[Fic] Seven Days -- Part 5/7: (Friday) Scream Queen
Title: Seven Days -- Part 5/7: (Friday) Scream Queen
Author: Lyricality (lyricality)
Rating: M/NC-17 for graphic sparksex and non-consensual situations
Pairings: Eventual Bee/everyone. In this part, Starscream/Bee and Sam/Bee.
Disclaimer: If it belonged to me, the Autobots and Decepticons would be much too busy 'banging each other's bolts' (thanks a lot, Flarn) to go to war. All characters are of legal age.
Note/Summary: This is the longest one yet. I am extremely--and justifiably, I think--nervous about posting this part, because I know it isn't what anyone was expecting. However, this is something I've been building to since the beginning, I promise you, and while it does contain non-consensual sparksex, it doesn't at all fit the stereotype of the warning. Everything is for a purpose. For this entire fic, you can blame nemi_chan and her marvelous prompt o' doom, in which Bumblebee is the resident pleasurebot of the Autobots. This plot, however, is all me. *dodges the pitchforks and torches* The title is not as porntastic this time, out of respect for the subject matter. In addition, expect an additional "mini-part" this week for Friday evening, from Ratchet's point of view.
Even the Very Special Hell now rejects me. *sob*
Part 1/7: (Monday) Prime Time can be found here.
Part 2/7: (Tuesday) Iron Ride can be found here.
Part 3/7: (Wednesday) Doctor Love can be found here.
Part 4/7: (Thursday) Horizontal Jazz can be found here.
Sam settled easily into the driver’s seat the next morning, just finishing the last bite of his Pop-Tart, and Bee shut the door and pulled out of the driveway with an inward sigh of relief. Maybe everything really would be all right, and later they would have plenty of time to talk.
“Wait.” Sam grabbed the wheel and gave it a steady tug. “Turn left.”
Baffled, Bee reverted to rote explanations of logical action. “Sam, turning north is the most direct and convenient route to Tranquility High.”
Sam continued to pull, using both hands now, until Bee relented and turned left at the intersection, moving in completely the wrong direction. “Which is where I’m not going,” Sam explained.
“Your parents--”
“Don’t care about what they’ll say.” Sam wore a grim expression, but Bee thought he discerned a quirk of amusement in those lips. Waving a hand, he added, “I’m eighteen. If I wanna play hooky and talk to my giant robot-kickin’ car-best friend, that’s what I’m gonna do.” He leaned forward against the wheel with a shy and entirely charming little grin. “Want to try and stop me?”
Bee considered that for as long as he took to make for the edge of town at slightly over the speed limit. “Not much,” he admitted with a pleased chirp of the horn.
For fifteen minutes, they drove in a companionable silence, and Bee thought that perhaps they were so pleased to be speaking to each other again that they needn’t speak at all. The day had a pleasant cast of early autumn, according to the precise orientation of the Earth to its sun and the crisply warm temperature. Bee liked these moments best, when neither he nor Sam had anywhere in particular to be--except with each other.
“So.” Sam shifted, a little pointedly. “A conduit.”
Bee braced himself. He hadn’t forgotten what this was about. “Yes.”
“I looked it up. Last night,” Sam continued, scratching the back of his head with one hand and summoning up a weary smile. “Can’t say I understand, really, but I was trying to wrap my head around it. Because a conduit conducts electricity, and you said it has to do with spark energy, so…” He trailed off, staring down the road for a few seconds. “So I’m thinking I’m pretty stupid, but I know sparks are the reason you guys are alive in the first place, and maybe you’re like...a healer? But Ratchet’s the medical officer, so I don’t quite get how that works.”
Making the turn toward the lake, Bee raised a cloud of dust with his back wheels. “Ratchet is the medic,” he said. “But what I do is a sort of healing. Yes.”
Sam shook his head. “It can’t be only that. No way you’d bother keeping that from me this long, Bee. Every day, every day this week you’ve been gone, helping one of the others with something. Something that’s gotta have everything to do with this conduit thing.”
“Yes,” Bee whispered, but nothing more.
The silence grew uncomfortable. Bee pulled up near the lake and rolled to a stop, braking near the water. After an interminable minute, Sam closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the seat with a dull thump. “Look. You gotta just tell me.” His voice adopted a pleading tone, his misery too familiar to Bee. “Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as this. Nothing’s as bad as not knowing.”
He’d given Bee the perfect excuse to simply come out with it, as Jazz had said. “Sam.” He forced the words past lingering dread. “Among Cybertronians, a conduit is someone who offers companionship--and healing--through spark connection.”
Sam frowned, but Bee calculated confusion as the cause, rather than displeasure. “Spark connection? Like...pushing them together?”
Willing himself out of defensive panic and back into serene explanation, Bee chose his words with great care. “When sparks connect, problems deeper than physical ailments can be aired. Two of my kind can share memories, and emotions, and fears. Comfort can be offered and damage can be healed. We can find the cause of pain, and share pleasure.”
“Share pleasure,” Sam repeated in an unnaturally neutral tone.
Bee quailed, but answered the question behind the statement. “Sharing pleasure is...the primary purpose of connecting sparks. Replacing pain with pleasure is the primary function of a conduit.”
“Bee,” Sam swallowed, a peculiar ache in his voice. “On Earth, we call that prostitution.”
“It isn’t!” Bee paused, and worked to modulate his tone. “It isn’t the same. I’m not some sort of whore, Sam,” he said, and Sam made a little moaning sound, hiding his face behind both hands as if that word had broken the spell of his stillness. “A conduit is paid a stipend by the state--by the Autobot army. Never by a...a client--”
“You have clients,” Sam said from between his fingers.
“Our word is closer to partners. Cybertron was not Earth, Sam. Our customs encourage open acceptance of pleasure, both for ourselves and for those we love. We believe in the healing of inner weaknesses with skilled help--that no one should have to be alone. Autobots believe in that.” Decepticons had their own preferred ways to deal with weaknesses, most of them unpleasant by comparison. “Sam, conduits are rare. Even rarer, since the war began. Training takes many of your centuries--”
“Training?” Sam wailed.
“A conduit is invaluable to the Autobot military force.” Bee had heard Optimus repeat that, and he knew firsthand what good his work could do. “A soldier psychologically damaged in battle may be healed. A commander has someone in whom to confide with perfect confidence. No matter how far we venture from Cybertron, no one in my group need ever be alone. It is an office of honor, Sam.” He stopped, uncomfortable praising himself in such a way, even by proxy.
“You’re doing this for all of them.” Sam had yet to emerge from behind his hands, his voice growing steadily more distraught. “For Optimus. For Ironhide. For Ratchet. For Jazz. Oh my God. Every single one of them. You’re doing this with them and you think it’s your duty?”
Silent for a moment, Bee couldn’t quite banish the hurt from his voice. “I couldn’t have expected you to understand.”
“Don’t you dare!” Sam brought both hands slamming down on the steering wheel. “Don’t you guilt me! You finally get around to mentioning this--how am I supposed to react, huh? You said it yourself, there’s nothing like this on Earth. Well actually, there’s plenty of shit like this on Earth, but it’s not exactly honorable. Hey, in fact, it’s mostly not even legal, although guess what, it’s legal in this state, who knew?”
Bee let the silence drag on even longer, fighting back every defensive retort. They wouldn’t help. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” he murmured at length.
Sam made a softly angry and anxious sound. “Shit, Bee.”
Then came the incongruous sound of Jazz calling his name, activating an open channel. “Bumblebee?”
“Here,” Bee responded, suppressing his sigh.
“I got somethin’ weird out there, Bee. Lost contact with the protoform’s signal eleven nanocycles ago. Somethin’s interruptin’ it. Don’t know what exactly, but it’s ten clicks northwest a’ your position. Grid Delta, 46 28 17.”
Bee started his engine and returned to the dirt track by the lake, heading back toward the highway. “I’ll check out the area. Optimus, I have Sam with me. Should I drop him back at base first?”
A moment’s pause, and then Optimus answered on the same frequency. “It should be safe enough. Satellite pictures suggest simple signal interference. The source seems to be localized within a six-mile radius. Keep in contact, whatever you find.”
“Understood.”
Returning to the paved road, Bee continued away from Tranquility, heading toward the given coordinates. Sam stayed silent for several minutes, though he kept fidgeting and tapping his fingers against the window edge. Nerves wound tight enough already, Bee fought to keep his patience and settle his mind on the current task.
“Can they hear us?” the boy said at last.
Bee set his communication links to incoming only. “Not now.”
