shadow_vector | Surrender

NC-17
Bayverse
Blackout/Barricade
sticky, dub con

Blackout had done his best to break his own fall, aiming himself—as best he could with a blown tail rotor, which…really wasn’t all that well—for the trees, letting the increasingly thick branches catch and slow his fall. Limbs snapped, dark bark splintering to show light colored raw wood underneath as he fell from the night sky into the night-dark forest. He slammed hard into the ground at last, long rotors still chopping at the trees, thin needles of green and shards of whitish wood flurrying around him until he got the wherewithal to kill the engine, his gyroscopic systems still overtaxed with trying to stabilize against a system with no tail control. He unfolded himself, hoping to patch his own injuries, starting a quick diagnostic.

Frag. He could seal the split energon lines—one or two had been cauterized by the sabot round that had torn through his armor. He stumbled forward, abruptly, control systems feeding messages to his legs sparking, fitfully effective, the stabilization systems failing suddenly. He dropped to his knees. Worse news: his tail rotor controls were down and beyond his capability to repair. And the most frustrating, humiliating thing about that was that the repairs were impossible simply because of the location. Can’t walk. Can’t fly. Forced to call for help.

He shot the distress call over open comm, the encryption foxing the signal from being traced or hacked, and waited, seemingly forever, before he got a mission commnet ping for his location. Help was on the way. He shivered in relief, already anticipating the repairs, the shunting of alarm and error messages, the slow pulling them off queue. Helplessness was not a sentiment he did well. Dependence on another for help was another he wasn’t quite so fond of, for that matter, but circumstances sometimes dictated that a warrior’s pride came after the warrior’s mission.

He strained his audio, trying to hear the approach. Nothing whupped by overhead—in the light of day his crash site would be glaringly obvious, which gave him a distressingly short time window that shortened by every klik that passed by without a sound or trace of aid. He hated to even think of it as that, but ‘rescue’ was even worse. And the pain was getting worse, the servos in his legs stiffening as the hydraulic fluid and interior joint oil leaked, sending another rising tide of pain—a dry ache that clouded his HUD, his sensors, his ability to think. His engine pinged and crackled, cooling in the night air. He stretched himself out on the forest floor, awkwardly pushing his limbs around the thick trunks of trees, pillowing his cheek on the fragrant carpet of dead pine needles, hands leaving gouges in the soft forest floor, trying to equalize his fluids, initiate shutdowns of the secondary systems pumps.

Blackout didn’t hear the approach until a branch snapped off to his right. He winced, lifting his head, needles falling from his face as he strained to peer around his shouldermounted shockwave cannon.

“Frag,” he muttered. “You.”

Four red optics glittered as Barricade approached. “Frag me indeed.”

“Not funny.”

“Really?” Blackout could feel the grounder’s optics, lowlight-set, taking in the whole situation—Blackout, flat on his belly, his lower frame splattered with pink energon and the greenish yellow mix of various interior fluids, luminescent under lowlight optics. Barricade’s face twitched, his chrome facial finials shifting in what had been, briefly, a grin.

“Lucky shot,” Blackout snapped, burning with humiliation.

“Yeah.” His face was strange, but not as vicious as usual. “Got secondary systems shut down?”

“What I can.”

Barricade knelt by Blackout’s side. The copter strained, pushing himself up on his elbows, trying to turn to see. He felt exposed. The grounder’s talons skated over his chassis armor, finding the systems access panel. “Sensor block?”

Blackout shook his head. He’d dropped carrying that long ago. Useless weight, pointless system. Better to carry more ammunition, more charge. What was a little pain? Nothing a warrior can’t handle.

Barricade muttered. “Use mine then. Won’t work as well, but….”

“Don’t need it.”

