Chapter Text
"What have you got?"
Skids craned his neck, squinting at the show bottles he had lined up. Half of them were the real thing, because Swerve knew his stuff, and the other half were synthetic knockoffs with fake labels, because he had a business to run and honestly, your average mech wouldn't notice the difference after a few pints.
"What do you want?" Swerve countered, wiping down the counter—ha! Counter, countered, get it?—between them. Not that it was dirty, or anything. It just gave him something to do that let him stay here.
"No, I mean, I can't remember what I liked to drink, but I might remember it if you list some off."
Now, it was time to fix him with a stare, stopping with a shift of plating. "You've got to be kidding—do you know how many different drinks there are?"
"Is that a trick question?" Skids asked with what had to be a shit-eating grin.
"You know," he said, mustering his best scolding voice, "Sometimes I wish I had amnesia. People would put up with me so much more."
"Please. Everyone's so desperate for a drink they wouldn't dare get on your bad side."
Swerve took a second to read Skids' face before returning to his busy work. Nothing sinister, but who knew? The guy was a mystery. Maybe he was some 'con plant, flattering and seducing the insecure bartender to get access to the crew's secrets.
"Swerve? You all right?"
Skids cocked his head to the side, and frowned. Yeah. Maybe that, or maybe he'd just forgotten no one liked him, because Skids was good like that.
"I'm trying to give you a glare. Doesn't work as well with the visor, see?"
Skids laughed, and gave him a wink. "I get it, I get it, you've got better things to do. I'll just take my business somewhere else. After you give me a drink."
"Do you even have any money?"
"Maybe. Drinks first. Something I'd like."
Swerve sighed again. There were a couple of mechs already trying to wave him down, but they'd spare him a minute for the ever-popular Skids.
"Right. I'll name you three tonight, and three tomorrow, and so on, and you'll choose one and you'll pay me for it and treat me nice. Deal?"
He held a hand out.
"I think I can handle that," answered Skids, reaching out to take it.
But little did he know, Swerve was waiting until the very last moment to snatch his hand away and give him a wide grin and a punch in the shoulder instead. Skids didn't grin back, but he didn't look awkward—small victories.
"Ha! Gotcha! Do you want a Sad Clown, a Motor Mouth, or a Fan Boy?"
"How am I supposed to know what they taste like?" Skids screwed up his face in a way that was way too innocent to be deliberate.
"Hey, that's your problem. Don't recognize it, don't buy it."
"I'll have…whichever one's the sweetest."
"Seriously?" Swerve teased. "I didn't pick you a mech with bad taste."
"It's not bad if I like it," grumbled Skids. Down the bar, Trailcutter had started moping again—loudly—and Sunstreaker was yelling for a drink.
"Sure, you go on thinking that," Swerve shot back as he spun around.
Time to get to work. Thinking for a moment, he grabbed a bottle off the middle shelf, two from the small fridge below the bar, a vial from the back of the countertop and a short, flat glass. A layer of thick, chilled engex was poured in, then swirled around to coat the inside of the glass. It was filled up a third of the way with high-grade, then another third with a dilute flavouring, and topped with the over-sweet aerated and chilled mixture that everyone liked and nobody would be seen drinking.
If Skids didn't know what he liked then, hey, he probably wouldn't know what other people did. Maybe Rewind would get a photo, and they'd all get a good laugh.
The finished product got a quick garnish of bismuth sprinkles and a straw before it got set down in front of a curious-looking Skids.
"Looks good. Which one is it?"
"Sad Clown. It's sweet enough, but if you give it a good stir, the stuff on the sides will dissolve, and it'll get bitter," he explained. "In case you change your mind."
"Good thinking."
"Now, if you haven't noticed, I've got to go and keep Trailcutter nice and sedated." He forced a laugh, wondering why he'd decided to ruin the conversation like this. Self-sabotage was supposed to be Whirl's thing. "Those depressives are good business, don'tcha think? I say we should give Rung a break one of these days, and let 'em all come down here."
