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tiesthatbind-tf · 1 year ago

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If you’re on a desktop, please full-view these lads if possible! Tumblr compressed the hell out of the preview unfortunately, but so much love was poured into them that it’ll be a shame if y’all didn’’t full view for the goods ;u;b (click, then right-click and open image in new tab!)

I’ve always held a deep fascination of for the Lambros, though for whatever reason, media beyond G1 seem allergic to actually making them brothers, or at least brothers who LIVE till the end and have something resembling a healthy/active relationship, so it was something I wanted to explore with TTB’s version of The Lads--Serafino and Sergio Saverio--who, despite being Twins, are very distinct individuals (Sideswipe in particular has a narrative focused on self-realization after a past of being constantly second best/in Sunstreaker’s shadow, and establishing healthy boundaries, even with those closest to you) with their own occasionally intertwining stories

They’re the team’s Battlefield Hellions, a pair of Feral Elric Brothers willing to punch open multiple Gates of Truth for each other, and who despite their flaws---especially Avowed Bastard Sunstreaker, whose protectiveness and care for Sideswipe is, at times, seemingly his only saving grace---will never have anyone questioning their love for each other.

You can find their (2881 words, this one’s a doozy!) pre-war full story below the cut!

Born to a Manual Class couple in the Little Italy neighbourhood of Lower Manhattan, the Saverio Twins could have easily gone the path of Cain and Abel, and given the lopsided treatment they received from their parents as children, it was a miracle that they didn’t.

Serafino Saverio — hair kissed by the sun — was the much-welcomed firstborn upon whom their hopes were pinned on.

Sergio Saverio – hair tainted with blood – was the surprise second and didn’t even have a name until after a week of his birth (he could only assume they were hoping he didn’t make it that long, being the twin with ‘complications’) as the unplanned and unwanted spare mouth to feed in a household which had always been intended for a family of three, and not a day of his young life passed that he wasn’t reminded by his parents that they had kept him as a favor.

The favoritism was as blatant as it was malicious when it came to food, praises and gifts—all of which were afforded to Serafino, all of which were an afterthought for Sergio who always took everything with a smile, having been told to simply be thankful he had a family, and that Serafino had to come first.

However, Sergio’s treatment didn’t go unnoticed or ignored by Serafino—sharp and cunning for his age—who began to question why his brother had less than him, why his brother was beaten for doing the things which he himself would simply be given a stern talking to, why his mother’s tone fell and rose so drastically between her sons and why his father never had a kind word for a boy who constantly bent over backwards for a fraction of the love they afforded him.

The aching sadness the older twin saw in his brother’s eyes when they were seven and had received their birthday gifts—a beautiful hand-crafted wooden sword for him, a cheap gas station tin Lamborghini for Sergio—gave birth to childhood defiance as he exchanged his gift with Sergio to the surprised dismay of their parents who were stuck awkwardly trying to explain why he couldn’t do that and why they saw it fit to treat two brothers so differently on they day they were born together, only seconds apart.

It was here that the seed was planted of Serafino’s protectiveness over Sergio–his best friend, his playmate, his shadow—and Sergio’s near-unwavering loyalty to Serafino—his defender, his confidante and the only one of their family who truly cared for him.

They grew up tight as thieves as Serafino’s disgust at their parents’ attempts to drive a wedge in between them burned ever brighter, because if they would not treat his brother the same as he, then he would act out in defiance until they treated him the same way they treated Sergio out of sheer frustration.

They walked hand in hand in the streets, always looking out for each other, and sparred fist to fist on the apartment rooftop where they would learn to fight together because the world wasn’t kind to little Manuals—and they had the cuts and bruises to show for it—but from up here where that world seemed so small beneath them, they could dare to dream of a better one where Sergio could be the dashing fighter Serafino’s sword allowed him to see himself as, and where Serafino would be able to one day own and drive a car similar to the little model he had traded that sword for.

School was no more kind to them than the streets were—at twelve, Serafino had learned to read the people around him and kept an aloof and guarded presence, but Sergio — eager for warmth and connection — forged friendships openly and recklessly, class divisions be damned.

His perceived insolence to The Way Things Were earned him the ire of a group of law enforcement prodigy picks when he befriended a girl among their ranks, and they set out to teach him a vicious lesson about staying in his lane despite her protestations.

He fought back hard, but it was Serafino’s fury that was unmatched when the older twin came across the assault in progress and leapt into the fray to back him up.

When the dust had settled, the brothers stood tall among the twitching bodies of five prodigy picks, the leader of the group beaten up so severely by Serafino that their dislocated jaw had to be wired shut for a month.

Serafino earned the scar on his jaw from this altercation, and as the twin who had dealt the most damage, was suspended from schooling indefinitely and put to work to help pay off the medical bills forced upon his family despite open confirmation from the girl at the center of the fight that the brothers’ role in it was that of self-defense (and it was reasoned that if he was so quick with his hands, he best put them to a more productive use).

