He'd been trying to get hold of her for almost 10 minutes when he realizes that something is probably wrong.

Astrid is completely inebriated, he can tell from her texts, and it seems like she's gone off to drink alone. Alone, drunk, and non-responsive are not three things that he wants Astrid to be at the same time... pretty much under any circumstance.

Having stayed pretty close to the hotel the entire time makes it easy for him to get to where his sensors triangulated her location based on the signal in his text message, and it doesn't look like she's strayed that far, thank Primus.

But ten minutes in the parking lot waiting for her to come out of the bustling downtown bar has him nervous enough that he's got to do something drastic. Astrid had given him some emergency contact info when they got to Alaska: her parents' and sister's numbers. He will admit that the idea to call one of them and enlist their help in finding her crosses his mind, but he suspects there's a reason she's run off to a watering hole instead of enjoying herself at a jazz club with her family like they'd planned.

Fraggit, it's up to him to get her out.

The giant robot.

Hound is idling nervously in a parking spot next to the building, twisting his front tires a little as he checks his energy stores, making sure he can pull off the holoform rescue. Being the Autobot's probable foremost expert in hardlight — not holograms, as most folks preferred to call it — use and tactics, one would think that this would be a cinch. Not so much. The bar is averaging an occupant for every square meter of space, his sensors indicate, and there's furniture everywhere. It's one thing to make a holoform look like it's walking or sitting on something solid; it's another thing entirely to make it squeeze through throngs of people and have every point of contact look and feel real. To make the clothes look and feel real. This is going to be a nightmare.

Could be worse, though, he thinks to himself. They could all be sober.

With one last groan he activates his holoform: a middle-aged man, probably early forties, wearing a black t shirt, jeans, and a pair of dusty yellow work boots. Not quite clean-shaven, as there's some stubble dotting the face, and under a black cowboy hat Hound gave him a nice, shaggy crew cut with a few grays thrown in at the temples for good measure. He wears a pair of brass-rimmed aviators no matter what the situation to minimize having to fudge realistic eye movements.

"Here goes nothing," he says through the holoform, opening the door and sending him out.

Most other mechs find that using holoforms more than a few meters away from their persons is difficult and disorienting, but not Hound. And where other Autobots get overwhelmed by sensory data, he's is usually just getting started.

The holo walks across the parking lot to the front door of the bar, almost getting hit by the door itself as two people come bursting out, laughing at something. Hound dodges them, wanting to save his contact energy for when it's absolutely necessary, and slips in behind them before the door closes.

"Astrid?" he calls out over the crowd, looking around with his remote binocular sensors, contorting his voice to make it sound like it'd come from a larynx and not a vocalizer in a Jeep parked 12 meters away. He notices that some people are looking at him, and he hopes its because he looks like he just came from a cattle ranch 3 hours away and not because he's not actually there.

He calls out her name again, paying close attention to how the holo's mouth looks when it's open. Thankfully, it's something that he can directly puppet by harnessing the signals that would otherwise go to his physical face in robot mode. The Jeep swears in his cab when someone bumps into him, though, and sends a small splash of beer right into his shirt. The interior of the mouth is completely forgotten as Hound acts out what to do with the holo's hands, and frag that was a close one. The beer doesn't soak into the black tshirt, and he desperately hopes that no one will notice that it's actually on the floor instead.

"Come on, please be here," he murmurs, beginning to seriously worry when he doesn't see any sign of her as he sidesteps tables and moving bodies on bar stools.

Contrary to what most folks think, and a number of sci-fi stories claim, there's very little in the way of a "signature" that's unique to every human beyond smell, and Hound cannot smell remotely. Even if he could, it seems like finding her in this mess would still be like finding a needle in a haystack. All he's got to work with is visual information.

"Astrid!" he yells again, this time a little bit louder, and then he sees it: a familiar purple sweater. She's at the jukebox in the back, perusing songs, and as he draws nearer he can hear her cursing at it.

"Come as you are my ass," he hears her say, and that's when he knows how bad it is. She's usually only a few drinks away from passing out when she starts ranting about grunge music.

"There you are!" he says, grabbing her arm both to get her attention and to help keep her vertical. He'd carry her back to him in the parking lot if he could, but a steadying grip would have to do: the thing is weak. He can barely lift a 5-gallon bucket of water with it before it fizzles away from insufficient energy input. He'd have to be twice a big in order to generate something stronger than that.

"You're gonna have to wait your turn," she loudly retorts, shaking her arm from him and turning back to the glowing glass case. "Well summer lover passed to fall, tried to REALIZE IT ALL..." she sings, completely off-key, and starts laughing uncontrollably. "That song... that song is totally about this guy I know. I'm not lying! I'm totally not lying. Not this time. I'm so sick of lying."

Hound's brows knit together, and he's pretty sure the holo's does too.

"He's HUGE!" she yells, standing up on tip-toes and reaching her arms toward the ceiling. "Like... he's a one-man basketball team." She snorts and collapses back down to the glass, holding onto it, and she turns to look at him. Her eyes are bleary and it looks like she's been crying. "I can't believe I just called him a man. Can you believe that? I'm gonna tell you a secret." She hooks her finger at him. "HE'S ACTUALLY A ROBOT!" and she starts laughing again.

The Autobot in the parking lot is getting nervous. He's found her, yeah, but unless she comes willingly, then he's up shit creek. And on top of all that, he feels paranoia creeping into his CPU at the shit that's spilling out of her mouth.

"Come on, Astrid," he says, and his voice sounds a little more mechanized than it did before. He tries grabbing her arm again. "Everything's going to be OK, we just need to get you home, alright?"

"Hey!" A young man nearby barks at the holoform, and Hound freezes. The stranger sets his jaw and doesn't take his eyes off of Hound as he addresses Astrid. "Do you know this guy?"

Astrid squints at the holoform, and suddenly it occurs to Hound that she may not recognize it in this state. He barely uses it around her.

"C'mon," he pleads. He recoiled his hand the minute the stranger stepped in, otherwise he'd have to figure out the physics of being popped in the mouth. Making a scene is the absolute last thing that he wants to do. "It's me, H...ound," he grinds out, painfully aware of how awkward his name sounds rolling off a human tongue like that. Even if they'd both agreed on a codename like Hank or Hogan or Hunter, there's no guarantee that she'd remember it while so compromised.

The stranger hears the hesitation in the mech's voice and steps a little closer to Astrid. What Hound can only guess is the man's friend or beau steps in closer as well, in case he needs more backup. Fraggit, fraggit, fraggit.

"My Hound is green and 15 feet tall," she says, completely serious. "I don't know who you are."

"Dammit, Astrid! It's me! This is my holo! Remember?"

The strangers glance at each other, and they have a look on their faces that says wait, are we that drunk? But they gather their composure, and the first one steps in between Hound and his human. "You heard the lady; she doesn't know you. Now take your tiny dick and go home."

