Few and Far Between [Transformers G1]

[burnedtoasty]

Title: Few and Far Between

Disclaimer: I, in no way, shape, or form, own the Transformers© franchise or the characters it contains. All publicly recognizable characters are copyrighted to Hasbro, and the respective artists/writers/et cetera. No infringement intended.

Fandom: Transformers

Continuity: G1 (Generation One), set in the Lost Time series.

Characters: Skyfire, Starscream

Summary: Which was worse - he would occasionally wonder in the moments after, where he could claim being dazed enough to warrant lingering a little longer - the fact that they actually needed this perversion of a bonding, or that Skyfire, on some deep, inner level he barely acknowledged, actually enjoyed these liaisons?

Warnings: Slash
Author's Note: Criticism encouraged, technical points preferable.

--

Starscream rather liked the desert, in a way. It didn’t scream ‘organic’; wasn’t strewn with light-sucking foliage; didn’t hum with the vibration of beating hearts and glimmer with wet, terrified eyes. Oh, it was there - there was no part of this disgusting mudball that didn’t have something crawling all over it - but at least it was muted enough to be ignored. He liked to fly here, to test his speed to its limits, and dare violent crashes with foolhardy stunts. It was one of his favorite retreats when he and Megatron had a spat, when he needed to make himself scarce. An ugly place, surely, but one he could call his own. Make his own.

Metal had to be struck, bent, burned, melted, to be changed. Sand required only the smallest motion, the slightest breeze. This world would bear his mark, be affected by his presence, and could not drive him away if he did not will it.

He watched the mostly-empty flatness, body still shimmering-hot from standing in the sun despite the purple bruising of the oncoming evening. A few birds had tried to land on him, earlier. He had smirked at the startled, raucous caws as they had burnt their fleshy feet on his plating, the indignant flap as they took wing again. He laughed when they fell, charred black, as he shot them down again. Everything was so fragile on this waste of a planet - easily damaged, easily destroyed. A perilous balance only sustained by happenchance and dumb luck.

It would be good to leave this place. To return to what made sense, where it really mattered.

Until then, he was just passing the time.

But that was neither here nor there, he thought, as a warning blip appeared in his internal radar, plaintively whispering ‘enemy’. Move away, it demanded, bring up his battle array, take to the sky where it is safe and good and home even on this alien world. Could never touch him in the air.

He wouldn’t register on the Autobot’s array for a while yet, and so he contented himself with watching the haphazard listing as the other sought him out. He could have fled - right up to the point where he was finally found - but the boom of powerful engines roared as Skyfire came in for a landing and he stayed exactly where he was.

“You’re so slow.”

He did not know how Skyfire had tracked him. He had run silently, stayed far from the Autobot grid lines, and further from human-settled territories. Yet here Skyfire stood, regardless of that caution, tangibly uneasy despite his best efforts to the contrary. He was never as unreadable as he thought he was. The curse of a brilliant scientific mind, it seemed, was general idiocy.

Skyfire’s mouth opened, like he might have said something, but thought better of it, letting silence drag on. Awkward with old hurts, they stood across from each other, in the vast distance of a few steps.

“Why are you-what are you doing here?” Skyfire at last managed, optics bright and blue and pathetically sad as always. Like he didn’t know.

“I’m sorry; were we keeping tabs on each other? I don’t see how it matters to you one way or another.”

“I’m, I’m not, it doesn’t- I.” Skyfire’s face scrunched, just a little between his optics and his lips thinned, pressing together in a gesture no-doubt picked up from some squishling or another. “Never mind.”

“Tch,” Starscream shrugged, flippantly turned to study the stars, remembering when the sky had been so much clearer, when the world had hummed with life and the stars had been so close, just within his grasp. And perhaps it was that nostalgia that prompted him to coo, soft and sly. “Though I do wonder what brings you here, so far out of your way.”

“You know very well,” Skyfire returned, grimacing. Embarrassed, compromising his precious choices, his willful stupidity. Knowing what he wanted and knowing he’d have to work to get it. It was an old song and dance, and, despite knowing this, Starscream couldn’t help but play into it.

“Of course,” Starscream sighed, deceptively sweet. “It's so sad that you cannot see it yourself.”

Skyfire’s optics snapped to him, wary, assessing.