“Shut it,” Barricade snapped. “Don’t need your warrior hard-aft slag right now.” The smaller mech popped the panel in his upper arm, tugging out the sensor block equipment. Barricade shifted around in an awkward duckwalk, straddling Blackout’s arm as he reached under the engine mount to the jacks for thesensor block. “Not…gonna be the best fit,” he muttered, his voc close to Blackout’s audio as he struggled to connect the third cable. “Bend forward.” He rapped the copter’s helm.

“Don’t need it,” Blackout repeated, truculently.

“Sign of cortical glitching to repeat yourself,” Barricade snapped. His free hand grabbed the copter’s crest, jerking it forward. “For your own good, you know.” He dropped his elbow on the helm, letting the weight keep Blackout’s face pushed down into the pine carpet until the sensor block was mounted against his collar armor.

Blackout hated how his body relaxed, the hydraulics sighing with relief, as the sensor block rerouted the pain messages, taking them into itself, leaving his other relays free. The sudden removal of the pain and error messages was like a kind of euphoria. He waited for Barricade to say something, to gloat, to expect some sort of gratitude or praise, fighting the giddy release that would have given the grounder exactly what he wanted. Instead the smaller mech, after a moment, tapped his helm, lightly, and pushed up to his feet, returning to survey the damage, optics neutral. Blackout felt…strangely discomfited by that—as he rolled in this warm euphoria, Barricade was his usual cold sharp self. Almost as if that were the insult.

Barricade worked the next cycle in silence, save for a few confirmatory questions, or requesting systems to online. His talons moved confidently, laying patching mesh over the damaged hoses, splicing damaged wires, and in one instance, using his entire body mass to leverage a bent piece of armor from where it had compressed a fluid hoses against a main servo.

Blackout had floated only half-aware, the sensor block turning Barricade’s work into ghostly shimmers of sensation. Even the armor-bend felt simply like pressure, what should have been sharp snaps of the patching mesh taking hold were almost tickles, the methodical talons tracing down his power core line into his leg somehow became erotic. He sighed, shakily.

He could hear Barricade’s head snap up. “Doing okay?” A sort of dark amusement in the voice.

“Better if you’d stop dragging this out,” he retorted.

A derisive sound. “Wouldn’t take me so long if you didn’t get yourself so thoroughly shot up, you know.”

“Some of those are old,” Blackout countered. If they didn’t significantly impede function, what was a little leak?

“Then you’ve been an idiot for a long time. Good to know.”

Blackout fumed. Even more when another cascade of sensation washed over him. He turned again, cursing for about the millionth time the high mount of his shoulder and back kibble. Barricade was squatting by one leg, running the backs of his talons up the cables and exposed mechanisms, his optics meeting Blackout’s with a kind of amusement. Blackout tried to stop the shiver from traveling through his frame.

“Stop it.”

“Stop what? I’m just checking for injury. You know. Might have forgotten some or something.” A definite smirk. Blackout swore. Barricade laughed outright. “Hey, copter. True that you’ve never ‘faced before?” His talons teased into Blackout’s hip joint.

“Shut up. Warrior thing. YOU wouldn’t understand.”

“Slag right I wouldn’t understand.” Barricade moved forward, reaching boldly for a rotor blade. Blackout gasped. “Ridiculous,” the mech said, raising the rotor up, making a pretense of examining it, before bringing it to his mouth. Blackout could feel the cool shiny metal of Barricade’s facial finials, the small, tender nips of his mouth along the blade’s trailing edge. “Ridiculous to deny yourself any way to feel good.”

“I feel fine.”

Barricade snickered, tracing one hand up the blade to where it mounted to the huge engine. Blackout quivered. “Felt like this before?”

No. Of course not. Not supposed to. His silence was all the answer Barricade was looking for: the grounder continued, “You ever have enough of it? Pain, death, misery, numbness? You even remember what it feels like to not feel those things?”

“Frag your philosophy.” Blackout tried to flick his rotor out of Barricade’s grip. The silver talons tightened around it. What might have been pain was damped by the sensorblock to a sort of blunt sensuality. Blackout felt his optics flicker closed for a klik.