The other one has her hand on Astrid's shoulder, hovering like a mama bear even though she's clearly a few years younger. "And learn to pick up chicks like a real man, you fucking creep."

Hound's mad, embarrassed, and beginning to panic. The energy stores he has dedicated to his hardlight tech are dangerously low now, so unless he wants to peel away the roof of the building and pluck her out like King Kong, he's got about 60 seconds left before the holo shifts back to the far less energy-intensive softlight.

Grinding his proverbial teeth together, the mech makes one last go of it. The only way that he's going to get her to recognize him is to do something drastic, and risk scaring everyone else in the vicinity.

"OK. If you can look me in the eye and say that you don't recognize me, then I'll leave you alone, alright?" The man steps away a little, willing to let this one last test pass. Hound moves the holo's hand up to his sunglasses and begins to slowly draw them down the bridge of the its nose. "Look me in the eye, Astrid." Once he knows that she is, he shifts the holo's human eyes to look like his own: blue, back-lit, with the tell-tale brilliant apertures sitting behind almond-shaped panes. He even over-lays a faint image of his own face for a split second, and the blue from his facsimile optics are bright enough to cast her in a delicate light. But he pushes the aviators back into place less than a moment later, hoping that did the trick.

The two strangers' eyes are wide as dinner plates, and it's the man that shakily reaches for the young woman behind him. Their mouths are moving but nothing's coming out. Astrid on the other hand, just blinks, completely unfazed.

"I know those eyes," she says, and the couple look at each other, completely dumb-struck. And then: "Oh my god, it's you! My Hound..." she throws herself at him and FUCK the last of his energy is spent making sure she doesn't phase through him and hit the floor.

"We gotta go we gotta go," he says firmly, shoving her off of the holoform way too roughly for his liking. "The holo is going to disappear any second now." A little lie, but it gets the point across to the wasted woman.

"Aye-aye, captain!" she bellows, moving in front of him and ordering everyone aside. "'Scuse us, Autobot coming through! 'Scuse us!"

Hound wants to die a little.

But most of him, in reality, is thrilled that he's finally gotten her out of the bar so that he can figure out what the hell got them into this pinch to begin with.

"Don't touch it, alright?" he murmurs at her as they exit and make their way across the parking lot. "I've officially gone soft."

She giggles, doing as she's told. "Your holo-guy is like one big dick joke."

He frowns internally for a second and then realizes, wait a minute, she's actually right. (In the past he has said various things along the line of "I'm hard" whenever he pulls out the hardlight holo.) The Jeep laughs, and remembers that it feels good to laugh. And he'll take what he can get because he senses that once she sobers up, there may not be much to laugh at.

By the time they arrive at AHQ, she's dead asleep. But that doesn't mean that there isn't collateral damage: not once, but twice, has he had to frantically pull over on the drive out of town in order for her to puke on something that isn't him. Nothing comes out both times, which clues him into how she got so completely hammered, and is very glad that there'll be no accidentally getting any on him. She spends a solid 14 minutes profusely apologizing— and not just for the dry heaving. At one point she even starts crying again, apologizing for things she didn't even do to him. Things like the time she killed a goldfish by forgetting to feed it, or the time she played some kind of mean trick on her mom that didn't wind up being as funny as she thought. She also apologizes for not being a sexy robot with one breath, and being too small for him to fit his dick into with the next.

Hound isn't quite sure what to do about these admissions. He knows she's too far gone to be able to say a single word that isn't the total truth about everything and anything, but there's really no parallel to what over-fueling does to his kind. Nutty behavior, yeah. Making poor decisions, sure. But dredging up things that happened in childhood? That's a little weird to him.

And the sexy robot thing? He sighs, shooting down the highway at a good speed. If that's the way she truly felt, then he decides to wait until she brings up again later... that is, if she chooses to.

I wish there was a handbook for this, he mumbles to himself as Astrid snores and drools into his seat.

He entertains his own daydreams on the road alone.

Hound finds himself wanting to brush her cheek with his sensor net, curious about the marks he'd made, examine them with remote detectors buried deep inside of him, but who is there but Prowl. Stern-faced and scowling, as he looks over Hound's profile for the first time some four-thousand Terran years ago.

"You prefer melee combat? What do you think this is, the pits?" Prowl says with a bit of disgust.

"You... skipped over the part where it says I don't actually like combat, but if I had to chose a preferred method of engagement, that it would be melee?"

"Look, I know you've been in the service for a while, but this is war"

Hound interrupts him. "Exactly. Which is why you shouldn't be getting picky about a single soldier's preferred"

"...which means that the reputation of the Autobots is going to be scrutinized even more now than during peacetime. We can't go do things like Decepticon thugs, Hound. We're the good guys, which means we take the high road. The clean road."

Hound throws up his arms. "The CLEAN road? What about some of the others that do things my way? Worse than my way? Mechs like... like Blades? Latrius? Roadchaser? I could go on. And they do worse without even touching the enemy! You give them this speech too?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Prowl states cooly. "Regularly.The difference between you and them is that you are an officer and therefore in a position of authority. Those mechs are not. "

"You're acting as though it'd be better for our image if I were to drink myself into stasis on the job than throw a punch."

"Both of them stem from the same aberrant behaviors, and both are equally deplorable. You are never going to be promoted beyond your current rank with something like this tarnishing your profile. Fisticuffs and brawling is for thugs and organics, and have no place in the Autobot... army."

He'd said 'army', but meant something else, Hound knows.

That seems like ages ago now, though. Feeling his fare shift around to get more comfortable in the front passenger seat, his attention is on her for a moment; he realizes that for her, even a few thousand years is an unfathomable length of time. And judging by the frequency of her brainwaves, time itself is unfathomable right now. Apparently it is for him too, as he finds himself driving up the road to the Ark before he realizes that he's done so.

"So how'd it go?" Beachcomber is standing there with Trailbreaker on the gravel, having some quiet time outside the base when Hound drives up.

"She asleep already?" remarks the big black mech, stooping to get a look inside the Jeep's cab.

"I had to rescue her from a bar," he mutters. "Single-handedly."

The others' mouths fall open.

"I'll tell you about it later. It's been a really long day. Help me out though, would you?"

Hound opens the door and undoes her seat belt, and Beachcomber steps forward to lift her gingerly out of the passenger seat. She's as limp as a wet noodle in his hands. He quickly changes, and once bipedal, takes her back from his friend, jerking his head toward the base's entrance.

"I'm going to put her to bed and then I'll be back out for a few. Could definitely use that energon after all this."

The two mechs chuckle, and then when Hound is out of sensor-shot, Trailbreaker turns to the blue off-roader: Are they... sharing a room? he asks over comm.