“You hide, you mince, sneak about with your own perversions - don’t you trust your comrades?” Starscream paused half a beat, just enough for effect, to better observe the reaction. “Don’t they trust you?”

“No, no, you don’t know-” Skyfire broke off, perhaps not quite knowing where to go with his thoughts. “It’s no more than what you yourself do, I’m sure.”

“Oh, my dear, dear Skyfire. You know what I mean. I am a Decepticon! It is part and parcel of what I am. They, however, they are much different, fettering you so. They underestimate you. They’ve made you less than what you are - less than what you should be. You’re a glorified freighter. You know they don’t trust you. Likely they never will.”

He could almost feel the protest bubble up in Skyfire's vocalizer, watching the pained look that passed over his too-expressive face. “It is what I chose.”

So redundant. So foolish. So Autobot.

Starscream's mouth twisted into a hateful sneer.  Didn't he understand? Didn't he realize what a grave error he made, what a mockery he had become? “You chose wrong.  You always choose wrong, you great fool. What use do they have for you? What do they offer that- that we cannot offer better?”

There was no hesitation. “Peace.”

Starscream laughed, too sharp to be any breed of mirth. Incredulous, he spread his hands, looking about, as if to present the world with Skyfire’s foolishness. “Peace? Peace? Autobot’s would see us halt, all our world rust away, our empire decay, fragmented and broken by lesser species. What is your peace, but stagnation?  Nothing but the goal of the weak-minded, the weak-willed! What is the use of living without moving forward, without conquest?  Oh, there would be peace, peace enough for you and yours if you’d lay down your arms, join up with the true cause.”

Skyfire’s optics narrowed, the lines of his face becoming more settled. It said enough, without saying anything at all.

“I can give you everything. What more do you want of me? A commission? A laboratory? Ask, it’s yours. I’ll give you an entire city if you’d-if you’d just see reason. You won’t have to fight - I won’t ask it of you again.  I could speak with Megatron. You could explore, stay away until the war is over, if you wanted. The cosmos could be yours, if you would just stop being so stupidly stubborn.”

“And what? Aid you in destroying civilizations, live under the heel of a tyrant, see my friends broken down to scrap? And what of freedom, of choice?”

“Megatron would not rule long,” Starscream scoffed. “He will fall, he must fall, for the true regime. Such is his role in life. There would be reformations, naturally, a culling. But would we not be the better for it, a united world, a single empire, under my hand?” He paused, pulling back. “Perhaps you, at my side.”

Skyfire raised his hand to rub at his optics, groaning, “Need we do this every time?” and failing to disguise the way his fingers trembled.

“You could rule beside me, Skyfire. I’d even let you harbor your precious Autobots-” Skyfire cast him a sharp, wary glance, and Starscream rolled a wrist to wave off the inherent question. “Those deemed weak enough. They’d be downgraded, of course,” He amended. “Anything you could want, it could be yours.”

“No,” Skyfire said softly. “No, it really couldn’t.”

Silence descended between them, the same that followed whenever they deigned to meet, by chance or fate or predetermined masochism. Skyfire warred with himself, fought with his conscience and his loyalty, mind following the well-worn path that was so depressingly familiar to them both.

Then, quiet, just above a whisper, “Come away with me.”

“What?”

“Come with me, away from here, from this stupid war.”

Starscream laughed, snide and shrill. “And what? Start all over, make a happily ever after? Idiot. Even if I wanted to go, we’d be slag within cycles, and fugitives, if by some strange quirk of fate we manage to miss every bounty hunter between here and uncharted space.”

“He hits you.”

“I shoot him. Regularly.” Starscream scoffed again, dismissively. “You do not understand, Autobot. He needs me.”

Skyfire made an unhappy sound.

“What of it? Are you to be my shining hero, now? Oh, yes, because I am in such need of rescue. Please, Skyfire, take me away from this dreary existence. I cannot bear to live out this lie any longer. Take me, you great fool.”

“I only-”

“Why are you so thick? Do you think I haven’t worked - fought, killed - for this? Do you think I would give it up for something as fleeting and insignificant as you?”

“Must you be so cruel?” Skyfire, at last beyond the bounds of self-restraint, snapped, his rigid body outlined against the flat, hazy purple and orange of the horizon.

