hesitation

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

R
Bayverse: Redeem AU
Barricade/Starscream
Sparksex.

Yeah, this is actually a repost of something I wrote in January. I'm just shipping them HARD right now!!

It had been solars since Barricade had finally been removed from regen, or what he decided should really be called cryogenic helplessness. He had hated every klik, suspended in gel, his processor feeding him a diet of regret. And puzzlement. He was dead. He knew it. He had succumbed, finally, to the pain and the terror and simply given up the will to keep trying to live. It had seemed so…pointless. Fighting against the pain had been a fight that just had no payoff. So he’d surrendered to it, hoping, praying that if he stopped resisting, it would stop feeling so bitter. 

He had no idea how he ended up in regen. And the repair bots had no answers for him, rushing over him, intent on repairs. At least, he thought, they were happy to see him—gave them some meaning in their life. Sad state of affairs when the best you can claim is that you’ve made non-sentient bots happy. 

The door from Ambulatory coded open. Starscream stopped in the doorway, almost as if afraid to come in. “Your repairs are progressing,” he said, hesitantly. 

“What happened?” Barricade croaked, wincing at the grating sound of his vocalizer. A repair bot detached itself from the party on his lower frame and threw itself bodily at his vocalizer, bleeping sympathetically. 

“We found you. In time.” Something swallowed in the pause.

Barricade shook off the repair bot. “Why?”

The bronze jet’s long fingers tapped on the door frame, betraying tension. “You are a valuable asset, Barricade.” Barricade shook his head deliberately. Starscream looked over his shoulder, as if checking for witnesses. He stepped into the room. “The…cause needs you.”

“What are we even fighting for?” Barricade muttered, swatting at the repair bot, whose small claws gripped into his vocalizer. “This cause of yours.” 

Starscream sighed, shifting on his feet. Discomfort growing, Barricade noted, the part of his processor that interpreted these signals feeding him data. Why does he stay if I make him so uncomfortable? “I think it is because we do not know how to do anything else. War is all we know. Anything else would be…terrifying.”

“So we die, because we’re afraid of ‘anything else’.”

“You did not die,” Starscream said.

“I should have. You should have let me go.” 

“No,” something soft and unreadable in the jet’s voice.

“Oh, come on,” Barricade had to pause to reboot his vocalizer. “What have I done except drag you down? Didn’t help when I could have. My entire existence I’ve…been a waste.”

“We all have regrets, Barricade,” Starscream said. He approached closer, and a repair bot looked up for a moment, quizzically, before returning back to work. “You are not one of mine.” 

“You don’t know me enough to know what a waste I am,” Barricade retorted, bitterly. “Waste of resources. Even these.” He raised a hand, two bots working away at the armor cilia on his wrist. 

Starscream knelt next to the repair frame. “I know you better than anyone, Barricade.” 

“You don’t.” Barricade hated this. His physical weakness on display, his emotional frailty. Just…go away, he wanted to shout at Starscream. The damaged vocalizer wouldn't hold that volume.

“You won’t let me,” the jet countered. 

“Why did you hunt for me?”

Starscream sighed, letting Barricade knew he saw the question for what it was—a wall, a step-back. “We, I came for you…,” he faltered. “It was perhaps the first honest battle I have fought in aeons. The first fight where I knew what I was fighting for and felt sure that it was right. That it was worth it. I have not felt that…since leaving Cybertron.” He reached over, stirring the mass of repair bots off the top of Barricade’s chassis. His long talons sparkled in the dim lighting as he traced the scorched armor. 

“You’ll regret it.” Barricade shifted, the jet’s touch unfamiliar. No one touched him. Not willingly.

“I shall not.” He smiled, sadly. “This battle of words we are having is amusing, Barricade, but tactically, I have allowed you to choose the battlefield. And I am losing. Tell me, what does a good tactician do?” He raised eyes, goading and red, to Barricade’s. “What would Meta do?”

“Change the battlefield.” The words came out of the back of his processor, automatic.

Starscream smiled. “Ah yes.” He leaned forward. “Like this, perhaps.” Barricade heard the soft hiss of metal on metal, retracting away from the jet’s central core, revealing his spark chamber. Barricade heard a whimper from his vocalizer, cursing it for not fritzing out him now. He could feel the magnetic pulse against his EM field. No, he thought. Too weak to resist. Physically, mentally. He hadn’t the will. 

“You have kept yourself apart all your life,” Starscream said. “And what has that gotten you?”

“Nothing,” he said, numbly. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the blue and gold flicker as the jet spiraled open his chamber cover. 

“Do you trust me?”

“You rescued me. Twice.” He winced as a repair bot slipped, its foot kicking one of the plates of armor sensor cilia. The bot bleeped a string of desperate-sounding apologies. For a non-sentient bot, Barricade thought, bitterly, it had better social skills than I. 

“That is what you would call an evasion.” Starscream ran his fingers along Barricade’s chassis armor, gently. Barricade could feel his own spark up-pulsing, as if trying to reach through his chamber to meet with Starscream’s. “Do you trust me?”

Barricade’s eyes met Starscream’s, all four of his optics spiraling in and out with emotion he could not properly process. “Yes,” he breathed. He felt his own chamber armor retract, almost without his conscious will, opening into the blue gold light, opening into the presence of the one mech who had reached out for him, who had fought for him, looked out for him. The one who had known him as Meta and did not look away. 

Barricade forced himself not to look away now, the green-blue light of his own spark melding with Starscream’s, pushing aside pain and self-loathing and fear and regret.



 

 

Comments

[katsuko]

YOU. Are still making me ship these two so hard!! Don't stop XD

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I can't help it!!! *sobs* They're just so...weirdly hot together.

[albydarned.livejournal.com]

I fully support your current desire to 'ship these two. 'Tis a good thing! ;)

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

They are like the two mechs I ship with EVERYONE. Seems weird it's taken me this long to ship them with each other. O_O

Thanks for encouraging my fluffy side! :P

[riventiana.livejournal.com]

Oh, please DO continue to ship these two! I wibble just about every time they come together in your stories--the interplay between them is just so good. Already read Threat like three times now <3<3<3

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! I...uh...not really sure I need much encouragement though. *eating my *BRAIN** ^__^

[swordage]

Oh, lovely. *happy sigh*

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I was digging around and just went melty at it. Sad that I lose track of my own stuff isn't it?

[swordage]

pshaw, I do it too. Every now and then I take a tour through my Googledocs and go "Oh lookit that little bitty ficlet trying to be an epic, isn't it cuuuute~"