Sky and Ground 48 Third Bond
Jul. 7th, 2010 09:15 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
niyazi-a.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
shadow_vectorBayverse: Sky and Ground AU
Thundercracker, Barricade
sticky and standard angst warning
HEY how 'bout we all just get along and read some fluffy smut? Sound good? This isn't 'the end'--still at least one more chapter (one chapter and one epilogue) to go.
Barricade followed Starscream to the brig, the bronze Seeker’s stride self-assured, loose, happy. He could feel it, too, through his new bond. Starscream was…happy. It was a weird feeling. Contagious. He found himself almost bouncing along behind. Starscream paused at the door to the brig. “Now,” he said, “I will go with you to smooth things over and to lower the barrier.”
It sounded…final. Barricade felt a clutch of fear. “You’re not going to stay?”
“With the bond wide open…,” Starscream winked. “Someone will need to take care of Skywarp.” Oh. He hadn’t thought of that. They’d be feeling everything. Because he wasn’t good at controlling the bond. Even now, he could feel Skywarp, a thrum of anticipation. It was some comfort they’d be with him, in a sense, the whole time. But still, suddenly, the fact he’d be facing Thundercracker, alone, and to interface with him, seemed very, very real. And not a little uncomfortable. Starscream felt his discomfort, and bent, briefly, to press his mouth to Barricade’s crest. It was somehow, and Barricade couldn’t exactly figure out how, not patronizing. Just…comforting. How had he ever disliked Starscream?
The brig door opened before them, and Barricade tucked himself in Starscream’s shadow as they approached. Starscream said he’d explained it to Thundercracker, and Thundercracker surely must know what this meant. Still, he wanted to be the first to get optics on Thundercracker. See him before he realized he was being seen. He would do this, gladly, willingly. Would suffer anything for Skywarp. Including this. That didn’t mean he’d let Thundercracker get away with anything. He’d had enough of disrespect. Enough contempt. He didn’t expect gratitude from the blue jet, but he did expect some dignity.
Despite, you know, the strained circumstances, their mutual dislike and a decided lack of ambiance in the brig’s holding cell.
Starscream led the way to the barrier, stooping to key the code into its controlbox. Over his shoulders, Barricade saw Thundercracker, on edge, perched on the rim of the berth, long talons wrapping around the metal as if trying to hold on.
“Starscream,” Thundercracker said, pointedly…refusing to acknowledge Barricade’s presence. The smaller mech felt the red optics light on him, and drift away, uncomfortable.
“Thundercracker,” Starscream said, straightening up. “You have met,” he said, wryly, “Barricade.”
The optics flicked down to Barricade again. “We’ve met.” His mouthplates trembled on the verge of saying more, but he thought better of it. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Really looking forward to it, too, you know,” Barricade muttered.
“Thundercracker,” Starscream chided. “We are doing this to save your life.”
“Yes. Fine. Whatever.” Oh this was just going over fantastically, Barricade thought.
“Not doing it for you,” Barricade said. “For Skywarp.”
“I’m certainly not doing this for your sake, grounder. Especially not after what I saw you do to him.” A jerk of the chin at Starscream.
“I ordered him to comply,” Starscream said. “He was merely obeying me. I was the one at fault.” No more than truth, but Barricade could feel the bronze jet pulling the blame down onto himself. Trying to take any rancor away from Barricade. Barricade tightened, waiting for Thundercracker’s retort.
“He could have disobeyed.”
“A direct order. From a superior. From a Seeker.” Starscream’s tension rang through Barricade’s bond. Starscream hated arguing. Hated defying.
Thundercracker broke the gaze, grimacing. “Fine. Leave us to do this.”
“You shall manage?”
“We’ll be fine.” Thundercracker frowned, drawing away as Barricade entered the barrier. Starscream sighed, but re-erected the barrier wall, and with one last worried look—at both of them—he left them alone.
Thundercracker looked down the entire difference of their heights, stretching his legs upright to increase the gap. “I’ll never like you, grounder.”
“Supposed to care? Not doing this for you.” Barricade tried to hide his nerves. He could feel Starscream and Skywarp with him, soothing, comforting. He didn’t want his worry to spread and ruin things.
Thundercracker edged around Barricade, examining him, as if looking for a weakness. The size issue suddenly became significant to Thundercracker—Barricade could practically hear him imagining possibilities, and disliking each. “I have to spike you,” Thundercracker said, finally.
“Yes.” He didn’t know why Thundercracker looked so slagging unhappy about it. Stupid size.