"Swerve…"
Whatever Skids was about to say, it stopped when he wheeled off down the bar. He was probably going to say it wasn't funny.
But Swerve had heard enough of that.
…
Skids wheeled gently along the corridor, going slowly. Too fast, and he'd have to make sudden stops or adjustments that might give him away with a creak or a rattle.
Superlearning. Love it or hate it, it made it easy to sneak up on Swerve. He had a loud gait, he favoured his right side, he didn't clean his visor as often as he should, and he was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to pay much attention to where he was going.
He stayed just behind him for a minute, taking care not to let his shadow reach forward into his line of sight, before pulling up on Swerve's left side.
"Going somewhere?" he asked, and smiled a bit when he heard Swerve flinch.
"Hey, Skids! Man, you're quiet. They shoulda named you Pads, not Skids, eh?"
He considered this. Skidding involved the squeal of tires, where padding just had the softer and more easily adjustable noise of rubber sticking to whatever surface was being walked on.
"All the best names were taken."
"Tell me about it," complained Swerve. "I'm not even fast enough to swerve!"
"Your feet aren't, but your mouth is," Skids joked.
A moment of silence later, he realized his mistake, and gave Swerve a light punch in the shoulder for a bit of context. He put too much stock in other mechs' words, and not enough in his own.
"It's my one talent, buddy," Swerve answered with a taut little grin.
"Don't forget about your bartending." Skids tried to sound reassuring. "Are you off somewhere, or just taking a walk?"
From the speed he'd been going and the way he veered left and right, Swerve hadn't been going anywhere he wanted to be. Maybe the medbay, maybe security, maybe Ultra Magnus' office. Maybe he was going nowhere at all.
"Oh, nah," Swerve said after a moment's pause, "Just back to the hab suite. Red Alert's still on duty for the next few hours, so I've got it to myself."
"Do you want to go somewhere else?"
Swerve's pace picked up slightly, and Skids lengthened his strides accordingly.
"Where else is there to go? If you want me to open early, you'll have to do a real good job of theorizing at me," Swerve challenged.
"Nope," Skids shot back. "I was going to ask if you wanted to run interference by Rung's office."
"What?"
"He doesn't like to be unavailable, but he needs a rest," he explained, and had to chuckle at the memory. "When I walked by for my appointment just now, he'd plugged himself into the recharge port on his desk. What do you think?"
"Oh." Swerve's voice fell flat for a moment, then went back to its usual brightness. "Sure! You know I'm a master bullshitter. What do you say we get them all to reschedule? Say Whirl trashed the place, or something?"
"Maybe not that, but we can make something up. And if there's an emergency, we'll let them through."
"Unless it's Whirl."
Swerve's humour bounced all over the place, but targeting one of the Lost Light's weirder crew was a favourite. Establishing a common enemy to make the crew feel united, or at least to make them feel like he was on their side. Or maybe it was insecurity and projected self-loathing. Skids was a theoretician, not a psychologist (or a psychiatrist, or a psychotherapist); whatever he'd picked up from Rung, it was probably best to leave this alone. For now.
"Even if it's Whirl. If it's an emergency for him, it's going to be an emergency for us."
"Yeah, you're right." The flatness came back into Swerve's voice, and Skids gave him another tap with his fist.
"I'm always right."
"Why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"The…" Swerve gestured vaguely, and then punched Skids in the arm as he'd done. "The that!"
Skids scanned his fragmented memory for a reason why that was the kind of physical contact he used to reassure his friend. Nothing in particular leapt out at him.
"I don't know."
"Amnesia again. Seriously. How's that working out for you, speaking of Rung?"
They rounded a corner, and found themselves in another empty hallway, heading up towards the lifts.
"Slow," he answered honestly. "I mean, treatment aside, I like talking to Rung, but I still can't remember a thing."
