"I think this is the first time I've been at a brawl I didn't start."
From their makeshift haven in one of the platform booths, Chromia huffed a laugh of agreement as she surveyed the mayhem. "You took the words right out of my mouth, Ironhide... as well as some of my high-grade."
Ironhide might have been blushing before he had to duck to avoid some poor bot's leg thrown out of the fight and almost colliding with his face. Windblade was watching along with the new happy couple, leaning over the platform railing, but not for an easy laugh or to look out for stray body parts and scrap filling the air. She was looking for someone very specific, very abrasive and, from how he looked at the bar with Chromia loading him full of Hypernovaes, very drunk. The mass was too thick though, too full of frames clanging against each other and chips of paint fluttering to the ceiling. Even a mech as conspicuous as Starscream was instantly swallowed by it.
Nautica seemed more preoccupied with keeping her drink steady and armour undented than observing the chaos unfolding beneath them, but she did notice her red friend striding towards the booth's stairs and the unconscious mech at the bottom with energon bubbling through the mask over his mouth.
"Where are you going, Windblade?" Nautica asked, licking at a line of high-grade shining on her top lip.
Windblade stopped at the top of the stairs, casting a look back over the railing for another nanoklick-long scan of the brawl. "There's an aft with wings somewhere in the middle of all that," she said. "And something tells me he's not gonna be able to fly out of this by himself."
"Aha! I knew you liked him!" Nautica squealed triumphantly, almost toppling over as she stretched a servo out to point at her.
"I'd do the same for anyone else!" Windblade protested, almost flinching away from the accusation. "Even you, if you weren't getting on my nerve nodes."
Nautica just gave a lopsided smile. "Suuuure you would," she slurred. "Have fun tracking down your boyfriend!"
Windblade just groaned in reply. As she spread her wings open Nautica started up a drunken refrain of "Windy and Screamy sitting in a tree." That was her final incentive to get away from the platform and power her thrusters, leaping up to catch the air and soaring over the madness below.
There was no wind inside the building, but the congregation of so many frames made thermal updrafts for her to coast on, keeping her out of range of the usual brawl projectiles. She tuned her optics to pick out reds and faint pinks, in case Starscream's plating was more energon than paint by now.
Surprisingly he wasn't in the middle of an epic fight with a gestalt team or using a poor Minicon to bludgeon bots with; instead he was on his back, at the edge of the battlefield, stasis locked with a dent in his faceplate. Windblade lowered herself to land next to him, narrowly avoiding an empty high-grade tank skimming her cockpit.
"Oh, Starscream, you idiot..." She didn't need Nightbeat by her side to see what had happened- someone hadn't appreciated his 'charming cockiness' and decided to straighten out his smirk with their fist. Windblade wiped a trail of energon from the corner of his fallen mouth with a digit, almost expecting him to spring awake and balk at being touched. But he was still, silent, almost peaceful. Windblade couldn't help wondering if this was how he recharged as a blip came from her comm unit.
"Windblade, are you doing something stupid again?" Chromia's voice was already loaded with a scolding tone for the obvious answer.
"Yes." The feed crackled with the blue femme's sigh as Windblade tried to prop Starscream up and relieve his own weight from his wings.
"Hang on, we're coming..."
Windblade was still trying to haul the Seeker up when her friends arrived, Ironhide and Chromia practically throwing bots aside and Nautica still drinking as they made their way to her location.
"You made me leave a perfectly good view for this creep?!" Chromia cried, throwing her servos out over Starscream's comatose frame.
"I dunno, I kinda enjoyed the exercise," Ironhide said, rolling one of his shoulder joints as the servo in it slammed backwards into a random bot's helm.
"I told you she liiiiikes him, 'Mia," Nautica giggled, to the tune of two pairs of optics rolling to the ceiling.
"Just help me get him out of here, okay?" Windblade sighed, still straining her legs trying to push Starscream upright. "Just because he's an aft doesn't mean he should be left to rust on the floor."
"That's exactly why he should be left," Chromia muttered, punching an incoming tankard out of the air before folding her servos over her chest.
"How are we supposed to carry him?" Nautica asked, lifting one of his servos up by the wrist and shaking it. "He must weigh as much as a turbofo-"
"Step aside," Chromia ordered, placing her peds apart and stretching her servos out to crack her digits, before kneeling down to wrap one servo around Starscream's shoulders with the other draping around his waist. She grimaced at having to touch the clammy metal. "You owe me so much for this, Windblade..." As she stood up she hauled the Seeker over her shoulder as if was a sack of ener-grains, even as she started groaning. "Frag's sake, either his aft his heavy or I'm getting old." She spun on a ped towards the seething brawl again with a nod at the red mech beside her. "Ironhide, baby, make a path for us."
