shadow_vector | Revive

PG-13
IDW
Jetfire/Sixshot
Ref to spark, spark fondling, maybe kinda dub con?
for tf_rare_pairing weekly request Jetfire/SIxshot ‘stimulating the other’s spark’
Follows after Reset
Canon has Sixshot having some 'hermetically sealed power core' thingummy. So just to be crabtacular, I translated power core to 'spark chamber'. Meh. Poor boy can't spark bond.

No one stopped him as he left the base, Sixshot’s frame, released to a staggering limpness, in his arms. He was possibly the only one of them there who could have managed the weight, and something on his face silenced all questions as he retraced Sixshot’s path, exiting into the setting sun’s rose-gold light, feeling Sixshot’s feet dangle and sway helplessly over his right arm.

This was wrong. And he’d done it thinking it was the right thing and the only thing he could have done. But there had to have been another way. Something that would…undo this damage.

He climbed a hill, barely heeding where he was going, studying the play of light on the white and green armor, seeking desperately for some responding flicker of light from the red-lensed optics. Nothing. No sign.

Jetfire slowly dropped to his knees, suddenly overcome with exhaustion, the servos in his arms whining into failure, his leg, having to compensate for weight and balance both, quivering, unstable.

He lay, as carefully as he could, Sixshot’s frame on the dusty ground with his failing servos. But he couldn’t even then, bring himself to take his hands away: he kept idly stroking up and down the broad spans of armor, indulging, finally, his desire to touch Sixshot, feel the heavy neutronium armor one last time. “I’m so sorry,” he said, for probably the thousandth time, his voice worn and raw and empty, unable to contain his remorse. He’d thought…he didn’t know what he’d thought. Reset code. Reset. Not…death. Perhaps a reboot or a temporary system freeze, but not this: not the agony he’d seen wrack Sixshot’s body, not the terrible emptiness that followed.

And curiosity overcame him at last, even though it felt like a violation. He’d never seen Sixshot’s face. How much more could he violate than Sixshot’s trust, than to bring him down with a word? What did it matter now?

He leaned over, to the access panel he’d found to release Sixshot from that terrible rigidity, pulling one of his control cables from his wrist, feeding it into an override jack, stifling his terrible selfishness. There.

The mask release clicked, sliding back effortlessly along its track. Sixshot’s face was in a way unremarkable—the straight clean line of his jaw, an almost dainty pointed chin. And the mouth. Why had he hidden it all this time?

Jetfire leaned over, pressing his lip plates warm and alive on the cold stiff mouth. It felt like iron, had a slightly metallic taste. The hardness bothered him, though he knew that sounded—was—stupid. He shuttered his optics for a long moment, mouth against mouth, trying to summon some life into Sixshot. He tried not to think about right and wrong. Not right now. He knew he couldn’t bear it, would break down completely, shatter his already fragile reality. His spark surged with despair—he could nearly feel it as a pulse against his armor.

[***]

“Your spark chamber,” Jetfire said, sitting back, reaching over to drop the tools he’d been using into a cleansing solvent, “has an unusual design.”

Sixshot sat on the table, chassis armor popped open, hands curled tensely around the edge of the table. He did not lie down, though Jetfire had told him it would be easier and more comfortable. Sixshot had merely tilted his head at the latter word as though it were in an alien tongue, and, shrugging, popped the locks.

Well, Jetfire told himself, he’d agreed to the refit, and Primus knew he needed one. Sixshot’s systems were impossibly complex—holding transformation actuators for six different forms—and were gunked from bad injuries and poor maintenance. He should, by every right, be reading Sixshot a riot act about proper self-maintenance, but…he gave a wry smile, just imagining how well that would go over.

“Sealed,” Sixshot said. “Impenetrable.” He craned his head over his armor, peering inside. The spark chamber was made of some dense black metal Jetfire had never seen before, that, despite the gouging and battering the rest of the systems bore testimony to, was unscratched, undented.

“Oh,” Jetfire said. “So you can’t…?” He cut himself off, a little embarrassed that his thoughts had run to that as the very first thing.

“…be killed,” Sixshot finished. Then hesitated, as though aware that that wasn’t the right answer.

“Yes,” Jetfire said, awkwardly. That, uh, too.

Sixshot looked at him. “What.”

“What? Nothing. I was thinking nothing.” He turned, plunging his hands into the solvent basin to scrub the tools clean again. He could feel Sixshot’s gaze on him, dubious, but just as clumsy as he was about questions. They really were better when they weren’t talking. He turned back to Sixshot, withering under the gaze. “It’s…umm, an unusual architecture.”

