This really is the 'couples' chapter. Warnings for mechslash and other lovely things.

Family Matters

Chapter Three

There weren't many things that could still Bluestreak's vocal processor. Excited or anxious, words flooded from him as if he'd sprung a leak. He hated silence – found it unnerving that in a universe filled with life, growth and destruction that it could ever be quiet for minutes at a time – and so filled it with what he knew perfectly well was inane chatter. Silence only came to him in certain moments – the short, shocked aftermath of a death or upon finding his attention fixed upon something so spectacular that it couldn't be translated into words.

Lying on his berth with Luna, spooned to her back and cupping the very bottom of her chassis whilst listening to the rhythmical sounds of her systems as she built their child, was one of those moments. At two weeks old there was only the thread-fine outline of a skeletal protoform around its spark, and so nothing to distort her body or feel moving against her plates, but he imagined that he could feel it. A point of warmth beneath plates that appeared unremarkable on the surface, but from which he couldn't bring his attention from when he saw her.

Luna rested her slim hands over his blunt fingers, shifting fractionally on the berth and smiling when she felt his hands press, searching. "You won't be able to feel her for another three weeks, Ratchet said."

Bluestreak kissed the back of her helm, resting his chin against the smooth metal. Though the gender of the sparkling would be debateable until the halfway point of carrying, she insisted that it was a femme simply because there were already too many mechs around the Base. "Yeah, maybe, but I want to feel her first, not have Ratchet telling me in a check up that I can. I wouldn't want to miss it. You've got it easy – you'll be able to tell right away, and you'd better come find me if I'm not there."

"Of course I would," she soothed, running the flat pads of her fingers across his knuckles to still his speech. "I wouldn't want to miss it either, but if I'm in recharge when she kicks for the first time…"

It was a tease and Bluestreak hugged her for it. "I'd wake you right up, because my hands are always right here, see?"

Luna smiled as those strong hands flexed in a brief squeeze before relaxing to rest against her again. After a few minutes his fingers began to run small, warm circles. When she sighed into the caress, one hand moved to the thinnest point on her waist to thumb her backstrut whilst his fingers stroked over and between her thin surface plating. "That feels nice."

"Good to know," he murmured back, his words coming slowly from intent as his hand became bolder.

Though clearly enjoying the petting, Luna allowed it for only a few more minutes before holding Bluestreak's wrists to stop him. "Please, no more."

Frowning at her tone, the warrior mech slid his arm out from under her to prop himself on his side, gazing down at her face with obvious concern. "What is it? Are you okay? Does something hurt? Should I get Ratchet? I'll get Ratchet. I-"

Her fingers touched his mouth whilst her own twitched into a smile. "I'm fine, you don't need to call Ratchet. I just don't know if we should take this any further."

Bluestreak's shoulder twitched in a shrug, though he wasn't thinking with his interface panel at the moment. He loved his femme, now more than ever, and wanted to please her. "It'd be really gentle, I promise. Ratchet said it'd be okay."

She sighed, optics brightening a little from where they had been dimming towards a light recharge. "Ratchet may the best field medic in the Autobots, but he's not well versed with sparkbearing. He told me himself that he's not a specialist, and that he's only worked with five femmes in the past. I just don't want to risk anything happening."

"You could ask Prime," Bluestreak suggested, blinking when Luna's expression morphed into a look of horrified astonishment. "What?"

"Ask the Prime?" Luna echoed back incredulously, mouth open and apparently waiting for the punchline. When it didn't come she shook her head. "I can barely ask him to sign off on paperwork for me. I'm not going to just ask him about sparkbearing, let alone interfacing."

Bluestreak's frown deepened, sincerely failing to see the problem. "Why not? Prime's the only bot here who's carried, so straight away he'll know more about what it's really like than Ratchet does, even though he's a mech so it might have been a bit different. He's really nice, Luna. He's got an open door policy for just this kind of stuff – so any bot can come to him with any problem." A pause and he rolled his optics. "Well, he –did- until he got bonded to Ironhide. Now it's like a ninety percent of the time open door policy, and the other ten percent you just have to come back later. But that ten percent is usually off-duty time anyway, so I guess it doesn't make much difference. It's good that he leaves the office nowadays, really."

