shadow_vector | Sky and Ground ch 38 Routine

PG-13
Bayverse AU
Barricade/Skywarp
Angsty fluff.

The next few rotations fell into a dull, numb routine for Barricade. He had finally gone back to his own cube, which had been set to sterile rights by then—all of the datatracks shiny-new, in nice straight rows on a shelf, the berth replaced, the walls resurfaced. Everything…as though nothing had ever happened.

Except that it had. The newness, even to the smell of uncracked packaging, the tang of new metal, spoke like a constant, niggling whisper.

He recharged alone, hating every klik of it, but fearing more what would happen if he tried to recharge with Skywarp again. If he pushed it. Pushed himself. Not that he had a choice in that—while he was locked into his numb rounds, Skywarp spent, it seemed, every moment with the Trine.

It was over, near as Barricade could figure. Not with a bang, not even a whimper. Just…badly erased, like the damage to his recharge. Like it never happened. Like HE never happened. He’d thought of the promise on Starscream’s lips bitterly. Right. Why had he allowed himself to believe that? Nonsense. Foolishness. Silly words meant to comfort him. Kindly meant, but insincere. It was a novel experience that anyone had even tried to comfort him, much less someone with any rank, and he tried to take them as that, and no more.

He curled over his datapad at midcycle, the autoinjector cycling the sludgy energon into his fuel tank as he scrolled down the text on his pad. A manual of Seeker law that Starscream had called up that night, in his work cube. Seeker laws, lore, legends. Weird stuff. Barricade had no idea why the Air Commander insisted he read it, but he did, obediently. Maybe it would help. And the raw wound of reading it—of the glimpses he had into a world, a culture so different than what he knew, having spent his entire activation on warships—he cherished that pain. It was a way of keeping Skywarp close, while feeling every micron of their distance. Now…he had all this free time. Free. Time.

His talons bunched under the table in misery. He had lost the only thing that had mattered. He didn’t even know how.

A shadow fell over him.

“Hey,” Skywarp said. His voice was so beautiful it pained Barricade. And after not hearing it for solars…it was like a resonance in a deep part of himself. Even one syllable was enough to bring a trembling ache to his spark.

“Hey,” he whispered back, as if afraid that speaking too loudly would shatter this illusion. That Skywarp was here, talking to him.

The head tilted, confused, awkward. “Can…can I sit here?”

“Yeah.” Barricade scrambled, clearing his datapad, the flaccid energon pouch, out of the way. Skywarp sat down across from him, the table’s surface at once too much of a barrier between them and a welcome distance. Barricade felt his optics, his EM field, drink in as much of Skywarp as they could. Primus, he was still so…beautiful. Stupid word to describe something that was armor and weaponry, but it was the closest one, the only one that fit. Barricade longed to touch the satin of his dark armor. Under the table, his talons trembled with suppressed desire. No. Do not trust yourself.

“Are you…doing well?” Skywarp winced, embarrassed by his own clumsiness.

Barricade almost smiled. “Yeah. Miss you.” His turn to wince as the sentence slipped out. Their optics met, briefly, both dropped to the side, uncomfortable. “You okay?”

“I…I hurt you, little spike. And I know nothing I can do can,” his breath caught, uncharacteristically, “can undo that.”

Barricade’s talons tangled in the hose from his energon intake. What could he say? That it didn’t matter? A lie. It did matter. It had left him numb, shown him everything he could ever have wanted, but in the one way that denied he could ever have it again. His mouth worked, helplessly.

Skywarp leaned over, holding something in his barbed talons. It took Barricade a moment to recognize it as his own spark chamber cover. The one he had given Skywarp back when things seemed so bright. Those days seemed…in the ancient past now, some gold-lit halcyon against which the now stood stark and naked and harsh. “I took this. From your recharge. I wanted to have it with me. And…so I took it from you.” Another hitch of the breath. “So if you want it back….”

“No.” The word cracked out of Barricade’s vocalizer. A rejection of the offer. Returning it as if it wasn’t worth anything. Didn’t mean anything. Who was Barricade kidding? It wasn’t; it didn’t. He saw Skywarp’s flinch. “I mean, it’s yours. If you want. If you don’t, you can just…,” he shrugged, bitterly. “Throw it out or something.”