Ain't none of my business, daddy-o.

Moments later and they're back in their temporary quarters. With one far-too-large hand he attempts to yank open the sleeping bag he'd brought for her, to very little avail. He curses under his breath, trying to do this and hold her steady with his other arm, but gives up and just lays her down on top of it instead, and covers her with the blanket. He takes her bag out from subspace, and fishes around in it for her water bottle, which he sets beside her, and fishes around again for a snack bar, which is a little more difficult to find, but he winds up placing one next to the water.

He steps back and surveys her. She's going to sleep like the dead tonight, he thinks, and then frowns, wondering just what had driven her to do this to herself. Okay, not that he didn't have a damn good idea, but... he wanted the actual story. He hopes to Primus that her hangover won't keep her in bed all day tomorrow, because that's that last fraggin' thing she needs, and slowly heads back outside.

"What'd you do, read her a bedtime story? Criminey," Trailbreaker scoffs from where he leans against a boulder sticking out of the ground. A "Leaverite", a BREME agent had called it once they found out that it went down another 6 meters below the dirt. The name sort of stuck among the Ark's crew after that. "Was tellin' Beach over here that if you weren't back soon, I'd have to drink your drink for you before it got cold." The black mech took a second cube out of subspace and tossed it to the Jeep. "Ain't nothin' sadder than a cold cube!"

Hound chuckled, poking in two corners on the top of the container with his thumb and took a swig. "You've been out of the field for too long, Trailbreaker. Outside the Ark, we take what we can get."

"It's about dignity, Hound!" he says dramatically. "Have you forgotten the meaning of the word?"

Maybe.

He forces a laugh, though. "Hunger strikes count now? Duly noted."

Suddenly, though, Beachcomber is in his comm transceiver. Wait for it, he says cryptically.

Wait for w?

"So where'd you and the broad run off to all day? How come you had to rescue her from a bar?" he asks with a smirk. "Was it attacking her? Inquiring minds are dying to know."

Right. That.

"Good to know the rumor mill is turning just as fast as ever," he all but sighs. "I took her into town to see her folks who were visiting. I think they probably had a few choice words to say so she left and homed in on a watering hole to drown her sorrows."

Most mechs who don't work with humans regularly have a pretty nebulous concept of drunkenness. Sure, it's generally understood that alcohol is a mild poison that humans like to ingest in quantities that usually aren't life-threatening in order to experience pleasurable side-effects. Popular media usually usually depicts drunkenness as a willful bout of temporary stupidity, and most of the mechs are able to wrap their CPUs around that. But others, like Hound, Jazz, Bumblebee, those who work much more closely with their organic allies, have a better understanding of what it does and why its culturally significant. Hound knows, for instance, that it doesn't just stupefy: it removes inhibitions so that emotions are harder to hide. And sometimes the emotions that reveal themselves can be very complicated.

Over-fueling, on the other hand, just dulls the sensor nets and messes with cognition a little. A mech can easily keep a secret right up until they fall into stasis. That is, if they wanted to. There are other substances on the market that can do what alcohol does to humans, and then some; but the use of mods and over-clockers among Cybertronians is far less than illicit drug use in humans. And chemical dependency just doesn't exist.

As always, the corollary is imperfect.

"Well, I don't think it'll take a genius to guess what they could've said to her." Trailbreaker takes a sip of his near-empty cube and looks off into the trees beyond the barbed-wire fence. "It's not like we're particularly well-thought of by most folk."

"Hard to form an opinion if they're not even allowed to know what we are," the green mech grumbles.

You know anything more than that, man?

Not a thing. She spent the whole drive back trying to vomit and rambling about not being good enough for anybody.

"Yep, can't blame em," Trailbreaker says, finishing off his cube and disappearing the empty container into subspace. "Who in their right mind joins a mysterious government organization and suddenly starts getting chummy with giant robots?"

"Mmh." Hound musters a grunt, sipping long on his own drink.

She did tell them about me, though. I know that much. I think she was going to play it off as just a work partnership, but I guess even that was too much for them to handle.

That's some bull, cat. Givin' her the shaft like that.

You're telling me. And now, she's got nobody to turn to besides me. And I'm not human... there are some things I'm never going to be able to do for her. She needs humans in her life, especially right now.

How d'you think this'll re-solve?

I have no idea. No slaggin' idea.

"Hound!"

The voice jolts him out of his comm channel. Beachcomber starts too.

"Sorry, sorry," Hound says. "Was just... daydreaming there for a minute."

"Really. Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you two were having a private conversation."

"Hey cut him some slack, man. Was just asking the green cat a question, yannow?"

He eyes them both. "You know, you've been actin' sorta funny for a while. You sure everything's alright with you?"

Hound vents and stares at the cube in his hand. "I'm fine, really."

"OK, but you know I can read you like an open file, and it's pretty obvious that something's got you all screwed up."

"I said I'm fine."

"Hound, you're among friends, here! Just say it, mech. Spill the—"

"It's none of your fucking business!" Hound snaps, and the English expletive falls out of his mouth so naturally that it startles him. He stares down the black mech, who's standing stock still, mouth buttoned up. "Sometimes you just don't know when to leave well enough alone, Trailbreaker." He throws the half-empty cube at him, and he catches is awkwardly, some of it spilling on him. "Now if you two will excuse me, I think I'm going to retire."

And once again, once Hound is out of immediate sensor-range, Trailbreaker has his last word: "...says the mech with nothing going on."

Hound storms back to his suite, now unable to shake the fluttering of anxiety in his spark.

What in the pit happened just now?

The green mech rests his back against the door behind him as he looks forlornly at Astrid, still in exactly the same position that he'd left her. He vents haphazardly, almost afraid that one of his two friends will come knocking at the door any minute now, and all he suddenly wants to do is hide from the world.

Hound lets gravity draw him to sit on the floor in front of the door and he rubs at the ridge of his nose, shaking his head.

Why... why am I even keeping this from him? He probably knows already.

The mech shudders at the idea, not quite sure why he's so afraid of one of his best friends knowing about his relationship with the human. He keeps telling himself that Trailbreaker wouldn't understand, but now Hound's not so sure. Maybe he would... but is it worth the risk? Hound knows that his spark can't take one more rejection from somebody he respects. It'll be too much.

Once again he looks over to the berth, lifting his optics to see the pile of sleeping bag on the hard surface. He's at eye-level with her now, and tentatively sweeps her body with his sensors. He tells himself that it's to make sure that she's alright and to see if he can tell how dehydrated she is from here, but Hound is still well aware of the real reason.

He can feel them, already well-formed just under the surface of her skin: the bruises. He doesn't know what color they are, their exact dimensions, but he can feel the broken capillaries, sense the dying blood cells pooling in microscopic pockets in her flesh, and he knows. I made those, he thinks, trembling. Me.

