Title: Exploring

Characters: Swindle, and Brawl

Rating: T

Summary: Brawl thinks it's a good idea to air out dirty laundry on a drive. Swindle thinks otherwise.

Notes: For ultharkitty on livejournal. And I'm finally posting after an entire year.

...Or how a jeep learned to express himself.

"No"

Brawl really shouldn't have expected any other answer, but he figured that the plus side of being too dumb to know when to quit was exactly that. Swindle had driven a little ways ahead of him, so the tank quickly rumbled up beside him.

"Seriously though, what happened?"

"Absolutely nothing"

Tact he reminded himself of what Vortex had told him. Swindle had more buttons than a radio panel when it came to his team, and it shouldn't have taken much for him to spill, but there really was that issue of tact. The copter had told Brawl that even he should've been able to muster up enough of it to get their teammate to talk, though his barely disguised laughter belied his actual thoughts, which was yet another reminder of being tactful and how Brawl decidedly wasn't.

They pulled up on the curb of the road, and transformed simultaneously. Swindle didn't bother looking at the tank as he headed off into the trees, disappearing amongst a tangle of green. Brawl grumbled to himself and followed, getting slowly more and more ticked off as branches refused to stay pushed back, and continually smacked him in the chest. Honestly, if Swindle didn't even want to talk why did he even invite him to come on this outing?

Because Blast Off wouldn't he dully reminded himself.

He exits to a small semi-circle or grass, cut off by the base of a huge cliff. Swindle stood near an opening in the aforementioned cliff, looking more than a bit annoyed.

"Hurry it up would you?" again not waiting for a response, he ducked into the entrance, engulfing himself in the black.

The spectrum of Brawl's temper did not run very far, and this time he dove right after his teammate, crashing into him, and landing the both of them in a pile of tangled limbs. He somehow managed to maneuver himself so that he was sitting on top of the jeep.

"Get off me Brawl!" he felt like telling Swindle that kicking him wasn't going to solve anything.

"Not until you tell me about you and that Autobot!" and Vortex said he needed tact. Hah.

"Seriously? Why do you even want to know?"

"Cause Vortex thinks you've been fragging him, and Onslaught wants to know if it'll frag anything up, and Blast Off acts like he doesn't care but according to Tex he does. Kinda. And I just… I just kinda want to know"

"Primus," Swindle stopped struggling, and laid his face on the dusty ground. Brawl briefly wondered if that was uncomfortable. ", that was vorns ago, and I was not fragging him. What's wrong with Vortex?"

Lots of things Brawl wanted to answer, but that nagging feeling that Swindle's was lying—not that it was surprising—overtook the urge, and he glanced down at the immobile form underneath him.

"Anything else?"

The kicking and thrashing resumed, and Brawl thinks that maybe Vortex was right after all.

"No, no, and no! Now get off me, those diamonds aren't going to collect themselves"

Swindle managed to grab a rock and somehow chuck it behind himself, hitting the tank in the head. Brawl hit him back, before getting off and the jeep glared at him, rubbing the new dent in his head.

"Fine then, I'll just get them myself" more turning of his back to Brawl occurred and the tank hoped it wasn't going to become a regular event.

"Come on," he stalked after his teammate, who was doing a very good impression of a wall, "if it happened vorns ago it really can't matter. You could do that self-express thing that the squishies really like when they talk to those fancy guys in white on TV shows"

Swindle whirled around, looking much tougher than his size really should've let him appear, "You want expression? LEAVE ME ALONE"

There was a pregnant pause between the two of them, Swindle's outburst filling up the entire space.

"Feel better?" Brawl finally asked.

The rock thrown at his face gave the answer.

"It can't be that fragging bad. I mean unless Tex was right"

"Vortex is not right" Swindle snapped, turning around to go deeper into the cave.

"But you liked him though"

"Not in the way you all are clearly thinking"

"So you did like him?"

"Go away"

"Err…if it helps I don't really care"

"Fantastic. You won't ask me about it anymore then"

This was getting them nowhere. They came to the very back of the cave, which widened into a circular room filled with boulders, stalagmites, and stalactites of various shapes and sizes. Swindle began inspecting behind every structure in the room.

"Said it'd be behind one of these things, but of course he had to pick a place filled with hundreds of them" he grumbled.

Brawl figured that helping out would ease up the tension, so he started looking as well. Luck had it in for him that he found a large crate behind his first boulder.

"Is this it?" Swindle pushed past him roughly and pried the lid open, revealing hundreds of shimmering diamonds. He picked one up and scrutinized it.

"Yeah," he picked the box up, "let's go"

Nothing was said as they made their way back to the entrance, until Brawl brought the subject back up.

"So you liked him, right?"

Swindle sighed, too tired to fight back anymore, "If I tell you, you'll stop asking?"

"Yep"

"Fine. We were partners. That's it. We scammed, we stole, we lived it up until he joined the bots and I joined the cons, and that was that," he shrugged, "there's nothing more to it"

"Oh" the silence afterwards felt discomfortingly empty, and he pointed to the box of diamonds, "You want me to carry that?"

"Why not?" Swindle handed him the crate.

Brawl would only have had it for a short ways, since the diamonds would be loaded onto the jeep once they reached the road again, but they both figured the tank had come for a reason. They reached the entrance of the cave, the surroundings quiet until…

"So did you frag him?"

"VORTEX" Swindle was not amused. Brawl himself was startled, almost dropping the diamonds, and glared at the copter.

"Okay, so I didn't think Brawl would be able to get it out of you, but it was still fun watching him try." the copter placed himself on a nearby rock and looked quizzically at his teammate, "So did you frag him?"

As Swindle hurled a million dollar diamond at the laughing mech, Brawl decided that maybe he never should have mentioned the idea of self-expression.