shadow_vector | Sky and Ground 9 Vulnus

Sticky, refs to noncon

It wouldn’t stop. It seemed like it would never stop. Like it had been going on forever, this awful thing. A messy blur of taunting faces, glittering red optics, hard hands, pinches and scratches and pokes, his valve almost numb with pain as they took their turns with him, sensors overcharged, shorted out. Unending. It would never end. Ever. He heard the sound of his own core fluid racing past his subvoc audio receptors, cold static that made their mocking words seem somehow far away but at the same time closer, like they were the voices in his own mind. Weakling, Spiketoy. Slut. Joking about how he liked it when it hurt too much or he was too weak to fight back.

The worst wasn’t the pain. The worst was the helplessness, the distance from his own audio, his own body, the lack of control: servos overstrained from long resistance, worn past his daily charge, or, on a few occasions, forcibly discharged to near catalepsy, where all he could do was witness. Hear, but dimly. Feel, but faintly. Fight back, but feebly. Scream, but powerlessly.

A sound jerked him out of recharge. Only when he felt the dying vibrations in his vocalizer did he realize the sound was a scream and the scream was his. He felt his core fluid race, dulling his audio.

A touch on his shoulder. He whirled, throwing out his spoke weapon, pushing to a low crouch.

The hand drew back. Large, worry-tilted red optics. “Little—Barricade?” Skywarp said, hesitantly.

Barricade resheathed his spoke weapon, abashed. “Sorry,” he said, miserably.

“Don’t apologize.” The hand came near again, risking a feather’s touch at the white armor of his upper arm. “Bad memory purge.” Less a question than a reaching out for contact, just like with the hand. And just as fearful of rebuff.

“Yeah.” He dropped to his knees, silver talons flashing helplessly on his lap in the dim light. He allowed the touch, but for once didn’t enjoy it. Instead it brought a flood of dark memories, of other touches, other hands.

“Do you want to tal—“

“No,” he said, abruptly. Apologetically, he added, “Sorry. No. ‘M all right.” He squeezed his talons together. They felt like they were trembling. He couldn’t tell. It bothered him that he couldn’t tell. That he couldn’t even feel his own frame. Powerless. Numb. Helpless. A raw sound choked in his audio.

“You’re not all right, little spike.” Skywarp edged closer, pushing himself up onto one elbow. He placed the hand he’d been touching Barricade with on the brushed steel of the berth, palm up. Showing its emptiness. No weapon. No harmful intent. Barricade knew that. He KNEW that, on one level. But on another…. He waited for Skywarp to force the issue, to ask again. He dreaded it—he could already feel a roil of anger in his cortex, a pathetic defensive posture. That he’d rather be angry—at Skywarp—than admit to him what was wrong.

“What do you need from me right now?” the black jet asked. He’d gone rigid, afraid to move, as if picking up somehow that any motion would tip the balance against him.

“Just—go back to recharge,” Barricade muttered. Knowing this was another trap laid by his anger and shame—you go, leave me alone to suffer, so I can get angry at you. Anything is better than feeling this.
Except it wasn’t.

Skywarp spoke carefully. “Barricade,” his voice barely above a whisper, “I am afraid. Can you please be near me? It would help me recharge.” A lie, an obvious patent falsehood. And a terrible lie at that. But one designed to bring Barricade closer. One designed to fox the trap Barricade’s anger had set out. And the one thing Barricade could not refuse: a direct request from Skywarp.

He didn’t want to. He felt…polluted all over again. Even though it had been a purge and not real. He felt unclean, and disgusted with himself that he’d ever let Skywarp touch such filth. The jet must not know, he couldn’t know. Not the truth. And the truth would ruin them.

He didn’t want to be touched. The idea of another mech’s contact terrified him. But. Skywarp had asked. He braced himself and slipped back closer to the black mech, rolling onto his side so that his face was away. So that Skywarp couldn’t see the expression of grief.

Skywarp draped an arm over him. “Okay?” A test. It had to be. It was…endurable.