And it was so damned easy.

He turns away, forces his sensors off.

That's the other thing he doesn't want anyone, anyone, to know. Not Beachcomber, not Jazz. No one.

Hound suddenly feels sick again as he unwillingly recalls the feeling of her between his hands, between his legs. It had felt good. Too good.

"I'm like a game of Russian Roulette," he whispers, repeating what he'd said earlier. He knows that when he finally gets to see those bruises with his own optics, then it'll be even harder for him to deny. This isn't like the bodice-ripping romances he's heard about and flipped through on one occasion or another— this isn't a well-sculpted, 90 kilo man struggling to express his angst in the most masculine way possible, grunting and growling about some metaphorical "beast" inside. Hound is a 2,200+ kilogram machine. He has no inner beast; and he doesn't need one to put her in a full body cast if he gets just a little too caught up in the throes of sensory bliss.

At what point does he put his foot down and say no?

At what point is she asking too much?

I got used to wanting more than I could get a long time ago.

"Had to accept it," he murmurs to himself.

Hound groans and decides that maybe he should make good on his earlier declaration of retiring. It's late, and all he can do is hope that he sleeps like the dead too.

It's a little after 0800 when he rouses from recharge. He's scrunched up against the wall to make as much room for her as possible on the berth, even though it looks like she hasn't moved an inch since the night before. Hound does a sweep of her, not even needing that much to tell him that she'll be sleeping for while longer yet.

In fact, it's an entire issue of the New York Times and a few chapters of Call of the Wild later before she wakes up.

It took Hound a few years to get used to the literary traditions of Earth, namely the conventions of fiction writing, but it's grown on him. Especially Jack London, who came recommended from Optimus himself after it came up that the green mech was a devout fan of John Muir and had taken to keeping a copy in his memory banks. There's something very... thrilling about reading of the exploits of humans and their animal companions being pitted against the wilderness. Their uniquely inherent frailty and determination is something that he will always, even if he were to ever leave the planet, be fascinated by.

He tucks the digital book away, though, and turns to Astrid, whose eyes have finally opened.

"What... happened?" she asks hoarsely, squinting painfully at the skylight high above her.

Hound reaches over her to grab the water that he'd set out the night before and hands it to her. "If you're not miserable now, you will be," he all but sighs. "Drink up."

She stares at him, still squinting and scowling, a little confused. But when she sits up to take a drink of water she groans and Hound can only imagine what hit her just now. She falls back down to the pillow, clutching her head.

"We have any asprin?" she moans.

"If we did, it probably wouldn't be any good now."

"Dammit."

"Just take it easy, OK? We've got the whole day."

There's silence and she rubs her temples.

He can't help but ask, and he makes sure that his voice is soft.

"What happened last night?"

Astrid stops and stares at the ceiling. He can't tell if she's trying to remember or thinking of the words.

"They think I've gone off the deep end," she says, quietly, flatly.

All the giant mech can manage is to vent himself empty and slump back down onto the berth next to her. The deep end, huh? Dammit, dammit, dammit.

But she's not done yet. "And it's all because they can't wrap their heads around you even being alive. If Scott weren't there to ask all the worst fucking questions..." She takes a deep breath. "It would have gone a lot better."

"Who's Scott again?"

"The brother-in-law. I called him a tinhat before I walked out of the restaurant... he is a tinhat. Contrails, the Illuminati... the man fucking thinks that there's compelling evidence for a faked moon landing. His problem is not that he's stupid, not that he isn't well-read - he knows what humanitarian crisis is going on at any given moment, and that's way more than most folks can say - but it's that he buys the goddamn snake oil anyway."

Hound stays quiet and listens.

Astrid is scowling now. "He knew what questions to ask as soon as I said "government"."

His spark sinks. "What did you tell them?"

She looks sidelong at him and sucks in her bottom lip. She turns away.

Hound rolls over onto his side and captures her tiny chin in his fingers. "Astrid, I need to know what you said." And he does - not just for his sake, but for the project too.

"I told them about the hole, and I told them about you. That's it," she whispers.

He vents again, relieved. It's OK. She did OK. "Just... just let it blow over, alright?" he offers, kicking himself at how weak his attempt at comforting is. Dammit, if only he knew what it was like to have a family. "Give it time. They'll come around."

But she shakes her head. "No," she says. "They're not going to - at least, not Heather and Scott. Not unless I say sorry, and like hell am I going to do that."

The mech isn't going to pretend to know the details of what went down. He's not going to pretend that he knows her sister and her husband, that he knows what kind of relationship Astrid had with her brother-in-law before this happened.

He's not going to pretend to know how she feels.

"What now, then?"

A breathy, strangled sound escapes her and she shakes her head again. "I don't know. Go back to work I guess."

Hound sits up and slides off the foot of the berth. He can't just lay there all morning like she likely will; he's too awake, to distressed. He's gotta go do something. Something at least somewhat productive.

"Where are you going?" she asks, lifting her head only as much as necessary.

"The firing range," he murmurs, nearing the door. "Text me if you need me, alright?"

"Ok."

"See you in a bit."

The range - or shooting gallery, to be more accurate - is empty when Hound slips in. The lights flicker on at his entry, revealing the large space. It's divided into a mech-scaled range, and a human-scaled one: the former 120 meters long, and the latter less than half that.

The gallery is cold. Not temperature-wise, but the atmosphere of this sort of place has always felt incredibly unwelcoming to him. He stakes out a spot behind the wall and sends a signal to the room's computer to dispense a target for him. A flat softlight image in the shape of a universal mech slides down from a track in the ceiling with a gentle hum, and numbered fields appear along the length of the body.

"Fifty meters," he says aloud, and the target responds.

What is it about this place?

The ambient noise of the Ark answers him: gentle thrumming of distant power cells, the sigh of cycling air, a faint creak or deep, subtle groan of metal as the earth settles around the place, freezing and thawing, pushing and pulling at the alien building materials. The mech notices a tiny smear of rust along where the wall meets the ceiling.

Someone should probably look at that.

But what is it about this place?

Hound takes his weapon out of subspace, and as soon as its in his hand he remembers.

It's a long time ago - a few thousand years - and he's back at the practice range after his first combat mission. Primus, he remembers it like yesterday; and not three cycles prior did he put his first bullet in the head of his first kill. A young Decepticon who turned into something with wheels and whose name he never did figure out. What the ballistic did to the young Cybertronian's face was almost incomprehensible; Hound distinctly remembers the shattered visor; the delicate plating ripped open like paper; the shower of sparks that exploded from the destroyed sensor array behind the transparent optical plate.

His company beat a hasty retreat after that. The kill had been in vain.

