Work Text:
Brainstorm looked up when he heard the doorbell ring downstairs. Chromedome was still at work and he certainly hadn't been expecting anyone today. Rewind had been having a good morning when he'd seen him before he buried himself in his latest project, but he still fretted over whatever response their visitor might inspire in him anyway. He turned off the soldering iron and left his lab to investigate.
"What are you doing here?" Brainstorm balked at the bottom of the stairs. Whirl waved back at him excitedly from where he had clearly been speaking to Rewind, "I thought you weren't going to be out of jail for another two weeks?"
"Oh, yeah, I was!" Whirl nodded, "But I told Teeg about it and he called around and got me two months of community service instead. So now I don't have to miss out on my date with your husband!" Whirl blinked his optic, and Brainstorm wondered if he was supposed to interpret that as a wink or not.
"I asked Whirl to help me shoot some overhead B-roll for my documentary today," Rewind explained apologetically.
"I would have helped you with that," Brainstorm frowned.
"Do you know what a dolly zoom is?" Rewind asked. Brainstorm shook his head. "That's why I asked Whirl, dear. No worries."
Brainstorm shifted between his pedes, frowning deeper. "Tailgate got you out of jail early?"
"Uh-huh."
"Why would he do that?" Brainstorm needled.
"Because he agreed with me that two weeks was ridiculous for the level of property destruction I got booked for!" Whirl scoffed, "I'll own up when I earned it, but I barely knocked that wall down. It wasn't even my fault it was the guy I hit that went through it!"
Brainstorm narrowed his optics. "Uh-huh."
"You and Tailgate have been talking a lot lately!" Rewind interjected, cutting Brainstorm a glare, "Why don't you invite him over for movie night sometime!"
Whirl lit up. "That would be great! I'll ask him."
"First up though, B-roll!" Rewind announced, clapping his hands and shooing Whirl toward the door, "Let's go! We're losing daylight!"
[14:30:24] Rewind: be nice!! I know you don't like tailgate, but at least whirl is making some friends for once!
Brainstorm rolled his optics with a huff at the private comm he got as soon as the door was shut and wandered back up the stairs to his work.
[14:31:02] Brainstorm: you know you just told him to invite a blind man to watch a movie right
[14:31:30] Rewind: ...
[14:32:10] Rewind: shit
"So what's he like?" Drift prompted, swirling the engex in his glass as he leaned across the counter, "How different is he from our Tailgate?"
"It's sort of subtle," Rewind answered, fiddling with the viz screen, "Like, he's got a lot of the same- uh- enthusiasm I remember, but he's like. Way older and more reserved. Also, I heard that he can totally nail a headshot even though he's blind, which is- well, if you can think of anything more un-Tailgate-like, I'd like to hear it."
"He's a better liar," Brainstorm mumbled, glancing down at his own glass, already nearly empty. Rewind glanced back at him to glare again.
"Ooh," Drift cooed with a chuckle, "That's a bit rich coming from you, isn't it?"
Brainstorm scowled at him behind his mask. "I'm just saying. Tailgate is a nice enough guy, but I don't think he's afraid of using people. In fact, I know he's not, since that's literally what he spent his whole life doing."
"You don't think there's a difference between manipulating a slaveowner and manipulating a friend?" Rewind scoffed, and the viz screen lit up, "Finally!"
"I think he's got all the motivation in the world," Brainstorm argued, "I don't blame the guy for projecting, but we all know what Whirl is like. This is not going to end well."
"You know, I'm supposed to be the pessimist," Chromedome commented as he returned to the room, "You're just going to have to live with it, Storm. If it ends badly, it ends badly, and he'll just live in the guest room for six months moping. You can't force things."
"Ugh," Brainstorm grumbled. He unhooked his mask and finished his drink, and was about to continue the argument when the doorbell rang.
"Be nice!" Rewind hissed, and Drift leaned up and away from the counter to answer the door.
"Whirl! Tailgate! How nice to meet you," Drift said with a pleasantness Brainstorm has learned was deeply controlled, and wondered suddenly if he actually had the old swordsmech on his side after all, "Please, come in."
"Truly said like it was your own house," Whirl laughed, but he ushered his minibot guest in ahead of him and stepped past the threshold, wings buzzing.
"Hello, Tailgate!" Rewind beamed, standing up, "It's so good to meet you- well, officially."
"Thank you for having me," Tailgate answered politely, "You have a lovely home."
"Storm made it!" Whirl tittered, gesturing toward him. Brainstorm sat up.
