Title: Crystal'verse Drabbles
Author: diayang
Rating: T
Pairing: Barricade/OC
Summary: Life goes on. Sort of.
Disclaimer: Transformers © Hasbro/Dreamworks.
A/N: Quick and dirty drabble(s).
When Barricade rounded the corner, the first thing he did when the familiar form showed up on his sensor sweep was to freeze, almost imperceptibly – then prowl forward with an alarming intensity, a clear sense of threat/protection/worry visible in the way the car perched on its shocks, like a cat on alert walking on its toes. The street held all the usual, intermittent bustle of urban pedestrian life in a more residential area; suits and jogging clothes, crisply ironed linens and ragged denim. They passed with only the briefest flicker of eyes over the cop who emerged from the Saleen parked across the street; he slammed the door shut and jogged across, picking his way to a woman who sat slumped at the foot of the steps leading to an apartment foyer.
They moved on; he didn't.
"You slacking off work?" he jabbed, the wormy little threads of worry unusually harsh around his spark. Calleigh – his Calleigh – lifted her head, hands folded in her lap.
"Quit," she rasped, the tone of her voice distorted from crying and some other emotion, eyes slightly blank, studying the form of the black car across the street more than the cop hovering over her. "Couldn't take it – the gossip and the talk."
"And here I thought you placed money-making and your job over even me," 'Cade snarked, sarcasm clear in his tone. Slag. Calle not yelling at him was a little like the Pits freezing over. The black-haired woman simply shook her head and pushed to her feet, dusting off her skirt. "It's done. I don't care to go back there – see all the catty bitchiness." And the talk that went on, oh, the talk. Calleigh shrugged, turned to him. Despite everything – his asshole jerk qualities, the insistence and the gruff bullying manner that was Barricade – he'd been a constant. A pain in her ass, but still an eerily consistent presence that had yet to fail her. And he wasn't failing her now.
"Can – can we go for a drive?" she husked quietly, leaning into the space between her and the holoform, eyes wide. Sharp eyes, almost red, peered down at her, the slightly too thin lips compressed, his expression softening for the barest fraction of a second before it settled back into the faint sneer he could never hide from her.
Across the street, 'Cade's lights flashed briefly.
"Yeah. C'mon."