Work Text:
The new project to overhaul the infrastructure of New Iacon was coming along relatively well. There were zoning permits to be approved, traffic lights to reprogram, crosswalks to ensure were up to code, and Perceptor, somehow, had been placed in charge of overseeing a great majority of the engineering.
His life for the past several weeks had almost exclusively been meetings. It was quite dull. He was in a meeting this very moment, albeit an informal one taking place standing in a hallway, with two of the lead engineers on the project.
“The budget you’re asking for is insane.” Perceptor insisted. “We don’t need to spend four million shanix on engraving sidewalk curbs.”
“Listen man.” One of the engineers said. “We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the right way. And personally I want to live in a city I’m proud to have built.”
“Yeah!” The other one agreed emphatically. Perceptor scowled.
“Okay, you fund it then, I’m not approving these expenses.” As he spoke he distantly registered the sounds of somebody’s pedes scraping across the floors towards them.
“Hey, Percy.” Said the familiar voice of his lab/life partner. Perceptor stifled a sigh.
“Not now, Brainstorm.” He huffed, waving a dismissive hand towards the other without looking. “If you want to commission artistic endeavors then that needs to be taken up with cultural resources, not traffic routing.”
“I don’t want to commission, I want to be commissioned!” The engineer protested.
“Perceptor.”
“I said not now. I don’t want to commission you!”
“Perceiver.”
“I want to get this goddamn project done so I can go back to something more interesting!” Perceptor spat.
“Percival.”
Maybe it was harsh but he was getting really sick of looking at intersections.
“It’s kind of important!” Brainstorm complained from behind him.
“In a minute!” Perceptor snapped, still not looking at the jet. “And another thing. We don’t have to keep you two on this project at all! I’m sure there’s plenty of other qualified individuals who-” Perceptor paused mid-sentence and frowned at the obstinate engineers. How curious, they both had frozen with twin expressions of shock and horror on their faces. Well that was certainly odd. A hand grabbed Perceptor’s shoulder and shook him insistently.
“Percy!” Brainstorm tried again. Finally Perceptor whirled around, shaking off the hand in the process.
“For the love of God, Brainstorm! What is-” Perceptor froze, his face quickly morphing to match the two bots standing behind him.
Brainstorm, his plating absolutely drenched all the way down the front in murky dead energon, held out something to Perceptor with both hands.
“Can you hold this for a second?” He said shakily. Without thinking Perceptor reached out and took the object. It had barely left Brainstorm’s hands before the jet’s legs gave out and he crumpled sideways into a heap of limp lifeless metal.
Perceptor stared down at him, totally stunlocked. He finally tore his eyes away to look down at the thing in his arms. The thing looked back up at him and beeped softly.
Slowly, like his gears were full of gum, Perceptor jerkily turned his head to stare at the two engineers behind him. He opened his mouth, lips moving wordlessly like he’d intended to say something, but for some reason he couldn’t really remember what he had been thinking just a second ago.
“MEDIC!” One of the engineers shouted and sprinted off like a shot down the hall.
---
If you had told Spike Witwicky fifty years ago that he’d be living on an alien planet in another galaxy for the majority of his adult life he’d have said “Hell yes, give me some of that good shit you’re smoking, brother.”
But it wasn’t a drug-induced trip. No, it was his fantastic reality. Living on Cybertron with the bots he’d grown up with (the ones that hadn’t been killed horribly) and his beautiful wife and son? What more could a man ask for.
“How’s it going, Bee?” Spike asked as he rounded a corner and ran into his old friend.
“Same old same old.” Bee answered.
It was easy to fall into conversation with Bumblebee. Sometimes it was almost like he was just that kid back on Earth, talking about who was doing what on Cybertron, Who had called from Metroplex lately, that sort of thing.
Their reminiscing was abruptly cut off by a frantic shout from down the hallway.
“MOVE!” somebody shrieked and Spike managed to dive out of the way mere seconds before First Aid rocketed past pushing a giant gurney. “IDIOT FORGOT TO CHECK HIS CALENDAR!” He yelled by way of explanation.
It didn’t really explain anything. Spike and Bumblebee looked down at the drips of pink liquid trailing behind First Aid and then turned to each other in silent concern. The whole thing had happened too fast to see who was hurt, but any Autobot was somebody Spike considered a friend.
Given his position, Spike couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible for the well-being of the Autobots, ridiculous as his therapist told him that was. He probably should have sought out somebody of authority who knew what was going on, but instead he found himself sprinting down the long hallway towards the medbay. Bumblebee muttered something about checking with command and hurried off in the opposite direction to do what Spike probably should have.