A flicker of something almost like anger in the exotic, tilted red optics. “I will not throw it out.” His voice had an edge: the talons curled around it in a possessive gesture that tore at Barricade’s resolve. “It is something beautiful. The most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me. I just…have no right to keep it.”

“Why?” Barricade’s voice was a thin whisper, like an echo of a ghost, “why did you take it off?”

A bitter smile, the red optics dropping their gaze to the table. “Truth, little spike? Truth is, that night…I’d been fantasizing about sparking with you.” He turned his face away, embarrassed. “Stupid, huh?”

“No.” Barricade reached a trembling hand out to Skywarp’s, still helplessly clutching at the battered disk of metal. “Not stupid.”

“It could have been…,” Skywarp shook his head, his optics focused over Barricade’s shoulder, his mouth tight. “It could have been beautiful. I wanted it to be. I’d guessed your spark color and everything.” His optics flickered down to Barricade’s for a klik. “I guessed right.”

“So did I,” Barricade breathed. “And it was beautiful.” It was dark and painful, but even that had been a kind of beauty to Barricade, seeing that much more of Skywarp. Feeling him, feeling through him. He could not regret it. He could not turn it away.

The mouth tightened, the metal plates grating across each other. “It wasn’t. It was…the most disgusting, vile thing I have ever, ever done.”

“I love you,” Barricade blurted. As if that could erase the pain on Skywarp’s face. The black jet sagged, his talons reaching, feebly, for Barricade’s.

“Sometimes,” the jet said, softly, pinching a line down one of Barricade’s talons with two of his own, “that doesn’t help.”

“Sometimes,” Barricade echoed, his jaw set, “it does.” He wanted to tell him about Starscream. About their resolve to fight. But he had lost faith in that, lost faith in everything except what he could feel. Not much—his body seemed an echo chamber, unable to carry its own sensation, but he could still FEEL. He closed Skywarp’s fingers over the dented disk. “Want you to have it.”

“I haven’t earned it.”

“You have.”

“I don’t want it to be a reminder of something I ruined.”

“It’s not.” A little more insistent.

The optics turned to him, intent, importuning. “Make me earn it, Barricade. Tell me to do something. What do you want?”

What did Barricade want? Skywarp to be happy. Skywarp, at the very least, not to have this look of taut pain on his broad, elegant face. Barricade was not worth this kind of suffering. But, what did Barricade want. “Recharge with me,” he said, his voice soft but fierce. “Not always. I know the Trine,” it took concentration to leach the bitterness from the phrase, “will always be above me. But once. Please. Just once.” He felt his own frame start to shake with the intensity of his desire. It was a bitter triumph—he could feel. He could.

“Yes,” Skywarp said, firm. Resolved. “This recharge cycle?” Barricade recalled Starscream’s words—about how meek and gentle Skywarp could be when he knew he’d gone too far.

“Whenever,” he said. “Just…when the Trine can let you go.”

“This recharge,” Skywarp said, firmly. “I don’t care what they say.”

Barricade wanted to say something, to tell him not to make promises the Trine would make sure he wouldn’t keep, but his vocalizer felt…clogged with the rise of hope. Skywarp, with him. Maybe for the last time, but he’d have a last time. He’d have finality.

Skywarp coded the door at precisely the time Barricade had set him. He hoped it didn’t show that he’d been waiting outside for the last five decaklicks fearful of appearing too eager, interrupting the smaller mech. He refused to allow himself any expectations. He just wanted to be with Barricade. Wanted to try to make some sort of clumsy amends. Wanted to at least try. He knew he was awful at words: the scene in the refectory was ample proof of that. Idiot Skywarp. Awkward, clumsy. He hoped he could somehow express, without words, without misunderstanding, how he felt. Not only that he was sorry, but…something more. The surge of golden light he had felt in the hangar had somehow burned inside him, a warm golden fire that had been building all these solars, creating a light and warmth that did not defeat his darkness…but made it less opaque.

He didn’t know how to explain it. And he knew if he tried he’d sound stupid. Or crazy. He just wanted Barricade to…know.

The door opened. Barricade stood there, hand on the door frame, looking just as awkward and stiff as he felt. Skywarp couldn’t suppress a laugh, which he instantly regretted. Stupid. Crazy.