Hound thought that that moment had come and gone, but it wasn't until he was in the practice range at the base did it hit him like a ton of lead. The mental breakdown was a delayed response, and Hound had to be dragged out of the space by two of the other soldiers from his unit and taken to the med bay. The war was on at that point, and so every effort was made to get the green mech to stay in the ranks. Two cycles later and he made his second kill. No breakdown followed.

But it was in the cycle he spent in the infirmary that made him realize that he was trapped in the life of a career soldier, and that he always would be.

A vent escapes him.

He brings himself back to the now, feeling the heft of the rifle in his hands as he sets his optics on the target. It's a long, sleek, seductive, ballistic weapon. A dull metallic white, it reflects the harsh lighting of the gallery. He rarely uses it, except in combat situations where he's been ordered to attack from a distance, as Prowl so coarsely reminded him all those millennia ago. The thing is about 2 meters long - slightly taller than Astrid, he quips unhappily to himself - and 130 kilos in weight. He runs his fingers over it, feeling every scratch and dent as he lifts it to his shoulder for a moment of reacquaintence, recalling the mission behind every individual mar. They each tell an ugly story: of pistol-whippings, clubbings, and the narrow escapes that the elegant and awful weapon consistently permitted him.

He'll never deny that the gun has saved his life almost too many times to count. But when he's at his lowest? He's almost sure that it only does so to mock him. That it only lets him live under the condition that he goes out into the field and puts his spark on the line in order to extinguish as many others as he can. Hound looks forward to the day that he can cast it aside forever.

Today, though, is not that day.

"Violence is a tool," Prime said in a speech once. "A powerful tool. And it should be used as sparingly as possible. Let the tool control you, and that is how tragedies happen. I want to minimize the number of tragedies we deal out in this war, and minimize the number that get dealt to us."

But war itself is the tragedy. And he knows that Prime knows. But telling that to the troops is a faux-pas.

Hound gives the weapon a once-over, making sure that it's in good working order. He gives a quick flick to a small switch just above the rear grip, and out of the back pops an energy plug. It'd been sitting dead in the gun for months now - since the last time he was in Portland, actually. He pulls it out the rest of the way and sets it on the counter in front of him, taking a fresh one out of subspace and pushing it into the open port with a click. Flipping another switch, the rifle hums to life.

He lifts it to his shoulder again, this time taking aim at the 50-meter target and after waiting for a few moments, instinct pulls the trigger for him.

SHPOW

Right between the would-be optics.

"Seventy-five meters," he calls out, and the target refreshes itself as it heads further away along the track.

Hound usually does two "rounds" of practice, each to home a different role that he's sometimes given out in the field: footsoldier and sniper. For some reason, he always startes with the second. Wheeljack could probably tell me why that is, he thinks to himself as he takes aim a second time. He's ready to fire, but doesn't; a thought occurs to him.

Should probably bring Astrid in here and teach her how to handle a gun.

Never know when she might need it...

A little while later, and he returns to their suite to see if she's up for doing just that.

"How are you feeling?" he asks upon entering. The door sighs shut behind him.

She's still curled up on the sleeping bag - really, an adorably sad sight - and fiddling with her phone. She looks up at him, and decides to rise to a sit, looking as though she's prepared for the worst. When it doesn't happen, Hound chuckles at the expression on her face.

"Seems that the worst is behind me," she shrugs. The mech is inclined to take her word for it even though her rough night is still written in the bags under her eyes and in her listless skin. "This headache will be with me for a little while, though."

He takes a seat next to her and looks down at her small, organic form. Her arms are visible now, and his spark feels odd when his optics fall on the bruises along her shoulder and bicep. He knows there's more, hidden away under the blanket.

"How do those feel?" he murmurs.

"They're still the best thing that happened to me yesterday," she says with a lazy smile.

He scoffs and looks away. "That's not saying much."

"You know what?" she quietly snaps, and he jerks his head back toward her commanding tone. "Stop.You're not being funny."

The giant mech is suddenly nervous. "I wasn't trying to be."

"Then you're insulting me."

"What?"

"You're talking shit about something I thoroughly enjoyed, and that's insulting. You don't have to do any of that ever again, but the least you could do is not be a jerk about it."

Hound is taken aback, and he searches her face for something, he's not sure. "I..."

I wasn't trying to be a jerk.

That's not what I...

"That's not what I mean," he says, suddenly exasperated. The mech looks away. "It's just... I did enjoy myself. I told you that."

"Then what is it? Why do you have to say shit like that?"

Hound's grinding his denta together in his mouth, spark coiling. There's an ache in his foreprocessors. "It's that I want you so bad sometimes that it scares me," he quietly relents.

A little, warm hand touches his and he's looking back at her. The human hooks a finger at him, and Hound can't help but lean in closer, following it.

"You don't think my desires don't scare me too?" she murmurs, reaching out for his face to bring it close enough for a kiss. Her lips, pillowy soft, brush his lower lip, followed by a flick of her tongue. It was always his policy not to open his mouth until she wants him to - he just didn't like the idea, being so much bigger than her and all - and this is her way of asking for more. He can feel the condensation of her breath on his dermaplating like a warm, faint, touch. Primus, that's one of his favorite little things about humans. The sensation has been driving him wild since he first experienced it with a human passenger so many years ago.

Venting, he parts his lips, and dives in. Eventually his hand is in her hair, cradling the back of her skull and using it for leverage as they continue. Every time he manipulates her head this way or that, or pushes her further into him, a tantalizing little noise escapes from her and into the recesses of his own mouth.

At some point, he has her panting and flushed, but he has to break away because his sitting position becomes hard to hold comfortably. Bringing both legs onto the berth from where they hung off the side, he gets on hands and knees over her and continues his assault.

"So this scares you, huh?" Astrid breathes, breaking away. He doesn't want to pull back, so his mouth goes to her bitten shoulder, kissing and nibbling. Her hand is on the side of his helmet.

"No," he says, disarmed by the lip-locking. I want you all over again, right now. "It's that how I want you is changing..."

He can feel her heart rate spike, and if he had a heart, Hound imagines that his would have done the same.

"Changing?"

"Yeah..." he gently pushes her down on her back, hand almost as wide as her hips slipping under the hem of her shit. "I don't know if it's... if it's the new programming, but I... I find myself wanting to be in you more and more."

Where the pit did that come from? He pauses for a second to reflect on what he'd just said, realizing that it's true.

Astrid responds by taking off her shirt for him. "If your cock continues to be the size of my leg, then I really can't help you there."

Hound thought for a moment about what Wheeljack told him about the apparatus when he'd gone to have it installed. It'd been an awkward visit; Wheeljack had no compunction either way, but Hound wanted the thing to take as little time as possible, and exchange as few words as was necessary. The engineer had said that the device had been designed to integrate with his systems over time, to create as an "organic" experience as could be had, as it learned to tailor itself to Hound's programming, behavior, and emotions. Eventually, maybe after a few weeks or months, it would start to respond to somatic input without Hound's conscious intervention. After that, its attributes would be more or less fully matured and assimilated, and changing them at that point would require conscious, manual, or even mechanical intercession.

