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niyazi-a.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
shadow_vector2010-03-10 06:12 am
Fic: Spark
NC-17
sticky
angst
Before you 'bawwwwww' at the ending, recall that both of the segments end at precisely the same moment.
Skywarp jolted awake from a bad memory purge, his optics onlining so abruptly it hurt. No. He was not there. He wasn’t…doing that. He was here. Safe. And Barricade was…. Skywarp looked down, rocking his weight off the smaller mech. Barricade was also here, safe. In full recharge, his face perfectly content, his limbs pressed out flat from having been under Skywarp’s weight.
Skywarp stared at his face—the little mech’s expression was peaceful. Serene. Engrossed in the experience of lying with Skywarp again. The smaller mech had shamelessly hauled Skywarp on top of him: which terrified the jet for a moment, a bright acid fear that he wouldn’t control himself. And the powerful urgency in Barricade’s talons as he’d pulled Skywarp on top of him was surprising. But the EM fields synched quicker than he’d thought possible, and the warm fuzz had overspread his sensor net. Before he thought possible, he had plunged into recharge, some of the flight grease still caked on his armor. He must have been exhausted.
Well then, why couldn’t he recharge? What had pulled him out of his purge? He’d had purges before, but had always managed to roll right over back into recharge—into another nightmare more often than not. But now…he felt as if recharge eluded him. He wasn’t upset—the purge’s last tendrils drifted away from his processor, dissipating like vapor. He wasn’t haunted—well, not moreso than usual—by the rapturous brutality of his dreams. It was simply that recharge eluded him.
He risked a light touch of Barricade’s hand, and felt the talons grip around his fingers. Even in his sleep, Barricade trusted him, clung to him. Skywarp wished he dared move enough to kiss the smaller mech. Not…that way, really. Just enough to make him real to his mouth. To get the scent of him, hear the soft hum of his recharging batteries.
He’d promised to spike Barricade over the comm line. Before he…before he knew. Now Skywarp didn’t know what to do. Did Barricade still want him to? Did Barricade still want him…at all? They’d lain together for cycles, but…there was no mention of interfacing. It made perfect sense, of course. What do you do when you find out the mech you’ve fallen…in love with (it still felt like a pull on his spark to even think the phrase) raped his own Trine mate? He probably did not want to be touched by those violating instruments. How Barricade was not disgusted to let Skywarp stay near him, much less touch him at all (these hands were hardly free from stain), was an amazement to the black jet. So…if Barricade didn’t want to interface, that was less than it should have been. Skywarp would endure without. So long as he could have this much.
He contemplated the smaller mech’s face. Barricade would never be considered attractive. Skywarp knew that, and wouldn’t pretend otherwise. His facial structure was too elongated, his mouth a strange rictus of electrumed teeth. All he could see were those earnest optics, all four of them, determined and insistent, focusing down on him like a laserbeam, refusing to let him go. He could feel where the little mech’s hands had clutched at him, digging in. He’d never seen anything from the small mech like that fierce light before. He’d always been so passive.
No…he had. When he had hurt the mech in his own bad recharge and the mech had been trying to push him away. He’d seen the same expression, a hard determination overlaying a gaping vulnerability, a need even Barricade was afraid to own. The mouth had been twisted, a contortion of unhappiness, then, but the optics had had the same intensity.
Now the face was content. Happy. Almost the angelic peace he saw in Thundercracker’s sleeping face.
He didn’t want to think about Thundercracker right now: where he was, what he was doing. He hoped Starscream was all right. No. That was foolishness. Starscream would be fine. Thundercracker knew how far to go. And Starscream had learned his own ways of channeling Thundercracker’s desires. He was smarter than Skywarp in that way.
He cycled his vocalizer down to nearly inaudible. He told himself it was because he was afraid of waking the mech. A lie. And he knew it. But sometimes it was safer to lie knowingly than to risk the truth, even to yourself. “I love you,” he said. The words tasted rich in his vocalizer, trembling like stars.
It wasn’t enough. When was anything ever enough for Skywarp—greedy, grasping thing that he was. Whatever he wanted, he took. Even at the beginning--Barricade hadn’t had much choice, had he? Not that he’d tried all that hard to fight it, really. Skywarp’s interface system hummed on at the memory: the little grounder torn between fear and desire, more than half-certain that they would hurt him at some point. That it would all go wrong. Maybe…and this was disquieting…maybe it was that very mix of fear and desire that first time that had been so attractive to Skywarp. Why this one otherwise unremarkable grounder drew him in. That fine balance between fear and desire, and Barricade’s willingness to show that. To be open to that both to himself and to Skywarp.
He pushed himself along that same line, feeling it like a razor’s edge underneath him. “I love you,” he repeated, a little louder. Barricade moved, murmuring softly, turning his face toward Skywarp. Skywarp’s spark ached. He thought of the spark chamber cover—he still hadn’t had a chance to get it permanently affixed. And then…he thought…he dared to think….
He shifted carefully, agonizingly slowly, down the berth. He wouldn’t do anything. Just…wanted to see what it would feel like. Imagine it better.
Work up his courage.
