Sky and Ground

A/N sort of a flashback thingie as Barricade flees. Someone chucked me a prompt and this was the only (laaaaame) way I could fit it into the timeline. But it's smut so...enjoy!



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Barricade ran through the corridor, aching with memory. He remembered…so much differently. Before things went so wrong. But…another time when Skywarp had, if more gently, pushed him away. He should have seen it then. Should have known. He wasn’t able to. He wasn’t allowed. Stay out of this. You do not belong. You cannot come with me.







*****



He wanted to go. Really, really badly. He wanted to go so badly it hurt. But he didn’t know how to ask. Didn’t want to sound dumb. Pathetic. Begging. He tried to tell himself that the stark terror he felt was silly. Skywarp would come back. Skywarp wouldn’t leave…forever. It was just a trip to an orbital station. Just…something that required him, needed him more than Barricade did.



Barricade felt irrationally jealous of the war for taking Skywarp from him, even for a decacycle. So much could happen he didn’t want to think about. Skywarp could be injured, or killed, or could meet someone else or forget about Barricade or get called to another mission or forget about Barricade or just…have time to think things over and realize how much better he could do…than Barricade.



Barricade reached for one of Skywarp’s sleep-limp hands, sliding his talons between the larger ones. Some dampened reflex caused the black armored hand to curl at the contact. Oh, he would miss this. Everything about this: the warm, lightly vibrating weight of Skywarp’s bulk on top of him, the rich scent of his external joint lubricant, the enveloping pressure of their EM fields. Just the knowing that another mech was here, with him. Wanted to be here, with him. Something he had never had before. Every moment was precious, and a whole deca seemed like an eternity.



He was mourning him already.



He hadn’t dared repeat those three words again. He held them close to his spark, but he could feel them bubbling out, exerting pressure, from time to time. Like now.



“I love you,” he breathed. It felt like pressure releasing just to say it. Even though Skywarp wasn’t awake. Even though he couldn’t hear.



The bulk on top of him shifted. “Mumph,” Skywarp mumbled, his hand closing even tighter around Barricade’s. He was always slow to online. Barricade adored it: the slightly bleary expression in the unfocussed optics, the buzz of systems coming online all around him. As though the whole world were coming to life.



For Barricade, that’s what it felt like: His whole world coming to life.



“Hey, little spike,” Skywarp said, the sound rumbling through his chassis. “How is it you’re always online before me?”



Because I want to lie here and feel you, Barricade thought. I want to remember every part of you, awake or asleep. I can never have enough of you. Never. His face tightened into a small smile. “Takes you so long to online,” he said.



Skywarp grinned. “Yeah, well, these are important systems that need to heat up, little spike.”



“Important like what?” He loved when Skywarp teased him like this. He had a feeling he knew what was coming.



“Important,” Skywarp said, bending down, pushing his mouth against Barricade’s, slipping his glossa over Barricade’s, “Like.” He dropped down to Barricade’s grille, leaving another popping kiss, “This.” He licked the armor plate over Barricade’s interface hatch, pausing to look up over the length of Barricade’s chassis. Barricade’s overload systems onlined with a shudder. He wanted Skywarp so much. He couldn’t imagine how he could live through the decacycle without him. It…ached.



No, he told himself. He’s here, now. Don’t borrow from the future. Don’t turn him into a ghost. “That’s pretty important,” he forced himself to say, bringing himself back to the moment, his systems flush with desire and happiness. He loved these moments—warm, intimate, teasing. He would do nothing to chill them.



“Pretty important?” Skywarp said, quirking one supraorbital ridge. “I’m not going to have this for a whole decacycle.” He dropped another series of kisses on Barricade’s pelvic frame, burying in the flurry of touches his hand deftly opening the interface panel. “Don’t know how I’m going to survive,” he said, his voice dropping off at the end, his exvents warm and arousing on Barricade’s exposed spike.



Makes two of us, Barricade thought, squirming. He moaned as Skywarp prodded his spike with his glossa.



“Mine,” Skywarp said, lifting his head, before enveloping the spike with his mouth. Barricade flopped back against the berth, almost overwhelmed. Skywarp’s glossa was eager and active, a warm, alive pressure teasing the nodes of his spike. He held himself rigid, barely daring to breathe or move. Yes, he thought. Yours. His optics drifted closed, his cortical relays overwhelmed by the flood of sensation from his spike. He wanted to look, but it was too much to bear. He whimpered, feeling the charge build up across the nodes, feeling the pickup in Skywarp’s EM field, echoing his own arousal. His talons scratched across the berth, until Skywarp reached up and tangled one set of talons in his own. Barricade’s breath came in gasps and ragged pants until he could no longer bear it: his talons clutched into Skywarp’s hand cabling, his body arched rigid as the overload swept through him, flooding release out of his spike.