Narrowing one optic, Luna sat up a little on her elbows before he could carry on. "You would really go into Prime's office and just ask him if he interfaced at all whilst he was carrying Tempest? You'd be able to look him in the optic and say those words?"

"I don't have a problem saying anything," Bluestreak replied smartly with a grin, though it faltered as the proposed scenario ran through his head. "Though maybe not look him in the optics whilst I said it. I mean, if it was just something about sparkbearing I'm sure he'd be happy to talk about it, but asking the Supreme Commander of the Autobots about his sex life… Yeah, that might be where the line is on the open-door thing. And even if he didn't kick me out and answered the question, I don't think I'd even want to know because, well, he's Prime and that's way, way too personal. I mean, I'm sure he doesn't recharge in a box or anything, but still it's not something I want in my processor. Not that it freaks me out, but I suppose it does, just that-"

Luna hushed him again with her fingers, her bottom lip caught between her dentals as a lyrical laugh fought to escape her vocal processor. "It's alright, Blue', I didn't want you to anyway."

A look of pure relief and Bluestreak nodded, lying down again and pulling her body back into his. Without conscious thought his fingers began laying trails again, only stopping when the femme clicked a soft admonishment at him. Plates heating in frustrated embarrassment, he tucked his head into her shoulder. "I'll go see Ratchet tomorrow," he mumbled, shuttering his optics and summoning a recording of a baseball game to his processor.

It had been a week since 'that' night, and Ratchet couldn't decide what was more infuriating: the fact that he couldn't remember any of it and thus had only the cringing embarrassment left after the enjoyable part was over to think on; or that Starscream was acting as if nothing had happened. He'd have been happier if the Seeker had been avoiding him, or seemed to be acting abnormally in any way, but Starscream's behaviour hadn't changed an iota. He still brought in the first 'for you' extra cube of energon in the morning when they were both looking over projects to check on progress during the night, starting the alternating pattern of who left to get them both fuel throughout the day. He still sat at his usual place in an out-of-the-way corner of the Medbay next to Ratchet's radio, which he never touched despite occasionally complaining about the music. He still came to him for second opinions on his biochemistry work and excused himself when he was due to see Tempest.

In response to this, Ratchet had been making a point of acting normally as well. He called Starscream over when a large part he was repairing needed an extra degree of brute force. He apologized when he had to throw the Seeker out for a while when a screen wasn't sufficient for a patient. He drank his energon listening to what he was doing at the moment, curiosity morphing into intrigue at the mech's proposed approach to creating energon from the newer sustainable resources the humans had developed so they'd no longer have to filter out the impurities from converted fossil fuels. He genuinely enjoyed the other's company, having forgotten how nice it was not to be the only bot in the Medbay and to still be able to work in a professionally geared atmosphere.

After a week without so much as an embarrassed optic flicker at unintentional innuendo (a part of working with rods, drills and other equipment), Ratchet had decided that he had to confront the Seeker about what had happened just so that he wouldn't be constantly waiting for it. Waiting for what, exactly, he wasn't sure, but something. Something surely had to have changed simply because they'd interfaced. Obsessing over this was keeping him from recharge now.

Running all this through his processor again had given him the impetus to abandon his berth and make the short walk to the Seekers' shared quarters. At the door and mindful of the hour, he pinged Starscream privately and waited. There was no response and, assuming deep recharge, Ratchet turned to return to his own living space.

"You get me up and now you're leaving?"

Ratchet stopped and looked back over his shoulder, seeing a fairly disgruntled mech standing in the darkened doorway. "Never mind, it can wait. Go back to berth. I'm sorry I disturbed you."

