Over Drinks

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW/RID
Turmoil/Metalhawk
maybe mild spoilers for RID
for tf_rare_pairing weekly request: turmoil/metalhawk such sweet sorrow

Turmoil ranged himself in the booth, a cube of high grade sweating on the table in front of him. Just watching, for now. Waiting, learning the terrain, with that careful attention Deadlock had derided as cowardice.

No. Not cowardice, intelligence. But that was something Deadlock couldn’t understand.

“Metalhawk,” he said, abruptly, his voice a carefully measured purr.  He gestured with one broad hand at the bench across from him. “Why don’t you have a seat?” 

The chromium-yellow jet sidled around him, shoulders high and tense, radiating that he’d hated being caught out. Turmoil smiled behind his mask. So predictable, all of them. He’d known Metalhawk would seek him out eventually. This was his chance to suborn him, if he played it right.

And he had every intention of doing just that.

He waited, optics bland and red, heavy on Metalhawk’s face.  “Turmoil,” the jet said, finally.  And then faltered.

Perfect.  

Turmoil nudged the cube over with one finger. “Drink?” 

A cautious look, Metalhawk reaching for the cube, but not taking it, not drinking from it. Yet. Not committing to anything. 

“You have questions,” Turmoil prompted.  Offering nothing. Another test.

“I heard,” Metalhawk said, studying the pink liquid, “that there was some…ruckus about your ship.”

“Ah.” He’d expected this. He’d also expected Wheeljack and the others to have hastily whipped up some sort of fantastic cover story. Metalhawk gained a point in his estimation for at least asking.

Hinting at asking. 

No wonder he’d fled the war: Metalhawk wasn’t capable of committing to conversation, much less to a cause. 

“It was merely a misunderstanding,” Turmoil said, modestly.

“Misunderstanding.”  Metalhawk frowned, more than dubious.

Turmoil grinned under his mask. Oh, right where I want you. “Yes,” he responded. “I misunderstood the protocols here.  I normally expect inspecting authorities to present paperwork and announce their presence.”  A beat.

And right on cue. “…inspecting authorities.”

“Wheeljack, apparently,” Turmoil said, flipping his hand over, showing an open palm. “I reacted…poorly.”

“Poorly.”

An echo chamber: exactly what Turmoil wanted, to fill the jet’s head with his own thoughts, leading him, crumb by crumb, down the path. “Old habits die hard,” he said, with an almost contrite shrug. “I saw an Autobot on my ship and I drew a weapon on him.”

Context. Context was everything.  The act was nothing but truth, but the story woven around it was a web designed to ensnare.

And even this, here, sitting seemingly so harmlessly, minus his arm-cannon, in this ersatz bar, even this was context: Autobot ground, Turmoil making the show of getting out and mingling. Context.

“Ah.”  Metalhawk, trying to give away nothing. He could perhaps control his words, but his face was open and mobile, and Turmoil read more in the way Metalhawk’s hand clutched the cube than the jet probably thought.  “I had heard a story.”

Time to press. “A fiction, no doubt, cobbled of half truths and old grudges.” He drawled the last word, meeting the blue optics.  Metalhawk knew a bit about grudges. 

“Dabola,” Metalhawk blurted. And if Turmoil hadn’t engineered just that thought-path, he’d have been hard pressed to follow the logic.

“Deadlock,” Turmoil countered. “He disobeyed orders.”

“You didn’t stop him.”

“It was a war.  How would it look for me to attack my own kind?” He gave a shrug. “We all had to worry about appearances and morale back then. Especially,” he dangled, like a bait, “Decepticons.”

“But now?  Morale still seems to be quite an issue.”

“Ah, but truth is perhaps better than the lies we had to tell.”  The irony, as Turmoil wrapped truth in little copper wires, was palpable.  “At least starting again, we can all admit our wrongdoings and stand as imperfect equals.” Oh that was nearly painful to say, and if Turmoil hadn’t had millennia of practice with smarmy half-truth, it perhaps would have showed.

Deadlock had preferred his war hot and messy: Turmoil preferred it like this, cold and clean.  Civilized, if you will.

“Wrongdoings,” Metalhawk said. “And do you have regrets, then?”

“Does anyone not?” Four million years of war, after all. To not regret something in all that time? Was the mark of a mech who was an utter stranger to introspection. Even Deadlock, from what Turmoil had heard, might have learned regret.

It would be the only thing he ever had learned.

“I regret, for one,” he said with all sincerity, “not handling Deadlock better.” For his own reasons, of course.  One step further, also truth but slightly grey-tinged. “Dabola…should not have happened.”

“It should not have,” Metalhawk said, sharply, “but it did.”

Time to shift tactics; unsettle the jet, keep him in the chop of crosscurrents. “I will not apologize further than that: it appears to me,” he said, letting his optics drop to the jet’s unmarked chassis, “you found you way clear.” Ah, the conundrum of the philosophical when looking on the past: that the brightest moments often had their roots in the darkets. Without Dabola, Metalhawk would never have fled and, if the stories were true, had his own meeting with these mystical 'Knights'. Information Turmoil wanted. And would get, by any crooked path.

The answer dissatisfied Metalhawk, at the same time it grudged some respect. “I did.” The mouth pulled into a pout that reminded him, powerfully, of Deadlock’s scowl. And it told Turmoil volumes: Metalhawk’s neutrality was a veneer, over a seething, unfocused hate. A hate Turmoil could channel, and use. 

“And now?” Turmoil cast that crumb upon the water.

“Now,” a tilt of the yellow helm, the fingers toying with the cube, as the optics studied the quiet bustle of the early evening bar crowd, “things are less clear.”

“Some things are clear, though,” Turmoil said, letting his gaze float to follow Metalhawk’s as it traveled over the clumps of mechs—some here to drown their sorrows, some to forget, some to purchase temporary happiness. “We have a chance that we can’t afford to waste.” Such optimistic words. If only he believed them. Oh, he did, after a fashion. Only the chance he was seeking was far different than the small, thin-armed jet’s sitting across the table.  “And things can’t stay as they are, or as they were.” 

Metalhawk nodded, distantly, but Turmoil could feel the ledge the jet was teetering on. He’d done his research, knew Metalhawk fancied himself the voice for the NAILs, indigenous and refugees.  And that Metalhawk hated what he’d seen the Autobots do here.

“Tell me, Metalhawk. Looking around here: what do you see?” A bar, the perfect place for it: dashed hopes, regrets and forced cheer in crumbs in every corner.

“Sadness,” Metalhawk said. “And anger. And regret. And helplessness.”

Turmoil grinned under his mask. You’re seeing yourself, he thought. You’re projecting what you feel onto this rather grim canvas.  Two mechs, Autobot badges askew, began shoving at each other, hissing insults. What better image could Turmoil ask for: Autobots as feral beasts, while he and Metalhawk sat, quiet and civil. “They need direction from someone who understands them,” he said mildly, keeping the weight of his optics off the jet for a moment, before letting them return, hooking the blue gaze. A compliment, sweet and thin.  He was not above flattery when it suited his ends. And his ends were Metalhawk's allegiance.

“They do,” Metalhawk said, and for the first time, he lifted the cube to his mouth and drank, signing some silent accord between them.

Comments

[pl2363.livejournal.com]

Amazing characterization and writing as usual.

[tainry.livejournal.com]

Oho!
Fantastic!