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It lasts longer than Whirl thought it would. Which means he's either greedier than he thought, or he's going soft; he's not sure which prospect unsettles him more.
But Cyclonus is at least partially responsible for screwing up Whirl's timeline of inevitable doom. About five months after they get the damn ship back and accidentally-on-purpose jettison Getaway into a black hole (not like anyone ever comes back from that), they swing back around to confirm what the moon crew already told them. Turns out Fort Max et al knew what they were talking about. It takes Brainstorm, Velocity, and Ratchet to confirm it, but confirm they do. There's nothing left but scorch marks and gouges in the metal where Tailgate tried to bust out, and trace atoms too scattered for Brainstorm to do anything but coax a few into a vacuum-sealed cube. It looks empty; it might as well be.
Between that and Minimus helping Ten to painstakingly set up little memorial figurines everywhere, and Rodimus miserably stubbing his toe on Megatron's plinth, and Nautica not really understanding why everyone needs a quiet moment at Skids's, the whole day's a hot slagging mess. Literally. Whirl can feel his paint melting in the Necroworld's summer heat. His kingdom for a sun gun.
Cyclonus has a good, cheery line he likes to bandy around about hope being a mistake, but he still shuts down harder than he has in - a while. Just sits there by the edge of the dug-up grave with his great sword balanced across his lap, the tremor in his claws so forcefully suppressed that to the untrained eye it might look like he's just contemplating the fields of pretty, creepy blue flowers blanketing the horizon. So Whirl does what he does: he lurks at a safe distance for a while; he mimes strangling Chromedome with increasingly obscure and exaggerated claw motions until Brainstorm finally takes the hint and ushers Chromedome and Rewind off to defy death and be obnoxiously sappy about it somewhere else; he squints pointedly down at Swerve until the blabbering trails off and the bartender leaves his vial on the convenient tree stump where everyone smart enough not to pass Whirl keeps stacking them.
Minimus comes and stands on the other side of Whirl's shady tree for a while. It never gets old, seeing the irreducible Minimus stand at Ultra Magnus's prim, perfect attention. It used to look awkward. These days, it almost looks like he fits in his own frame. "We will be departing in 1.6 hours," he says, low and quiet enough that Whirl can't even snap at him for interrupting. "Rodimus wants us to be on our way."
Whirl keeps his arms folded, the steady turn of his fan blades not quite enough to keep him cool in the sweltering heat. "Rodimus already knows where he can stick it," he says. Then, after some thought - "But with the appropriate citations of the Autobot Code."
Minimus sighs but complies. Ironically, as the day drags on, the thick air reeking of hot, circuit-laced flowers, it's Rodimus who spends almost as much time brooding as Cyclonus. He's a blot of red and yellow just down the crest of the hill, long after everyone else quietly clears the planet. Whirl can still see him staring at his left hand like it holds all the answers when Cyclonus finally stirs, and pushes up from his kneeling position with stiff old person legs. He raises the sword with both hands and stabs it into the earth beside the open hole, with enough weight behind it that he hits his knees again.
Then he stands and walks back down the bluff. He looks lopsided without the sword, hands weirdly empty by his side. He stalks past the vials without looking down to either side, haggard optics fixed on the shuttle waiting on the old battle field. Whirl falls in step with him, clasping his claws behind his neck with a nonchalance he has to feel for both of them, and doesn't tell him it's going to be okay. Cyclonus never got good at mourning fast; he missed the war and all that jazz. "What do you think - just a good sword, next time? Maybe middling. Nothing will ever live up to the great one, obviously."
Cyclonus transforms and arrows over the field. Whirl follows him, unfazed. "A gun, then. Don't worry. I know a guy."
-
When Rewind comes to ask if they want to attend the official memorial rite on the ship, Whirl locks him out. Cyclonus did his time already. People won't help.
