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shadow_vector2010-11-03 07:01 am
Balk
Bayverse, Sky and Ground AU
Barricade, Skywarp, Starscream
sticky, refs noncon
Barricade sagged for a moment before coding the door to the recharge open. It had been a long shift. Not busy; that wasn’t the problem. In fact, it had been really unbusy. Unbusy enough that he’d had far, far too much time to reflect. He knew what had happened, could see it all too well, all too vividly every time he blanked his video. But he couldn’t say it. That, and the implications of it, terrified him.
Someone had hacked his core codes. It was a violation so deep that…words could not even express. Not even to himself.
He cycled his ventilation slowly, steadying himself before he hit the door codes.
He let his optics cycle down, pausing in the doorway. Starscream and Skywarp lay tangled together, their connection obvious, even if Barricade hadn’t felt, suppressed, damped, the tingling flood of desire halfway through his shift.
He fought a thread of jealousy. No. He loved them both and they did him. He knew this. He had nothing to envy.
Red optics glimmered on, a face turning to him. “Barricade.”
Skywarp’s deep voice, followed by a hand reaching out to him. Above Skywarp, Starscream shifted drowsily, making a soft, sleep-drenched sound.
Barricade approached. “Hey.”
A tentative smile, the hand curving around his hip, drawing him in. “Long shift, little spike. Missed you.”
Barricade’s jealousy overmastered him; his optics flicked up to Starscream’s languorous drape meaningfully. “Doesn’t look like it.”
Skywarp’s smile melted into a worried frown. He pushed up, drawing Barricade against him. Barricade held back, arms down by his sides, feeling the cautious probe along the bond. He ground his optic shutters against his own envy, knowing Skywarp would feel it.
He quivered, feeling the precise moment that Skywarp contacted the jangling thread of jealousy.
“Oh,” Skywarp breathed. He pushed Starscream off him. The bronze jet’s optics warmed. He nodded faintly, withdrawing. “I love you, Barricade,” Skywarp breathed.”You know that, right?”
Barricade nodded, his chin bumping against Skywarp’s shoulder. His arms came up, slowly. “Yeah. Know that.” He did. And he was ashamed that part of him felt that it wasn’t enough. Greedy, Barricade.
Skywarp rolled back, hauling Barricade onto the berth with him. “You don’t know it well enough,” Skywarp murmured, his voice balancing between teasing and deadly serious. He never dismissed Barricade’s moods, even when Barricade himself did, and even though it led to embarrassing moments like this, Barricade treasured the impulse. His talons tightened around the jet’s neck, the bond loosening. He had no problem letting Skywarp feel his adoration, golden and warm.
Skywarp purred, his hands gliding down Barricade’s back, talons teasing along the thigh plating. Barricade squirmed, his adoration bubbling into desire. He tipped his head up, his mouth mutely begging a kiss.
Skywarp rumbled against him, mouth warm, the hard plates opening to admit his hesitant glossa. Barricade stroked his talons over the broad shoulders, one leg sliding around Skywarp’s hip. He pushed his thoughts, worries about Soundwave’s hacking him aside. Or tried to. At best, he tamped it down, letting the rush of desire pour over it.
He felt another presence against his bond—Starscream, curious, cautious, warm—asking for admission.
The contrast shook Barricade—Starscream, who had every right to push his way in, quietly, patiently waiting for Barricade to lower his admittedly-shaky firewalls. Soundwave, who had had no right, had torn his way through, tearing past protocols, forcing into programming, casually, callously, firing on pain signals, fear subroutines.
Skywarp noticed his sudden stillness. “You okay, little spike?”
Barricade forced himself to nod. He opened up his bond, feeling Starscream slip in, the presence gentle, intimate. Barricade felt the soft solicitude bloom in him.
Skywarp felt it, too. “Starscream,” he admonished. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” the bronze jet said, leaning back against the wall, optics glinting, amused. “But I see no need why I should be left out.”
Skywarp growled.
“’S’all right,” Barricade murmured, Starscream’s presence in his sensor net teasing at his desire. A small ember glowed in him—Starscream was, in his quiet, mild way—jealous. It soothed Barricade’s own envy.
Skywarp narrowed his optics, his gaze flipping between the two. He grunted, before pulling Barricade’s audio close to his mouth. “Pushy, isn’t he?”
Barricade grinned.
