Sideswipe didn't know why, but for weeks now, from the moment he'd wake up, he'd be as sour and rotten as could be. Everything was an irritation. Trivial, nonsensical things that would normally never even make it with a whisper of indignation into his conscious train of thought had nearly been throwing him into an outrage the last few weeks. No one around him could behave in such a way that wouldn't make him silently froth, even his own brother. Having spent thousands of years at each other's side, they knew each other's ways. Peace was something that always welcomed Sideswipe when things were regular. It irritated him that peace had made a nasty escape, and from the unnervingly sheer fact of feeling irritated, irritated him further to the point that even the sound of Sunstreaker's voice, something that normally provides some semblance of familiarity and therein comfort, made him want nothing more than to rip out his throat.
It gnawed and eroded and chewed at him like he were being processed through a grinder. It was as if some fly with an incessant buzz synonymous to screeching stuck to his audio receptors. He stood staring at Sunstreaker's face and tried to tune out whatever meaningless garbage he was spewing; succeeding, mostly hearing incoherent noise. He thought maybe he was talking about someone from his shift. Something about the lounge? He couldn't care to swim closer to the surface of his senses to figure it out. He was completely and uncharacteristically irked. He felt like he was crawling inside his own pristine, red armor, unable to shake off the feeling.
And it was there, standing in the middle of his shared quarters, really grasping the meaning of his hatred for his brother's voice, that he realized he was beginning to boil over. The all too familiar signs presenting themselves like a chasm, warning him that if he didn't find an escape from the monotonous and claustrophobic routine that he'd been obligated to, he'd tear the entire Ark apart from the inside out to find some relief. This hadn't happened in a long time—the caging, leashing, penning of Sideswipe. At least, that's how it felt to him to be without operation for so long. It'd been five weeks of peace—blessed peace, he understood he should perceive it, because last months battle had filled the medical bay to maximum capacity with broken, burned bodies, and time to recover numbers was crucial—but it left him and the few others who came out relatively unscathed to pick up the slack around the Ark. And slack there was plenty of. By the time a few free hours would come along (if they did, and rarely), all he wanted to do and did do was fall into a dead, deep sleep.
But chores had gotten a little slower as time reached the present. He pulled sixteen hour shifts less often, and tasks the higher-ups harassed him with were becoming far and few between. So, he began finding himself with more time to spare. Which, despite still being confined to the Ark, was a better situation than the one before. At least he'd be in control of how his time was spent now; training, sparring, socializing. And at least he'd see his brother conscious every once in a while, instead of already asleep in their quarters—except that he didn't. In fact, he could swear that all together, he saw him even less after they'd been laid off from heavy duty. And when he did see him, he was unnervingly copacetic.
And something about that bothered him, and it bothered him perhaps even more deeply than his innate need to do what he'd been brought up to do.
You must understand, if there is someone who belonged in war so perfectly, who was birthed and sustained in it, who fought in it with such a vigor treading on passion—and damnable in that regard—it would be Sunstreaker. It didn't make sense. If anyone would be tested by the stagnation of the last five weeks, it would be him. But yet, infuriatingly yet, he remained unscathed by the dullness—and not only that, but treading on... placidity, proactivity; reporting and returning from duty without complaint, agreeing to arduous tasks the higher command requested, allowing allotted free time to be dedicated to his new position of combat instructor. The last one, that one in particular when he first learned about it, confused Sideswipe immensely. It wasn't like him to spend his free time with others who he deemed incompetent in combat, and then instruct them. The frustration with his brother truly began to affect him in such a way that he fantasized tactics of how he'd illicit some sort of appropriate reaction; some brand of anger not unlike his own.
It was some time before Sunstreaker finally ceased his endless gabble and asked his brother a question while turning away to labor over something that Sideswipe didn't acknowledge. "You talked to Swindle? Need to make sure he knows the meeting point, 'cause remember we can't meet where we used to." Sideswipe stayed silent, of course, not realizing an answer was being requested of him. Eerily still, he continued to stare in the direction of where his brother once was in a haze, barely registering that he looked back expectingly at the lack of a reply. Subtle mischief then took over Sunstreaker's face before he circled around his brother. A rough shove with the intent of getting his attention suddenly came at his back, and as if the trigger of a rifle was pulled, Sideswipe sprung into angry alertness, whipping around to ram Sunstreaker back into the closest wall with much more force than necessary. He stood there for a moment, hands gripping his brother's shoulders, and took in his face contorted with offense. It gave him some satisfaction to see it, but not enough. He clenched his jaw and threw Sunstreaker against the wall once more, then pulled himself away, met with the feeling that he'd gotten his point across, if nothing else. Without so much as a word, or even a second glance, he set off into another part of their quarters out of sight.