“I’m sorry.” Sam blew out a breath, almost as if he’d held it in since Jazz’s first call. “Look. Jesus, Bee. Is this...this isn’t something they force you to do. Is it?”
He sounded so earnest, so pained, and the question somehow hurt far more than all his other implications about Bee’s professional behavior. “Never, Sam,” he answered, very low. “No. Never.” Perhaps he shouldn’t confess it, but he wanted honesty between them. “After we had recovered from the battle at Mission City, Optimus gave me the choice to...retire from any duties beyond those as a soldier and your guardian. I said no.”
That seemed to give Sam pause. “You said no?” he repeated.
“I know it must be...difficult to comprehend, when your own species cannot connect in such a way, but they need me, Sam. Our journey away from Cybertron was painful, and now we have no hope of returning home. They have no one else to turn to, with that pain.” Bee had never needed to express his dedication so eloquently before, and he hoped he would never need to again. “I value my work, Sam. Just as much as I value you.”
Sam’s expression had shifted a bit, from discomfort to awkward uncertainty, and he reached out a tentative hand to rub his thumb over the symbol on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Holding back on outright forgiveness just yet, Bee shivered despite himself at the touch. “We’re almost there. I’m turning the communication channels on again.” After the warning, he spoke directly to the others. “Jazz. I’m within six miles of the location, but my scanners are picking up nothing unusual.” The open brush of the desert stretched all around them with occasional outcroppings of rock. In the distance stood a dozen old electrical towers, part of an abandoned line. “I’m heading off-road to the specified coordinates.”
“Satellite’s showin’ some kinda structure out there,” Jazz replied. His transmission carried an unexpected amount of static. “Not seein’...radar...glitch...” The channel crackled and went silent.
Almost everything went silent. Bee instantly lost all use of his long-range sensors. All the communication frequencies had cut off, even the power of his scanners reduced to the immediate area, and Bee felt an immediate wash of disquiet through his essential components. “I’ve lost communications,” he explained to Sam, who took a wary glance out the back window. “Something in this area is blocking long-range transmissions of all kinds.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“This may be unintentional human interference,” Bee said, uncertain and unwilling to simply give up without investigating the problem, especially when the solution might be near at hand. “Is your government conducting experimentation in this area?”
Sam snorted, amused. “I think you guys know how much the government tells the average American citizen these days.”
“I want to have a look at those towers.” Bee altered his route, rolling toward the broken shapes in the distance. “Maybe they’re emitting some sort of electrical charge.” The closer they went, the more Bee’s uneasiness increased. The twisted ends of steel against the sky seemed too reminiscent of Cybertronian ruins. “My scanners aren’t showing anything.”
His first hint of disaster came not from his scanners, but from his audio receptors. A dull roar swept over them from the west, the sound trailing behind a sleek shadow, and Bee recognized with dread the distinctive rumbling of jet engines.
“Sam,” he whispered, voice crackling as panic interrupted his processors. “Hold on.”
He had barely reversed direction when the roar turned deafening, the clanking whir of transformation beneath it, and then Starscream caught hold of him with both lethal hands and his wheels spun uselessly against the dust.
Sam cried out, ducking low in the driver’s seat as the jet engines went silent.
“Not the one I was expecting,” Starscream hissed. His razored claws clenched against Bee’s sides, puncturing along his doors and twisting one mirror. “I suppose you’ll have to do.” Sam screamed, diving across into the passenger seat, casting about for anything to use as a weapon. With a grunt of effort, Starscream began dragging Bee backward toward the wreckage of the electrical towers. Bee spun his tires against the dirt, fighting for every nanoclick of distance, too-nearly powerless to resist while unable to transform.
Sam pounded a fist against the dashboard. “Go! Go go go go go!”
Going nowhere, Bee strained against his own suspension, joints wrenching and moaning, his frame pushing the bounds of pressure it could withstand. He couldn’t make headway; Starscream literally had the upper hand. The Decepticon dragged him over the twisted metal of a fallen tower, puncturing Bee’s right front tire in the process.
“Oh shit,” Sam whispered, hands clenched hard enough to hurt. Starscream shifted his grip and the passenger side window shattered, showering glass across the seats. “Shit!” Sam cried, but then he went quiet, and Bee panicked when he realized what the boy was trying to do.
“Sam! Stay inside!”
Sam understood the impossibility of their situation--that so long as he remained inside the Camaro, Bee could not transform--and he had crawled into the ragged gap in the window, trying to twist his way out between the wedges of glass and Starscream’s claws.
Starscream paused.
No. No, no, no...
The seeker shifted his grip again, pinning Bee flat against the ground with weight alone while extracting Sam with his other hand. To his credit, Sam fought for all he was worth, the glass cutting long scratches down his legs before Starscream succeeded in lifting him free. Bee couldn’t see, his sensors straining, chills running through his cabling when the seeker laughed and Sam made a cry of pain.
“Listen, fool.” Starscream crushed Bee deeper into the dust for emphasis, speaking in English. “Cooperate with me, and I shall see that your revolting pet comes to minimal harm.”
Bee heard fists clanging against metal. “Screw you!” Sam shouted. “He won’t do it, he won’t make any deals, you oversized mechanical turkey-”
So long as Starscream functioned, he lied, but Bee had no choice to make.
“What do you want?” he asked in Cybertronian.
Apparently Sam could interpret the meaning without understanding the words. “No, Bee. No. He’ll kill me anyway, no matter what, he’ll kill us both. Don’t listen to this asshole!” He hissed, Starscream’s grip tightening around him.
“Watch your words, fleshling.” Some sort of perverse glee distorted the seeker’s tone. “I want justice from you and your kin, Autobot. I demand it.” Those lean claws scratched along Bee’s hood, subtly painful. “You’re not who I wanted, but I know what you mean to your weakling friends.” That sounded ominous, but Starscream retreated just enough for Bee to fulfill his next request. “Transform. Or suffer the consequences.”
Bee obeyed, optics flickering for a second or two when damaged metal tore against wiring. Doubting whether he actually could, he made to stand, only to become immediately and intimately acquainted with Starscream’s foot in the center of his back.
“Turn over and be still.”
Compliant, Bee did so, optics instantly drawn to Sam, his boy dangling twenty feet above the ground in Starscream’s grip. The Decepticon kept Bee trapped with the same foot, stretching away and ripping a long strip of twisted metal from the fallen tower. In one brisk movement, he shoved Sam up against the base of the nearest standing tower and lashed him in place, bending the metal around the boy to trap his arms and legs. Bee noted with a dim flicker of hope that he had done a poor job of it. The second he had his back turned, Sam freed one arm.
Starscream knelt, his shadow covering Bee completely. He was massive. The intricacy of his faceguards made distinguishing his features or his expressions a near impossibility, but Bee thought he recognized eager disgust in the red gleam of his optics.
“I know what you are,” Starscream sneered. “How frantic they all must be, unable to reach you through the field I’ve set.” He didn’t quite touch Bee, but brought his claws just over the center of Bee’s chest, directly over his spark. “I had hoped for Prime, but as the fates would have it...by damaging you, I may just as easily destroy him.”
Now Bee had a much clearer picture of what Starscream had in mind, and he couldn’t resist flinching away though the seeker had yet to touch him.
Starscream stilled him with two crushing claws. “Open up,” he hissed, distaste plain in his voice, “and we’ll have this done with, Autobot whore.”
The Decepticon’s head twitched slightly sideways; Bee heard a metallic clang.
“Don’t you dare call him that!” Sam shouted. He had a second rock in his free hand, and he threw it as hard as he could with true aim. Not that his effort made any difference--the rock impacted harmlessly against one side of Starscream’s helm, but it sent out a satisfying clank.
Narrowing his eyes to mere slits, Starscream turned his attention back to Bee and tore the outer armor of his chestplating to one side with a single, brutal wrench of his claws. Sam let out a strangled yell and Bee shrieked in belated pain. “You forfeit your chance for cooperation.” The seeker ripped into the secondary layer with as much malice as determination, and Bee wailed softly when all the armor stripped away, exposing sensitive circuitry and the thin barrier of his spark casing. “Weak-willed scrap of slag,” Starscream muttered, fastening his claws into one of the casing edges and wrenching hard enough to bring a scream out of Bee’s vocal components.
Given the impossible choice of agony or capitulation, Bee’s automatic processing codes went into effect, relenting to spare his frame from further damage. One edge had bent out of joint, but the casing still opened. Bee struggled again, attempting overrides.