-
So Cyclonus goes stiff and bitter and silent again, as bad as he was when they first heard the news. Doesn't try to claw up his face again, which is nice, because it already looks like a funeral. Whirl gives him space, and makes sure he eats, and plays referee when some dumbaft tries to wander up to Cyclonus and say something stupid, and lets Cyclonus's hands find him in the dark and frag him until he sees stars where they shouldn't be. It's a little bit harder but never enough to hurt: Cyclonus's sharp claws scratching the paint along Whirl's back, teeth leaving dark crimps in the lines of his neck, charge leaving Whirl such a shaking, shuddering wreck that he can't bring himself to ruin it.
I told him the truth waits, sour in his vocalizer.
It's a year of reprieve he doesn't deserve. But Cyclonus uncoils. The sharp points of his anger wear down; the exhausted, miserable emptiness when he stares out windows eases into something melancholy but meditative. Whirl cajoles him out of the room more often, and lets easy marks like Ten and Rung and Velocity sit on him for a while so Whirl can fit in some me-time and Cyclonus can practice using his words again around normal people. Slag knows normal people are in short fragging supply around here. Whirl loses track of him entirely one day and finally stumbles on Cyclonus reading through and critiquing some of Minimus's poetry in the observatory. Cyclonus's idea of good music is old, patriotic battle hymns, and Minimus was inspired to pick up poetry because of Megatron (shudder), so the critique mostly consists of Minimus debating his own punctuation choices and Cyclonus squinting at the datapad like it personally offends him.
They seem to be having a good time. A rousing success. Just inspirational. Whirl owes himself a pat on the back.
Time to wreck it.
-
Except Cyclonus wrecks it first.
Aft. That's just not fair; Whirl has been working up to this for years now, dammit, and Cyclonus beats him to the punch.
It's a normal day. Cyclonus still won't pick up anything that isn't his own integrated weapons system, so when they spar it involves a lot of flipping and grappling. Cyclonus punches like a fragging tank and knows more throws than Drift, but Whirl barely feels pain in some of his slagged up joints and doesn't care about dislocating them to win a fight; he can wriggle out of holds that would lock anyone else down and come up swinging.
Also, Whirl's trash talk is better. That's just a cold hard fact.
They fight until Cyclonus calls it, his gaunt face creased in an exasperated grimace as he hauls Whirl down two floors to have First Aid snap his shoulder back into place. Whirl's high on energy today, bouncing off the medical berth before First Aid can finish rolling his optics behind his visor, and nearly catapults feet first into Cyclonus's chest to get them moving again. They're covered in grime and grit from the well-worn sparring floor, and Cyclonus redirects Whirl toward the washracks with the inexorable force of a steamroller, unmoved in the face of Whirl whining and bouncing off the walls. Cyclonus is boring and won't frag Whirl in public where people could walk in on them, but he does wrap an arm around to draw Whirl close and press his palm against the hot, exposed surface when Whirl shifts his interface panel open, wet with solvent. By this point Whirl is actually dying. He's burning with charge all through the agonizingly long hustle back to their habsuite because Cyclonus goes so slow, and when the door finally shuts Whirl tackles him like a linebacker.
But something's wrong. Something's wrong before they even hit the berth. It's been a while since the worst of it - Cyclonus doesn't zone out on autopilot too much, these days, and the more attention he pays to who he's actually interfacing, the more he shaves away at the safe layers of insulation between Whirl and the inexcusable mess Whirl's made of this whole situation. Whirl coaxed him out of his grieving stupor for some dumb reason like friendship that seemed important at the time, and as long as Cyclonus was touching him and thinking about Tailgate, who cared? The little guy's dead, Cyclonus snaps out of his lethargic torpor a little longer each time, and Whirl hates himself a little more, his secret choking him like energon in his throat - so basically no one's getting hurt. There's probably something skeevy about being someone's hard rebound like this, but Whirl's never been a good person.
Except this time, like a few times before, Cyclonus is - too present. Maybe it's teetered on the tipping point for a while now, but Whirl wanted to ignore it. But Cyclonus plants a hand over the huge scrape of purple paint on Whirl's waist where they collided earlier, studying Whirl like he's never seen him before and making uncomfortable amounts of direct eye contact as he strokes a thumb along the side of Whirl's helm. Whirl rips his gaze away - no one wants to stare at his misshapen optical socket for too long anyway, so he's doing Cyclonus a favor - and gets them the rest of the way to the berth with raw, jittery, jangling nerves.
