barricade was focused.  Or lie.  He didn’t know why it made a difference: he’d get punished either way. But it mattered that it would be undeserved. He could feel the other’s optics hard upon his back—he forcibly had to still his doorwings.  Vortex would not react well if he found out Barricade leaked emotion. 

Flatline hung over him, his larger bulk an ominous arcing presence behind him. Barricade felt an almost building pressure to say something or do something.  He fought it.  Do your job.  Concentrate.  The repairbot’s touches tickled against his thigh.

He felt a cool pressure on that spot between the mounting of his doors. The repairbot? No…. His optics shot over to Flatline. An intimate location, but a completely neutral touch. Almost an experimental prod.  He bit down against a response, continuing to input the authorization codes.  

The hand on the console next to him moved, and grabbed his hand, drawing the wrist tire up for inspection, his optics darting between the tire and Barricade’s face.  “Has the patch held?” His long finger prodded the precise location where he had patched Vortex’s drill injury.  He spun the tire idly, watching Barricade’s face for a response.  Barricade stiffened, as the spun tire sent shimmers of sensation across his net.  Flatline seemed to smirk.

“Held fine,” Barricade said, tightly.  He tried to pull his hand out of Flatline’s grip. The hand tightened on his own.  Flatline’s talon traced in the tire’s groove, then stopped, pushing in hard enough to hurt.  His optics locked with Barricade’s, the talon digging in. 

Barricade fought the redline alarms flickering across his HUD.  His cooling systems rattled on, to cope with the extra load of pain messages, but he kept his face still.  Show nothing.  Flatline moved one of his hands up Barricade’s arm, to the tire mounted above the shoulder.  Barricade braced himself, realizing that this was deliberate. If anyone knew about the sensitivity of drivetrain tires, it was another grounder. He tried, but he couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran down his frame.  Flatline’s smile widened, lopsided. 

“How are you feeling, Barricade?” he asked. That clinical, neutral tone. 

“F-fine,” he managed.  He jerked his hand out of Flatline’s grasp.  “Got work to do.”

“Do you?” The hand in his upper tire slid down to the brake disk.  Barricade tried to shrug the hand away, irritated. 

“Stop it,” he said.

“Stop what? This is a manual diagnostic of your drive system.” 

Right. 

“It’s against Decepticon policy to refuse essential repairs.” The smirk grew to a shiny silver crescent. 

Oh, so that’s how it was going to be. Time to stop this slag right here. Barricade pushed back, slapping the hand from his tire.  “Don’t have to take this from you.”

“Actually, I believe you do.”

Barricade backed up a step, his heel plate banging into the small box of components.  “Frag that.”  He crouched into a combat stance.  Bad enough he had to take this kind of thing from Vortex.  He was not going to take it from this creep. He readied the command to deploy his spoke weapon.  Pitiful, Vortex had called it.  Yeah. We’ll see. 

Flatline looked amused.  The repairbot chirred in distress, climbing up to Barricade’s shoulder.  “Interesting display.”

Barricade felt rage wash up him, as though from a geyser beneath his feet.  “Can make it more interesting.” His weapon flashed, whirring into the air between them.

“I have no doubt that you can.”  He seemed disturbingly well at ease, Barricade thought, for a mech with a weapon pointed at him. 

“Let me do my slaggin’ job and get out of here.”

“This is your job,” Flatline said, coolly. “Vortex says I can have you.”

“He doesn’t own me.”

“Doesn’t he?”

“No.” He revved the weapon, the spokes glittering in the subdued light, casting white flecks of light around the lab.  A few more repairbots stirred from their recharge-balls at the sound, watching drowsily. 

“Ah,” Flatline said, disbelieving.  The repairbot scrambled around Barricade’s neck, curling around the armor.  “I was under a misapprehension.”

“Yeah.”  Barricade cast an optic to the exit.  He could make it.  The repairbot clicked in his audio. He twitched his head away from the sudden noise.  “Vortex doesn’t control me.” Well, not totally. Not as much as he thought.  But probably more than Barricade wanted to admit.

“Yes,” Flatline said mildly. “That is the nature of my misapprehension.  Vortex does not control you.”  He gave a series of clicks and suddenly, Barricade’s entire system froze, his spoke weapon snapping to a stop, his entire frame rigid. “But I do.”

