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[phase6kindofbot]

The moment the ship docks, Sixshot vanishes.

It's happened often enough times that the crew and captain of the ship that ferried him around the galaxy for missions have ceased trying to understand how it was possible to lose track of a building-sized beast mech that quickly. All they'd get in warning was a virtual post-it note on the bridge's big screen and they didn't see the guy for the rest of their stay. There was something disconcerting about a Phase Sixer going around without anyone noticing, but what can you do?

Someone spots him briefly at the station's biggest bar buying something ridiculously expensive and distilled and the radio lights up with gossip. This was a mech whose social life was nonexistent as far as anyone onboard knew. This was also mech who couldn't get drunk anyways, what with the whole ridiculous fission cells business.

So. Who was it for?

About five hours later, they get news of Black Shadow's ship docking and the rumor mills pretty much explode.

In a secluded VIP room he'd signed off on for the rest of their stay, Sixshot is busy making a pile out of some foam beds he'd been hoarding for this particular occasion.

Comments

[phasesixsellout]

Black Shadow couldn't care less about the rumour mill. Bored people will talk about anything they want, and if they start chattering about something he doesn't like, he can and will shut them up. By force, if need be. The crew on his ship know this well enough that they say nothing about how Black Shadow lets himself out an airlock while they're still on approach. Docking procedures are always too slow and he can just fly himself in, so why wait?

He's waited decades as it is.

He doesn't even think once about barging into that reserved room. Or throwing himself directly into the massive heap of beds whether or not Sixshot is done arranging them.

"This is my third favourite part of getting here," he declares with a gusty sigh and a long vent from his engines.

[phase6kindofbot]

There's suddenly a Black Shadow in his neat pile of mattresses and Sixshot huffs and just tosses the rest onto his fellow Phase Sixer before promptly following suite.

"Third favourite?" he quizzes, draping his bigger frame over the limited real estate of Black Shadow's lap, popping out a bottle of energon from a hip compartment and offering it up. The damn thing was so distilled it glowed a strange, iridescent white and would probably send a Geiger counter ticking.

"Remote's somewhere to your right," he rumbles, making no effort to make it easier for Black Shadow to fetch it.

[phasesixsellout]

Sixshot's bulk isn't much of a burden but Black Shadow swears at him anyway, and grins all the while. He doesn't even bother answering until he's taken a swig from that offered bottle first. It's strong stuff – strong enough to make him dizzy for a second. His grin widens.

"This kinda thing is my second favourite," he says appreciatively, licking a stray droplet off his lower lip. Even though he can't get much out of it himself, Sixshot always brings really good stuff. Way better than Black Shadow can pick out on his own. (He learned the hard way that a high price tag doesn't necessarily mean it's going to taste good or go down well.) Then he stretches and twists at the waist, fetching back the remote only after a few very long seconds of straining; Sixshot isn't much of a burden, but he's still one heavy slab of metal.

Black Shadow beams down at him and starts flipping through the options on the television screen.

"This part is my first favourite," he adds and raps his knuckles on Sixshot's chest meaningfully.

[phase6kindofbot]

"That's sappy," The exposed part of Sixshot's nose scrunches up. "You're sappy."

Apparently, one of Megatron's most powerful Elite Warriors has the maturity of a teenager when he's comfortable. He's not giving up his spot on his friend's lap though and there was definitely a smile slanting up the corners of his optics there.

"So what are we watching today?" the six-former asks, letting himself fully, finally, relax against the warmth of his friend's armor.

It was so strange, but Black Shadow smelled almost exactly like he remembered. There were dashes of new scents here and there, the smell of a few new alien worlds and the deaths that'd happened upon it- but otherwise... it was almost perfect. Perfect, really. Between that and the sharp, heady scent of the energon slowing filling up the room, a strange, drowsy and nostalgic calm began to take root.

[phasesixsellout]

"You like it anyway," Black Shadow scoffs. He takes another drink and goes back through the menus on the screen again, adding, "Hope they have something with lots of explosions. My last run was barely worth it. No fight in 'em at all."

It was boring, he means to say. Not the least bit fulfilling for someone groomed into and rebuilt as a one-bot army. It's always boring these days.

Sixshot's never boring.

"D'you care if there's a lot of explosions?" asks Black Shadow, glancing down at the much larger bot sprawled in his lap.

