#viceglide

Mae had always maintained that a bitlet's processor was the most ravenous thing for new information in the universe (aside from herself), and Viceglide was inclined to take her word for it.

When Posthaste had grown past the point of needing to be around them to drink in their ambient spark energy, that wasn't gonna stop them from bringing him around with them. He curled up in his sire's cockpit when she worked, and Viceglide, lacking such natural creation-holders as she, made do with this servos.

He had big red optics and pupils that flickered online nanokliks after waking up, which Viceglide guessed made sense, considering that he was trying to understand as much as possible about the mixed-up galaxy they'd shoved him into. He tried to make up for it by explaining things.

"Blaster," he enunciated, aiming with his right and balancing his creation on the other hip. "Shot," as he performed the action.

Posthaste's first vocalized word, beyond the beeps and clicks he'd come online making, was nothing particularly funny or egregious. It had been "creo," the bittten-off version of "creator" directed at them both, but it still didn't fail to make Viceglide's throat close up.

After that, armed with a semi-functioning vocalizer, Posthaste's curiosity had gotten a lot more pointed.

"How?" he asked one day, out of the blue. They were at target practice, and he sat with his legs dangling over the side of a crate.

"How what?" Viceglide asked, sinking a bullseye.

"Howidyou get me?"

Hm. Well, it was a pretty fair question. Hasty was the only little-little guy on the ship.

"We had to steal you," he said, turning around, "well. Half of you." Blam. It sounded like he'd hit the target.

His creation made a questioning little bweep, and tilted his head.

"We could make your spark— me and your sire, that is— but we didn't have this." Viceglide walked over fully, holstered, reached out, and Posthaste put his small servo in his. "Your frame. We had to go steal your protoform to get all of you."

"Steal?"

"Ehh..." how to explain this one, "take something that doesn't belong to you. We can get to the intricacies of how and from who and such later. But it was a wild heist, Autobots firing on us left and right—" He scooped Posthaste up with a spin, and his creation giggled, "I covered your sire as we fought our way to the holding bay, the clock was ticking, time was running out—!"

He lowered his face and puffed air through Posthaste's vents, earning a peal of laughter.

Shore leave is, in many ways, a semi-magical thing.

It's not like anyone becomes a different mech when they're fully and near-completely off the clock, it's just that the whole atmosphere's a bit more... relaxed. It's what drives the best of the Armada's forces towards the seediest dives this side of Quintessa, something more... ephemeral.

See, it even has Viceglide using words like "ephemeral." Power of shore leave.

Like now, under the dim magenta lights of one of said seedy dives planetside, where Mae's sprawled out on one of the booth seats against the wall and Viceglide can sling his leg over her cockpit, be as close as he damn well likes.

"Statistically, it's bound to happen again," she says.

She has a cube of high-grade in one servo, the other rests on his helm.

"What is?" he asks, because his helm feels kinda fuzzy and she's so beautiful that it makes it a little hard to think about anything else.

Maelstrom snorts and drains the rest of her cube in one long pull that leaves him staring at the cabling of her throat. She throws the empty shell at Blackout, which Viceglide finds hilarious.

"Another with abilities like mine," she says musically, Vector Sigma, everything about her is a song, "you were playing with my hands."

Yes, he was doing that, wasn't he? Looking at the tiny points of the needles tucked under her claws, wondering if he could reach them with his glossa—

She laughs again, optics slitted under her visor painted with black highlights, "You're overcharged." She tilts his head up and Viceglide's never been more in love in his function. It takes a nanoklik to turn his vocalizer back to something coherent.

"Am not."

"Lies."

"Am not."

"Damn lies."

"We've had the same amount."

"You're half my size."

"Don't I know it," he said, knows it and loves it, "gonna prescribe me somethin' for it?"

And then her lip curls up, she huffs the softest laugh, leans down, oh, yes, yes please—