He winced at the sound of his chest plates retracting, gummed with the cold-baked grease, his optics keen on Barricade’s sleeping face. What would he do if Barricade woke up now? Nothing. He could pretend to be asleep, hope the lowlight didn’t reveal what he was doing. He was only going to open the armor. He wasn’t going to…not really. The EM field enveloped them with a common warmth. He pushed his awareness along it, as if he could smooth any disruption in the synchrony of their fields, and keep Barricade safely in deep recharge.
He moved his hand, slowly, carefully, optics wary for any sign of movement from the smaller mech, as his fingers reached for the spark chamber cover magnetically attached over his own. He tensed, prying the cover off with one careful talon inserted between the cover and his own. He was surprised at the sudden sensation as he lifted the cover away. Must be the magnetic field, he told himself. Or residual heat flush. Oh. His optics drifted closed, their receptors blurring the image of Barricade lying there, slackly humming with recharge, somehow into Barricade lying, eager, desiring, wanting, yearning, aching for him, his own spark chamber exposed, awaiting… tentatively—that perfect intoxicating mix of fear and desire. Skywarp’s hand started shaking with anticipation. Did he have the nerve, or was he too caught on the fear side of that exquisite line?
He closed his optics, pushing his lip plates together in concentration as he issued the command to open the spark chamber, half disbelieving his own audacity. Was this courage? Or another kind of cowardice?
The purple flickering light dazzled across the silver parts of Barricade’s armor—his grille, his facial finials, the joints in his arms, his talons seemed to dance with movement. Skywarp tried to block the light from the mech’s shuttered optics, bending lower, closer, feeling the spark’s energy reaching out, over and through Barricade’s prone body.
Barricade squirmed, his chassis arching up toward the open spark chamber. Skywarp froze. Oh frag. What if…no. Too late for that now. If Barricade onlined now, he had no excuse. The potential mortification of that thought sent a bracing shiver through his net. Dangerous in ways he couldn’t describe.
He bent closer, letting the spark’s energy unspool around Barricade. He could feel it reaching for the smaller mech’s own spark, as if calling to it through the thick metal of the Barricade’s own chamber. He could swear he felt it respond, surge up eagerly against his. He felt the purpled energy probing through Barricade, body and field, felt the energy bounce against the firewalls, doubling back as shimmering echoes of light and sensation. He pushed along the spark’s energy, even now controlling it, as he had learned. He could make…anything a violation. He had learned this much from Thundercracker. From himself. He could push further. He could batter those firewalls. Even this way, he could take Barricade.
Would Barricade want him to?
No. NO. He could not. Stop it, Skywarp, he snapped at himself. You’ve ruined interfacing for the little mech. He’ll never want to touch you again—not that way. Do not ruin this. Do not destroy the potential of this before it even starts. He suppressed—with effort—the worry that if Barricade did not want to interface with him, he’d scarcely invite this deeper intimacy.
He released his control of the spark energy, letting it bathe, almost as an apology for his dark thoughts, the smaller mech in gentle washes of light and energy and an emotion he could not even name. There was no word that encompassed it. He hung for a moment over the smaller mech, imagining what it would feel like to have this reciprocated, have Barricade’s spark energy wash over, wash through him. Would it wash him clean? What color was Barricade’s spark? Gold, Skywarp thought. Shimmering gold. As if wishing it to be true.
Wishful, stupid fantasy. The voice in his processor sounded like Thundercracker so much. So much. What if you did, you fragged up glitch? What would happen, do you think? Would Barricade like what he found there, felt there, if you were ever so slaggin’ STUPID as to spark with him? He’d KNOW. He’d know and then you’d have no recourse. You’d be bare and ugly in front of him. And he would either (if he had any sense) tear himself away (and could you lose him? Could you bear knowing that someone out there knew and despised you?) or throw himself, pathetically, tragically, heroically, into the maelstrom as though he could fix anything. As though he could help.
Nothing helped. Skywarp knew this. Nothing did anything more than distract him from himself. The pranks. The jokes. The insubordination. They were all distractions, an outward sign of his inner brokenness. A different take on what Starscream had done with his tattoos—making an outward sign (if anyone could read it) of his inner pain.
Was he so foolish (Thundercracker’s voice, again), was he so foolish as to think that love (his cortex sneered the word) would save him? Would do anything other than, perhaps, provide a momentary branch, breaking his inevitable fall…but only for so long. Until it too broke and he would plunge—with it—to the unrecoverable darkness. The thought disquieted him, but it was enough to call him back to himself. He’d pushed his luck so far, pushed his emotions…too far. He leaned back, snapping his covers shut, and dropping back on top of Barricade, not caring if he woke him. Trying not to care. Trying to pull his way back along that line. Coward’s retreat ? Tactical redeployment. It stirred a dull sadness in him that he could only think in these warrior metaphors.
He shuttered his optics, powering down his optical sensors, pulling Barricade against him, acutely aware of the hard boundaries between them. Hating their necessity. Hating that he was the one needing that boundary to keep them both safe.
