shadow_vector | Sky and Ground 4: Gossip

Sticky!

Barricade spent the first half of his shift in a fuzzy warm glow, despite being a little…underrecharged. There was, of course, the physical effect of having had his electromagnetic field blended with Skywarp’s as they co-recharged, that kept ions tingling in his own field. But there was also another tingle, just as unfamiliar. He was…wanted. Trusted. Skywarp had woken once in the night, whimpering and clutching Barricade closer, as if the simple contact made him feel better.

He’d had the hardest time dropping back into low-power recharge after that, just in a sort of rigid awe that he had the power, the ability, to comfort anyone. That had also contributed to his fuzzy glow, carrying him through the tedious rounds of logging traffic and analyzing reports.

His fuel zip pinged him—he needed some energon. A little earlier than usual, but perhaps being up most of the recharge cycle forced more fuel consumption. Not that he minded. He was already trying not to get too eager about this upcoming recharge cycle. Anything you think will happen, anything you want to happen, he told himself…always goes wrong. Hope for nothing. Expect nothing.

He snapped a datapad onto his thigh plate by its magnets, and headed to the lower-level refectory. Still early enough that it was crowded—exactly what he normally avoided. But his fuel reservoir was adamant, and, well, what was the big deal, anyway?

He held out his wrist unit for the service bot to scan. It recorded his name, rank, duties for the day, and current fuel levels, calculating, based on his assigned duties, his approximate ration. It scuttled off to fetch his ration.

A large shape bulked beside him. “So, honestly, you spiking the Seekers? For real?” Brawl, from the meeting.

“Uhhhh, you kind of saw it happen.” As did the entire Decepticon high command.

“Yeah, but…I mean, more than that?”

Barricade ducked his head. It probably wouldn’t do the Seekers any good for him to brag about it. They had their own reputations. And while their size, relative power, and rank kept them immune from some of the repercussions of their actions…well, at the very least, using the small, weak, CIO as a spiketoy to disrupt Soundwave’s meeting could be written off as a joke or a kink. Voluntarily doing it more than once, in private, and it became a perversion. They didn’t need that.

“A little. Once before that.”

Brawl looked disappointed. Barricade felt a little better. They weren’t going to get labeled as perverts for interfacing with him just once. Their sense of humor might be questioned, but…no Decepticon had what could be considered a ‘normal’ sense of humor.

“So…you’ve done Starscream, right?”

Barricade hesitated again. Not…really. It would be skirting a lie to say he’d had any sort of active role—he’d pretty much done what they’d directed, or been used by them. ‘Doing’ Starscream had comprised being pushed into him by Skywarp. Skywarp. A shiver ran through him at the memory. “Not exactly.”

Brawl frowned. “Kinda wondered what he was like. Whether he liked spike or, you know.”

“Don’t know,” Barricade muttered, optics eagerly seeking out the service bot holding his energon ration over its head. Starscream’s mouth around his spike flashed through his processor again, the soft moans he’d made when Barricade’s spike had overloaded in his mouth…. He could see exactly what Brawl would do if he knew. It was ugly.

“Holding out on us, are you?” Brawl said.

Barricade shrugged, reaching for his ration. “You saw—I didn’t have much say in what happened.”

Brawl grinned. “Yeah, kind of noticed.” His optics raked up and down Barricade’s body, appraisingly. Barricade slipped his datapad over, self-consciously, snatched his ration, and moved to find a fuel station.

He’d settled himself on a table, inserting his ration in the autoinjector. He keyed on his datapad before connecting the refuel injector to the intake under his chassis, and settled in to read. A study of propaganda through the Protectorate. Dull on the surface, but if one considered the uses one could apply the same principles to….

“Barricade!” Starscream’s…unique vocal timbre cut through the crowd. Barricade jumped, nearly dropping his datapad mid-scroll. He struggled to his feet, hand fumbling for the injector still in his intake. If he’d chosen to ingest the energon ration orally, he’d’ve managed to spill it all across the table.

“Yes! Right here!” His talons tangled in the injector’s hose. He muttered a curse, looking down, juggling his datapad and the autoinjector.

Starscream stormed across the refectory, the crowd parting, silence rippling in his wake. He looked furious. Barricade quailed.

“Barricade!” Starscream repeated, drawing himself up across the narrow surface of the refuel station. He glared at Barricade, and bent, sweeping the table clear—injectors snapping from their couplings, Barricade’s datapad sailing across the room. Starscream splayed a hand across the surface, bending low. “I did not think,” the Seeker snarled, loud, “that you would stoop to gossip.”

Barricade froze. He’d been so careful. He tried to think over what he’d said. He’d tried so hard—should he have denied everything? But there was what the others had seen. He couldn’t lie. “I-I…” He didn’t know where to look. His optics dashed from side to side, frantic for an escape vector. All he saw was the refectory filled with mechs, a sea of red optics, all turned to face the delicious spectacle of one of Starscream’s notorious rages.