[phase6kindofbot]

"I'm completely numb to explosions," Sixshot deadpans, turning his head slightly to look at the screen.

"At least they didn't teleport you into the middle of a sun," he adds after a moment, slightly less deadpan, but still in the kind of tone that said he'd stopped finding any kind of fulfillment in his work eons ago. "That sucked."

It took a good couple of hours for the tech team to somehow reverse the teleportation tech and fish him out. He'd left a decently sized, glassy crater in that planet from the sudden temperature change his arrival had created.

"What about that series with the guy you were following a while back? Maybe they have new episodes."

Sixshot is very helpful.

[phasesixsellout]

That Sixshot bothered to remember the stupid vid series Black Shadow used to track almost religiously is pretty surprising. That he suggested it is even more weird. Black Shadow blinks owlishly, too stunned for words.

For all of three seconds.

"Yeah, great idea!" he says with a laugh and clicks through the programme guide. He's greeted by a nearly deafening boom as he picks his channel and settles in with a contented rumble from his engines. "And yeah, they didn't orbital jump me into a star at least. After that time they dropped me on the fifth moon instead of the planet I was supposed to hit, I stopped letting 'em do it. I'd rather just fly in on my own."

[phase6kindofbot]

"I don't sleep through everything you watch," Sixshot protests, despite the already dimming glow of his optics. Black Shadow's engine rumbles didn't do him a lot of favors either.

"And your support team sounds like a bunch of hooligans," he grumbles, voice almost completely lost under the howl of maxed out speakers.

[phasesixsellout]

Sixshot has the kind of voice that carries well through low frequency resonance, and he's currently pinning a large portion of Black Shadow to the floor. Even though Black Shadow can barely hear him, the words still get across. He pauses briefly, looking deadly sober, then drains half the bottle in one go.

"Liked my old support crew better," he mutters unhappily. The ones who aren't dead were long ago transferred elsewhere. Someone higher up decided his attachment to his crew could become a liability. He decided that if he ever finds out who's responsible, he'll detach them from their limbs.

He lets the video talk for a while.

[phase6kindofbot]

The sound of a half a bottle of distilled energon disappearing down Black Shadow's gullet shakes Sixshot from his drowsing. He peers up wordlessly at his friend, expression unreadable.

After a moment, he quietly sits up, rolling onto his knees and putting some distance between himself and the smaller mech. High pitched whirring and clicks reverberate through the room, white and green plates folding and unfolding, mass shifting through subspace. Eventually, most of the room ends up being taken over by a fuckhuge wolf robot who has to flatten his wings down so that they didn't bang through the ceiling.

Out of all the Phase Sixers, Black Shadow was the only one who maintained social connections. Overlord was charismatic but he mercilessly used and threw people away. Sixshot was distant and aloof and never formed connections to begin with (or in the case of the Terrorcons, it was pretty one-sided). Neither of them were affected the same way Black Shadow was when High Command started actively preventing them from socializing, changing out the rosters of their support teams.

The room shakes as the massive six-former curls up around Black Shadow's back, moving to rest his chin on top of his paws. He huffs once, loudly, and settles back down.

[phasesixsellout]

Black Shadow doesn't really like most people, but he's good with people. It's a weird way to be, and it took a few missions before he came to like his original support crew. They were weird and asked stupid questions but they worked well with him, and yeah, he got pretty attached. They were his. He'd have been just as angry if an Autobot had killed one.

Sixshot moving rouses Black Shadow from his sulk and he watches, suddenly wobbly as the high-grade hits him like a punch in the face, while Sixshot transforms. His brow furrows and he teeters backwards trying to follow Sixshot's movements. Fortunately, the massive wolf is there to keep him from tipping all the way to the floor.

"You were fine where you were," he says, but curls himself into Sixshot's bulk anyway.

[phase6kindofbot]

"I'll be fine here too," Sixshot retorts softly, watching Black Shadow curl up against him. The fumes from the drink were getting stronger, tingling the back of the wolf's olfactory sensors.

"... This is cornier than I remember it," he continues after a moment, turning his optics back to the screen. Mostly, it was an attempt to direct the conversation away from the subject, but yeah, no, this is also one heck of a cheesy show. The hero had just spend a good five minutes monologuing and it didn't look like it was about to end either.

[phasesixsellout]

"Yeah," Black Shadow says with a snort, letting the distraction carry him away from awkward thoughts. He should tell Sixshot, definitely… just… not right now. "Mostly I watch it because they blow things up really well."