"What the hell is your problem?" Sunstreaker shouted as he followed, voice loaded with vitriol. His roughness concealed the sting of consternation he no doubt felt, Sideswipe briefly thought, but he didn't care. Sunny could pick his feelings off of the floor just fine. Sideswipe sat on the edge of his bunk, leaning forward with elbows digging into his knees, needing a moment of silence before going out on duty again. He slowly looked up with a glare at his brother—presenting an uncanny imitation of the same brother who's trademark it is—who stood in the threshold of the room looking at him expectingly. He watched as Sunstreaker outwardly prepared himself for a scrap to unfold, puffing himself up. Sideswipe decidedly resigned himself, reeling his temper back in—which he'd been finding himself doing much of lately—and let out a sharp sigh. He then stood, simultaneously changing attitude.
"Nothin'. My bad, Sunny," he said with a tone as casual as if he'd only bumped into him a minute ago, instead of with the force of a fast moving boulder. He gave Sunstreaker a pat on the shoulder with nothing but camaraderie as he brushed passed him out of the room with a blithe expression and left the yellow warrior to stare after him in bewilderment.
He didn't see or speak to Sunstreaker for the next eight hours, and gladly so. He had the feeling that if interacting with others was irritating, then his pain in the ass bitchin' brother would set him on fire in seconds of being in his line of sight. He spent most of the day around Bluestreak, which didn't do much to better his mood. He could talk more than Sideswipe could keep up, and he felt that primal urge to do to him what he did to Sunstreaker.
"I'd leave him alone, Blue," he heard Hound say from a distance.
His shift would be over soon, though, and he remembered plans set up for afterward. He would need to talk with Sunny within the day after all. To get it over with, he found a secluded spot from the rest of his crew and opened a comm. link.
"Hey, Sunny. You talked to him?" His voice was charged with false cheeriness. He stared out from an open portion of the Ark, rifle in hand, and admired the beauty of planet Earth. The sun was beginning to set. He never got tired of watching it. If there was one thing he would change about Cybertron, he would trade the always black nothingness of the sky that the billions of stars permanently poked into for those vivid sunset colors instead.
"Is this my cue to try to use your body as a bulldozer?" He replied dryly after a few moments.
Sideswipe felt frustration rise at the remark. He didn't regret what he did, not really. In fact, he thought it as an appropriate and necessary way to rid Sunstreaker of which ever stoic parasite had attached itself to him over the last few weeks; he should actually be thanking him. But something nagged at him, and he abhorred it, and he desperately tried to rid it of validation or merit, and so he sought to recall a time where he was the victim of Sunstreaker's violent mood swings, to justify his actions and reduce the ever growing seedling of guilt to ash. But unnervingly, he couldn't think of one instance. In all of the years of dealing with his brother's intermittent sociopathic tendencies, Sideswipe had never been on the receiving end of his temper—but then he remembered... he had been. That one time! But... no, it didn't count, because Sideswipe then recalled an important detail: that he'd been the one to start it, that he'd provoked him into such a rage—of which he was so familiar with, and of which he saw coming, but ignored it on the basis of whichever poor excuse he had—and had earned himself a nice one to the face. Sunstreaker felt terribly about it, he remembered, and perhaps Sideswipe could use that against him now; anything to rid himself of accountability. But, no. It didn't count. It really didn't count.
Becoming increasingly agitated over the guilty feeling steeling over him, he found humor compulsively tugging at his voice to trick the faint, familiar feeling of angry heat rising. "Yeah. You can use me to take down Prime's office and all for the fun of it if that means you'll confirm with ole' boy."
"Already did after your meltdown. Said he wants to request something else as part of the trade."