Starscream frowned at that and stepped out fully into the corridor, glancing back to see if he'd awoken any of the remaining three Seekers before shutting the door and approaching the medic. "No, I'm up now. What's on your mind?"

Feeling somewhat lost now that he was on the cusp of confronting the mech, Ratchet glanced about partially to check that they were alone and partially to gain a few extra seconds to think. Finally he replied, "Not here. Medbay?"

The broad mech folded his arms. "Your quarters are closer and, by my reckoning, empty."

Ratchet's mouth tightened into a hard line at that, narrowed optics scrutinizing to see if anything more had been meant by that comment. Starscream's expression remained impassive, however, so he merely nodded and led them a few doors down the corridor to his own. Letting the other mech enter first, he flicked on the lights and was suddenly, illogically, self-conscious. He rarely had visitors to his own quarters, tending to see bots around the Medbay or in the yard. This felt like a peculiar kind of invasion that he'd allowed to happen.

Starscream was watching him expectantly, his sharp features tight. "So? What's wrong?"

A beat whilst Ratchet wrestled for some kind of response, before he finally blurted, "We can't keep acting like this."

The Seeker blinked though immediately masked his surprise, shifting his weight on his feet a little as he stood in the middle of the room. There were chairs but Ratchet hadn't invited him to sit. There was a door to leave but Ratchet was blocking it. The only other door led to the berthroom, and he was quite sure that it wasn't going to get used. He studied the mech's features. "What are you talking about?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Ratchet barked back, perturbed that he was having to be the one to move things along to a reconciliation. He couldn't spend his time wondering what was really going through Starscream's mind, wondering if the defector felt as sick about what had happened as he did or if he wanted to do it again. The latter he'd made a point of not giving a lot of thought to. "We can't go on pretending nothing happened."

Suddenly animated, Starscream threw up his hands and moved to the side of the room to lean his back against the wall. "I knew you were going to make a big deal out of this. Stupid Autobots just have to pick and pick until the weld comes off."

Ratchet scoffed. "Let me remind you that you're a so called 'stupid Autobot' now as well. And I'm not picking. I'm just…" A vague gesture of helpless, irritated confusion with his hands before he moved to the opposite wall to put as much distance between them as possible. "I don't know what happened. I don't remember anything except for waking up. I'm not even certain if anything happened at all."

A flickered smirk and Starscream's optics flashed a ruby hue. "Things happened, and it's a shame you can't remember because you seemed to enjoy it."

Despite himself Ratchet cringed with shuttered optics, gritting his dentals. At least they were getting somewhere, though. "So you remember everything?" he bit out for clarification. If the Seeker just told him what had actually happened, particularly who initiated the proceedings, his over-imaginative processor might back off.

Unseen, Starscream nodded. "My system's tolerance is more resistant to getting over-energized than yours, it seems."

Ratchet shook his head, unshuttering his optics but keeping his gaze on the floor between them. "I've never experienced a blackout before, but then maybe I've never drunk that much before. I don't remember."

A hard shunt made Ratchet look up as Starscream fairly glowered at the floor. "Or maybe you're blocking it because you're having some kind of PTSD."

The medic looked up archly. "I hardly think over-energized interfacing can be deemed traumatic."

Starscream scoffed, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling. "Yeah, because you've been –completely- unaffected by me, what with taking a step back when I come near you all week, and dropping things off your workbench because you think I'm watching you."

Ratchet refused to fidget, however minutely. It stung a little that the Seeker thought him to have been so rattled by a one-night tryst that he was quite sure neither of them had considered before. It was somewhat true, but he didn't like this sense of defensive indignation that pulsed off the mech, shaded with something that looked like shame. "I'm not afraid of you, Starscream, nor did I fear that you were thinking about anything… inappropriate whilst we were working."

Starscream fixed upon the mech's stare with a frown, stepping away from the wall. "Get over yourself, Ratch'. We fragged, it was fun, life goes on." A cocked brow. "Are we done now?"