"On it." Ironhide was only too happy to dive right back into the throng and practically pave bots aside as he ran them through. Chromia led the way with the sleeping Seeker on her back and Nautica cradling her drink safely to her chest. Windblade just tried not to stand on any trampled frames as they made for the exit.
xx
Windblade knew his apartment wasn't too far away from Maccadam's, but Chromia still wasn't happy about having to drag Starscream all the way down the block.
"Primus knows how he gets in the air when he weighs as much as Megatron's aft..." she grumbled, only too glad to dump him down by the front door when Windblade pointed it out. Nautica looked around for a trash bin for her finished drink, before deciding to just throw it aside on the ground.
"Aren't we gonna put him inside?" she asked, to a bitter laugh from Chromia as she stretched her spinal strut out.
"Be my guest, but I'd rather stick claws in my optics than go any closer to our 'dear leader's' lair. Besides..." Chromia looked behind her to where Ironhide was waiting on the other side of the street. "I have a date waiting. Thanks for the night out, though. Let's do it again sometime without the Seeker infestation." She obviously wasn't one for farewells as she turned around, almost running towards Ironhide as they disappeared into the late evening.
Windblade shuttered her optics and edged the door to the apartment open, preparing to drag Starscream through it. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to, Nautica," she said through a groan as she pulled on his wings. Nautica seemed to stand still, kicking her peds together and studying them both.
"Do you like him, Windblade?" she asked. Windblade sighed, ready to deliver a firm no before she looked up and saw the purple femme's faceplate. There was still a glaze over her optics, but her features were curious in a much more innocent way. Whatever she was told here wouldn't find its way into Cybertron's gossip circles.
"Not even in a... romantic way, just... do you like him?" Nautica repeated.
Windblade blinked, servos still wound around Starscream's frame as she actually thought about it for once. "He's a complete pain in the aft and one of the worst mechs I've ever met," she said slowly. "...But yeah, I guess I do a little. Is that a dumb thing to do?" Windblade shrugged with an almost guilty look up at Nautica, expecting to see some kind of triumph but only finding a thoughtfulness that didn't suit her expression.
"Yeah," Nautica told her with a small smile, copying her shrug. "But dumb things aren't always bad, you know. I'll see ya tomorrow, Windy."
Even after Nautica had turned down the other street, Windblade was left still thinking over her advice. Was it something that floated up from the tiny lucid part of her processor or inspired by her tipsiness?
She wasn't quite ready to trust that advice either way.
It was a wonder she hadn't woken anyone up with the amount of groans and metal grinding against the floor that echoed down the corridor as she hauled Starscream inside, but she finally made it outside his door without snapping her spinal strut. She didn't know the code to get in but there was a hand scanner just below the keypad, and holding Starscream's servo over it allowed the door to slide open for them.
The interior was dark, and his trine didn't seem to be inside. The main room branched off into three smaller ones, and she assumed Starscream's quarters would be the largest one. The berth seemed moulded specially for his wings, and she at least tried to roll him the right way onto its surface. A small lamp stood up on a berthside table, and she switched it on just bright enough to cast light over his battered frame. Dried energon had turned the red on his frame to a sickly carmine colour, and even the grey of his faceplate seemed pale.
"What has the world done to you, Starscream?" she whispered, kneeling down and cautiously stroking at the deep dent on his face. As her hand moved away from his optics, they started to split open in tiny beams of red light.
"Windblade..." Her hand snapped away, and she poised herself for a quick escape. But surprisingly enough, Starscream didn't screech at her to leave to hurl accusations at her. His mouth twitched and gloss flicked over his dry lips as they did something strange.
They smiled at her.
"You look like a goddess..." His glossa was so heavy she barely heard him at first, or that might have just been shock muffling her audios. The punch must have done a lot more than knock him out, and she actually worried for his processor before something else bubbled past his lips in a content mumble.
"I can´t wait to overload in your pretty little mouth..."
Despite a tinge of disgust in her spark, Windblade felt herself blushing, and she was grateful that his optics had squeezed closed again. "Time for you to sleep, handsome," she said quietly, absently patting one of his hands as she stood up and switched the lamp off. He'd wake up in darkness with a splitting hangover, hopefully with one of his trinemates watching over and with no memory of the last few breems.
Mostly he just yawned and muttered as she walked away, but there was one last sentence she caught as she reached the front door.
"Our sparklings would be sooo cute…"
A smile played at her lips, but it flickered out as quickly as the lights passing overhead as she closed the door and made to leave.