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Dead End had first noticed it when Perceptor had been making the third Iacon he had ever ordered.
He was, of course, at his usual seat at the bar. He wouldn’t sit at a table if he could avoid it — the less opportunity for someone to slide in and have him cornered in the booth, the better. He had ordered his new favorite drink with a “number fourteen, the Iacon,” and checked his fuel intake levels, because that was a thing he did now. It was just a sliver below acceptable, but the drink would take care of that.
Dead End smiled, just a bit.
Then, Perceptor had lifted his arm, and he saw it.
The gash on Perceptor’s side had been welded over, though poorly. It still had rough and raised edges with barely-repaired gaps and unsmoothed metal, but those were barely noticeable in the dim yellow glow of the bar’s lights. Dead End was sure that it must hurt, even now, though it must have been vorns.
That was why when Perceptor placed his drink in front of him, Dead End took a hold of his wrist. Not his hand. Not just yet.
Perceptor might have been staring directly through him as Dead End ever-so-slightly tightened his hold on his wrist.
“Uh,” muttered Dead End, looking away as much as he could. “You should take care of that.” He pointed at the gash automatically, then retracted his hand, just remembering that Perceptor couldn’t see him anyway. He wondered just how much the scope helped, because it seemed to, even if only a little. Oh, right. He had planned on asking, once. He always forgot the important things, didn’t he?
He already knew the answer to that question.
Perceptor must have known what he meant, but followed up anyway with a “What do you mean?” His mouth was pressed into a thin line, vents shallow and quiet, arms stiff.
Dead End hesitated. “The … scar. Gash. Whatever it is.” He looked downward at the scratches on the table, then pulled his gaze back up. “On your side?” It came out more as a question than a statement.
Only when Perceptor’s arm shifted under his grip did he realize he had been keeping a hold of it the whole time. But it would be weird to let go now. But he wouldn’t let Perceptor get away from him when he had been so adamant on keeping Dead End’s health up.
In the end, Dead End kept his hand there. He told himself that it was just because he had to return the favor, and he couldn’t have Perceptor running away.
Perceptor sighed, then seemed to immediately regret it. “I,” he began, then cut himself off. “I hadn’t found the time to.”
“Why not now?”
“Someone has to keep the bar open.”
That was an excuse, thought Dead End. He looked around. Clobber was engaging Hot Rod in a very enthusiastic retelling of an adventure she’d had some orns ago, with Whirl listening in and commenting every few sentences. Soundwave was nowhere to be found. Dead End reckoned he was sulking in the Titan somewhere.
Overall, all was quiet. Dead End knew that there was no point in Perceptor tending to the bar now that he had received his drink.
“You know that’s a lie,” said Dead End. “Besides, Maccadam’s always around when help is needed.” For once, it was Perceptor who was pinned under his gaze, not the other way around. It felt powerful and exhilarating and scary , just a bit. Dead End would never say so.
Perceptor exhaled, just slightly. “I do.” His shoulders slumped a bit, and his entire posture fell limp a moment later. His head turned a bit, as if he was looking away, and his scope dimmed as well. Dead End couldn’t tell what that meant.
“Why don’t — how about — should —” Dead End slumped with a frustrated burst of air from his vents, dropping his hold on Perceptor’s wrist. He then looked back up, clasping his hands together under the counter. “You have time now. Do you want …” He didn’t — couldn’t? — quite finish his sentence, but Perceptor nodded slowly with a single dip of his head.
“I’d like your help,” he said quietly. He turned back to Dead End. “But I don’t want to assume. Only if you’d be willing to offer it. Only if you want to.”
“I do,” mumbled Dead End. His answer was clumsy. He’d never be poetic.
“Don’t feel pressured to —”
“I want to,” said Dead End a little louder, then winced as Hot Rod curiously looked over to them. Dead End heard his own fans kick on quietly, not-so-discreetly dispelling the rush of heat from his frame. He stood, taking his drink with him, then paused. “Can I take this — um, my drink — with me, or ...”
“Yes, of course,” said Perceptor, stumbling over his hurried words, half as if his vents couldn’t take the air in fast enough. “We should go back to the Titan’s medical bay, where you were before. When you ...” He trailed off, as if avoiding mention of the “incident,” as Dead End called it in his thought.
“Um. Passed out, and ... uhh ... you know,” said Dead End slowly, receiving a short nod in return. “Yeah, let’s go.”