“Yeah,” he said. After a time, the weight of the arm became comforting, as his audio cleared, his core fluids running more slowly, the memory’s hold on his processor shredding like fine tissue. He could hear the hum of Skywarp’s engine, the comforting pulse of his systems. He pulled the arm closer, wriggling his central dorsal between the jet’s cockpit and his ribstrut. It felt…safe here. Almost like a shelter. A cave. He heard his ventilation release, not realizing until that klik that he’d been holding his ventilation in, his core temp creeping upward for lack of air cooling.

The arm tightened around him. He waited for Skywarp to say something. He didn’t want him to. He wanted to stay in this warm crevice, his sensors fuzzed by their combined EM fields, his audio filled with the comforting sounds of Skywarp’s systems. Words would shatter this.

*****

Skywarp could feel Barricade trembling against him, his frame hot, febrile to the touch. He knew bad purges and their aftermaths from experience, and ached for what Barricade was going through. He could feel the mech’s distance, aloofness, hesitancy at being touched, and the slow relaxing into it, the acceptance. An acceptance that still felt wary, like a wild animal ready to bolt.

He was frozen: aware that anything could cause harm here, even immobility. Should he tell Barricade what he guessed? That he knew what this was about? Starscream had told him, and Onslaught confirmed it. ‘Had you ever--?’ he’d asked of his Trine mate, optics pinpoint with fury. Starscream had lowered his head. No, but he had let it go on. It was, Starscream had tried to explain, lamely, pathetically, how things work on a mixed crew ship. Skywarp wouldn’t know, working only with airframes.

Skywarp knew now, though, and his arm tightened around the smaller mech. He felt Barricade tense, then loosen (it couldn’t be called ‘relax’), as if forcing tension out of himself. For a long time they lay like this, each trapped fighting their own helplessness, unable to recharge, unable to speak. Or, unwilling to speak and risk breaking the delicate, tenuous bridge between them.

Skywarp had not ever been known for his patience. Eventually, he reached the end of his short supply of it. And he could not bear the uncertainty. And an idea came to him, finally.

“Barricade,” he whispered.

He felt Barricade shift in his arms, but no other response. He in-vented. “I want to show you something,” he said, softly. “Do you want to see it?”

Barricade pushed up, out of his arms. Skywarp felt a little dirty, like this was some trick. It is not, he told himself. “What is it?” Barricade responded.

Skywarp lay back, and popped the armor locks on the arm closest to Barricade. Barricade twitched at the sound, at first unable to place it. “Go ahead,” the jet encouraged. He rocked his arm on the berth, loosening the armor plates. He felt a frisson of…not exactly fear, himself. But he had never done this. Never been unarmored before anyone other than repairbots. Not even Starscream. And even then, only one plate at a time. It was…exposing. Vulnerable. “Take them off,” he said, his voice thready, trusting nothing but that Barricade would do what he asked. Because he asked. That kind of power over the smaller mech scared him sometimes.

Barricade’s optics flickered, worried, but he obeyed, his fine talons lifting the heavy armor on the upper arm, separating the panels on the large forearm. Underneath, bare cables, power core and coolant and hydraulic and lubricant lines among the control servos and the signal relays. And the broad, fragile, flexible plates of connective cilia, waving anxiously now that the armor they connected to was gone.

“Touch,” Skywarp said. He’d turned his head, half-fascinated, half-horrified at his own exposed mechanisms. He looked so…ugly. So bare and scrawny and naked.

“C-can’t,” Barricade stammered. He stroked the disconnected armor plating as if getting some comfort from the touch.

“The armor is not what I am,” Skywarp said, quietly.

Barricade closed his optics for a long moment, Skywarp’s comment hitting home in ways the jet could never know. He reached a trembling talon and gently, ever so gently, brushed one cable. Even though it was part of the cable that was normally exposed—in the jet’s elbow join—the contact sent a shimmer of sensation across Skywarp’s sensor net. He tensed. Barricade froze. “No,” Skywarp said, “Please, more.” He felt a tightness across his chassis as he spoke. Somehow this had become important for him as well, not just as a way to get through to Barricade. He’d thought he was merely showing his own vulnerability to the smaller mech. He was showing it to himself.