"I've seen you two in the bar a couple of times. Was that part of it?"
"No, I just thought he might be lonely. He's not supposed to socialize with his patients, but when everyone's a patient…"
"Yeah, yeah, it's probably rough. So you two are friends now?"
"I suppose so."
"Well. That's good. Everyone needs a Skids!" Swerve punched the air, but didn't touch him. "So. What's our script? Are we going to talk at them until they give up? Look all professional and write down names as if we're actually rescheduling? Blind 'em with the brilliance of Swerve 'n Skids?"
"Or Skids 'n Swerve. I don't know, but maybe we could do real rescheduling? We don't want to attract too much attention."
"Oooh, yeah, Mags would have my hide for that. You know, if he's hearing all these rumours about a bar, one of these days he's just going to walk the Lost Light from front to back on every floor, just so he can throw me in the brig. I wouldn't put it past him to…"
They made their way forward, Swerve talking and Skids watching.
…
Swerve set today's drink down without much ceremony, and leaned over the bar to chat with its drinker. It was near closing, meaning that the clamouring was at a minimum. Just a bit of crying, or some casual conversation. Nothing that would pull him away from this.
"So. Skids. Now that you're finally here, what's up?"
"You can't seriously be asking that."
"What?" He had a sinking feeling Skids would ask him why he tried to slip Mags the strong stuff. And after so long trying to get on his good side…never mind that it wasn't even him! "It's been a cycle since we got back."
"Apart from us dragging Ultra Magnus back on board, Cyclonus getting fendered, Tailgate somehow being some kind of calming-down outlier, and everything else that happened—nothing much."
"Hey, I didn't spike the drink! That was Whirl."
Skids grinned at him, for some reason. Here we go again. He'd never gotten a lecture from a theoretician, but from what he'd heard it wasn't a good experience.
"Don't worry, buddy. Magnus knows that even if he shuts this place down, he can't get rid of you."
"That's me. I'm like a…" he realized he was trying out an Earth saying, and grabbed around for something that fit. "Starscream. I just keep turning up and ruining everything."
"And the rest of us thank you for it," added Skids, raising his Out of Focus in a toast.
"You know," he continued, not really knowing why, "I've got a pretty good track record. I run an illegal bar, I get Ultra Magnus drunk, my roommate disappeared, and I killed Rung. Just about. Tried to."
Skids' smile had been edging away slowly without actually leaving his face, meaning that now it was a kind of grimace. Probably shouldn't have mentioned Rung.
"It wasn't—"
"Yeah, yeah, that's what you said. I still—I know how bad a shot I am. It's funny! We had a game, on Kimia! How far is Swerve off the target? We made bets."
Good thing it was so quiet. The only ones left were Cyclonus, who'd be leaving as soon as things got embarrassing; Trailcutter, who was gently arguing with Jackpot and Mainframe in the corner, and a few ones he didn't recognize who didn't know and didn't care. So what if he'd tested the merchandise and started yelling at Skids.
Skids. Who'd apparently learned the dear-Primus-I'm-concerned-and-you're-pitiable look from Rung, and had turned it on full-blast.
"Oh, that's me, that's Swerve, can't shut up if my life depended on it. Sorry. It's just—Rung—"
He had no idea what he was going to say next. He's kind. He's your friend. He's just someone else I screwed over and didn't take responsibility for. Speaking of which, did Red Alert actually disappear, or is everyone just hiding him from me? Thankfully, it was Skids to the rescue. As always.
"You talked to him about it, right? After we visited?"
"Hah! Yeah. I went on about it for ages, but you know Rung, if—" He looked around, just in case. "—if Whirl waltzed up with a corpse and a camera, he'd just look kind and understanding, you know?"
Skids looked at him for a moment longer, then laughed.
"What? This is serious! He's your friend, and I—"
"I know, Swerve. I sat up with him, in the medbay after he got talking again. We had a good conversation of two about it."