“Talk a lot about fragging, don’t you?” Barricade said, softly. “Kind of sad, isn’t it?”

Blackout bit down on a retort.

“Ever want to?” Halfway—as if Barricade himself wasn’t quite sure how serious he wanted to be—between snark and sincere.

“Can’t.” Blackout stated it as fact.

“You mean…physically?” Barricade’s head tilted, surveying the length of the copter’s prone body. Blackout shifted, self-consciously, pushing himself onto his side. No more lying around exposed like that.

“Not like that. Just…can’t. Offlinable offense.” He pushed up to a sitting position, flipping his rotors out of the way. Sitting, he and Barricade were almost optic-level. Which meant that the interceptor’s smirk was almost unavoidable. Improper relationships, they were called. Diversions of energy. Softens you, weakens you.

“You know you’re the only one who still holds to that, right?”

Blackout frowned. “Not the point.” Not the point if he was the only one doing the right thing. Didn’t make it the wrong thing.

Barricade stepped in. Blackout stiffened. “Aren’t you even…curious?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?” Barricade closed the distance. Blackout jerked away, slamming his engine into a treetrunk behind him. Barricade’s arms came up around Blackout’s head.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Thought you’d want the sensorblock off. Since, you know, you didn’t want it in the first place.” Barricade smirked, arms still outstretched. Blackout growled. Barricade laughed. “Why? What did you think I was going to do?”

“Shut it.” He ducked his head down, signaling for Barricade to remove the sensor block. The smaller mech moved in, his talons brushing over Blackout’s audio sensors as they reached for the connecting cables for the sensorblock. Blackout braced himself for the onslaught of pain as the smaller mech unhooked the connections, acutely aware of Barricade’s impassive face close enough to him that their optical cages almost bumped, their EM fields chafing against each other.

No pain: just a rush of sensation as the shunts closed down and signals resumed their natural channels. He shivered at the almost pleasurable sensation.

The lower set of Barricade’s optics blinked at him, as the smaller mech tilted his chin in abruptly and Blackout felt the smooth slide of metal and then the warm presence of a glossa flicking in the narrow channel of his mouth.

He jerked back. The plating still tingled as though from a phantom contact. Barricade snickered at his outraged glare. “Awww. ‘M I your first kiss?”

Blackout shoved Barricade away, roughly. “Get away from me.” His net tingled strangely. From the sensor block, he told himself. Not used to that, that’s all. Felt weird, pain reading as…not pain. He pulled forward, trying to get to his feet.

His joints groaned, his stabilizers spinning wildly as he tried to stand. The servos yielded, and he crashed back onto the ground.

“Great slagging repairs,” he snarled, getting his palms under him, wincing as a rotor blade bent.

“Repairs are fine,” Barricade said blandly. “Fluid levels low. They’ll circulate through. Give it time.”

Blackout growled.

Barricade stepped closer, releasing the rotor blade from where it had gotten trapped by a treelimb. He gave it a teasing stroke before he released it. “Come on. No one would know. No one believes me about anything anyway.” There was something bitter in the set of his mouth.

Blackout didn’t know how to answer that, to read the currents under Barricade’s voice, the warm swirls of pleasurable signals from his rotor blade. “I…uh. Why?”

Barricade could sense the copter’s resolve crumble. He stepped closer, touching the swell of Blackout’s cockpit with one talon. “Because we have at least a cycle before your fluid levels equalize and regenerate and it’s better than insulting each other the whole time. Because I’m slaggin’ bored and this planet is a miserable sinkhole. Because,” the optics flickered low for a klik, “don’t you think after all you’ve been through you deserve some kind of pleasure?”

It was the last that did it for Blackout. Did he?