Following the energon splatters, Spike soon found himself inside the huge double doors of the ER where First Aid and Ambulon were hunched over a motionless frame on the operating table.
Spike squinted at the bot on the table. It was a bright turquoise jet with gray wings who he couldn’t quite remember the name of… Shame on you, Spike.
“What’s going on?” Spike asked up at First Aid who was busy gluing medical instruments directly onto the jet. First Aid barely glanced at him before turning back to his work.
“Brainstorm had his sparkling and didn’t fragging tell anyone, that’s what’s going on.” He huffed. “He was supposed to check into the medbay two days ago for observation!”
Spike still wasn’t fully sure what was happening, but apparently this had been some foreseen event?
“Didn’t you remind him?” He asked First Aid, confused. If he’d missed an appointment surely there would be some follow up, right?
“It wasn’t in my schedule because I don’t have any of the patient files from before thirty years ago! Ratchet took them with him when he exploded!- Primus rest his spark.” First Aid lamented while making some kind of religious gesture with one energon-stained hand. “Ambulon!” He snapped suddenly. “Where is my crowbar!?”
“It’s right next to you!” Ambulon groused.
Spike made the executive decision to stop bothering them and slunk back out the doors. There was a bench outside the operating room for visitors to wait, and Spike belatedly realized that somebody was already there. The mech sitting on the benches was obscured by Hoist, gesturing insistently and speaking in soft but firm words until he finally took something from the bench-goer and rushed off with it, taking it deeper into the medbay.
Hoist disappeared through a door and Spike looked back at the bench. Perceptor was sitting there, staring blankly into space with his arms still held in front of himself like he was cradling something invisible. His hands were smudged with dried energon and he looked… Frankly unwell!
Ignoring whatever was wrong with Perceptor, Spike hopped up to sit on the bench across from him. He was doing his best to remember who Brainstorm was and what the hell a ‘sparkling’ was. Whatever it was must have been some kind of horrible weapon or virus, to inflict the kind of damage it had on poor Brainstorm.
Spike gave up and slumped over. He looked at Perceptor curiously. Why was he here, was somebody else hurt too?
“Who are you here for?” He asked.
“Uh. Gwuh. Huh?” Perceptor said, still staring into space.
Clearly Perceptor wasn’t in the mood for conversation so Spike sighed and resigned himself to waiting. He could have just left and checked back in later, but something about this situation was giving him a strange sense of deja vu and he wanted to figure out what it was.
It didn’t take too long for First Aid to shuffle out of the double doors and into the waiting room. Perceptor shot up and stared at him expectantly. First Aid just shrugged nonchalantly.
“It’s fine.” He said. “You guys can go in.”
First Aid followed the two back into the operating room which had been hastily cleaned up of mechanic tools and bodily fluids. Perceptor power walked over to Brainstorm and proceeded to stare at him intensely, his hands gripping the berth’s railing so hard he was crushing it.
“Stop that.” First Aid complained while he swatted at the offending hands. Spike meanwhile had climbed up the human-sized stairs that somebody had wheeled in for him and was on the bedside table staring at the unconscious mech.
“So…” He started lamely. “What exactly happened again?” He looked at First Aid in confusion. First Aid just looked annoyed.
“I told you that already.”
“Yeah but I didn’t really… get it.” Spike admitted. He didn’t appreciate the ambulance staring at him like he was stupid but… He was starting to think he might be stupid.
“Where’s the-” Perceptor stammered out. It was almost the first coherent sentence he had formed.
First Aid pointed at Brainstorm’s midsection. Or more specifically his cockpit.
“Hoist cleaned him up and checked him out. They need to stay together for the first several hours.” Perceptor frowned but nodded anyway. Spike was only getting more confused.
He leaned over and squinted at the cockpit, trying to figure out what was wrong with it. If he stared long enough he could see some kind of blobby shadow in there and it was… Oh dear lord, it was moving.
All at once a particular memory rushed back to Spike. It was so long ago, no wonder he had forgotten. Decades ago, back when dear old dad had still been with them, he had come home one night, clearly buzzed, with the strangest look on his face.
“Spike, you would not believe the day I’ve had.” He had said and then proceeded to tell Spike all about-
“Oh SHIT I totally forgot you were going to be a dad!” he blurted, staring at said new dad. “Congratulations I guess.” Perceptor glared at him.
“Thanks.” He grit out.