Clearly they were both embarrassed now, though Ratchet also felt guilty for the mood he seemed to have put the Seeker in and simply nodded, optics downcast. He'd anticipated Starscream to respond to him with his usual dry, intelligent wit, probably scoff and condescend for a while before finally closing the conversation on a serious tone. From spending so much time together since he'd defected and pledged allegiance to Tempest, and thus the Autobots, it was how he'd come to understand his character. Apparently he was wrong.

As Starscream came level with him heading towards the door, he impulsively raised a hand, uttering, "Wait." The mech paused and continued to watch him with that loaded stare as he approached, coming to stand opposite him. Ratchet forced his gaze back up. "I'm sorry, Starscream. I never meant to imply anything like that."

"What, that even though I've been fighting for your side for the past year that I'm still a filthy Decepticon whom you should be ashamed to have shared a berth with?" Starscream spat, armour tightening to close the vulnerable gaps through to his working parts and protoform.

Suppressing a sigh, Ratchet grimaced at the loathing in the tone and shook his head. "It's not like that. I've come to see you as a colleague, even as a friend, and -"

"And as a lover is such a repugnant thought to you that it's kept you awake and made you seek me out to confront me about it?" Starscream broke in venomously, taking a step forward to force the other mech back lest their bodies come into contact. "It's a mercy to you that you don't remember, because then you'd have to live with the fact that you started on me on top of everything else that's fritzing your processor."

Dimly, Ratchet felt himself gape. "… I, started?"

Starscream's mouth twisted and more steps were taken, rapidly backing Ratchet into the wall and pining him there with seething optics. "Yes, -you-." Abruptly, and eliciting a short gasp from the medic, he roughly grabbed Ratchet's wrists and pinned them to the wall level with his shoulders. "You got me like this, just inside the Medbay. I was making sure you didn't end up on one of your own plasma arcs before I went to my berth, and you grabbed me like this."

Ratchet stood frozen in place with wide optics, acutely aware of Starscream's hands restraining him and of how the glass of the mech's cockpit was just resting against his chassis rollbar.

Optics narrowed, Starscream's tone lilted into the thrumming croon he'd naturally favoured performing interrogations as his hands slid up from the unresisting wrists to rest over the medic's hands, interlacing his clawed fingers with Ratchet's. "You had my hands like this whilst you looked at me. These hands which have ended more lives than you've ever saved."

The medic's dentals clamped harder, a tremor passing through his frame.

"Which have drawn your weight in energon from Prime over the centuries."

Ratchet's voice came as a quiet hiss. "Stop it."

"Which have crushed spark casings torn from your comrade's chests."

His hands clenched into fists around Starscream's and he pushed back without success. "Shut up."

At the resistance Starscream closed the final slither of air between them, using his body to pin the slighter mech to the wall as well as his hands. "You looked at me with heat and questions, asking me to roam these hands over you and moaning when I obliged."

With renewed strength Ratchet shoved himself off the wall and twisted them sideways, ultimately slamming Starscream back in the same position he'd just been in. The exertion had made his engine growl, a corresponding sound returning from the Seeker's chassis. "I mean it, Starscream. Stop."

"You stop!" Starscream roared back, optics turned to slits so deep a hue of red that they appeared black. "Stop blaming me for something you're so fragging ashamed of when it was your fragging idea in the first place. It was just a frag – a good one that you can't let alone. I haven't asked for anything from you or tried to change things. You're the one obsessing and then trying to blame me as if I took advantage of you. I'm not sentimental over a frag like you are, but I'm not going to just stand here whilst you-"

Ratchet clamped his mouth over his to shut him up more than anything else.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Pulling back with a hot charge that swelled across his body, Ratchet glared at Starscream out of frustration with his system's own aroused response as much as with the Seeker's screeching. The rage evaporated from Starscream's features leaving contempt in its place, and his voice was dry. "You're moronic."

"Shut up, Screamer," Ratchet bit back, yielding to some deeper urge and finding Starscream's mouth meeting his halfway across the gap. Fingers tightening and fisting against the wall, both mechs shifted against each other and twitched when warm metal scraped hard.

