Siren had guessed correctly that he wouldn’t be seeing Nightbeat that day. The fire chief’s mind-numbingly uneventful shift ended and he started making way to Swerve’s but was stopped mid-journey by a group of security officers.
“Siren!” Aquafend hailed as his fellow officers disappeared into the bar. Siren initially thought he had done something wrong or was needed somewhere, but that wasn’t the case. “I’ve got a tip about an invitation-only function going on tonight.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. You know that guy who used to be a bigshot politician but somewhere something went horribly wrong so now all he does is write shit no one understands?”
“…You mean Crosscut?”
“Yeah yeah, Crosscut. He’s having a rehearsal of his new play in one of the classrooms. The first half is gonna suck, but the afterparty sounds right up your alley.”
That was a pretty shallow way to view it, but Siren also knew it was probably true. It was nothing against Crosscut, but arts and entertainment were his most frequent companions in his little office which made him less than enthused about engagin with them during downtime. And, besides—Hosehead had a hand with the set pieces. Maybe Siren could finally give some feedback if he saw them in person.
“That sounds fun! Are you heading there now?”
“Just after we get this to-go order,” Aquafend said, peering in to see how that endeavor was progressing. The security officers emerged seconds later, handed Aquafend a tray full of drinks so that there was one tray to each officer, and they all headed off. Siren felt strange being the only one not carrying anything as he towed behind them.
They abandoned him as soon as they arrived, distributing the drinks among the parts of the crowd that had taken up their delivery offer. Siren scanned the room. Hosehead was absent. Plenty of other people he knew were there, but there were hardly any empty seats. Come the afterparty the seating situation would probably change, so he didn’t worry about snagging a good spot. He went for the closest available one, an aisle seat in the back row, and addressed whoever was neighboring it, “Is this seat taken?”
“Oh, Siren! It’s not, go ahead!”
His face paled. It was Nautica. Just when he had gotten over being intimidated by Nightbeat, he had to have something happen to him that made him realize he was about ten times as nervous about his best friend. This was the person the object of Siren’s affection trusted most in the universe. What if she didn’t like him? What if he didn’t like her?
Better to get that sorted sooner rather than later. He took the seat. The night’s program was displayed on the student console embedded in the back of the next row, he didn’t bother looking at it. A quick glance down the aisle to see the neighbors that were politely ignoring her revealed that she was there alone, just like him.
“Are you a fan of Crosscut’s? I’m jealous I didn’t get to see his first play. One of the very first entries into the post-war theater canon, I wouldn’t miss this for the world!” She squealed, clasping her hands together in the joy of anticipation.
“Uh, no, not really…” Siren said. He wished he could match her energy, but it wasn’t in him.
“Oh.” She tapped the datapad in her lap nervously. Despite the show having yet to start, she had already taken a hefty amount of notes. “Well, you haven’t seen his other work, have you? You’re lucky, when you think about it—what I wouldn’t give to se My Shovel, Your Face again for the first time…”
He nodded. It was the least he could do.
The lights dimmed, the room hushed (eventually), and Crosscut introduced the evening’s entertainment, which was still going by its working title of “Information Creep”.
Siren did his best to follow along, and he made it a good ten minutes before his anxieties took over. He hadn’t thought to ask Nightbeat if Nautica and him getting along mattered to him until now, and since Nightbeat was currently only available via texts he never read, Siren had taken it upon himself to decide that this was a problem of very high stakes. Considering the way Nightbeat adored her, Siren couldn’t imagine that it didn’t matter.
Her appearances in Nightbeat’s stories were so dense with jargon that he couldn’t clearly recall them. Going by impression alone, the two of them had nothing in common besides being in the same place, and even then they had different reasons for being there. He had gone most of his life without caring much about art—it was a hobby he’d only truly taken up during his time on the Lost Light, and he found most of it disappointing. While Nautica may have been an outcast on Caminus for her primary interest being quantum mechanics, she still immersed herself in artistic endeavours more than most Cybertronians. Any conversation they might have, she would be light years ahead of him.
