Attack

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

NC-17
Bayverse, Sky and Ground AU
Barricade, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Starscream
sticky,

 

Barricade snarled with a fierce pleasure, the ion rifle recoiling in his hands. He’d forgotten the strangely clean burn of combat.  He hadn’t realized that he’d missed this, cooped up for decacycles on the ship, or sent in short recon missions that required stealth and subtlety. There was something honest and open about firing a weapon compared to that—a clean intent to kill, nothing masked, no deception.

The others had dropped him here, on the salient, Skywarp fussing over the spare ammunition he had carried for Barricade’s rifle, grumbling, audibly and through the bond, about the distinct lack of integrated range weapons on Barricade’s light grounder frame, before they’d taken off to fly their long, complicated scissors pattern over the AO. 

The battle was winding down—a hard, fast sortie on an Autobot forward base.  The three jets had blown the perimeter emplacements on the first strike, covering Barricade’s ground approach, scouting through the high-canopied vegetation for buildings, marking targets for airstrike.  The buildings lay in rubble, only fitful fire erupting from scattered pockets of the enemy.  It was almost done.  They’d made it with barely an injury—Starscream had gotten an aileron damaged, Thundercracker had lost one of his horizontal stabilizers and bomb rack clips, and Skywarp?  Barricade could feel flashes of pain across the bond, but Skywarp seemed to ignore them himself, blocking it out entirely…somehow.

//Doing all right, little spike?// Skywarp had been in almost constant audio contact with him.  At first Barricade had thought that Skywarp didn’t trust him, but he’d felt something, almost like a broad rope, binding them over the bond, and realized that Skywarp was doing that to steady himself.  He could feel a strange, grey-crimson roil under the tight feeling, something Skywarp was afraid to fall into, the bond a narrow tightrope he was trying to cross.

//Fine. You?//

//Be glad when this stupid thing is over.// A trill of unhappiness, sharp and heavy.

//Thought you liked fighting.//  Barricade paused to reload, the depleted charge casing hissing through the air as he ejected it, with a remembered deftness, with one thumb.

//I do.  Just…I hate so much is riding on this. //

Yeah, well Barricade had to agree.  He couldn’t help but feel a bit under surveillance. Even if Soundwave wasn’t orbiting above, they were being watched.  //Would you fight with me some other time?//

A laugh. //Romance, huh?// 

The distinctive boom of Thundercracker overhead. 

Skywarp continued, after a pause. //Thundercracker’s checking up on you.// He sounded amused.

//You’re not?//  Barricade ducked a round of incoming fire that had been driven from target by Thundercracker’s furious assault. 

//It’s different, little spike.//  Then, a little more quietly, with a little less amused humor. //I hope it is.//

It…was.  Barricade didn’t have to say anything back.  

He heard the rumble of engines overhead, not the loud roar of Thundercracker, but a sound almost familiar.  He looked up just as a black shape detached itself from the clouds of smoke, swooping down, snatching him off his feet, the rifle somehow crushed between them.

//Want you,// Skywarp said, his hands clutching desperately over Barricade’s body, his turbines blasting through the air. Barricade could smell scorched energon, heat-bubbled enamel, the acrid scent of missile fuel, the thousands of scents of combat, just as he could feel Skywarp’s lust rage up in him. 

Air cut cold ribbons down his back, but his talons curled around the black armor, his head tilting up, finding the battle-warmed mouth of the jet.  //Want you, too.//  The rifle jabbed into his side, butting against the jet’s cockpit.  //On the ground, maybe?// 

//Yes,// Skywarp said, a bit abashed.  //Ground.//  He tore his mouth from Barricade’s just long enough to swoop in for a hasty landing, dropping hard to his foreknees, laying Barricade on the ground beneath him.  One hand tossed the weapon aside, the other pinning Barricade’s wrists.  Skywarp growled with impatience.  “Need another hand,” he muttered, impatiently tearing at his interface hatch.

Barricade bucked up his hips, helping the jet’s thumb catch his own panels’ catch, retracting his equipment covers.  The larger jet’s lust pounded at him over the sensornet, like flame turned into pulses, hammering at him.  He had no choice but to be consumed, to let the lust blaze through him, sweep him away. 

He didn’t want to resist. He didn’t want to close off anything from Skywarp—his cortex haunted with the hinted allusions to how the original Trine bond had faded.  He forced it open, yielding utterly before Skywarp’s razor-violence.

Skywarp hesitated, just for a moment, his optics whirring into apology, before he dove forward, sinking his spike into Barricade’s valve. “Sorry!” he gasped.

Barricade’s spinal struts arched as the spike drove into his valve, lubricant almost burningly hot, charge already crackling from the jet’s system over his.  ‘Don’t be sorry’ he wanted to say, but he couldn’t make words, at all, only incoherent syllables of desire tearing themselves from his vocalizer. His talons curled around the jet’s pinning hand,  his tires crushed into the hard ground, his doorwings grating into the gravel.  Skywarp’s optics were wild, distant, somewhere else, riding his desire like some strange demon, or being ridden by it, Barricade thought, suddenly.  The bond poured lust through him, like black flame, giving no hint to its origin.

The spike was a conduit of rage and desire, the heat from it, driving into Barricade’s systems, was a primitive transfer of emotion, an exorcism, it seemed, pushing into Barricade what he was afraid to own himself.

Skywarp roared, his hands tightening over Barricade’s wrists, one talon puncturing the hard rubber of one wrist tire.  The overload was like an anvil striking against Barricade, scorchingly hot, inexorable as a wildfire. 

