Work Text:
Brainstorm returned to the lab to hear cursing. That by itself wasn’t too unusual, but what was unusual was that he wasn’t the one in the lab doing the cursing. Or the one in the lab getting cursed at , although that would have been a lot quieter. He sped up and breezed through to the back room of the lab.
“Who the hell is in my—Whirl?”
Whirl spun around to an accompaniment of glass clicking softly against metal. Immediately his shoulders dropped and he straightened up from his defensive hunch in the middle of the room.
“What you doing swearing in the backroom?” Brainstorm glanced down to his claws and back up. “What are you doing tied up and swearing in the backroom?”
The copter huffed. “Well, if you must know, I was trying to put up lights, and these little shits don’t like mechs like me.”
“Do you—" He paused to bite his lip behind his faceplate to stifle a snicker. Whirl looked ridiculous. The string of lights bound his claws together in a way that implied he’d sunk them into the lights to try to get them untangled, but he’d somehow also gotten them looped around one of his chest guns, one narrow wing, and his helm.”Do you need some help?”
“No.” Whirl gave his claws a little shake. It did not improve his situation. “I’m fine.”
“So you can totally get loose on your own, got it.” Brainstorm’s voice wavered slightly as he spoke; he was desperately close to outright laughing at Whirl’s plight, and nothing he was doing helped.
He tried to tug his claws apart again and failed. “Yup, sure can! So you can just, I dunno, go build a fraggin’ gun or something while I fix this.”
Another barely suppressed snicker. “This is my workspace, you know.”
“Yeah, and? I’m taking over. Now—" There was a flurry of rattling as Whirl yanked at the mass of lights around his claws. From deep in the mess came the quiet sound of wires tearing and the copter swore creatively. “Go be the ship’s genius somewhere else.”
“I think I’ll do that right over here.” He gestured to the neatest worktable in the place, against the far wall. It was still littered with mechanical debris, but its contents were the closest to looking fully assembled. “Since you’ve clearly got this, you won’t mind me being in here, right?”
Whirl rattled his claws again. “Sure, yeah, fine. I would have figured the ship’s genius would know that doesn’t actually count as ‘somewhere else,’ but I guess that’ll just have to be good enough.”
“Glad you think so.” Brainstorm reached up to one of the magnifying lenses attached to the scaffolding above the bench. It wasn’t the greatest reflective surface, but with a few minor adjustments…
He twitched it into place and tilted it down until he could see Whirl’s vague outline. He was still struggling against the string of lights. That struggle continued for some time as Brainstorm pretended to work, with Whirl’s movements growing more and more frantic as the minutes ticked by.
Eventually he sighed. The lights clicked gently as he finally lowered his claws. “Fuck.”
Brainstorm looked over his shoulder at him. “Can I help you now?”
There was a long pause. “Yeah.”
The jet pointed him towards a stool. “Why don’t you sit and I’ll fix the mess you’re in.”
Whirl made a little hissing noise and dropped himself onto the seat with a discontent rattle of plating. “I could have done this on my own, you know. Eventually,” he added.
“Yes, I know, you can absolutely fight the nasty lights.” Brainstorm sank to one knee in front of him and started carefully unwrapping the less tangled lights from the outside of the bundle.
“Hey, you should be nicer to me, I was trying to do something nice for you.”
He paused and glanced up at Whirl. “You were?”
“Well, I certainly wasn’t doing it because it was fun.” He snorted. “Was supposed to be done before you got back. Convinced that other nerd to let me in here unsupervised and everything, had to promise I wouldn’t touch anything. And I didn’t! Everything’s just as much of a mess as it was when I got here.”
Brainstorm tipped his helm and his optics narrowed in an approximation of an exaggerated, joking frown. “I know you’re only saying that because you’re stuck and angry, but ouch. My workspace is not a mess, it’s chaotic.”
Whirl blinked. “Are you. Are you being serious right now?”
He snorted. “No, I’m not. But on a serious note, how in the pit did you manage to get yourself tangled this badly? It’s like you were actively trying to wrap yourself in them.”
“I said before they weren’t made for mechs like me.” One of his claws twitched as he spoke.
He worked in silence for a little while longer as Whirl tapped a heel against the floor. The copter liked to be moving. Brainstorm understood.
“So why were you trying to put these up?”
Whirl sighed, loudly and dramatically. “Are you just gonna keep asking questions you already know the answers to or are you gonna get my claws outta here, genius?”
“I know you said you were trying to do something nice, I’m just wondering why?”
“What, because I can’t do something nice for you?”
“You can, but it’s usually stress-testing a gun, not decorating my workspace. So what’s up?”
He was silent for a long moment. Brainstorm was about to prod him again when he spoke. “It’s some Earth holiday. Swerve was talking about it.”
“So what is it?”
“So I might not have really been paying attention when he was talking about what it’s called and why they do it. But they get together with other people—" Whirl rolled his optic. “Gross, I know—and decorate trees and put lights on stuff and shit and it… it sounded fun.” He glanced deliberately away from Brainstorm’s face as the jet untangled the last few sections of lights and lifted them off. “But you know what, I’m absolutely not having fun, this holiday sucks.”
“It sounds like you’re missing a key component: doing it with someone else.” Brainstorm stood back up with the lights neatly draped over his hands. “So. What do you say we put these up together instead?”
After a moment, Whirl’s optic curved up into a smile. “Yeah, I like the sound of that.”
Brainstorm bumped his faceplate against the side of Whirl’s helm. “It’s called Christmas, by the way.”
He knocked his helm against the jet’s shoulder. “Go put the lights up, genius.”