“Yeah about that.” First Aid cut in. He was wringing his hands nervously. “Perceptor, can I talk to you about some… expectations?” Perceptor crossed his arms suspiciously.
“What do you mean? Because I read those pamphlets you nailed to my door, and I still don’t know what a baby is.”
“No not that.” First Aid shuffled awkwardly. “So the thing is. You know how. Oh how do I put this? Jets can be- broadly speaking of course- and not all of them! But it’s somewhat understood that as a frame class they’re kind of…” He side-eyed Perceptor through his visor. “...Neurotic.”
“I’m aware.” Perceptor said simply. He was so very aware.
“Yes well.” First Aid continued. “This isn’t well documented. In fact it’s just hearsay more than anything. In fact you might not have a problem with it at all! Actually maybe I shouldn’t even tell you-”
“Get on with it!” Perceptor snapped.
“Just um. Be careful once he wakes up.” First Aid said cryptically. “For your own sake.”
Perceptor raised a brow but didn’t ask for clarification.
“Noted.” He said, and returned to his post staring at the hospital berth.
“Are you sure he’s going to be okay?” Spike asked nervously. “That looked like a lot of bleeding.” Even though he didn’t share the bodily fluids of the Cybertronians, seeing all that energon splattering everywhere was still kind of nauseating.
First Aid waved a hand dismissively.
“That’s mostly just from the scaffolding.” He said plainly. Spike’s eyebrows shot up.
“Scaffolding?” He asked.
“You know. The scaffolding. It’s like.” First Aid made a series of hand gestures over his chestplate that didn’t form any coherent image. “It’s the scaffolding!” Perceptor looked over and frowned.
“You know of Earth’s propensity for ‘3D printing machines’?” He said.
“Yes?” Spike replied. “Kind of.”
“It’s like that.” Perceptor finished and turned back to stare at his partner.
“Okay?” There was a war raging inside of Spike’s mind at the moment. He didn’t want to be too intrusive with his questions (or find out anything he regretted) but also what he had been told so far was painting bizarre pictures that surely couldn’t be correct.
“The scaffolding forms inside the spark chamber around the sparkling to keep it safe and provide minerals and energy from the carrier’s frame.” First Aid finally figured out how to explain. “And then it all breaks off at the end. And bleeds everywhere.”
“Ohh.” Spike said. “Okay, I guess I see. How does. Um.” Careful, Spike. “In broad terms, how does all that…” He gestured vaguely at Brainstorm. “Work. For you guys?”
“Well it doesn’t really work at all honestly.” First Aid replied, tilting his head in thought. “I heard once you humans can grow tumors made of teeth.”
Spike gawked. They could!?
“In a way it’s similar to that. Biologically speaking it’s not healthy, nor is it supposed to happen. But it can, and it does.”
“Yeah the teeth tumors-” euck. “Aren’t alive though!” Spike protested. “How does that happen by mistake!?”
Perceptor pulled a thick book out of of his subspace and opened to a page towards the middle.
“You can read all about it in here if you’re interested. It’s really quite complicated.” He offered the huge book to Spike who took it. It was the size of a medium table, but he managed to heft it up only to find it was written in Cybertronian.
“The reason sparklings are so rare is because the whole process is really nothing but a weird blindspot in our programming.” First Aid added. “It’s an understudied topic, but putting in any research is frowned upon for. Um. Ethical reasons.”
Spike flipped through the book and stopped on a page in the back.
“Why is there a picture of Shockwave in the ‘about the author’ section?”
“Very understudied…” First Aid repeated gravely.
For a while Spike sat and flipped through the book, gawking at the diagrams (the only part he could understand).
Perceptor had started dozing off in his chair, and First Aid had wandered off to return to work, leaving behind a call button should they need him.
Spike was just trying to wrap his head around what the hell was going on in Figure 14b and whether or not it was sex when a miserable groan came from the hospital berth.
Perceptor startled awake and stumbled over to the side of it.
“How do you feel?” He asked in a clipped tone.
“Bad.” Replied Brainstorm. He woozily sat up and looked down at himself, poking curiously at his cockpit. “Aww, he survived!” He said happily. First Aid had taken off Brainstorm’s mask at some point during the medical procedures so Spike could see the grin that spread across his face. It warmed his own heart to see a new family coming together.
Perceptor also did something vaguely approximating a smile and moved as if to put a hand on Brainstorm, but before he even made contact Brainstorm’s entire body flinched violently. The furious sound of an engine growling ripped through the room and without warning Brainstorm bit Perceptor’s hand, sinking surprisingly sharp teeth in and refusing to let go even as Perceptor flailed.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH” Was all Perceptor managed to say as he pulled uselessly against his beloved sweetheart’s jaws of death. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?”