Bewildered but finding that he didn't care beyond how his spark was pulsating at the moment, Ratchet pulled back from the other's mouth and met the red gaze with his own darkened one. "You're like a fragging drug, you know that?" he growled, relaxing his grip on the Seeker's hands to see where they would go.

Starscream gave an unkind smile, flexing his fingers against the wall before running his clawed thumbs down the sides of Ratchet's throat, skimming twin lines down to his hips where he pushed between armoured plates to the vulnerable protoform beneath. "Maybe I'll do you some good," he replied in a low reverb, flexing his fingers to trip over parts with no gentleness and feeling his own fans kick in at the sounds it elicited.

Trying to gather himself a little, Ratchet opened his optics and fixed his hands on Starscream's shoulders, pulling him forwards before slamming him back with a growl just as his body arched again from that incredible touch. "This isn't going to happen again."

The Seeker smirked and tipped his head, silently offering his mouth again as the medic's hands slid to the edges of his wings. A whined gasp he hadn't meant to vocalise escaped him. "That depends entirely on you," he replied when he'd found his voice again, just before another hard kiss.

We enter our shared quarters in a silence that denotes sombreness but is actually the result of the hot and cold prickles fluttering along our bond. Anticipation and wariness. Desire and uncertainty. The repetitive knock of Ironhide's unspoken question: are you sure?

He's not an emotionally articulate bot, which made the sparkbond more of a stabilisation of our relationship than a celebration of it. I never doubted his commitment, though. After centuries of knowing him I am as able to predict most of his behaviour as he is mine, but a romantic entanglement was unchartered territory, and his unpredictability in the realm of being lovers was as disquieting as it was exhilarating. The sparkbond, whilst doubling pleasure and granted the reassuring constant presence of a beloved 'Other', shed light on some of the unknown quantities of who he was whilst somehow allowing some of the mystery to survive.

I know from feeling him that he lies on his side facing me because his frontal sensors are better at close range than the ones of his back, and that even in deep recharge he gets a warm sense that he is not alone. If he does recharge alone, he lies on his back as I and most mechs do.

I know from touching the unshielded eddies beneath even his most incoherent desires that his doting sexual ministrations, his long-lingering hands and mouth past the point of reasonable patience, is not rooted in reverence at my supposedly being the living symbol of Primus himself, as I had worried. It is because his mental pleasure, quite separated from ports, cables and spark, is wholly parasitic. The most erotic thing he can do for himself is pleasure me, and was wholesparkedly so long before the bond and the sharing of sensation.

Such knowledge of him, exposure to a side that few could even guess at, humbles me and brings a warmth to my hands as I touch his neck when he abandons moving towards the berthroom to sit in the living area.

"At the risk of a foolish question," I broach, standing behind him to circle my thumb over a battered and frequently aching part, "What's on your mind?"

We have decided to have a sparkling. His answer could be any number of things. Sighing into my touch, Ironhide shutters his optics. "I don't want to hurt you."

Not what I was expecting and I laugh softly to myself because of it. "Of course not, but some discomfort is to be expected."

A dark hand slides up to cover mine though doesn't restrict my fingers, encouraging the small massage. Affirmation through contact. "All jokes aside, you had it hard with Tempest. Carrying gave you more suffering than it ought to have."

"Mechs aren't well designed for it," I agree softly, thinking briefly with a smile of Bluestreak and Luna. Sparkbearing has made the femme positively glow. As pleasing as their happiness is, I push the thought aside. It's only us here. "You're worried that bringing our sparkling into the world will cause me undue pain?"

A grumbled sigh and his optics open to fix on an unspecified point on the far wall. It's an expression that only looks stoic, but actually speaks of a tumultuous wave beneath his features.

"When Megatron forced a sparkling on you, it gave me another reason to hate him. A personal one. And every day I saw you and what was happening to you, I couldn't see the sparkling as anything more than a parasitic time bomb, and I hated it too."

