shadow_vector | Sky and Ground 23 Floating Numb

NC-17
Bayverse, Sky and Ground AU
Skywarp/Thundercracker
sticky, hard dubcon

Skywarp settled himself gingerly in the tank of exterior joint lubricant. It had taken him…conspicuously long in the washrack, scrubbing fiercely, almost hatefully at his own limbs. Ostensibly trying to scrub away the last of the flight-sealant, but he knew what he was really trying to do: abrade himself, take pain as a distraction from himself: from what he had done, from what he was capable of doing. Distract him from…thinking about what Barricade would think.

And then Starscream had linked with him and he had felt…something he had never felt before. It burned in a hollow little space under his spark chamber, like some sort of dark, crystalline fire. He felt, heard, saw Barricade with Starscream and Onslaught. And…as impossibly arousing as it was, even as he felt his own systems respond along with his Trine mate, the burning had flared higher.

Jealousy. He was jealous. That they were with him and he was not. That Barricade was enjoying them, and he was not there to share it. Not really, even as his sensor net rippled, synchronized with Starscream’s.

But he had told Barricade he could—even he couldn’t hold it against the smaller mech. And if Barricade had to interface, there was some comfort that he’d chosen Starscream and Onslaught—the two mechs Skywarp knew would take care of him. Who wouldn’t overstep his boundaries.

Even as he watched Onslaught force Barricade to fight him, he knew Onslaught would stop before…. Though that had caused another strange pain, watching Barricade respond to Onslaught’s roughness. Watching Barricade writhe, unable to tell if it was from pain or arousal. Knowing he didn’t trust himself to hold back, as Onslaught could; seeing a need in Barricade he dare not fill.

Starscream’s overload had ripped through the Trine link, staggering him under the fall of cleanser from the ceiling taps, the clear liquid washing away the spill of transfluid along with his tears.

//Are you all right?// his Trine mate had asked, his voice even over comm, concerned. //Your systems are…unstable.//

Skywarp had muttered some random rationale that he knew Starscream didn’t believe either, and clicked off, his talons scratching into the wall of the maintenance facility, as if trying to push his pain through his talon tips and out, into the blank, dumb surface.

Jealousy and…the growing feeling that he had made a huge mistake. What had he done? He couldn’t unsay the words to Barricade, even if it was as easy as unsaying them. Something had grown between them, larger but even more intangible than their combined EM field, that wouldn’t go away. Something large yet fragile and so-very-vulnerable. And after what he had done with—done to—Thundercracker, he didn’t trust himself not to break it.

He had to contact Barricade. He wanted to, right now, so desperately it felt his fuel lines were overoxygenated. But…he had no idea what to say. More than that, he wanted to hear—he wanted to hear Barricade console him, tell him he was special. That it was different with him, even without the pain, the dominance game. That Barricade didn’t need that…not with him. But he couldn’t ask that, be that pathetic. Not with…not with Thundercracker still in his EM, a discordant harmonic in his vibration.

So instead, he sank into the hot tub of lubricating oil, hoping its soothing warmth would calm his racing processor, take him out of his cortex and into his body and give him time. Give him time to figure things out. Find a way to talk to Barricade without blurting out…more things he couldn’t unsay, make the thing between them larger, stronger. Which would make it all the harder when, inevitably, he would end up having to smash it to pieces. Because of Thundercracker.

No. Because of himself. Because of what he knew he could do. Because of what he knew he was, what he had become. It was wrong to blame Thundercracker—it was just that Thundercracker seemed bent on reminding him of it.

He lay back, submerging himself under the surface entirely, feeling the oil ooze between all of his servos, cables, under his heavy armor. He forced himself to relax. And think. The oil stripped out his EM field of any vibration but his own, and he tried to open into that feeling of being just himself, even while he felt the final loss of Barricade’s fuzzy pulse as a bad omen.

Oh, little spike, he thought, achingly. Maybe…maybe this is for the best. Maybe during the combat mission I’ll die and you can go on with the memory of me as you think I am. Before I can ruin it. But…I want to be able to say goodbye first. I want to play, just one more time, that mech you think I am. Before we both lose sight of him forever.

