Work Text:
Ultra Magnus had, thankfully, gotten distracted by something else going on in the other end of the shuttle, and Swerve heaved a sigh of relief that he would not have to deal with someone trying to make a spreadsheet out of Blurr's lap times. At least the first stop would be the bar—Swerve could not wait to see what kind of interesting concoctions Hedonia had to offer, though, he was a bit disappointed to note that his collection of holomatter avatars in the Homo Sapiens category were all the usual ratio of width-to-height, no matter which age group he picked.
Something something psychology-babble about it being linked to his self-perception, which he generally thought was a bunch of scrap, because Rewind's avatars were always just as tall as everyone else while Swerve had to walk around with his head craned back to look people in the eye, just as he always did.
Out of the corner of his optics, though, he noticed Tailgate looking through his own options, and an idea came to Swerve like a bolt of inspiration from Primus himself.
"Tailgate, buddy, listen, I need a favour!"
Tailgate, to his credit, did not look very apprehensive. He had probably seen way worse ideas while he was in the Primal Vanguard, so Swerve launched himself straight into it: "You've seen that there's those age-categories, right?"
Tailgate nodded. "Yeah, because, uh. Organics look different at different stages of life," he said. "Something like that, right? I'm trying to figure out which one to use."
Swerve leaned in, and noticed Tailgate rapidly minimising a tiny database window with the glyphs for 'homo sapiens what is middle age" in the search field.
"Okay, so, see, there's this little bug with my avatars, and I'm not as tall as the others here..."
"You're never as tall as the others. Except me, and Rewind, and Pipes, and maybe Rung if he stoops, and—"
"Point is!" Swerve wrapped an arm around Tailgate's back and pulled him in close. "Point is, my avatars are short, okay? And I'm a minibot. So, I'm always the one who gets picked up and carried around if we gotta go somewhere tall..."
Tailgate made a confused noise, but did not interrupt.
"Point is, I need a favour from you. All I need you to do, is pick that option right there in the age." Swerve's grin could have worked as a toothpaste commercial as he pointed at the top-most category in the avatar selection. "That's the smallest homo sapiens, which'd make you smaller than me, and then I can carry someone around for once!"
"... But I'm a minibot, too, and I don't ever get to carry anyone around, either.."
"Free drinks for the rest of the week if you do this for me."
Tailgate immediately pressed confirm on the option, and Swerve giggled with delight as he added a harness to his own avatar. For once, he would not have the shortest avatar!