Sixshot gave a noncommittal grunt, but tensed, almost flinching, as Jetfire reached forward with a cleansing rag. Undented it might be: it was still filthy. Grease and oil and crusts of energon and coolant gummed up the exterior, and the main power core line leaving from its envelope looked a little loose.

“Sensitive?” Jetfire asked, pausing the rag’s slow stroke.

“It’s fine,” Sixshot said, unconvincingly. Jetfire watching him for a moment longer before resuming, letting his fingers, under the rag, trace the complicated shape, the strange angles that defied measurement, that had some symmetry that was beyond his grasp. This was not Cybertronian work, he thought, neither metal nor design.

He felt a tension sing down Sixshot’s arms, his fingertips biting into the metal of the table. “You will,” Jetfire said, offering a compromise, “inform me if this is painful. It is important for me to know.”

“Doesn’t…hurt,” Sixshot managed, his voice rough. He might not be able to open his spark chamber, but he was feeling—something—from Jetfire’s contact.

Oh. An electric thrill ran through Jetfire, quivering through his wings, his fingers vibrating gently. Jetfire hesitated, torn. Should he continue? Did he want to stop? No. He wanted nothing more than to feel the hard flare of Sixshot’s spark overloading against his but that was…a thousand steps from here and blocked by an impenetrable metal barrier. It was a slow torture to them both, then, as he continued, stroking the cleansing rag over the chamber’s strange contours. Sixshot’s ventilation fell into ragged heaves, his optics fixating on Jetfire’s twitching wings, his hands biting into the table. Jetfire’s entire system hummed with want.

But neither of the spoke, because neither of them knew what to say.

And so the opportunity slipped through their fingers, though both ached, feeling it go.

[***]

Jetfire pulled away from the dead kiss, his palm flat on Sixshot’s chassis, and it struck him that just under his hand was the hard, dark shape. And Sixshot had said he couldn’t be killed. Sixshot was not one for overestimating his abilities. Which meant…maybe, maybe there was something in the spark. That Sixshot wasn’t dead, just somehow…not alive.

Jetfire rocked back on his heels for a moment at the thought—what would it be like, to be not dead yet…unable to move or see or feel? His spark seemed to spin cold and slow at the thought, at the notion that Sixshot might be suspended in such a dangerous emptiness.

At Jetfire’s command. And…Sixshot had gone willingly, without protest, ceding to Jetfire.

And all this time, Jetfire thought he had been the submissive one. He had not, never, yielded as much to Sixshot as this.

It was a stupid thought, but grief made Jetfire stupid, perhaps, and the temptation was too great, with his override cable still jacked in. He sent the command, not letting himself analyze, moving down the frame as the chassis armor cracked itself, two overlapping plates sliding aside. He remembered the motion from the lab, and how excessive he’d thought the design was. And he remembered, suddenly, in his selfishness and greed, he’d never gotten around to fixing the core seal. Too late now.

He sucked in a vent of air, touching the chamber. It felt cool under his fingers, but it had felt cool the other time as well. That meant nothing. He traced his palms over the shape, cupping it, caressing it, with a sort of reverence he wished he’d dared to show before, hoping for any hint or sign of life within it. “Please be here,” he heard himself say. “Please.” He didn’t know what he was looking for, didn’t know what he hoped to find.

“You can hate me. You can blame me, never speak to me again, can kill me. Just…be alive,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. He wasn’t religious and had never felt the need for it before. But now he was…almost tempted. Someone to ask, to beg, someone to make an offer to, someone who would hear and witness the agony of his remorse. He had never felt so terribly, terribly alone.

He knew no one would understand this—he’d go back and they’d view him as a hero. A legend. The one who had…killed Sixshot. Armies hadn’t done it; Jetfire had.

A sob escaped his throat, a bubbled note of pure despair, his hands clutching over the spark chamber. He keened, softly, as his frame type did, tilting his head to the night, optics burning with grief, before dropping down, pressing his face against the rounded shape, nuzzling it, hopeless, pathetic, seeking comfort and finding only cold metal. He ground his optic shutters closed, bruising his cheek against the chamber, his hands still stroking the chamber. “Start,” he whispered. “I’d give anything….”

He curved a hand under the spark chamber, fretful, despairing. His hand caught, tangled, and he had to blink his optics open to see that his hand had gotten caught up in the override link’s thin cable. Like a sign.

