Ep. 1.5 - "Something in Common" - [Closed]

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(( Takes place sometime after 'Brightplate'. ))

’That way.’ Stormbreaker pointed from behind Shearwind’s head, pretending to have a great advantage for her field of view from her perch on her twin’s back. She was flopped comfortably over hir wings, knees clamped to hir side and supported with chin comfortably rested in between the varied mobile crests of hir helm. They were playing a game, they decided. It was a bunch of hiding and seeking, except it was completely one sided; so they would pretend to get themselves lost while enthusiastically running away from Sideswipe all while entertaining the idea he was going to come looking for them.

The entire point of this game (obviously) was to give themselves a purpose to explore the base (because Storm said they needed one and Shearwind was always happy to indulge). And when they became satisfied with their exploration of one wing of the base (and equally bored with their imagined ‘hiding’ role), they turned the tables. Sideswipe had definitely hidden from them (they both remembered it starting off that way, they agreed), and so they were in the process of finding him. Their objective.

And this one-sided game of popping in and out of Sideswipe’s presence (sometimes with stolen goods, sometimes with broken goods, sometimes with broken stolen goods) continued quite routinely over the next couple of days until the both of them were satisfied (bored, rather) of exploring everything they could on the base. They had, in short, settled in.

Now, they had to find him again to win and finally complete this round and game (of course). Shearwind slowed her trot just outside the Med Bay doors (always the first place they looked), and with stacked helms they peered around the doors until the bright red of Sideswipe’s frame appeared in view, hunched over his brother’s frame.

’Found him.’

He didn’t move when they entered (Stormbreaker having finally slid from hir shoulders), quietly picking their way around the berths until they were situated by the beautiful yellow frame. Shearwind, for hir part, skirted around the edge until zie could flop right beside Sideswipe. At least this time with the courtesy not to touch while he was recharging. Stormbreaker had dropped to all fours, creeping underneath the berth until her helm could peek up over the other side, chin and tips of her sharp ended servos tapping patiently on the edge, optics facing down the yellow lamborghini’s length before angling up towards Sideswipe’s half covered face.

Three kliks is what they settled on. That was courteous enough, before they started to poke him.

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Now usually - usually being the operative word - this choice to poke a sleeping ex-Autobot commando would have probably ended in tears, also denting and pain, but this was not usually. Sideswipe, seated on a makeshift bench he’d dragged to the side of Sunstreaker’s medical slab, did not stir an inch at the first poke, nor the second, nor the following half-dozen gentle jabs to his heavy framework. Sideswipe just lay there, head on his arms, deep in recharge and totally oblivious to the pair of jetmorphs creeping up over him and his brother.

Anyone who knew Sideswipe would have called that strange. Sides was a war-frame through and through and that included a healthy number of proximity alert subroutines designed, implicitly, to bring him back online at the approach of anyone and anything that didn’t ping friendly. And that didn’t even include his innate and slightly bizzarro knack of knowing, in general, when something bad was about to happen. Bottomline: he should have woken up.

But, much like his comatose twin, Sideswipe did not wake up. Subroutines pinged, pinged again, several times in fact but did not penetrate through the deep system command telling him to just keep napping. He just hummed slightly, a flex of internal hydraulics and engine noise, and resettled.

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’Seeee?’

Stormbreaker leaned away from Sunstreaker, snaking her way up (quite a feat with wings) between the table and the bench all to peer around Sideswipe at Shearwind’s waiting optics. It was a marvel the smugness in hir field didn’t awaken him at all. ’No scythes!’

'He's still in recharge.' She pointed out. Though now perched just on his other side, she admitted that it was curious after now having poked him several times each, without so much as an adjustment in his posture.

'C'mon, ain't nothing' to worry about.' Said the one operating under theory Sideswipe would not harm them. Admittedly, his failure to stab them on their flight here or dent them at any point after didn't help this… for Shearwind, this simply meant zie hadn't been proven wrong (yet), and so this was very obviously evidence to support hir theory.