***

Flatline had given him back mobility.  It was just a demonstration, of course, he’d said.  A joke. Yeah. Slaggin’ funny as hell.  Don’t do it again, he’d snarled in his processor.  The feeling of helplessness, that Flatline could do…anything to him and he couldn’t even move, couldn’t even turn his head, might not even be able to feel it, was in its own way worse than what Vortex did to him.  A different kind of mindgame. They both wanted to watch him writhe….  But at least Vortex pretended that it was for a reason other than his own arousal. That made a difference, too, though he couldn’t quite define how.

“Now,” Flatline said, reasonably, “We can be reasonable about this, yes?”

Barricade muttered, “Going to tell Vortex anyway….”  No reason to fight or not fight. 

“Tell him what? Your resistance?” The grin widened. Toothy.  Disturbing.  He leaned in closer to where Barricade had backed himself into the corner. “Your resistance arouses me.”

“Why’d you need to shut me down, then?” Barricade retorted.

“Because your resistance arouses me,” Flatline repeated, patiently. As though there was something Barricade wasn’t getting.

“So…how do I get out of here?”  The repairbot coiled around his neck, bleating sympathetically. Right. Enemy.  Even the repairbots.  You have no friends. You can trust…nothing. 

“I imagine the answer would be obvious, even to you.”  Flatline had leaned back against the row of monitors, their  cursors blinking patiently for authorization codes. 

Uhhh no way. “Go frag yourself.”

Flatline grinned. “Far more amusing to have you do it.”

“Amusing,” Barricade scoffed.  His cortex started spinning out a line.  If you know what someone wants, Vortex said, you can control them.  You know what he wants….

“Why me?”

Flatline folded his arms, considering Barricade.  “Once again. Your resistance.”  He leaned forward suddenly. “I want that.” 

He wants resistance?  Let him have some: Barricade swung out with his talons in a clawing swipe, catching Flatline across the face. Not enough to slice off that smug smile, but his denta gritted in satisfaction as he heard metal grate against metal, and Flatline’s head snapped to the side.  The repairbot squealed at the sudden motion from the position it had taken around his neck. 

The larger mech pushed up off the console—he loomed nowhere near as large as Vortex, but large enough that Barricade’s head only reached his shoulder, and pushed Barricade bodily against the corner, Barricade’s doorwings scraping.  “Yes,” Flatline murmured, his ex-vents hot on Barricade’s facial spires. “Like that.”

Barricade shoved both of his hands against the larger chassis. An inelegant move, but effective.  Flatline staggered back a few steps.  “Not a toy,” he snarled. 

“You are. Would you like to see how much?”  He clicked. The repairbot stirred on Barricade’s neck.

It didn’t really call for an answer, but before Barricade could retort his body rocked rigid, thrust into a painfully abrupt overload.  No warning. No preparation. No firing on of the interface systems. Just a sudden burst of charge, transfluid scalding out his unlubricated spike.  He could not prevent himself from crying out, teetering forward.

Flatline tilted his head. “Autoinitiate,” he said. “I use it myself, normally to handle the unfortunate…needs.  It is efficient, but…,” he shrugged, “somewhat unsatisfying.” 

“How--?” Barricade gasped. His entire system ached, as if scorched. One hand rubbed uncomfortably against his interface equipment housing.

“The repairbot acquired your designation codes.”  He resumed his seat. “Now. Shall I do that again? It was quite…diverting.”

Barricade glared venomously. “What do you want me to do?” Best to get this over with. “Besides, of course,” he snapped, “’resist’.”

Flatline stared at a spot behind Barricade’s shoulder, considering.  “I want you to tell me about Vortex.”

“Don’t want to talk about Vortex.” Flat shutdown. 

“I do.” He gave a truncated click. A threat. 

Barricade tensed. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

Flatline folded his hands together on his lap. “What does it feel like? What he does to you?”

Play dumb.  Always safe. “Does what?” He didn’t think he got the look of blank ignorance quite right. 

Flatline gave an amused moue.  “Come now.” He sighed, pushed to his feet.  He swung Barricade by one arm, throwing him against the bank of consoles. Barricade felt his frame, and EM field, push against him from behind, his captive wrist twisted just enough to hurt and strain the cables but not…quite…enough to do damage. The repairbot squeaked, leaping clear as Flatline leaned over. His armor slid over Barricade’s back kibble. “Does he do this to you?” The voice was silky in his audio. 

Barricade stayed silent.

His hand was released, but he found himself pinned by the shoulders, Flatline’s weight levering him down by pressure to his shoulder fairings.  He thrashed on the console’s surface, kicking with his legs.  One heelplate caught in Flatline’s armor and he shoved back with all the leverage he could gather.  Flatline laughed, a sort of dry, hollow sound. He pushed in again, and Barricade could feel the rise of his pelvic armor scraping against Barricade’s interface hatch.  He wanted resistance? 