Starscream’s lips twisted into a sneer, a pitiless, mocking expression he had designed specifically for these encounters. “It is what I am,” he replied, his optics brightened to the hue of a dying sun. It was so easy to manipulate Skyfire. It had always been easy, from the very beginning. “Would you rather I lie?”

He knew the answer, as plain as the paint on his wings. He wanted to hear it.

Skyfire grimaced, looked away, aside, anywhere but at the gloating triumph written so unrepentantly across Starscream’s face. His gaze dropped to his hands, expression falling into a resigned bleakness. “… Yes,” he choked out, the word so small it was nearly stolen by the wind.

Starscream’s sneer twitched marginally. “Heh. Very well. I can play your little game.” Thus declared, he approached, ignoring the wary flinch as he laid his hand boldly upon the cold metal of Skyfire’s chest. He leaned in until his lips were against Skyfire’s throat, until every tremble that coursed through that immense body was reported into his own.

He dimmed his optics, body language shifting, one hand reaching up to draw Skyfire down to his level. “I’ve missed you, Sky,” he murmured against the softer alloy of Skyfire’s throat, and the resulting shiver was more than worth his time. He felt shaky, hesitant arms lift, the cautious brush of fingertips on his waist; not daring enough to hold him, not resolute enough to keep away. “I’ve missed you so much, for so long. I can’t- I can’t be away any more. I’ve tried, but I can’t, and I’m so sorry.” It took a supreme effort of will to not allow the lilting mockery he had become so accustomed to enter his voice. Tilting his head aside, a quiet whisper against the yielding metal, “Skyfire… I need you.”

Skyfire, at last, gave a great, pained moan, and his arms encircled Starscream completely, embracing him as if he were the most precious thing in all the world. “Starscream,” he gasped, as much a prayer as a name, full of hope and fear, free to be shattered with the slightest word.

That was the joy in Skyfire, the incredible allure of a toy he could break and break and break, and never be broken. It was a thrill, to have this vast being jerking along to his tune, the brilliant mind pushed aside in favor of baser desires.

“Please,” though his sneer belied the delivery, it mattered not. Skyfire was trapped, now, caught up by the willful delusion.

He felt the pulse of Skyfire’s spark, the sharp pull-push of energy from deep inside his chest, towing him in.

Surely it hurt; it had to hurt, it always hurt, the shared half-link between their sparks. The part ached for completion, whined for contact, sending out skirls of contradictory data throughout his body with terrible demands for its partner. Simultaneously, his systems warned of great injury, and promptly assured themselves that there was no hint of damage to be found.

Such was the penance for an aborted joining, the risk one took when agreeing to bond with another being. Even if he were inclined to take another into his spark, the pain would not leave, not until the final synchronization was achieved.

They could not be free of each other, could not escape the anguish of what had been done, first, out of love.

Starscream had grown used to the sensation - had even come to enjoy the hollow resonance of it, in a warped fashion - over the course of his long life, but this was a new wound to his dear, dear bonded. It spurred Skyfire on, drove him to come at the slightest beckoning to Starscream’s side, to set aside his indignation and clasp the Seeker tight, mumbling false endearments against his throat. Perhaps, caught in the moment, with the promise of relief so near at hand, and so beguiled by the fantasy, Skyfire could perceive these little deceits as truth. What would he think, afterward, when spark-energy did not so compel him to whisper such sweet nothings? Would he think back with bitterness and regret for what he had said, and look to lose himself in another, to cleanse himself of Starscream’s taint?

The Decepticon’s grip tightened, his languid smirk devolving into an unvoiced snarl. He tugged at the expansive shoulders, pulled his partner toward the dust and grit, tuning out the meaning behind their pretense at intimacy.

The words meant nothing; they could not, after all that had transpired between them. Each would use and was subsequently used, despite the game they played - this was a coupling of retribution as much as relief, no matter whatever stories they gave each other to justify it.

Starscream could find delight in the duplicity of their relationship, the sick caricature of what had once been a sacred trust. A sad little reflection of what could have been, might have been, to be trotted out and thoroughly ridiculed at every opportunity.

It was easier to do so when he wasn’t held so painful-tight against that firm chest, with spark energy leaping in miniature arcs of lightning between them. It was easier when he didn’t want it to be sincere, just a little bit, for old time’s sake.