Starscream opened his own chest. The act of a lover, corrupted, and Bee shuttered his optics against the sight.
For the first time, Starscream seemed to hesitate. Surely not out of any concern for the victim--he had no such empathy--but maybe from personal distaste, an aversion to doing something so intimate with someone he so despised, even for the purposes of war.
“Afraid of doing your own dirty work?” Bee said, not so levelly as he might have liked. He flicked his optics on again just in time to see fury twist across the seeker’s face, shifting his faceguards.
“Not to a creature so filthy!”
He crushed Bee fully to the ground with both hands and snarled, crashing their sparks together in a sick parody of the act Bee had shared so many times with those he loved. Instinct and training combined in an instant; Bee tossed up every mental and emotional shield he possessed. Starscream raged against the unexpected barriers, clawing at them with razor-edged hatred and cursing him alternately in Cybertronian and English.
Face to face, Bee never could have matched him. Starscream’s mass and strength and weaponry dwarfed his own, and with minimal effort he could equal Bee’s reaction speed. But here... So peculiar. Bee could actually spare a moment to analyze the situation while the Decepticon battered at his fortifications.
Starscream appeared to possess few emotional defenses at all. Behind the elegant fury of his basic psyche, Bee could already glimpse the flow of memories and emotions, brief flashes of deeper truths, as if the seeker hadn’t the slightest idea how close this act had necessarily brought them.
Was it possible that he had no idea how vulnerable he was?
Even now, with direct access to Bee’s spark, he barely focused his attacks, relying on pure persistent force. He caused no more than physical pain--acute, but bearable--and the vague emotional distress of helplessness and unwilling exposure. Somewhat baffled by the discrepancy in his expectations and the reality, Bee calculated his options for escape. Only one scenario gave high probabilities for the survival of both him and Sam, and though the details chilled him to the core, he would accept no other outcome in this fight.
He gathered his determination and weakened his walls. He let Starscream in.
In the moment of their complete merging, he felt a stab of triumph from the seeker, confidence steeled by a self-directed certainty of victory. Bee separated his memories, isolating the dangerous knowledge of Optimus that Starscream wanted behind a wash of comparatively useless information. Lured closer, Starscream tried slashing through the web of recollection, tangling himself into it instead, and Bee slid his own subtler tendrils of thought in among the seeker’s.
He twisted and pulled Starscream’s rudimentary defenses apart, and in the tangled coil of memories underneath, he found something profoundly shocking.
It was joy.
Brilliant and burning joy, the sense of stretching out wings for flight and the wind touching every exposed inch, streaming through the sky faster than any other creation on this pitiful planet, and if the filthy insects worshipped anything they should worship him, the ultimate potential of their ultimate weapon... Disgusting denizens of this mudball of a world, but they had held even Megatron captive, and the thought of Megatron in chains seared like ecstasy through all his connectors...
Megatron, and Megatron, and Megatron. Limned in fire, wreathed in ice, dripping the energon fluids of a thousand murdered mechs. Ecstasy, fear, pain and pleasure and a thousand different shades of desire, each more disturbing than the last.
Jerking back on reflex, Bee steeled himself against the overwhelming rush of emotion. Starscream’s spark had woven joy and fear so intricately together that he doubted one could ever escape the other. Bee had never touched a Decepticon in this way before, and he wondered with horror if all of them possessed such incomprehensible connections.
Starscream shrieked and fury assaulted Bee’s spark. The seeker had discovered his tactic and worked to block him, raising walls so patchy that Bee could sense right through them--they might have been transparent. Merciless, he flung remembered pleasure into the focus of Starscream’s attack, and the Decepticon faltered, panic mixed into the revulsion and hatred he tried to push into Bee.
He had every reason for panic. Bee had only the secrets of others to hide, but Starscream had dozens of his own.
The seeker’s concentration on one front left him exposed on another, and Bee twisted his own presence into a directed needle, piercing through the remains of barriers and entering into the deepest of Starscream’s emotional fortifications. Once there he paused, reeling.
Never had he seen a psyche so damaged. Starscream’s innermost being had all the strength and security of an emotional holocaust victim. What was left of his self-worth lay scattered across a landscape of poisonous fear and roiling hatred, his mental stability stretched thin and cobbled together by strands of self-reliance and distrust. His hatred made a powerful but painful barrier of protection, striking inward as often as it lashed out. He was full of hollow places, riddled with gaps and tears, and for a horrible moment of dumbfounded shock, Bee nearly reverted to the gentleness required by his calling.
Reality slapped him out of that impulse in an instant. He had no time for pity; he’d wasted precious seconds on astonishment.
All the valuable culmination of his professional experience told him what to search for, and he already knew the deepest desire of Starscream’s twisted spark. He yanked out memories and wove them together without much finesse, but with plenty of emotional power. Now he could be doubly appreciative for the memories Ratchet had shared with him, no matter how he hated to abuse them in this way.
Starscream could focus again, at least enough to realize his peril, and he let out a mental and audible shriek that reverberated in every metal component of Bee’s frame. Those claws tore into the earth at either side of Bee’s shoulders, seeking mental purchase with physical violence.
Too late. Bee strengthened his emotional weapon and flung it into Starscream’s spark as hard as he could. Take this instead.
Above him, around him, Starscream went horribly and suddenly still, and then he began to shake.
They were connected still. Bee had little choice but to experience the seeker’s psychological storm, his emotions reeling with the sensations, the impressions, the memories and the meanings Bee had given him.
Megatron, around whom revolved so many of Starscream’s desires.
Ratchet’s recollections of him, of his spark, for maximum devastation.
Power and pain and lightning shocks of pleasure from talented fingers.
The sense of value, being wanted, desired, safe in someone’s violently gentle strength.
His cruelest gift of all was his own memory of mighty hands holding him close, tracing patterns over his back, spelling out the Cybertronian symbols of passion and protection again, and again, and again.
Bee twisted all of it into a construction of Megatron as he had probably never been, but as Starscream might want him to be--as Starscream might want to be to him.
The ultimate distraction.
Starscream shattered. The pleasure was intense, ferocious, but so tangled up in hate and pain and fury that Bee repelled as much of it as he could.
When the flood of sensation ebbed, Bee took his chance and disengaged instantly, ripping them apart and rejoicing for once in the sting of psychological recoil. He squirmed his way out from under Starscream, leaving some secondary wiring behind in the struggle. Just a shaky step or two brought him to Sam, who had fought halfway free of the metal strut, both arms and one leg now free. He held both hands out to Bee with a wordless cry of relief and distress. In a moment Bee had torn the rest of the restraint away, Sam surging forward to wrap both arms around his hand and hold tight.
“Let’s get out of here, Bee,” he pleaded.
“Yes, Sam.” Bee braced himself for pain and transformed, sparks flying from broken connections, his torn chest plating making an agonized shriek when it forced itself to realign. Nothing fit quite right, his joints groaning and gears grating together, but he folded himself as best he could into his alternate shape, scattering a trail of gleaming glass and spatters of mech fluid.
The pain of his transformation had shaken Sam. “God, Bee,” he whispered, then swallowed and edged into the driver’s seat with great care, as if he could cause worse harm just by touching.
Starscream was offlining, fighting his overloaded systems every step of the way. “I’ll destroy you!” he screeched, claws raking the earth until his arms went abruptly still. He repeated his threats in Cybertronian, promising more creative violence in a voice of equal parts rage and anguish, before his optics finally offlined along with his processors.
“Not this time,” Bee muttered.
Sam’s face twisted with a wrath that far surpassed any lingering fear. “Bee--what he tried--what he did to you--”
“Sam. Wait. I...need you to drive. Please. While I try to reach Optimus.”
Jaw set, Sam did his best to swallow his anger for the moment. “Yeah. I can do that. Call Ratchet, too.” He started the engine and shifted gears, wincing at the sound, but he didn’t question Bee’s decision. Instead he stepped on the gas and pushed the Camaro forward foot by painful foot, everything jostling over one flat tire before they finally reached the road. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, when Bee trembled with a creaking shudder and tried to readjust his weight to ease the pressure. “I’m sorry.”
“Keep going, Sam.”
They bumped their way back toward Tranquility. Bee kept his sensors trained on Starscream as closely as he could through the interference, but the seeker never stirred. After five miles they reached the edge of whatever interference field Starscream had set, and Bee’s communications and long-range sensors returned with a heady rush of information.
