Sky and Ground 45 Flight

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

R (just to be safe)
Bayverse AU
Barricade, Skywarp, Starscream, Thundercracker
ref to abuse/humiliation

FIRST some fluff.  Then, some plot advancement!  

FLIGHT

Barricade woke up? Came to?  It felt like cycles later.  He was curled on his side, Skywarp’s bulk wrapped around him like a protective shell, the jet’s cockpit wedged between his doorwings. He stirred, feeling dizzy. Unsettled. 

Skywarp shifted behind him and Barricade reeled, feeling his vision shift to double—seeing Skywarp, seeing himself through what must be Skywarp’s optics. 

“How do you feel?” Skywarp asked, curious, hesitant.  Barricade could feel his concern—perhaps a groundframe was not made for that?  He wasn’t sure himself, honestly.

“Want to go flying,” Barricade blurted. He felt it almost like an ache, a desire to do something he never wanted to do, to feel the cold of space caress his armor, feel the power and control of his thrusters cutting through vacuum, carving elegant shapes into the sky.  Since when?

Skywarp laughed. “That’s me you’re feeling, little spike.”  He bent his neck and kissed Barricade, gently.  “You get used to it. After a while you’ll be able to control the link.  Shut it down entirely if you need to.”

“Why’d I want to do that?” Why would he want to close a link with Skywarp? It felt…amazing. Huge and powerful and so rich and vast.  Like a treasure being poured into his hands. 

Skywarp’s smile saddened. “We did.  A long time ago. Because it hurt too much.” 

Barricade drooped.  Already he’d overstepped. Gone too far. “Sorry,” Barricade said.  He felt…something, almost a tickle in the back of his cortex.  Skywarp, opening his side of the link, pushing at his awkward apology.  Barricade retreated. “YOU want to go flying.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you?”

Another brush at his cortex. “Because you don’t like it.”

Barricade quivered. “Never saw you fly.” 

Half of Skywarp’s mouth quirked in a smile. “You want to?”

“Yes.”  Another brush at his cortex, and this time he could feel, almost see, what Skywarp was finding—his regret, when he had flown with Starscream, that he had never seen Skywarp fly. Never seen something that was so…essential, innate to being a Seeker.  “And stop showing off that you can do this better’n me.” 

The grin grew to the other side. “If I were any good, you wouldn’t feel me at all.”

Barricade squirmed up the large body, twisting in the embrace, his arms around the Seeker’s neck. “Then don’t get good.”  The intimacy of Skywarp’s touches in his cortex were something he could never have imagined.  As for Skywarp’s searches—he had no secrets. Not from Skywarp. Everything was his.  All of it. 

Skywarp allowed himself to get pulled into another kiss before rolling to his other side, taking Barricade with him.

“Where are we going?” Barricade asked.

“We,” Skywarp said, depositing Barricade on his feet before rising to his full height, “are going flying. But only because you want me to.” Barricade could feel the tease across their link, Skywarp’s sly demurral of his own desire to fly.  Is this what it would be like, this bond?  This made a private comm freq feel so…limited.  Barricade had never imagined anything like this.  He couldn’t imagine it ever getting old. 

“You…okay?” he had to ask. “Regret it?”

He felt a tide of warmth push toward him. Unfeigned, inviting him to feel it.  “No,” Skywarp said, just in case Barricade couldn’t read it enough in the bond. “No regrets.  And I love you.”  The words seemed to scintillate in the air between them, lit with the energy of their bond. 

**

“Want to watch you,” Barricade insisted, hovering near the ship in his propack.  He’d have been content to watch from the hangar, but Skywarp had insisted, so he let himself be rigged with a pack and had puttered gamely, lamely after Skywarp.  It filled him with a content he had never known watching Skywarp wheel and angle and arc through the starry expanse.  Watching Starscream had been one thing:  a cool aesthetic appreciation.  This was…different somehow. 

//Close your optics.// Skywarp said.  Barricade obeyed, and suddenly his senses blared to life, as Skywarp helped inch the bond open a little wider and the boundaries between them seemed to disappear.  He could feel acceleration across his wingpanels (his?) like a cool caress of air, could feel the hum of his thrusters vibrating pleasurably, could feel a completely alien shifting and sliding of parts as Skywarp shifted from his alt to his bipedal mode, all the while still carving arabesques into the sky with elegant precision.  He knew…instantly, entirely…why airframes felt such contempt for grounders, limited, constrained to…going over surfaces.  Rolling on tires, in contact, in need of gravity. He was…free of that, suddenly, free and powerful and uncontainable. 

