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Lug could have asked where Anode had gotten the engex from. If she did, Anode would have answered “It doesn’t matter. People who come back from the dead deserve nice things,” and both of them would know that meant that she’d stolen it.
Lug decided not to bother with the whole song and dance when the hypothetical Anode in her head was correct. People who came back from the dead – and their wives who had brought them back through improbable odds and sheer force of will – did, in fact, deserve nice things.
Anode had flown them out to the fields and they were sitting on some dead soldier’s platform. Anode had clinked the bottle against the edge of it before they’d started passing it between them to thank the dead mech for the seat, but maintained that Lug’s suggestion of pouring out a shot for him or her or them would be going too far.
Lug could already tell that this was a moment she was going to treasure: the feeling of being settled in her frame as the world swirled slightly around her, which only strong engex could produce, Anode warm against her back, occasionally moving just her head to kiss the top of Lug’s or take another swig of engex, the way Anode had started out holding her tighter than she usually would, as if to ensure that Lug was solid and warm and there, and gradually relaxed until she was slumped against Lug more than anything.
“I think I like being alive,” Lug remarked to the stars, faint in the distance with the light from the glow of the sparkflowers surrounding them.
Anode snorted, an awful habit that Lug suspected she’d picked up from Swerve before Lug had been around to stop it in its tracks. “You think?”
“I think maybe I could be convinced.” Something about that gave Lug an idea, and she drummed her hands eagerly against Anode’s forearm, rousing her enough to meet Lug’s optics when Lug turned toward her. “Hey. This is a brand-new body I’m in, right? We should renew our conjunx ritus.”
Anode looked thoughtful. “I already did the confession,” she said, glancing at Lug for her affirmative nod. Then her optics narrowed. “You just want a present.”
“No, I want to show you that you’re still the love of my life and that I want to be with you for the rest of forever,” Lug said, now just holding on to Anode’s forearm where it was wrapped against her chest. “I really want to do it. Please?” As soon as she said it, she admitted to herself that “Please?” wasn’t exactly the greatest thing to say when you were asking someone to (re-) marry you, but Anode was already smiling, so she didn’t bother to recant it.
Lug was filled with a flash of relief so intense it surprised her. Lug’s gift to Anode, the first time around, had been pulling the strings to get her accepted into that internship on Caminus. Anode had been so excited when she’d found out that Lug had managed to brute-force her application through despite the Lighthouse not typically accepting Cybertron-born Cybertronians, she hadn’t stopped smiling for days. Then Anode’s act of devotion had been to leave the apprenticeship she’d wanted so much to come back to Lug.
Well, that was what Lug had thought, and Anode had nodded along. Looking back, Lug had misread the guilt in her optics as anxiety over how Lug would react, and Anode had never actually said that she’d intended it as the fourth act…Lug had just assumed that it was. It had been sitting uneasily in Lug’s mind since Anode’s recent revelation of the ugly truth of what had happened at the Lighthouse. It hadn’t made Lug love Anode any less, but the lie at the center of their conjunx ritus, which was supposed to be so special, wasn’t sitting well.
“Hey.” Anode’s voice had that tone that had always made part of Lug wary while the rest of her perked up in excitement.
“What?”
“I did a confession, yeah? And we’ve been cuddling for hours. I have an idea for a way for you to do something for me and me to get something for you all at once.”
Lug tipped her helm back against Anode’s curved chest and looked balefully out at the field of sparkflowers. “Is it helping you steal something?”
“It’s helping me steal something.”
Lug gave her a flat look and held her hand out for the engex.
The engineers from the Lost Light had set aside a room as a workshop when they’d been working on the teleport chamber, and inside that room, Anode insisted that she’d seen a pair of teleportation bracelets just like the ones that could have saved their lives back on Luna 2.
There was a small chance, Lug mused as Anode flew them in graceless engex-fueled curves back to the fortress, that if they asked nicely the engineers would just give them to them. There was a larger chance, particularly given that Anode had already manage to piss off Nautica in what seemed like a permanent way, that the question would lead to the teleportation bracelets being taken out of sight forever.
If Anode wasn’t asking her to do this as an Act, Lug would have refused. And if Lug wasn’t so eager to have that extra measure of safety back, Anode wouldn’t have bothered. The whole of the thing made Lug feel in sync with Anode in a way that felt like finally coming home, and that was the point of this, wasn’t it?
Anode landed on the roof of the fortress and Lug transformed off of her, only to miscalculate the distance through the engex-haze and fall flat on her face. Anode snorted again, and Lug halfheartedly kicked at her knee, which was enough to make Anode fall on her drunk aft on the roof. They were lucky that the fortress didn’t actually have any sort of security system to speak of, because they absolutely would have activated it with their drunken laughter right then.
“Someone’s going to hear us,” Lug finally managed to say.
“Then I guess you should shut up.” Anode pulled Lug toward her and kissed her, long and deep, maybe just in case the hours of cuddling hadn’t quite been intimacy enough.
Lug was about ready to call it quits and make out on the roof all night when Anode pulled away, dotting Lug’s nose and then helm with kisses as she did. She ameliorated the insult by pulling Lug to her feet. “Come on. Let’s do this. The grate will be just southeast of center.”
“…been planning this heist long, have we?” Lug asked, pulling out the screwdriver that she knew Anode would need for the grate before Anode had a chance to ask for it.
“Just hypothetically.” Anode focused on unscrewing the grate, and Lug focused on the little motions Anode’s wings made on her back plating as she worked. “Is the rope ready?” Anode asked while lifting the grate away from the roof.
