shadow_vector | Sky and Ground 24 Distance

PG
Bayverse Sky and Ground AU
Barricade, Skywarp
angst

Barricade would not let himself fall into recharge. Starscream had said Skywarp would comm him. Skywarp wouldn’t go back on a promise like that—even if Barricade hadn’t heard the promise from Skywarp himself. And Barricade felt he’d die of disappointment if Skywarp commed him only to get a ‘recharge callback’ zip. He sat on his recharge berth, joints locked down, feeling his systems periodically trying to drift to shutdown. Eventually he gave in, letting his non-essential systems—voluntary physical control, optics, audio—fade offline until he became merely a cooled core, a waiting presence…and a silent comm line.

His emotions rocketed from worry to anger to despair, all embracing the same thought, why hasn’t he called?

Barricade’s chrono clicked to seventeen kliks before his online alarm when he finally gave up. Skywarp wasn’t going to comm. It was pointless by then, he told himself, to recharge. Seventeen kliks of charge was not much more than none. He could manage to make it to his work cube and his online recharge. Still, he couldn’t stir himself to move. Why? To get to his work cube early? His mood filled him with a leaden lethargy. I love you, he thought, hopelessly, helplessly. A plea. An assertion.

Sixteen kliks.

The soft chime of an incoming freq. His capacitor dropped current for a few breathless instants. “On?”

*****

Skywarp turned his head to one side, as if turning his visual field away from Thundercracker would somehow erase him. He felt a pang of guilt at the thought—his own Trine mate. Still….

Thundercracker had collapsed on top of Skywarp, one arm and leg thrown over him, possessively. He felt Thundercracker’s cooling fans’ exhaust as gentle breaths against his side, Thundercracker’s face nuzzled against his neck. His valve ached, but not as much as his spark.

He had to comm Barricade. Or else he WAS nothing but worthless dross. He had to…and he wanted to, but for different reasons. Better to end it now—even like a coward, even from a distance—than drag it any longer , hurt the little grounder even more. He wished…oh he wished it wasn’t so. He felt the need to hear the smaller mech’s voice like a physical pain.

And the only time—he tasted this irony bitterly—he could comm him was with Thundercracker sprawled over him like this, a blanket of betrayal.

He activated his comm, feeling miserable. For himself. For what he had to do.

*****

“Barricade?” he said, softly, even though he knew the comm line was secure, as though afraid of being overheard. Or…waking him. Either of them. He hadn’t run the time conversion calculations. Lazy, selfish, Skywarp. “Are you there?”

“Yes.” The desperate longing all somehow packed into that one syllable crushed Skywarp’s resolve.

“I miss you so much, little spike,” he blurted, his entire intention gone. Evaporated. Let him go? He couldn’t. His greedy spark wouldn’t let him. Even knowing how he would only end up hurting him more…he couldn’t. His sense of unworthiness redoubled. How could he do this to Barricade? How could he give in to his desires, knowing that it would only hurt Barricade in the future?

“You do?” Almost frantic disbelief. Anyone else, it would sound like an accusation.

If only you knew, Skywarp thought. If only I could show you…. His spark chamber seemed to give an upward pulse. He shifted, apprehensive, as if Thundercracker could feel it. Thundercracker recharged on, his expression blissful. In recharge, Thundercracker had the face of an angel—peaceful, serene. Skywarp had always convinced himself—another lie he grabbed for—that this was Thundercracker’s real character, his true self, safe to come out only in recharge. “Yes,” he said, “I’m sorry about the time.”

“You’re busy.” Barricade said, quickly. Handing him an excuse.

Not too busy for you, Skywarp thought. Unworthy. Instead, he heard himself agree, clutching at the excuse, another layer padding him—and Barricade—from reality. “I…uhh…was there with you and Onslaught and Starscream.”

“Starscream told me,” Barricade’s voice was tremulous and thin. Skywarp could almost picture Barricade just from the tone: optics downcast, talons tangling together in his lap. He knew Barricade would be sitting up, with a certainty he couldn’t analyze. “’M sorry.”

“Ohhhh. Please don’t apologize, little sp—Barricade,” he corrected. “I want you to be happy.” Truth so large and honest it hurt his throat. “Did they make you happy?” he added, meekly, half-afraid of the answer.

“Not like you,” Barricade said, hastily.

Skywarp felt his spark swell at the words. If only there wasn’t so much standing between them: distance and…history….

“Don’t feel guilty,” he said. Enough guilt already. Enough blame. Don’t need anymore. Especially not with what…I have done. And this jealousy? Skywarp deserved it: deserved the pain. Needed the stinging reminder that Barricade could be happy without him. Be just fine without him. Didn’t need him.