My hand has fallen still of its own accord as I listen, my own optics narrowed and averted now as well.

He sighs through his vents, squeezes my hand on his neck. "Tempest's a good bot, and I'm as proud of him as I would be any of my own. But when he was just Megatron's sparkling forced on you, seeing you overclocked, underfueled and more vulnerable than I've ever known you because of giving up space and energy to it hurt. And I don't know how I'm going to feel about doing that to ya with ours. I know the sparkbond will help, but still I'm already feeling slagging guilty and it's not even happened yet."

Silence for long moments, him slipping into an anxious brood at my lack of response as I gather my thoughts. Finally I free my hand from his and come about the chair, kneeling to equalise our optics. "Ironhide," I start, sliding a hand to his knee to settle his gaze on mine. "I know we come from a long life of seeing pain as a necessary evil. Suffering as something to retaliate against. Scars as proud emblems of how we endured and fought back through pain. But 'Hide, not all pain is suffering, and not all hardship is to be avenged or unwelcomed. They will be what bringing our sparkling, yours and mine, into the world will entail. And I welcome it, as I hope you will come to as well."

His optics narrow in scrutiny, turning over the words before the corner of his mouth lifts in a smile. "Still, don't expect that I won't be fussin'."

I smile back with a quirked brow. "Oh, I'll be demanding as much, I assure you. Being a single creator meant no one to rub my backstrut."

A snort. "For starters."

I grin and bow my head, relishing the swell of warmth down the bond that has replaced the anxious prickles as he thinks on his role as caretaker. Doubtless no whim of mine would be considered too fanciful or extreme, though I have no intention of taking advantage of him beyond the necessities.

Still... It's been centuries since I last had a hot oil soak.

A touch to my hand resting on his knee brings me out of my reverie. When I look up I see that the soft smile has morphed into a more predatory smirk. My spark gives a hot little pulse as his optics glint on the doorway to the berthroom.

"Shall we?"

The taller mech rumbled a soft sound of agreement and rose to his feet, leading the way. Optimus had barely reached the berth before he found himself spun and thrown back onto its padded surface. A short laugh at the unexpected enthusiasm evaporated when Ironhide crawled up onto the berth, his optics dark with intent. Now that the last concerns had been addressed, he –wanted- this.

Braced over the slimmer mech, Ironhide brought his mouth down to plates usually hidden by the iconic mask, laying a trail of charged blue sparks. :You know, I'm not quite sure what I'm doing.: he sent quietly over the bond, watching the blue webs of electricity from his kisses ripple out minutely before fading on the metal.

Optimus slid a hand to the mech's hip, trailing the cracks and crevices in the thick armour that he knew to bear sensory treasures. :Don't worry, the data's there. We've just never used it before.:

A reverberating hum and Ironhide rested more of his weight down, straddling his partner's hips. Across the bond their neural feeds synchronised, waxing and waning rhythmical heat as their hands roamed and vents growled.

This was going to take a lot of energy, they both knew, and Ironhide drew back when their engines had both reached that familiar throaty note that spoke of more than lust. Sliding back the cover at the base of his pelvis to expose his interface panel, where cables lurked like electronic stamen around his recessed ports, he blindly hooked the most charged and fed it across the narrow space between their bodies. A pulsing heat guided his unseeing fingers to Optimus's exposed panel whilst his mouth remained locked, foreshadowing the second physical connection.

A short whine unwittingly escaped Optimus's vocals when the corresponding port was bypassed as Ironhide sought one set back deeper in his panel. One he'd never used before.

:Not that one: the older mech crooned, glossa withdrawing to grit his dentals in concentration. :That one.:

The lurch of power made him buck, naturally thrusting his panel into Ironhide's and triggering the remaining connectors to latch onto each other and complete the woven bridge. Automatically their chest plates spun and slammed open without any of the usual teasing slowness.