He flopped down, trembling, rapt, forcing his talons to loosen their grip. Skywarp laughed around Barricade’s spike, the vibration sending him into another wave of pleasure. Skywarp released the spike, reluctantly, his black glossa flicking sliver around his mouth. “Mine,” he said, his optics blazing.



“Yes,” Barricade breathed. Anything Skywarp wanted. His desire? His pain? Anything. The enormity of his emotion frightened him, but he couldn’t back away from it, couldn’t deny it. Starscream had been right—he had to hold onto it. Not be afraid. It was powerful and pure and beautiful. “Want you.”



“Just had me, little spike.” Skywarp clambered up his frame, bending into the kiss Barricade reached up for. Barricade’s talons stroked around the satin smooth black helm. So familiar. So beloved.



“Know what I mean.” Barricade nuzzled against the chevrons of the jaw, his talons feather-stroking the underside. He felt Skywarp’s breath hitch slightly.



“Hmmm,” Skywarp teased. “Not sure you’re ready for any more. Are you?” He gave a teasing probe between Barricade’s lip plates, before curling around to look at Barricade’s body beneath him. Barricade grinned back at him. Oh yes. Always. “Well, then,” Skywarp laughed, his optics meeting Barricade’s. “Guess you are.”



“Guess I am.” He wriggled on the berth as Skywarp pushed off him, moving to settle himself over Barricade’s pelvic frame. He gave a soft sound as Skywarp’s valve settled over his spike, the warm interior yielding against his slicked spike, the valve’s cinching mechanisms spiraling down against him, Skywarp’s hands almost automatically taking Barricade’s wrists, pushing the tires into the berth.



Skywarp paused, his optics strange, almost liquid. “Have I ever told you how happy you make me, Barricade?”



Barricade felt a tremor run through him, like a shock, a jolt. Yes, he thought. In a hundred thousand different ways. Still…hearing it…. His talons curled around Skywarp’s, his body shifting the spike in the black jet’s valve. He didn’t trust himself to respond any other way.



The strange intensity left Skywarp’s optics, replaced by the warm, teasing look Barricade remembered, and he began a slow even rhythm against Barricade’s spike, his thigh armor sliding silkily along Barricade’s hips, his hands curling around the tires of Barricade’s wrists. His gaze never left Barricade’s face, and that’s when it struck him that Skywarp could feel it too, that Skywarp felt something desperate and precious in these last cycles they had together. It gave him a burning hope that Skywarp would miss him, too. That he wouldn’t be forgotten. Not so easily as he feared.



It was sweet and beautiful, the slow surge of the black jet’s body over his, the smooth slide of armor over armor, the elegant, even gusts of Skywarp’s exvents against Barricade’s chassis, the air pushing in, delicate caresses into his exposed under arm cabling. The indefinable push of something between them, something deep and rich and filling the darkness around them. Barricade felt a sharp beautiful pain as the overload hit him, pushing into Skywarp as though hoping to reduce the hard metal between them to something softer, something permeable. Some way that he could become one with Skywarp, never have to leave him.



Skywarp’s talons grated against the berth, his body shuddering in the three sharp, short jolts that signaled his own overload. He folded his long arms, elbows bending to the berth, lowering his weight on top of Barricade, the spike still in his valve, warm fluid trickling between them, slicking and affirming the contours of their bodies. “I am going to miss this—miss you, little spike.” Skywarp pulled Barricade’s body against his, his cockpit digging in below Barricade’s grille.



“Take me with you,” Barricade blurted into the black plating of Skywarp’s chest armor. Probably, the thought ran wildly through his head, a handspan away from the spark chamber. The arms tightened around him, Skywarp rolling to his side. He felt the jet’s head lower to his, the exvents warm across the top of his head, his comm array. The long legs curled up around him as well, until he was in a warm cocoon of Skywarp’s body.



“Wish I could, little spike.” The arms released him and they pushed back at the same time, eager to look at each other, both achingly aware of the coming separation.



Barricade knew his own worry, his own fears: being forgotten, abandoned, replaced. But he couldn’t imagine what was behind the sudden sorrow in Skywarp’s optics, nor the sudden tremor in Skywarp’s voice as he added, “Where I’m going, Barricade, you can’t follow.”