shadow_vector | Through the Storm

PG-13
Bayverse
Barricade/June (OC)
warnings: OC, angst

written originally for the

tfic_contest but then your moron (me) went back and re-read the rules (DEEEERRRPPPPP) and there's anonymous judging. Yeah, I think y'all would figure out WHO would write Barricade/June, right? (Insert expletive here), I suck so hard. SO, just my luck it also fits the

flesh_and_steel challenge theme. So, here's me losing TWO contests with one fic! I excel in everything I do, especially fail!

Whoops--I fail at failing! Look at my pretty prize banner for winning the

flesh_and_steel challenge! :DD

1.Summer Storm

He knew something was wrong when she tapped on the driver’s side door. Fat raindrops were just beginning to plop down from the laden grey sky, rumbling like an empty belly. Barricade popped it open, saying nothing as she flopped into the driver’s seat, throwing her purse across the center console, some random contents—a pen, a lipstick, a crumpled yellow receipt—spilled out.

“I’m driving,” she announced. She didn’t even look, much less get frustrated.

Ummmm, okay, really something wrong. But he merely fired on his engine and popped the controls—well, most of them—over to her. Her small hands gripped his steering wheel like little claws, her face tight and set as she backed out of the parking space. The rain began in earnest, as though the dark sky was breaking off into pieces and falling on them, slapping against the windshield in a stirring sheet of water. His windshield wipers compensated, sluicing the water off the windscreen in heavy swipes. He waited until she was on a straight stretch of road, the only sound the kssshunk-kshunk of his wipers and the beating white noise of the rain, struggling to think of some way to open this up.

“How, uh, how did it go?”

“Fine,” she said. Yeah? She didn’t look ‘fine.’ She certainly wasn’t driving ‘fine’. Unless ‘fine’ suddenly meant ‘fast and reckless’. He compensated—he hoped subtly—for his tires starting to hydroplane on the puddle-wet road.

“Want to talk about it?” Frag, he sucked at this.

“No.” Her mouth moved, lips buckling against each other as if she were trying to physically hold back words.

She took the on-ramp to the expressway and for a few moments there was no sound beyond the regular rhythm of his tires going over the seams in the pavement. The rain let up to a simple shower, sky lightening to a dirty white. Her hands still clutched into his steering wheel, hard enough that he could feel her pulse through the tight grip. “You…want music?” he offered, finally.

“If you want,” she said, tightly.

He did not want. He wanted her to talk to him. To tell him what was going on. But he flipped open the file of music that she liked and started playing. He waited for her to sing: normally she did and laughed at how bad she was and that Barricade should arrest her for criminally awful singing. Not a great joke, but a familiar one, and one that Barricade would give anything to hear right now.

She didn’t sing. At all. Her face grew tighter, lips thinning, almost disappearing. Her breath was ragged, almost hissing, as though her air intake had clamped shut. Barricade split his attention between her and her driving. Normally, he kind of got off on when she drove him, feeling a foot against his pedals, the way she’d tap out a rhythm with two fingers on the top of his gearshift knob, the way her hands slid around the steering wheel. And…surrendering control to her. It was one of the most intensely arousing things he’d ever done.

But this was not like that at all. And he wasn’t afraid of her driving, really. His armor was more than enough to survive any collision she could get into. And he could protect her, as well—he’d rather her be doing this in him than her battered Honda. But he didn’t like the strange, silent blotchy emotion on her face, in her motions. The way her foot shoved the accelerator, the heel of the hand jamming the gearshift into position.

The music changed, her breathing got deeper, forcibly sucking in air, as if she’d overheated. Her thumbs began stroking along the steering wheel, hard at first, her skin juddering along the surface, but then softer, lighter, a gentle repetitive caress. Her eyes glistened. Hypersalinated, he thought. But she didn’t speak, and the song rolled to a new one, and she mechanically cut for the exit.

He hated having to ask. He wanted to be able to force her. Interrogate her. Terrify her into telling him. But…she looked scared already and instead of wanting to push at that he found himself wanting to do anything to relieve the pressure.