Spike sprinted over to the call button and started furiously pressing it. Behind him carnage ensued as Perceptor finally managed to wrench his hand free, energon pouring down his arm like a waterfall.
“Have you gone mad!?” He yelled at Brainstorm who just kept growling at him, his armor plating flared out in aggression.
A moment later First Aid hurried in. It took him all of five seconds to take in the scene before he sighed.
“I told you to be careful!” He chastised Perceptor.
“About what!?” Perceptor cried. “I thought you meant health-wise!”
“I guess it’s true then, at least in this case. Jets make fantastically protective carriers!” First Aid said excitedly as he started jotting furiously in a data pad. “Or at least super angry ones!”
“Protective!? I’m the sire!” Perceptor protested. “Why am I a threat!?”
“Everything’s a threat.” First Aid shrugged. “He’ll calm down eventually, don’t worry!”
“When!??”
“Uh…” First Aid spared a glance at Brainstorm noticed his stare and snarled in response. “At some point!” He promised. “Well, if there’s no real emergency I’ll just take my leave. Good luck.” Spike thought he might have been imagining it when the medic snickered under his breath on his way out.
After getting smacked a few more times Perceptor eventually gave up on seeing his child and went to sulk in the corner where it was safe. Once some distance was put between them Brainstorm smoothed out and finally stopped growling. A few minutes later an alarm went off on one of the monitors indicating that it was apparently time for Brainstorm’s next round of supplements. After some debate and more hissing this led to Perceptor very carefully and slowly pushing a cube of the provided energon blend towards the lovely carrier of his child. Using a fifty foot pole.
“I’m chill! I’m chill.” Brainstorm promised, and took a sip from the cube. His face scrunched up in disgust.
“Well that might have been the worst marital spat I’ve ever witnessed.” Spike joked. The whole thing reminded him of a broody chicken sitting on eggs. His aunt had owned a little farm back on Earth and he’d swear up and down that he nearly lost an eye to Daisy the hen once.
Brainstorm had at some point taken his sparkling out of its container (himself) and was messing with it in his lap but stopped to stare at Spike in confusion. His expression was matched by Perceptor on the other side of the room.
“We’re not married, what are you talking about?”
Spike blinked, slightly taken aback.
“You aren’t? My bad, do bots not do that?”
“We do.” Perceptor confirmed.
“My buddy Chromedome just got married last year.” Brainstorm added. Then with some irritation, “Again.”
“Well then why aren’t you…” Spike trailed off. “You are together right?”
“Yeah.” Brainstorm confirmed like he hadn’t just tried to chew his paramour’s limb off a few minutes ago.
“Well why haven’t you then!? You have a baby!” Honestly, call him traditional but Spike thought the kid deserved a little stability in its life going forwards! It needed all it could get considering who it was being raised by!
“Kind of a big commitment, innit?” Brainstorm mused.
“You have a child!!!” Spike cried again. “What the hell, guys!? You had fifty years to figure this out and I know for a fact that my dad talked to you about it multiple times!”
“God, fifty years just flies by though.” Brainstorm reclined in his berth and went back to fiddling with the lump of red metal obscured by his arms. “We have time! I’m not gonna let you move out until you’re twelve hundred at least!” This last part was directed at the red lump in a high pitched baby voice. The lump made a series of beeping noises and something that might have been wings fluttered around.
“No, hold on! I won’t stand for this!” Spike declared. “You two are going to make this official, I don’t care what it takes!”
“What’s the point?” Perceptor huffed. “It hardly changes anything practically speaking.”
“It’s about the symbol of it!” Spike insisted again. “That sparkler-”
“Sparkling.”
“Let me finish. That sparkling is going to grow up knowing that its parents love each other and made it on purpose because they love it too!”
“We didn’t make him on purpose though.” Brainstorm muttered.
“It’s going to grow up thinking that you did!”
The new parents looked at each other for a long moment before looking away and sighing in unison.
“Fine.” They said begrudgingly.
“Good.” Spike huffed, crossing his arms in satisfaction. “Now, on to the next important matter.”
He leaned over to get as close of a look at the sparkling as he could without Brainstorm swatting him into a bloody pulp. God, its eyes were huge!
“What are you going to name it, do you know yet?”
Perceptor shook his head.