“I suppose,” Thundercracker sighed, aggrieved, “it is better than the alternative.”
“They both suck,” Barricade snapped. He would do this—for Skywarp—but there was only so much he could take. “Can we get on with it?”
They fumbled together awkwardly for several decakliks, until Thundercracker finally decided (apparently) that the best solution was to pin Barricade against the wall, folding his own legs down. Barricade could feel concern wash back to him through the bond, Starscream and Skywarp supporting him, sustaining him. And…Skywarp laughing at the awkwardness. Barricade grumbled back, but his mood lightened. He supposed it did look pretty funny.
“Stop mocking me, grounder,” Thundercracker snarled.
Thundercracker shifted, clumsily, made more self-conscious by Barricade’s sudden grin, his spike digging at Barricade’s pelvic plate, searching for the valve. Master of foreplay, Barricade thought, sarcastically. He felt a ripple of laughter along the bond. Barricade thought of laughing outright, but then it struck him that Thundercracker had never interfaced with anyone other than a Seeker. Possibly, he realized, never with anyone other than his Trine mates.
That seemed…kind of sad. He activated his abdominal servos, rocking his pelvic plate closer, one hand reaching to guide the spike. Thundercracker flinched as the talons wrapped around the lubricated metal, but he let Barricade guide it, grinding his mouthplates together in an expression more of discomfort than disgust. The spike seated itself.
“Spark chamber,” Barricade prompted.
“Silence,” Thundercracker barked. “I shall do that in my own time. I take directions from no one.”
Barricade stiffened, but he heard a soft voice over his comm. //It is just his way, Barricade.//Starscream said. //He is merely uncomfortable and trying to deny it.// Barricade forced himself to relax. The spike moved in his valve—more gently than he would have guessed. He’d’ve pegged Thundercracker for the rough, violent type.
The blue hands bracing his shoulders against the wall were rigid, radiating Thundercracker’s discomfort. But, Barricade thought, like me, he’s doing it. Doesn’t want to, but he is. The spike pushed into him, rubbing against his nodes, sending a fairly unwelcome tingle through his systems.
//He likes having his cockpit mounting stroked,//Starscream suggested, helpfully.
//Useless trivia.// Barricade retorted. //Don’t care what he likes.//
//The sooner he gets off, the sooner it’s over, little spike,//Skywarp said.
//What about me? Doesn’t seem to care if I’m having a good time.//
Over the link, Skywarp’s voice grew husky. //Oh, don’t worry, I’ll take care of that.//
//We both shall,//Starscream added.
Barricade shivered, a klik later, feeling talons trail down rib struts he did not have, unfold one wing flap he also did not have, felt a mouth hot and warm on his, that was not his. He felt his valve clench against the spike, felt Thundercracker’s corresponding tremor. He picked up his rhythm. Barricade sighed, letting the swirl of desire from his bond carry him, blend with the tingle of pleasure from his valve.
//I believe he is enjoying this,// Starscream’s smirk carried over the bond. //Now, you might try Thundercracker’s cockpit. It feels like this.//
“Guh!” Barricade cried out, feeling a feathering touch of talons followed by the unmistakable flicking of Starscream’s glossa against a part he didn’t even have. His spinal cables contracted, twisting from the phantom touch. “Stop it, Starscream,” he whimpered, losing track of his voc channels, “Tickles.”
Thundercracker froze. “You can feel him?”
“Yeah. Can’t you?”
“No.” Thundercracker’s face was clouded with a strange longing. “Not for a long time.” He bit one of his lip plates, his chest armor retracting. Barricade felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy at the naked hesitant energy. He took his cue, retracting his own armor.
Thundercracker froze. “I wish there was another way.” He tried to pitch his voice to sound disgusted, but Barricade could already feel the quivers of fear underneath, as though the chamber was seeping with long constrained energy.
“There isn’t.” Barricade opened his cover, feeling his gold light spill out against the Seeker’s frame, the exposed chamber. Thundercracker gasped as the action opened his own in involuntary response. As natural as cool-venting.
And the melding of their bodies became secondary, an afterthought, almost insignificant to the battle of their sparks. Barricade could feel the orange light flicker and flame against his own, a powerful conflagration as the sparklights twisted and surged and roiled against each other, neither wanting to give in, to open, each resisting the intrusion of the other, or trying to, even as their bodies moved them inexorably towards each other, towards climax. Barricade caught flashes of Thundercracker—little mosaic pieces sharp edged and cutting. He saw Skywarp, younger, still bold and reckless and beautiful. He saw Starscream, earnest and arrogant. He felt Skyfire, the Seeker he had never met, but who had left such a crater in their lives when he died, each of these in flashes of crystalline intensity. He pushed, gently, toward the orange flame’s heart, and felt a rage of translucent resistance that clawed at him with ghostlike talons, roaringly empty. And he pushed through into the eye of this maelstrom.