Skywarp tilted his head, his glossa flicking like a serpent’s along Barricade’s electrum mouth plates. “Guess we’ll have to show him, huh?” He laughed. It was full of effort and slow, but sincere, each sound like a spoke catching in a drivetrain, pulling him away from his dark mood.
Barricade’s optics dimmed for a moment, overwhelmed by the teasing in Skywarp’s voice. It had been so long, and everything had been so deadly serious. This was a return to blessed normalcy, a crystalline bright moment captured in Skywarp’s laugh. As if…it…hadn’t happened. Barricade clung to that moment, fragmentary as it was. “Yes,” he breathed, wriggling down over Skywarp’s body, letting his own desire, and Starscream’s gentle hints, guide his talons, his mouth. He paused at the cockpit, talons tracing along the join where glass met metal, sliding his palm over the amber bell, grinning as Skywarp shivered. Starscream’s presence glowed a happy yellow against him, enjoying both the refracted sensation of Skywarp’s response and his own glee at guiding Barricade.
Barricade’s own envy melted as his desire spiked, his other hand reaching for Skywarp’s interface hatch.
“Think you’re in charge, do you?” Skywarp murmured, one hand reaching down to tease at Barricade’s window-wing.
“Am in charge,” Barricade teased back, opening the hatch, letting his talons circle the equipment covers.
“He looks to be in charge to me,” Starscream offered from where he leaned.
Skywarp glared. Starscream winked back, as Barricade lowered his face, letting the chrome plates around his cheeks gloss over Skwyarp’s spike cover. Skywarp’s protest died into a shudder.
“He’s in charge until I want to be,” Skywarp muttered.
“Am I?” Barricade asked. He traced a circle around Skywarp’s valve cover with his glossa. “Have to make good use of my time then.” He flicked his glossa into the valve, brimming with delight as Skywarp moaned.
“You,” Skywarp gasped at Starscream, “are a terrible influence on him.”
“I confess my culpability,” Starscream replied mildly. “And when you two are done, I will gladly accept my punishment.”
Barricade snorted laughter, the vibration and vent causing Skywarp to jolt.
Skywarp growled, rising up, snatching at Barricade’s hands, flipping him effortlessly onto his back. Barricade’s window-wings splatted against the cool metal, his shoulder tires bouncing as Skywarp pinned his arms over his head. The black jet adjusted his thumbs, hooking both of Barricade’s wrists with one hand, his own long black talons squeezing into the wrist tires while his other hand slid possessively down Barricade’s exposed sides.
“Still in charge?” Skywarp snarled. Then paused. Barricade could feel the confusion and worry sweep across the bond, as Skywarp considered that what he was doing might read too much like a violation.
The hesitation stuttered everything to a halt. Barricade ground his optic shutters together, hating how this thing, even in the open, was coming between them. “Please,” he said, his voice raw, begging. Begging to hold onto the past, before it had happened. Begging to be himself again, not a victim, not weak, not injured.
For a long moment, their optics met, Skywarp frozen, looming over Barricade, the dim light of the room masked by the large mass of his wings, his red optics burning with unreadable emotions. He dropped to one elbow, releasing Barricade’s hands. Barricade gave an agonized sob, as the moment seemed to tear itself apart. He slammed down his end of the bond, refusing to let his hurt wound Skywarp.
“I can’t, little spike,” Skywarp said, not even able to meet Barricade’s gaze. “I can’t. Not right now.”
“’S’all right,” Barricade muttered, nearly choking on his own helplessness and shame, hating that it had done this to him—to them—more than what he had gone through. More than the hack. But this was not Skywarp’s fault. It was all right. Though it really wasn’t.
A shifting movement, and another large shape, another EM pressed against him: Starscream. The bronze jet pulled Skywarp down against Barricade, wrapping his own arms insistently around both as if trying to stitch them together, repair what had been torn.
Barricade found himself clinging to Skywarp’s armor, rigid with some unnamed emotion until Skywarp’s arms loosened, and gently, as though he were a fragile doll, wrap around him, the black cheek brushing against his crest.
“I’m sorry,” Skywarp breathed, his voice barely audible.
“You hurt,” Starscream said, quietly. “We are all hurt in our own way by this. But just as you do not blame Barricade for showing his injury, he does not blame you.” And as much dismay and despair as Barricade felt—and Starscream knew he felt—he knew Starscream was right. But what he couldn’t figure was…how to prevent Skywarp’s hurt from hurting him more? An endless cycle of clumsy, unmeaning injury, an agonized dance of scars ripped open by gentleness gone too far?
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