It was the only time, Skywarp thought, he had ever been trusted. Always, he’d been written off before simply as his exterior: teasing, joking. Not like he wasn’t that. In fact, often he wished he could become that—all surface, all glitter and shine. But it didn’t change the fact that Barricade had seen him as he really was: broken, vulnerable, afraid, and had not turned away.

Barricade had not seen, however, his other side.

“I’m glad you chose them, actually.”

“Wasn’t intentional.” Still trying to apologize.

“Best kind, little spike,” he forced himself to tease. “You were so hot.” He could feel Barricade’s happy discomfort at the compliment.

“You…you…doing okay?” The end rushed out too hastily. Skywarp could hear what he really wanted to ask: had Skywarp, too, interfaced?

“I’m with Thundercracker,” he said. He couldn’t lie and maybe Barricade would feel less guilty if he knew Skywarp had also not been celibate. Still, it hurt to admit it somehow. Why?

“And…he…?”

“Not like you.” Skywarp repeated Barricade’s hasty claim with a wry smile. He heard Barricade get the response, and then begin to doubt it. Poor little spike. He saw the shadows in everything. Even Skywarp. “I miss you so much,” he repeated.

A long silence. “You…sure you’re not mad?”

Despite himself, Skywarp grinned. “You worry too much, Barricade.”

“Just…,” a long gust of air. “Don’t want to lose you?”

Skywarp’s spark chamber gave another unfamiliar throb. Is this what it felt like, he thought, suddenly, to want to spark link? “You won’t lose me.” Not over that. He tried to turn it into a joke, afterward, ashamed of the naked emotion in his voice, but he couldn’t. Instead he blurted, “How are you doing?” The instant he spoke, he wished he could pull the words out of the freq. What if Barricade asked the same of him—what would he respond?

“Doing all right. Missing you.” As if that itself were an all-consuming activity. Skywarp knew how that felt. He’d felt Barricade like an absent presence, a ghost, with him every klik since his departure. But never more than now. Despite the distance, he felt…a comforting nearness.

Skywarp wasn’t sure he could take any more. “Please,” he said, softly. Not even knowing what he was asking for.

“I love you,” Barricade mumbled, and then added, clumsily, “Sorry. ‘M sorry. Don’t have to say it back or anything and not trying to make you feel uncomfortable or pressured and don’t even know why I said it in the first place and—“

“Stop,” Skywarp said, softly. Barricade cut off, abruptly. “Say it again.”

“M sorry.”

“Not that?” He felt the smile spread over his face again. He cast a quick apprehensive glance at Thundercracker.

“I…love you?”

Skywarp purred. He couldn’t help it: Barricade’s words, so haltingly tripping out of his vocalizer, caused his whole interior systems feel electrified. He wanted to hear it again and again, as if the thing it was building between them—the thing he knew he’d eventually have to destroy—was a lifeline feeding him a source more vital than energon. But he couldn’t bring himself to ask yet again, be that greedy.

“Thank you,” he breathed, gently, barely audibly, over the line.

“Are—are you coming back?”Again, a world of longing crammed into the syllables: are you coming back to me, please don’t abandon me.

“Yes.” No matter what, yes. “We…have to talk about some things, though.”

“Okay,” Barricade said, with an obedience so quick it almost hurt. The moment stretched, Barricade waiting, expectantly, bracing himself—Skywarp could feel that, across the line. Skywarp swore inwardly. How could he possibly…?

Skywarp’s courage failed again. Slag. In combat he could handle himself. Shoot at him, he was fine. But…talk about his past? He was a coward. The whole story—Skyfire’s death, Starscream’s near suicide, Thundercracker—it was opening a floodgate he wasn’t sure he could close. And so he took the coward’s way out, hating himself while he did. “I won’t do it this way. Face to face, all right? When I come back.” He couldn’t stop himself from adding, “to you.” Just to reassure the mech. Reassure himself.

“Okay,” Barricade repeated. Accepting. Unhappy, but accepting the crumbs he’d been given. Skywarp writhed inwardly.

“Barricade?” he hated himself even more for this. “Ask Starscream. Ask him about Thundercracker.”

A sudden tension. “Are you okay?”

Oh Primus, he sensed it. The little mech could read into it already. Skywarp felt a burn of humiliation, along with a flutter of fear—all his life, he’d been able to mask this to everyone. Why not Barricade? How long had the grounder seen through him? “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine, little spike.” Fine enough. Barricade didn’t need to trouble himself. Skywarp would, after all, survive.

He heard a chime. And Barricade curse roundly.

“Online chime?”

Another curse. “Gotta go. Don’t want to.”

“Do your job, little spike.” Next to him, Thundercracker stirred in his sleep, idly stroking one hand down Skywarp’s side. “And…if it helps at all, I love you.” He cut the comm line, still cursing his cowardice. Twice, and he hadn’t the courage to hear Barricade’s reaction out.

Coward. You do not deserve……….

Sky and Ground 24 Distance

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