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He needed a starting point. Every auctioneer had a baseline they began from. No point in wasting time in the double digits when the piece in his hands was worth triples, probably more. It was an insult to offer a low bid. It devalued the piece, whatever the final price.
The whole deal reminded him of handling art. True art, the real expensive stuff displayed in museums, not the up-and-coming artistic endeavors put in galleries in hopes the grubby common mech would purchase something. The sort of art that had a price tag but was actually priceless. That kind of art. This was a one-of-a-kind art that had to be experienced as much as viewed. It was famous, but fragile in the peculiar way art often was. Touch it right, and it'd sing to the senses. Handle it wrong, and its value plummeted until it couldn't even be given away.
Swindle stood back from the bed and looked for the best place to begin. There were some spots he shouldn't touch, not yet. The helm fin, for one. Blurr was far too sensitive there, too prone to start purring and revving back up if Swindle touched him there now. It was the fragile thin connection of a sculpture, prone to snapping if he took advantage of it. In his mind, the helm fin was marked as Do Not Touch. It was a handhold, one he'd reach for if he wanted to break the pretty mech splayed on the bed, but not one for today. They had an agreement, and if he bent the rules, the dropped trust would shatter.
The vents were uncertain. Sometimes Blurr would writhe if he stroked them, helplessly balanced on the razor edge of pleasure and pain where the final overload had suspended him. However, sometimes they would settle closed the longer Swindle paid attention to clearing them, cleaning between the slats with a rag wrapped around one finger, leaning close to puff air at the dust out on the fans inside. Blurr cycled a massive amount of air. Duct cleaning was fairly standard maintenance for him, yet like this? Swindle frowned and considered it as he would picking up a heavy painting by the corners. He had no way to know know if they'd support weight until the moment they gave way.
He was confident he could catch anything that fell, but he hadn't become the trader he was without learning when and where to gamble. Risking the frail trust between them was a bad bet.
Well. He'd handled all kinds of art in his time. He could find where this piece was safe to hold.
Blurr murmured into the bed, shoulders easing down. The tension of released charge was finally ebbing, shuddering cables relaxing in tiny increments as painfully sensitized systems wound down. The last overload had flung him taut, expression almost agonized as he'd choked on a scream. Now he whispered long sighing words that made no sense. Nonsense noise, sound for the sake of making it. Swindle doubted even he knew what he was saying. It sounded like dream-noise, leftover syllables dredged from a deep defragment.
"Shhh," Swindle replied on automatic. He didn't even think about it. He'd been saying various shushing sounds since Blurr tipped over the edge. It took him about half a minute to recover from overload, personally. The afterglow disappeared into a pleasant, tired haze that lasted a bit, but that was the extent of what a good interface gave Swindle.
Blurr took half an hour at best after a tumble like tonight, hard and building one overload after another until his joints creaked and his voice broke into static. Swindle had drawn the last one from him while sitting on those powerful hips, thighs clamped over the skirting while Blurr bucked in frantic, climbing need to climax that bordered on desperation to escape the oncoming crash into overload. His kicking would have unseated Swindle if not for the hobbles keeping his feet tied even now.
Taking things this far made the aftermath more difficult, but Swindle thought it a decent price. He couldn't buy a frag like that. He definitely couldn't dig up the money for the silence afterward when Blurr fell offline, leaving trust precious and infinitely beautiful in his hands.
That's what made this art.
Ah, there. He had his starting point as the sleepy racer-turned-bartender turned over, slow and languid as he never was fully awake. Sleek blue limbs stretched outward to take up the entire bed. Swindle had turned down the lights, mindful of Blurr's over-sensitized everything, and it gleamed over him in waves where the day's dust had been disturbed by the sudden pulse of overload. Static still crackled in his joints, rearranging the patterns in the dirt. Miniscule particles of metal, dried coolant, and powdered paint wavered from the energy of Blurr's expanded electromagnetic field. The waves made an erotic pattern spelling out his completion.