Applause slowly started and Siren realized the main event had come to an end. He had sunk deep into his seat over its duration and quickly fixed his posture. Normally he took great joy in causing a ruckus when applause was needed, but tonight he only clapped. He had screwed himself even harder by not paying attention—if she were to ask him anything, he would look like a complete fool. The lights grew brighter and the room grew louder with post-show chatter. He hesitantly turned to Nautica. Tears streamed down her face. Was it that bad? Or good?
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, it’s just that memory loss and corruption are problems where I’m from too, but it hasn’t caused anywhere near as many catastrophes as it has for you. And to think its ravages could be illustrated so poignantly by casting Ravage as them given form…it’s genius!”
This is exactly what he feared. Ravage had been a cast member? He hadn’t noticed. What in the world was she talking about?
“Are you okay, Siren?” She asked as she wiped the tears off her face. “I’ve been told that silence isn’t a great sign for you.”
He looked to the floor. Being petrified by her presence was unsustainable. He thought back to the first few times he had seen her, back before he had enough information to feel that she was in another league. She had been kind, courteous, and inviting. Some presented themselves that way as an empty nicety, but certainly not anyone that Nightbeat would associate with. What was the worst that could happen, really? They were both decent people, it couldn’t be that bad. Would Nightbeat have to avoid group activities? He excelled at that already. Siren braced himself. “I don’t think I…got it?”
“Oh, what didn’t you get?” Nautica’s face lit up in response to what she sensed was the first instance of Siren being genuine with her. “The nonlinear plot? The allegorical characters? The shovel?”
“All of it? To be honest, I was thinking about something else.”
Nautica giggled. “Well, I’m not sure I can explain the entire thing, it is pretty advanced, but I’ll try. Information creep is when—”
“I know what information creep is!”
She giggled more, then went through her notes point-by-point, letting Siren address which parts escaped him. Her explanation lasted an almost equal duration to the play itself. He felt much more engaged with the story as a conversation he could participate in than as something he had to sit back and watch. He was still a little unnerved by her, but it didn’t compare to earlier.
“That’s actually kind of interesting!” Siren remarked.
“Oh, I know, I can’t wait for opening night! Hopefully, I’ll succeed in dragging everyone along then…”
Siren’s thoughts drifted to Nightbeat at the implicit mention of him. He smiled. For some reason, Nautica gasped.
“I’m sorry!” She clasped her hands over her mouth. “It’s just that that’s the first time you’ve smiled all night—you’ve got a great one!”
“It is?” Siren pawed absentmindedly at his lower face. “Sorry, Nautica! I was so in my head!”
“It happens.” She gave him a reassuring pat on the back, in the dead center of his inactive light bar.
“No, I shouldn’t have been like that!” Siren leaned away from her but didn’t shake her touch. “It was totally avoidable, but I came in with a bad attitude cause theater’s not really my thing and…well…I was put off by you cause you come off kinda…pretentious?”
“Pretentious?!” She exclaimed with a volume to rival his own, earning a few looks from the others (including Highbrow, who quickly realized they weren’t talking about him). “I’m the last person to dismiss something just because it’s regarded as low-brow! Like—you like action movies, don’t you? Any given Camien won’t give them the time of day. But I recognize them for what they are—fascinating insights into a culture that has forgotten all but how to fetishize egregious violence and to communicate very little even when given plenty of room to. Reading about it doesn’t hold a torch to actually seeing it. It’s a self-portrait of a broken world. They speak volumes about your society, they deserve a certain amount of attention! And that’s not to mention the role they played in advancing holographic technology. To think so many forms of infiltration you all are known for might never have been invented if not for your film industry being forced to transition from costly practical sets and effects to completely programmed imagery that pushed itself to become hyper-real so the medium could stay alive…”
Siren was beginning to feel more like a specimen on display than the other half of a conversation. “Have you ever thought about how they’re also, y’know, fun?”