There's an alarm going off in his head that doesn't register in his HUD. Since he's the master of bad decisions, Whirl shoves it to the back of his mind. They've done this before. Easy. He's thought of a thousand different ways to frag up and sabotage this as thoroughly as he can, but he wasn't planning to set any of them in motion today. They've fallen into a weird, comfortable rhythm over the past year or so, one that keeps both of them from crashing and burning and taking half the ship with them, and Whirl forgot to be suspicious of it along the way.
(It's been getting harder to remind himself that he doesn't deserve this. That he's a selfish slagger, keeping the truth to himself like the worst kind of hypocrite. The intrusive reminders don't intrude quite as hard as they used to.)
So it's not fair when Cyclonus keeps watching Whirl with that inscrutable, intent look, and rearranges them on the berth, his hands lingering long enough that Whirl starts squirming and snapping his claws to get things moving again. But instead of fragging him to get Whirl's mind off this weird blip, Cyclonus licks into him, sparks crackling off the damp warmth of his glossa, until Whirl glitches out his vocalizer and can only keen faintly as he folds his legs over Cyclonus's shoulders and tries to press him deeper. Finally, finally Cyclonus stands up and slides into him, and Whirl's so desperate that he overloads twice in rapid succession, once as Cyclonus stretches him open and again once he's full. He scrabbles and swears as his claws keep fumbling his grip on Cyclonus's shoulders, half out of his head with the waves of charge - he thinks he's babbling something, but either his vocalizer's still totaled (very possible) or he's too far gone to hear himself think (equally possible). Cyclonus keep staring at him, brow furrowed, one hand cupping the back of Whirl's neck as he stays there, not moving. Whirl tries to kick him into gear, but he's all shivery and useless at the moment.
Then Cyclonus's gaze softens. This is not imperceptible, the kind of slag you only notice when you hyper-focus on deciphering someone's frowns to the nth degree so you know when they're about to lose their slag and flip out on the ship's happiest couple. This is perceptible, and terrifying, and Whirl's optic goes perfectly round in mute panic as Cyclonus presses his hand to the side of his helm and sends them both over the edge as he drags Whirl closer.
Afterward, Whirl's too burned out to move or protest as Cyclonus does his usual pre-recharge repositioning. He's a limp puddle of limbs, and his processor basically stopped in the moment he recognized the look on Cyclonus's face, and everything feels entirely too good as Cyclonus settles down on his side, with one arm slung over Whirl. His eyes stay fixed on Whirl, dark red in a dark room, and Whirl is weak.
He falls asleep while he's still relaxed, the suspicion settling into a tight knot high in his chest, where he won't have to deal with it until morning.
-
Cyclonus won't interface with him again for five weeks.
It's not like it has to be a daily thing, or like Whirl is marking off a checklist, for frag's sake. But five weeks is significant enough that he fragging well notices. It would be hard not to.
Instead, it's like the final knot loosened inside Cyclonus. Coaxing him to get energon or hang out at Swerve's isn't a trial anymore. He starts tipsily growling along on karaoke nights again. When they head out on Rodimus-brand adventures (patent pending), Cyclonus is the one who quietly keeps order and checks in with everyone if the party gets split up, his demeanor grim but bracing. He's his old stoic, longsuffering, blunt, yet tolerant self again, for the first time in - ages.
It's not like he ghosts Whirl, either. The Lost Light doesn't quite obey the laws of physics at the best of times; it's not impossible to disappear into the bowels of the ship and avoid someone for the rest of the trip. (Whirl has it on the best authority that Steelline has successfully sidestepped Rodimus every single day since they left Cybertron). Whirl tries to after the first night, confused and bristling on instinct, but Cyclonus shows up at his shoulder and joins him in their usual spot on the edge of crowds or the back of rooms, acting like everything's normal. After the first time Whirl whips around, startled, and accidentally clocks Cyclonus in the face with his guns, Cyclonus steps louder so Whirl can hear him coming. Unnerved, Whirl finds himself chattering more to fill the awkward pauses, a mix of snarky comments and nonsensical babble. Either he'll annoy Cyclonus enough to make him walk away or…something.
