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The club music pounded in her ear. The Iacon Police Academy recruits were celebrating their last weekend before proficiency examinations. Arcee had been pushed to come by some fellow classmates, and she had caught a glimpse of the tall, dark silhouette of the new recruit - the one with piercing violet compound optics - and she had decided she wasn't drunk enough.
Four glasses of high-grade down - or was it five? And she was starting to see why the youth of Iacon would waste their precious study hours at this hot, foggy, artifice of chaos and hedonism. It's fun. Music pounded through her energon-saturated systems in a sort of euphoria. She's not that worried about her exams. Not her, consistently pulling in at top of her class (if it weren't for the new recruit, actually). There's absolutely no reason why Arcee shouldn't indulge a bit in the pleasure of youth herself. And strutting onto the dance floor, following the tall, dark figure she's been trying to look inconspicuous about eyeing all night, she tapped the other on the shoulder and lithely slid in in front of her.
Airachnid looked surprised, but not unpleasantly so, Arcee noted, with satisfaction. "Alright if I step in?" Arcee said, in what she decided was definitely an extremely smooth tone of voice.
A grin lit itself onto Airachnid's face and Arcee's spark leapt. "Lead away, little motorbike," she said, in that voice where Arcee could have sworn she heard the undertones of a purr. Airachnid set two hands on Arcee's hips - so confident, Arcee thought, and inhales sharply - vents heated from the high-grade and from the EM waves in the atmosphere. She flashes Airachnid a gleeful smile and throws her arms around her shoulders.
For long, hazy, wonderful moments everything was a whirl of colour and the scent of energon - the drinking kind, not the kind you get when you cut yourself - and Airachnid's eyes. Eventually, to her dismay, Arcee found herself losing breath, stopping her movements to lean down and pant hot hair onto the dancefloor. Airachnid had stopped dancing as well. Her arm was around Arcee's shoulders, and she had leaned down to look at her, optics bright and concerned. Let's get some air, she mouthed to Arcee over the sound of the music.
Arcee nodded and tried not to throw up.
She doesn't remember the stairs. The cool air of the patio roof hitting her is the next clear memory in her mind. And Airachnid's hand, the same one that had encircled her hip, was on her shoulder, stroking her backpiping while Arcee struggled to remember how to breathe.
"God, I'm such an idiot," she said when she could manage, and buried her head in her hands.
Airachnid's tone was that soft one she always used. "Why would you say that?"
"I didn't mean to drink so much," she said. "Please go back and enjoy the party. I'm fine. You don't have to look after me."
"It's alright," Arcee didn't look up but through the haze of high-grade she registered that Airachnid was smiling. "I was about to come up here anyway. It's crowded in there."
They sat in silence for a moment, Arcee gathering herself and slowly coming to the realization that she's leaning on Airachnid's shoulders. And too embarrassed to take herself away. the only thing she could do was cover her face again and groan. "I'm so sorry. I'm so embarrassing today."
"You're not." Airachnid made shushing noises as she lifted her other hand and grazed fingers over top of Arcee's helm, brushing over the shapes of her crests. Arcee felt her plating growing, impossibly, even hotter, with shame that she was causing Airachnid so much inconvenience but just really enjoying her company as well. She felt so guilty. None of this was how she imagined her first night out with Airachnid would go, when she let herself imagine, during dry lessons on policy when her only distraction in the classroom had been the beautifully forged shapes of Airachnid's back, sitting in the row in front of her. For one thing, she wouldn't have been drunk, in her imagined scenarios. Not this drunk, anyway. And they wouldn't be on top of a noisy club in downtown Iacon. It would've been a much better place. Classier. Without the shrill voices of their classmates so close by.
Airachnid's hand had stopped to come to sort of a rest at the base of her neck, and Arcee's plating there tingled with the touch. "It's nice," Airachnid said softly.
"What is?" Arcee managed.
"The city."
Arcee looked up then at Airachnid's face, and she was serene and looking forward, over the roofs of the buildings around them. She followed her gaze outward.
"Yeah, I guess."
"I don't see it a lot," Airachnid said, and it made Arcee look back at her face. Soft, composed, contemplative. She thought, very briefly, about what it would feel like to kiss her. But instead she turned her head away again to look with Airachnid over the lights of Iacon's busy downtown, loud, buzzing with voices and energy at this time of night.
"What it like where you're from?" Arcee asked.
Airachnid laughed then, softly, just once. It was a little sad, Arcee thought. A little wry. Airachnid was from one of the smaller cities to the east of Iacon, bordering the Rust Sea. It was in the notice the sergeants had posted on the bulletin board the week before her arrival. Arcee's class of first-years had clustered around, chattering about what sort of transfer student she would be. She had been nothing like any of them could have ever expected.
And now she was here, and one of her hands still rested on the crook of Arcee's shoulder where it joined her neck and she was smiling looking out at Iacon and Arcee didn't know what exactly kind of smile Airachnid had wrapped around her lips. "It's got its charms. Not quite as brilliant as Iacon. But a lot of very good people."
"Would you rather be back there?" Arcee asked.
Airachnid turns toward her this time, and the smile was full on her face and reassuring, but there was still something that made Arcee wonder. She would wonder about that smile long after that night at the club and long after events would occur and Iacon was never the same again.
"No," Airachnid had said, smiling. "I'm exactly where I want to be."