Dead End couldn’t help but simply remain silent for a moment, hand softly running over the half-finished welds like rivers on Perceptor’s frame and mind half-floating in the mixed buzz of their systems. They didn’t talk for that moment, until Perceptor shifted in his seat. Dead End tore himself away as if he’d been burned.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I — just — uh, I’ll try to re-weld this and grind it down flat. Hold still.”
Perceptor nodded slightly, lifting his arm a bit higher onto the berthframe. Dead End cringed, only reminded of their awkward seating on the floor.
“Should I deactive my somatic sensors?” asked Perceptor as Dead End tested the welder, turning it on and off. “Dead End —”
“Um. Yeah, that’s a good idea,” said Dead End. “I’ll start now, so if you want to say something, you’ll have to tell me over comms.”
He turned the welder on and began to work at the badly attached seams. From here, he could see the smaller mechanisms quietly moving under the places where Perceptor’s plating parted. For a klik, he was half-convinced he was just going to stop welding and sit there, listening to the whirr of those little systems moving. He was only broken away from his reverie when the ping of a comm blinked in his HUD.
.: Where did you learn to weld? :. said Perceptor. Dead End frowned slightly. He couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be an insult or not. He considered taking it as a compliment, then a genuine question, then a snarky remark.
.: Not everyone has the luxury of good teachers, let alone any at all, :. retorted Dead End, having decided on interpreting it as a criticism.
.: I didn’t mean it like that, :. Perceptor said just a little too fast. He bit his lip. .: Your welding work is surprisingly skilled. :.
.: Oh. Thanks? :. said Dead End dryly. .: Nice to know you expected so little of me. :. Despite himself, he let a little smile tug at his face as he reached what was about the one-thirds mark. He was sure this was taking longer than usual — he would probably have gotten to halfway by now if not for the particularly messed-up edges from the previous mess of a weld.
Perceptor’s frame warmed just a degree at Dead End’s response — or maybe that was just his imagination, the welder, or both. He didn’t have the courage to ask.
.: No, I mean — not many people have the experience. I didn’t expect for you to care very much about cosmetic procedures. :.
Dead End snorted. .: You really don’t know much about us ‘Cons, huh? People ... mechs talk. You’d know what I mean if you heard it. :. His smile faltered just a bit, and it must have shown in the change of his EM field, because Perceptor definitely noticed.
Perceptor didn’t miss anything, did he?
Dead End yanked in his field, immediately disappointed at the lack of contact with Perceptor’s pleasantly cool one. All of a sudden, he was painfully aware of the vulnerability crawling beneath his plating, and he flared it out a bit to dispel heat without obviously activating his fans.
.: Never mind, :. said Dead End.
.: I understand, I think, :. said Perceptor awkwardly. .: I ... I see what you mean. :.
Only then did he seem to realize what he had said, blank optics scrunching slightly —
And before they knew it they were both laughing. Dead End had to rush to turn the welder off so he wouldn’t somehow accidentally melt Perceptor’s arm onto the berth, heaving for control over his frame. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like this, struts shaking, grin bright and open and free.
“Damn, our humor’s messed up,” he said once he managed to quiet. His face ached from smiling, and he could still feel the linger of amusement in their overlapping fields. He couldn’t find it in him to pull his field back in again. “We even can’t handle saying the word ‘see’ seriously anymore. Literally no one else does this.”
“People reject things they don’t understand,” said Perceptor in response. When Dead End looked up at his face, he was smiling.
Just that sight alone filled his tanks with something warm and bright.
Dead End was moving on to the grinding-down portion when he ran into a ... somewhat major inconvenience.
“Where’s the actual — this is missing the slagging disc ,” Dead End exclaimed incredulously. “There’s a wheel grinder handle without the actual wheel to grind anything down with .”
Perceptor, at least, seemed to be finding this particularly amusing, despite him being the one with the need for a sanding-down. “Have you tried looking for it?”
Dead End’s inner temperature climbed up a degree. He fumbled with his words, stuttering a few incomplete syllables as he hastily dismissed a request to activate his fans from his HUD. “I — uh — um, no. I’ll do that.”
“I will try to help.”
Dead End wondered if he was imagining the faint smile on Perceptor’s face. It wouldn’t be the first time he had overthought something and assumed incorrectly.