He was boiling with frustration by the time they rolled into her garage, the patter of rain cutting off as he moved under the garage’s roof. She went through the usual motions—first gear, release the clutch, check the windows—her hand even moving to turn off an invisible key. That was what broke her: her fingers closing on empty air where a key would be.

June slapped the steering wheel, her palm stinging against it. Once, and the several times more, faster and harder, pounding into it.

Barricade took the opening. “Ow.” It didn’t hurt. Not…that way. He knew that if he asked her to talk again he’d get the same response as before.

“Oh god,” she said, voice crackling. She burst, as in seemed to explode, into tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, wetly, sobbing, her body shaking against the seat. “I’m sorry.”

“You want to make it up to me? Talk.” Cold, but, he justified it. He had to know.

“Bastard.” But she leaned forward, wrapping her arms around the steering wheel.

“Yeah?” So what. “Could let you out, if you wanted,” he said. An offer. She seemed to like talking to him when she could see his optics.

“No,” she murmured, turning her face to rest a cheek on the wheel’s edge. “This is fine.”

At least she was talking. At least she was touching him, leaning toward him. “Going to tell me what the doctor said?”

“No.”

He waited.

A wet sigh. “They found something.” Oh, that was immensely helpful. His engine growled. “On the ultrasound.” Also not helpful.

“Care to translate that into, you know, comprehensible language?”

She gave a frustrated sigh, but her hand curled around the wheel still, seeking some sort of connection. She groped for an analogy. “There’s …a growth. Something wrong with one of my systems.”

Well? “So you need to get the system yanked and replaced.” It would be inconvenient, but it wasn’t such a big deal. Unless it was her first time getting a system overhaul.

“You don’—we don’t work like that. We don’t have interchangeable systems. Well. Not really.”

“Fraggin’ idiotic design, then.” He wished suddenly that she had gotten out. He wanted to touch her. Maybe it would help. Something.

“No argument here,” she mumbled. But her voice was a little softer, the edge dulled.

“What system?” He just wanted to keep her talking. While she would.

Her hands tightened around the wheel. “It’s a…female issue.” Barricade’s engine rumbled. It wasn’t like her to be so distant and squeamish. Female issue? What did that even mean? He did a quick search and….

“Oh.” Oh. Pieces rattled into place. He popped the locks, audibly.

She gave a weak smile. “Hint, huh?” She wiped her wet, blotched cheeks with one hand, grabbing her purse and sliding off the seat. Barricade pushed back , into a crouch. He curled one hand around her shoulder. A white flash as lightning stabbed through the afternoon.

“My fault,” he said. Thunder struck so close that the garage seemed to shudder.

She shook her head. “No. No, it’s not your fault.” Her hand came up, curling around his thumb.

He ground his dentae. “Has to be. Radioactive. Contamination.” He couldn’t put the idea together in a string of words, spitting out nouns. He must have done it. His energon, must have tainted her. Corroded her system.

“It’s not!” Something under the sudden flash of anger. Her hand tightened around his talon. He pulled it away, angry.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he snapped. “You never told me there was any danger.”

“It’s not related!” June’s hand hung in the air, frozen, reaching out for him.

“You never told me.”

“I just did!”

His talons flashed in the dim light. “You knew there was a risk!”

“I didn’t! It’s not even--What the hell is wrong with you?”

What the hell was wrong with him? He’d made her sick. He’d ruined one of her systems. Enough that she was scared and angry. He’d broken her. The only good thing he’d ever had. The only THING he’d ever had, the only special thing. How could he ever touch her again? His optics flicked, the lower set squeezing shut.

What was worst was that he didn’t know what to do. If this had been an enemy, he’d know what to do. He wanted something to punch, to tear and rend. He wanted an enemy. He wanted something to hate. What he had was…June, tearful and scared. And his inability to comfort her tore at him, and his sense of guilt was like acid poured into the wound.

What the hell was wrong with him? “Everything,” he said, coldly. He threw himself out the door, transforming, landing hard enough on his tires to bounce as he roared away into the deepening storm, his taillights like dim red tears receding into the gathering darkness.

