Xeno

“You WHAT?!” Barricade was so startled he almost dropped the crate he was supposed to be loading onto the float pallet. He had to scrabble to regain a grip on the metal sides.

Starscream tilted his head, confused. “I have just now told you, Barricade. I have spark linked with my xeno. Are you not excited that it worked? With an alien species?"

“Yeah, not quite. Kind of stuck on the complete abdication of common sense part. Give me a few decacycles to get over that and get back to me about the science behind it.

Starscream blinked, bending down to pick up the crate as the smaller mech handed it up to him, to stack it higher on the pallet. “You are unclear in your meaning. It makes perfect sense.”

Barricade rolled his optics showily, his head tracing an arc. Just to make sure the fraggin’ jet got the fraggin’ point. “So, pretend I’m having a slow-processor day. Explain this to me so that I can understand all this perfect sense you’ve got.”

“Well,” Starscream pause, turning to stack the crate, “it just seemed the next natural extension. There were…misunderstandings arising and a spark link seemed the easiest way to resolve them.”

“So, it’s a substitute for your admittedly poor conflict resolution skills. Riiiiiiight.” Barricade paused to log the current weight of the float pallet on a datapad.

"Considering your own limited skills in that area,” Starscream said, tartly, “you might try it.”

“That’s my point, thruster-brains. Little old Barricade here isn’t dumb enough to spark link with mechs who hate him. Even in name of,” he wiggled his talons derisively, “resolving our misunderstandings.”

“She does not hate me,” Starscream said, smugly. “And I know that because we have spark linked.”

“Shut up.” Hard to conceal a certain rawness in his voice.

Starscream squatted down, curious. “Are you not even a little surprised that it is technically possible? Considering the differences in our species?”

“Beyond the, ‘yeah, the fraggin’ jet could have gotten himself killed’ thing? No, not really.” Under his breath he muttered, “Can just see trying to explain that one to Megatron.

“I was in no danger.”

Barricade snapped the datapad’s magnets against his thigh with more force than necessary. “Yes, you were, you glitch!”

“I was not.”

Another melodramatic roll of optics. “Fine, so tell me: Where and how precisely do humans open their spark chambers?”

“They—they do not, precisely, have spark chambers.” The jet’s voice lost some of its confidence.
Barricade prompted him with the wave of a hand. “She engaged the energy field with her hands.”

“Her HANDS!” Barricade’s talons sliced the air.

Starscream ducked his head, getting Barricade’s point. Direct contact of any material object in the core of a spark was fatal. “She—she was very gentle.”

“Goody for you.” Barricade said, flatly.

“Barricade,” Starscream said, trying to regain the upper hand, “You sound jealous. You can spark link with your xeno, you know. Just as you had instructed me it was possible to interface with a xeno, now I can instruct you that spark linking is possible.”

"Well, thank you very kindly,” Barricade said, acidly, “But I do not want to spark link with June. She’s an alien, need I remind you? Some things you just don’t do.”

Starscream recoiled. “You sound like Ironhide.”

Barricade’s talons balled into silver fists. His drivetrain tires spun in outrage. “You take that back,” he hissed. “Right now.”

“He acted out of the same sort of belief. He does not believe that we should interface with humans. Yours is merely a matter of degree.”

Barricade flinched. “Wrong of you to say that.”

“Is it?” Starscream stared him down. Both of them had lost all pretense of loading the float pallet behind Starscream.

“Look,” Barricade was visibly trying to calm himself, cool himself, sucking in deep vents of air, almost hyperventing. “It’s…different. It’s not the same at all.”

Starscream’s eyes narrowed, debating pushing the point against the obvious distress he was causing the smaller mech. “Do you…not care about your xeno?”

“Of course I do. None of your business if I didn’t, though,” he muttered.

“Do you wish to know how she feels about you?”

“I know…enough.” He shifted awkwardly on his feet. He crossed over to the pallet, fiddling with its balance adjusters. “Besides, I respect her. She wants to tell me, she’ll tell me.”

Starscream move to stand behind the smaller mech. “That is not what the issue is, is it, Barricade? You are afraid.”

“Am not!”

“You are afraid. You cannot hide it from me. Surely you know that there is nothing to fear. It is no different in effect than a regular spark link. You have spark linked befo—have you?” His optics got a crafty glint. “Barricade, have you ever spark linked?”

The smaller mech whirled, his back to the pallet’s controls, optics swirling with fury. “None of your slaggin’ business.”

“That is a ‘no’.” Starscream felt a teasing grin creep across his face.

“Not funny,” Barricade snapped, but his eyes were agonized.