Barricade thrust up with his arms against the console, throwing his weight floorside, letting gravity lift him, tear him out of the confining hands, letting his hips follow through the move, feeling his armor catch and bend.  He landed awkwardly, half on his back, on the floor. Flatline landed on top of him, roughly, letting the pulling momentum of Barricade’s legs lead him to the floor, his weight hard on the interceptor’s chassis. “Very good,” he said dryly. He shifted his weight, and Barricade felt a…hand creep down between his pinned thighs.  “You will give me what I want,” Flatline said, calmly. 

Barricade kept bracing himself, waiting for the sudden quixotic shifts of mood he was used to from Vortex, but Flatline seemed determined to remain at this level of chilly amusement.   There was no threat or menace in his tone.   Simply a statement of fact, almost a commissive.

Hands pushed him over onto his back, and Barricade felt small fingers skitter over his interface panel, snapping it open.  Flatline’s optics flicked down, his wide mouth curling in amusement as he took in Barricade’s filthy spike, gummed with lubricant and Primus-knew-what else, glistening with silvery transfluid from his forced overload. 

“You are filthy,” Flatline murmured. “Let’s get you dirtier.” The larger mech shifted his weight, coming to rest straddling Barricade’s pelvic frame, his valve seating over and then cinching down upon the spike.  Barricade writhed his hips, but Flatline’s weight made it impossible for him to get leverage, and all he managed to do was slide the spike in the valve.  Flatline grinned down at him, bracing his shoulders with his larger hands, the smaller ones continuing to pinch and probe and tease their way across Barricade’s frame. 

“Get off me,” Barricade snarled, realizing how…completely pitifully empty the words were.  He clawed at Flatline’s arms, but his talons only made short scratches in the armor’s enameling, Flatline hissing in a sort of pleasure-pain at the contact.

“You have the order of those words mixed up, Barricade.” Flatline rocked his hips back, driving the spike to seat fully in his valve.  “You realize you’re not getting out of here until then.  So…the more you resist, the longer you stay here. Which means…you must like it, yes?”

Barricade snarled, jolting his hips upward against Flatline’s, his talons gouging into inner-arm cables.  “This what you want, then?”

Flatline snickered. “It’s all what I want, Barricade.”  Sensation, feeling.  These were all…alien to Flatline. Unknowns. Exotic.  It was what he had seen in Barricade to begin with—the fierce struggle under the surface, the hateful obedience, the confused compliance.  Barricade was alive in ways that neither he—nor Vortex—were.  The interfacing was almost irrelevant to Flatline. Mere physical sensation. A systems trip.  That was mechanical. That he understood.  But this. This he did not understand. This captivated him, fascinated him—the smaller mech’s defiance, the obvious veering from thought to thought, response to response.

And yet, for all that,…not a victim to surface.  Barricade was not like, say, Starscream, who flitted from distraction to distraction, only able to feel so long as his attention was held.  Pico-emotions.  This was something entirely different—the entire cortex engaged in feeling and synthesizing those feelings, trying to strategize, work around, suppress, rechannel.  Yes. 

Barricade glared up at him, his body moving in a solid, mechanical rhythm, determined to get it over with, get through it, his distaste obvious on his face.  Flatline leaned lower. “Your emotion is showing,” he whispered, sensuously in the audio. Barricade’s face snapped taut, into a blank mask, only the optics blazing feral and red, spiraled in tightly like laserpoints of hatred. 

Barricade pushed all of his hatred and rage and loathing and humiliation at what they had done to him, were doing to him, what he had allowed himself to become, into the violence of his thrusts, into the fine points of his talons driving into Flatline’s cabling.  Use what Flatline wants against him, his mind spun, but he could not think through his helpless frustration.  Could not see a path to make that happen.  Use it against him…for what?  He had nothing he wanted from Flatline save to get this over with, let it begin to fade and grey and feather in his memory against a dozen other abject humiliations.  All he could do was funnel his emotion into it, determined to ruin it for Flatline. Oh, I’ll give you what you want, but you won’t enjoy it, he thought, grimly. His spike refused to pick up charge. He would not give in.  He would not stoop to allow his systems to enjoy this.  He could feel the prickling of Flatline’s nodes against his—he staunchly, adamantly overrode the signals.  He would show control.  He would show Flatline.  You can make me do this: you cannot make me betray myself.