Sometimes, when in enough of a mood to warrant it, when their sparks conjoined and essences merged, Starscream could come close to believing it was still a kind of affection, as depraved as the dynamic was. That blissful moment of mutual reprieve, the pain of separation eased by proximity, when trembling bodies sank together and common betrayal meant naught at all, it could be called love.

But then he would drift, plummet deeper into Skyfire’s conflicted being, and all pretense of fondness or care was shed.

He always tried to skim, at first, to stay close to the surface, and keep far from that dark, confusing mass. But he would fall; be dragged; perhaps leap into it in some masochistic desire to hurt and be hurt, plunge until he was in danger of becoming lost. Adrift in the madness, he would struggle again for the shallows of Skyfire’s spark, battered and baffled by these thoughts, the incompatible emotions. Both hated and adored, needed and loathed; he always marveled that Skyfire could bear his slightest touch, could bear to live with such turmoil.

And though repulsed, he never failed to fall into Starscream’s arms willingly enough.

There was a soft whirr of machinery, and blue spark-light brightened the closing night, trembling and flickering as uncertain stars. Skyfire sighed, brushing a hesitant finger along Starscream’s cheek, tracing the proud jaw line and dipping down to slide the length of the amber canopy, leaving a scar of sensation in his wake. Even this he hardly dared, his touch light and flighty, ready to be snatched back at the smallest twitch.

Loathing to touch what was, now, forbid to him? Afraid of rejection?

Afraid of Starscream?

The Seeker snorted, staring up and beyond Skyfire, at the alien constellations. He jerkily opened his chest, canopy separating at the center, sliding back, each layer unfolding with callous disregard until only one remained stubbornly sealed. The immense form over his own shifted, laying down beside him, a blunt wing swinging in to block Starscream’s view of the firmament. Carefully, ever so carefully, Skyfire laid his cool palm over the thick shielding, filling the emptied space above. His hand moved in a reverent caress against the dense metal, a silent request, perhaps, for consent. So hopelessly, stupidly sentimental, for such a small gesture.

Starscream could see the bared spark-light reflected in the glossy surface of Skyfire’s wing, the blue glow at war with the rust-red of his own optics. It rippled and quaked like struck water, constantly shifting, agitating with the slightest change of humor. He was tempted to reach out, to run his fingers along the echo of radiance, life made light, to see this color play against himself.

Instead, he roughly wrenched the final barrier aside, noting the shudder of Skyfire’s shoulders, and the ensuing frenzied swirl of brightness. Skyfire’s clumsy fingers jerked back, fearful of this delicate thing that caused so much hurt in him.

So fragging predictable.

But- where was the clash, the clamor, the gratifying testing of the most intimate of barriers?

Starscream frowned. He wanted to shout at Skyfire to hurry up, to get this charade over with, or shove him off, or just shoot him and fly off, back to safer skies. But it would ruin the mood, end his ploy unfulfilled, and so he, remarkably, held his silence.

He dragged his gaze along, following the line of arm and shoulder and jaw to mild optics. “Well?” He asked, shifting his hips in discomfort. This was not in the agenda. This was not what he wanted.

It might have been sadness in that expressive face, for a moment. Starscream didn’t care to delve much into the look that followed, feeling to do so would be most unwise. Why ruin a perfectly good moment with sap?

Mightily resisting the urge to roll his optics, Starscream seized Skyfire’s shoulders, shoving him up and over upon his back with a great gout of displaced sand. He straddled his waist, leaning in close, forehead to forehead - one of the more intimate gestures unique to Cybertronians. “Skyfire,” he whimpered, more than ready to play the part, if it got him what he needed. “Please.”

The Autobot shivered, staring up with something akin to reverent grief. “Do you- do you miss me?” He rumbled, reaching up, pausing, his hand hovering halfway between them. “Truly?”

Without pause, Starscream reached out, grabbing hold of the empty hand. He drew it close, nuzzled the palm, reveling in a touch - even an unwilling one - that was not so guarded. “Yes,” he purred with a sparked liar’s flawless sincerity. “I do.”

Skyfire frowned, searching his face for deceit, for the inherent treachery that was synonymous with whatever passed Starscream’s lips. Unable to find evidence, he asked what he already knew. “Are you lying?”