In other words, it would become as natural to his systems as having legs or hands. But in the interim, in this pseudo-puberty? Hound had full control over when he wanted it, and how he wanted it to be. And that usually meant "proportional".

Her hand on his brakes his train of thought. "I know," he fretted. "But..."

"But you like it the way it is?"

Hound twists up his mouth and he looks down at her. "Yeah."

"You can't have both, big guy."

"I know."

She looks off to the side, then down past his chest, and meets his gaze again with a devious grin. Uh oh. What's that little hellcat up to this time?

"Sit back," she says, biting her lip and getting up onto her knees.

He does as he's told, resting back down on his legs, hands on his thighs. He's watching her as she steps over to him, motioning for him to set his knees further apart, and she takes her place between his thighs. Slag... the mere sight of her settled between his legs like that, looking so small and yet so fierce, sends his spark a-shivering. And when her tiny hands, not even big enough to wrap around his thumb, set themselves on his thighs next to his, he activates the toy.

The feeling of just materializing it, the sensation of its coiling conduits swelling with his own, real, spark fluids, is a shock of pleasure on its own. It's fully erect in a second or two, standing tall.

She runs her hands over it, marveling, hungry, wily. Does she know? Does she know how amazing this feels? What it's like to have small, soft hands pawing at the now-most sensitive tendrils of spark fluid in his body? It feels like she's reaching into his chamber and stroking that ball of energy itself. Oh frag, Astrid...

Hound watches, just as hungry, as she sits up higher - no, kneeling, now - so that his cockhead is level with her mouth. Is she going to...?

And suddenly that wet little orifice is breathing on it, deep and throaty, fogging up the dermaskin. Hound can't help the low moan that passes his lips. Every sensor he has is trained on the feeling of that condensation prickling at the microscopic nodes located in the head. He wants her to do it again until droplets of moisture - her moisture! - form and trickle down his length.

But not this time. This time, Hound quickly realizes, she's going to blow him.

His entire body jerks when her tongue contacts the slit; his cock does so so much that it almost gets away from her. She giggles, grabbing it again, firmer this time, and goes back to coating the end of his large prick with her saliva.

"Shit, Astrid," he hisses, unable to hold back the English swear. This is the first time her mouth has been on him like this, and the feeling is electric. Up until now, not one centimeter of his member has been in her.

The slow build of excess charge begins deep in his chest when he feels her mouth open as wide as it can, and with a circuit-shorting sensation of sucking, his cockhead disappears.

His fingers are restless as they sit splayed on his thighs, and without thinking, he places one on her back while the other goes to grab a fistful of hair. Apparently it's her turn to moan. The sound vibrates the sensitive material in her mouth. One by one, non-vital parts of his HUD give way to static as the overcharged spark fluid begins circulating through his body, filling him with a still-building pleasure. Soon... soon he'll need to ground. Or, as the humans call it, climax.

Her hands are wrapped tight around him as she bobs her little head up and down on him at the firm encouragement of his hand. Together with her mouth, it almost creates the sensation of being inside of her. For a brief second he permits himself to imagine that it's actually her, and she's lowered herself down into his lap, rocking on him.

"F...rag..."

He has no idea that he's offlined his optical array, and quickly fumbles to turn it back on again just as the charge is becoming too much to contain. And Primus is he glad that he does: he catches her looking up at him with darkened eyes, face flushed and skin virile again, and there's just something in her expression that sends him over the edge.

Hound grinds his denta together, throwing his head back, and his hands lock up as the overcharged fluid changes composition for just a nanosecond, expelling the charge down and out via his new toy. The mech can't help the roar of his internals as his cock pulses and pumps out about a half-liter of quickly neutralizing, clear, viscous fluid, realizing through the static and the electricity that he still feels Astrid's mouth on him and fuck! Some of it is in her mouth!

He looks down, optical array quickly returning online and he sees that he's accidentally held her in place against him. Her eyes are shut tight, chest heaving, and even through the haze of grounding he releases her like, once again, he'd almost broken her. He doesn't dare move as she jerks her head away from him and sputters, coughing out some of the grounding fluid and catching her breath. How long had he held her there for?

"By the goddamn pit, are you OK?" he asks, shaken. He has the sinking feeling that he'll be asking that after most times they get intimate.

She's still catching her breath, but leans against the inside of his thigh, draping her arm across it and wiping the stuff from her face. "Remind me... is that stuff going to kill me?"

He draws hips lips into a tight line and wipes himself clean too before putting it away. His dick is dripping from the both of them: his grounding and her saliva. "No no no, Primus no! God, I never would have gotten this made if the byproduct weren't inert and nontoxic."

"OK good," she says, breathing a literal sigh of relief, letting her smile reappear. "Because quite a bit of it went down."

Hound can't help at the little jolt of arousal he feels at hearing her say that. Well, I wanted to be in her...

"Damn, your uh... your stuff tasted weird, though."

He's suddenly self-conscious. "Is... that a bad thing?"

"No," she says, considering it and gesturing. "It was like mineral oil. Didn't taste like too much... was a little sweet, a little salty, like the real thing. The weirdest part was that it tingled."

Hound allowed himself to chuckle a little, noting that his HUDs were coming back online. "It's a byproduct of grounding overcharged spark fluid. Normally, what I uh... what I... expelled-"

"Ejaculated?" she interrupted cheekily.

He blushed in his spark and looked away. "What I ejaculated... it gets processed internally and it escapes later as I go about doing other stuff."

"Like static shock from wearing socks on carpet?"

"Yeah, same principle."

"So all that's been rerouted and reprogrammed to do it this way."

"That's all there is to it, really."

Astrid nods and quiets down. It's only when she reaches out to touch the emitter at his groin does he realize what she's focusing on. Can he go for seconds? Yeah, it's the nature of how his body works as a Cybertronian. He could overcharge and ground all day long. But it does take its toll on one's systems, and right now, Hound is wiped.

"How come you don't go flaccid?"

"I don't know," he replies, quietly, lazily. "Maybe it'll figure out how to do that eventually."

"Would you want the ability to go flaccid?"

Hound considers this for a moment, but decides that the repercussions are too many and too varied to really think about. "It might be more trouble than it's worth." He pauses, looking at her as he rubs her shoulder. "How's that headache?"

The little human shrugs. "It feels like it's going away. Sex is good for that sort of thing, though." He doesn't know that that generally only holds true if you orgasm yourself, even though it seems, from what he can tell, that she's telling the truth.

He nods. "Hey, I had an idea for something I think we should do today."

"Oh?"

"When I was out practicing earlier, I thought... I thought that maybe it would be a good idea for you the learn how to use a gun."