Art. Swindle admired the intensely personal design for a moment, saving an image capture to his files. The stylized waves would collapse back into random grubby smudges soon, but for now, it was all his. If he did this right, it would subside gently into everyday dirt instead of spiking from the disruption of poor aftercare.
"Shhh," Swindle said. "Just walking over here. I'm right here." Blurr's disoriented, disappointed 'wuh?' subsided. The tired mech kept his optics offline, following the sound of Swindle's voice by turning his head, comforted by the warm presence speaking soothing words in the dark. Swindle didn't put much thought into what he was saying as he picked up the supplies from where he'd tucked them behind the bedstand. It was the tone that mattered at this point. Blurr didn't have the processing speed to understand what he was saying, yet.
Blurr's engine thrummed heavily when Swindle returned to his side. This time, the merchant sat at his side, close enough to feel the warm pulse of electromagnetic energy but not close enough to provoke a defensive reaction. Blurr murmured in response, and wavelets fluttered through the dust patterns on his armor.
Swindle traced them with his optics but didn't touch. "You ready?" Another murmur. "Blu~urr," he crooned, "come back here. Come on. Wake up. Back to the real world with you." A split second of blue light winked from one optic. Swindle bent closer to study Blurr's lax face, looking for a hint of awareness.
Blurr hummed something. It might have been acknowledgement.
Fingertips trailed over glass, daring the lightest of touches. "You can't hear me yet, can you?" Swindle shook his head at the lack of response and sat up to spritz glass cleaner on a rag. Cool liquid sprayed directly on glass would be too much of a shock. It'd probably throw Blurr into a panic. Wrapping the rag around one finger, he drew it gently down the center of Blurr's windshield, barely letting it skim the glass.
Blurr inhaled sharply, and metal creaked as the lanky blue racer arched to meet the soft petting. Swindle paused, watching him closely, ready to stop if he'd pushed too fast or too far. Things could snap so easily right now.
Hobbled wheels tried to spin and ended up skidding across the bed. Kicking feet tug helplessly against the loop of rubber holding them tethered together. Blurr tossed his head to one side, chest pushing up and hands curling into fists. Swindle blinked at the shuddering tension and lifted the rag away immediately.
A very low sound, softer than a moan, and he reached his free hand out to brush the back of his forefinger against the glass. Optics still offline, Blurr subsided a bit. Knees bent, and the tips of his feet came to rest on the bed. The hobble stretched but held.
"Good thing I didn't take that off. You really do run when startled, don't you." Swindle shook the rag loose from his other hand to drape over his lap. Spritzing the rag one-handed was awkward, but it left his other hand to settle flat on the glass, scraping over the smooth surface at a glacial pace until his palm finally came to rest against it. He waited a moment, then pushed down just slightly.
Blurr's back curved down under the pressure, but his shoulders worked restlessly into the bed as he tried to ask for something he couldn't even articulate yet. The warm palm on his windshield slid down his chest, left briefly, and came down at the top to stroke downward again. Down, and up. Down, and as Swindle's hand abandoned him this time, the cooler scratch of the rag started from the top. It cleaned a swathe down his windshield. As it left him, Swindle's palm began its downward path. Again, and again, hand and rag petting and cleaning him in a rhythm.
The constant contact started light but grew heavier, easing the itchy restlessness. It coaxed the racer back toward consciousness, urging systems to reset one by one back to normal parameters.
After a while, the rag ventured off his windshield to wipe down the rest of his chest. On automatic, in a breathtaking moment of trust, Blurr lifted his chin, helm rolling to the side as Swindle moved to slip the rag in among the vulnerable cables and tubes in his neck. Swindle paused, but only for a single beat of the old, familiar tune he'd started to hum. He resumed almost before he stopped, turning it into a hitch in the jingle, merry and bright. He didn't have the voice for singing, but he had the chest for reverb. The song thrummed as low as any bass as he hummed, and Blurr's vents gradually cycled in time.