It doesn't work. Which is weird, because Whirl has never failed to annoy someone to the brink of homicide before in his life. Why have his powers forsaken him. Instead, Swerve starts asking if they're surgically attached at the hip. When Rodimus tells people to split up and search for clues, 'Cyclonus and Whirl' rolls off as easily as 'Chromedome and Rewind,' like the idea of pairing them off with some arbitrary mechs never occurs to him. Which is terrifying. Then every night they head back to the habsuite and Whirl will fiddle with clocks while Cyclonus stares out the window. And after that, instead of interfacing, Cyclonus watches Whirl, suspiciously reserved; he ignores all of Whirl's pointed hints and petulant sighs as he draws Whirl close and falls asleep.
But Whirl knows. He just doesn't want to admit it. He doesn't want this, and if he's not careful he's going to get it anyway. He feels sick when Cyclonus tackles him out of the way of some plant monster thing Brainstorm managed to tick off and grasps Whirl's claw as they crash through the thick underbrush. He feels sicker when Cyclonus takes it again, in the privacy of the habsuite, his hand curled loosely enough around Whirl's [not hand] that Whirl could pull away whenever he damn well wants. Cyclonus cycles a vent, his other hand deviously coming up to cup Whirl's [not face] and keep him from looking away as Cyclonus leans in.
Whirl stumbles away. Nothing fancy; he just rips his claw free and bolts for the far side of the room, twitchy with restless, rising, dizzying dread. Cyclonus stops where Whirl left him, his little frown uncomprehending as his optics follow Whirl.
Before Cyclonus can say something he can't take back, Whirl forces it out, his voice a million lightyears away from his audials. "I told Tailgate about the fits."
The world's a sharp edged, cracked, crazing thing, like a splintered pane of glass, and Whirl's gonna cut himself open on every edge on the way down. It's a shame, really; he had so many good lines ready and waiting, all the lurking, cruel things he thought but never said so he could gut this not-relationship properly, but he doesn't get to use any of them.
Cyclonus breaks like this, pretty predictably: he freezes, then he snaps. All that perpetually repressed emotion, y'know. His failure mode is a known quantity. He doesn't have a sword anymore, so he can't accidentally stab passing minibots these days.
But he rips the berth out of the wall and throws it through the wide window - a solid 6 on the Prowl scale - and depressurization does what it does, and that's how Whirl finds himself sucked out the window, too surprised to do much more than blink, as the emergency bulkhead shutters down and the Lost Light leaves a twinkling trail of reinforced glass along its side.
Ah, well. That's one way to do it, Whirl supposes.
He puts on the musical track from an Earth SNL skit, and drifts away to the dulcet tones of Imogen Heap and gunshots.
-
No one's more surprised than Whirl when they actually come back for him. Good riddance and all that, right?
Turns out Ultra Mags is in the full suit when they reach the shuttle hanger. Suddenly it all makes sense - if it's a choice between Whirl and the paperwork in triplicate generated by Whirl dying, the flight crew would rather reel Whirl back on board. Whirl's almost touched. And also offended.
When Ultra Magnus starts in on the lecture about damaging the hull integrity of the giant fragging space ship, Whirl tells him, "Put it on my tab." Because he has a tab for miscellaneous damages in the budget, obviously. It's not nearly as substantial as the one in the Wreckers, but it works.
He deserves whatever Cyclonus wants to dish out. But the thought of walking back in there and seeing the wreckage Whirl's left in his wake -
Haha! Nah. It's not running away if he hunkers down at Swerve's and waits. If Cyclonus wants revenge, he can come and get it any time. Whirl intends to go down fighting. One last good fight for the satisfaction of it, because he's selfish like that, and then he's done. He usurps the current occupant of the darkest corner booth from their seat of power - Joyride, at the moment - and perches on the seat, radiating menace, optic narrowed at the door as he waits for Cyclonus to show.
