Chapter 117
=0=Cosmos
They climbed in one after another, Ratchet, Ironhide and the sparkling getting cuts to the front of the line. Behind them the others came, walking inside to sit against the hull. Bluestreak and Sideswipe sat together. Sideswipe pulled Blue into his lap as Sunstreaker sat across from them, settling in.
He looked at them, the two quietly conversing on the bond, their words reaching him. They were just chatting, talking about nothing in particular, getting used to each other together on this deeply personal level. He smiled slightly, the memories of the night before coming to him. As they did, the two looked at him with a momentary flash of embarrassed realization pulsing from both as Sunstreaker acknowledged mentally that he'd been present, he'd been aware, he had watched.
Sideswipe shook his head as he slightly tightened his arms around Blue who was looking at Sunstreaker with an embarrassed smile.
Sunny smiled back then erected his first of many firewalls allowing himself and him alone access to that part of his memory. Leaning back, he watched it all again, that is, all but his part which was lost in the fury of his need.
He'd come to his own awareness at some point, lying on his back, remembering the heat and the intensity of their feelings together. He remembered Bluestreak in his arms, holding him and then it went black. He turned on his side, seeking Blue in the darkness and heard rather than saw them, his brother and Bluestreak together.
He remembered then, everything finally coming into place again so he relaxed, laying his helm on his crooked arm. Sideswipe, lying on the other side of Bluestreak had the gunner in his arms softly whispering how much he loved Blue. It surprised him. He figured that Sideswipe was more the aggressor, the fun and thrill seeker taking charge. He hadn't pegged him to be gentle and loving in the way he was showing.
They weren't noticing that he was aware of them, the mist of pleasure that formed over Side's processor was a cloud between him and his twin. Sideswipe's gentle touch was something that Sunstreaker had never really seen before. Bluestreak was beautiful and sensual, just like he always knew him to be.
Sunstreaker reached out and stroked Blues arm, his soft touch sparkling across the sensory net spread over their surface. As he watched he considered this moment that their life changed forever. Now they were connected. They were family.
Now they were truly one.
The door closed as the crew, chatting, joking and laughing together, the past few orns almost magical to a people so unused to relaxation and celebration outside of a shared high grade bottle in a dirt hole or blasted out building. Lift off was gentle with Cosmos moving upward into the thin clouds overhead to disappear into the vacuum of space. Below, beneath the orange-hued sky, Autobot City got back to business.
=0=Ratchet and Ironhide
They sat together, the infant recharging in Ratchet's arms. Ironhide with his arm around Ratchet watched him, his Orion sleeping. Reaching down, he touched the flat little pug nose that mimicked his old dad. He grinned. "He's one handsome little sparkling."
Ratchet glancing up at Ironhide to smile at the unabashed love that he had on his face for his son nodded in agreement. "He's a handsome little devil."
"He's got your face, Hide."
Ironhide looked up at Trailbreaker sitting against the hull with Hound and Silverbow next to him and laughed. "And what a handsome face it is."
Everyone laughed and chuckled.
Then Silverbow got up and clutching her bear, shyly walked to where they sat to bend down to look at the sparkling with curiosity. She pointed at the baby, clicking her sparkling word for 'what?'.
Ratchet who was looking at her with love and sympathy smiled. "Orion."
Silverbow looked at Ratchet who was holding the infant up closer to her, pulling back the blanket, then looked at the infant again. "What?" she clicked again.
Hound who rose to move closer knelt beside her, slipping his arm around her. "Sparkling, Silverbow. Just like you were once. Orion is a sparkling."
She looked at him and then the sparkling. She reached out to touch his bootied ped. Smiling at Orion, she looked at Hound clicking something no one could understand.
He hugged and kissed her, then glanced at the baby. "Orion."
She listened to him then looked at the infant. She then expressed a sound, her attempt to repeat the word.
Hound looked at her and said it very slowly. "Oh-rye-un."
She stared at him, her head moving along with every syllable as she struggled to understand him. "I."
Hound smiled. "Close, baby. Oh-rye-un."