Barricade saw him waver and leaned in, his cheek finials rubbing glossily against Blackout’s. He said nothing, knowing that anything he might say could tip the copter against it. So close to yielding, giving in. The idea had been with him since he’d first seen the copter prone, shivering under the sensor block. It had been eating at him since, a hunger only sharpened by the notion that the copter was untouched. Just…that he could be the first. All of that power, all of the calm and easy brutality and strength Barricade had seen time and again in combat—it felt like he could reach out and grab some of it, or at least slather himself in its glamour. Best yet, having that power and control and strength quivering with desire.

It was all he’d been able to think of during the repairs, the soft sighs, and shivers of the large frame under him as he worked, responding to his touch. So few mechs let him touch them. He had gotten aroused just at the thought, much less Blackout’s twitching response. And Blackout’s nervous discomfort…? Frag. Barricade’s systems were already primed hot just at the shy flinch from his kiss.

Blackout made a sound in his vocalizer, a soft bitten-back moan, as Barricade’s small talons stroked at his chassis armor. Barricade felt one hand press against his back, cautiously, thumb exploring under his doorwing mounts. Barricade’s optics dimmed at the contact. His own hands clutched at the cockpit, sliding up between the shouldermounts. He could feel Blackout tense, but fight the urge to pull away.

Blackout tilted his head into Barricade’s, hesitantly, the cleft of his mouth seeking Barricade’s in a timid nuzzle. Barricade’s mouth moved over his own, more confidently, and he felt the electric tingle again of contact. The tingle seemed to spread from his mouth all through his net. He had no idea what to do, how to respond, so he held himself a little stiffly, feeling Barricade’s electrum-plated mouth plates move against his facial armor. His optics flickered open, apprehensive, Barricade’s smaller ones dimmed before him.

Barricade lifted his mouth away, grinning. “Yeah?” Blackout could feel an almost electrical thrum run through the EM field between them.

“Yeah,” he croaked. It was really hard to concentrate with this firestorm of new sensations tearing across his processing grid. His hands felt shaky and weird, and clumsy over the finer armor of the smaller mech’s backplates. “What now?”

Barricade’s head tilted for a klik, the grin growing wider, and then fading. “Honestly don’t know, do you?”

Blackout’s face tightened, bracing for mockery. Barricade tugged gently at the chassis, at the split between his cockpit halves. Blackout followed the motion as the smaller mech rolled to the ground, Blackout looming over him, palms spread on the fragrant needles. “Little less weird, your first time, if you do the spiking.”

Oh. Uh. Oh. This suddenly became very, very alarmingly vividly real to Blackout. He tried to push back, his elbow servos trembling. “I can’t.”

“You want to.”

“I…uh.” Blackout’s rotors slicked to a thin line down his back. How could he explain more clearly that he didn’t know! He didn’t even know the release codes for his interface equipment. He didn’t know what to call, much less what to do, with this rising flowing slosh of sensation that left him shaky and unsure, pulling him out of his cortex and squarely within his frame and its sensory network. His whole life, he’d been told to ignore the signals from his sensor net. Pain, fear, these were weaknesses. Pleasure? The greatest weakness of all. Warriors overrode, overcame. He…could not. Against pain, yes. Against this? He was helpless.

Barricade wriggled down, one long arm reaching between the copter’s legs. Blackout gasped as the talons skittered over his interface panel. A hot rush of something like shame raced across him, but by the time he could think to react, the hatch had been opened, and the four little contact points of Barricade’s talons were tracing intricate patterns over equipment he couldn’t visualize. He’d never seen them before. Another wash of shame, this time at his own ignorance, in the face of Barricade’s so obvious expertise.

“Scared?” Barricade murmured. His optics were aimed at the space between their bodies, his hand’s action on Blackout’s interface tech. Possibly goading. Possibly not. Barricade wasn’t even sure at this point.

“No.” Blackout said, brusquely, defensively. “Told you: don’t know what to do.”

“I’m helping you with that.” The optics flicked up, hard with laughter and then softening. Frag. The copter was ridiculously hot, the way he was fighting his own ignorance, fighting his own desire. Responding just…exquisitely to Barricade’s talons tracing around his spike cover. His optics flickered when he felt the cover autorelease, the spike pressurizing against his hand.

