shadow_vector | Crocus

PG
Bayverse, post RotF
Barricade/Starscream
Prompt: flowers by ravynfyre , to whom I think I owe a ton of drift/percy, by now, don't I?
warning: sap and it came out a bit hurt/comfort-y so if you don't like that, you can skip on.

Starscream hissed in pain as Barricade jerked on one end of the tangled cable. The sky was flat cerulean above them, turning the snowy ground into a blinding reflector, that helped suck the heat from Starscream’s straining systems.

“Should let me do that fraggin’ sensor block,” Barricade muttered. “’Stead of whining.”

“I am not whining,” Starscream said. “It was an involuntary response.” He shifted to lie flatter on his backspan in the sun-blinding snow. The top layer had melted and refrozen, crunching under Barricade’s footplates as he moved around the downed jet’s damaged frame.

Yeah, well…true, but stupid jet should have taken the sensor block anyway. Enough pain floating around—fraggin’ airframe should know better than to cling onto it like it was such a rare commodity. “Sometimes I think you mouthing off to Megatron’s an ‘involuntary response’, too.”

A raspy laugh. “Quite possibly.” A silver hand came up to prod at an injured ribstrut Barricade hadn’t gotten to yet.

“Gonna get you offlined one of these days,” Barricade warned.

“No,” Starscream said. “He recognizes me as too valuable, even so.”

“Does he?” The cable finally slid free: Barricade quickly capped the end before reaching into the jet’s onboard salvage kit for a cable-patch. Since his return from the depths of the terran ocean, Megatron had changed. A lot. He was not the leader Barricade remembered, who valued his troops, respected limits.

“He has to,” Starscream said, turning his head to watch Barricade’s work. “I kept my army alive and together for how long?”

“Your army,” Barricade echoed, ducking over his work. “Y’mean, his army.” Stupid jet was going to get himself offlined either for really being that naïve or thinking everyone else was that stupid.

“AN army,” Starscream corrected, “Which I handed over to him willingly. And he promptly destroyed.”

Oh, no bitterness there, no. Not at all. Barricade dropped to a knee, reaching under a bent clavicular strut, hauling back on it. He felt Starscream tense under the pressure as the strut squealed back straight. “Running your mouth again,” he said, warningly. “Got to think about who’s listening.”

Starscream stilled, as if realizing for the first time that Barricade might not be his ally. “Then why are you repairing me?” he countered.

Yeah, that was the big-money question, wasn’t it? “Need the bodies,” Barricade said, flatly. A lie, and he knew it. And Starscream knew it, too.

Starscream winced. He shifted again, snow crunching under him. The day was still, breezeless, just the two of them in the white-blanketed clearing, surrounded by the winter-black bleak skeletons of trees.

“Stop that,” Barricade snapped. The jet had been trying to probe into the wound on his side, groping blindily. “Gonna make it worse.” He pushed to his feet, crunching through the ice-coated snow, slick from the heat of Starscream’s engines.

“Sweet of you to care.” Starscream winced, a lecherous grin gone wrong.

“Stop that, too,” Barricade said, bending by the damaged side. “No flirting. Orders.”

The jet managed a slightly more convincing moue, clawing back onto more familiar, more safe territory. “You are unreasonable, Barricade,” he pouted.

“Damn straight. And trying to get you to working order again. Without you twisting yourself up or overloading unstable systems.”

A tinny laugh, and then Barricade stiffened as something tweaked his window-wings, sending a sharp stab of desire through his net. “My systems, I am certain, can handle it.”

Yeah, mine can’t, Barricade thought. Every time he was with the jet, you know, that way, it’s like his cortex got fried. Common sense? Self-preservation? Yeah, not so much. All he could think about was those large burnished panels shifting and writhing under him, the way the hips quivered when Starscream overloaded…these hips, this hip, right here, it would jerk and tremble, like a wild thing barely bridled. He pulled himself back to reality, sucking in a deep cycle of the crisp, dry air.

“But…,” and for the first time Barricade heard a real thread of concern in the jet’s voice, “do you think I pushed too far?”

Jet, you always push too far, Barricade thought, twitching as Starscream’s silver talons slid up his pauldrons. “Think you should be more careful.”

Starscream’s mouth worked, the talons stilling, disconsolate. “I have lost everything, being ‘careful’. Everything.” His optics were unreadable, the playfulness shattering, like the brittle ice beneath Barricade’s feet.

“Not everything,” Barricade said, more disturbed by the crack than he wanted to admit, the stirred desire resettling across his systems. He’d never seen Starscream without a plan, without a scheme. He’d been beaten before, defeated in combat, even assaulted by Megatron, punished severely for his infractions. But he’d never seen the silver jet with this flatness in his optic.

“Everything,” Starscream confirmed. He pushed himself up onto one elbow, curling around his injured rib. “that matters.”

“Setback. Never stopped you before.” So many setbacks, from Tyger Pax onward. He stood up, to meet Starscream’s optics at an even level.

The jet sighed, warm air making soft clouds from his vents. “I do not have it in me to start anew. Not after this long. Not again. Not…from nothing.” He gestured eloquently with an empty hand over his damaged frame.

Barricade looked down at the bare ground exposed when he had stepped back, at a loss for what to say. A small movement caught his optics—a golden bright crocus popped back upright on its slender, wiry stem, uncrushed by his weight, heedless of the snow surrounding it. He looked up at Starscream. The flower was a symbol, and they could both feel the weight of it, the brightness blazing into their optics, a spot of color and life—fierce, determined life, orange and green—against the white and brown of winter. Barricade managed a wry smile. If this miniscule plant on this Pit-spawned planet could fight its way through cold and darkness to the light….

He saw the idea, the symbol, catch in Starscream’s face. “Have me,” Barricade said, and then shrugged. Yeah, wasn’t saying much—smallest combat frame they had, the one no one else could put up with. Some prize. Why was he repairing Starscream? Because Starscream put up with him. He stepped back, heels crunching in the snow, looking up into the jet’s face. “It’s a start.”

Crocus

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