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Shadows stretched across the floor, creeping in through the open door to darken already dim afterhour lighting in Maccadam's. Night covered the puddles of spilled drinks left behind by the last customers shooed out onto the streets. Those who'd stayed to last call were out there now, still finding their drunken, lonely ways home. They staggered under neon lights turning off one by one as the city fell silent and dark at long last, the hawkers stopping their persuasive calls, the bright signs turning off, the nighttime businesses closing their doors. Quiet darkness finally settling over the city in the hour before dawn.
At this hour, even the blackest sparks took a rest. The shady deals, whispered promises, and knife-ended alliances had done their worst through the night. The balance of politics and business show any changes made, but that would come when the sun rose. That's when the bargaining cycle of politics, trade, and survival restarted.
For now, Iacon waited.
Blurr kept cleaning glasses. It was a mechanical process of taking a glass in one hand, wiping out the inside with a quick in-and-twist of the rag held in the other, pinching the rim with that same rag while deftly spinning the glass, and setting the cleaned glass in the rack. He'd run the whole stack through the sterilizer later, but a once-over with a rag spared his machine the labor.
It was a familiar ritual even for a new bartender. He fell back on its comfortable rhythm once everyone went home and he had nothing else to do. It was just him, the bar, and the last full glass in the house. Anyone glancing in Maccadam's door would see a weary bartender staying open for a final customer. It was a waiting game. Once the customer left, he'd wipe the counter, clean the dirty glass, and lock the door on his way out.
The customer at the far end of the bar didn't hurry. The glass Blurr had set on the counter for him was full, liquid glowing to the brim despite being his favorite blend of engex. He hadn't asked for it. He didn't even have the money to pay for it. That wouldn't have been enough to stop him from ordering, depending on his charm to make shanix appear, but Blurr had circled his palm over the drink as it was set down. On the house, that gesture said, and the bartender turned away once he set it down.
There it'd sat. Metal scraped gentle on glass as the lingering customer just barely touched it with his fingertips. He looked at it like it was a spun-glass dream instead of a free drink offered to him without price or comment.
Eventually, however, he broke the silence. "Must be nice to win."
The frames around Blurr's optics tightened. He didn't otherwise react to the mocking tone. "It is. I'm a winner. It's what I do."
Swindle laughed out loud, shoving off the bar with his elbows in order to wave in wild remembrance of the celebration party, and for a second, the cold, dark hour before dawn brightened. "So generous to the losers! I, for one," he brought his hands in to press against his chest, bowing slightly, "am grateful to the victor of the Velocitron raceways. You grace us with your illustrious presence and, apparently, bartending skills. How's that working out for you?" He put his elbows back on the counter and laced his fingers together, chin set on the backs of his hands. Blurr glanced at him, optics narrowed in annoyance at the carefree attitude, and Swindle tipped his head to the side with a wane smile.
Blurr couldn't help but snort. "Shut your face. It worked out fine, and you know it. I held up my name in racing on a world dedicated to racing, and everybody knows I'm the fastest 'bot out there - still." He straightened, shoulders going back as he, well, he couldn't help it. He preened. "Moonracer's as much as told Windblade I'm the only reason there'll be any sort of diplomatic venture between Cybertron and Velocitron from here on out. Not a bad way to keep my feet in racing, eh?" His optics dropped to the glass in his hand, and suddenly he bent back to wiping it industriously. "Might go back a time or two, but like I told everyone, this is my bar. I'm not going to abandon it."
Not after everything he'd done to keep it. Him and his customers, no matter what color insignia they had or hadn't worn at the time.
Swindle hadn't been here for the fight for the bar, but he'd been here nonetheless. He'd been here for the aftermath. He'd been here for everything, after that, and then he'd left.
He'd left.
Blurr wasn't standing at the opposite end of the bar just because that's where the dirty glass rack was. He'd poured Swindle a glass of engex. That didn't mean he forgiven the coghead yet. It'd be a while before the space between them stopped feeling like fingers in an open wound.
A heavy silence fell. The drink glowed, untouched. Swindle stared down into its depths, and slowly, the night outside invaded Maccadam's. The shadows muffled everything, turning the tables and chairs to vague shapes in the dark. Even in the desert heat of Cybertron, this hour felt cold. Maybe it was a trick of the light, a mindfrag brought on by the distance between them, but it felt real enough. The seeping chill ate at them until the two mechs at the counter huddled in the remaining light as through it kept them warm. It was unsettling. It was a symptom of a good thing gone wrong, and what hung in the air kept them to separate ends of the bar.
"Funny how things work out, isn't it?" Swindle asked after all the glasses had been wiped and racked, and Blurr had nothing to do but turn toward him. He said it almost idly, a dispassionate observer making a note of what he saw.