Starscream bent lower, pushing forward. Barricade shrank back. “I’m sorry?” he squeaked.

“Sorry? You’re sorry? You lied!” Starscream banged his taloned fist on the table. Barricade flinched.

“But—but…,” He hadn’t lied. He hadn’t.

Starscream lunged forward. Barricade twitched back, bumping against the back of the recharge station. He pressed himself flat. The jet hooked his talons under Barricade’s grille, jerking him forward. “You lied,” the Seeker repeated.

“How?”

“You said we had not interfaced. That is a lie, Barricade.”

Barricade’s optics flew to the watching crowd. He felt his armor overheat from embarrassment. “I was trying…to….” Whatever Barricade had been trying to say got muffled as the jet pulled him into a kiss, his long talons curving over the smaller mech’s body.

“We have,” Starscream announced, breaking the kiss, “interfaced. There shall be,” his optics glinted, wickedly, “no mistake about that.” He leapt agilely onto the recharge surface, pulling Barricade to him. “Take me,” he whispered.

“What? No, I can’t—“

“You can. You will.” Starscream’s voice took on an edge. Louder, he said, “You know I cannot stay away from you, Barricade.” He sucked in a cycle of air, nuzzling showily into Barricade’s neck. Barricade’s sensornet sizzled. His arms came up to encircle the jet’s neck, stroking along the broad shoulders tentatively. It always felt like it was somewhere between Opposite Day and Surrealism Festival with the two Seekers. How had he never noticed that before?

“Harder,” Starscream whispered, the vibrations tickling Barricade’s audio.

“What?”

Starscream lifted his head, raising his voice again. “Oh! Harder! Stop teasing me!”

Barricade blinked, stupidly. What the spark was Starscream up to? The jet reached behind the smaller mech, pinching at his wing fairings. Barricade moaned, his talons clutching involuntarily at the jet’s shoulders. Starscream hissed with pleasure. “Yessssss.” Starscream settled himself on the recharge table, pulling the smaller mech between his dangling legs. Barricade caught one last glimpse of the crowd, mouths agape, eagerly watching. “Take me,” Starscream moaned, showily. “I must have you again.”

“Uhhhhh,” Barricade placed his hands awkwardly on the jet’s chassis. “This all right?”

Starscream squirmed. “Do not ask me,” he whispered. “You are to take me.” Louder, “I want you again. Already. Now. Please.”

This was…so bizarre. Right. Barricade ran his talons across the jet’s broad body, down the long, powerful arms. Like Skywarp’s but not like his, at the same time. Too-familiar fingers returned the teasing touches, a too-similar face pulled his in for another kiss. One of the hands crept between his thighs, reaching for his spike cover. Barricade tried to jerk away, but Starscream held him pinned by his other arm across the smaller mech’s shoulders.

“Here? I can’t.”

“You can. I want you. And you need this.”

“Not here!” Sure, he was a little on the undersexed side of the line, but…couldn’t this be handled privately?

“Yes, you do. Here.” The eyes went serious for a moment, but then glittered mischievously. “Now, spike me. I am ready to put on quite a little show for our audience.” The long talons released his spike cover, brushing once against the extended spike in a blatant torment.

“Uhhh, right.” Barricade pushed the Seeker back, gently. Starscream fell back on his elbows, harder than Barricade pushed, and autoreleased his valve cover. Barricade looked up at the jet, then down at the valve, biting his labial plate. Did Starscream really want him to? In front of everyone? COULD he?

He pushed in slowly, the lubricant spreading languorously down his spike as it coated the Seeker’s valve. He watched the jet’s face anxiously for any sign that the joke was over. Starscream fluttered his optics closed, moaning. “Oh, do not tease me like this,” the jet said. “Not again. I cannot bear it.”

Barricade moved his spike gently in the valve, watching the jet moan and writhe. Oh, if only this wasn’t an act, Barricade would feel like a demigod of spiking to cause such a reaction in the jet. Even knowing it was all an act, it was heady. To even pretend to have this kind of power—dizzying.

The jet moaned again, his talons reaching for Barricade’s hips, to pull him harder, deeper. “No!” he whined, “Harder. Please. You know how crazy it makes me when you’re so cruel like this!” Okay, that was pushing it a bit far into bad scripting, but still…Starscream was ridiculously hot. The only other time he’d been with him, Barricade had been so overwhelmed by the experience that he really didn’t appreciate the jet himself. Almost involuntarily—his sensornet taking over—he pushed harder and more firmly into the valve. Starscream rolled his head back, panting. Barricade’s sensornet fired signals in all directions, aroused by the jet—it was an act, a show, just pretend, he told himself, but…well, no one had ever even bothered to act before for him. Just…the effort behind that was a consideration he never got.

