Ep1.5 - “Safe and Sound” – Closed

[Deleted]

When it came down to it – the jet twins were better fliers than him.

They’d crossed half the planet with only a handful of pit-stops between continents, those pit-stops largely being the product of Sideswipe’s ill-formatted jet-mod overheating after hours of prolonged flight and requiring him to land and cycle his cooling systems for a while, watching the twins flounce about, generally unaffected. He was drained – his fuel tanks tapped almost completely, his hydraulics generally overworked – strained in ways that they were unused to straining. It have been eons since he’d had his jet-mod installed and most medics still wouldn’t touch what had been done all those centuries back.

“Too close to the base code,” they said when the topic of re-programming came up. “Interfaced to the central nerve trellis,” they said, when surgery was suggested. “You should have it deactivated,” was what usually followed. “Your systems aren’t designed to deal with the fuel burn or the overclocking. Every time you use that thing, it’s damaging you, technically.”

“Yeah? Well, taking a bullet to the face because I couldn’t take off in an emergency is, largely, worst for my health,” was usually Sidesipe’s bottomline, but that didn’t make him any less envious of the jet-morphs’ seemingly boundless energy. They were still climbing the walls, literally, somewhere in the base. Sideswipe, for his part, was too exhausted to give a damn about stopping them and too exhausted after expending the pent up totality of his rage on Cleaver – the acid tang of his words still there on his tongue, static in his vocalizer, humming.

He was tired, seated, back against the wall near to door to medical, arms draped over his knees, debating shut down. He wasn't expecting to be interrupted.

[Deleted]

'Jet-morphs loose somewhere in the base' wasn't entirely accurate. 'Twinned fliers chewing the walls in and around the rave cave' was marginally moreso. 'A couple of glitchwits making an unholy racket at ungodly hours OUTSIDE MY FRAGGING ROOM' was even better- and 'Two turborats with wings working on a one-way ticket to the scrapheap' nailed it. Haven might have been an explicitly demilitarized zone, theoretically free of the gunfire and chaos so prevalent everywhere else, but nobot had ever said a Pit-slagging thing about neutrals shooting other neutrals. If the newcomers could break the rules- and Shot was pretty slagging certain the maniac jets driving him batty broke the letter and intent of DMZ law in one fell swoop- he could too. And Primus help him, he'd do it BETTER-

Moonshot was, to quote Cat, Having A Day.

Having a Week, really. Maybe even Having a Month. He'd forgotten to keep tabs on his descent into madness/misery right about the time Megatron had stepped out of that ground-bridge straight into the smelter. Though things had quieted down since, the quiet was in many ways worse than the madness and jackassery that had preceded it. Sure, he'd spent the last two days holed up in his cave, but even stone walls transmitted sound. There hadn't been any. Small wonder nobot was in evidence when Shot finally worked up the courage to tear down his hastily-erected barricade and creep out in search of energon.

His return trip took him by the med-bay, and as much as he avoided that hell on earth, the white bot couldn't ignore red where red didn't belong. He backtracked, cube in-hand, and very nearly fumbled his prize.

There was their AWOL frontliner, scuffed-up, scowling and radiating the sort of 'I want to hurt EVERYTHING' Shot had long ago learned to associate with prematurely-awoken Cats. The expression wasn't pleasant on their pet squishy- on Sideswipe it straddled the line between 'imposing' and 'outright terrifying'. A more sensible mech might've kept going, put some much-needed distance between themselves and that Andromeda red powderkeg looking for a spark, but Shot? He edged just close enough to extend that cube and take a swing at normalcy.

"You look like death. Any p-particular reason why?"

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Sideswipe looked up. He didn’t answer for a second, looking up at Moonshot from beneath the brow-guard of his helm, the blue glow of his optics vaguely dull and unfocused. Moonshot tended to look like a perpetually startled animal. Sides wasn’t entirely sure if that was just because of him or if Moonshot was like that by default (though he suspected it was by default). He was relatively certain this was the first time Moonie had talked to him of his own volition versus Sideswipe bothering the little white mechanoid in his cave.

I guess watching me almost die revokes shyness.

“Oh,” said Sideswipe, very casually, taking the offered cube. “You know. Megatron came to visit. We had a vigorous disagreement about his having his spark chamber still in his fragging chest versus ripped out on the floor.” He tipped the glass at Moonshot, winking in a kind of smug but extremely tired way. “I lost the argument.”

[Deleted]

That was, perhaps predictably, the worst possible thing to say.

So of course Sideswipe said it, imbuing every syllable with that damnable 'I'm smug as frag to be alive and making your life miserable' tone Shot was steadily coming to hate. Of course he shrugged it off, like the thrice-beslagged glitchfragger got wrecked on a daily basis. Maybe he did. Maybe he just wanted everybot to think he did. Maybe, Primus help him, this was Big Red's attempts at making conversation. Moonshot was too busy trying not to glitch himself straight out of his plating to care over-much. Watching Megatron step out of his nightmares had been bad enough all by itself- knowing Sideswipe, the unstoppable force, their de-facto defender and resident badaft, had plunged right in to mix it up with the baddest of bads just turned the 'oh Pit no' factor right up to eleven.

It also entirely ruined Moonshot's already-slagging-bad day.

"Just so you're aware," The sniper groaned, sliding inch by inch down the wall to join Sideswipe in quite thoroughly blocking the hallway, "I hate you and everything you stand for. Why'd you- Was that really necessary?" 'That' was wide-open enough drive the Prime's alt through, spanning the gap from 'tussling with Megatron' to 'intentionally jacking my sparkpulse up' all the way to 'existing', all underscored with vulgarity crude enough to leave a Towerling speechless. "You could've- Frag you. Sideways. With a crowbar."

If you do that again I'm never, ever going to forgive you. ...or stop worrying about you. So don't do it, okay?

[Deleted]

“Wow, Shot, buy me a drink first.” Sideswipe frowned at the drink in his hand. “Huh. Are you making a pass at me?” There was a dead second of silence where he happily watched Moonshot’s face do kind of gymnastics. “Sorry, kid, no crowbars ‘til th second date at least an’, for th’ record, I really don’t stand for anything so don’t hurt yourself finding reasons to loathe me.” He gratefully downed the cube of energon, which hit his power-starved systems like a shot of lightening. He shuddered a little, setting the empty cube down while various fuel-warning tags on his HUB vanished quietly. “Ahh, just what I needed. Thanks, Moonie.”

If Moonshot had a problem the butchering of his name, Sideswipe didn’t see it because he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, sighing while his over-taxed systems settled and – for the first time in what felt like ages – he felt himself finally come down from that semi-locked combat state he’d been in since Megatron walked through that groundbridge. He kept his eyes closed, arms draped over his knees, comfortably aware of the irritated hum originating from the robot next to him. Was that really necessary? According to Cleaver: No, it really hadn’t been. According to him: Abso-fragging-lutely.

“I can feel you frowning from here,” he said.