“We’re going to wait for a bit of a personality to develop before deciding on a designatio-”
“I named him Synapse!” Brainstorm blurted, cutting off the other. Perceptor slowly turned his head to stare at Brainstorm.
“...I thought we were going to decide later, dear.” He said icily. Brainstorm ignored him and just nuzzled his now re-masked face up against Synapse.
“He violently exploded out of my chest cavity, I get to name him!” He said cheerily. Perceptor looked like he really wanted to say something, but he glanced down at the bite marks still visible on his hand and wilted in defeat.
“His name is Synapse apparently.” He acquiesced. “Actually, I think I may grow to like it.” As if to emphasize his approval, Perceptor leaned in to place a soft kiss on Brainstorm’s helm. Big mistake, buddy.
Spike winced as a loud *CLANG* smashed through the silence mere moments before Perceptor crashed to the floor. Synapse, clutched behind Brainstorm’s flexed claws, giggled happily.
Not long after that Brainstorm was discharged from the medbay with the promise of returning for frequent check-ins to see how they all were doing. Brainstorm waved goodbye to Spike and skipped away, his miserable betrothed wobbling after him at a safe distance.
Spike decided not to think about why they were taking the baby towards the lab…
In the days that followed, morale was at an all time high. With the help of a translator Spike learned a little more about how exactly the whole ‘kindling’ process worked. Apparently the comparison to a tumor was not as far off as he had assumed. Spark splits happened naturally during… ‘activities’ as benign system hiccups, but were always immediately reabsorbed. If a sample of somebody else’s coding ended up mixed with the spark during the split however, it would be registered as a foreign body and fail to reintegrate, thus giving it the chance to absorb materials from the host and grow into an entirely separate entity that was then evicted forcefully via an irregular transformation sequence when it got too big to coexist with the host. There was about a fifty percent chance that the newspark was reabsorbed at some point during the process thanks to the carrier’s antivirus programs successfully murdering it. Yikes.
And yes, Figure 14b had been sex. Again: Yikes.
He remembered from his youth when the Dinobots had been built, and then later came the Aerialbots and since then he’d seen the ‘birth’ of a lot of new bots so Spike kind of just assumed that was how they all came into existence. It turned out there was actually quite a few different ways Cybertronians were made, from being built by hand to just straight up growing out of the ground.
Each method had their own advantages and disadvantages, but it seemed that the main advantage of being ‘kindled’ as they called it was that a bot was able to develop their survival skills while under extra protection due to the fact that they were-
“Sooooo cute!” cooed Jazz at Synapse who was sitting in a weirdly advanced looking high chair. He wiggled a finger at the wide-eyed sparkling who simply stared in awe as a taloned pede smashed into the side of Jazz’s head and sent him flying across the room. Brainstorm growled at the heinous offender who dared compliment his baby and ran after him to finish what he started.
Yes, nowadays there was barely a mech or femme in HQ that hadn’t been beaten, berated, besieged, or bitten by Brainstorm in their attempts to get at his adorable offspring. The fact that they kept trying was something of a feat in and of itself.
“How’s it going, Perceptor?” Spike greeted the microscope sitting (with his legs) on a bench at the edge of the dining hall. Perceptor looked up at him with exhausted lifeless eyes. There was hardly a square inch on his entire frame that wasn’t dented or covered in claw marks.
“Superb.” He answered dryly. “I finally got to hold Synapse yesterday.” He said.
“That’s great!” Spike exclaimed. “How did you manage that?”
“I distracted Brainstorm with a laser pointer.”
Spike stared at Perceptor, trying to figure out if he was joking or not.
“It was a high-powered laser capable of cutting through 10 feet of titanium.” Perceptor clarified. “It only worked for a few seconds…” He sighed deeply and a piece of loose plating fell off his shoulder, clattering to the floor. He just stared at it mournfully.
“Well, chin up!” Spike encouraged half-heartedly. “How’s the wedding planning going?”
“I’m still terribly busy between all that” he gestured at Brainstorm who had moved on to a new victim, much to Synapse’s delight. “and the development projects I’m still working on. I outsourced the wedding to Rodimus.”
Spike raised an eyebrow.
“Who then outsourced it to Ultra Magnus.” Perceptor continued. “There seems to be a math themed party in the works. I’m actually quite excited.” He said in the dullest, least excited voice possible, and yet somehow Spike could tell he was sincere.
The mech Brainstorm was trying to flay alive had started screaming for help and Perceptor reluctantly got up to step in before his dearly beloved could become a murderer.