"What? The bastard has to give us notice." Sideswipe's brows pinched. Indistinct voices grew louder and he glanced to see Hound and Bluestreak nearing closer. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and moved further down the line, turning his back to them and speaking lowly, "we can't change everything with just a couple hours to go." His voice was rough again with his own parasitic companion—irritation.
Again came an apathetic tone. "No, apparently everything stays the same."
Sideswipe paused and felt, briefly, the urge to scream at him, to shake him, to forcibly return him to the character of which he approved of.
"Everything stays the same," he repeated flatly—almost involuntarily, as if it were a reflex of his own surging mind. He expected to hear a reply of confirmation, but when he got none, that in itself confirmed something else. Suddenly, his pettiness left him as he understood the situation. "So," he began speaking his brother's mind for him, "he probably wants intel then."
"Yeah," came an unflinching, hollow reply.
"And probably won't trade with us otherwise."
"Yeah," it came through again.
"And I wonder if he'll decide to exercise some leverage," Sideswipe mused seriously.
"Yeah," it was said one last time, sounding sharp and terminal.
"So, what do you think?" He could tell Sunstreaker was weighing consequences in his silence that followed. His loyalty to the Autobots was no doubt competing with the instinct of saving his own skin. And this type of dilemma, a moral one, was something he simply wasn't used to. The both were creatures of instinct at their core, but Sunstreaker didn't harbor as much knowledge (or perhaps interest in applying said knowledge) on the intricacies of social etiquette like his twin brother. He was much more boorish, vulgar, and unrefined. Though the red warrior was the only one he got along with, Sideswipe knew what his own decision was, and if the two didn't agree, there would be a big can of worms to be opened, and therein a big conflict.
"Look, no matter what we choose," Sunstreaker's voice finally sounded, and with a thin lining of stress around the edges of his words, "we're gonna be the bad guys. If we don't go for this, Ratchet will wonder why we couldn't get the plutonium... from whatever we called it—that made up government—"
"Sector 85," he interrupted. A ghost of a smile played on his face. "Secret unit of the DOE." Sideswipe remembered Ratchet's skeptical look fondly.
"Yeah," he said blandly, not sharing the same humor that was faintly heard in his brother's voice. "We'll get our asses lit up with questions we can't answer. If we do trade with him, then we might as well swing over to the other side, because hell, it'll probably get out so fast that we won't know what happened. Prowl has a thing for sniffing out moles. And then I don't wanna know what Prime would do to us—and all that's if he doesn't want something else that would complicate our lives even more." He let out a sharp vent of air by the end.
Sideswipe responded quickly. "I say we go and negotiate it out. See what happens. And if he threatens to out us, we'll just kill him. He's only Swindle." Sunstreaker remained quiet, and after the silence dragged on for too long, Sideswipe spoke again, "I'm getting off duty soon. I'll see you in a while," he ended.
He stood where he was for a long time and watched as the sun continued to disappear with a bang of colors. It reminded him of himself for a moment. He would never go out quietly, complacently, submissively. He would fight until the very last drop of energon bled from his body, and with that, he briefly fantasized the many adrenaline inducing ways that tonight could go—feeling a little bit of life come back to him; excitement, energy, danger. The well rooted frustration he held in his chest suddenly diminished and was replaced with a ravenous hunger for action, as the longing, deep inside for his systems to be worked as hard as they could, was finally becoming a real possibility. It is his drug, or perhaps even deeper: his very premise of living, and without it, he would withdrawal and become a miserable shell of himself like he had been. He would take advantage of some freedom from the Ark tonight, he thought.
When he arrived back to his quarters, he didn't realize how much of a mess it was before. Items that were previously on shelves were scattered all over the ground. He didn't push Sunstreaker that hard this morning, he thought. He began picking them up, and while doing so, recalled all the memories attached to them. All bitter as they originated from the place of their adolescence: The Gladiatorial Pits of Kaon. It was the closest place they'd ever had to a home before the Ark, but what a home it was...
"I don't know why we still have all that crap. Horrible memories," Sunstreaker said from behind. "But I left it for you to pick up, seeing as how you made me make the mess." He thought it sounded like the beginning of some playful banter, but he suspected it was only an echo of his newfound mood.
"More like you made me make you make the mess," he humored honestly without looking back and tossed the items haphazardly on the shelf. "So," he began as he turned toward him, "ready?" He gave Sunstreaker a look up and down, a quick flick of the eyes, intuitively feeling how wound up he was.