Storm settled herself on taloned pedes (because she wasn't so sure they wouldn't need to dodge a swipe) just beside his seat. Quiet now as the energy of their game went flat. Shearwind hadn't moved after that comment, save for the turn of hir optics towards his other half, lying so close to them.

'Should we wake him?' She asked, the feelings behind it half-hearted, as if she were only asking to fill a space, no energy behind the action.
'…Nah.' As if they needed to say it at all. So there they sat, quietly paying their respects with intention for the first time since they arrived at Haven. Necessary…? Storm would argue not. But… admittedly, she felt driven to it as much as Shearwind, certain that it wasn't just feed back from hir side. Wanted to.

For more than a few kliks it was only the silence of the med bay, joined only by the rhythmic sounds of the life support systems, and Sideswipe's own steady intake.

…But a few kliks was a long time to sit still.

Though at least, zie still attempted to remain quiet, readjusted hire position. …Multiple times actually, over and to either side and finally beneath, where zie could peer under the table, close to his knees and attempt to catch a glimpse of his optics. Not a good glance from this angle, so by that time zie began to make hir way over to Storm's side (objective: achieve the better angle to stare), taking every possible long route zie could (and zie did manage to find a few, including circling under the berth a few times) just to keep hirself moving. Another game, she thought: Exist without waking up Sideswipe.

They were already winning.

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If there had been a third party observer to this situation, the sensible thing would have been to quietly extract the ‘about-to-punched-in-the-face-and-maybe-killed’ interlopers before Sideswipe had a chance to wake up. But the unfortunate thing about the state of affairs at the Neutral Base was that there were no sensible third parties. There was only the medic with a Good Samaritan Complex, the agoraphobic civilian, the xeno-befriending squishy, two jet-twins with personal space problems, and the spark-shorn frontliner.

This was going to end tragically... but for another two minutes, Sideswipe didn’t wake up.

In response to all the poking and warily circling EM fields, the mostly unconscious lambo-bot just shifted slightly, a hydraulic reflex half sub-routine, half mass memory and muttering something in Kaonese. A wobble of uneasy frequency bled off his frame, the red mech lost far too deeply in whatever defragmentation process was rendering his dreams dark. Expression tensing somewhat, Sides muttered, and turned his head slightly, vent cycling down bit before he finally said something in groggy Neocybex.

“G’way, Sunny. Five minutes...”

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Shearwind's fidgeting came first, followed by a nervous sounding 'whine' that made itself up through a couple dozen pitches, a sound that they had only used between themselves. Some might mistake it for what it sounded like: nervousness. But Storm knew it for what it was, and what it was was exactly opposite of what they should be doing. Should: meaning definitely not snuggling the ex-Autobot commando deep in recharge by his comatose twin.

Nevertheless, Stormbreaker could not only feel in field and frame Shearwind's desire to fix the obvious mess these two were in, but feel it heavily enough through their bond Storm actually questioned whether or not she wanted to clamp onto him as well. Because laying next to your other half, dreaming they were awake when…

Was definitely just Shearwind.
::It's you, too...::
::Stop it.::

So it was for the next two minutes that Shearwind circled Sideswipe, extra fidgety, only going so far as to touch his pedes if zie did at all and only held at bay from more by Storm's own wary field. She adjusted her place on the edge of the bench, wings shifting to provide a counter balance. They had definitely read his body language in two different ways. While Shearwind was fidgeting around still operating on hir theory, Storm wasn't so sure this wouldn't end in one massive twister-sized swatting when their luck finally broke.

She cast a glance at the firebrick form scrambling below. Another glance at Sideswipe, granted no longer with his blank expression of deep recharge. But… they were still winning.

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They ceased to be ‘winning’ precisely two seconds after they decided they were winning. This was, of course, the moment when Sideswipe’s proximity warnings penetrated his shut-down directive and hit his high-processes with an alert that, after four million years of trench, guerrilla, aerial, seige, biological, space, proxy (and really), all manner of warfare meant one thing to a sleeping commando: SOME MOTHERFUCKER WITH AN ENERGY BLADE IS SNEAKING UP ON YOU. WAKE THE HELL UP!

