Summary- Some texting occurs. Much more Tailgate mental rambling occurs than actual texts.
It hadn't taken him long at all to be the first to reach out. The gifts left behind had cheered him up quite a bit and Tailgate had felt his mood lighten from that. The grumpiness from earlier went subdued. It'd mainly been based on the feeling left after finding out the other had already left without so much as giving him an extra chance to say goodbye; that all just felt like a statement implying the time spent getting to know the other hadn't meant that much outside the temporary to the mech. The gift? It implied the opposite. Even if it meant Cyclonus had somehow broken into his shop during Tailgate's recharge to leave it there on his desk, it had spark to it. Like all the heavy lifting and stuff had. The guy didn't talk much, but he obviously put a high value in helping actions and leaving gifts. The breaking in part would have to be talked about (even if, hell, Tailgate didn't think he'd be that adversed to just giving the other the official keycode when [not if] he got back here if they kept up long distance at the rate they were currently going; all he had to do was ask, not jump straight into bypassing locks and sneaking around). Leaving him with what he had though? Tailgate found it kinda romantic. The eager drive to ask him if he needed any help around the shop was starting to lean that way in his view too, if he was to be honest with his own processor. Anyway, that was kind of the point. Little gestures changed in the mind's perception after more about the gesturer came to light. Add up enough of those and-
...Well, this! His first text went out quickly, not long at all after finding the goodbye gift. He was the first to reach out, but that reaching out itself happened often enough on a cycle by cycle basis because it almost always got a reply back to prove he wasn't being a pest. The responding written comms always came much slower. Maybe they were getting extra deliberated over. It was always a bit harder to tell with people when communication was limited to the written.
But it worked. It didn't drift away until it all was too subdued to really pursue any longer. Tailgate kept up without running out of things to say. Sure, they were typically pretty basic comments. He'd mention something that happened at the shop that day. He'd send a joke he'd run into that cycle (and get just slightly disappointed when those were never really responded to). And he'd ask questions! They were basic questions too, though, for the most part. Things like how's the flight? They always got basic answers in return. The flight was good. Three days later? The flight was still good. A bit of prying into how long it was and how it was being taken alone convinced him that it must have actually been a horridly boring thing to be stuck with. A small ship all alone without any stops to stretch the old stabilizing servo joints and tour around? Cyclonus didn't ever say he minded. Truth be told, Tailgate was suspicious that he actually didn't. However he managed to avoid boredom continued to be a life secret, as that wasn't one of the things that got pried on. Keeping everything basic kept it relaxed, after all. Dense though he may get himself called, he wasn't completely inept in not scaring or ticking his new friend off.
He hoped, at least.
The datastick provided him with a part of the world he'd never really delved into. He regretted never having dove in before the further he made it through the enclosed files. This was full of culture, some predating him! And that felt...Weird, really. He was so used to feeling like the displaced antique. The guy older than most veterans of the first great war apparently were. But these were actually antiques. In perspective, he stopped feeling quite so hopelessly old (without having really aged mentally without life experiences, which, really, was the hardest part). They were full of other good stuff too! Stories, fiction, that he'd started getting rather engaged with after getting used to the fictional medium. The epics were exciting, even if sometimes stuffy. The dramas were also exciting, also stuffy, and contained more-...well, different- emotions through the relationships that built and died throughout their text. Some of the translations were iffy and he couldn't understand the ones that went untranslated at all, but he chugged his way through what he could. Maybe when Cyclonus visited again or vice versa, he'd get the other to help him with some of that language barrier. The idea of getting taught the original glyphs for these pieces of history was nice. He had a feeling that he wouldn't have felt that way before falling into that cave system ten million stellar cycles before.
Since he wasn't really that used to reading or fiction or strange poetry and the like, he'd started on smaller files and gotten asituated. Once he felt that he had a grasp enough on it, Tailgate went for the file that Cyclonus had inadvertently called his favorite. He hoped that his earlier readings would have him used to this all enough that he could get the most out of it. Despite that stress, the worries went mostly unfounded. He understood the story, he was pretty sure.
And he'd been eagerly waiting for the cycle he'd get to read and finish it, if just so he could tell Cyclonus he had.
That jour, he laid back against the bench in one of the storage rooms (they had recently become his most common place to sit back and read) with the file up in his processor and the comm opened excitedly. Currently, Cyclonus was still in his flight. Tailgate checked that status every once in a while because he wasn't sure the flier would actually tell him when he'd landed without prompting (he hadn't exactly been good in that area when it came to informing Tailgate he was leaving at the cycle he had). The empty flight left him pretty free to talk. Free to read. Now free to talk about reading, because the autobot now had the exposure needed to do so.
So he settled back comfortably and messaged out first. They chatted about the files left on the datastick for a while. The poem he'd read last, the script for an outdated play, and, finally, the one that the other seemed to care for most. Once they got to it, Cyclonus had given even shorter responses than normal. It only made his assumption feel more backed up.
I liked the book! Tailgate wrote him.
The extra short responses moved back into normal (for Cyclonus) ones.
His assumption felt confirmed by that. So it really was one of his favorites. And he'd been at least slightly on edge to find out Tailgate's opinion on it. Tailgate's opinion had mattered.
If he'd been constructed with a mouth, he'd have been beaming wide.
As time passed into orns and the conversations continued- grew easier, really- that invisible smile got even more chances to arrive. He loved getting the ping alerting him to a new message. He liked getting to talk about the gift and then, when he'd read through all of them, some other literature he'd found from libraries that Cyclonus would then go read as well just to dissect its literary functions for them both. He liked talking about random customers and different paint jobs and history and really just anything that came to mind. Cyclonus didn't outright say it, but he liked to listen.
By the time the distant mech had sent some short note without much warning to preclude it about how he hoped to head back to Viianta within the next few orns, Tailgate just about fell off his desk at both the blunt timing and the glee it brought. He'd been worried, all those cycles ago. Worried about how to actually get to know someone better over comms at such a distance when that someone was so short and stern and quiet in person. It'd been more than a welcome surprise to gradually realize that the worries wouldn't end up coming to into the light.