"It looks like you're too ready," Sunstreaker noted darkly, catching the opposite: an appetite for something explosive just underneath his perfectly crafted composure.
The equilibrium of their relationship wasn't technically off what with Sideswipe's feigned good nature concealing his capriciousness and Sunstreaker's cold façade hiding his turmoil, but it was a whole new chemical reaction untested under pressure and heat, and the concoction may explode. But the curious thing was, the both knew, good and well, that they themselves were gilded under the pretense of normalcy, and clearly saw straight through each other's bullshit. But never did they handle this sort of thing straight on. As the warrior types do, they release it outward onto the field and return to each other fondly with goodwill and comradeship afterward. Or, if no field is available, let it fester until it's forced inward, and then...
"You can never be too ready," Sideswipe retorted with a sly grin.
Sunstreaker narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, you know what I meant. Don't screw this up tonight." He watched him intently. With that, the both exited their quarters without another word and slipped off of the Ark with a swift, imperceptible silence that was unmatched. It was finally when they were distant enough from the soft light of the Ark did the complete darkness of the organic planet embrace them, confirming their success, and they transformed.
With shared silence, they traveled the highway at a near one hundred miles per hour and counting as a subtle game of race emerged between them. They weaved through traffic gracefully, one trying to gain the upper hand on the other while being cautious of the native species' tendency to wreck into each other. Taking an exit and reaching a red light, they stopped, one brother behind the other, and watched as a replica of their alternate form crept up to the left side of Sunstreaker, side by side with him at the light.
"Hey!" A male, no more than twenty five hooted as his window rolled down. "Let's go." He threw out a gesture forward toward the long, empty road in front of them. A threatening scream of the engine sounded.
Sideswipe thoroughly enjoyed the presence of humans. He thought them as not so far removed from their own species, and therefore just another class of beings to socialize with, and what a social butterfly he was—especially now. His window rolled down, revealing a rarely used holoform. "Yeah?" He shouted with vigor, accepting the competition. The stranger turned his head out the window to find the face that matched the voice, coming from the red Lamborghini Countach behind the yellow one. Sideswipe, now a strong, tall, and refined, mid twenties human male greeted him with a mischievous grin.
"What, your buddy here don't want it?" The stranger joked with matching enthusiasm, gesturing toward a silent Sunstreaker who idled in visible irritation.
"Nah, can't handle speed. He's a little sissy. I'll take you though." He shot a look at his brother in front of him, smiling deviously.
"Hell yeah. Whoop your ass," the stranger shouted with friendly competition. The light turned green just a few moments later and Sideswipe peeled out as he rode the shoulder to quickly get around his brother, nearly clipping him. Sunstreaker kept up enough to keep them in sight. It was by the end that Sideswipe won as the vehicle he was in wasn't a vehicle at all. Sunstreaker remained at a distance and watched as his brother and the stranger exchanged a good-natured farewell, side by side, before he sped off, leaving Sideswipe to fall back next to the yellow warrior.
"Are you done?" Sunstreaker spat through a comm. link.
"Lighten up, Sunny. Have some fun," he said with residual energy from the race.
"That's not fun. That's reckless. We're not supposed to make contact with those pests. And get rid of that damn holoform," he gritted.
There was a moment of silence before a challenging and defiant "No," rang from Sideswipe, feeling playful. "I'm keepin' it. I like it." Sunstreaker remained perfectly quiet. "And since when did you become a goody two-shoes, little Timmy? Scared of getting in trouble now?"
"I'm not," Sideswipe heard him say simply, and with a sudden absence of that clip tone that is uniquely his brother's. He knew that transition well, and knew he was sitting within arms length of a soon to be very violent bear, should he keep poking it, and he was overwhelmingly tempted to so. It was because of his manic state, and therein a sequential throttling into a lack of regard for anything but fun for Sideswipe, that he found excitement in that very notion, and was then suddenly presented with an impressively bad idea of how he'd manifest it into reality. He wondered why he hadn't done it before, when he was all but dying for a figurative breath of fresh air on the Ark, as if it were such a painfully obvious solution to all of his problems. Something about visceral betrayal and gross transgression then rang through his mind, in addition to a brief but bitter acknowledgement to which bridge he was threatening to burn—and not to mention a sense of déjà vu should he go through with it. But to top off the allegorical cake, his subconscious left him to endure a lingering stench of morality—and that, if anything could remove him from his mild insanity, would be what did it. But no matter, as it was all forcefully subdued through some selfishly founded will.