“Oh, yes, I’m aware! Two of my top 300 movies are action! It’s always a pleasure to be taken by surprise by hidden gems, I spent plenty of time digging for them. Of course, most of your movies catch me off guard. So many don’t even pretend they’re not propoganda, and they’re all fascinating insights into what the cast and crew were thinking—whether they realized it or not—as the war was happening. It’s haunting in a way to not just watch so much senseless violence but have it resonate with you because it’s the glue that binds a stunning emotional arc…
“Yes!” Siren pointed with an energy he had so far been lacking. “I love stuff like that! You take all that mush and frame it with a ton of explosions and it just works!”
“You aren’t a fan of talking heads, I take it.”
“Ugh, no! People just sitting around talking? No thanks!”
“Personally, I’m the opposite, but everyone has their own tastes, I suppose. And it’s refreshing that you can immerse yourself, it’s an important part of the experience! Just a warning, Nightbeat’s no fun in that department.” She said, her voice suddenly lowered. “He can’t suspend disbelief to save his life. He gives every story a painfully thorough autopsy when it first and foremost needs a decent obituary.”
Nautica was truly something. Siren was left with only the Nightbeat-Hosehead part of the equation to worry about, and even then, there wasn’t much that could go wrong—he didn’t expect them to be close or anything. With all the pieces on their way to being in place, he suddenly had a burning question that might be answered. “Hey, maybe you can give me some advice! If I asked Nightbeat to get a little bit more serious, do you think he’d go for it, or would that freak him out?”
“No, not at all! He’d love that! He's mentioned the idea to me a few times.”
“Seriously?!" Siren hadn't noticed anything that indicated Nightbeat had any sort of opinion on the matter. “That seems really sudden!”
“Yes, well, that’s our Nightbeat. He excels at making decisions like that in no time. And remember, he picks up ten times as much about someone than they do of him since he’s so obscenely observant, so it’s not like it’s an ill-informed conclusion. He's waiting for you to ask since it's taken you longer to get to know him."
Siren couldn’t help but wonder if Nautica had any idea that Nightbeat was eyeing her as a prospective amica endura. He focused all of his mental strength on not blurting that out.
“He probably managed not to look it, but he was immensely jealous that you had propositioned Thunderclash. I pointed out that you probably wouldn’t have if he had made more time for you, which he didn’t appreciate either. What he carves out for you now might not seem like much, but it’s a huge effort on his part.”
“...Should you be telling me all that?”
“I don’t see why not. He’s militant in his clarity when he wants things hush-hush.”
The liveliness of the party had dwindled. It wasn’t too late into the night but Siren had one last thing to do. “Well, I’ve gotta head off…” He gestured in the general direction he would be going.
“Oh, of course!” Nautica said, getting up and following Siren out of their seats and into the aisle. “Thanks for keeping me company! Do you wanna know something?”
Siren went in for a parting handshake. “Sure!”
Nautica engulfed him in a hug and whispered. “I was worried you wouldn’t like me! How silly is that?”
Before he could reciprocate or respond, she darted down to the front of the classroom to inform Crosscut and his crew of how much she adored their work. Siren smiled to himself as he listened to her onslaught of praise grow quieter the further he got.
Siren fired off a message asking Nightbeat as to his whereabouts. While he waited for a reply, he wandered the halls on the off-chance he would encounter him organically. He reviewed any possible leads in his mind and came up with nothing—he had a vague awareness of the cases Nightbeat was pursuing at the moment, but not what specific locations they might lead him to. He weighed whether it was better to seek out Nightbeat's usual haunts or keep to the main halls. Barely paying attention to his surroundings anymore, he turned the corner onto the ship’s bridge, and his quest suddenly came to an end.