Blue optics snapped wide, flaring neon, irises spiraling open and with a snarl, Sides spun on the body sitting next to him on the bench and put it in a headlock, kicking himself back from Sunstreaker’s medical berth and landing on top of his choke-held victim. His other would-be attacked got a face full of his right pede, albeit, not very powerfully as he’d already fallen over on top of a very compressed Stormbreaker... and it was only after realizing how very, very skinny and squeaky and small this Decepticon was that Sideswipe remembered where he was and realized who he was crushing.

“PRIMUS FRAK!” Sideswipe released his chokehold on Storm but swatted her upside the head. “AGAIN? ARE YOU SERIOUS? ARE YOU DUMB!?” He grabbed her by a wingtip, pinched it and dragged her squeaking to Shearwind whom he also grabbed by the wingtip. “What are you two doing in here, both of you? You have ten seconds.”

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::We lost.:: Storm stated very obviously from her position squished between the floor and massive frontliner weight. She couldn't decide which was more uncomfortable: that, or the way her processor began to fritz when his arm closed around the chords in her neck. One would think she'd have lost the pissed turbocat expression.

But she kept that and more, letting herself be dragged by wingtip to be tossed beside her slightly larger, firebrick red and… surprisingly bubbly twin.

Shearwind, for hir part in this fiasco-in-the-making, was too busy laughing like the loon zie sometimes resembled to formulate a coherent or immediate reply. Sure, the grappled wingtip- and, ow, fraggit, face!- stung (almost as much as the pointed, woe-is-me annoyance slowly filtering in from Storm’s end of their bond, actually) but the look on Sides’ face more than made up for the I’m-not-angry-I’m-just-disappointed speech the larger flier was sure to get later that night. If it took raw outrage to bring even the faintest glimmer of Sides’ erstwhile shine back, that was a price Shear was willing and more than willing to pay.

“You were lonely,” Shear pointed out, three tons of limp, compliant deadweight in Sideswipe’s grip, “So we- okay, I, I’ll take the fall for this one- thought you could use some company. Here we are. Please don’t kill us? ‘Specially not her, I’m kind of fond of her. Especially unsquished her.”

::….I blame you.::
::I’ll say it so you don’t have to: You told me so.::
::Thank you.::

Head slightly bowed she looked up at Sideswipe with a face that looked like it was made of only optics, optics narrowed by a slanted helm.

"We played a game,” She added. “Found you. But you didn't wake up. Played another one, …lost." She fell silent for a moment, before continuing to respond in a voice that seemed entirely too flat to belong to something sentient. "…That is eight seconds. …Nine. …Ten." She looked back up to Sideswipe expectantly.

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“You little shits,” said said Sides in slow, perfectly irritated English, “are gonna get my foot so far up yur after parts you’ll taste wheels for a week. You get me, fam?” He released their wings and grabbed them by the tops of their heads instead, crouching down to their level and angling them in close so they could, you know, really hear him. “Ya come back in here, sneakin’ around while I’m in recharge, ya come up in here while Sunny aint conscious, ya look at ‘im funny, ya do any’a those things... I will straight merc th’ two a ya, leave ya both inna fuckin’ scrapyard, an' use yur wing bits as end-tables for th’ fuckin’ bar. Am I bein’ translucent?”

He glared back and forth between the two of them, blue optics all nitroglycerin dangerous, attempting with every fiber of his being to relay just how hard he would kill them. Very hard. The hardest. That’s how hard he would kill them. There would be weeping and gnashing of teeth and whole sonnets would be written about the damage he would do their faces were they ever try it again. The Lamborghini would have felt more confident he was being understood if the pair of them didn’t keep giving him these giant orange-optic owl-stares that conveyed pretty clearly they were not processing a single flying Primus-slotting byte what he said.

Or if they were, they didn’t care to show it.

He let them go and swapped to Neocybex, exasperated. “You get that I can kill you right? That that is a thing that I could do? Yes? No?”