Any thoughts of seducing them into the final critical exchange were shattered in Ironhide's mind, moaning hard as his processor was overwhelmed, clogged and cleared in turn by the unrelenting waves of ecstasy. Logically, interfacing with intent to reproduce was going to feel better than to otherwise, as a natural incentive to propagate as a species. But surely, the scrap of Ironhide's mind that held fleeting coherent thought gasped, no bot could survive this feeling.

Optimus, by contrast, had no capacity to think coherently at all. He saw white, felt every minute part of him electrified with pleasure - even those that had no business being so – and was keenly aware of a spike of something else leading into his core, like electricity seeking ground. The line from the port connected to Ironhide swelled and stiffened before the first crack of data. The second activated dormant subroutines that began transforming the minute parts in his chassis to make room and prepare for the new infant spark. The third crack made him instinctively grab Ironhide's flexing shoulders to crash their chassis together, sparks merging in a loud and furious joining.

Finally, Ironhide felt his spark swell and something tiny but huge – like a tear in the glossa – splinter off painlessly and fall into the halo of his lover's soul. Deaf and blind to the world outside of this singing passing of data and spark, Ironhide found unconsciousness swelling over him with the warmth of thick High Grade. Sagging as all his hydraulics went out at once, he dimly felt Optimus's hand struggle up to cup his helm before his chestplates inched closed and he fell into recharge.

My chronometer alerts me to a time lapse of three hours and eighteen minutes the moment I come back online, and the blissful feeling of overload feels a long way away. Pinching my closed optics, I catalogue the complaints. My interface port and a few lines leading off of it ache like they've been overheated and shorted. Inside my chassis there is a general busyness that's slowing down as components are rehomed, though despite my body's efforts it's still tightly packed and some of it will have to come out temporarily. Finally, there's a weight on me that's pressing down on both areas and bringing no little discomfort.

"Ironhide."

A light stroke of a hand over my windshield and an acknowledging kiss.

I sigh and open my optics to regard the ceiling. "I love you very much, but kindly get off of me."

There's a rumbled chuckle before he rolls off obligingly, propping himself up on his elbow to regard me. "Sore?"

I sit up with a hand pressed to my chassis, which feels like it's full of loose and disconnected parts. "Somewhat."

A completely insufferable grin. "Figured you might be. Made a hell of a racket. Red Alert thought you were being murdered."

A hand goes to cover my face habitually. "Primus…"

His fingers ghost across my helm and graze soothing strokes to my left antenna. "Once he figured out I was in here with you he just sulked off swearing." The smug tone leaves his voice. "You okay?"

"I could recharge for a week, but yes." I open my optics and find him watching me, his expression warm.

"Did we do it?" He tips his head, voice soft and cautious. "Can you feel anything?"

My systems feel sluggish and I rest my weight back through my hands to remain upright. Drained as I am, though, I can feel a warm presence of something beneath my spark chamber. It's tiny, much smaller than the sliver Megatron placed in me a year ago in its infancy, but already hungrily drawing on power to establish itself. To Ironhide's watchful gaze I merely nod, though smiling.

His hand moves to cup my jaw and tip my mouth into his. Against my lips he rumbles a laugh. "I plugged ya."

"Yes," I agree slowly, arching a brow. What is the expression the humans use? "You the mech."

A barked laugh and Ironhide gives a brief, hard kiss before sliding off the berth. "I'm gonna get you some energon."

"No, you're going to go swagger," I correct evenly, lying back with a sigh and bringing my knees up a little to align my backstrut whilst my systems continue to whirr and pop. "Be sure to inform Ratchet. No doubt he'll want to put half my backup systems into storage as soon as possible."

His footfalls sound towards the door. "Yeah, 'cos my sparkling's gonna be a big bot."

"No doubt." The door closes and I shutter my rolled optics. Before I can feel any real irritation at his smugness, albeit amused, my systems wind back down towards recharge again. I remember to set an alarm for an hour's time, for when my duty shift begins, though it's debateable how productive I'm going to be today.