Starscream cried out, loud enough that a mech entering the refectory dropped his ration from startled fingers, and more than a few of the nearer audience members ‘whoofed’ in sympathy. The jet curled one heel against Barricade’s backside, holding him in. The rippling spasm of the valve finally pushed him over the edge—Barricade overloaded into the jet with a shudder that arched his back, and clutched his fingers deep into the jet’s thigh cables.

He stood there, trembling, feeling sheepish, suddenly aware of the eyes on him, of what he was doing. Of what he had dared to do. He stuffed his still-aroused spike ruthlessly back in its housing with shaky talons. He could clean it later. The jet’s valve was another issue. He reached in a storage compartment for a cleansing rag. “Sorry,” he muttered, moving to wipe the valve’s exterior oozing with his transfluid.

The jet shuddered. “Oh!”

Barricade twitched. Stupid mech. Of course. What had he been thinking? Only of the sticky mess, not of…what trying to clean up the sticky mess would do. Starscream rolled his head around to the front, his heavy-lidded eyes drooping open. “Unwise, little Barricade,” he murmured. He pushed the mech back, sliding off the table, coming to rest on his knees in front of Barricade. Starscream wrapped his arms around Barricade’s waist, in a posture of utter submission, his cheek flare resting against one of Barricade’s hips. The smaller mech stroked the jet’s head, shyly, self-consciously.

The jet stood up, hauling Barricade onto his shoulder. What the--? “We are not finished,” the jet announced to the crowd. “It may be many cycles before Barricade is able to return to work. Please make sure his shift is covered.” A few startled, bemused expressions. More than a few. And more than a few envious ones.

Starscream headed to the door, Barricade slung over his shoulder like a doll.

Barricade, shocked into stillness, summoned up some resistance once they reached the corridor. “Right,” he said, as Starscream drew to a stop. “Can put me down now. No one’s looking.”

Starscream dropped to his knees, swinging Barricade off his shoulder and against the wall. “While I do enjoy performing for an audience, I was not dishonest. I am not,” he said, his eyes following his fingers as he traced a line down the long plate of Barricade’s upper arm tire armor, “finished with you.” Barricade shivered, a little glad the hard cool metal of the bulkhead was supporting him. “Barricade?” the jet said, softly. “May I spike you?”

“I…uhhhh, I can’t exactly stop you.”

“That is not what I asked, Barricade.”

The smaller mech looked up at Starscream’s face, looking for some hint of the aggression and humiliation he’d always seen from others wanting to spike him. ‘Take it, you slut,’ they’d say, sneering even as they drove into him. As if he’d wanted it. But…nothing. None of that was on the jet’s face. “Yeah,” he said, a little surprised at the shakiness of his voice. “If you want.”

“Here?”

Barricade looked around. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said, bitterly.

“Hush,” Starscream murmured, leaning in to nuzzle his audio. “This is not that.” He crouched lower on his knees, so their pelvic armor was about level. He traced Barricade’s upper tire slowly, drawing the tire’s rim in a complete circle. Barricade closed his eyes into the sensation, barely feeling his valve cover released by the jet’s other hand. He gritted his eyes closed as he felt the cool presence of the jet’s spike sliding into his valve, waiting for…pain. Humiliation. Rage. Helplessness. He braced himself against sensations that never came.

For a long moment, as the jet’s spike moved in him, he felt…nothing. And it was a blessed kind of nothing—not pain. But then his sensornet fired again, remembering the pressure and arousal of when he’d been between the two Seekers and it had been Skywarp’s spike pressing into his valve and he had felt…only desire. That desire rose back in him again. He opened his eyes to see Starscream’s upper chest armor rising and falling in front of his eyes. He threw one arm over the jet’s shoulder, planting fierce kisses along the armor, little whimpers, almost mewlings, coming from his vocalizer.

Starscream’s venting was ragged—Barricade could feel him holding off an overload. Waiting, holding off, for Barricade. Again, this strange consideration, this unaccustomed effort. It should have made Barricade suspicious. Instead, he quivered, tensing his whole frame, almost resisting the rising flood of his own overload. Until he could not hold back any longer. He made some odd sound, something like, “Muh!” as the overload rocketed through his sensornet, trailing ripples of electricity. The jet’s own overload, hot and hard and wet, sent a second and third wave of spasms across his body. His talons clutched into Starscream’s shoulder servos.

“That did not hurt you?” Starscream whispered. Behind him, Barricade could hear footsteps, slowing as they approached and saw the Seeker obviously spiking some mech. “I mean,” he corrected, to be overheard, “Was that was you requested? Did I please you, my master?”