2. Winter Rain

Months had gone by. He busied himself with…trivialities. He’d grown to hate and love the periodic thoughts, flashes of the schedule he’d already come to know so well: the first day of the semester, and June’s analysis of the first day like an omen for the next fifteen weeks. Now would be midterms, and June would be railing about study habits and penmanship. Now was the time in the semester when she’d be testy from students making up excuses. He’d catch himself wondering what she would wear, when she’d wear that long coat of hers he liked, imagining how the sunlight of the different seasons would catch in her hair.

He missed them all—each moment like a jewel he’d never see again. A flash of light on water. The days had gone aflame with autumn, the trees bursting into brilliant color, bright and crisp and fragrant. And then the leaves had gone brown and dead, skittering across the roads like scurrying, fearful animals fleeing the approach of winter. And then winter came, harsh and barren, stark white and umber.

He’d driven by her house, the parking lot on campus, irrationally hating the blue Honda for doing what he could not. For NOT making her sick. For not running away. It seemed smug as it squatted in its spot. HIS spot. He hated the thought that she drove it, instead of him; hated that she might have cried in it, sang in it, instead of him.

He’d done his job, burying himself in work, in missions. Snow flew, coating the world with whiteness. As if it could overwrite everything wrong with its thick purity. And the human holiday season came, bright with false color and cheer, and he drove by her house on Christmas day, seeing only the one golden pane of light from some upstairs room he’d never been in. Something else he could not share. Something else he couldn’t understand.

He’d driven up and down the snowy street, turning the road to slush, on some vain, pathetic hope she’d look out and see him. And…maybe….

The holiday faded to the dead part of winter, where the cold was brittle and the lines too sharp. It was raining, enough to pock the billows of snow, to catch and freeze on branches, promising crystalline coatings of ice for the morning. Beautiful, but breaking the trees with their weight. It seemed like some omen. His comm sounded. June’s phone.

He answered immediately, before his processor could scream at him that he had no idea what to say. “…on,” he said, hesitantly. Around him, rain dripped. It fell like tears, as if the sky itself was weeping for the season’s deadness.

“Hey,” June’s voice was just as he remembered it—the warm alto. “Sorry to bother you.”

“Not bothering me,” he said, so fast the words tumbled over each other. A moment of tense silence. “You…okay?”

A choking kind of sigh. He winced. Bad question. Ruinous question. “Been better. You?” He could feel her hiding behind the formula.

“Yeah. Same.” Been better was an understatement. Things had been worse in his life, but this felt…empty. And worse than that: all his fault. He scrambled for something to say, feeling the seconds slip through his talons like second chances. “June, I—“

“I have a favor to ask,” she blurted. “I need to go to the hospital but they won’t let me drive home afterwards.”

“Yes.” A ride. Time was she wouldn’t have bothered to ask. Just told him. And the formality felt like a retreat, like lost ground.

“I—I don’t have anyone else I can ask. I asked my sister and, well, she heard the ‘c’-word and just said…she couldn’t handle it.” She wasn’t telling him, talking to him, as much as just…trying to get the words out of herself.

I can handle it, Barricade thought. Can handle it better than these long months of separation, of the sharp, stabbing awareness that the separation was caused by his own hurt pride and clumsiness. “Yes,” he repeated. “I can do it.”

“You’re the only one left I could think of.”

“Should have been the first,” he said, the edge creeping into his voice. He fought it down. Not here. Not now, when the bridge being built was barely the under-structure. Should have been? He’d ceded that right when he’d fled.

“I—you left.”

Yes. He’d left. Run away. Again. Because he couldn’t stand by, burning with guilt. Nothing he could think to say didn’t sound defensive. He had no right to be defensive. He refused. He laid himself open, vulnerable. “Shouldn’t have,” he said, quietly. For what it was worth.

“Please,” she said, and he could hear the fear in her voice, the fear of the future and also the strain it was to reach out, the courage to ask for help. Against the cold rain on his armor, her voice seemed a flickering flame. Of desire, hope…trust. “I…need you.”

“Tell me when.” He couldn’t find the words to answer her real emotions. He clung to the surface, hoping, trusting she’d hear what he meant, how he felt, under the words.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered, and he could feel the word looming over her, pressing upon her with all the dread weight of uncertainty.

“Coming there now.”

Through the Storm

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