#sweve

He made a quip about there being a better bot for this job, and had massive rush of an unfamiliar guilt when Swerve looked up at him dimly and angled a pained smile his way.

Whirl leveled an unimpressed stare his way.

"You're gonna tell me that if -right now- I went and got-"

"We've split up."

"But-"

"I ended up ditched when I fessed up about being sparked."

Whirl, usually a mess of frenetic-kinetic motion, froze all at once. He craned his head down to stare at swerve, silent save for the whirring of his systems as he tried to comprehend what Swerve was telling him.

"But," he said slowly, voice taking on a timbre with the slightest promise of an edge, " doesn't it take two to make one of those little parasites all healthy and slag? Or else...."

" Yeah, or else." Swerve agreed miserably, not looking up at him. Or else there would be consequences, solved only by termination, or intervention......

He did however, reach into his subspace to pull out Whirl's coveted engex.

"Here, take it. It's what you were wanting, right?"

Whirl gingerly took the bottle, and watched as Swerve curled in on himself a little further, radiated shame and hurt as he waited for Whirl to walk away. It just got worse as Whirl stood there, and he could practically see Swerve nearly on that razor's edge again.

Whirl subspaced the engex, and came to a choice as that unwelcome worry came right back again. It felt like a bad idea - both to acknowledge those feelings he had stuffed away, and to plop himself down next to Swerve, who gave him the most bewildered look.

"Well now that dead-beat mech is gone, is that position open for applicants?"  He was completely serious despite the joking nature of his remark- and Swerve gaped at him until he offered his claw to Swerve.