No. It was stupid. A fond wish, a primitive attempt to make reality conform to his wishes.

But still. What if…?

‘What if’—the phrase that had guided science, guided Jetfire, like a pole star.

No one was around. He would try, and he would know, and when it failed, he would find he’d eventually be able to laugh bitterly at his stupid hope. But he’d rather know than risk the chance, however small, that it might work.

He sent an initiate sequence command through the override, almost feeling it trace down the cable, into the darkened lights of the access panel.

And then….

A thin high whine, that at first Jetfire thought was his keening, so closely had he cinched down his vocalizer. And then another sound, the solid hum of an engine kicking on. Vibration, unmistakable, under his cheek.

Jetfire raised his head, disbelieving, in time to see red optics warming a glow in the darkness. Metal groaned around him, servos buzzing to build pressure again, one hand clenching slowly, and opening.

“Sixshot,” he whispered.

A harsh buzz—the vocalizer hadn’t rebooted yet. Jetfire ducked his head sheepishly. He should know a reboot sequence by now. He could hear, now that he listened for it, the filtration checks on the optics, the audio cycling through frequencies, calibrating volume.

The optics blinked. “Jetfire,” the voice was raw, throaty, still crackling.

Jetfire felt a tingling heat seem to surge up his frame, his wings sweeping upward in some powerful joy. Words collided in his vocalizer, another apology ramming into a question into just…saying his name, over and over again. His hands spoke for him, curling reverently around the spark chamber. The body heaved underneath him, and it took Jetfire a long moment to realize that it was in response to his hands, and not part of the reboot sequence.

“I’m here,” Jetfire managed, struggling upwards, wanting more than anything to see that face moving, light playing from the optics. It didn’t matter if Sixshot hated him; just that he was alive.

He braced a hand, without thinking, on the spark chamber.

Sixshot hissed, his frame curling involuntarily up around Jetfire’s hand, protectively around his exposed chamber.

“Sorry!” Jetfire gasped, scuttling over. “Oh, I’m so, so sorry.” His optics dimmed with worry. The last thing he’d wanted was to hurt Sixshot. Not on top of all the other hurt.

A hand grabbed at his, hauling him upward. “Stop,” Sixshot said, “apologizing.”

It was such a characteristic, such a Sixshot thing to say, and so…utterly inappropriate in the circumstances, that a delirious kind of laugh rippled from Jetfire’s vocalizer, colored by joy. He freed his hands, snapping his override cable free with one flick, bracing them on the ground on other side of Sixshot’s shoulders, holding his weight off the open chassis, looking down at Sixshot as though trying to convince himself he was real.

“What.”

Jetfire’s spark surged at the familiar, flat interrogative. Something he’d never thought he’d find so dear. Jetfire bowed his head, his body spasming in another burst of laughter, resting his brow against Sixshot’s helm. And then the smothered peals of laughter turned to a shudder of another kind, as Sixshot’s hands came up, taking their familiar places in the divide of Jetfire’s wings. “Just,” Jetfire managed, worry and laughter colliding in his voice, rendering him breathless. “I thought I’d killed you.” Their optics met, close enough together that the colored lights seemed to merge.

A snort. “Harder to kill than that.”

“I see,” Jetfire said, the traces of a smile on his mouth; he was almost giddy with relief. The vision of Sixshot, seizing, limbs locking up, flashed in front of his visual process. The smile faded. “I didn’t know it would hurt you.”

Sixshot made a squirming shrug against the ground. “Didn’t tell you.” Taking the blame for that squarely on himself. One corner of his mouth pulled back, in a flat grimace that Jetfire recognized as his smile. “Besides. Worse ways to reboot.” His hands glossed up the edges of the wings.

It was impossible, that Sixshot could just so easily forget the pain that Jetfire had caused him, that he could not have thought of the probabilities that he’d be left like that, presumed dead, trapped forever, but here he was, alive and his systems humming with desire and he seemed..as though he’d expected nothing less than this outcome. “Please,” Jetfire said. “Let me do something. Anything. To make it up to you.” He cut off the stern look with an earnest blink of his optics. “Please.”

Sixshot pushed up, looking down his frame at his open chassis, twitching as Jetfire moved and the cool air of night struck the warming metal. He looked up at Jetfire, then let his optics trail lasciviously back down Jetfire’s chassis. “Second time you’ve seen my spark chamber.” A blatant hint.

“Oh,” Jetfire said, scrambling back. “I—I….” I’d thought you’d never ask.