Sam let them roll to a stop, so careful with his application of the brakes, and Bee murmured his gratitude for the consideration. Focusing, he called out to Optimus, and then to the rest of the Autobots, and received the short response from Ratchet that they had been underway since losing contact with him. That news helped to restore his optimism, but Bee still had immediate concerns. He opened the driver’s side door, and Sam slipped out without a word, waiting for instructions.
Instead, Bee transformed again, settling into his natural form with a muffled moan.
“Bee, don’t...” Sam knelt by him, his eyes naturally drawn to Bee’s chest and the destruction of his armoring, the visible flicker of his spark. “You’re gonna be all right, Bee,” he said, easing into the space between Bee’s arm and the side of his body. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Bee didn’t try to rise, resting on his back against the side of the road. “I need your help, Sam,” he whispered.
“Anything, buddy.”
Had he ever seen Sam cry before? Once, just after Mikaela had gone, but the boy hadn’t known that his guardian was watching over him. Lifting a hand, Bee rested it against his chest, his fingers touching the edge of the spark casing. “It’s all right. I need you to just...fit those pieces back together.” Curling his other hand around Sam’s back, he urged him closer. “Then the casing can close.”
Shocked, Sam resisted, pushing back once Bee had positioned him beside his chest. “Bee, man... God, I don’t want to hurt you. That’s like...your soul.” He looked up at Bee, swallowing hard, and the unspoken horror of what Starscream had just done to that soul showed stark in his eyes.
“You aren’t going to hurt me,” Bee promised, pressing him forward again. This time Sam went, crawling delicately up over Bee’s chest, perching just one side of the center and finding footholds and handholds sturdy enough to support him. Bee cupped a hand beneath him, ready to catch him if he slipped.
Drawing in a breath, Sam visibly gathered his nerve. “Hoboy,” he breathed. He wiped at his eyes. “Okay. Okay. Don’t wanna mess this up.”
His hands found the disrupted seam, exploring the damage and testing the amount of pressure he would need to apply to repair it. Bee spent a disoriented minute or two simply watching him when he should have offered instruction, admiring the blue glow of his spark against Sam’s tiny but beautiful hands. Pain seemed like an afterthought, but it still made his fingers twitch before he locked their joints.
“Okay.” Sam settled his hands into place, bracing his weight. “Hold onto me, Bee. You’ve got to help me push.”
He counted to three and they pushed together. Sam’s fingers made the delicate adjustments of direction; Bee provided the necessary strength. Adjustment, application of force. Adjustment. Pressure. A peculiar sort of dance, and the pain was exquisite when Sam shouted at him to push, and the casing came back together with a grating snap.
For a long moment or two they sprawled together, shuddering, with one of Sam’s hands resting dangerously close to Bee’s spark, close enough that he felt a tremor of electrical life moving through the boy’s skin.
“Thank you,” Bee whispered, and with a minor effort he slid the spark casing correctly shut.
Sam gave him a weary thumbs-up, his cheek resting against Bee’s lower chest.
Equally drained, Bee nevertheless sent his long-range sensors to scan the area. Starscream hadn’t emerged from the jamming zone. Other air frequencies stayed silent, and he realized he was letting himself drift only when the roar of a diesel engine reached his audio receptors.
“Optimus,” Sam rejoiced, when the eighteen-wheeler pulled up next to Bee and transformed. Sliding off Bee’s chest, Sam stood when Optimus knelt down to his level. “Don’t let him transform again!”
“I would not even consider it.” Optimus scanned Bee’s prone form, the shift in his expression frightening, and Bee made a little call to him in Cybertronian, a soothing sound. “Can he be moved?” their leader asked of Ratchet, who transformed in the midst of rolling to a stop.
The medic took a long cycle of scanning to respond. He touched the fin components of Bee’s head with impossibly gentle fingertips. “Carefully. Yes.”
“Sam. Ride with Ratchet,” Optimus said. Sam seemed prepared to argue, but Bee encouraged him by running one finger down his back, nodding toward the chief medical officer. “Ironhide. Go after Starscream. Do not engage him without great cause.” The weapons specialist departed with a low growl, withdrawing his weaponry to resume his Topkick form for greater speed. “And up you go,” Optimus murmured to Bee, arranging powerful hands beneath him and lifting him up with a tenderness too great for pain. “Let’s take him home.”
*****
Bee kept quiet until long after they reached headquarters, not yet trusting himself to discuss the events leading up to his distress call. Once Optimus had arranged him on the examination table and Sam had climbed up beside him, however, he could hardly escape his fate as the unwilling center of attention. With the exception of Ironhide, still absent, the other Autobots gathered around him with varying expressions of barely suppressed horror and--at least in Jazz’s case--simmering anger.
Ratchet stood over him, resting a hand against his head, fingers smoothing, soothing. “Bumblebee. Can you tell me what happened?”
Hesitating, Bee glanced sideways at Sam. His boy had an expression Bee had seen twice before--once in the glare of Sector Seven’s strobing lights, once in the immediate aftermath of Mission City--and his eyes held all the concentrated determination of not just a soldier, but perhaps a partner, too. His body was all warmth, tucked close between Bee’s neck and shoulder.
“Tell it,” he said, offering encouragement.
Bee did. He preferred to surrender the experience like a proper report, as if Optimus were standing in front of him in the usual expectant fashion, rather than kneeling at his side with concern written across his face. Dividing emotions from events, he recounted their drive away from Tranquility and Starscream’s ambush, followed by his humiliating defeat and the Decepticon’s capture of and threats against Sam. He reported Starscream’s cruelty with a neutrality that even he considered remarkable in himself, but he faltered under the description of what the seeker had attempted to do to him, and what he had done in return. Optimus touched him then, hands against his shoulders, and for some reason the gentleness of it almost undid him, the final few words of his account shivering away into silence.
“Gonna rip him open nose ta thrusters,” Jazz promised, his anger crackling magnetic blue between the joints of his fingers. “Gonna tear out his spark an’ shove it up his--”
Bee shuttered his optics, a sickness shifting somewhere in his fuel processors.
“Jazz, shut up,” Ratchet said. “Back into recovery. All I need right now is two of you damaged.”
“No way in the Pit am I gonna just sit in recharge when--” A level look from Optimus ended Jazz’s argument and decided the issue in Ratchet’s favor, and the lieutenant returned reluctantly to the adjoining room after a last touch and a murmured promise of vengeance to Bee.
Optimus stood and leaned over him, his fingers lingering against one side of Bee’s face. “I am sorry,” he said, voice hoarse. “This is my failure. Had I any warning at all that Starscream had returned to Earth--that he represented a current threat--I would never have placed you in such obvious danger.”
Bee lifted a hand, resting his fingers over his Prime’s wrist. “I know. Not your fault.”
“My failure to properly anticipate a threat.”
Such terrible heartbreak in Optimus’ tone, but Bee had no chance to reassure him again. Ratchet caught his shoulder and urged him back. “I have a great deal of work to do,” the chief medical officer said, but gently, his expression all grim concentration. “And I need room to work.” Obedient to that directive, Optimus bowed his head and stepped outside the medical bay, assuming the position of a guard.
Ratchet slipped one hand beneath Bee’s head, a welcome numbing sensation sweeping through all his lower systems when the medic sent most of his pain receptors offline.
Bee gazed up into Ratchet’s optics, seeking and finding a deeper understanding than the others could offer. He spoke after a few seconds of silent uneasiness. “It wasn’t right. What I did to him.” He wanted to regret it, but couldn’t quite manage it. “It was the only way I could think of.”
Sam’s hands tightened. “Bee,” he said. “No way. No way.” He shook his head. “He deserved everything he got. You were--it was...” His hands skidded over Bee’s armor, fingertips catching against wiring and making his processors stutter. “You were awesome.” Such fierce pride blazed in those eyes that Bee brushed the back of Sam’s neck with a fingertip, deeply touched.
“Leave off the guilt,” Ratchet agreed. Another flick of his fingers shut down Bee’s motor functions, and his hand slid away from Sam’s back. “I would have chosen the same route.” Something tightened in the medical officer’s expression. “And I would not have been so merciful.” Reaching out, he caught Sam carefully in one hand, giving the boy no chance to argue. “If you insist upon staying, you may sit over here,” he said, and deposited Sam onto a crate several feet back from the examination table. “No fidgeting. No talking. I must concentrate.”
“Sam,” Bee had time to whisper. “Thank you. For defending my...honor.” He couldn’t smile, but he hoped Sam understood.
His boy gave him half a smile, another tear starting down his cheek. “No problem.”