"Uh," he said, on the spot, "I only designed it."
"Residential architect and world class weapons engineer," Tailgate commented, "Impressive credentials."
"Okay, so, this is Brainstorm," Whirl said as he pointed one claw at him, "You know that's Rewind, that's Chromedome, and that's Drift. I work with him."
"I recall," Tailgate nodded, offering him a hand to shake, "I knew your mirror once."
"Really?" Drift asked, sounding intrigued, "Fond memories, I hope?"
"He was a good mech," Tailgate said, and Brainstorm suspected he wasn't the only one that noticed the starkness of the was in that sentence.
"I picked out Whirl's favourite for tonight," Rewind interjected, pulling up the film's menu on the viz screen, "Alphaville. It's from Earth."
"I don't indulge in movies often," Tailgate said politely, "I'm sure I'll get the gist of it, though."
"Okay, I didn't mention this because I wasn't sure if I would finish in time, but I spent all week working on an audio description track," Rewind announced, sounding weary.
Tailgate straightened up. "Oh! Thank you."
Whirl tapped his claws together, looking extremely grateful and Rewind shot him a thumbs up. Brainstorm got up to refill his glass.
Brainstorm was flying a little tipsy as he followed Whirl at a medium distance, staying back and overhead. He'd been right about that colour changing camouflage paint, though. Whirl hadn't commed him to tell him to piss off yet, so he must not have noticed he was being tailed.
He lingered a ways away while his amica landed and let his passenger out, waving goodbye. He half expected some indication their pursuit had shifted romantic already and Whirl had kept it from him, but the exchange was chaste.
As soon as Whirl was airborne and out of audial range Tailgate unsubspaced a pistol and aimed it at Brainstorm's head.
"Alright, come out," the minibot said gruffly, all the lightness from his polite tone earlier gone. Brainstorm jolted, caught fully off guard and raised both hands palms-out in alarm, stepping forward.
"Whoa, whoa, Primus, don't shoot!" Brainstorm exclaimed, "It's just me!"
"I know who it is," Tailgate snapped, "You've been following us since we left the house. What are you- invisible or something?"
Brainstorm blinked. "How can you tell?"
"Because you're twenty paces away and Whirl didn't notice you," Tailgate explained as if it were obvious. Self-consciously Brainstorm reset his paint job back to the default. "So what is this?"
He hadn't lowered the weapon yet and Brainstorm noted with growing irritation that the barrel followed him as he moved and wondered how the hell he was doing that. "I'm not here for a fight, I just wanted to talk to you alone."
"You could have just asked," Tailgate answered, still sounding suspicious, but he flipped the pistol away and leaned back against his front gate.
"Yes, well," Brainstorm began, but he didn't have a good retort to that, "What are you doing with Whirl, anyway?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean what are you doing?" Brainstorm insisted, "You know he's not the other one. I don't blame you for projecting, but you can't just replace him."
Tailgate tilted his helm at an angle, unimpressed. "I'm not trying to."
"Could have fooled me."
"Whirl told me about your Rewind," Tailgate replied coolly, "The other ship, and the engines. He's not your Rewind at all. Did you replace yours with him?"
"No!" Brainstorm exclaimed, filled with a sudden and unexpected anger that was altogether unlike him, "There was a difference between them of a matter of months. He's still the Rewind I knew for millenia."
Tailgate shrugged. "My point is more that obviously you were going to care as much about him as you did the first one, for the same reasons you cared about the first one. How could you not fall in love all over again?"
Brainstorm eyed him, mulling it over. "Like I said before. I don't blame you. But you aren't my amica, Whirl is, and when this ends it's going to end badly."
"Has anyone ever told you that you're a bit of a pessimist?" Tailgate inquired, cocking an eyebrow ridge at him.
"Often," said Brainstorm dryly, "But I'm right more than I'm not."
Tailgate huffed a laugh through his vents. "Fair enough."
Brainstorm shifted his weight as the silence stretched out, before he spoke again. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"What are you going to do?" Brainstorm insisted.
"I'm going to continue pursuing a friendship with Whirl, because I care about him," Tailgate answered, "And if he wants more than that he can have it."
Brainstorm's wings jittered, flapping in irritation. "I'm not going to let you use him to fill a void. By now you must have figured out how incredibly precariously he's balanced, how little it would take to push him over the edge. The other Tailgate already left him once. When the veneer wears off and you realize he's not your Whirl he won't be able to handle you leaving too."