The quiet crawled beneath the surface of his plating as he opened and closed cabinets in a search for a grinder wheel. He considered saying something, opened his mouth, then closed it again. He almost wished he was still welding, so that at least the sound of the welder would drown out the silence.
Unfortunately, the only thing breaking the moments of quiet was the occasional scuffing of items being pushed around inside squeaky drawers. Once, a crash had come from Perceptor’s side of the room, but that had just happened to be Perceptor nearly snapping the door off a cabinet out of his slight lack of depth perception. Only seeing outlines and not fully detailed objects certainly couldn’t have helped, thought Dead End as the spin of his spark calmed after he had originally startled at the noise.
“Is this correct?” asked Perceptor from across the room, halfway inside of a … was that a particularly small closet, or a larger-than-usual cabinet? He was frowning, holding up what looked somewhat like a grinder wheel. “This feels correct, but my scope doesn’t allow me to check for any sort of damage.”
Dead End stared a little too long, then crossed the space quickly and stiffly. He took a look at the wheel, which seemed good enough by his standards — not that he was always able to get the best equipment with the Decepticons, anyway. “Yeah, that looks good. I’ll try to work with that, if this thing even gets started.”
Perceptor turned a little too quickly, whacked his scope into the cabinet(? closet?)’s doorframe, crashed into Dead End, and sailed directly into a crash course toward the solid concrete floor. Dead End reached forward in a halfhearted attempt to catch him and promptly tripped over Perceptor’s legs, nearly slamming face-first into the cabinet(?) door in the process.
“Are you ... alright?” asked Dead End, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
“Operational. However, my scope is damaged.” Perceptor’s voice was unshakable as his fingers scrabbled and scraped over the smooth floor. He sounded almost awkward as he added a “It’s nice to see you care.”
Dead End was sure he was flushing. “It’s good you didn’t somehow reopen the part I just welded,” he mumbled, biting his lip.
Perceptor still hadn’t gotten up.
“Uh. Do you need help?” said Dead End tentatively.
“That would be appreciated,” Perceptor responded simply, reaching up a hand. Dead End took it uncertainly, then gave a firm tug upward — just about enough to lift someone like Clobber up at a slow and steady pace.
Unfortunately for them both, Perceptor and Clobber were completely different frame-types.
This meant Perceptor shot up like a rocket, eliciting a little yelp from him and some sort of less-than-ungainly squawk from Dead End. Dead End’s optics widened as he found himself face-to-face with the scientist.
“Um,” he said, the delicate brush of vents prickling on his plating.
Seemingly at a loss for words, or maybe just oblivious, Perceptor stepped back and turned his head away just the slightest bit, exposing his neck cables and —
“What the scrap,” said Dead End, staring at a scar of warped metal. “ Another one?”
Perceptor froze like a child caught stealing sweets. Then, he frowned slightly, helm turned down at the floor as if he was looking away. “It’s fine, really.”
“No, no,” said Dead End. “Might as well fix it.”
“This really isn’t necessary —”
“It really is necessary.” Dead End wasn’t quite sure why he was so set on doing this, and the force in his voice surprised even him. “I mean — uh, why not?”
For a moment, it was just their vents that filled the quiet.
“Okay,” said Perceptor, unreadable as always.
“If you had one way to prevent all this, what would you do?” asked Perceptor suddenly.
Dead End blinked, stopping in his manual filing of the welds he had just completed. “Uh. The apocalypse, or the war?”
“Whichever you would like,” said Perceptor plainly, a hint of a twitch ghosting over his lips before they smoothed out, back to being a blank, rippleless lake.
Dead End thought, attempting to distract himself from the task at hand (and the ever-frequent requests to turn his fans on popping up on his HUD) as he thought about the question. “A time machine,” he settled on saying. “Going back and changing everything is a fix-it for both of those events, and whatever extra. Infinite tries, infinite redos? Sounds good to me.”
Perceptor slowly worried at his lip, shifting to help Dead End get a better angle. “One of my ... well, former coworker took a particular interest in that a while ago. I wonder if he ever ....” He paused. “I’ve always had a little space in my processor for time travel.”
“Really?” asked Dead End absently, swiping a tissue-covered magnet over the metal filings left from his work. He could feel each pleasant vibration of sound on Perceptor’s plating every time he spoke. “Ever tried it?”
“Not yet,” said Perceptor. The way he said it sent shivers through Dead End’s struts, as if something big was coming. “Would you like to see?”
Dead End couldn’t help but say yes.