He disliked the buoyancy of the oil, holding him, weightless, suspended. He wanted to feel Barricade, even feel the smaller mech under him, the way Barricade liked to recharge—Skywarp pulled over him like a heavy living blanket. Ridiculous, really, that such a little thing, a little quirk or habit, could cause such a flood of response: Right now, Skywarp would give anything to drape himself on top of Barricade, the rising bulge of his cockpit snugged under Barricade’s grille. But the oil held him up, floating, just as he was trying to float—indecisive, refusing to move in one direction or another, trying to hold onto a hover. Unlike flying, where he fought against gravity, here his opposing force was time, which would tear him down despite his best skill and effort.

He had to surface. He had to do something—he couldn’t stay in the tank, or in indecision, forever. He pushed himself to the surface, then to his feet, careful of his footing, oil sheeting off him, spilling in amber beads back into the tank. His energy systems hovered close to red. The small ration of energon hadn’t been enough, and he needed to recharge his systems desperately. And maybe a reboot of his secondaries would clear his cache and he could think properly about what to do. He watched his hands shake from the lack of energon.

“Good look for you.” Skywarp stiffened at Thundercracker’s voice. He turned—his Trine mate stood in the doorway, leaning one elbow against the frame. “You should go high gloss.” Skywarp grabbed for a cleansing cloth, bluntly swabbing the oil off his armor.

“Better matte,” he said.

“Ah yes,” Thundercracker murmured, coming closer, swooping down to pick up a cloth to help, “the stealth thing.” He started swabbing at Skywarp’s chest. “I don’t know why you want to make yourself look ugly.”

Skywarp stiffened. Barricade certainly didn’t think he was ugly. Thundercracker noticed the change.

“I didn’t mean ugly. I’m sorry, Skywarp.” The cleansing cloth moved up closer to Skywarp’s throat, Thundercracker’s face close to Skywarp’s. “It’s just that…it looks like you’re hiding what you could truly be.”

I want to hide it, Skywarp thought, even as he felt a dull rage and violation at Thundercracker’s too familiar touch. He swiped more roughly over his own armor, using it as an excuse to bend away from Thundercracker’s reach.

Thundercracker slicked a hand over his lower back. “Could take you like this,” he said, teasing.

“I just got clean,” Skywarp said. “And you came to get me, I presume, because I’m late for something.”

“No. I just missed you.”

Skywarp frowned, at himself. At Thundercracker’s words, because they were sincere. In his way.

“And what’s the fun of being clean except to get dirty again?” Thundercracker said, coyly, one hand trailing up Skywarp’s thigh.

Skywarp couldn’t disguise the pain in his expression. “Sorry,” he mumbled, watching Thundercracker’s expression turn to hurt. “Just…tired. Really need to recharge.” He thought longingly of Barricade’s cramped berth, the familiar smell of Barricade’s groundframe joint oil. It seemed to recede out of his reach.

“Yes,” Thundercracker assented. “It was a long flight. And I took a lot out of you, didn’t I?” He winked, cheekily. “Let’s finish this quickly and get you to berth.” He slicked his rag down Skywarp’s right leg, the picture of businesslike haste.

“Where are my quarters?” Skywarp had a sinking feeling he knew the answer.

“Quarters? With me, of course. You don’t mind, do you?” Thundercracker had dropped to his knee joint, looking up, importuningly, at Skywarp. “I promise I’ll behave,” he added.

“Yes, fine,” Skywarp said, numbly. He slicked the oily rag over his head, closing his eyes as the cloth covered his face. He knew that for the lie it was. But even so, he recognized that Thundercracker didn’t.

The blue jet stood up. “Close enough, right? We’ll let the rest of it soak in while you recharge.” He tossed his rag into a bin for autoclaving, swiping the one from Skywarp’s fingers as well. He gestured Skywarp to go in front of him. Skywarp stepped past him, his sensor net firing strange alarm signals at him. No, he told himself. Overtired. Undercharged. Overwrought. It’s nothing. He missed you. He wants to be with you and all the worry you feel is just your own drama you are projecting onto him.

He said that even as he knew it was a lie. He hated how easily he grasped for lies.

When the truth was this:

Thundercracker seized his elbow as he passed, swinging him face first into the plassteel wall. He grunted, pain shooting across his sensornet. He felt Thundercracker’s hands move from his wrist and elbow to his shoulders, a hot mouth against the back of his neck.

“You are so beautiful,” Thundercracker breathed down his neck. “I wish you could see that. It hurts me that you can’t.”

“I-you’re hurting me.” Skywarp winced as Thundercracker’s talons dug under his shoulder armor. His voice was muffled—his vocalizer pressed against the wall.

“You hurt yourself,” Thundercracker said, softly. He rubbed himself against Skywarp’s engines. “I can’t tell you how much you arouse me, Skywarp. You always have.” His legs slid against Skywarp’s from behind.