Optics flickering with worry, locked on Skywarp’s face, Barricade risked a touch at normally unexposed cable, his talons clicking across the cable’s mesh, a river of fine vibrations. He traced the line down the jet’s forearm, stroking the warm lubricant line as well with his other hand. Skywarp gave a shuddering sigh. Barricade slid his hand across the still armored palm, curving his talons in the spaces between the larger jet’s fingers. Skywarp squeezed against the hand, encouragingly, but needily at the same time. He watched, his entire focus riveted on the unfamiliar sensations in areas never before touched, as Barricade’s talons explored the servos of his hand as they disappeared under the armor plating.

“Continue?” Barricade asked, his voice shaky. Skywarp nodded.

Barricade kept his hand interlocked with the jet’s, his other drew long lingering lines up the mechanisms of the exposed forearm. Skywarp vented, unsteadily. Barricade risked a touch at one of the cilia plates, stroking the connective filaments as if they were fur. Skywarp gasped, his hand squeezing almost too hard against Barricade’s. The feeling was…exquisite and terrifying both at once, right on the edge of too much to bear. Each of the connective filaments normally held the sensor endings for an entire area of the armor above it; all of that sensory ability concentrated to hair-fine strands. It was strangely erotic, but in a way he’d never felt before, one that wasn’t located in his interface equipment, didn’t seem to want an overload. Just a continuation. Just that it go on, spinning sensations like bright colors and sounds across his sensors.

“Hurt?” Barricade asked, his voice small. A little too late, probably, Skywarp released his over-tight grip.

“No. Again.”

Barricade trailed both his hands through the filaments again, more slowly. As he did, each of the cilia clung to the metal of his talons for a fraction of a klik, trying to connect to his metal skin they way they did armor plating. “Oh!” he breathed.

“Hold still,” Skywarp said. “Hold your hand there.” His own ventilation was ragged, almost overcome.
Barricade hesitated. “What will happen?”

“I don’t know,” Skywarp admitted. But he wanted to know. He wanted those little cilia grabs to continue. He wanted to see what it felt like, to know what would happen. His sensor net throbbed; his spark seemed to revolve faster in its chamber.

The smaller mech sighed, nervously, overcoming his resistance with a cooling vent of air, shooting Skywarp one last worried glance before he opened his palm and slowly, slowly lowered it to the span of one of the filament plates.

The cilia grabbed for the metal, sending a thousand little prickles through his sensors, like a continuous tingle. He could feel a presence at the other end of them, something large and dark and powerful, holding itself right now in some form of abeyance. He wondered what Skywarp felt from him. He stroked the one filament-connected hand with the other. They both shivered, Barricade and the Seeker, as his touch ran through both of their surface sensors.

Skywarp ached, body and spark. Why now? Why after all this time, after all of the partners he’d had, why did this one matter? Why did he open himself up for Barricade? He could feel, palpably, with color and texture and substance, the smaller mech’s…gratitude (though that wasn’t the right word, something mixed with adulation), and his constant struggle with himself. Skywarp had been used before (allowed himself to be used), admired before. He’d had mechs who swore they were unspeakably lucky to interface with him and meant it, but this one…it was more. It was a core deep
acknowledgement, an openness Skywarp wasn’t sure he could handle. Or reciprocate. How to return such vulnerability? Such trust? From someone as wounded as Barricade? It was…humbling. And Skywarp did not often experience humility.

Skywarp moved, his other arm coming to embrace Barricade. To pull him closer, not just for the smaller mech’s comfort, but for his own. Barricade laid so much open before Skywarp, and that action itself was a kind of strength Skywarp wasn’t sure he possessed. He didn’t want, suddenly, to let Barricade go. This, though, this was all he could do: the lame physical echo of what his spark wanted.

The motion tore the fragile grip of the connecting cilia, leaving them both stung and breathless, sensors trilling at the sudden absence of connection, like a beautiful heartbreak.

Next: Overcharged