Blackout gasped, as if it hurt. He didn’t have, he realized, any other vocabulary to process sensation other than levels of pain. This didn’t…hurt. Even the warm slide of something wet oozing from…it…didn’t hurt. And Barricade’s sure hand, wrapping around the spike—that must be what it was, Blackout realized—blanked his processor with an influx of sensations: pressure and friction and temperature and the electrical prickle across nodes. His elbows buckled, his chassis dropping onto Barricade’s.

“Sorry!” he said, sheepishly, abashed. Barricade laughed, his free hand reaching for Blackout’s underarm, sliding in among the open control cables. Blackout shivered. Barricade sucked in a deep vent, trying to control his overheating systems. Blackout wasn’t even touching him, other than the weight of his cockpit bell against Barricade’s upper grille. Simply responding, reacting to Barricade’s touch. And it was so fraggin’ hot. He felt his own spike lubricate in its housing, his valve do a quick anticipatory systems cycle, both sending messages of readiness and eagerness.

Frag he wanted the copter. Like...he wasn't even aware of how badly until just now. He hiked his hips up, releasing his own interface hatch and valve cover, trying to guide the spike toward the rim. Blackout resisted.

“Just…let me,” Barricade whined. He’d pulled the copter’s spike to the mouth of his valve, could feel the field from it brushing against his own. He was already quivering in anticipation.

“I—I can’t.”

Barricade’s grip tightened around the spike, causing the copter to yelp. “You…can take out half a platoon. Pretty sure you can manage this.”

“Warrior…I can’t.”

“You can,” Barricade breathed. He arced his hips up sharply, catching the tip of the spike with his valve, like a little nip. Blackout’s entire body jerked, rotors snapping together. They hung for a moment there, barely connected. Barricade tilted his head up to catch Blackout’s face, the war of confusion and desire and resistance taking place across his face the most erotic thing he’d seen. Blackout gave a groan, almost of surrender, and shifted his body, lowering his hips into Barricade’s, his spike pushing its slow way into Barricade’s valve.

The spike stretched the valve lining—fraggin’ copters were apparently pretty well equipped—the end jutting into the sensitive node cluster at the valve’s deepest end. Barricade clawed into the copter’s armor, his optics shuttering, closing off everything but the exquisite feel of the spike stretching his valve.

Blackout lowered down to his elbows over Barricade’s body, shoulder servos singing with tension. Barricade could feel the vibration against him, and through the spike, inside him. Barricade’s valve gears spiraled down around the spike, squeezing at its contours. He could feel Blackout twitch above him, his secondary heat sinks humming on abruptly. He lay still, not even stirring his talons. Blackout needed time to feel this, really feel it, let it sink in. Memorize it.

The rotors relaxed from their tight line, sliding over the copter’s broad shoulders, drooping to the ground on either side. Blackout gave a shuddering sigh. Barricade bit back the snide comment bubbling in his vocalizer, choosing instead to explore the chassis armor hovering over his face. He nuzzled against the night cooled metal, his olfactory sensors drinking in the high viscosity lubricant oil airframes used, the soothing scent of metal.

Blackout shifted, tentatively, the spike moving gently in Barricade’s valve. Barricade tilted his hips up, encouragingly. “How fast do I…? You know, so you…?”

Barricade tried a snicker that wilted instantly. The copter’s ignorance was one thing, entirely arousing, but the fact that he wanted Barricade to enjoy it…. He felt his thigh servos tighten. “However works for you.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Barricade croaked. Frag, the consideration alone had him teetering on the brink, his valve nodes sparking with a rush of a strange kind of lust.

Blackout moved gently, pushing in and out of the valve, his head tucked under, intent on studying Barricade’s reactions. The smaller mech writhed under him, vents coming as ragged gasps, hands moving from smoothly stroking his armor to clutching at it. He’d never thought Barricade was …. Uh, yeah. Never thought that way before at all. This whole thing was more than just a physical sensation—it carried with it a whole new way of thinking.