Barricade tilted his head, curious, all four of the optics intent on Skywarp’s face.

“Sorry,” Skywarp said. “Just feeling…really dumb.” He didn’t used to be like this. He remembered being the confident, self-assured one.

Barricade’s face shifted into a tentative smile. “Me too.”

He dropped to a crouch, trying to get on level with the grounder. “Can I?” He reached one hand toward Barricade. He would do nothing without permission. He had taken too much, thinking that just because Barricade hadn’t protested that it was his to take. Barricade stepped into his touch, tilting his cheek into the talons.

“Yes,” Barricade breathed, a moment later. “But…not too much.” Skywarp sensed a little swirl of fear in the smaller mech’s voice. Yes. No less than he deserved. Actually, far less than he truly deserved. What he deserved was for Barricade to hate him. He could not understand how the grounder could not. Skywarp moved inside the door, his arms wrapping carefully around the narrower shoulders, pulling Barricade closer.

“Too much?” he asked, his vocalizer murmuring into Barricade’s audio.

“No,” Barricade said, his own arms coming up. “Didn’t think you’d come.”

Skywarp pulled away. “I told you I would.”

“I know. Just…would understand if something came up.”

Skywarp buried his head in Barricade’s shoulder kibble, the familiar smell of the external oil and rubber haunting him with memories of happier times. “I am part of the Trine, yes,” he murmured. “But it’s not all of who I am.”

Barricade muttered something that got muffled in Skywarp’s chassis, and he pulled away, tugging Skywarp insistently to the berth. Skywarp forced himself to look around the room—the place he had destroyed in his shallow, stupid, white rage. Something else to make up for. A reminder. Even the new berth, free of the scratches and wear and tiny dings and dents of their intimacy, was a blunt reminder of his transgression. “Don’t want to mess things up by talking,” Barricade said, sadly, simply. Skywarp’s spark ached. He nodded, dumbly. Understanding. Feeling the same fear.

“Me neither.”

Another shared, sad smile, recognition of the fragility of what was between them, and Skywarp settled himself on the berth, letting Barricade come to him, letting the smaller mech choose how close and how intimate he wanted to be. Barricade settled next to him, the two of them on their backs, staring at the ceiling, acutely, agonizingly aware of every micron of distance between them, physical and…not physical. Even so, Skywarp could feel their EM fields contact, the boundary already blurring, fuzzing between them, the fields reaching to join and grow, as if their electrical systems were simpler and far, far wiser than they were. He risked looking over at Barricade. The smaller mech was wringing his talons, looking terrified, distressed. Skywarp ached. He’d do anything to relieve that, take that away.

“What would make it better?” he whispered. He knew the answer—that he should fix himself. Not be Skywarp. Be…someone else. Without this darkness. Without this burden.

“’M afraid,” Barricade blurted. Stopped. Studied his talons. “Starscream talk to you?”

“Yes,” Skywarp said. “Soundwave.” And, Skywarp added silently, he told me about you. About your fear. Oh, how well I know that fear. I’ve felt it from Starscream…so, so many times. The fear of never being able to feel again. It was not a fear he understood, not really, not at a core level. His fear had always been…feeling TOO much. But he could understand the basic terror of one’s emotions and a lack of control. “I left you open for that.” He risked a touch to Barricade’s upper arm, one of the white panels that seemed to catch a glow in the darkness.

“Not your fault.” Barricade stiffened, and then wiggled, gently, into the touch. Allowing it. Inviting more.

Skywarp sighed. “So much is my fault.”

Barricade rolled to his side, lifting his face to Skywarp’s. “Didn’t want you here for that.”

“What did you want?” Skywarp’s voice was thin, afraid.

“Just…can we pretend? Even knowing it’s pretend and we’re really just fooling ourselves, can we just fool ourselves that it never happened? Just for a bit?” The mouth moved, restlessly. “Sorry. Came out sounding dumb.”

Skywarp’s optics burned, and a line seemed to sear its way to his spark. Delusion, it was all delusion. But he could not withstand the temptation himself. “No,” he said, softly. “Better than I could have put it.” He risked another touch, reaching over the smaller mech, the way they used to recharge—Barricade flat under him. “It’s what I want, too.” Not what I really want, he thought, but the best I can hope for.