She listened then looked at the baby. "I. N."
Hound glanced back at Trailbreaker with a huge smile on his face.
Trailbreaker who was living and dying with Hound, too, as their daughter struggled to speak smiled back. "Close."
"Very close," Hound said, squeezing his femme gently. "Very good, Silverbow."
She smiled at him then, pointed at the sparkling.
Hound considered her actions then looked at Ratchet. "I think she wants to hold him."
Ratchet stared at the tiny femme, then grinned. He held Orion closer as she smiled widely, then turned to Trailbreaker to hand him her bear.
He grinned as he took it, setting it on the deck for his daughter. Hound helped her to sit on it as Trailbreaker braced her. Then Ratchet lay the sparkling in her lap.
She put her arms around it, holding it with joy, then looked at Ratchet with a big smile. "I-N."
Ratchet nodded. "Orion."
Silverbow held the sparkling, gently touching its peds and holding a servo that was tightly balled into a fist in recharge. She touched Orion's nose and giggled, looking at Hound with immense pleasure.
Hound grinned back as Trailbreaker held her up on the bear as she explored the sleeping infant.
The ride back was different than any they had taken before. It was happy in a different way, the idea of going home. This time there were giggles and infants, the pleasure of watching a tiny femme being openly happy and mischievous, showing herself to the ones who loved her for the first time in a natural way.
The ride home brought the future back to the present and it was missed on no one on the shuttle.
=0=On Silverbolt, Prowl
Prowl and Prime sat together, their little mechs nearby playing with wooden toys they'd been given at Christmas Surprise by the human femmes. They had small wooden cars that they carried everywhere, their favorite toys their constant companions. They sat together making engine noises as they drove them around the adult's peds in that intergalactic way that boy children do in all forms, places and dimensions.
Prowl who was alternating between watching their legal charges playing sweetly and trying to decipher the new intel marveled in some part of his processor at the changes in the past few months. He was bonded, now legal genitor guardian of three small mechs as well as the genitor and bond guarantor of his eldest who was bonded himself. It was fraggin' wonderful. He smiled at the curse word. His parents would be scandalized. But they would also be astonished that he'd 'landed the big one' as Ratchet so inelegantly put it.
A Prime would make them proud.
Finally.
He pushed them back out of his mind, making sure that the negativity that they engendered in him didn't stay. He was a quiet emotionally contained individual that had been searching for warmth since he was able to understand his genitors were not going to give it to him. He had affairs, most notably with Sentinel Prime but they were always unsatisfying.
He was always dating his father.
They said once in a study you dated and/or bonded with your father or carrier. One of the other. For better or worse.
Worse mostly.
He was thinking they were right when Orion Pax came through the door all big and fantastically handsome and was introduced to him as Optimus Prime, the new Prime.
"Help him, Prowl, get up to speed, oh say, two orns ago."
He'd been smitten the moment it occurred to him a few orns later that he wasn't a dumb aft, he was a dignified and extremely intelligent individual and MOST OF ALL! MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL! He was self assured, confident in his own masculine side and willing to be wrong.
Willing.
To.
Be.
Wrong.
It'd been a shock to him that a Prime could be so calm, kind, smart and able. Sentinel had been another matter altogether. He had the ability to project all the same qualities but they were projections. He had an ego that didn't allow for the idea he could be wrong, that there might be others with ideas that could supersede his own in correctness and quality and when he wanted something he felt he was doing you a favor if you were anywhere near that want.
That's how he ended up with him, old 'Mercy 'face Prowl' Sentinel had called his second. He'd somehow ascertained that Prowl was married to the Autobots, to the Cause, to doing his job beyond peak ability and uninterested in office gossip, office romance and placating his ego to the degree Sentinel required and had achieved with everyone else but Prowl. That had thrown down a challenge to Sentinel and he'd gone out of his way to be brazen, the seduce him, to humiliate him in front of others in his 'courtship' of the young winger.
