Fragile

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

R
G1
Skyfire/Starscream
angst (uh, yeah, look at the pairing!!) 

Written for 4 Jul springkink prompt "You're not going to break me, you know."

His kisses were always like this.  Gentle, too gentle. Afraid, not of rejection but of damage. Misreading, Starscream thought, sourly, Starscream’s smaller size for fragility.  Frame type, Starscream had patiently explained, (well, patiently, for him!) had nothing to do with sturdiness.  In fact, his more compact systems actually rendered him safer and faster—fewer relays to fail, less long cables to fray or wear or split.  And though Skyfire was a scientist, robotic engineering never had been his strongest suit.  Skyfire cared more for chemistry and metallurgy than circuitry and systems. 

In the lab, it made them an excellent team.  In a relationship?  Not quite.

Starscream tried to show what he wanted. Words were…so tedious.  And ineffective. A thousand would have to try to do what he might accomplish with one gesture—snaking one of his hands around Skyfire’s white helm and pulling it more firmly, aggressively, against his face, his glossa flicking into Skyfire’s mouth.  He could hear a low hum of arousal from the larger mech.  Skyfire was one of those.  You know.  The kind that tried to hide their arousal, as though interfacing or the want to do so was somehow embarrassing or shameful. 

As a scientist, he should know better about that, too, but Starscream had come to realize that Skyfire had gone into the study of science to try to live entirely in his cortex, leaving his physical systems entirely out of it. No way to live. Not at all. Starscream felt that life was for living, body, lasercore, cortex and all. Denying one of these was amputating part of what you might be. Cutting yourself down. Selling yourself short. Not for Starscream, no thank you.  He was going to be famous. One way or the other.  Ambition? Sure.  But it pushed him to achieve, and even Skyfire acknowledged that Starscream’s manic drive had boosted them along: more grants, more research opportunities. 

Well, life was to be lived, sensation to be grasped, here as well. Not a moment or a feeling gone to waste.  He twined his legs around Skyfire’s midsection, arching his cockpit into Skyfire’s chassis, his body needy and grasping.  Wanting. Always wanting. 

He could feel Skyfire yield. Could feel the mouth part, the body move over him, the will bending to his, the innocent kiss turning…not so innocent.  His own systems fired up, aroused by this…conversion, every time.  Skyfire wouldn’t be half so alluring if he were eager, but he always had to be coaxed, cajoled, and then tugged across that boundary of ‘decency’. 

The shuttle’s large hands stroked along the white span of Starscream’s wings’ leading edges.  Gently, again, afraid to hurt or damage.  Starscream ached for that touch to roughen, the hands to squeeze to the point of denting metal.  He fantasized about driving Skyfire so mad with arousal and desire that he had an aching mark on him for solars afterwards, something he could look at, a reminder, a physical token there forever if he chose, of Skyfire’s lust pushing the shuttle beyond his quiet reserve.

Skyfire broke the kiss reluctantly, his optics closed, demure, even as his hands stroked down the wings,  toward the dermal plating of Starscream’s body, yearning for touch.  He treated Starscream like a precious doll, something he’d die before he damaged.  To him, the gentle touches were reverence, a worship of something so much more…alive than he was. Starscream was brilliant with life, glowing in science, and coruscating with energy, emotion, passion. Everything Skyfire wasn’t but longed to touch, to borrow. Skyfire felt abashed at the kind of selfishness he felt—that even by these shy touches, he was trying to possess, to claim, Starscream’s vibrance as his own.  To connect himself, to bask in its beams, like the ion winds of some foreign but beautiful sun. 

He felt Starscream’s legs unwrap from his waist, the sliding grate of the thrusters over his hips.  He paused to look down, look over, Starscream’s body: even his colors were vivid and bold. He felt something that didn’t dare to be envy.  Even his emotions lacked force and power.  Starscream wriggled on the berth, in open invitation, his optics glowing with desire—a light that embarrassed Skyfire with its flattery.  That he should have drawn Starscream’s desire. 

He shivered, his systems wracking awake. “I want you,” he said, asking permission, even though they had done this…so many times before. He never wanted to intrude.  Never wanted to force himself on Starscream.  He didn’t trust himself to read the signs.

“Then take me,” Starscream said, a glint of hopeful challenge in his optics. 

Skyfire’s hands hovered over Starscream’s pelvic frame, twitching over the interface hatch.