Then Ratchet initiated a stasis lock, and Bee slipped gratefully into senseless but secure darkness.
*****
Author: Lyricality (lyricality)
Rating: M/NC-17 for graphic sparksex and non-consensual situations
Pairings: Eventual Bee/everyone. In this part, Starscream/Bee and Sam/Bee.
Disclaimer: If it belonged to me, the Autobots and Decepticons would be much too busy 'banging each other's bolts' (thanks a lot, Flarn) to go to war. All characters are of legal age.
Note/Summary: This is the longest one yet. I am extremely--and justifiably, I think--nervous about posting this part, because I know it isn't what anyone was expecting. However, this is something I've been building to since the beginning, I promise you, and while it does contain non-consensual sparksex, it doesn't at all fit the stereotype of the warning. Everything is for a purpose. For this entire fic, you can blame nemi_chan and her marvelous prompt o' doom, in which Bumblebee is the resident pleasurebot of the Autobots. This plot, however, is all me. *dodges the pitchforks and torches* The title is not as porntastic this time, out of respect for the subject matter. In addition, expect an additional "mini-part" this week for Friday evening, from Ratchet's point of view.
Even the Very Special Hell now rejects me. *sob*
Part 1/7: (Monday) Prime Time can be found here.
Part 2/7: (Tuesday) Iron Ride can be found here.
Part 3/7: (Wednesday) Doctor Love can be found here.
Part 4/7: (Thursday) Horizontal Jazz can be found here.
Sam settled easily into the driver’s seat the next morning, just finishing the last bite of his Pop-Tart, and Bee shut the door and pulled out of the driveway with an inward sigh of relief. Maybe everything really would be all right, and later they would have plenty of time to talk.
“Wait.” Sam grabbed the wheel and gave it a steady tug. “Turn left.”
Baffled, Bee reverted to rote explanations of logical action. “Sam, turning north is the most direct and convenient route to Tranquility High.”
Sam continued to pull, using both hands now, until Bee relented and turned left at the intersection, moving in completely the wrong direction. “Which is where I’m not going,” Sam explained.
“Your parents--”
“Don’t care about what they’ll say.” Sam wore a grim expression, but Bee thought he discerned a quirk of amusement in those lips. Waving a hand, he added, “I’m eighteen. If I wanna play hooky and talk to my giant robot-kickin’ car-best friend, that’s what I’m gonna do.” He leaned forward against the wheel with a shy and entirely charming little grin. “Want to try and stop me?”
Bee considered that for as long as he took to make for the edge of town at slightly over the speed limit. “Not much,” he admitted with a pleased chirp of the horn.
For fifteen minutes, they drove in a companionable silence, and Bee thought that perhaps they were so pleased to be speaking to each other again that they needn’t speak at all. The day had a pleasant cast of early autumn, according to the precise orientation of the Earth to its sun and the crisply warm temperature. Bee liked these moments best, when neither he nor Sam had anywhere in particular to be--except with each other.
“So.” Sam shifted, a little pointedly. “A conduit.”
Bee braced himself. He hadn’t forgotten what this was about. “Yes.”
“I looked it up. Last night,” Sam continued, scratching the back of his head with one hand and summoning up a weary smile. “Can’t say I understand, really, but I was trying to wrap my head around it. Because a conduit conducts electricity, and you said it has to do with spark energy, so…” He trailed off, staring down the road for a few seconds. “So I’m thinking I’m pretty stupid, but I know sparks are the reason you guys are alive in the first place, and maybe you’re like...a healer? But Ratchet’s the medical officer, so I don’t quite get how that works.”
Making the turn toward the lake, Bee raised a cloud of dust with his back wheels. “Ratchet is the medic,” he said. “But what I do is a sort of healing. Yes.”
Sam shook his head. “It can’t be only that. No way you’d bother keeping that from me this long, Bee. Every day, every day this week you’ve been gone, helping one of the others with something. Something that’s gotta have everything to do with this conduit thing.”
“Yes,” Bee whispered, but nothing more.
The silence grew uncomfortable. Bee pulled up near the lake and rolled to a stop, braking near the water. After an interminable minute, Sam closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the seat with a dull thump. “Look. You gotta just tell me.” His voice adopted a pleading tone, his misery too familiar to Bee. “Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as this. Nothing’s as bad as not knowing.”
He’d given Bee the perfect excuse to simply come out with it, as Jazz had said. “Sam.” He forced the words past lingering dread. “Among Cybertronians, a conduit is someone who offers companionship--and healing--through spark connection.”
Sam frowned, but Bee calculated confusion as the cause, rather than displeasure. “Spark connection? Like...pushing them together?”
Willing himself out of defensive panic and back into serene explanation, Bee chose his words with great care. “When sparks connect, problems deeper than physical ailments can be aired. Two of my kind can share memories, and emotions, and fears. Comfort can be offered and damage can be healed. We can find the cause of pain, and share pleasure.”
“Share pleasure,” Sam repeated in an unnaturally neutral tone.
Bee quailed, but answered the question behind the statement. “Sharing pleasure is...the primary purpose of connecting sparks. Replacing pain with pleasure is the primary function of a conduit.”
“Bee,” Sam swallowed, a peculiar ache in his voice. “On Earth, we call that prostitution.”
“It isn’t!” Bee paused, and worked to modulate his tone. “It isn’t the same. I’m not some sort of whore, Sam,” he said, and Sam made a little moaning sound, hiding his face behind both hands as if that word had broken the spell of his stillness. “A conduit is paid a stipend by the state--by the Autobot army. Never by a...a client--”
“You have clients,” Sam said from between his fingers.
“Our word is closer to partners. Cybertron was not Earth, Sam. Our customs encourage open acceptance of pleasure, both for ourselves and for those we love. We believe in the healing of inner weaknesses with skilled help--that no one should have to be alone. Autobots believe in that.” Decepticons had their own preferred ways to deal with weaknesses, most of them unpleasant by comparison. “Sam, conduits are rare. Even rarer, since the war began. Training takes many of your centuries--”
“Training?” Sam wailed.
“A conduit is invaluable to the Autobot military force.” Bee had heard Optimus repeat that, and he knew firsthand what good his work could do. “A soldier psychologically damaged in battle may be healed. A commander has someone in whom to confide with perfect confidence. No matter how far we venture from Cybertron, no one in my group need ever be alone. It is an office of honor, Sam.” He stopped, uncomfortable praising himself in such a way, even by proxy.
“You’re doing this for all of them.” Sam had yet to emerge from behind his hands, his voice growing steadily more distraught. “For Optimus. For Ironhide. For Ratchet. For Jazz. Oh my God. Every single one of them. You’re doing this with them and you think it’s your duty?”
Silent for a moment, Bee couldn’t quite banish the hurt from his voice. “I couldn’t have expected you to understand.”
“Don’t you dare!” Sam brought both hands slamming down on the steering wheel. “Don’t you guilt me! You finally get around to mentioning this--how am I supposed to react, huh? You said it yourself, there’s nothing like this on Earth. Well actually, there’s plenty of shit like this on Earth, but it’s not exactly honorable. Hey, in fact, it’s mostly not even legal, although guess what, it’s legal in this state, who knew?”
Bee let the silence drag on even longer, fighting back every defensive retort. They wouldn’t help. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” he murmured at length.
Sam made a softly angry and anxious sound. “Shit, Bee.”
Then came the incongruous sound of Jazz calling his name, activating an open channel. “Bumblebee?”
“Here,” Bee responded, suppressing his sigh.
“I got somethin’ weird out there, Bee. Lost contact with the protoform’s signal eleven nanocycles ago. Somethin’s interruptin’ it. Don’t know what exactly, but it’s ten clicks northwest a’ your position. Grid Delta, 46 28 17.”
Bee started his engine and returned to the dirt track by the lake, heading back toward the highway. “I’ll check out the area. Optimus, I have Sam with me. Should I drop him back at base first?”
A moment’s pause, and then Optimus answered on the same frequency. “It should be safe enough. Satellite pictures suggest simple signal interference. The source seems to be localized within a six-mile radius. Keep in contact, whatever you find.”
“Understood.”
Returning to the paved road, Bee continued away from Tranquility, heading toward the given coordinates. Sam stayed silent for several minutes, though he kept fidgeting and tapping his fingers against the window edge. Nerves wound tight enough already, Bee fought to keep his patience and settle his mind on the current task.
“Can they hear us?” the boy said at last.
Bee set his communication links to incoming only. “Not now.”