She furrows her brows at him. "A... gun? Why? Isn't that what you're there for?"

"I'm not going to be around you 24/7. And... and if something were to happen, I'd want you to be able to at least sort of defend yourself." He couldn't imagine what human threats she might run into while with BREME, because Primus knew what good a sidearm would do against a Decepticon, but he wanted her to do this all the same.

Astrid falls silent for a few moments, and Hound's worried that he shouldn't have said anything.

"You're uh... you're probably right. Who knows what sorts of crazies I might be liable to run into now."

Whew. "Thank you. It'll just make me feel a lot better."

"Can I shower first though? I'm covered in robot spunk and I still smell like the bar from last night."

"Oh jeez, of course."

A little while later and he's in the practice range again with her in tow. He'd sent her off to the humans' munitions room to fetch an M9, and she's now standing on the small side of the space next to a table; on it is the opened case and a pair of muffs.

She's staring down at the thing, so tiny compared to him and his, but her heart is racing and she's biting her lip, wondering where she ought to start.

"Eyes up here for a minute," he says gently, coaxing her from her own head. Since the weapon is far too small for him to use - it can fit square in the palm of his hand - he pulls up a soft holo to illustrate his talk. A monochrome image of the gun appears beside him and he gestures at it.

"OK, so that there's a Beretta 92FS. It's a sidearm commonly used by the US army, navy, all those folks." She nods up at him, folding her arms tightly. "It's a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol with a magazine capacity of fifteen rounds. You follow?" The holo image beside him expels its magazine, and 15 bullet icons slide out to arrange in a neat row beneath.

"...I think so."

"Alright." The image dissolves and instead, Hound fashions a 3-dimensional projection of the gun, sized in proportion to his own hand. He curls his fingers around the grip. The mech is an expert at miming around his massless, softlight holo-images, making them look solid; this is no exception. "There are four main rules to handling a firearm," he continues with gentle authority. "One, always assume that a gun is loaded. Do you know if yours is? Go on, you can pick it up now."

She reaches into the foam inset and slowly, carefully, removes the thing from its case, keeping it pointed away from her. It takes her a few moments, but eventually she discovers that there's no magazine inside. "No," she says, trying to sound firm.

"Are you sure? Open the action and lock the slide like this..." he demonstrates on his own. "...and make sure that the chamber is empty."

She does the same thing, only slower and far less sure, and discovers that the chamber in hers is empty too.

"OK, good." He allows himself a small smile. "Second rule is to always keep it pointed in a safe direction. In other words, don't aim it at anything that you aren't willing to shoot." She nods. "Third, keep your finger off the trigger and out of the trigger guard. Hold it like this." He shows her on his, and she looks up at it carefully before mimicking the placement of his fingers. "Like that, good. And the last rule is to keep it unloaded until you're ready to use it."

Astrid forces out a sigh, clearly overwhelmed. "That doesn't seem too hard."

"It'll become second nature," he reassures. "Don't worry. Now, it's time to load it. Is the safety on?"

"How do I tell?"

"If you see a little red dot exposed on the side there. No, it is. That little switch thing there is pointed downward, covering up the mark, so it is. Good. Now get your magazine."

She turns back down to the gun case and pulls out what she correctly assumes to be it; and it's been pre-loaded by the previous user. In all honesty, Hound's surprised that the magazine isn't in the pistol to begin with; gun safety is lax around AHQ, for better or for worse. If it's not mechs walking around with their blasters and cannons, then it's a BREME agent or three with chest holsters. He can count the number of times they'd been visited by a civvie on his fingers, so there's really little need for strict rules when it comes to handguns. Astrid is obviously a glaring exception, and if he's honest with himself, then he wishes she could afford to be this apprehensive forever. Unfortunately, that's not the life that she's living anymore.

"Alright now lock the slide again," he instructs, demonstrating. He holds up his hand now, and a holographic magazine appears in his fingers. "And take your magazine, and just slide it up in there. No, no, wrong way. Flat side against the back. There you go. Okay, so when you release the slide, it's going to put a round into the chamber. How are you feeling?"

Maybe this is too fast for her...

"I'm feeling alright..."

Her heart is pumping faster and harder than the wheels on a freight train. And criminey, it's not like she doesn't know he can sense it.

"We can stop at any point, OK?"

She just nods with resolution. "I think I can do this."

Hound's not sure why some humans have such an intense fear of guns while other don't. They're dangerous, sure, but in the proper hands they're no more so than a hammer or a knife. Maybe it's the sound they make?

He nods down at her, drawing his lips tightly together. "You'll want your ear and eye protection now, then."

Astrid sets the gun down on the table and puts on her glasses and noise-canceling muffs. He gives her a thumbs up, gesturing at her spot along the counter before maneuvering to a crouch behind her.

"Release the slide," he says loudly, and points to the release. She starts at the mechanism. "Now turn off the safety. Push that little switch upward."

Astrid does, and the pistol is now locked, loaded, and ready to fire. He reaches around her to very slowly, very gingerly, help her with her form. Once her hands and arms are to his satisfaction, he calls out to the computer. "Target, 8 meters." Then back to Astrid. "Don't worry if you miss, and take all the time you need."

He watches, hands on his thighs as he crouches behind her, as she tries to calm her breathing. Hound is beginning to realize just how daunting of a task this is for her without being able to conjure up a reason why. She once told him how her grandparents had been avid protesters of the Vietnam War and had met while attending Ohio State the year before that infamous shooting; that her own parents are some of the few left still embodying the spirit of Woodstock even as that culture died with Hendrix and Joplin. I'm a third generation hippie, she'd said once over a beer.

And Hound knows, from what he's read and seen of US culture, that "hippies" don't like guns.

But still... why the fear?

Her movements are steadying, but not by much, and with a single long exhale, she pulls the trigger. The bullet clips the edge of the target.

Astrid allows herself to slump, and she's trembling now. The gun is set down on the counter and she pulls down the ear muffs, lower lip sucked in between her teeth in the polar opposite of a 'come hither' gesture. In fact, Hound worries that she might draw blood.

"I'm a terrible shot," she chuckles uneasily.

"No, no," he says, placing not a hand, but two fingers, on her shoulder. It's all he can comfortably fit. "You did fine," he offers. "You did fine." When it's obvious that she's not convinced, he continues. "Look, we'll bring it home and we'll set up some cans out in the backwoods for you to practice with. That's all it takes - just a little practice. You'll get good in no time."

But she's still staring at the ground between them. "I don't think I can do this."

The mech frowns. "What?"

"What the hell is a handgun going to do for me out there? This world that I'm part of now... these people know their way around a lot more than just pistols. And that's just the humans."