Starscream’s mouth twitched into an indefinable smile, riddled with potential. “Does it matter?”

For what felt like a long moment, Skyfire considered, on the edge of rejection. Then, nodding in agreement or for some strange need to acknowledge the remark, he pulled Starscream down; was allowed to draw him near. Tenderly, he settled a hand between the hard-edged wings, both trapping and supporting his almost-bondmate.

Still, he hesitated again. “Starscream-”

“I’m tired of playing,” The Seeker mumbled, and, with that, latched on to Skyfire’s spark.

The Autobot arched up, surprised, his powerful fingers convulsing, certain to leave obvious dents in Starscream’s plating. His legs spasmed, gouging trenches in the earth as they fought for unnecessary traction. Starscream wheezed out a laugh, dizzied by the headlong rush, and the resultant pleasure-pain that rattled through his frame like a good static charge. Before Skyfire could gather enough wit to speak, he did it again, with only slightly less force behind it.

More or less ready for the second surge, Skyfire reciprocated, a deft flash of mind against mind, spark against spark. Starscream’s wings quivered, the vibration humming like an enchanted moth’s wing-beats against streetlamps.  He more clawed than stroked Skyfire’s side, leaving trails of faint blue paint to record the touch. Another collision, and he could feel their personalities beginning to merge, harmonizing in preparation for the actual bond, another small step to synchronization.

Confidence flagging as they approached the threshold, Starscream cast a glower at Skyfire’s face, having a sudden, irrational urge to simply shoot the blasted Autobot and be done with it for good. But their sparks surged again, and all power left his limbs, sprawling him inelegantly over Skyfire’s chest. He twitched and quaked as the point of no return drew close, falling into that place beyond the physical. He tried to keep contained, and hold tight to his own self, afraid of slipping too deeply. Sensory memories, like iron filings to a magnet, struck against him, chipping away at his resolve. No, he didn’t want to lose his sense of individuality, to drown in that millennia-old sea of memory. Didn’t want any part of this traitor near himself, his core of being, no-

A slight loosening, and suddenly his grip was gone. He fell into that strange chasm, individuality spiraling away from him, stripping him down to a thing without thought, without reason, and it was echoed in his counterpart-self. Superego and ego were shorn from the equation, leaving only id, action and reaction.

He was aware of a two bodies, as if from a great distance, though it was any guess which belonged to whom. Physical pleasure-sensations, tempered by the emotional conflict of their association. In here, it meant little, seemed so simple - why be bothered with the myriad of personal issues that so hurt them? Why prolong the pain when the solution was so easily grasped? They tumbled through and around each other, bounding from memory-sense to memory-sense, acknowledging what the reality of their lives but not trapped by it. Here there was no factions, no differing loyalties. There was the moment, the rightness, and nothing else mattered.

Easy to slip. Easy to let go, now, and forgo individuality. Merge completely, become one being, and subsequently perish without a new body standing by, modified to accommodate such a spark. Tempting, when there was no mental clutter to muddle the equation. Could be beautiful, for a moment.   Could be good.

But too close, too much, they had to let go before the appeal became too great. The bodies approached overload, mindless things thrashing, bound by their corporeal mass, by the burden of active intelligence.

With something akin to reluctance, they began to detach, sliding back into their identities. The divide grew until it was a chasm, until what had seemed so easy and perfect looked insane and ugly, until what had transpired was just a confused jumble of emotional odds and ends.

Warning lights flashed, bright and hot, not as blinding as the white light between them, this nova-spark, this otherness. Wings rattled, processors flashed warnings, prepared for shut down, rerouting the excess of sensation, shunting the charge as static electricity. Identity snapped back into place, and Starscream arced forward, jerking back and forth helplessly as finalization came near, and, unwilling to give a name, he choked out glitching chirp-hisses, and the world went white with static.

It seemed only moments passed before he rebooted, but the fading stars above made a lie of the thought. Grumbling, Starscream shifted, slithering the rest of the way off of Skyfire’s chest. The Autobot would take longer to reboot; he always had, having more body to go over and more memory units to defrag. So stupidly vulnerable. He could do whatever he liked with the insensate scientist. Stasis-lock him; extinguish him, even, if he were in such a mood. And he had so many reasons to, barring the personal. Foolish, to risk himself in these bitter rendezvous when he was so invaluable an asset to the land-bound Autobots.