It was a strange tone from him, nothing like his usual laughing tone. Networking was his primary social activity. He could be missing limbs and still smile his practiced, easy smile at a mech aiming a gun at his head. He had a careful front, one meant to invite others into his confidence, make a shanix, and schmooze potential clients. Anyone was a potential client, making the universe his customer, and thus the mask didn't come off. It wouldn't slip unless it was the end of the world, and even then he'd probably try to shake the Unmaker's hand. Whatever traits of his personality showed through in private, they rarely got through his professional mask.
Everyone knew Swindle. That Swindle, the greedy conmech Swindle, and that was all he was. Nobody knew what else Swindle could be.
Blurr screwed the rag taut in his hands. He knew. He thought he knew.
He'd thought he knew.
But the distant tone echoing in Swindle's voice sounded completely unfamiliar. It threw Blurr for a loop. His tanks lurched, tossing themselves against his internals as if the parts of him deeper than conscious control wanted to reach out to the ex-Decepticon sitting at the far end of the bar. Decepticon. Ex-'Con, like Blurr was an ex-Autobot, but the war hadn't ended yet no matter what the politicians said, not on the street level down in the Decepticon ghetto or out in front of Maccadam's where drunk mechs without faction emblems took their faction-divided fights once he kicked them out.
Everyone's true faction showed through when they came down to the finish line. That's when rivalries were remembered, and no matter what this city tried for, competition to win overwhelmed everything else. The war wasn't over, or perhaps it was restarting. Blurr didn't know. He wanted to reach for Swindle's restless hands, hold them over the counter how he used to during other conversations, but the time for that had sped past. Peace was left chasing their heels, falling behind, and whatever race they were in was in its final stretch.
Blurr could feel it in the conflicted excitement pull at the base of his tanks, an odd sadness mixed into determination. Something was finishing here, tonight, and they were speeding toward it. Blurr had never been able to slow down, much less turn back in the final sprint. That would be like asking Swindle to stop wheeling and dealing. No, they were in this together, the two of them, and they could only go forward to see it through.
"Yeah, funny," Swindle repeated softly. "Funny in a not ha-ha way." He sighed and ran the tip of his forefinger around the rim of the glass in front of him. "Bigshot government authority figure comes up to you, says 'You can help me save a diplomatic hash,' and you know you're being played. You know they're using you, but oh, do you want it. It's your big chance, right? A little normal amidst all," optics down, locked on the drink, he flapped his other hand dismissively at the universe in general, "this. Nothing wrong about the brave new world, but they're saying all the right words. Feels weird, but it feels right, and they're dangling the one thing they know you can't resist in front of you."
The words stirred memory, bringing Windblade's earnest expression to Blurr's mind, and an aching longing tugged at his axles just remembering. He'd lived for it once upon a racing career: the cheering, the adulation, the crowd on their feet as he swept past, but first and most important, the speed. War had given him the chance to run for his life, but a race, a true race. Velocitron had been an opportunity he couldn't resist, and everything Swindle said was as true for him as it was self-directed.
Swindle let his hands fall flat on the counter. Lifting his head, he looked at Blurr with optics holding something of pain, something of regret, but still defensive. He'd lost, but what hurt was that he'd thought the whole way he could win. "I knew it was stupid, but I just couldn't stop myself. Now it's too late, isn't it?" He looked down again, and if he faded a bit into the shadows at his back, then it was a trick of the cold night air breathing wind through the bar. Blurr set his jaw, shivering, but Swindle only cupped his hands around the growing drink like it would warm him. "Too late."
He laughed suddenly, an out-of-nowhere bark as bitter cold as the wind. "Guess you only get to win if someone else cheats for you." Reflected glow from the engex glittered in those big purple optics as they turned on Blurr in challenge, and Swindle's smile sliced bright white through the darkness he sat in. "You know they cheated. Your big victory, and you don't even deserve it. Did you tell your admirers that tonight, hmm? Did you tell them you wouldn't have won in a fair race? Or is being in the winner's circle all that matters once you're over the finish line?"
"There's no proof," Blurr said through his teeth, clenching his jaw to keep them from chattering. And if he sounded angry, good. "I won the race." He'd won the race and Swindle…Swindle had lost.
Only one winner per race, political or on foot. Everybody knew the rules. One person won, and everyone else lost.
"Oh, yes, sorry." Sitting up straight, Swindle place a pious hand on his chest in testament of clear conscience. "Your hands are clean, therefore you are innocent and the uncontested fastest of the fast on Velocitron. Do forgive me. Sour grapes, you know." He snorted and slumped back down, elbows on the counter and optics downcast. "Not easy being the loser caught cheating when your scam got away scot-free, but hey." A twisted smile flashed at the racer, pain in purple optics. "All hail the underhanded winner."
