The Diego Diaries: Interlude 1
-0-That night around town
She stood braced against the couch, her tiny servos clutching tightly. She wobbled a bit but was determined not to fall down.
Again.
Sitting in front of her watching with a gigantic smile, Uraya patted her sister. Iacon's tiny wings fluttered gently, stiffening as she swayed, relaxing as she caught herself.
Sideswipe who sat nearby with his camera filmed her as she stood, something that was relatively new behavior. Uraya was still crawling like her sister but had fallen on a tile floor bumping her helm. She was afraid to stand remembering that so it was up to Iacon to lead the way.
Again.
Kaon was standing at the window patting it, singing to the darkness and twinkling lights beyond its cool surface. He patted it, pausing to look at the traffic below before beginning his song again.
Bluestreak and Sunstreaker was indisposed, retiring together to the berth room early. The day had been tense and difficult. Sideswipe would put the infants down later but for now he enjoyed their sweetness. The girls laughed, a sound that was soft and gentle. He loved it. He tickled them sometimes, watching them with admiration as they smiled and wiggled, looking at him with complete trust.
Trust wasn't something that he and Sunny gave to many. In fact, you could count on one servo the number of individuals that they felt they could include that closely into their usually hermetically sealed duet.
Splice was one.
Sideswipe had jumped on the big mech when he saw Splice come down the ramp and Splice had spun him as he hugged Sideswipe back. He was a ghost from their past, someone never expected again. He had been taken to the debrief by Sunstreaker with the promise to come by the next day. They had secured him a good apartment on a floor of the bachelor mech and femme tower where other bachelor Knight and Circle members lived. Tomorrow was going to be slagging awesome he thought. Tomorrow, Splice would meet their daughters and son. He would also meet Bluestreak.
Iacon tweeted and laughed drawing Sideswipe's attention. He would film it and they would enjoy it as a family.
Tomorrow.
-0-In a crib
It was dark and he wasn't sleepy. Not yet anyway. They had put him to bed as usual. He lay down and off lined his optics listening to their sweet words of praise and wishes for a good recharge. He listened to them as they went about their business, then finally things were still.
The genitors were in bed.
He hoped.
Sitting up, Orion looked around. His room was the shit as some on Earth would say. Or his two oldest brothers who hung out with human soldiers a bit too much used more often than Bluestreak's sense of Prowl-type propriety considered decent. He had a view of the air field, his toys were in a box nearby and his dollies were at optic level to him on a little table in the corner. He could have any toy or dollie he needed at any time of the orn when he was home. It was all a smart feisty little bot with a big imagination could want.
He stood up and calculated the fall to the floor. Then he paused and looked down in his bed. He bent to grip his pillow and pulled it up laboriously. It took two attempts to push it over the bars but at last it fell to the floor. He looked down at it and grinned. Then he laboriously lifted his little leg and hooked his ped. Pulling up, he fell over the edge and landed.
Right next to his pillow.
-0-In an apartment in the bachelor's tower
"So when do you want to do the deed?"
"I don't know. What about you?"
"I don't know."
Springer looked at the big bot stretched out on the couch across from him. The 'Thing' hung in the air between them. "Do you still want to do this? You don't have to. I like our life as it is."
Drift nodded. "I know. So do I. I also like the exclusivity. I like the permanence. I have fantasies of becoming Ironhide and Ratchet some faraway orn."
Springer snorted and laughed aloud. "That's what I think about when I think of us down the road." He smirked at Drift with amusement.
"As long as we're on the same page," Drift said with a grin. He sipped his 'beer', his optics fixed on his partner. "It is inevitable."
"How so?" Springer asked.
"We almost sparked the other orn," Drift said. "It was a miracle you weren't sparked. If we're going to be as stupid as we are I think being legal is a good idea."
Springer grinned, then chuckled. "There is a cure for that. Ask Sunstreaker."
Drift smirked. "I don't think talking sparking is a good thing with Sunny. He has no sense of humor on a good orn."
"Sunny has humor. He just doesn't trust," Springer said sipping his high grade.
"Trust is the issue isn't it."
Springer nodded. "I trust you."