“Huh?”
“The rope? For the air vents? That we have to climb down?” Anode looked over at Lug and started to laugh at something in her expression. “We’ve done this hundreds of times.”
Lug rolled her optics and reached into the proper compartment. “Rope, climbing, yeah.”
Anode booped Lug’s nose as she unwound the rope and secured it to one of the beams on the roof. “You’re really drunk.”
“You’re…that new idiom that Swerve taught me. Something something kettle black.”
“What’s a kettle?”
“I don’t know. You ready?”
“Ready.”
Anode started down the shaft first, which probably spoke to her eagerness more than anything but struck Lug as very gallant. It was with a warmth in her spark that Lug followed her down.
Lug miscalculated her grip strength as she started and slid a little ways down the rope until she was stopped with Anode’s hand on her aft. Lug’s drunk brain interpreted this as the funniest thing that had ever happened to anyone, anywhere, ever, and she needed Anode’s support to hold her up even more as her laughter really got going.
“Get on my back, you’ve lost your climbing privileges,” Anode said, and Lug was delighted to comply.
She’d never been this drunk on Anode’s back with Anode in root mode. She had been missing out. The vents on Anode’s back warmed Lug’s frame and her ailerons tickled Lug’s sides, giving the impression that Anode was practically all around her. “You’re warm,” she said, in an attempt to convey it all.
“You’re silly.” Anode said. Her feet touched the bottom of the shaft, which Lug could feel from Anode’s back. Right. Ventilation shaft. Heist. Teleport bracelets.
Conjunx ritus!
Lug would have been perfectly content to stay there on Anode’s back forever in pretty much every other circumstance, but she transformed away and looked around. They were still in one of the fortress’s ventilation shafts, and there was a grate below them which led into a cluttered room that must be the destination Anode had in mind.
Lug pouted. The grate was Lug-sized, not Anode-sized, and there wasn’t the infrastructure here to anchor a rope for both of them anyway. Lug would have to fetch the bracelets herself. It was more symbolic that way, probably, even if it was annoying.
Lug handed Anode a carabiner, which Anode grinned at, probably specifically at getting to avoid the argument Lug might have started over this plan at another time. Anode had better love her forever after this.
They each hooked carabiners onto designated spots on their belt loops, Anode’s with the belay device, and Lug started backwards down through the open air to the workshop. Anode released the line that tethered them together in practiced motions so that Lug descended slowly and steadily.
It wasn’t enough. The engex in Lug’s system, which had made the ride on Anode’s back feel like the greatest thing in the world, made this descent hellish. She clamped her hands over her optics so that at least she couldn’t see herself practically in freefall, which seemed like a great idea right up until her foot hit something round.
She scrambled to regain her footing, failed, and landed on a hard surface gently on her aft. She finally uncovered her optics just in time to see the crash.
She had not, in fact, reached the floor. She’d landed on a table, and in her scramble to get her feet on something solid, she had knocked a giant metal tube, about twice as long as Lug, off of it’s supports on the table. As she watched in horror, the tube rolled into another table, collapsing two of its legs and scattering its contents on the floor. Glass shattered and something actually exploded.
Lug tugged hard at the rope, their sign for abort, but the rope had gone slack. She looked up to see the ceiling tile next to the grate shuddering, and she dove out of the way before Anode could land on top of her, accidentally knocking into another flimsy table as she did so.
Anode swung out of the ceiling, catching the edge on one hand before dropping to the floor. This was a disaster. Through the remaining haze from the engex, Lug realized in a moment of sudden clarity that this had at no point been a good idea.
“Teleport bracelets!” Anode said in a whisper as footsteps raced towards the workshop’s door.
Teleport bracelets! Lug spotted their familiar translucent glow from one of the newly upended stacks of equipment and quickly programmed both of them to send them just outside of the fortress before tossing one to Anode. Anode slipped the bracelet on and grabbed the hand where Lug wore hers, and they activated the bracelets simultaneously.
Lug didn’t know which one of them had lost their balance, but they landed in a heap on the soft ground outside, Anode already giggling. Lug just sighed and snuggled closer to Anode, their hands still clasped together between them. “Love you,” she said. Then, “I’m never conjunxing you again.”
“Then you’d better not die again,” Anode said with uncharacteristic seriousness that Lug suspected she wouldn’t have used if she wasn’t quite so drunk and if she was looking Lug in the optic rather than mumbling into her shoulder.
But it wasn’t like Lug had any intention of dying again, so she just stayed there, letting the world spin around the two of them, just the way it should.
“They’re going to figure out that it was us,” Lug said when it occurred to her, after they’d been lying there for a while.
“So? They can’t catch us. We have teleport bracelets,” Anode said.
Lug giggled into Anode’s chestplate, starting to feel a little less like she was going to fall into recharge right there in the field. Anode pressed a kiss to the top of Lug’s helm, a heaviness and seriousness to it that made Lug adjust her position so she could look at her.
Anode was looking at her in that way only Anode ever had, like she was the reaction at the center of a star that kept planets in orbit around it. Lug pulled her a little closer.
They met halfway to kiss, imperfect and sloppy with both the engex and the heaviness that always came after the intensity of a heist. Lug blinked her optics back on when Anode pulled away, not even having realized that they’d shut off.
Anode was her conjunx, now, again, and forever.
For the first time since Lug had come back from the dead, they said in tandem the words that always came when they felt like this, so wrapped up in each other that the rest of the universe fell away.
“I love you so much it’s not even funny.”