The math-themed wedding was held the very next day in- Wait, next day!? Spike hadn’t meant they do it that fast!
And yet here he was, sitting in the aisles with his family as Blurr of all people officiated the ceremony. The audience was filled with all colors and shapes of Autobots. Rodimus looked to be falling asleep in the corner on a bench shaped like the square root of -1. Spike glanced at the pair at the end of the aisle standing underneath a perfect parabola of an archway.
They had both dressed up fancy by painting ornate stripes and complex patterns on their armor which probably had some cultural significance Spike wasn’t privy to, but what concerned him more was that they were standing closer together than he had seen all week. Perceptor was doing his best to lean out of Brainstorm’s personal space without his feet leaving the tape marker he was standing on, and Brainstorm had his arms crossed conspicuously over his cockpit, growling softly like he was really trying his best to keep it stamped down.
Blurr’s speech was finally wrapping up after a miserable several minutes.
“AndFinallyPerceptorDoYouTakeBrainstormToBeYourLawfullyBondedConjunxEnduraFromThisDayForwardToExperimentOnAndWithInTimesOfWarAndPeaceForRicherOrForPoorerAlthoughLet’sBeHonestHeOnlyHasLikeTwoDollarsInObviousMentalIllnessAndInHealth;”
He stopped and took a long gasping breath in.
“WillYouLoveHonorAndCherishHimForAsLongAsYouBothShallLive?ANSWERNOWPLEASE.”
“I do.” Perceptor said.
“AndBrainstormDoYouTakePerceptorToBeYourLawfullyBondedConjunxEnduraFromThisDayForwardToBaffleAndBemuseEvenWhenDecepticonsAttackForRicherOrForPoorerYou’veGotTheRightIdeaMarryingRichInSicknessMostLikelyCausedByYouAndInGoodEnoughHealth;”
Another long breath.
“WillYouLoveHonorAndCherishHimForAsLongAsYouBothShallLive?ANSWER.”
“Yes.” Brainstorm grit out like it was physically painful. His entire body was twitching with the urge to attack.
“ALRIGHT!” Blurr yelled. “YouMayNowBonkYourHelmsTogetherToSymbolizeYourMergingFeelingsAndIntentions!”
Spike frowned. “They may now what??” He whispered.
Rewind seated next to him leaned over and whispered to him.
“Not all of us have mouths to kiss with.” He explained. “It’s all inclusive this way!” He must have been speaking from experience.
Perceptor began slowly leaning towards Brainstorm, genuine fear in his eyes. Brainstorm also slowly leaned in, his own yellow gaze unblinking and glowing intensely. The two inched towards each other, painfully slowly, until finally after what felt like an eternity, their helms clinked together in the softest, gentlest little love tap there had ever been.
It still was too intense apparently, as the second they touched Brainstorm jumped violently like he’d gone swimming and felt something slimy touch his foot. The jet jerked away and without warning suddenly bashed his head against Perceptor’s skull, smashing a huge dent into his helmet and knocking him clean out. Perceptor crashed to the floor, optics dark and lifeless, and there he stayed.
There was a long moment of silence. When they realized nothing else was going to happen the audience clapped politely.
“MEDIC!” Somebody yelled, once the applause had died down.
Several days after the wedding and subsequent emergency concussion treatment Perceptor found himself recharging peacefully at home. It may be the couch in the living room, but it was his home nonetheless. He had only just managed to begin drifting off when he felt something warm and pointy plop itself on top of him.
He jolted awake and onlined his optics to discover Brainstorm staring him directly in the face, mere inches away.
“Come to beerthh.” He complained. Perceptor gawked in confusion. Brainstorm harumphed and rolled off of him onto the floor. He then got up and started trying to bodily pull Perceptor off the couch. “C’mon, I’m lonely over here!” He insisted. Perceptor spluttered at the sheer audacity of his spouse.
“Are you truly serious!?” He spat. Brainstorm just glared at him.
“I’m always serious!” He lied.
“You spend the last two weeks treating me like your own personal punching bag and now you want to cuddle!?”
It maybe wasn’t quite possible for Brainstorm to ever look sheepish, not with his massive (yet fragile) ego, but he at least had the decency to avert his gaze right then.
“Sowwy.” He said, without an ounce of regret.
Perceptor probably should have kept up his protests or started an argument or something, but unfortunately for his pride, he found he was also in some sore need of cuddling.
He was by no means a religious mech, never could be with his dedication to science, but he found himself shooting up a quick prayer that ‘At Some Point’ had finally come.