Work Text:
The last few millennia had, understandably, been a bit short on parties. Even so, despite the reality of a brutal civil war with an astronomical body count that had threatened the fate of the universe on multiple occasions, Ratchet had managed—somehow—to retain his particular reputation.
The noise and chaos overflowing the bar and spilling out into the Lost Light ’s corridor was an assault on the sensors, but his arrival didn’t go unnoticed; a few stray cries of, “Party Ambulance!” greeted him, half-overpowered by the pulsing rhythm of whatever awful song Blaster had queued up. He could feel the relentless beat buzzing in his protoform, rattling his armor, reverberating in his struts.
Jostling his way through the press of rowdy revelers, he snagged the beverage Swerve held out to him—some dubious-looking concoction the bartender had been advertising as the themed drink for the night—and knocked back half of it all at once. Drift was elsewhere, busy getting into trouble with Rodimus, no doubt up to something that would land at least one of them in the medibay eventually. Left to his own devices in the midst of the gathered crowd, the medic found himself falling easily back into long-established habits. He quickly drained the rest of his glass, chasing the pleasant high of engex saturating his lines that he knew so well.
A second drink closely followed the first, accompanied by two potent shots of something that burned all the way down to his fuel tank; then, discarding the empties on a nearby table, Ratchet strayed nearer to the shifting, winding mass of bodies on the dance floor. Among the gaudy decorative lights, an aggregation of mechs that ran the gamut of size, dance skill, and level of inebriation were shouting, laughing, and moving their frames more or less in time to the upbeat pounding of the music.
At the edge of the clustered bots, Ratchet felt himself hesitate. An uncharacteristic reluctance settled over him. He frowned.
Confused, he ran a brief check of his systems, initializing a basic diagnostic script. Everything seemed…normal. The high-grade fuel was circulating through him, propelled by his pump, and its effects were already noticeable. He swayed a bit on his feet, the bar’s dim overhead lights and dazzling colored illumination combining with the constant motion around him to make his optical sensors refuse to focus. He was among friends—well, allies anyway—and the clamor in here was more than loud enough to drown out any and all lucid thinking. He was in his element; the setting was primed for the Party Ambulance to make his appearance like he had hundreds of times before, but Ratchet was finding that, unexpectedly, he just…didn’t want to.
Remaining where he was, the medic rocked himself a bit along with the music and watched. The air was laden with the sweet-sour smell of Swerve’s special cocktail, the various mingled odors of waxes and polishes and fresh grease, and the smoky stench of exhaust expelled from too many heated frames. His gaze swept over pairs, trios, and small groups of mechs packed together: twisting, jumping, grinning, dipping, touching, holding, reaching. Unbidden, thoughts of Drift surfaced to bob idly about in his processor. He wondered if his conjunx would finish up whatever it was he was doing and make an appearance.
As if on cue, there was a sudden ping from his comms. He did his best to tweak his audio input and output so he could both hear and be heard among all the noise. At the sound of Drift’s voice, something bright and warm bubbled up within him.
“Ratty, hey, hope you’re having fun at Swerve’s. Rodimus is headed over there, but I’m probably going to go back to our hab.” There was the sense of an apologetic wince in his tone. “I’m sorry, I just don’t think I’m feeling up to it tonight.”
Ratchet’s response emerged without any conscious deliberation. “I’ll come and join you.”
“No, you don’t have to do that—I’ll be fine, honest. It’s been a long time since you’ve been able to let the Party Ambulance out to play. You’ve been looking forward to this, right?”
He’d instinctively turned himself away as he answered Drift’s call; now, Ratchet angled himself to glance back at all the action. The glass of his windshield caught and reflected the mess of overlapping beams in a jumble of hues. The feeling that was forming in his spark was strange, but not because it was unfamiliar. On the contrary, he knew it well: it was the same sort of vague and uneasy wanting that usually sent him searching for exactly this type of distraction, for a way to cut loose. In that moment, he felt a similar push, but this time it was driving him away instead.
“You know,” he said, and as the words formed in his vocalizer, he was simultaneously confident they were real and true. “I was, but…now that I’m here, I think I’d much rather be back there with you.”
Even without being able to see him, Ratchet could tell Drift was smiling. “Well, I’m certainly not going to say no to that. As long as that’s really what you want. See you soon?”
“Yeah. Very soon.” As he ended the transmission, a satisfied flush crept through him that he knew had nothing to do with the engex. The odd disinterest that had been hanging over him was beginning to fade.
Ratchet had earned his reputation for a reason, and he’d unquestionably had a lot of fun along the way; the many memories that had managed to escape corruption and archive properly despite his addled processor told him as much. Looking back, he’d never felt inclined to regret any of it. The dull, restless yearning—the impression of something basic and fundamental that was missing—would always return, of course, but that was inevitable. That hollow ache had no solution, and so he’d stopped bothering to seek one. He’d figured out how to hold it at bay, and that had to be good enough.
For the first time in his entire functioning, Ratchet realized, the persistent sensation was gone. Somehow, while he’d been looking the other way, something had slipped into his life and slotted itself right into that vacant space. It was no wonder his usual diversions weren’t working, that this whole survival strategy had lost its appeal.
It was no wonder that his spark was telling him so clearly where he would prefer to be right now—and with who.
His frame felt light as he spun towards the door, like his armor weighed nothing at all. As the music flowed into the next song and the thumping beat picked up again, Ratchet exited the bar and left the party behind him as he traversed the passageways of the route that would lead him home.