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shadow_vector2010-03-02 06:31 am
Sky and Ground ch 27: Inscribed
Sky and Ground ch 27
Starscream/Thundercracker
Warning for disturbing content that may be triggering to self-cutting.
Thundercracker purred as Starscream worked the brush over his joints. “It was almost worth the flight to get this kind of attention,” he teased.
“It is a luxury one deserves after a trying flight,” Starscream said. He paused to sweep the purple flakes of dried grease off of the armor plating. “And it dulls your finish. I recall how you like your shine.”
Thundercracker smiled. “I am a vain little creature, aren’t I?”
Starscream smirked back. “You may try, but I shall always be more alluring than you.”
Thundercracker considered. “The bare metal look does stand out, yes. Much better than that…thing Skywarp does.”
“I find that it suits him.” Starscream did not want to discuss Skywarp. Not yet. Thundercracker needed to be in a more receptive mood. He knew he could not lie, nor keep Skywarp’s relationship with the little grounder a secret. It was, he knew, entirely self-protection. If he was not colluding to hide it from Thundercracker, the blue jet would spare him punishment. At the same time, he had enough loyalty to Skywarp not to want to cast him into danger.
They were a Trine. They were all each other had.
And, he consoled himself, if Thundercracker heard about it from him, he would have time to calm down before confronting Skywarp. Starscream knew that there was no chance for him to talk anything like reason into Thundercracker—the blue jet was rigid in his beliefs. If only he didn’t insist that his Trine follow them as well, there would be no friction at all.
“Besides,” Starscream added, coyly, “I had rather flattered myself into thinking you were here to be with me! Skywarp has had plenty of your attention over the last decacycle.” He lowered his optic shutters as Thundercracker trailed one hand up his arm. Thundercracker so often withheld his affection from Starscream—his craving for it was genuine. It was just also very useful at the moment.
He leaned into Thundercracker’s touch. “I missed you,” the blue jet murmured. “Not just this way, either. I missed having someone I could…talk to, you know? Without having to explain everything.”
Starscream felt himself warm. Thundercracker had his quirks, but he really did have their best interests at heart. They were a Trine. One of the best. And in no small part thanks to Thundercracker. “I have missed seeing your smile,” he murmured. Thundercracker was always so unhappy. Always so stiff and formal. So very rarely did Starscream get to see him like this—loose, relaxed, open. Almost…happy.
He wanted Thundercracker to be happy. As well as Skywarp. He regretted that he felt this desire almost like a burden—before they arrived, he had only himself to worry about. Now, he felt like their happiness was his responsibility; his doing, or his failing. He had burned with a fierce, but ardent, jealousy at Skywarp’s relationship with the little grounder. Not that he wanted Barricade for himself. He was an amusing plaything, yes. But he envied more than he ever dared admit the warm bond he had felt between them; envied Barricade’s raw emotions. He did not think anyone had ever felt for him with such intensity.
The closest was Thundercracker.
No, the closest living was Thundercracker. Skyfire’s spark chamber cover burned against his chassis, a painful reminder of what his last attempt at such devotion had cost. That, he said to himself, is no thing for you. You are not designed for it. You cannot manage it. Do not even dare to hope. Take…what you can.
He stretched himself alongside Thundercracker, laying the brush behind him. Thundercracker smiled down at him, optics wide and warm. Starscream kissed the broad mount of the shoulder, tenderly at first, barely brushing his lip plates over it, watching his ex-vents make small clouds of steam against the sleek blue plating. Then, a little more intently, his one hand sliding tentatively over the broad chest, fingers skittering toward the cockpit, mouth plucking at the edges of the armor plate, glossa flicking little touches across the plates, into the wiring. Thundercracker’s breath hitched.
Starscream’s capacitor picked up at Thundercracker’s response. At the thought that he pleased his Trinemate send spirals of pleasure through his lines. Someone, he thought, greedily, he could make happy. “I desire you,” he breathed. Honest and raw and pure.
Thundercracker’s arms helped pull himself across the broad chassis, lifting his face to meet Starscream’s, their mouths moving in an unforgotten dance. The kiss was gentle at first, probing each other out along familiar lines of arousal, then growing more intense, Thundercracker’s hands pulling at Starscream’s body, along the back verniers, the flares at the back of his helm, holding his Trinemate’s mouth against his, a small growl answering a whine in Starscream’s throat.
“You want me,” Thundercracker said. Not a question, but…almost as if he were afraid to make it a question.
“Yes,” Starscream said, letting his mouth brush Thundercracker’s cheek. “I desire you.”