At some point in Swindle's needling, Blurr had advanced halfway down the bar. He stopped himself and backed away, one step at a time, until he could put his hands back to clamp onto the counter edge. It was solid in his hands. It anchored him. "Starscream covered his tracks. He set you up, we all know it, but nobody can find any proof. The whole thing smells like Rattrap, and he's as slippery as he is slimy. All I can get from Windblade is - " He faltered.
"Is that I acted on my own, for the profit" Swindle finished for him, unsurprised. He didn't even look up. "You know me. Glue a shanix to Astrotrain's aft, and you'll find me in orbit somehow, prying it off while he sleeps." He steepled his fingers over the drink, watching the glow of the engex light his hands from underneath. "So that's it. That's how it's going to be. You cheat and win. I cheat and lose."
Blur tightened his grip on the bar. His joints hurt faintly from the cold, hurt more from staying tensed to stop the shivering. Dawn wasn't even a gentle hint outside the city yet, and its absence made the darkness pitch black. Concentrated night filled the streets, a smothering dark nibbling at the solitary light over Blurr's head. Except for that weak bulb, night had taken over Maccadam's. He felt besieged by it, like it threatened to consume him, and Swindle sat nearly swallowed in the shadows on the other end of the bar, close by but so far away. The distance seemed impossible to bridge.
It wasn't fair to the losers, but it never had been. That's how racing worked. One person won, no matter how that victory came about. Sometimes the cheaters won, for the good of all, or perhaps that's just what they told themselves to sleep at night.
Blurr was wide awake. Painfully awake. He should have been back to his home by now, up the stairs and tucked away safe in recharge, not trapped here his bar in the hour before dawn, still hoping for answers to questions he'd sworn he wouldn't ask. Sworn to himself, on his pride, but what was pride? Right now, it seemed unimportant.
So he found himself asking in an anguished whisper, knowing better, "Why?"
Swindle shook his head. "You know why. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse."
From across all the distance between them, from opposite ends of the bar and beyond a finish line he couldn't cross, he offered that confident, familiar smile to the winner, conceding the race. A little sadness filtered around the edges where whom he really was broke through the professional mask, but it was a smile nonetheless.
When he stood up, his hand cradled the full glass of engex in true regret. He understood the value of a free drink from a friend. It meant more than even that, and he left the glass on the counter while carrying all those things with him in the palm of his hand. "Thanks for this," he said quietly, in that dispassionate, empty voice Blurr didn't recognize. It was a hollow tone as close to neutral as he could manage, and it still echoed of things unsaid.
Business waited for no one, however, and there was an appointment he had to keep. One might say he was running late.
Blurr swallowed, mouth opening to say he didn't know what, but Swindle met his optics. Whatever he saw in those big purple optics shut his mouth. He bit the inside of his lips until they pressed together hard enough to dent, and Swindle reluctantly stepped back from the counter.
"I'm expecting you back here tomorrow night," Blurr said abruptly.
Swindle paused, half turned away and lost in the pre-dawn dark. "I don't have a shanix to spare," he said, light as though it was his only care.
"It's free. Drink's on the house." He took a deep breath, vent fins shuddering as cold air met stress-heated internals. He was cold, deathly cold, but he made his voice project warmth, made it inviting. An invitation. A bargain. "Tell me that's not a steal."
Shadowed optics dim against the darkness lit a touch brighter. "It is, it is."
Swindle hesitated. Blurr couldn't make him out anymore, a trick of the night making his silhouette disappear dark against dark. All he could see were smoky violet optics that wouldn't look directly at him, evasive as ever, and he was suddenly reminded that Swindle always lied, always. But his peculiar brand of dishonesty became honesty if knotted in on itself enough.
"I'll see what I can do," came out of the darkness, soft as a promise that wasn't.
He didn't know how he knew, but between one vent and the next, Blurr knew the canny little ex-'Con was gone. The purple smudges he'd thought were optics were merely afterimages from tired optical fibers strained by a long night working under inadequate lighting in the dark. He blinked, and they faded away.
Outside, furnace-hot air held motionless in anticipation, the last minutes of night waiting for morning to break. The bar was oppressively hot suddenly, dry and still, and dawn would bake the city. He needed to lock up the bar and get home before he lost the flimsy illusion of cool night shadows.
The last glass stood by itself at the end of the bar, as full and sparkling as when he'd put it down. Blurr pretended his hand didn't tremble as he picked it up. The engex swirled inside it. The blend wasn't his favorite, but it was someone's, and he tried to smile as he looked down into the blend. "You're welcome," he said, belated but sincere.
He knocked it back in one long swallow. His face creased in a grimace as he forced it down, because the dead didn't drink and he was alive.
He was alive.
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