“Starscream,” Skywarp muttered, twisting himself away, trying to dislodge Thundercracker’s talons. Even as he spoke he felt awful; as if he were throwing Starscream like a sacrifice between them.

“Yes,” Thundercracker said. “I miss him, too. When I come back with you…oh.” Skywarp’s systems tweaked an alarm: Thundercracker was coming back with him? This was the first he’d heard of it. And… he hated playing out that future. Right now, he couldn’t make anything of that future but a hard knot of icy dread.

The exhaustion was getting to him. An insistent yellow light began blinking in his HUD, as if he needed reminding of his nearness to recharge-shutdown. Thundercracker’s hands moved, reaching under Skywarp’s arms, pulling Skywarp back against him, one hand stretching for Skywarp’s interface equipment. “I want you.”

“Recharge,” Skywarp said, blearily. He was exhausted. Drained, physically and emotionally. The icy dread was sucking the heat from his emotions, turning him numb. He still had to—he was agonizingly aware—contact Barricade. His one gratitude was that Barricade hadn’t commed him. But that gratitude fed his jealousy—Barricade, right now, was probably with Starscream, snuggled against his bronzy gold frame. He could picture it—Barricde’s silver talons on Starscream’s rib struts. The jealous burn blended with an ache of longing. “Really. Too tired for this.” He squirmed again, twisting his hips away from Thundercracker’s hand. He pushed away.

“No.” Thundercracker’s voice was hard. “You do not reject me, Skywarp. We are a Trine.”

Skywarp half-turned. His knee stabilizers quivered. “Not rejecting you. Honestly, I’m just too tired right now. I can barely see straight. I’m on the verge of secondary-systems shutdown.” Not a lie, but not the whole truth either.

“You,” Thundercracker repeated, as if Skywarp was stupid, “do not reject me.” His optics suddenly looked malevolent against their blue plating.

“I told you, I wasn—“ The blow caught him on the side of the head, staggering him to the opposite bulkhead, his hands flailing out to catch his balance. His sensor net flared with pain, alarms flickering. His self-repair frantically rerouted his remaining energy into his damaged audio and the gyroscopic sensors in his head, sending him tumbling to the floor as, in consequence, they cut fine control leg servos. The extra burden of processing the alarms spiked his core temp. More power was cut to his actuators to kick on his heat sinks. He tried to push himself up.

Thundercracker’s weight crashed on top of him, his hands skilled, hot, furious, snatching at Skywarp’s interface panel, talons digging into the enamel. “We are a Trine,” he hissed. Skywarp dug his hand under Thundercracker’s shoulder, trying to divert as much remaining power as he could to push Thundercracker away. His servos whined.

“You do not fight me,” Thundercracker said, grimly. He swung down with one long arm, slashing at Skywarp’s face. Metal squealed against metal. These were, Skywarp knew, the rules. Sometimes Thundercracker ‘wanted’ you to fight. Sometimes not. It depended on which would allow him to exert more control.

It bothered him that even knowing the system, he couldn’t work around them. Some tactician you are.

Skywarp cried out, not caring that it was a public hallway, as Thundercracker’s spike jammed in his valve. Thundercracker’s one hand raked down Skywarp’s side, reaching for his wrist that he bent back far enough to cause the black jet to gasp.

Give in. Don’t fight. It will only make him worse.

“A Trine,” Thundercracker repeated. “We are always there for each other.” He began driving his spike hard into Skywarp’s valve, lifting the black jet’s leg out of the way, crooking it over one elbow. “Do I have to teach you that again?” His other hand scratched down the heavy mounting braces of Skywarp’s engines. Skywarp mewed in pain, kicking feebly against his shutting-down servos, fighting shutdown as much as Thundercracker.

“No!” Skywarp gasped, not in answer to his question, though he took it that way. Skywarp was refusing this, trying to make it not happen, make it stop. Deny reality. As if, again, a word could change anything.

“You have no idea,” Thundercracker murmured, “how beautiful you are like this. So open to me.” He bent lower, digging his talons for leverage through Skywarp’s rib struts. “So open.”

Skywarp twisted, trying to roll over.

“You are open to me, aren’t you?” Thundercracker’s voice was unctuous, seductive.