“I’m sorry.” Sam blew out a breath, almost as if he’d held it in since Jazz’s first call. “Look. Jesus, Bee. Is this...this isn’t something they force you to do. Is it?”
He sounded so earnest, so pained, and the question somehow hurt far more than all his other implications about Bee’s professional behavior. “Never, Sam,” he answered, very low. “No. Never.” Perhaps he shouldn’t confess it, but he wanted honesty between them. “After we had recovered from the battle at Mission City, Optimus gave me the choice to...retire from any duties beyond those as a soldier and your guardian. I said no.”
That seemed to give Sam pause. “You said no?” he repeated.
“I know it must be...difficult to comprehend, when your own species cannot connect in such a way, but they need me, Sam. Our journey away from Cybertron was painful, and now we have no hope of returning home. They have no one else to turn to, with that pain.” Bee had never needed to express his dedication so eloquently before, and he hoped he would never need to again. “I value my work, Sam. Just as much as I value you.”
Sam’s expression had shifted a bit, from discomfort to awkward uncertainty, and he reached out a tentative hand to rub his thumb over the symbol on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Holding back on outright forgiveness just yet, Bee shivered despite himself at the touch. “We’re almost there. I’m turning the communication channels on again.” After the warning, he spoke directly to the others. “Jazz. I’m within six miles of the location, but my scanners are picking up nothing unusual.” The open brush of the desert stretched all around them with occasional outcroppings of rock. In the distance stood a dozen old electrical towers, part of an abandoned line. “I’m heading off-road to the specified coordinates.”
“Satellite’s showin’ some kinda structure out there,” Jazz replied. His transmission carried an unexpected amount of static. “Not seein’...radar...glitch...” The channel crackled and went silent.
Almost everything went silent. Bee instantly lost all use of his long-range sensors. All the communication frequencies had cut off, even the power of his scanners reduced to the immediate area, and Bee felt an immediate wash of disquiet through his essential components. “I’ve lost communications,” he explained to Sam, who took a wary glance out the back window. “Something in this area is blocking long-range transmissions of all kinds.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“This may be unintentional human interference,” Bee said, uncertain and unwilling to simply give up without investigating the problem, especially when the solution might be near at hand. “Is your government conducting experimentation in this area?”
Sam snorted, amused. “I think you guys know how much the government tells the average American citizen these days.”
“I want to have a look at those towers.” Bee altered his route, rolling toward the broken shapes in the distance. “Maybe they’re emitting some sort of electrical charge.” The closer they went, the more Bee’s uneasiness increased. The twisted ends of steel against the sky seemed too reminiscent of Cybertronian ruins. “My scanners aren’t showing anything.”
His first hint of disaster came not from his scanners, but from his audio receptors. A dull roar swept over them from the west, the sound trailing behind a sleek shadow, and Bee recognized with dread the distinctive rumbling of jet engines.
“Sam,” he whispered, voice crackling as panic interrupted his processors. “Hold on.”
He had barely reversed direction when the roar turned deafening, the clanking whir of transformation beneath it, and then Starscream caught hold of him with both lethal hands and his wheels spun uselessly against the dust.
Sam cried out, ducking low in the driver’s seat as the jet engines went silent.
“Not the one I was expecting,” Starscream hissed. His razored claws clenched against Bee’s sides, puncturing along his doors and twisting one mirror. “I suppose you’ll have to do.” Sam screamed, diving across into the passenger seat, casting about for anything to use as a weapon. With a grunt of effort, Starscream began dragging Bee backward toward the wreckage of the electrical towers. Bee spun his tires against the dirt, fighting for every nanoclick of distance, too-nearly powerless to resist while unable to transform.
Sam pounded a fist against the dashboard. “Go! Go go go go go!”
Going nowhere, Bee strained against his own suspension, joints wrenching and moaning, his frame pushing the bounds of pressure it could withstand. He couldn’t make headway; Starscream literally had the upper hand. The Decepticon dragged him over the twisted metal of a fallen tower, puncturing Bee’s right front tire in the process.
“Oh shit,” Sam whispered, hands clenched hard enough to hurt. Starscream shifted his grip and the passenger side window shattered, showering glass across the seats. “Shit!” Sam cried, but then he went quiet, and Bee panicked when he realized what the boy was trying to do.
“Sam! Stay inside!”
Sam understood the impossibility of their situation--that so long as he remained inside the Camaro, Bee could not transform--and he had crawled into the ragged gap in the window, trying to twist his way out between the wedges of glass and Starscream’s claws.
Starscream paused.
No. No, no, no...
The seeker shifted his grip again, pinning Bee flat against the ground with weight alone while extracting Sam with his other hand. To his credit, Sam fought for all he was worth, the glass cutting long scratches down his legs before Starscream succeeded in lifting him free. Bee couldn’t see, his sensors straining, chills running through his cabling when the seeker laughed and Sam made a cry of pain.
“Listen, fool.” Starscream crushed Bee deeper into the dust for emphasis, speaking in English. “Cooperate with me, and I shall see that your revolting pet comes to minimal harm.”
Bee heard fists clanging against metal. “Screw you!” Sam shouted. “He won’t do it, he won’t make any deals, you oversized mechanical turkey-”
So long as Starscream functioned, he lied, but Bee had no choice to make.
“What do you want?” he asked in Cybertronian.
Apparently Sam could interpret the meaning without understanding the words. “No, Bee. No. He’ll kill me anyway, no matter what, he’ll kill us both. Don’t listen to this asshole!” He hissed, Starscream’s grip tightening around him.
“Watch your words, fleshling.” Some sort of perverse glee distorted the seeker’s tone. “I want justice from you and your kin, Autobot. I demand it.” Those lean claws scratched along Bee’s hood, subtly painful. “You’re not who I wanted, but I know what you mean to your weakling friends.” That sounded ominous, but Starscream retreated just enough for Bee to fulfill his next request. “Transform. Or suffer the consequences.”
Bee obeyed, optics flickering for a second or two when damaged metal tore against wiring. Doubting whether he actually could, he made to stand, only to become immediately and intimately acquainted with Starscream’s foot in the center of his back.
“Turn over and be still.”
Compliant, Bee did so, optics instantly drawn to Sam, his boy dangling twenty feet above the ground in Starscream’s grip. The Decepticon kept Bee trapped with the same foot, stretching away and ripping a long strip of twisted metal from the fallen tower. In one brisk movement, he shoved Sam up against the base of the nearest standing tower and lashed him in place, bending the metal around the boy to trap his arms and legs. Bee noted with a dim flicker of hope that he had done a poor job of it. The second he had his back turned, Sam freed one arm.
Starscream knelt, his shadow covering Bee completely. He was massive. The intricacy of his faceguards made distinguishing his features or his expressions a near impossibility, but Bee thought he recognized eager disgust in the red gleam of his optics.
“I know what you are,” Starscream sneered. “How frantic they all must be, unable to reach you through the field I’ve set.” He didn’t quite touch Bee, but brought his claws just over the center of Bee’s chest, directly over his spark. “I had hoped for Prime, but as the fates would have it...by damaging you, I may just as easily destroy him.”
Now Bee had a much clearer picture of what Starscream had in mind, and he couldn’t resist flinching away though the seeker had yet to touch him.
Starscream stilled him with two crushing claws. “Open up,” he hissed, distaste plain in his voice, “and we’ll have this done with, Autobot whore.”
The Decepticon’s head twitched slightly sideways; Bee heard a metallic clang.
“Don’t you dare call him that!” Sam shouted. He had a second rock in his free hand, and he threw it as hard as he could with true aim. Not that his effort made any difference--the rock impacted harmlessly against one side of Starscream’s helm, but it sent out a satisfying clank.
Narrowing his eyes to mere slits, Starscream turned his attention back to Bee and tore the outer armor of his chestplating to one side with a single, brutal wrench of his claws. Sam let out a strangled yell and Bee shrieked in belated pain. “You forfeit your chance for cooperation.” The seeker ripped into the secondary layer with as much malice as determination, and Bee wailed softly when all the armor stripped away, exposing sensitive circuitry and the thin barrier of his spark casing. “Weak-willed scrap of slag,” Starscream muttered, fastening his claws into one of the casing edges and wrenching hard enough to bring a scream out of Bee’s vocal components.
Given the impossible choice of agony or capitulation, Bee’s automatic processing codes went into effect, relenting to spare his frame from further damage. One edge had bent out of joint, but the casing still opened. Bee struggled again, attempting overrides.
Starscream opened his own chest. The act of a lover, corrupted, and Bee shuttered his optics against the sight.
