Two Turtle Doves

“Sandstorm, Sandstorm!” Fireflight’s bubbly voice echoed in the loading bay, demanding the attention of the mech who had just come back with his team with an exuberance that many on the ship had come to expect from the fledgling. He had no mind for any of that though; he wanted to talk to Sandstorm!

In his haste to get to the orange mech, Fireflight nearly collided with another Seeker, whose arms were full of datapads; he only barely dodged under the mech’s wing and gave a halfsparked apology before slamming into his target with all his might. The move almost bowled the massive triple changer over (probably would have if he had had more mass to throw against him) but as it was, he ended up clinging to the Tarnite’s torso with all his limbs, giggling and blabbering questions.

“Did you get to see the green liquid thing? I wasn’t allowed to cross it, it wasn’t in my scouting sector, was it awesome? Cold? Hot? Did it have anything living in it? Are you going out again next shift or can we play a game? I’m bored, Sandstorm, why can’t the scouts help with the mapping?”

Sandstorm laughed and wrapped an arm around Fireflight’s shoulders while he leaned forward to steady himself. Much as he had come to expect this kind of behavior, it was nigh impossible to stay balanced with this rambunctious Vosian around!

The questions, however, were easy enough to handle because Fireflight rarely seemed to care if he skipped a few, and when he did, he just asked again instead of getting upset.

“How many times have I had to pull your aft out of the fire now? And you still want to go near foreign stuff… Well, you definitely picked the right job for that,” he chuckled, hooking his free arm under the fledgling for more support as he moved out of the middle of the walkway. “C’mon, let me get some energon and we can hang out for a bit and I’ll tell you about it.”

“I’m a scout! Getting into trouble is part of the job description,” Fireflight insisted. He then nuzzled his face plates under Sandstorm’s chin and clung on as they moved. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t be put down. That was just fine with him!

Nacelle watched the spectacle with a frown, having barely managed to twist to one side before the younger Seeker threw himself at the triple changer. Someone should really say something to the Tarnite about his behavior, preferably before things ended in either sadness or violence. The fledgling didn’t know better, and well… It was a Tarnite.

Hm…

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“Hey, hey! Survey mech!” To Nacelle’s annoyance, it had been almost impossible to find the triple changer without a red and white seeker burr plastered to some part of him. This, of course, only helped cement his belief that he needed to inform the Tarnite of a few things!

He sped up as much as was socially polite in an effort to catch the orange mech and called again. “Wait up; I would like a word with you!”

Sandstorm turned at the call instinctively even though he wanted nothing more than to crawl into his berth for a nap before he had to go out again. Most of the preliminary surveying was done for this planet, but his work never seemed done nowadays. If he wasn’t answering to Command, he was imputing information or chatting with Fireflight about things they had seen. It was fun, but exhausting, and he wanted to take advantage of the fact that Fireflight was out doing his own job to catch a cycle or two of recharge.

Nowhere in there did his wishes coincide with talking to some random Vosian, but the gods toyed with his wishes all the time so he resigned himself to it, stopping to one side of the hall right before the residential sector and waiting for the other to catch up.

“What’s up? I’m supposed to be off right now.”

“This isn’t official stuff,” Nacelle assured the larger mech before shrugging uncomfortably. “I’m… I suppose I am here to warn you.” Nacelle frowned. “You shouldn’t spend so much time with the fledgling. It won’t end well at all, and he is very young – younger than you’d think, even if he is technically adult.”

And ‘technically’ was the issue here. Fireflight was in his final upgrade; he was slowly losing the last marks of the young, but he was still a fledgling by Vosian terms. His spark was not mature enough to have begun searching out trine mates or a resonance partner. His factual age aside, he was a child still, a youngling.

The triple changer frowned, turning the rest of the way around to face the other flier. He didn’t like the mech’s tone or his words one bit but it didn’t do to jump to conclusions… “What are you trying to say? I know he’s young. But we’re just friends, anyway, so what’s this about?”

“Are you sure that’s what he thinks?” Nacelle lifted an optical ridge, dermas pulling into a somewhat supercilious smile.

“He’s young, you are handsome… Really, there are things that older mechs just shouldn’t do. I’m telling you, don’t encourage him.”

At that, Sandstorm scowled. Just who did this mech think he was?

“Are you trying to imply that there’s more going on than friendship on my part?” he asked, tone level but promising bad things if he got an answer he didn’t like.

“I’m saying that he might think there is more to this. We, Vosians, are not like others… Just make sure he’s clear on what’s going on, before you break his spark.” With that, Nacelle figured he had given enough of a warning and thought he better make himself scarce. Fast… the Tarnite triple changer was quite a bit bigger than him and clearly had a bad temper.

Perhaps he should warn off Fireflight as well?

For all that Sandstorm seriously thought he should just kick the Vosian’s skidplate for even suggesting that he was out to hurt Fireflight, the orange mech knew his time would be better spent getting some recharge. That in mind, he turned away from the retreating Seeker and headed for his cabin. The long walk only served to remind him just how beat he was and by the time he collapsed onto the pliable mesh of his berth, he was so gone that all he could think about was how uncomfortable he used to think these things were. Maybe they just got softer over time and he had to break his in…

Kind of like how he wanted to break that Seeker’s face in, since he was thinking about it. Slagger would deserve it, too, telling him who he could and couldn’t befriend and hang out with. Even if it did seem that he and Fireflight were attached at the hip these cycles. Whose business was that but theirs?

And he had no time to think about it anyway! Fireflight would be back soon and he would want to talk about all the things he had seen (and possibly gotten a little too close to before his team leader could stop him) and he’d be damned if some stupid, clueless wing-ding was going to be the reason he missed out on it!