His reputation as a pugnacious, split-knuckled hellion preceded him among the rough-and-tumble warehouse workers he was stationed with, and, for better or worse, they accepted him into the fold as ‘one of the lads’ despite his youth.

Over beer and cigarette smoke—a vice he embraced too early—he became privy to how truly hopeless their lives were, born in the same class as their parents and their grandparents before them, destined to die in the same class no matter how hard they worked to climb a ladder whose rungs seemed to increase every year, and it made him all the more bitter to the world.

When he crossed paths with one Tulio Hoffman — a stag Beastman attempting to evade authorities in an alley — while on his way back to the workers’ hostel, he made a split-second decision to cover the man’s tracks and pointed the cops elsewhere out of spite for them. His chutzpah, as Tulio called it, earned him the Stagman’s respect, and having seen the calluses on his palms and the crowbar he wielded with unusual expertise for his age, Tulio—who revealed himself as the elusive Thunderhoof, an up and rising don— extended a hand to him with the promise of a better life, one that didn’t require him to slave away in a warehouse for an eternity.

He agreed, seeing a chance to wrest the life he wanted for himself—and by proxy his brother— by force, and pledged loyalty to Thunderhoof who initially employed him as a scout and informant. It was work Serafino excelled in — his relentlessness to get the job done won the Stagman over, and he was quickly promoted to Thunderhoof’s personal assistant, following the don on business deals and clandestine meetings across the city and helping the man keep his ledgers and income on track.

He experienced the High Life for the first time—fine clothes, good food, a fast car—and it was a lifestyle he grew an insatiable taste for and was desperate to keep for himself (attempts at sharing this life with Sergio were politely declined, and there was an understanding of their different approaches to climbing out of the dregs, even if they did not always agree with the others' methods)

The big money Thunderhoof made from taking part in illegal pitfights seemed like a natural progression given his prodigious skill with fisticuffs, and his first win when he was 18 was one the Stagman—who had taken on the role of a somewhat twisted adoptive father—celebrated and honored by gifting him the neck chain he wore, which also served as a symbolic gesture from Thunderhoof that the business would one day be passed to him. Serafino continued his career as a much-feared pitfighter with a rumored body count— the dreaded ‘Aureleone’ (Golden Lion) of the rings — all the while rising up the ranks of Thunderhoof’s mob until he was the man’s underboss, and keeping an eye out for Sergio like any good big brother worth their salt.

Sergio’s scar above his eyebrow remains a daily reminder of the day the system came for him and his brother, and while he was allowed to remain in school, he was transferred to a heavily-manual establishment which would ‘better suit those like him’.

The situation at home became even more unbearable than it already was, as his parents blamed Serafino’s downfall on his carelessness and stupidity—despite Serafino’s assertion that the bullies deserved everything that happened to them and he would reoffend on sight if they hurt Sergio again—and he began to spend more and more time outside, visiting Serafino at work whenever he could to repeat the day’s lesson during breaks so his brother still had access to education and sneaking into worker’s rallies by the docks.

It was here that he was drawn to the music and effortless charisma of a young dock worker and union figurehead, Jace Zayden (Jazz), which whom he struck up a friendship, and where Thunderhoof brought Serafino deeper into the underbelly of the city to escape the system, Jace gave him hope that change could happen on the surface, in the sun.

After a blowout with his parents when he was 16 where they’d made it clear he should never have been born, he finally left the house. Not wanting to burden Serafino who had already suffered enough for him in his eyes or be indebted to Thunderhoof (who he respected for taking care of his brother, but understood was a dangerous man with an agenda), he roomed with Jace who had taken on the role of his mentor and helped him find employment as a warehouse worker so he could save up to afford rent for his own place once he was old enough to sign a lease. His nights were divided between helping Serafino with supply runs and stock-checking for Thunderhoof’s contraband goods, and joining Jace at union meetings as well as helping the man with his activism and protest plans.

When Jace was arrested after a brutal crackdown on a workers’ rally and never came back to the neighborhood, Sergio feared the worst but wasted no time stepping into Jace’s position when their local union chapter began to flounder so he could continue their fight for a better life.

Like his brother, he had become intimately acquainted with the injustice perpetuated by the neverending cycle of poverty their class was intentionally, systematically trapped in, but rather than abandon it and the people in it as Serafino had chosen to do, he wanted to help break it so his community could rise above it with him.

As the most prominent figurehead of an unprecedented, rising tide of unionization in Manhattan which started from across the pond in the UK, he was marked out as a person of interest by local officials desperate to keep the status quo, and his increasing clashes with local cops tasked with bringing those behind these ‘public disturbances’ to heel brought him in contact with a face he remembered from his school days—the same upperclass girl he had tried to befriend, whose testimony had helped keep him and Serafino out of juvie and who was now a tough-as-nails rookie with a reputation for breaking ranks.