//Yes.//  Barricade opened his eyes just as Skywarp cut his engines to a hover, an arm’s reach away.  //It’s beautiful feeling it from you,// Skywarp murmured.  Barricade looked down at his own hands, the pro-pack controls rigged into his wrists. 

//Take me?// Barricade trusted Skywarp would know what he was asking—please, let me feel that for myself, let me feel, imagine, pretend, engross myself in that sensation. 

Skywarp shifted easily behind Barricade, wrapping him against his chassis, pausing to nuzzle against the back of Barricade’s helm.  Barricade cut his optics, concentrating on the feel, again, through his bond, the easy grace and power, as Skywarp accelerated, turned, wheeled, dove.  These motions used to terrify him, fraught with memories.  Now they seemed…natural, extensions of him and he could not imagine ever being afraid of them again. 

//I’ll never be able to do that.//

//No. But you can,// Skywarp ducked in for a kiss, and the warmth of his frame was startling against the cold of space, //keep us grounded. We need you. I need you.//  Through the bond, Barricade felt a wash of sparkling light. 

**

Starscream shifted, restless.  Skywarp and Barricade, right now, were using his recharge cube to bond.  They’d open that bond together with each other.  The one Starscream missed so much.  They could open their links only limitedly. Not like they used to. Not enough to feel everything together.  Just physical sensation. Just astrogation. Enough to perform well in Trine combat runs—perfect synchrony.  Without the ‘distraction’ of emotions. When had they shut down? Why? 

He ached with something like envy for what they were going to have. It was thin consolation knowing that his turn would be next—that if nothing else, he would have a fresh start, a new bond. But with Barricade.  Not that he did not like the grounder, but…he was not Skywarp. Or Thundercracker.

This line of thought was threatening to suck him into despair. He could already feel Skyfire’s ghost in the edges of his processor.  No. He needed to stay strong. Coherent. He could not afford, not now, to falter. To fall.

He pushed himself off of his borrowed berth, and headed down to the brig.  Megatron had, in his infinitesimal and backwards mercy, allowed Thundercracker to have visitors, at least.  If it was consolation or mercy to be separated by a force barrier. 

Thundercracker heard him coming, pushed up from the narrow berth into a defensive crouch. He straightened when he saw Starscream. They stared at each other, wordless, neither knowing how to begin.  Fearing how it might end. 

“I—I am sorry,” Starscream breathed.  The force barrier hummed warningly as he stepped in. 

Thundercracker shook his head. “I don’t even know what that was.  He does that to you? He treats you like that?  Your commander?”

“Our commander. Our leader,” Starscream said, softly. 

“He oversteps.”

“Perhaps.” 

“How could you…why didn’t you tell us?”

Starscream shrugged, uncomfortable. “It was no large matter.  We filled each other’s needs.”

Thundercracker stepped back.  “He…humiliates you.”

“Yes. It is his way.”  Starscream faltered. He did not want to defend Megatron. Or himself, and what he had let himself become. He felt—so acutely that it scored him like knives—his own culpability.  He had yielded and yielded, retreated and retreated, never holding a line for dignity or respect.  If he had…this would not have happened. Would not be happening. 

“How can you let him?”

Starscream squirmed, his optics dropping to the barrier’s generator idly.  He had the disarm codes, but what would be the point? Nothing would be gained by such a mad, rash attempt. Not when they had a plan that stood a chance of working. “He is our leader. He demands it.  It is…not so different from Skywarp.”

“Skywarp means it differently, you know that.”  Thundercracker frowned, knowing the words didn’t come out right.  Starscream nodded. He knew what he meant.  Skywarp’s use of him came from love and trust, mutual. He knew Skywarp trusted him to contain, to hold his darkness for him.  He was an honored vessel for Skywarp: he was an object to be spat upon for Megatron.  Subtle but a world of difference between them.  He had always known, but had…refused to know. 

“Yes.”  He didn’t want to talk about that. “We have a solution.” 