“Oh!” Skywarp’s spinal struts sagged, his optics unclouding, working to focus.  “Oh, little spike.”  He spoke as if he’d just recognized him. “I’m…sorry.”

Barricade shivered, his valve clenching around the spike still embedded in him.  Skywarp jolted in response, optics clearing even further. “Don’t be.”   He wanted this, wanted it—a special, secret intimacy. He wanted to be used by Skywarp, a sacred honor to be something that brought relief to his darkness, that took his pain and made it pleasure.

[***]

//You have him?// Skywarp’s voice over comm sounded exhausted, strained.

//Not a problem,// Thundercracker replied.  //Exactly where Starscream said he’d be.//  Starscream had pored over the battlefield during the briefing, and decided where the sniper would be.  Thundercracker hadn’t believed, at first, Megatron would be so unsubtle, but Starscream had been adamant.  He shook the sniper by the shoulder, hard enough to wrench metal.  Yes, he was only following the orders of his Leader and Lord, but Thundercracker held the Quaterne above that. //You tell your little grounder he owes me.//

//I owe you.//Skywarp said. 

A grunt.  //Does he know?//

//No.  I…don’t want him to.// 

Thundercracker frowned, exchanging a look with Starscream. //You sure about that?//

A sigh. //He feels enough like a target.  It would kill him to find he’d been made one.//

Thundercracker disagreed, but Starscream cut off his objections with a quick shake of his head. 

//Fine. We’ll take care of it.// Thundercracker clicked off. “Well, now,” he said, grinning poisonously. “Guess who’s about to become a late battle statistic?” 

 

Comments

[thepheonixqueen.livejournal.com]

oh, megatron is playing with fire! Trying to kill barricade will only piss the quaterne off more and make them stronger!Skywarp should know these kinds of secrets are more hurtful in the long run, this won't end well! And with the sniper gone, who knows what Megatron will try next! Posioned fuel, an 'assault' that goes to far, virus implanted in his station? I love your updates so much! I can't wait for more!

[ravynfyre.livejournal.com]

I'd honestly wondered why the sudden assault on Barricade, in the MIDDLE (okay, tail end) of the battle... I mean, I actually understand the whole wanting to interface right then and there. After a fight, the blood is up, metaphorically speaking, and the need to reaffirm connections is STRONG... but I didn't peg Skywarp as being quite THAT reckless that he'd do so right in the middle of the fight. I figured it'd be one of those victory dance ritual things... done when they were CERTAIN that the enemy had been taken down.

But that last section... everything made so much sense suddenly. Holy shit.

Okay, I'm with Thundercracker on this... First? Megatron has gone right off the deep end. So blatantly targeting Barricade? If it didn't work, he's just shown his hand, and now the Quaterne has NO reason left to follow him. And EVERY reason to have their vengeance.

But if it DID work... Megatron has just KILLED his most effective unit, all for the sake of his own pride. Even if the Seekers survived Barricade's death, they won't be coming out of it sane. Especially Skywarp. The vicious one.

Second... It may "kill" Barricade to now KNOW that he's been made a target... but if he DOESN'T know, then he won't be as wary, and that WILL get him killed. Warned ahead is armed ahead, and he won't always have Starscream there being able to point out that there WILL be a trap, and where it's going to be. Barricade is clever enough to do that himself... but only if he KNOWS.

[nova-myth.livejournal.com]

Poor little cade, I'm starting to want them to defect to the autobots so they can interface without plots of doom over their head, lol.

[eerian_sadow]

ooooh, layers here that i wasn't expecting to see. i like it. <3

however, here:

There was something honest and open about firing a weapon compare to that—a clean intent to kill, nothing masked, no deception. don't you mean to say "compared" not "compare"?

[arirashkae.livejournal.com]

Wow, not good at all. (Well, 'Cade & 'Warp are always good ^_^, but ...)

I hope TC at least gave the sniper a quick death. Following orders doesn't really deserve a slow torture. Then again, that might be hard to cover as a battlefield casuakty.

[akisawana.livejournal.com]

Wel~l. I always thought being turned on by violence could be a bit...complicated in a warrior. I can only imagine Skywarp leaving the battlefield (victorious or otherwise), trailing lubricant the whole way.

Then again, he's apparently distracting Barricade. If he's going to try to wrap Barricade up in cotton wool and keep him safe from anything and everything, I hope he realizes that's a 24/7 deal. And that Barricade isn't going to be happy when he figures it out. And that Thundercracker may be an asshole, but he's generally right about this sort of thing. The madness is in his methods.

Also, Thundercracker checking up on Barricade is adorable. He cares if the little grounder lives or dies! I'm pretty sure that's progress!

[shanfiction73.livejournal.com]

I agree - Barricade will actually be endangered more to not know that he is being deliberately targeted by Megatron. After all, there has to come a cycle when he will not have one of his Quaterne around...

On the other hand, he is remembering what it is like to fight, to be the aggressor, to be powerful in his own right. Megatron may not find him as easy of a target the second time around, especially if Skywarp convinces Barricade to have some more powerful weapons installed.

[chibirisuchan.livejournal.com]

I am now totally rooting for TC to take that stupid sniper apart bolt by bolt. Yay TC! And several stories earlier I could not ever have imagined saying that about him... XD

[ithilgwath.livejournal.com]

*rubs chin* ...did... did interfacing just save Barricade's life? Skywarp kept him out of the danger zone of the sniper while TC and Starscream took care of the little bugger?

*pets the Quatern* I love them and so so SO happy they are outsmarting Megatron at every turn.

I do not envy anyone standing near the tyrant when he finds out his masterful plan has failed.