"I trust you." Drift set his beer down and 'spit' on his servo in imitation of a human he once saw do it. Holding out his servo he waited.
"How unsanitary," Springer said gripping Drift's servo tightly.
"It was only metaphorical," Drift said pulling the big rangy bot toward him. "How's that for literate."
"I'm impressed, but then you know I have no standards," he snarked back as they both laughed. Then they didn't bother with conversation for a while.
-0-In an apartment
"That was lucky that Ratchet knows our past and doesn't hold it against us. I am afraid that others might. Some do. Especially all the other stuff," Levee said. He had put Prima to bed, walking out to sit and chat with his bond mates.
Hobo nodded. "I don't think we should tell anyone about prison," he said nervously.
"We don't have to tell anyone anything, Hobo," Outlaw said as he sat on a chair by the window. "We are here to help our people and regain ourselves in the colony. I think we can spend a few orns just unwinding and then seek work again."
"I don't know what it will feel like not being behind bars, Outlaw," Levee said. "I feel anxious all the time."
"They have services here. We can get help, Levee. We can relax and find work that we like. They say you can choose. This isn't Cybertron and we aren't in the prison system anymore. There are also Knights and Circle mechs and femmes here. They're accepted. Not everyone hates the peace people. It will be nice to be back in commercial design," Outlaw said. "It will be nice to be back doing anything."
They nodded. The night wore on as they talked together quietly, their haunted dreams put off for a few joors.
-0-On the floor. Next to his pillow.
He sat up laboriously. In fact, the whole process was laborious but necessary. Sometimes a mech couldn't sleep so it was their duty to get up and meander around until they could. He got to his peds and walked to the door peering out. The night light in the hallway shown a gentle pool on the floor so he walked to the next room to see if Praxus was awake.
He wasn't.
Turning, walking out to the living room he headed to the windows. Patting their cool smooth surface, he licked them for a while before becoming distracted by the lights. They were off and he wanted them on. Somehow they must come on. He considered that, then walked to the ones at the bottom of the window. Touching them, he waited.
They didn't come on.
Touching them again, he gripped a couple and tugged. They didn't budge. He looked at them expending his attention span of six seconds, then turned to find some other distraction. Walking to the cupboards in the kitchen, he opened the lower ones pulling things out examining them carefully before discarding them on the floor. Fortunately for him, the floor was carpeted.
Pots and pans, this and that came out, were inspected and put down again. When he found Ironhide's munition boxes in the back where they was stashed he smiled. He knew what these were. They were like the ones in the big room full of them where the trains were. He crawled in and grabbed a strap tugging with all his might. It budged a bit. He would continue to tug.
He would pull one of them out.
-0-Polyhex Tower, Metroplex District, Autobot City, Mars
They chatted on the floor, then Iacon tried to stand. She stood in a 'camel' pose as humans sometimes called it. Her backside was in the air, her servos and peds were on the ground. She was stuck trying to figure out what came next. Sideswipe leaned down and gently pulled her up. She stood up, wobbled, then looked up at him smiling gigantically. "Bai." She spoke to him in the universal first word of infants in all planes of existence.
He grinned at her. "Baby."
She stood when he moved his servo away teetering a moment, then she turned slightly to look at him. He had his camera on her as she took three steps, wobbled, then sat down. Sideswipe grinned. "You are slagging perfect, sparkling."
She just grinned up at him.
-0-In the Bosom of Love
He tugged and pulled, grunted and strained. The box was stuck on the door where it was slightly askew and therefore unable to come further. He dropped the strap and looked at his quarry with a severe optic. Leaning down, he patted it. Then he knelt and looked at it closely. Orion considered the problem, then began to apply his highly developed fine motor skills to solving it. He began to try to unlatch the munitions box with his tiny digits.
-0-Vos Tower, Metroplex District, Autobot City, Mars
They cleaned up together, then walked tiredly to the berth room. Ven dropped flat on the berth giving in to his fatigue while Miler washed up.
The habits of a lifetime were hard to give up.
He walked back in and joined his bond. The lights were called down and they relaxed together. "Those sparklings are so wonderful. Sideswipe told me that the girls were trying to walk."
"Blue told me Kaon is talking now. We have to keep a list of their words," Venture replied.