Instead of reducing the slumbering giant into a molten pile of slag, he untangled their limbs, feeling blissfully numb to the worldly sensations, as if every molecule of him were coated in a film of nebulous haze. He pulled back his wings to rest on his side, cheek against the faux-glass of Skyfire’s cockpit.

Both of their sparks were again shut away, hidden by layers of resilient metal in a reflexive action as soon as they offlined. Tentatively, he settled a palm over Skyfire’s upper chest, imagining he could still almost feel the energy pulsing away behind that solid mass. Easy to think the shuttle-build invincible, when he wasn’t awake. He supposed he liked him best like this, silent and still and close enough to deactivated to make him a tolerable presence.

While his grip was hard and his strokes ungentle during their entanglement, in the placid fallout Starscream found it in himself to indulge with softened, doting caresses, both possessive and tender. Some part of his mind railed against such a thing, that he had not taken advantage of such pathetic weakness already; the rest of him, however, could not care less, still giddy from overload.

His optics drifted thoughtlessly. Obviously he should leave, should’ve already been gone. Little time to spare for these encounters, with so much work left undone.

Most often, he would depart before Skyfire roused himself enough to be completely coherent. Sometimes with a parting shot of his null rays to be certain there were no doubts on his sentiments, or some sniping remark before he blazed off and away, back to headquarters.

However, rare as they were, there were times where he dawdled, strewn haphazardly across Skyfire’s chest, limbs akimbo, his gyroscopes all reeling with tactile sensation. Never when Skyfire was aware - he could never allow such a thing to be witnessed - but, sometimes - so very rarely, it hardly bore mentioning - he actually - somewhat - missed the easy camaraderie of days gone by.

And with Skyfire so very out of it, what was the harm in resting a little while longer?

He laid his head against the chill glass that composed much of Skyfire’s torso, and simply stared, watching the behemoth slowly reboot, reclaiming his mind inch by disoriented inch, energy field distorted by the aftershock of bonding.

It was impossible to not be affected. Their personalities and proclivities were wildly dissimilar, and to merge sparks - if only briefly - was to take on the aspect of the other. These were all too temporary changes, hardly worth noting in the long term, but there nonetheless, an unfortunate side effect. A mellower Starscream would emerge from such trysts, the sharp voice ground down into a more appealing tenor, his emotional plateaus less inhospitable. Irritating changes, but easily overcome.

And Skyfire - what happened to Skyfire in the aftermath? Did he become harsher, less forgiving? Did he sit, restless and agitated, finding his arms empty and his mind fractured between extremes? Did it endear Starscream to him, or drive the wedge more firmly between them?

“Does it really matter?” he muttered, with a depreciative lilt in his voice. He didn’t want to be here anymore.

Only listing slightly, he rose to his feet, rattling his wings to return sensation. No need to fly back on dead sensors, and risk a humiliating crash. The no-sensation that had bundled him departed, and he felt sand beneath his feet, caught in corners and creases, and the leftover marks of Skyfire’s ecstasy, metal pinched in by traitorous fingertips.

Skyfire had no control of himself in interface. He never had. Always misjudging his own strength, or simply too lost in feeling to care.

Starscream shifted his weight from one foot to the other, frowning sternly down at the comatose Autobot as his finicky gyroscope recalibrated itself. Idiot shuttle. Likely had no idea how very lucky he was to be alive. He only functioned on a whim. Starscream would be the one to kill him, one day. Of that he was certain.

Just not tonight.

For good measure, he kicked Skyfire’s side. Then he kicked him again, because now the edge of his foot ached. Skyfire grunted, waving a limp hand vaguely to ward off further violence.

Starscream scoffed, and promptly tottered to the side. “Don’t know how lucky you are, Autobot,” He spat, shaking his wings again in a fit of ruffled pride. “And don’t think it will last forever.”

“Hn,” Skyfire mumbled intelligently, still coming back to himself.

Starscream sneered one last time, the transformed, tearing off into the night. [Coming back in,] He spat over the radio. [What a waste of a patrol.]

[Nothing?] Skywarp’s bored voice crackled back, not even bothering with proper acknowledgement.

[Nothing worth shooting.]