“Yes,” Skywarp said. Get it over with. Then, he felt a wash of guilt: he is your Trine mate. You must be there for his needs. We must work harder than the other Trines to bond, try harder, open more, to get over the loss than almost broke us. We must accommodate, (his cortex dredged back up from memory), a Seeker trainer’s voice he could no longer place, we must accommodate for the grieving process. The overload failed to build in Skywarp’s valve, the charge buildup hampered by the joint lubricant Skywarp had soaked in. Thundercracker thrust into him, his actions vicious, but his voice was soft and gentle.

“You are so open for me, yes. You’d spark link with me if I asked, wouldn’t you?” His hands stroked coaxingly over Skywarp’s body. Skywarp shuddered, hoping Thundercracker would take it as a sign of arousal. If he spark linked with Thundercracker…he’d know everything. On one hand, a clean solution, lancing the boil of mistrust and fear growing between them. No, growing one-sidedly. That was all Skywarp.

But Thundercracker would know, at least skipping over the agonizing scene of Thundercracker finding out the hard way—the blame, the recrimination, the condescending doubt that it was true, that it could be true. That Skywarp could have ‘fallen’ so far from his ideals.

On the other hand, Thundercracker would know. With all that would entail. And Skywarp had barely been able to say the words, and had cut the line before he’d had to deal with the aftermath—leaving Starscream, once again, to clean up a mess he had created—he was not ready for Thundercracker to know. He was barely ready for himself to know.

And…oh Primus. Barricade’s spark cover. He could feel it throb, suddenly, against his—so light, yet so heavy with meaning. And so…dangerous. If Thundercracker saw it….

He felt ashamed. Ashamed he wasn’t strong enough to stand in front of his Trine mate and claim it. Claim Barricade. And with that shame, he felt a tide of unworthiness, that he could simply no longer fight.

“Yes,” he heard himself say, hating himself as he said it, a risk, a bet, a giving-in to his own cowardliness. What Thundercracker wanted was the submission more than the intimacy. That had always been Thundecracker’s way; the way Starscream had always wanted the intimacy—enduring cycles of abuse for one tender word or gesture. Skywarp had no idea where he fell on that spectrum. He was too tired to think, too tired to pretend he was anything more than a coward. The yellow light blinked faster, more urgently, almost in tempo—sick coincidence—with Thundercracker’s spike in his valve. His valve nodes refused to hold a charge. What should have been a rising charge to overload was simply an irritating prickle.

“Good,” Thundercracker said. “I love you so much,” he purred. His pace picked up, pounding into Skywarp’s valve, the lubricant tumbling down onto Skywarp’s other thigh, slicked with the joint fluid. “I love when you don’t fight me, Skywarp.” His talons dug deeper, one into Skywarp’s engine mount, the other into his inner thigh. Skywarp moaned in pain, struggling to at least turn his engine away from the cruel fingers. “Love it as much as when you do fight me, Skywarp,” Thundercracker whispered, bending over Skywarp’s limp body.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Skywarp said, deeply, honestly. He wanted his Trine to get along. He would do what it took. Open. Accommodate. As if that could somehow make up for Skyfire’s death. They had lost a piece, and needed to recreate it with pieces of themselves.

And he wanted—needed—recharge right now. Talking to Barricade, even worrying about what he would say—he couldn’t even think about that now. Just…getting through to recharge. Getting through this. He’d have to sort through the emotions later. Too much. Right now, just…too much. Some warrior, he thought, dully. Some fearsome warrior you are. Can’t even fight for yourself. Can’t even, more importantly, fight for Barricade. He moaned in thin despair.

“I know,” Thundercracker said, softly, moving one hand to dig the talon points under Skywarp’s collar armor. ‘You don’t want to fight. We belong together. You have no idea how good it will be for us to be together again.” He stopped speaking, vents hissing in time to his thrusts. The yellow light blinked faster in Skywarp’s HUD. Systems shutdown imminent, a ping read.

“Please,” Skywarp gasped. “Shutdown.” He reached one hand out to Thundercracker, trying to take his hand in a pitiful gesture. Please. Pity. Stop. He’d even take pity now, as much as that scraped like gravel over his pride. Thundercracker took his hand, squeezing it fiercely in his own, Skywarp’s barbs in the gaps between his own fingers.

“I’ll take care of you, Skywarp,” he said. He paused, a shudder running through his body, rattling him against Skywarp’s lower frame, as he overloaded. He began cycling large vents of air to cool his heated systems. He looked down at Skywarp, whose visuals were beginning to fuzz out. “I always have and I always will.”

Sky and Ground 23 Floating Numb

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