Tailgate regarded him for an obnoxious length of time, tilting his head as if he could look him up and down. "You know, I like you."
"What?" Brainstorm asked, thrown off.
"A little overprotective, but I see why he's so fond of you," Tailgate leaned away from the gate, "I think you have the wrong perception of me, though. I'm sure TV makes me look like a grief stricken widow who never did anything else after Birdy died, but I served the next six centuries in a command position. I led the assault on K'th Kinsere from the ground. I'm not so judgement impaired as you seem to think I am."
"I don't want you to hurt him," Brainstorm said finally, as simple as that.
"Why don't you come in for a cup of tea," Tailgate said, turning down the front path to his door with a beckoning wave, "Let the engex settle before you fly home, at least."
Brainstorm scowled. "No, thank you."
"Suit yourself."
Tailgate waved again before he vanished into his country estate and Brainstorm paced back and forth, irritated and undecided if he should do anything else. Eventually he turned and left.
Brainstorm looked up from the dishes he was washing when he heard the front door open as Whirl stumbled inside, looking weary.
"Pretty late out," Brainstorm commented, grabbing a towel to dry his hands, "Any reason?"
Whirl ignored him and wandered with sunken wings to the couch, where he collapsed face first in the cushions. Brainstorm tossed the rag into the counter and joined him in the living room, leaning over the back of the couch to look at him.
"That bad?" he inquired.
"Rough day at work," Whirl mumbled.
"How so?"
"Patient today," Whirl spoke softly, voice muffled by fabric, "Soft termination."
Brainstorm winced. "Not fun."
"No," said Whirl hoarsely, "Not fun."
"It get to you?"
"Not at first," Whirl answered, "I was too busy trying to stabilize him. It didn't hit until he was gone."
Brainstorm's spark sunk. "I'm sorry, Whirl."
"Sometimes I still wish Velocity hadn't found me, in Mauler territory," Whirl murmured, "Avoid stretching it out so long."
"It wasn't even a real sparkling, Whirl," Brainstorm reminded him, and Whirl sighed.
"I know, but imagine if it had been. Imagine everybody finding me like that. Woulda really been a fun party, seeing everyone all confused that ol' Whirlibird would go out like that."
"Fantasies of self destruction aren't healthy," Brainstorm reminded him, "You wouldn't have been able to enjoy everyone's reactions if you were dead. On account of being dead."
"Ugh. I know."
"I know you know. It's okay."
"I had to break the news to his conjunx," Whirl sighed, "It was rough." He hesitated. "I know you don't like Teeg, but it's not like what you think."
"I never said I didn't like him," Brainstorm argued and Whirl huffed and rolled over.
"I know what I'm doing," Whirl assured him, "Don't you trust me?"
Brainstorm hesitated, wings sinking. Eventually he sighed through his vents. "Of course I trust you."
"I gotta try, don't I?" Whirl prompted, "Wouldn't you?"
Brainstorm grimaced, but eventually he nodded. "Come on. Guest room. No sleeping on the couch again."
Whirl groaned, but allowed himself to be herded upstairs and into the spare room to collapse on the berth up there. Brainstorm glanced back at the stairs, thinking of the unfinished chores, and then crossed the hall to his own room, where Chromedome was sitting up and reading a datapad. He looked up when Brainstorm entered and shut the door behind him.
"He alright?" Chromedome asked.
"Bad day, but I'm not worried about him." Brainstorm hesitated before he crawled in bed with his conjunx to lay his head against his chest. "Not tonight, at least."
"I know you're worried," Chromedome soothed, setting his datapad aside, "But you can't fix everyone's problems, Storm. Sometimes you just gotta let it be."
"I'm no good at that."
"Yeah, I know. It's simultaneously your most annoying and most endearing trait."
Brainstorm rolled his optics at him.
"It's going to be okay. You can't micromanage things for everyone all the time. You gotta learn to let people make their own mistakes."
"I hate it," Brainstorm murmured, "Watching people suffer when they didn't have to. When I could have fixed it."
"You're too empathetic to live," Chromedome sighed.
"And too stubborn to die," Brainstorm agreed with a curt nod. "I know, I know. I'll play nice."
"Good boy," Chromedome replied, leaning down to kiss the top of his head.
Brainstorm resolved to begin an aggressive new campaign to befriend his amica's new fascination in the morning. If he wasn't going anywhere, then he may as well drag him kicking and screaming into the inner circle of their friend group where he could keep an eye on him.