********
Barricade stirred in his recharge. He felt like he was floating on a soft cushion of air—like being in a repair cradle that was warm and gentle, without the fear and pain he normally felt on a repair cradle. He recognized the source—his combined EM with Skywarp, back again. Back again and recharging with him.
His memory purges spun out shattered visions of what Skywarp had told him: Skywarp throwing Starscream to the ground, taking him, the bronze jet whimpering, almost sobbing—the way he had almost wept with Onslaught when Barricade had walked in; begging for help, mercy, end. Skywarp’s talons used as weapons—not as the gentle fingers Barricade knew them as—smaller mechs flailing helplessly against him. He must be terrifying in combat, Barricade’s subconscious thought, and fed him images of the jet raining terror onto grounders. His spark surged with a mixture of pride and terror at the images—that his Skywarp could be so fearsome with them and yet so…tame with him.
He thought he heard a voice, and not a voice. He couldn’t make out the words. He turned his audio, in his recharge. Nothing. He lapsed back into the images flickering in his memory cache: Skywarp cold and hard in the hangar, the way he had flatly denied Thundercracker’s wish to co-recharge. The way he had glared down at Soundwave after the Tribunal—he had been cold from space then, too, and colder yet in demeanor. Then, Barricade had been too caught up in his own shame to focus, but they were falling into place, like pieces of a mosaic.
There was, there had always been, a coldness, a hardness in Skywarp that he could not touch, could not soften or warm, that seemed to weigh on Skywarp’s spark like a stone.
Was he frightened? These were no secrets, not really. He had seen Skywarp’s coldness, the potential for what…what he said he did (his cortex flashed him another image, blurred, cooked up, Skywarp biting a neck cable of a nameless, faceless mech, who squealed and sobbed, the energon hot and scintillant on Skywarp’s face). Was he afraid? Should he be?
His sensornet soothed suddenly, as though a warm radiation like solarlight was flooding over him. He sighed, softly, squirming under this gentle wash as though moving to rinse the bad images, the disturbing thoughts, away from him. Instead…his cortex drifted to that one fantasy, inviting, tempting, opening his spark chamber to Skywarp, letting the jet see and feel and know everything. And he would see and feel and know. He could almost feel it, his spark seemed restless, trapped within its chamber, wanting to reach out of his chassis, embrace Skywarp’s own energy, mix with it…become part of it and it part of him. He felt his back struts lift off the berth, as if towards an imaginary Skywarp bending over him.
He…had no idea how to do that. No one had ever wanted, and…even his worst violators hadn’t gone that far with him. Most likely, he thought, because that would be too far—they would feel him, become unified with him, if even for the space of a spark overload. Distasteful enough to drive away the threat: to feel what he felt, to be mixed, joined, boundaries blurred with him. Their contempt had, ironically, saved him that.
He wanted to but he had no idea and the thought of looking like a fool (Had Skywarp done it? Would he know what to do? How much would he laugh if he knew Barricade had never?) for his lack of knowledge almost outweighed his timidity at even entertaining the thought. As if he’d ever build up enough courage and worthiness to ask…! But still, the desire ached in him, and he fed it the only way he knew how: with clumsy half-romanticized imaginings.
Skywarp would bend over him, murmuring over and over that he loved him, and all Barricade would have to do (in his fantasy, Skywarp was entranced by his innocence, and took pains to make sure this time, his first time, THEIR first time, would go well) would be to lie there and do what Skywarp directed, let Skywarp take lead. And they’d be equal, but not equal—Barricade still giving in, taking whatever direction Skywarp wanted. He could feel another aching surge in the spark chamber, tinged with longing. And…and their sparks would combine, the colors swirling and mixing and blending (what color was Skywarp’s? He wished he knew. It felt…incomplete that he didn’t know. He’d had a dream where it was purple and rich and lush…but that had been a dream) and their energy would blend and they’d be carried off on a wave of electrical ecstasy where they would be one. Unity. Thinking each other’s thoughts. Feeling each other’s feelings. Knowing each other’s basic core programming.
He would know and he would show Skywarp how little it mattered to him. Skywarp was Skywarp. There was no other word to contain all of him. And Barricade would not reject, refused to reject, any part. Everything he adored about the jet had come along with everything that scared Skywarp about himself. All of those bad things created Skywarp—how could he turn against them?
He wanted Skywarp to feel that. Barricade had no confidence in anything but this: that this powerful emotion roiling in his systems, which Starscream had told him was pure and beautiful, was strong enough to overwhelm, drive aside, any obstacle. And earlier he had felt…a glimmering of a something. That …Skywarp needed it from him, that this feeling could do something wonderful, redeem Barricade from his uselessness, his unworthiness. Could, maybe, help.
If only he knew how.
He felt the sudden weight drop on him, long arms squeeze around him, as, falling deeper into recharge, Skywarp resettled. Barricade took a white-burning satisfaction, almost—almost a pride—that in his recharge, unconscious, unguarded, Skywarp took comfort in him.
Next: Summoned
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*Wipes tear*
And the way you describe the sparks is beautiful.
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would arts make you feel better? :(
this was beautiful. skywarp and barricade really need each other.
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