The smile faded. “Barricade,” Starscream said, gently, “I would like to, with you.”

“What? No. No way.”

Starscream leaned closer, dragging one long talon in a light, arousing line down the smaller mech’s helm, neck, chassis. “I would like to.” The bronze point teased at the heavy, triple-redundant armor over Barricade’s spark chamber. “I shall show you that there is nothing to fear.”

Barricade’s frame trembled, half from arousal, half from fear he didn’t want to name. And a touch of something else, muddying them both. “Starscream,” he managed.

The jet leaned in, brushing his mouth against Barricade’s once, and then pausing for a longer kiss, his glossa flirting with Barricade’s. “There is nothing to fear,” he breathed.

Barricade’s talons clutched into the crate behind him, squealing metal-on-metal, as he heard the unfamiliar sounds of Starscream retracting his armor. He found himself watching, transfixed, as the armor plates slid apart, opening to reveal the complex shape of a spark chamber. Even shielded, even covered, he could already feel the spark’s unique, indescribable energy, rippling out in waves toward him, sliding against him in waves of warmth and comfort and trust.

No. He did not want this. He pushed weakly at the jet, who loomed over him, large barbed hands coming to rest on either side of his shoulders on the crate. “No,” was all he could croak.

“Come now, Barricade. It is not so difficult.” A hint of teasing in Starscream’s tone. “Let us see you retract your armor. Do you need instruction on where to find the codes?”

A frown rippled across Barricade’s face. “Don’t condescend,” he snapped. “Don’t want this.”

“You do not?” Starscream looked down as his spark chamber’s cover irised open, revealing the hypnotic, swirling blue and gold of his spark. The light illuminated Barricade’s agonized expression.


Starscream leaned in closer, for another kiss, bringing the pulsating spark closer to Barricade’s own chassis. He felt his own armor start to retract in sympathetic impulse. In desire. Oh he did want this. He’d wanted this more than anything. True intimacy, true connection. With someone. Anyone, much less Starscream, and all the jet had ever been to him. He gritted his jaw against the movement of his armor.

No. He could not let anyone in, human or mech. Especially not Starscream. To see the swirling darkness, the river of strange despair that was his daily companion. To see recorded all of the petty malices, spites, envies, all the littleness he was capable of, laid bare before another’s eyes, another’s spark. No, he couldn’t bear it.

Starscream breathed into his audio, “What color is yours, Barricade? Do you know? Have you ever looked?” His voice, as a sound, as a sensation against his audio, as meaning in his processor, and HIS voice, above all, was a near-irresistible seduction.

Barricade’s head drooped on his cervical cabling. He did not know the color of his own spark. He did not want to resist. He wanted to give in, completely, utterly. He saw his own spark chamber, its surface pitted with picocorrosion, gummed with old oil and grit. Underneath, maybe his spark was as beautiful as Starscream’s. Maybe.

NO. He did the only thing he could—buckled his knees, dropping hard on the floor, the sudden pain jarring him out of his entranced state. His armor snapped shut definitively across his chassis. Starscream seized him with one strong hand before he could dash between the jet’s legs. The jet had shut his own chamber, his expression worried.

“Barricade?”

The smaller mech shook his arm off. “Let go of me. Told you no.”

“Can you tell me why not?” The hand returned, but instead of gripping his armor hard, it made tentative, soothing strokes down the arm. “Can you?”

Barricade stared at the floor, the edge of the float pallet, even the jet’s feet. Anything that couldn’t look back at him. “Don’t want it like this,” he said, finally. “Not as a test. Not as a joke. Not as a fraggin’ learning experience. If it happens at all, want it to be real.” He ground his mouth plates together so hard he could taste filings.

The jet dropped hard on his aft next to Barricade. “Oh,” he said, suddenly, comprehending. “Yes. I understand. Your first time…it should not be like this. I am sorry.”

Barricade shrugged, turning back to toy idly with the float pallet’s controls. “No apology.”

Starscream leaned in closer, wrapping one arm around Barricade from behind, nuzzling his face in Barricade’s wing fairings. “One thing, Barricade. I do want to. With you. When the time is right. It does not have to be your first. That was a wrong honor to claim.”

Barricade’s spark ached, partly from the still-nearness of Starscream’s spark, and partly from his words. There was no one Barricade would want more. If he ever could bring himself to lay himself that open, that naked, in all his ugliness, to anyone. But there was also no one Barricade wanted to see him that way less than Starscream. He found himself tilting his head back, rubbing the finials gently against the jet’s cheek flares. “Some day,” he said. As a promise to the jet. As a promise to himself.