-
Which shouldn't take him two weeks to do. Swerve asks Whirl whether he plans to leave when he locks up for the night, more unimpressed than nervous when Whirl bristles his rotors. Not even the threat of property damage really fazes him these days. Worse, Whirl only lasts ten seconds under Ten's doleful, imploring stare before he sulks out the door. He's losing his touch. As the days drag on, Ten has to cart him out a few times when Whirl gets too overcharged to notice the time. It helps him ignore the weird mix of pitying and skeptical looks that he gets from the usual crowd.
(They'd stop looking at him like that if he put a claw through Ten's chest. He hasn't done anything atrocious or arrest-worthy in a while; he needs to get back in the swing of things.)
Nautica is the only one other than Swerve who dares approach the table directly, and Swerve only does it from behind the shield of a tray full of drinks. "What did you do?" she asks, brow quirked, more concerned with swirling her glass of bubbly engex. Apparently she kept sneaking her own stash in, and Swerve's been furiously trying to meet her exacting standards ever since.
Whirl is bored stiff, so he doesn't kick her out of the booth. It helps that she treats this like a case study instead of the utter fragging disaster it is. "Hnnrrhgll," he says, optic pressed flat against the sticky table, which roughly translates to 'it would take a few centuries to list it all.'
Nautica nods, both brows making a bid for the ceiling. "Communication is key," she reminds him, with a brisk pat on his arm, and then heads out.
Yeah, he's aware. It's what got him in this stupid mess in the first place. It doesn't matter, because Tailgate's still fragging dead. If Whirl stopped helping, the world would be an objectively better place.
No one tries to hold him up when he staggers out the door to find a nice unoccupied corner to recharge in. He's tired and tipsy, with a dull ache in his chest, and he doesn't register the hand that steadies him when he trips on the threshold as a threat for a solid 2.8 seconds. "Thanks," he croaks, vocalizer garbled with disuse.
"Whirl," the mech says, like he's repeating himself. Probably is - Whirl wasn't paying attention to anything but the immense effort required to keep his feet lined up in the same direction.
Oh.
Right. Fighting. Guns blazing. Going out with a bang. If Whirl still had a glass in his claw, he would chug it. He snaps his engex-addled processor into gear by transforming. His rotors shred the doorway as he rams Cyclonus out of the hall and into the next room over. "Not! In the bar!" Swerve bellows after them, as if Whirl isn't already being considerate as frag.
The timing could be a little better, though. When Cyclonus grunts and flips Whirl over his head, Whirl transforms to land and flails his way through the next wall when he can't keep his feet under him. Balance is shot. He hooks an arm over the nearest terminal and hauls himself up. "Whirl, I'm not interested in fighting," Cyclonus says, reaching out to steady him. "You -"
"Tough," Whirl mumbles, and tackles him around the waist. He shoves them sideways through another wall. Cyclonus's claws hit his shoulders, but midway through the charge Cyclonus realizes he's the only one capable of keeping them upright. He smacks his hands out to catch them on the next wall. Someone yells and dives out of the room through the actual door as Whirl reels back and shoves Cyclonus away.
Cyclonus catches both his wrists. "Enough."
This is the part where Whirl shoots him. Except that requires a lot of effort. Whirl headbutts him instead, denting the rim of his own head.
Cyclonus tilts his horns back and tries again, this time holding Whirl by the shoulders as he holds him at arm's length. "Whirl, enough."
Whirl winds his head back hard enough that he can see backward through the hole in the wall, ready to launch forward.
Someone clears their vocalizer just outside the door. Someone who sounds suspiciously like a guy who's not technically in charge of anything around here, anymore. "So, uh. This is me asking, for the record - does one and/or both of you need help in there before I barge in?" Drift calls, enunciating very carefully.
"No!" Cyclonus and Whirl yell back, at the same time. Whirl wobbles a little with the force of his squawk.