"We should go over your business ledgers while I've got you at my mercy," Swindle said as he worked down to wipe long thighs clean. Vents huffed at him, blowing still-warm air into his face. The erotic wavelengths on blue plating shimmered, blown out of pattern as fading charge lost its hold on the dust. "You need to start charging more for the fancy drinks, y'know. They take too much labor for so few shanix."
Blurr mumbled something more coherent than before and twitched a hand. It was supposed to be a dismissal. Swindle took it as an invitation.
Shifting about on the bed, he hiked up a leg to prop his heel against Blurr's side. It let him balance the mech's arm up the length of his shin, hand resting on his knee. "You'll run that place into the ground, see if you don't," he chided as he switched bottles. Time for armor polish.
Blurr flicked a rude finger at him. Swindle grinned and caught it. "Now now, I'm only trying to help." A dab of polish, and he began to work it into roughened plating one digit at a time. Blurr still thought of himself as a racer, but his hands were those of a bartender. Swindle's rag picked up pink and vivid blue from engex ingrained in the knuckle joints, and the friction pads on Blurr's fingers had been changed to minimize glass slippage.
He should have soaked Blurr's hands before polishing them. It amazed him how much filth a mech who washed his hands six dozen times per night could acquire between his fingers. Swindle shook out his rag and grimaced at the mess. "Hmm. I need to get something."
Optics offline, Blurr frowned. It looked like a pout. "No."
"It's right over there. Look, you can see it." Swindle prodded him with his foot, trying to make him look over at the basin.
Fingers curled on his knee, getting a grip. "No."
"Alright, alright..." It'd be easier to clean Blurr's hands with a basin and some solvent, but it wasn't worth upsetting the mech. He'd just have to use the rag.
Blurr took a long time to recover. Swindle wasn't about to knock him out of his blissful quiet before he was ready. Getting two words out of him this soon was a rarity. Swindle eyed the prone mech, thinking over his options. The vents might be good odds by now.
Testing his theory, he pet Blurr's windshield again, then let his hand drop further to rub back and forth over the lower edge. The unhappy lines on Blurr's face smoothed the longer he toyed with the frame. Once they'd disappeared into the contented expression of a well-fragged mech, Swindle's fingers walked down to pet the rows of open vents on Blurr's belly.
They quivered.
For a second, he thought he'd misjudged. Swindle stopped, freezing on the edge of everything crashing down.
The quivering became a rattling shake as cringing expectation of pain became relief. Oversensitive systems had calmed. The vents flexed, small fluttering motions of adjustment. Parts searched for more contact, tapping against motionless fingertips like an eager cyberhound butting into someone's palm. Watching Blurr's face closely, Swindle slowly laid his hand flat on the vents. Just as slowly, they eased closed, until he could run his hand down the sleeked-down shutters in long strokes.
Blurr tensed, fans stuttering, but just for a second. Only a second, and the air pushed out in a long, easy exhale. When he inhaled afterward, it was a strangely satisfied sound. The tension melted out of him with the breath. His whole body went slack.
Swindle flashed his sales smile, the smile that won customers. It was useless with Blurr's optics off, but oh well. Some deals needed the special touch, complete with smile. Success!
"Here, move your speedy aft over. Not fair, you being this tall." Grumbling good-naturedly, he tugged on Blurr's arm, sliding off the bed for a bare moment in order to edge in behind the racer. Blurr's frown didn't even have time to form before Swindle pulled him back into his lap. "There. Better?"
"Mmm." Blue plating squirmed, thoroughly smudged. Blurr turned onto his side enough to nuzzle into Swindle's wheelwell, and his far arm snaked over the merchant's middle.
"You're making it harder to clean up." Despite the complaint, his own arm settled across Blurr's broad shoulders to pull him closer.
Blurr slurred something that might have been, "Don't care."
"I do. Resale value's very important, especially considering the market lately. Not much left out there in good condition." His voice held all the confidence of an auctioneer, saying exactly what he meant to say at the cadence his audience wanted to hear.
He idly pet the helm burrowing into his side. His hand avoided touching the helm fin. They were gentle. Tender. An art dealer's hands, holding a masterpiece.
He'd get a good price when it came time to sell.
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