For the first time, Starscream seemed to hesitate. Surely not out of any concern for the victim--he had no such empathy--but maybe from personal distaste, an aversion to doing something so intimate with someone he so despised, even for the purposes of war.
“Afraid of doing your own dirty work?” Bee said, not so levelly as he might have liked. He flicked his optics on again just in time to see fury twist across the seeker’s face, shifting his faceguards.
“Not to a creature so filthy!”
He crushed Bee fully to the ground with both hands and snarled, crashing their sparks together in a sick parody of the act Bee had shared so many times with those he loved. Instinct and training combined in an instant; Bee tossed up every mental and emotional shield he possessed. Starscream raged against the unexpected barriers, clawing at them with razor-edged hatred and cursing him alternately in Cybertronian and English.
Face to face, Bee never could have matched him. Starscream’s mass and strength and weaponry dwarfed his own, and with minimal effort he could equal Bee’s reaction speed. But here... So peculiar. Bee could actually spare a moment to analyze the situation while the Decepticon battered at his fortifications.
Starscream appeared to possess few emotional defenses at all. Behind the elegant fury of his basic psyche, Bee could already glimpse the flow of memories and emotions, brief flashes of deeper truths, as if the seeker hadn’t the slightest idea how close this act had necessarily brought them.
Was it possible that he had no idea how vulnerable he was?
Even now, with direct access to Bee’s spark, he barely focused his attacks, relying on pure persistent force. He caused no more than physical pain--acute, but bearable--and the vague emotional distress of helplessness and unwilling exposure. Somewhat baffled by the discrepancy in his expectations and the reality, Bee calculated his options for escape. Only one scenario gave high probabilities for the survival of both him and Sam, and though the details chilled him to the core, he would accept no other outcome in this fight.
He gathered his determination and weakened his walls. He let Starscream in.
In the moment of their complete merging, he felt a stab of triumph from the seeker, confidence steeled by a self-directed certainty of victory. Bee separated his memories, isolating the dangerous knowledge of Optimus that Starscream wanted behind a wash of comparatively useless information. Lured closer, Starscream tried slashing through the web of recollection, tangling himself into it instead, and Bee slid his own subtler tendrils of thought in among the seeker’s.
He twisted and pulled Starscream’s rudimentary defenses apart, and in the tangled coil of memories underneath, he found something profoundly shocking.
It was joy.
Brilliant and burning joy, the sense of stretching out wings for flight and the wind touching every exposed inch, streaming through the sky faster than any other creation on this pitiful planet, and if the filthy insects worshipped anything they should worship him, the ultimate potential of their ultimate weapon... Disgusting denizens of this mudball of a world, but they had held even Megatron captive, and the thought of Megatron in chains seared like ecstasy through all his connectors...
Megatron, and Megatron, and Megatron. Limned in fire, wreathed in ice, dripping the energon fluids of a thousand murdered mechs. Ecstasy, fear, pain and pleasure and a thousand different shades of desire, each more disturbing than the last.
Jerking back on reflex, Bee steeled himself against the overwhelming rush of emotion. Starscream’s spark had woven joy and fear so intricately together that he doubted one could ever escape the other. Bee had never touched a Decepticon in this way before, and he wondered with horror if all of them possessed such incomprehensible connections.
Starscream shrieked and fury assaulted Bee’s spark. The seeker had discovered his tactic and worked to block him, raising walls so patchy that Bee could sense right through them--they might have been transparent. Merciless, he flung remembered pleasure into the focus of Starscream’s attack, and the Decepticon faltered, panic mixed into the revulsion and hatred he tried to push into Bee.
He had every reason for panic. Bee had only the secrets of others to hide, but Starscream had dozens of his own.
The seeker’s concentration on one front left him exposed on another, and Bee twisted his own presence into a directed needle, piercing through the remains of barriers and entering into the deepest of Starscream’s emotional fortifications. Once there he paused, reeling.
Never had he seen a psyche so damaged. Starscream’s innermost being had all the strength and security of an emotional holocaust victim. What was left of his self-worth lay scattered across a landscape of poisonous fear and roiling hatred, his mental stability stretched thin and cobbled together by strands of self-reliance and distrust. His hatred made a powerful but painful barrier of protection, striking inward as often as it lashed out. He was full of hollow places, riddled with gaps and tears, and for a horrible moment of dumbfounded shock, Bee nearly reverted to the gentleness required by his calling.
Reality slapped him out of that impulse in an instant. He had no time for pity; he’d wasted precious seconds on astonishment.
All the valuable culmination of his professional experience told him what to search for, and he already knew the deepest desire of Starscream’s twisted spark. He yanked out memories and wove them together without much finesse, but with plenty of emotional power. Now he could be doubly appreciative for the memories Ratchet had shared with him, no matter how he hated to abuse them in this way.
Starscream could focus again, at least enough to realize his peril, and he let out a mental and audible shriek that reverberated in every metal component of Bee’s frame. Those claws tore into the earth at either side of Bee’s shoulders, seeking mental purchase with physical violence.
Too late. Bee strengthened his emotional weapon and flung it into Starscream’s spark as hard as he could. Take this instead.
Above him, around him, Starscream went horribly and suddenly still, and then he began to shake.
They were connected still. Bee had little choice but to experience the seeker’s psychological storm, his emotions reeling with the sensations, the impressions, the memories and the meanings Bee had given him.
Megatron, around whom revolved so many of Starscream’s desires.
Ratchet’s recollections of him, of his spark, for maximum devastation.
Power and pain and lightning shocks of pleasure from talented fingers.
The sense of value, being wanted, desired, safe in someone’s violently gentle strength.
His cruelest gift of all was his own memory of mighty hands holding him close, tracing patterns over his back, spelling out the Cybertronian symbols of passion and protection again, and again, and again.
Bee twisted all of it into a construction of Megatron as he had probably never been, but as Starscream might want him to be--as Starscream might want to be to him.
The ultimate distraction.
Starscream shattered. The pleasure was intense, ferocious, but so tangled up in hate and pain and fury that Bee repelled as much of it as he could.
When the flood of sensation ebbed, Bee took his chance and disengaged instantly, ripping them apart and rejoicing for once in the sting of psychological recoil. He squirmed his way out from under Starscream, leaving some secondary wiring behind in the struggle. Just a shaky step or two brought him to Sam, who had fought halfway free of the metal strut, both arms and one leg now free. He held both hands out to Bee with a wordless cry of relief and distress. In a moment Bee had torn the rest of the restraint away, Sam surging forward to wrap both arms around his hand and hold tight.
“Let’s get out of here, Bee,” he pleaded.
“Yes, Sam.” Bee braced himself for pain and transformed, sparks flying from broken connections, his torn chest plating making an agonized shriek when it forced itself to realign. Nothing fit quite right, his joints groaning and gears grating together, but he folded himself as best he could into his alternate shape, scattering a trail of gleaming glass and spatters of mech fluid.
The pain of his transformation had shaken Sam. “God, Bee,” he whispered, then swallowed and edged into the driver’s seat with great care, as if he could cause worse harm just by touching.
Starscream was offlining, fighting his overloaded systems every step of the way. “I’ll destroy you!” he screeched, claws raking the earth until his arms went abruptly still. He repeated his threats in Cybertronian, promising more creative violence in a voice of equal parts rage and anguish, before his optics finally offlined along with his processors.
“Not this time,” Bee muttered.
Sam’s face twisted with a wrath that far surpassed any lingering fear. “Bee--what he tried--what he did to you--”
“Sam. Wait. I...need you to drive. Please. While I try to reach Optimus.”
Jaw set, Sam did his best to swallow his anger for the moment. “Yeah. I can do that. Call Ratchet, too.” He started the engine and shifted gears, wincing at the sound, but he didn’t question Bee’s decision. Instead he stepped on the gas and pushed the Camaro forward foot by painful foot, everything jostling over one flat tire before they finally reached the road. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, when Bee trembled with a creaking shudder and tried to readjust his weight to ease the pressure. “I’m sorry.”
“Keep going, Sam.”
They bumped their way back toward Tranquility. Bee kept his sensors trained on Starscream as closely as he could through the interference, but the seeker never stirred. After five miles they reached the edge of whatever interference field Starscream had set, and Bee’s communications and long-range sensors returned with a heady rush of information.