Behind him it sounded like one of the mechs snarfed his entire ration. My master? Was Starscream crazy? Okay, scratch that. But was the jet really thinking through what he was saying? Implying—okay, way more than implying—that he was in some dom/sub relationship? Well, they kind of were, but Barricade was most definitely not the one in charge.

“Yeah,” Barricade said, dumbly, “It was…really good.”

“Oh, I am so glad that I please you,” the jet gushed, his eyes winking wickedly. The steps retreated, hurriedly, doubtless to spread even more gossip.

A moment of silence. “Okay, Starscream. Going to tell me what that was all about? And don’t keep saying I need it.”

“But you do. Think of it as our way of…protecting you.” Great. That was a new one. Protection service through public sex? He’d love to see that business plan. Get in on the ground floor investments, too. The jet nuzzled again, withdrawing his spike gently. “Besides, Skywarp asked me to do this part.”

“Skywarp did?”

“He was afraid you would have a bad reaction and…he did not want it associated with him.”

“So…you spiked me for psychotraumatic research.” Well, that deflated that fantasy.

“In part. I shall not deny that. But the refectory…well. That was my doing.” Starscream preened.

“Neat set up. I don’t think anyone suspected a thing.” Other than the jet was crazier than they’d thought.

“Not just the set up,” Starscream said. “I do not share Skywarp’s fascination with grounders, but…I can see the appeal for you.” Easy victimhood, apparently, Barricade thought. “And he said I could borrow you,” the jet shrugged, easily. “So I did.” Oh great. Just borrow me. Like a shovel. But somehow he didn’t really feel up to complaining.

“Think you went a bit far with the dom/sub thing.”

“You think so? I thought it was a nice touch, myself, to make it memorable to passersby.”

“Oh, I think it’s memorable enough.” Dear Primus!

“And I did not want them to think that we were violating you. Especially when I was spiking you. It seemed the natural choice.”

“Gonna come back against you, you know, if they think you’re a sub.”

Starscream smirked. “It has not before.” Well, that opened an entirely new railway for trains of thought. Barricade ex-vented. The jet enjoyed his discomfiture, adding, “How do you think Skywarp learned that he enjoyed holding someone else down?” Oh. My. Barricade shivered at the thought, his hands bracing himself against the wall. Starscream winked at him. “Speaking of that, was Skywarp with you last recharge cycle?”

Barricade blinked. “Yes,” he said. Was there a problem with that? He frowned. Should he have said that? It was too easily verifiable.

“Did you co-recharge?” Starscream stroked the smaller mech’s head. Distraction. Don’t be distracted. Why did he want to know?

“Yes.” Again, verifiable.

“Ah! Did you like it?” Starscream slicked his glossa across Barricade’s mouth.

Barricade shivered, between the memory and the sensuous tickle of Starscream’s kiss. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

Barricade braced himself for the prying question, what Starscream really wanted. What this was really all about.

Starscream ran one set of his thumbs down the sides of Barricade’s grille, tickling the headlamps. Barricade shivered, trying to keep his head level. “You will do it again?” Trying too hard to be casual.

“Yes—if he wants,” Barricade added, quickly.

“He has bad dreams?” Starscream ran his other hand down Barricade’s thigh.

Okay, this he knew to lie for. “No—not that I know about.” He couldn’t say for absolute certain it was a bad memory purge last recharge. Wasn’t—really—a lie.

Starscream gave him a curious, disbelieving look. “Do not tell him this, Barricade, but I worry about him. Please take care of him.” The jet ducked lower, his eyes inches from Barricade’s, blazing with sincerity. “I trust you.”

You’re an idiot, then, Barricade thought. We aren’t friends. We’ve never been friends. But…Skywarp. The memory of that soft whimper, the arms clutching him closer, the face nuzzling against him in his recharge. Unconscious responses. To Barricade. “Yeah,” he said. “On this. You can trust me.”

“I know,” Starscream said, pausing to kiss Barricade, gently. “I know because I have just now heard you lie for him.”

Well, that made about…as much sense as anything since Barricade had even gotten himself involved with the Seekers. And just about as much sense as what Starscream did next: rolled back onto the floor in the middle of the hallway, pulling Barricade on top of him, pushing one of the smaller mech’s hands down onto his thigh. “Oh!” Starscream cried. “You are so cruel! I cannot bear it!”

A passing group of mechs from the refectory had to step—carefully—through the jet’s splayed legs, pausing to get an optic full of the smaller mech (apparently) having thrown the Seeker to the ground and toying with him mercilessly. After they passed, the jet pulled Barricade’s audio to his mouth. “You still have several cycles I have just claimed. And I know where Skywarp is….” His optics winked.

“You two are weird.” Still, the delicious prospect was…hard to resist.

"Oh, you have seen nothing yet," Starscream said, rolling to his feet. "We went easy on you last time."

Next: Overcome