A white hand makes a peace sign in the doorway. "Cool! Please stop breaking the ship. Positive vibes, okay?"
Ratchet needs to do better. This is a travesty.
They give it a second for Drift to head back down the corridor. Then Whirl cycles a vent and headbutts Cyclonus again.
The room starts to spin a little. "Whirl. Just stop," Cyclonus says, exasperated. Seriously, what does it take to provoke someone into a homicidal rage around here?
Whirl plants one foot and then the other, struggling to keep his balance while standing still as his processor does another spin. "Can't even keep your slagging promise," he mumbles, deeply affronted, and then passes out.
-
He wakes up two hours later with a fuel moderation add-on chip plugged into his neck and a vexingly clear head. It only takes two clicks for him to snap his claw down on the chip and yank it out. Sober and coordinated - an ominous combination.
Cyclonus sits next to him against the wall a set distance away, legs folded in meditation. When Drift does that, it's pretentious; when Cyclonus does it, he looks like an old statue who could sprout moss and rust at any moment. Titans would start snoring in their sleep and set off major earthquakes before Cyclonus would shift his damn aft.
"Ugh. Don't tell me we're going to talk about feelings. Kill me first," Whirl says, crushing the chip between his claws. He's at least half-begging. On the sliding scale, being sucked out a window and left to starve out in deepest reaches of space falls only slightly below being talked to death.
Cyclonus sighs without turning his optics on. "I'm not going to kill you, Whirl," he says, his voice weirdly tight and tired for someone who barely emotes at all. Whirl looks away, embarrassed on his behalf. The disappointment's not really crushing, but it does leave Whirl in an even gloomier mood. Everything's ruined, and he doesn't even get his promised out? Rude.
Before Whirl can do more than stretch his legs out, though, Cyclonus onlines his optics and keeps going. "I apologize."
What.
Whirl raises both claws and then drops them, speechless. He's not sure which is winning - disbelief or anger. When his vocalizer finally kicks into gear, the pitch is all over the place. "You're sorry. You're sorry?!" he repeats. He jabs a claw at Cyclonus, incensed. "Excuse you, that's my line! Except no, I'm not sorry! I'm the one who told Tailgate -"
Cyclonus cuts him off. "He needed to be told." There's steel in his voice - two weeks of steel, Whirl guesses. Cyclonus sets his jaw with an audible click. Whirl made the mistake of turning to face him, so he has a front row seat to the exhaustion in Cyclonus's face. "I did him a disservice in concealing the fits from him, and placed you in an irreconcilable position. You chose truth. I deemed the damage I sustained negligible in comparison to sparing him pain in the face of his other, concurrent issues. Perhaps, if he had sought medical assistance earlier - if he'd been aware it was even necessary - they wouldn't have needed to attempt such extreme measures. The hypocrisy and what came of it are my responsibility to bear." Then he adds, dry as rust, "And there are more constructive methods of dealing with things that are - difficult - than throwing furniture."
For Cyclonus this is a fragging speech; by the end his ramrod straight posture caves a little, his hands folded over each other in a rigid grip. A year ago, there wouldn't have been anything underneath the brittle exterior.
(Two years ago, he looked like that when he came to Whirl for the cold hard truth, and Whirl had stared back with Getaway's plans tucked away in his head.)
Whirl hunches a little, defensive. He imagined this scene a thousand times in his head, and none of this is going to plan. He's uncomfortably aware that without the anticipated anger on Cyclonus's end, Whirl has nothing to throw himself at. Thinking this through and talking about it like grown mechs? Horrifying.
But Cyclonus looks serious, safely arranged so that no part of him is touching Whirl. Nothing that can be interpreted as hostile (and Whirl defines 'hostile' pretty damn loosely). He wobbles on his knees, then slumps back down against the wall, all the tension rooting in his back. "You don't know that. It - wasn't supposed to work out this way," Whirl says, legs sprawled out in front of him. "Didn't think he'd tell you to go. I thought once he knew, he'd - I dunno. Confront you about it, and you'd kiss and make up and go find a fragging doctor. AKA Ratchet or Lotty, not some little rando with questionable medical credentials. Not this." He throws his claws up and lets them fall back down with a clunk. "Meant to tell you ages ago. So. Sorry," he finishes, clipped.