Stella Armstrong (Strongarm) was more than a little surprised to find out that the scrawny, bright-eyed Manual scrapper who had suddenly disappeared from her classroom after the Big Fight was now a feisty, quick-talking, hot-tempered rabble-rouser with a careless smirk and a witty comeback for every police warning lobbed at him.

Regardless of his teasing and her scoldings for the ‘trouble’ he made for her whenever they crossed paths, Sergio kept eye out for her on the streets—good cops didn’t last long in the ranks, he knew this much—and vouched for her being an ‘honest one’ whenever she was stonewalled for information regarding her cases.

In turn, Stella spoke out in defense of him whenever her colleagues brought him in and attempted to remand him for a period much longer than the minor infractions he was hauled in for could justify, and stopped any attempted violence on him and his community in lockup, making enemies among the force in the process.

When several prominent union supporters began turning up dead to the radio silence of the police, Sergio approached Stella for help in investigating the matter, and she agreed to do so after finding out that reports filed on the murders had been closed before any investigations had wrapped up.

She gave him a burner cell to keep their communications private after the two agreed that something about the situation smelled like a cover-up.

All of this was confirmed when Stella called him with a warning that the killings were tied to the current mayor who had pro-functionist ties, cops on payroll and was desperate for a re-election in the coming month.

She had also found documents approving the use of Mnemosurgery on a list of union figureheads to turn them into Trojan Horses on their own movement and communities—a list which Sergio’s name headed, which meant he had to go into hiding before the next minor infraction brought him back to lockup.

When she couldn't give him an answer on if the breach of classified information could be traced back to her, he feared for the worst again—the unsolved fate of Jace still hung heavy in his mind—more so when further calls he made to her went to voicemail.

The next call Sergio received from her sent him on a hunt for her in the winding alleys of Brooklyn, where he found her bleeding out from a through-and-through gunshot wound to the stomach she received from her own colleague, after it was revealed that the drug bust she was a part of was a front to get her in a vulnerable position so they could take her out.

Her refusal to back the thin blue line at all costs, newfound knowledge of wide-spread corruption in the ranks and growing friendship with a ‘target’ had made her a liability, one they had orders to get rid of.

He raced her to a back-alley clinic, unable to bring her to the local GH because of the real danger of the rest of the force coming over to finish the job.

Stella survived the ordeal with his help, and the two of them went into hiding together to plan their next move; As she had never turned off her body camera, she had damning evidence of the hit which she had immediately downloaded to the burner cell for safekeeping in case the footage was later remotely wiped, and she had taken pictures of the documents beforehand.

To Sergio’s surprise, help came from two unexpected places; Jace, who returned from self-exile in the UK after it was discovered that the same thing planned for Sergio had earlier been planned for him, and Serafino, who had broken the Mafia Code and put aside mob work and pitfighting the moment he caught wind of the target on his baby brother’s back. (When Thunderhoof had demanded that his loyalty to the mob come before his loyalty to his brother if he were to take over the mantle of Don, he balked at the idea)

As it turned out, Jace was part of the Resistance movement back in the UK which had branched out worldwide and inspired the rising workers’ protests in the States as well, and worked as a saboteur who had experience in exposing corrupt men in power for filth.

Stella’s near-death experience and the ongoing risk to her life made a strong case for her filming a dying confession which Sergio delivered along with her body cam footage to her father, who then passed both to an attorney whose services her family had employed to find justice for their ‘missing’ daughter.

The documents and list made it to the ACLU’s New York office, while Serafino and Jace both worked on a sting to catch the mayor red-handed, as they posed as bounty hunters looking to collect on Sergio’s head. As Sergio played his role as defiant captive and tactically bandied words with the mayor to lead the man to a full confession, Jace’s colleague, Brandon Shen (Blaster) hacked major digital billboards at Times Square to air the footage in real-time, destroying the man’s name and political career in the span of fifteen minutes.

Regardless of their victories however, both Sergio and Stella had become far too big of targets to remain where they were, and Jace offered to bring them all into the Resistance’s fold.

Sergio, for his own safety, had to hand over the reins of leadership to a new leader of the Manhattan Movement, though his community, knowing full well the risk he had put himself through for them, encouraged him to find safe harbor with Jace’s team mates who could afford him the protection he needed. .

He had carried on Jace’s work when Jace had to leave, and there would be others to continue the work here.

Serafino, chafing harder and harder against the control that Thunderhoof was rapidly losing on him, threw all caution against the wind, chose the codename Sunstreaker and joined his brother. --now codenamed Sideswipe -- as the new frontliners of the wider Resistance movement.

Whether he would come to regret the decision was still up in the air, but brothers stuck together, and the path ahead was one both of them would forge back to back with each other as fate damn well intended.

#maccadam #maccadams #humanformers #sunstreaker #sideswipe #Me: I love both twins equally #Earlier that day: Sideswipe is Best Boy #The Bugman in Sunny's sheet is the one and only Bob!

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