He kept his pace slow and gentle, feeling the valve dilate and cinch down upon his spike. It was…indescribable. And Barricade’s reaction: he could not even process its effect on him. He wanted to touch the smaller mech, stroke the doorwings flattened against the ground, or the tires of his shoulders, but he didn’t know if it was allowed. Maybe they couldn’t touch at all besides the interface tech contact? No, Barricade was touching him, but maybe the one getting spiked was allowed to. Frag, so much he didn’t know. He wished he could find a way to ask, without feeling stupider.

He felt a charge prickling over the spike, and suddenly, Barricade lunged forward, biting at Blackout’s armor, his claws screeching along the copter’s backplates. The valve spasmed around his spike, a charge crackling across it, sending sharp-surfaced ripples through his sensor net.

Was he…supposed to stop? He slacked his pace.

Barricade clutched into him, optics flying bright and wide open. “More!” he gasped, the overload still rocketing through his systems. “Come on!” He squirmed, the valve rippling around Blackout’s momentarily stilled spike.

Blackout pushed in, a little faster, a little harder. His spike burst with another rush of lubricant fluid, somehow managing to intensify the conductivity of the little friction bursts of node against node. Barricade thrashed on the ground, his armor plates slapping against the soft surface, his legs trying desperately to wrap around the copter’s narrow hipframe. “Harder!” Barricade said. “Frag. Want…!”

Blackout pushed in more sharply, making each thrust more of a stab at the end. Barricade gave an electronic squeal, his pelvic frame jerking in response as the spike jabbed at the ceiling node cluster. Blackout could barely process, his sensor net awash in the sight of the thrashing mech, his upper arm panels flashing white and urgent; the smell of friction heated metal; the smaller mech’s ragged venting and fierce, desperate cries. And on top of that—because his cortex was used to capturing and analyzing realtime data—the internal sensations of heat and tingling warmth and the sense of something large and powerful rushing toward him. He trembled physically and mentally at this oncoming surge. As if it were still not too late. As if he could pull back now and not violate the rules.

As if he could stop himself even if he wanted to.

The rushing seemed interminable, inexorable, measures counted out in sharp, staccato beats of his spike into the valve. Until suddenly it seemed to crash over him, flaring his rotors in their mounting braces, shuddering through his body. His frame jerked and he felt a sudden blaze of heat across his net that gushed through his body. Something scalding hot and wet burst through his spike, tracing a channel outward, slamming into the smaller mech’s valve. Barricade cried out, backstruts arching, chassis scraping against the copter’s lower frame.

Blackout shivered, hanging over the smaller mech, optics refusing to focus. His entire awareness was in his body, as if it were a new thing, his sensor net prickling with life, old injuries and formerly dead circuits firing to activation. His vision seemed too sharp to resolve to mere focus, his dermal plating exquisitely sensitive to the contrast between the night’s coolness and the warmth from Barricade beneath him. And Barricade’s valve, almost teasingly flickerining over his still pressurized spike. And the current still running like wildfire over his secondary systems. Oh…this was on the verge of too much.

He shifted, awkwardly. Barricade reluctantly released the spike, sighing as the transfluid spilled over the rim. The interceptor’s own body was still trembling from the overload—the amplitude higher for having been forced on top of the first one. Blackout looked on the verge of saying something, struggling to find some way to categorize, to bring this moment over, to make it into the past.

“I can see why they banned it,” Blackout said, quietly, dropping onto one side, wiping one hand over his heated chassis, his face. He felt…weaker already. More alive, but…too connected to his body. Too present to sensation.

Frag, Barricade thought. Too late. “Yeah?” He rocked onto his own side, worming his way down the copter’s body. His talons circled the still sealed valve cover. He looked up, optics glinting. Blackout’s vents caught, his entire body twitching. “Only halfway done.”

Surrender

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