Sam let them roll to a stop, so careful with his application of the brakes, and Bee murmured his gratitude for the consideration. Focusing, he called out to Optimus, and then to the rest of the Autobots, and received the short response from Ratchet that they had been underway since losing contact with him. That news helped to restore his optimism, but Bee still had immediate concerns. He opened the driver’s side door, and Sam slipped out without a word, waiting for instructions.
Instead, Bee transformed again, settling into his natural form with a muffled moan.
“Bee, don’t...” Sam knelt by him, his eyes naturally drawn to Bee’s chest and the destruction of his armoring, the visible flicker of his spark. “You’re gonna be all right, Bee,” he said, easing into the space between Bee’s arm and the side of his body. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Bee didn’t try to rise, resting on his back against the side of the road. “I need your help, Sam,” he whispered.
“Anything, buddy.”
Had he ever seen Sam cry before? Once, just after Mikaela had gone, but the boy hadn’t known that his guardian was watching over him. Lifting a hand, Bee rested it against his chest, his fingers touching the edge of the spark casing. “It’s all right. I need you to just...fit those pieces back together.” Curling his other hand around Sam’s back, he urged him closer. “Then the casing can close.”
Shocked, Sam resisted, pushing back once Bee had positioned him beside his chest. “Bee, man... God, I don’t want to hurt you. That’s like...your soul.” He looked up at Bee, swallowing hard, and the unspoken horror of what Starscream had just done to that soul showed stark in his eyes.
“You aren’t going to hurt me,” Bee promised, pressing him forward again. This time Sam went, crawling delicately up over Bee’s chest, perching just one side of the center and finding footholds and handholds sturdy enough to support him. Bee cupped a hand beneath him, ready to catch him if he slipped.
Drawing in a breath, Sam visibly gathered his nerve. “Hoboy,” he breathed. He wiped at his eyes. “Okay. Okay. Don’t wanna mess this up.”
His hands found the disrupted seam, exploring the damage and testing the amount of pressure he would need to apply to repair it. Bee spent a disoriented minute or two simply watching him when he should have offered instruction, admiring the blue glow of his spark against Sam’s tiny but beautiful hands. Pain seemed like an afterthought, but it still made his fingers twitch before he locked their joints.
“Okay.” Sam settled his hands into place, bracing his weight. “Hold onto me, Bee. You’ve got to help me push.”
He counted to three and they pushed together. Sam’s fingers made the delicate adjustments of direction; Bee provided the necessary strength. Adjustment, application of force. Adjustment. Pressure. A peculiar sort of dance, and the pain was exquisite when Sam shouted at him to push, and the casing came back together with a grating snap.
For a long moment or two they sprawled together, shuddering, with one of Sam’s hands resting dangerously close to Bee’s spark, close enough that he felt a tremor of electrical life moving through the boy’s skin.
“Thank you,” Bee whispered, and with a minor effort he slid the spark casing correctly shut.
Sam gave him a weary thumbs-up, his cheek resting against Bee’s lower chest.
Equally drained, Bee nevertheless sent his long-range sensors to scan the area. Starscream hadn’t emerged from the jamming zone. Other air frequencies stayed silent, and he realized he was letting himself drift only when the roar of a diesel engine reached his audio receptors.
“Optimus,” Sam rejoiced, when the eighteen-wheeler pulled up next to Bee and transformed. Sliding off Bee’s chest, Sam stood when Optimus knelt down to his level. “Don’t let him transform again!”
“I would not even consider it.” Optimus scanned Bee’s prone form, the shift in his expression frightening, and Bee made a little call to him in Cybertronian, a soothing sound. “Can he be moved?” their leader asked of Ratchet, who transformed in the midst of rolling to a stop.
The medic took a long cycle of scanning to respond. He touched the fin components of Bee’s head with impossibly gentle fingertips. “Carefully. Yes.”
“Sam. Ride with Ratchet,” Optimus said. Sam seemed prepared to argue, but Bee encouraged him by running one finger down his back, nodding toward the chief medical officer. “Ironhide. Go after Starscream. Do not engage him without great cause.” The weapons specialist departed with a low growl, withdrawing his weaponry to resume his Topkick form for greater speed. “And up you go,” Optimus murmured to Bee, arranging powerful hands beneath him and lifting him up with a tenderness too great for pain. “Let’s take him home.”
*****
Bee kept quiet until long after they reached headquarters, not yet trusting himself to discuss the events leading up to his distress call. Once Optimus had arranged him on the examination table and Sam had climbed up beside him, however, he could hardly escape his fate as the unwilling center of attention. With the exception of Ironhide, still absent, the other Autobots gathered around him with varying expressions of barely suppressed horror and--at least in Jazz’s case--simmering anger.
Ratchet stood over him, resting a hand against his head, fingers smoothing, soothing. “Bumblebee. Can you tell me what happened?”
Hesitating, Bee glanced sideways at Sam. His boy had an expression Bee had seen twice before--once in the glare of Sector Seven’s strobing lights, once in the immediate aftermath of Mission City--and his eyes held all the concentrated determination of not just a soldier, but perhaps a partner, too. His body was all warmth, tucked close between Bee’s neck and shoulder.
“Tell it,” he said, offering encouragement.
Bee did. He preferred to surrender the experience like a proper report, as if Optimus were standing in front of him in the usual expectant fashion, rather than kneeling at his side with concern written across his face. Dividing emotions from events, he recounted their drive away from Tranquility and Starscream’s ambush, followed by his humiliating defeat and the Decepticon’s capture of and threats against Sam. He reported Starscream’s cruelty with a neutrality that even he considered remarkable in himself, but he faltered under the description of what the seeker had attempted to do to him, and what he had done in return. Optimus touched him then, hands against his shoulders, and for some reason the gentleness of it almost undid him, the final few words of his account shivering away into silence.
“Gonna rip him open nose ta thrusters,” Jazz promised, his anger crackling magnetic blue between the joints of his fingers. “Gonna tear out his spark an’ shove it up his--”
Bee shuttered his optics, a sickness shifting somewhere in his fuel processors.
“Jazz, shut up,” Ratchet said. “Back into recovery. All I need right now is two of you damaged.”
“No way in the Pit am I gonna just sit in recharge when--” A level look from Optimus ended Jazz’s argument and decided the issue in Ratchet’s favor, and the lieutenant returned reluctantly to the adjoining room after a last touch and a murmured promise of vengeance to Bee.
Optimus stood and leaned over him, his fingers lingering against one side of Bee’s face. “I am sorry,” he said, voice hoarse. “This is my failure. Had I any warning at all that Starscream had returned to Earth--that he represented a current threat--I would never have placed you in such obvious danger.”
Bee lifted a hand, resting his fingers over his Prime’s wrist. “I know. Not your fault.”
“My failure to properly anticipate a threat.”
Such terrible heartbreak in Optimus’ tone, but Bee had no chance to reassure him again. Ratchet caught his shoulder and urged him back. “I have a great deal of work to do,” the chief medical officer said, but gently, his expression all grim concentration. “And I need room to work.” Obedient to that directive, Optimus bowed his head and stepped outside the medical bay, assuming the position of a guard.
Ratchet slipped one hand beneath Bee’s head, a welcome numbing sensation sweeping through all his lower systems when the medic sent most of his pain receptors offline.
Bee gazed up into Ratchet’s optics, seeking and finding a deeper understanding than the others could offer. He spoke after a few seconds of silent uneasiness. “It wasn’t right. What I did to him.” He wanted to regret it, but couldn’t quite manage it. “It was the only way I could think of.”
Sam’s hands tightened. “Bee,” he said. “No way. No way.” He shook his head. “He deserved everything he got. You were--it was...” His hands skidded over Bee’s armor, fingertips catching against wiring and making his processors stutter. “You were awesome.” Such fierce pride blazed in those eyes that Bee brushed the back of Sam’s neck with a fingertip, deeply touched.
“Leave off the guilt,” Ratchet agreed. Another flick of his fingers shut down Bee’s motor functions, and his hand slid away from Sam’s back. “I would have chosen the same route.” Something tightened in the medical officer’s expression. “And I would not have been so merciful.” Reaching out, he caught Sam carefully in one hand, giving the boy no chance to argue. “If you insist upon staying, you may sit over here,” he said, and deposited Sam onto a crate several feet back from the examination table. “No fidgeting. No talking. I must concentrate.”
“Sam,” Bee had time to whisper. “Thank you. For defending my...honor.” He couldn’t smile, but he hoped Sam understood.
His boy gave him half a smile, another tear starting down his cheek. “No problem.”
Then Ratchet initiated a stasis lock, and Bee slipped gratefully into senseless but secure darkness.
*****