"We have more important things to focus on than playing with the organics," Sunstreaker's voice sounded again, and it was all the incentive Sideswipe needed to get going.
"Oh?" He queried in a mocking tone. "What's got your panties ina twist, Sunny? Ole' Swindle making you nervous? Think he's gonna getcha?" He swerved toward his brother as if he were jumping at him, almost clipping his mirror. "Or is it Big Prime that you're worried about?" Sideswipe taunted.
"You're pushin' it," Sunstreaker said plainly.
"Yeah, just like Swindle's gonna be pushing your face in the ground," he cackled fully, despite its complete and total lack of originality, or hilarity to begin with. "You know, I'd probably let him! Maybe even help him!" And then the rest happened so rapidly that Sideswipe hardly realized he was mid air. A blur of yellow swept over him, latching onto and pulling him off the road into the wide grass median between the two highways separating North and South bound. Sideswipe transformed instinctively in response and found himself on his back after the two rolled from the momentum. Swift, rage induced punches landed on the red warriors face in quick succession. Sideswipe held up arms in defense while coming to, then evaded a swing and finally pulled his brother completely down to the ground with him by jerking an arm and getting a footing against his chest, effectively flipping Sunstreaker over his head. Turning around who had the leverage, he quickly rose and dug a knee into his yellow armor, having him squarely pinned. Sideswipe held a wild grin as Sunstreaker lurched his upper half over to the side, just barely missing the first punch and causing Sideswipe to slam his fist into the earth instead.
Suddenly, Sunstreaker's face fell. "You wanted this." Sideswipe studiously ignored the comment and threw another punch, striking him this time and wiping away Sunstreaker's moment of vulnerability as quickly as it came, replacing it with hardened rage. He pulled an energy sword from subspace and roughly shoved it to his brother's neck. "Get the hell off me," Sunstreaker gritted between breaths. His face resembled the same taken aback and confused expression as that morning.
They stared at each other for a moment. Sunstreaker's eyes a dangerously deep blue while his other half's a bright, energetic sky. An even more wild grin presented itself. "You couldn't live without me, dear brother," Sideswipe said, subtly daring him.
"You," he began as the blade fizzed with the pressure at his neck, "can go to hell," he said, anger clear in his voice. Slowly, Sideswipe stood to his feet, never losing his unnatural amusement over the situation.
"I guess we can call it even over this morning," Sideswipe said, practically gleaming.
Sunstreaker began turning to leave, but whipped around at the comment. "Whatever is wrong with you," he began quietly, inches from the blue of Sideswipe's eyes, "fix it!" He roared into his brother's face.
Sideswipe, unfazed by the violation of his personal space, threw back a tone as casual as could be. "What's wrong with me?" He said, but something was boiling underneath as he then shoved him in that playful, but scalding hot kind of way you do when you're testing if the other person is really about it, as he said—and all while still encompassing a smile, "how about you? Since when did you become so submissive? What are you, Prime's little pet? Readily bending to his will, accepting all of his requests—"
"Submissive?" Sunstreaker scoffed in complete disbelief. "What the hell are you talking about—Prime's pet?" Then a skeptical look took over the warrior's face. "You know what? You're stir crazy," he pointed a finger into Sideswipe's chest, accusingly, "that's what this is." He watched as the red warrior's expression faltered ever so slightly in confirmation. Sunstreaker's temper visibly rose once again. "Do you realize how much shit I've taken from you for the last few weeks, all because you're bored?"
Sideswipe laughed loudly over him before shouting, "oh, and you're so much better than me. A little peaceful butterfly—not a warmongering, bitchin', vain, psychotic—"
He pointed a finger and cut him off sharply, "At least I have ways to keep myself distracted—ways that don't include baiting you, or just being a completely insufferable bastard." His look was set on disappointment. Sideswipe merely scoffed in response as his jaw set to the side. Knowing his position was indefensible—but needing to have the last word—every insult he could muster rose up all at once and got caught in his throat, leaving him to stammer at his brothers retreating form.