Thundercracker bridled a bit at the wording, for some reason Starscream could not understand. He felt his blue Trinemate’s hands harsh along his back. “Your desire is not that special,” Thundercracker hissed. “Tell me, Starscream,” he gripped his Trinemate’s helm with one hand, the other digging into the tender interior of one of Starscream’s thrusters, “how have you been spending your desire in my absence?”
“Skywarp,” Starscream murmured. “He has been most entertaining.” It was not a lie.
Thundercracker’s hands softened against him. “Mmmm,” he purred. “And before that?” He slicked his hands down Starscream’s chassis, trailing his long talon points under the skirting armor, feeling into the ball joints of Starscream’s hips. Starscream hissed, half in pleasure, arching up off of Thundercracker’s chassis. “Have you been with grounders?”
No point lying. Thundercracker’s talons dug in harder for Starscream’s delay. “Yes.” He could not lie. Not to his Trine. To anyone else, though…. And perhaps he could blunt Thundercracker’s edges against himself. “Thundercracker, it is not an egregious act to interface with grounders.”
“Aerials should be with aerials; Seekers with other Seekers.”
“I am not with them, Thundercracker,” Starscream said, reasonably, aware that he was skirting on the edge of betraying Skywarp. “Interfacing is not the same as sparkbonding. We merely…pass the time pleasantly. Plus,” he added, “it is good for building alliances.” He cringed, aware that he was, indeed, tacitly betraying Skywarp. Perhaps the two had sparkbonded. And he had just cut a distance between them. It tasted like betrayal.
“We do not need to ally with them: they need to court our assistance,” Thundercracker said. His mouth was hard.
“We need to cooperate,” Starscream said, reasonably. “There is no reason it must be unpleasant in all circumstances.” Soundwave was unpleasant. But the others? Starscream saw no reason not to burn every bridge. Thundercracker simply didn’t know. He had held himself—always—aloof from any others but fliers.
“You can do so much better,” Thundercracker murmured. He began moving his hands along Starscream’s frame once more, sliding one leg between Starscream’s thighs. Starscream felt himself melt against Thundercracker, his arms wanting nothing more than to touch his Trinemate. Thundercracker braced Starscream against his torso, rolling to one side. Equals. Not one on top, one on the bottom. Equals. Starscream’s hands wrapped eagerly around Thundercracker’s body, his mouth seeking out the blue jet’s throat cables. Thundercracker writhed against him.
They lay like this for a long time, two long parted lovers re-exploring each other’s bodies, the faint streams of memories rippling, eddying with hints and echoes of the other’s desires. How well they remembered each other was an amazement to Starscream, who had known so many others. How eagerly he responded was less of a surprise. He loved Thundercracker as he loved Skywarp, with an intensity he could not explain, and that, sometimes, frightened him. To lose either of them would be to lose Skyfire all over again. He could not bear it.
The very thought, drifting across the back of his processor like hidden code, of Skyfire’s loss burned at his core, pulling a dry sob from him, forcing his optics closed, shutting out the world. Shutting him in with his memories. Still. After all this time. He clutched at Thundercracker desperately, half wanting to open his optics and see Skyfire, dreading the terrible agony of reality.
“Starscream,” Thundercracker said, gently, his touch shifting from desire to comfort. “Do not do this to yourself. To us.”
“I am fine,” Starscream said, his voice sounding thin and distant to his own audio.
“You’re going away,” Thundercracker murmured, “Don’t. Please.” He pushed up to one elbow, running a consoling arm over Starscream’s body, his optics concerned, their red glare purpling his cheeks.
“I am fine,” Starscream repeated.
“You are not.” Thundercracker shook his head, drawing one of Starscream’s own forearms in front of his optics. He twisted the arm so that the incised designs glittered in the low light. “This?”
“It was a necessary reminder.”
“You do not need any more reminders, Starscream.” He tapped Starscream’s chassis, above the cockpit, meaningfully.
“I needed to remind myself who I was.” Not of my loss, he thought, but of my nobility. Of my own strength. My ability to endure. If only he could explain it correctly, he knew that Thundercracker would approve.
Thundercracker traced one talon along a glyph, the metal tip drawing a long wake in the liquid metal nanites that filled the deep incisions. “You did these yourself.”
“Yes.”
“I want to.” He looked up, asking for permission. Starscream’s capacitor trilled in response. Thundercracker wanted…something, anything from him. Wanted something he could give. Starscream knew he let Thundercracker down in…oh…so many ways.
“Yes,” Starscream said. “I have some of the dermal nanites left over.” Starscream pushed himself off the berth, the discarded brush clattering to the floor. He stooped to pick it up. Skywarp was tolerant of messes, but Starscream was not. His thoughts drifted to Barricade’s cramped little recharge cube and its untidiness. Was that where they were now? Were they co-recharging? Was Skywarp himself happy again? He had looked…disturbed on arrival. If anyone could break through that wall, it would be Barricade.