"Oh, Primus." Swerve let his head fall down on the countertop, not that it was too far of a distance. "Do I even want to know?"
"I'm not going to spill. Patient-doctor confidentiality. But you can go talk to him, personally, if you've got more to say."
"Does he even want to?"
A pair of mid-sized, gentle hands slid up either side of his helm and lifted his head, so that he looked into Skids' face. Yep, it was kind and understanding. He'd been spending too much time with Rung.
"Come on, Swerve, take a guess."
"Oh, fine. I'll talk to him."
"And cheer up." Skids set his hands on his shoulders this time instead of punching him. "If even the bartender's depressed, then it's time to get out of here. Come on, I'll help you clean up."
…
There was no drinking, there was no talking, there was nothing but cleaning up and drawing so far back into your brain that all the mixed signals from your spark got filtered out.
The ship was trashed. Rodimus was off in a sulk. Half the crew was getting angry, the other half was depressed, now that the high from the fight had worn off. It'd mean good business for the bar, once they got it back up and running.
Swerve sorted glasses into three piles. Cracked but repairable, trashed, and intact. Ultra Magnus, true to form, had made up a list of the rooms everyone was supposed to clean in case of a disaster. Which this was. A disaster. Each bot had to get his own hab suite up to absurdly high standards, and then public areas were split up among the bots on nearby decks.
But good old Mags wasn't up to enforcing it, so mechs just kinda helped out wherever. The bar was a popular place, a fact that surprised him, or didn't. He'd been taken aback at the crowd, until Jackpot asked if there were any free drinks in it for them, when the penny finally dropped, as they said on Earth. It was a joke, maybe—hopefully—but not a surprise.
Between the trashed bar, Skids not showing up, and the fact that no one had stopped by his place since Red disappeared, he figured it was best to say "yes" to the help and forget about the cost.
Sunstreaker and his gang were hanging around the booths, re-installing the fixtures and furniture now that the place was mostly cleaned up. They couldn't move any slower if they tried—some racer he was—but Swerve had no illusions about how much they were doing this for him.
The funerals from a few weeks ago were harder than you might have thought, even now. It was a war, people died, and this was only a couple of years later. Not even. Sure, with the Kimia survivors it was a bit harder, but—come on. The MTOs were built to die. The rest of 'em had it overdue.
But there was a turnout. Half the ship was sobbing into the arms of the other half. Bloody Cyclonus had turned up. Speaking of Cyclonus, Ratchet said he'd stayed there, with Tailgate. The whole time. Swerve had worked through the night cycle to save him and translated the cure to freakin' cybercrosis and he'd still played second fiddle in terms of friendship. Mechs had cared.
Maybe that's what stung him.
He slid another glass down the bar. The "trashed" pile was starting to get too big for the counter—best scrape it off into a heavy-duty bag, send it off to the makeshift command centre that a few of the more experienced bots had set up. Rodimus was fine when he was dashing off on his own, but he wasn't prepared for this. Ultra Magnus had gotten them into that mess, Drift was a criminal and he was gone, and Ratchet and Rung had their hands full. Tailgate was sentenced to bed rest for months. Rewind was—was dead.
Oh. And Skids had a new friend.
The bag was tied up and thrown in the corner. Hopefully some bot on board with an alt mode that could melt it down, but like as not it was as useless.
Not that he was ever going to run into a fight, but, suppose he was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time—who'd turn out for his funeral? Say a few words? The Legislators had been close. What then?
Magnus maybe, but he wasn't so Ultra any more. Teebs, if he remembered where his engex came from. Tailgate, bless him, and likely Rung, who said he didn't hold a grudge. Honestly, he wouldn't blame him if he didn't show up. He knew he was a real pain in the neck. Or pain in the head. Ha. That was a good one.
Skids, probably. He didn't know. But probably. He was way too nice.