He's not even sure where the words are coming from, at this point. Easier to stare at the ceiling and pretend he's not hyper aware of Cyclonus in his peripheral vision. Easier to remember how it all hinged on him in a room with a sleeping Tailgate, the truth cold and heavy on his mind. Tailgate, who looked quiet and peaceful in the dark, unaware, while Velocity spent hours downstairs piecing Cyclonus's face back together.
Caring about other people and their problems never ends well. When the only person Whirl cared about was Whirl, the number of lives he ruined decreased exponentially. This - he doesn't know what to do with this.
Another sigh escapes Cyclonus's vents. He closes his hands into fists, and Whirl watches with a weather eye before Cyclonus flexes his fingers again. When Cyclonus talks again, he sounds - embarrassed? Stiffer than the iron rod where his spinal strut should be. "I also wished to apologize for taking advantage of you," he says, stilted.
Whirl starts nodding along. Mostly out of shock. Then his stunted self-control cracks and a howl of laughter bursts out; he slaps a claw on his thigh, convulsed with giggles.
Cyclonus twitches, startled, and Whirl realizes that he's serious. That's almost funnier. Almost. Whirl's laughter chokes off. "…I must have hit my head harder than I thought," he says at last.
Cyclonus snorts. So at least his sarcasm didn't break along with the rest of his brain. He inclines his head, hands closed so tightly in his lap that the sharp tips dig in. "You have been my friend and brother in arms. A better one than I," he says, quietly. "I should not have imposed on you this way, out of grief; it was a poor showing of my respect. For both of you. I will do better."
Ohhhhh frag. Whirl is mortified. Yup. That's mortification. If he had a face left, it would be on fire. They've blown right past the danger zone into the realm of no return. Not to mention the fact that Whirl is the one who has been taking advantage. Duh.
If they're both (Whirl can't even think the word) feeling things - if Cyclonus wasn't just projecting all this time -
They're so screwed.
"Huh," he says, cogently. Whirl is the picture of coherency over here. He taps his claws together as he rolls his optic back to stare at the ceiling. The truth's out, but this isn't imploding like Whirl planned. So he has no idea how to respond. Thankfully, Cyclonus thinks sitting still for hours contemplating where you went wrong in life is a respectable past time, so he doesn't interrupt.
Ah well. When in doubt - establish what's really important here. "Does that mean we're not 'facing anymore?" Whirl asks, squinting. He flicks a claw flippantly. "Because honestly, not really sure what you're getting out of this, but obviously I only want you for your body."
Cyclonus darkens his optics, folds his hands together, and cycles a deep vent as he presses them together.
Whirl gives him a minute. The urge to stick a claw through the hole in Cyclonus's cheeks and see if he can tap the wall through it is valiantly suppressed.
"I am not averse," Cyclonus says, wryly, once he's recovered. But the humor fades a second later. Grave is his default setting, but the weight of his stare pins Whirl in place as he finally makes eye contact with him. "It has been made clear to me that my understanding of courtship protocols are several million years out of date, and I don't want you to feel…obligated. If it is your preference to be amica, I would be grateful for your company. Ordinarily I would not -"
Whirl just reached his limit for feelings talk. There's way too much to unpack here, too many terrifying implications behind Cyclonus's words, and Whirl's ready to start climbing the walls already. He makes a shushing sound that would drive Chromedome mad with jealousy, and slowly raises a claw to press it against Cyclonus's mouth. "Shh. Let's just leave it ambiguous," he says. His wisdom is obvious. Obviously.
Then Whirl pauses and glances over his other shoulder at the humming bars of the prison cell. "So, anyway. Did Ultra Magnus say how long we're stuck in the slammer?"
Cyclonus nods, his face filled with stoic resignation. "Until morning."
Damn. Whirl whistles. "He must be going soft."
"Indeed."