"We will. I'm exhausted," Miler said.
"I am too. Good night, Milie."
"Good night, Ven," Miler said moving to snuggle beside his bond. The night would pass quietly.
-0-In the Bosom of Love
"Ada?"
Silence.
The sound of peds walking around to the other side of a big berth could be heard in the darkness. "Atar?"
A pair of blue optics appeared in the dark and looked around, then down. "Sunspot? What are you doing up, son?"
"I wanted to get a drink. I found Orion in the living room. He has one of your boxes."
Pause. Eruption of two big bots rising toward the ceiling at the same time. Lights come on. A pair of bots hit the door together, get stuck, then a white and red one shoves a big black one backward over the top of a tiny white and yellow Seekerling. Black one lands on the berth and bounces. Red and white one disappears into the darkness.
Big black bot rises and heads for the door exiting into the darkness which becomes light immediately. Black bot and red/white one pause. Standing on the floor next to a cupboard with everything strewn around a tiny black bot with two fists filled with bullets looks up at the genitors.
He smiles.
They don't.
Busted.
-0-In a bachelor apartment
"That wasn't so bad."
"Nope."
Pause.
"How do you feel?"
"Now that I know everything about you that you ever did, thought or said? Pretty good. You are one interesting slagger."
(grin) "You aren't so bad yourself." Pause. "Do you regret this, Springer?"
"No. Do you?" (worried frown)
"No."
"Good." (Grin) "It's too late anyway." Turns helm to look at profile of a handsome white and red mech. "You do know that, right?"
(Snort and grin) "You ask me that now?" Drift asked as he looked at the mech with whom he had just jumped over a cliff. "The bond is made. I thought it would be more … like fireworks or something."
Springer snorted and chuckled. "Are you saying my technique needs a little work?"
Drift looked at Springer, his smokey gaze suggesting nothing of the sort. "Nope."
"Good," Springer said with a smile. "Don't tell Ratchet."
"I won't." Drift grinned. "Don't tell anyone. Slaggers. Let them figure it out."
Springer nodded. "Sounds like a plan."
Drift merely grinned.
-0-In the bosom of etc etc op sit
"WHAT THE FRAG!?"
"He didn't do anything with them, Ratchet. Sunspot called us to come."
"WHAT THE SLAGGING FRAG?! IRONHIDE! CART THAT CRAP TO YOUR FRAGGING LOCKER! I TOLD YOU EONS AGO TO DO THAT! WHAT ELSE DO YOU HAVE STASHED AROUND HERE, YOU TIN PLATED FRAGGER!?"
Ten minutes later …
"Should we help him, Ada?" Sunspot asked as they sat together on the couch eating 'ice cream'.
"Nope," Ratchet said looking down at Sunspot. Orion had been banished upon pain of permanent exile in a Corner of Doom to his crib. The other two -PRAISE PRIMUS AND THE ONE!- hadn't awakened. "Let him get that slag over there. I told him already. No munitions beyond our personal arms in the apartment. All personal arms have to have trigger guards while in the apartment."
Sunspot nodded and grinned. "Atar is funny."
Ratchet grinned. "He is. Don't tell him."
"I won't."
On the way to Mandalay (so to speak) ...
He trudged down the sidewalk toward the Fortress heavily laden with guns, knives and canisters of experimental bullets he was "GOING TO WORK ON, SLAG IT, RATCHET! IT'S MY SLAGGING JOB!"
A hearty "OH THE FRAG YEAH!?" had cut that argument to ribbons.
He trudged along considering the amount of space he would have to use up in the locker for all his stuff and as he did he counted his blessings that Sunspot had decided to get a drink.
He walked onward staggering under his burden as the night grew darker and the streets began to clear as citizens old and new finally decided to go home. He would eventually. But when he did he would tip toe in, be met at the berth room door with a blanket and spend the night on the couch.
Or as they say in the Ironhide-Ratchet domicile … it would be the ending of another typical orn.
=0=TBC
2012 (12) EDIT: I used the wrong names for the new trine. :D They are Outlaw, Hobo and Levee. BAD ME! (SERVO GETS PATTED!) *SLAM*! Whimper ...