Hound's shoulders sag, trying to not let himself get dragged down by her, well... realism. "There are a thousand and one situations where this could save your life, Astrid. And you don't even have to be good at it: just knowing how to get a shot off without injuring yourself is more than valuable enough." He pauses when their eyes meet. "Besides, you're in Alaska now. I wouldn't want you going off into the mountains alone without one anyway." He laughs a little. "Bear spray will only get you so far."

She smiles a little, and Hound vents a breath in relief. But her expression grows distant again as she turns to look behind her at the target. "I know that," she says at length. "It's just... it's just what Prowl said."

The Jeep scowls in anticipation.

"He's right. I'm nothing but a fucking liability. And a handgun? A handgun isn't going to change that." She pauses and then snorts. "Agent Schneider. God, it's like a bad dream."

Maybe it is. "Screw Prowl," he grumbles. "His idea of being objective is whatever fits with his worldview that day." Hound wants to believe his own words here, but can't quite do it. Acknowledging that he was right would... would what? Make him right about everything - that's what you're scared of, aren't you?

"Maybe," she sighs. "But a broken clock is still right twice a day."

Astrid shrugs off his hand and turns, picking up the muffs again, much to his surprise.

"Let's try this again. I'm not leaving until I prove somebody wrong, here."

They were in there for another two hours before calling it a day. By the time they were done, Astrid had a much steadier hand, and had actually managed to get within the silhouette even at the 10 meter mark.

"Can I see your gun?" she asks after putting hers away. It catches him by surprise. "You said you had one and I've just never seen it."

"Oh, uh, sure." Hound isn't sure why doing so is making him feel so vulnerable - maybe it's because it's one of the last big parts of him that she hasn't seen yet. The mech holds out his hand and in it appears the rifle from subspace.

"Holy shit," she laughs, eyes wide as she takes it in. Hound realizes just how huge it must look to her - hell, from butt to barrel the thing is the size of a small howitzer.

"Let me know if you start feeling sick," he says, holding it up to his shoulder and taking casual aim at a target.

"Sick?"

"Yeah. Cybertronian energy weapons are known to make humans ill after a while."

She knits her brows. "Why's that?"

"They leak EMR like crazy. Migraines, paranoia, nausea... it's all well below your typical safety standards, but there's something about our tech that your bodies just don't like after a while. And some people are more sensitive than others."

"Oh the irony," she grunts. "Will it be loud?"

"Not as loud as the M9. You might still want your muffs, though."

"Might as well get used to sudden, loud noises if there are going to be guns in my life from now on." The human sticks her fingers in her ears.

Hound gives her one last look then shrugs, getting down into a kneel, and turns back to Astrid's target, set as far back on this end of the gallery as it will go.

The rest of their time at AHQ is spent quietly, and generally away from the other mechs. They head out for a late lunch/early dinner, and Astrid stocks up on some junk food: a burger and fries and a bag of chips. When they return, Hound tunes into a TV channel and projects it onto a wall for them both to watch.

The evening passes without fanfare, and before they know it, it's time to catch their morning flight back to Anchorage. Hound says his goodbyes over private comms.

They do Red Alert's sign-out procedure, and Astrid hands over a card key to a room that she hadn't used. And even without a knowing look between them, Red's suspicious. Of what, he likely doesn't know, but his thinly-apertured, side-long look at them as they head out of the base is the security director's bread and butter.

They arrive back home just before lunch, and are greeted with thick fog and damp pavement. It's cool out - a balmy 10 degrees celcius - and you'd hardly have guessed that it was still August.

"Talk about jarring," Astrid says, disembarking the Jeep inside the warehouse and heading toward the couch at "her" end.

Hound engages transformation and is soon standing up, idly following her over to the human-sized common area. "What, Portland to here?"

She laughs, throwing her bag down onto the sofa and then following with her own rear. "No, coming from California."

Hound smiles, recalling her old Tahoe climate - it snows there, sure, but it's still far from being Alaska. "All I've got to say is, enjoy that sun before it disappears!"

Astrid leans back into the beige cushions and closes her eyes for a moment, and Hound can see tension nip at her brows. He lowers himself into a crouch, resting his back against the wall, and watches as her eyes open again. The human reaches into a pocket for her phone and she checks it, scowling.

The mech can easily pry into the goings-on of her every electronic device, but he sees no need to most of the time. "You hear from them yet?" he asks quietly.

The woman stuffs the phone back away, almost angrily. "No," she says, and he can see her running her tongue along her teeth behind her lips as she thinks. "Nobody's going to reach out until it occurs to somebody that, maybe, I'm not the one at fault here."

Hound nods, looking away, at his fingers.

Suddenly, she stands up, leaving the bag where it is. "Well," Astrid says abstractly. "I guess I've got some work to do."

He looks about, over to his console and then up at the frosted skylights. Now that he thinks about it, he does too, but something in him really doesn't want to get started. He notices that the air wandering in from a cracked open window is a chilly off-shore breeze, and he knows that Astrid's first winter here will be cold. But there's something else on the wind... a distant tenseness, like charged particles being carried in from a storm battering the furthest Aleutians.

"Before you go upstairs," he finds himself saying.

The human sets down a cup of water that she'd gotten herself and strolls back over to him. "What d'you need?"

What you need, more like.

He hooks his finger at her and she steps near enough to grab. The mech curls inward, bringing his face towards her small one, and captures her mouth in a kiss. To his slight surprise, she opens up, yielding to his tongue, and he's in her again. (Different appendage, different orifice... same principle.) Hound's reminded very exquisitely that he doesn't just like her mouth, but loves it. It's small, but frag, does it work hard. He loves each and every one of her teeth, their different shapes. He loves the little ridges on the roof of her mouth; the secret salivary gland under her tongue. Primus, the tongue itself, though - what an amazing thing. That one muscle had the dexterity of several fingers, and then some.

She's grabbing the sides of his helm now, her little hands radiating heat. He feels her breathing hot and heavy through her nose, and gods, the sensation of her breath fogging up his upper lip drives him wild. The green mech can't help but grab the rest of her as they kiss, and once again he's pawing and clutching at her like a child with a small animal. Unlike a child, though, he knows exactly how much pressure he can exert before she...

Hound breaks away, though. He senses that she wants to catch her breath, but he also knows that it is time to get to work. They can always finish this later.

They lock eyes, and a smile tugs at his mouth. He kisses the crown of her head, something he picked up a while ago that he liked the symbolism of, and then rose up to his full height. "I'll see you in a few hours?"

"Don't work yourself to death," she counters, heading toward the stairs.

"And don't work yourself to sleep," he calls over as she ascends to the second floor and disappears into the hallway.

I'd rather be outside getting rained on, he thinks, seating himself before the terminal. Processing files is the bane of his existence, but right now, being reminded of the draft from that damn window, something else is making it harder for him to hunker down and get it done.

Just keep your nose to the grindstone, as the saying goes.