Right now, he had his own desire to look after.
He brought the sealed jar of nanites back. They swirled, dark silver and turgid, in the light. “You must,” he instructed, “apply them to a fresh incision, before the sensor nodes have time to reroute.” Thundercracker nodded. He probably already knew that, but didn’t get short tempered at the reminder.
“Where?” Thundercracker asked.
Starscream lay the nanite jar on the berth and turned slowly, his arms outstretched. “Where would you like?”
Thundercracker leaned forward, tapping his Trinemate on the back of his right thigh. “Here.”
Starscream nodded, laying awkwardly on the berth, his cockpit almost like a fulcrum raising his upper body off the surface. He looked over his shoulder, craning over his folded wing plates to see Thundercracker.
Thundercracker studied the site, stroking his fingers along the cool metal. Starscream shivered. It was an intimate touch, in an area that did not often get touched, save for loading bots installing bomb racks. Thundercracker’s fingers traced over the area. Starscream strained his senses, trying to figure out what Thundercracker was preparing to write. He felt no anxiety that it would not be something suitable. Were it Skywarp, he’d fear for something like an arrow pointing at his aft and some crude joke. Thundercracker was always above that, in his stiff, distant way. Still, part of Starscream ached to know what would be written on him.
And the feathery touches were sending tendrils of silken sensation across his sensornet. He felt his interface systems cycle on, his spike signal readiness. No, Starscream told it. This is not that.
“Ready?” Thundercracker asked.
“Yes.” Acquiescence: Starscream’s greatest power. It was so rare that he was asked.
He bit down on a hiss as Thundercracker drove his talon into the armor plate, dragging it slowly down. Metal squealed. Starscream could feel a curl of it spiralling out of his dermal plating, the raw red-hot burn of the newly exposed metal striking air for the first time. His sensor cilia shivered in a frenzy of pain blasting down at them from the metal.
Starscream felt burning, red then white then almost a sense of grey coldness, as if all of his nodes had flipped a circuit breaker. He felt the pain on him, radiating from his metal skin, acutely aware of his surface, his skin, pulled from his depths to the most minute of foci on his dermal plating. His entire awareness cut to that small area, feeling with fine distinction the line Thundercracker had already carved out of him, the razor point of his Trinemate’s talon, on him and IN him simultaneously; the trembling anticipation of the sensor cilia waiting for the next cut, the next turn.
Most blessedly, he could not feel himself. He was externality. Pure surface: a thing without depth , without darkness. A thing without time, existing NOW only now, not in the past’s shadows, not in the haunted future. Simply now. Simply sense. Simply pain.
He cried out in a weeping kind of ecstasy.
Thundercracker poured the nanites along the gash, and the blaze of pain from their intrusion was so intense it was without color, without heat, as if beyond the senses, transcendent. Starscream felt his overload systems trip, the pain rushing across his net, pushing a brutal pleasure through him.
He shuddered, wracked with his own overload, the berth reflecting back to him the sudden heat from his frame.
Thundercracker swabbed the armor panel with a cleansing rag gently, so gently that it, somehow, felt like agony. The plating was raw, throbbing at the insult of the injury. Starscream rolled over, gingerly.
“What did you write?” he asked, arching his spine around to see. His thrusters got in the way.
Thundercracker grinned. “I thought you’d like it. ‘Honor through suffering’.”
He knows me, Starscream said. We are a Trine and this is why. He knows. And he accepts. In his way. He would accept Skywarp and Barricade in time. Starscream would soften Thundercracker’s rage, by taking it, accepting, allowing its damage, himself. Where it would do no—lasting—harm. He would do that much for them, for Skywarp was also his Trinemate. And the black jet’s happiness was a hot longing in Starscream. The Trine was a Trine, a sacred unity. Theirs was unbalanced—a four-legged chair teetering only on three. But if they clung tightly enough to each other, if they held close, they were strong.
In the meantime, Starscream’s interface systems were still half charged—his previous release had not been physical. He pulled the blue mech down on top of him: hands, mouth, entire body reaching and grasping greedily at Thundercracker. Thundercracker laughed.
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And this - along with so many other little lines like it in this series - is heartbreaking: Acquiescence: Starscream’s greatest power. It was so rare that he was asked.
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This and the entire story was so beautifully moving. ::sniffle:: I love how you write seekers, be it angst, humor, whatever...you really know your jets.
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Starscream's willingness to take Thundercracker's anger for Skywarp, and his desperate love for his remaining quaterne mates. As well as his struggle to rise above his grief...