Prowl who was uncertain about being able to keep his job running the show, taking care of soldiers and the Cause in relation to the ideas he had about ending the war swiftly and with the least damage to everyone eventually gave in and the short and not so sweet saga of 'Prowl and the Prime' began. Sentinel was his second Prime but it was a stock point of his life that he'd be gossiped about as 'Prime Stuff', someone who slept with Primes as a matter of course.
He didn't.
The first Prime he'd worked for, Nova, didn't pay attention to him, leaving him the bulk of the essential work but taking his counsel elsewhere. Nova didn't last long, fortunately, but the rumors did and Prowl knew that was part of what prompted Sentinel's attention. Prowl was a perk, some would whisper, usually those with only a scintilla of the talent, ability and raw intellect that Prowl possessed in abundance. Ambitious lesser lights were always hovering around so he heard a lot of slag that they circulated trying to undercut him. They couldn't, he was that good. So Prowl became even more prim, more proper and closed off.
Until that is, he gave in and became Sentinel's lover.
He'd expected something exciting and different but it was no better than any of the others. That is, the two before him. They were non military, one a politician and the other a businessman. Both of them were as married to their careers as him and when they moved on to others more advantageous to their career advancements he was glad.
Relieved.
Completely happy.
Then Sentinel had badgered him and he'd given in, hating himself for doing so but ever hopeful that the right mech would come along eventually.
He didn't.
Not this one. He was egotistical, wanted him around when he needed him no matter what Prowl was doing and was a lousy 'face.
Truly.
As he sat on the deck, it occurred to Prowl that the only 'facing he'd ever experienced that wasn't complete crap was with Optimus. He wished at that moment he could dig up all three of his former lovers, Sentinel Prime included and laugh in their faces. Then he pushed that utterly unworthy and completely understandable fantasy away into the trash bin for recycling.
He had a life now he never imagined. He, of course, wasn't aware of the other side of the coin.
=0=Optimus
Optimus watched his sons, newly minted and legally theirs driving wooden cars around his peds. He watched them with fascination, these little mechs that were now his and Prowl's and felt an ocean of contentment settle into his spark. It had taken forever to find this oasis, the family life that he never once expected to have. He was Prime. All the rest came first. He was at the end of the line for Wants and Needs. What he wanted for himself, what he needed and dreamed about was last.
Then Prowl came into his life.
The first time he met him at the Citadel in the crush of introductions he'd found himself admiring the clean crisp beauty, if not the correct and military bearing of the one who would be his number two militarily. He found himself pleased that the face he'd have to see nearly all the time, nearly every day was so handsome, the voice who would be his counsel so soft and mellow.
Prowl had turned out to be 'terribly efficient' as others told him, 'intense', 'damned near infallible tactically', 'cold, uptight, prudish, repressed' and 'ultra 'face-able if you were a Prime'. He found out that almost none of it was true right out of the gate. Prowl was patient, he was thorough, kind, tough, smart as the Pit, gentle and thoughtful. He was the left side of Prime's processor. He was the one who would do whatever was needed until it was done almost to the detriment of his own well being.
He was also stubborn, brooded about things, argumentative when he thought he was right, had a nice right punch and could throw things including heavy furniture a long distance. He was as the humans say completely capable of Machiavellian maneuvering but always based on precise things, such as his carefully formulated plans which were always going into the dumper by those required to fulfill them.
Somewhere along the line, probably the second or third orn Prime found himself drawn to Prowl in a personal way that he'd never experienced before. That it was love and enormous personal affection, he didn't know. He was as oblivious as Prowl in that department but he had it.
Badly.
He'd heard the rumors but discounted them, seeing from Prowl's dedication and devotion nothing to validate them. He was dependable and invaluable and wonderful and sensual and from that moment onward Prime of Cybertron was in love.
Thank Primus for Ratchet and Ironhide being the unholy terrors that they were or he might not be sitting here watching his children play as he sat beside the love of his life.
It was funny how fast life could turn on a dime.
The Aerialbot flew onward taking Autobots and civilians back to Diego Garcia. They all streaked together through the endless night of space ever onward to the warmth and beauty of Earth.