“You’re not going to break me, you know,” Starscream said, wryly. 

***

“You’re not going to break me, you know,” Skyfire said, quietly. 

“Oh I am very much aware of that,” Starscream snapped.  Skyfire winced. The war had made Starscream so hard, so bitter.  All those vorns where Skyfire lay trapped beneath the ice…had changed Starscream. Turned his ambition to acid, his vibrant aliveness to a prickling force. 

Starscream paced impatiently.  “The issue is, what to do with you.” 

Skyfire debated simply asking to be let go.  But Starscream, he knew, would view that as an insult, a mortal one, and he had wounded Starscream too many times with clumsy words.  The Seeker was physically tough, always had been. And mentally. But Skyfire knew that his emotions were always so volatile, likely to flare and burn anyone within reach.

“There is no value in killing me,” he said, quietly.

“Other than denying the enemy your transport capabilities,” Starscream snapped. “You have never grasped even the rudiments of military strategy, have you?”

“I am a scientist.  I hate war.”

“What is war but another kind of knowledge?”  Starscream sighed, as if frustrated at himself for getting drawn out. 

“War is never the answer, Starscream.  Studying it only validates it.” 

“I have other concerns at the moment than your misguided and tedious pacifism.” Starscream snarled. “And your response is ridiculous. You do not make something more or less real by studying it.”

“Light,” Skyfire countered. “ Wave or particle. The study determines which.” 

“I have no time for your scientific analogies,” Starscream snapped.  He headed toward the door, peering out.  “Unless you wish to die, for certain, you should keep your blathering to yourself until I find a way to get you out of this alive.”

Skyfire watched the white span of Starscream’s wings, marred by the purple logo that set him apart, set them apart.  An insignia that signed Starscream on to the side that chose violence as the route to their solutions.  “The others?”

A hitch of the wings. “I don’t care about the others,” Starscream snarled.  The closest he’d come to an admission of what he might—once—have cared about.  “They came here to kill. They deserve their fates.”

“Are they all dead?”

“Not your concern either.”

Skyfire twitched.  Then again, who was he to judge?  He had flown the other Autobots here, knowing full well they meant to attack, to damage. 

“What do you intend to do with me?”

“I don’t know!” Starscream snapped. “Perhaps turn you over to Megatron.  See what he has to do with you. Maybe you would make a serviceable Decepticon, after reprogramming.”  The voice was harsh. 

“Is that what you want, Starscream?”

“Do not question what I want! Never question what I want, least of all, you, Skyfire!”  Starscream rounded on his heels, his face taut with fury. 

Skyfire flinched back.  Such outbursts of rage were…new to him, unfamiliar.  The Starscream he’d known…did not have this viciousness.  Or maybe he’d had the seed of it, but those long vorns had nurtured it, fed it, until it had taken root in Starscream’s cortex.  Maybe ages of warfare and unhappiness had buried the goodness Skyfire believed was in Starscream’s core, smothered it. 

“I am sorry,” he said, quietly.  “How can I make you less unhappy?”  The simplest question of all: always the most impossible to answer.  The white wings—Skyfire remembered the satin smoothness of their white finish under his hands still too well after all these ages—twitched, almost a flinch. As if Skyfire’s simple words had cut too deeply.

“By being who you never can be,” Starscream said, turning his helm away, to a blank corner of the wall, so quietly, and for a klik it lost its arrogant harshness, and was the soft, quiet voice of a lover, laden with regret, with pain. 

And Skyfire ached, and remembered: His choices were always like this.

Comments

[albydarned.livejournal.com]

You. Always. Break. My. Heart. With. These. Two. *sobs* I really love the second part of this, because it's the perfect compliment to the first half, where you can really see how Starscream's tendencies then could have, over time, shifted to become what he was when Skyfire got out of the ice. Although I've been known to enjoy stories where the Starscream that Skyfire knew was some sort of pseudo!Autobot before the war, what I really love about how you've handled his character here is to show that no, before the war he was still Starscream, just not as hard, bitter, or intense. He wasn't a fluffy bunny by any means.

*long, rambly review!is long* Awesome fic, even if I'm bawling right now. :)

[bimbomushi.livejournal.com]

This is beautifully written and the ending really grabbed me. Great characterisation ^-^

[ithilgwath.livejournal.com]

oh man that's heartbreaking... and it started off so.. warm and yummy... and then the owie angst that is inevitable between them.. hurts so good.