“Kill the fragger.” Thundercracker’s optics were bright lines of hateful red.  Unforgiving. It stirred something in Starscream, this protective rage of Thundercracker’s.  So close to what felt like love. 

“We cannot.  But we can neutralize him.”

“How.”  Not really a question. More like a flat denial of the possibility.

“We can,” Starscream’s voice grew breathy from fear and excitement, “become a Quaterne.” 

“Become a—oh no.” Thundercracker shook his head. “Not with the grounder.”

Starscream braced himself.  Courage.  “It is already being done.  Right now, Skywarp is bonding with him.”

Thundercracker snarled a string of obscenities, whirling in the cell as if looking for something to strike.  “Ruinous! This is ruinous! What were you thinking?!” His optics were feral when he turned back, blue talons in raking claws. 

“Saving you. Saving us.  If we are a Quaterne…no one can touch us.”

Thundercracker’s rage showed in his tight ex-vents, air hissing from his intakes.  He trembled with rage. But Starscream could feel the point seeping in, the possibilities, potentialities seeping in through cracks in Thundercracker’s objections. 

“We could get back what was lost,” Starscream whispered. 

“I can’t. You can’t ask me to…bond with that thing!” 

Starscream’s mouth flinched into a minute expression of pain. “Why not?  Is it different from what you used to make Skywarp do? Make me do?”

Thundercracker reeled back, shocked. “But I—I was never like him. Like Megatron.”

“No. Never. I did not say that you were.  Merely that you overcome your objection. Just once.  Please.  For all of us.  Not just yourself.  We need you.”  Starscream placed a hand on the force barrier, feeling it vibrate under his palm.

The choice was simple: let his pride win, and die, and take the Trine down with him; or give in, just once.  Cede control.  Push aside his prejudice.  Which was more important? 

“I don’t ever want to see Megatron touch you again,” he said, quietly. 

“There is only the one way. I know it is much to ask of you.”

No. Not after what he had demanded of them, from them, all those ages ago.  It was not too much to ask in comparison.  He felt the guilt like a blow; that he had somehow laid the first stones on the pathway to what he had seen Megatron do—so casually debase Starscream.  He staggered back against it, under its weight.  Made even heavier by the fact that Starscream, who could, who SHOULD be raging with blame at him, merely stood there. Radiating, if anything, a quiet kind of sympathy.  Asking only this much.  Asking. Not demanding. 

He sagged against the barrier, his fist on the opposite side as Starscream’s spread palm.  I will do anything never to see that again. Anything.   “Yes,” he said.

Comments

[katsuko]

Oh my god, I'm melting from the utter sweetness in the first section. Skywarp and Barricade are just so... happy and fluff-filled at the moment!

As for Thundercracker and Starscream, they're also achingly sweet in a way. It's almost heartwrenching to see TC finally come to the realization that his means of keeping the Trine united and whole paved the way for Megatron to debase Starscream whenever he felt like it. I know that it won't be easy for him to concede entirely, but he's already willing to do what it takes to keep his Trine-soon-to-be-Quaterne-again safe from those machinations in the future.

*wriggling in her seat, really wants more*

Edited to fix icon. How the hell did that one pop up when I was headed to use this icon? O.o

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

If you like sweetness....wait till next week. ^__^

[anontfwriter.livejournal.com]

Awesome!

[sasuke-emosauce.livejournal.com]

Oh, the way you described Skywarp's sensations of flight...this is precious to me for reasons I won't go into.

“I don’t ever want to see Megatron touch you again." I loved this.

I need a Barricade icon.

[library-drone01.livejournal.com]

*Jumps up and down in glee*
LOVE this. I love that TC is finally bending a little and that SS is standing up for himself.

As always Skywarp and Cade make me go awwwwwww.

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it! TC is rigid, but he has his reasons and they make sense to him...and that's a hard thing to shake.

And they are stupidly cute together. For a psychotic jet and a police car. O_O

[flamekaat.livejournal.com]

*Brain go smush* I adore sky and ground verse so much *huggles fic* "Yes TC make a right choice YAY!" *head hits desk with resounding thud* ZZZZZzzzzzzzzZZZZZ

[ithilgwath.livejournal.com]

Skywarp and Barricade are adorable fluffy flying happy joy. :D