The overload hit Flatline almost by surprise—so tightly had he been focusing on Barricade’s inner workings, he had hardly paid any mind to his own physical systems.  The charge had built cleanly, quickly, his valve sensors prickling online, picking up charge steadily with Barricade’s even, angry thrusts.  Flatline felt his valve ripple against the spike, saw the slight tension in the very corners of Barricade’s mouth as he continued to drive his spike into the overloading valve, merciless, trying to fox the signal with more charge. 

Flatline bent lower, his pelvic frame quivering with physical release, electricity skittering across his system.  “Entertaining, little Barricade,” he murmured, and then switched his vocalizer to the machine language, blurting the autoinitiate code.  “My turn.”

The smaller mech managed to keep his face appreciably still, his vocalizer under control, as his systems, already primed this time, burst another overload through his net.  Flatline grunted at the pulse of transfluid against the over-sensitized nodes in his valve, enjoying more deeply Barricade’s carefully masked disgust.  At himself. At Flatline’s utter control of him. “You think Vortex controls you?  He controls only your reactions. I control your actions themselves.” 

Barricade bucked his hips, not bothering to hide the sneer on his face. “Got what you wanted.”  His surge of triumph had faded with Flatline’s use of the code again. Used by another one. Used again. Unable to fight back. Unable to win. Unable to make any difference.  Control? You have none.  You are unable to stop this from hurting, from happening. Unable to make a difference. Fight, give in, the same.  What is the point? What is the point!?

There is no point. No point, save the tiny, hard, dense knot that had been coalescing slowly near his core, this part determined to be unbreakable, untouchable. This is all that you are: this microscopic fragment.  And you cannot even control that much.  You are…hollow.  An echo chamber, wind chamber, wild emotions thrashing through you. 

“I did.”  Flatline pushed himself off, pausing as he unseated his valve to let the transfluid leak onto Barricade.  “And far more than you think I did.”

They will destroy you, these emotions, Barricade. Even they are not even yours, only reactions to outside influences. They are not you, for all your clinging to them. Leave them. They do not serve.  Leave the anger, the rage, the humiliation.  They are false idols.  The pain, alone, is yours. Is you.

Fine, he thought, to Flatline.  Snatch what you think you have taken from me. I shed it. Willingly. It is no longer me.  It no longer controls me, defines me. I am small, but I am other.  I am beyond even your control. “Or less,” he said, quietly.



 

Comments

[wicked3659.livejournal.com]

Flatline is creepy. I love him, (that's completely weird right?) It's great how Barricade manages some control over the situation towards the end, or at least thinks he does. Very nicely done. I do so adore your Flatline ^_^

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

He is deliciously creepy. Thanks for helping me brainstorm how to creep him up. I don't think I nailed 'pushy sub' but he's definitely...something. :P

[ex-velaquie.livejournal.com]

What a perfect way to start my morning! Great fic. I really enjoyed it. :3

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Glad you liked.

[swordage]

Oh. My. Goodness.

I shed it. Willingly.

Beautiful. There's so much going on here, I love it. Barricade is condensing, yes, pulling back to his center - but I feel like he's growing as well. More than he was. Being forged, if you will.

Also, Flatline is damn hot. Yowza. Let's get you dirtier indeeeeeed. :3 The involuntary controls, and how he tops by receiving - mmmmyes. Also omg why are repair drones so cute. I love drones! I love them to bits! But I was all AHHHHHHH when it wanted to fix Barricade and he vehemently sent it about its business. Oh poor darling. ;_;

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I have no idea why I love those damn repairbots. But I do. They are so squeezably adorably weird.

I really need to get caught up on writing this series some more. It's taken off way bigger than I thought it might. :C

[swordage]

I admit it, I would totally adore a story written entirely about repairbots scuttling around beeping at each other. SOOOO CUTE.

Yeahhh funny how the little things turn into giant epic fics. :( *stares mournfully at the Glory, Disassembled, trinefic, and pre-Shockwave folders in GoogleDocs*

[dfastback68.livejournal.com]

mmm Sexy Flatine <3 On the other hand, the repair bots are just way too cute. Awesome as always!

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

So very cool. Barricade's thought process is fascinating, and his determination. And the contrast between Vortex and Flatline is really interesting.

I especially love this: let it begin to fade and grey and feather in his memory against a dozen other abject humiliations

(and, of course, repair bots, so squeeworthy!)

Apologies if this made little sense, I've stayed up far too long yet again playing Vortex and my brain isn't exactly engaged.

[caiusmajor.livejournal.com]

Woo! Creepy Flatline.

I like the autoinitiate code. Very useful.