Emptiness.
Cold, aching emptiness. Loneliness. A longing for connection so powerful it exerted an inward force, like gravity. And at its core, a tight hard singularity, a heavy knot of fear. A need to be strong. A need not to collapse, to give in, to yield to loneliness, and fear and loss so powerful that it had walled itself off entirely behind a hard husk. This…was Thundercracker’s core, and Barricade felt the horror and shame as Thundercracker realized Barricade was so close.
//I don’t know what to do!// Barricade sent the panic spiraling frantically through the link. The rising play of their bodies seemed far away, like the sound of distant battle.
//Relax, Barricade,// Starscream soothed, and Barricade felt almost a swelling along the bond, a push towards him, Skywarp and Starscream joining him, enveloping him, and reaching out, blue white and purple melding with his gold, spinning out arms like the spirals of galaxies and reaching toward the hard wall, the density of fear and loneliness and longing, pulling it apart, pulling it into their combined light.
Barricade was swept along with them, pulled into the unspinning whirling mass, a star pulled into a whipping orbit around a quasar, and he saw, felt, tasted them as they sensed each other, through him, around him, in him. And he felt the icy shock as Thundercracker felt into the depths of his Trine mates, felt Skywarp’s roiling rages, Starscream’s abject terror of loss, and his own complicity. And he was humbled by their forgiveness. He had broken them, out of fear of breaking himself, and they forgave him. He had hurt them, thinking it was love, and they forgave him even that. The worst of what he could feel and do erupted from his own memory to haunt him like a flaming ghost. And they quelled it, quenched it, yanked its vile fangs before they could sink in.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Thundercracker sobbed, his body wracked with the agony of the constrained emotions of ages, forcing themselves to the surface, a violent eruption of the return to feeling to a body so long numb that even the slightest touch was too much. He crushed Barricade against him, the long blue arms desperate around his shoulders, the overload still echoing distantly, an afterthought, his face grinding against the firm rubber of Barricade’s upper tires. He kept repeating the apology, blindly, numbly, like a chant or incantation he did not expect to work. “I’m sorry.” Barricade knew the apology wasn’t to him, or about him. But it didn’t matter. He felt the sure strong pulse of another presence along the bond, could feel the other two, their own skills rusty from disuse and shame that they—all three of them—had let their bond fall into such disrepair, open and dance together, trusting, praying that they would remember the steps. It was beautiful in such a magnitude that Barricade had no choice, really, but to struggle to contain it.
Contain them. Their fourth. Their quaternion.
They were free.
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Date: 2010-07-07 01:21 pm (UTC)And am I glad that I haven't been witness to the latest wank?This is still the f_s thing, isn't it?no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:54 pm (UTC)*Hugs* It'll blow over. It always does. People are just posting when angry, and once they have time to think about what they said, they'll feel idiotic. The comm wasn't meant to be an RPing comm, and you guys have adapted wonderfully.
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Date: 2010-07-07 06:08 pm (UTC)Either way, I am cool with that.
Be even cooler if people could not try to ruin anyone else's fun.
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Date: 2010-07-07 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:35 pm (UTC)But damn, that was beautiful. Made me cry, which is something fic rarely makes me do. I'll be sorry to see it end!
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Date: 2010-07-07 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 01:51 pm (UTC)Thank you for sharing this, especially today ♥
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Date: 2010-07-07 06:14 pm (UTC)The fandom needs more drama in fics, and less between people.
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Date: 2010-07-07 06:16 pm (UTC)Drama between people = fail =\
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Date: 2010-07-07 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 10:03 pm (UTC)I... needed to read that. Thank you.
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Date: 2010-07-07 10:06 pm (UTC)I'm still so sad to see this story come to a close but I'm also happy because it's ending so well. <3
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Date: 2010-07-08 03:16 am (UTC)Oooh, I love this bit of description/metaphor. Lots of folks walking around with their own internal singularities in this world. AND TC NEEDS HUGS!!!
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Date: 2010-07-09 03:29 am (UTC)Thank you for sharing
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Date: 2010-12-01 08:56 pm (UTC)and on a side-note... my iTunes decided to play Riders on the Storm for this chapter... and it was strangely appropriate.