A point underscored nicely by the ground under the hero's feet erupting in a massive gout of roaring blue flame and white-hot plasma. Black Shadow cackles at the sight.

"It almost looks real!" he cheers. It should have more force to be really real, and the rock edges along the blast should look much more glassy from the heat of it, but the effects crew clearly know their stuff. It's what got him hooked on this stupid serial in the first place; nobody can say it was the acting. he just rolls his eyes as the villain takes his turn to monologue at the smoking crater where the hero was standing a few seconds ago. "Right down to the long-winded rhetoric," Black Shadow adds in a low mutter. He takes another drink.

[phase6kindofbot]

Sixshot doesn't entirely understand the appeal of watching the show just for the explosions, but then he keeps his character heavy, angsty romance stories to himself. He's pretty sure Soundwave's got at least ten different levels of firewalls put into his computer after finding that out, probably for fear of having the Phase Sixer's terrifying image ruined.

"... It's shorter winded than what they actually get up to these days," he says with a snort, watching as the characters onscreen finally started throwing punches to ridiculously dramatic music. "Last time Megatron and Optimus faced off, I timed at least ten minutes of posturing."

[phasesixsellout]

The reminder of everything outside the here and now turns Black Shadow quiet and sour again. His expression closes up, amusement fading.

"Yeah," he mutters. His wings dip slightly and his grip around the bottle tightens, hand shaking a little. He adds, louder, sullen, "Look, I don't wanna talk about any of that. Can we just… not right now?"

[phase6kindofbot]

"... Alright," Sixshot concedes, curling his huge paws around the smaller Phase Sixer. "What do you want to talk about?"

While awaiting an answer, the wolf-mech scooches a little closer and starts grooming Black Shadow. He wasn't awful dirty, but it's also been a few decades since their last meeting. God knows what his friend's gotten into.

[phasesixsellout]

Black Shadow doesn't have anything he actually wants to talk about, really; he just wants to watch his stupid show with his big stupid friend and not think about their jobs. Their boring, pointless jobs.

"Nothin'," he grumbles. He's not sure he actually wants to watch his show any more, either. Suddenly the one guy sounds an awful lot like Megatron.

Then there is a very large tongue on his back and he snickers before he can stop himself. It tickles.

"Hey, what're you – are you lickin' me?" he wonders between chuckling fits, setting down the bottle to half-heartedly bat at Sixshot's paws.

[phase6kindofbot]

"I might be." There's definitely a smile under there somewhere. He finds a spot just behind one of Black Shadow's ridiculous head fins and goes to work trying to get out the nonexistent grime.

"Figure I might as well make you presentable while we're here," Sixshot grumbles, curling a paw over his friend's chest to keep him in place.

[phasesixsellout]

"You big weirdo!" Black Shadow says, laughing and squirming. It's a bizarre sensation, being licked by a tongue big enough to cover the whole back of his head. He could maybe get free if he twisted just so and shoved Sixshot's paw away hard enough, but he's too busy laughing. "I didn't even wash off yet! It tickles, dammit!"

Being tickled is not something that happens to him much. It's nice; strange, but nice. He squalls and kicks his feet in the mattresses anyway.

[phase6kindofbot]

"You're going to be so shiny Overlord'll get blinded a few galaxies over by the time I'm through," Sixshot declares with a huff, starting up on the other head fin. "Now stop squirming so much!"

Black Shadow's laughter was a welcome change from the sudden mood shift though. He's not seen the other Sixer so unhappy about and off-hand comment about their work before.

Did something happen? he wonders quietly. With Black Shadow drunk and laughing right now though, he tucks the question away for later.

[phasesixsellout]

Black Shadow's laughter pitches up, nearly as high and loud as jet engines on takeoff, and he twists himself up against Sixshot's hold in earnest now. It is entirely too weird and nice. And the niceness makes it stranger.

"This is no way to treat your elder!" he protests between gasps.

[phase6kindofbot]

"Blhhh," Sixshot answers petulantly before leaning back when Black Shadow's squirming threatens to bang his helm against the wolf's mouth. His tongue just wasn't armored quite the same way the rest of him was.

Black Shadow's getting the full weight of the other Sixer's head now though, as he promptly plonks his chin atop his friend's helm.

"You're too rude to be an elder," he declares with a contented rumble.