“Hey,” Nightbeat trumped Siren’s attention over the tall, star-speckled windows. With the ship on autopilot, they were the only two in the massive room. “My dowsing rod practically fixed itself once I got up. Thanks.”
“No problem!" Siren joined him next to the window. "What’re you doing here?"
"Patrolling." He shrugged. "I was hoping to kill this boredom, but no one's stirring up trouble tonight."
"Maybe I can help with that! I have a question!"
Nightbeat's interest was piqued.
Siren inhaled. Even though he practically knew what Nightbeat’s answer would be, it needed a bit of mental preparation. “How would you feel about being partners? Officially?”
“Hmm.” Nightbeat put his hand to his chin, which was not anywhere near the reaction Siren had been expecting. Had Nautica perhaps used more definite language than she should have? He braced himself. “I could get more done with a bit of assistance, especially since Nautica isn’t as fond of fieldwork as I wish she was, research is more—”
“No, not detective partners—” Siren laughed. “—Well, that too, but I meant—”
“Ah. Well, it's a yes both ways. I’ve been dying for you to want to get definitive about it.”
Siren already had the gist of why that was, but surely Nightbeat himself could give a better explanation. “Oh yeah? Actually, I was hanging out with Nautica earlier, she mentioned that.”
Nightbeat smirked. “You were hanging out?”
“Yeah, well—we kinda just ran into each other, but yeah. She didn’t say that much about it, so, why is that?”
“It’s the same reason I want amicahood—pre-defined relationship guidelines have clear boundaries. Undefined relationships can be a minefield—for example, Getaway.”
Getaway? Mutiny Getaway? Siren was listening.
Nightbeat crossed his arms and seated himself on the windowsill, Siren joined him. “He and I always seem to gravitate towards each other, but we despise each other, but we still give each other the time of day. How am I supposed to navigate that? I wouldn’t call us friends, but I’m not sure I’d call us not friends, either. It’s a pattern you see throughout history, but there’s no word to describe it. But this?” He gestured between them. “There’s a nice little predefined box just for this. ‘Partners’. Only a few ways to misinterpret that.
"There’s been a decent amount of ‘partners’, but do you know how many couples had their relationships formally recognized during the war?” Nightbeat continued. Siren shook his head. “Nine. Out of everyone on Cybertron. And those were mostly Chromedome. Everyone was terrified to know each other as anything but brothers in arms. As a culture, we are severely underdeveloped in this area. I have a feeling that as time goes on and things smooth over we’ll develop the terminology we neglected thanks to pouring everything we had into warfare.”
This was quite the tangent, and despite its subject matter, not a very romantic one. Siren took one of Nightbeat’s arms and began planting kisses on his wrist wires that he had to bend his hand back to access. It gave Nightbeat pause for a moment, but he got right back to his rambling about semantics and the complexity of the social world.
Siren wasn’t going to stop until Nightbeat took the hint. Thankfully, it didn't take long.
“Not the time, huh?” Nightbeat asked in a near-whisper.
Siren shook his head. Nightbeat gave a laugh so soft it was almost undetectable. After that, verbality ceased He took his time tracing the edges of Siren’s plating, taking note of which spots earned a reaction.
Nightbeat’s communicator had been going off and he had been doing a great job not realizing he was being contacted until a call came through. When Siren saw the unread messages that had stacked up, he wondered out loud. “Hey, there's mine from earlier! You didn't open it?”
Nightbeat let the incoming call keep ringing as he answered Siren’s question. “I guess I should've told you I can't stand instant messages. They’re too brief, they reveal practically nothing. It’s the least insightful mode of communication. And if someone has something truly important to say, they’ll say it some other way.”
Siren supposed that made some sort of sense. As frustrating as it was for everyone that Nightbeat was almost entirely inaccessible in a convenient way, it must have been equally frustrating to Nightbeat that so many things he could usually perceive and relied on were completely omitted from the medium.
Nightbeat finally answered the call and returned to studying Siren’s form. “Yello.”
“Nightbeat of Yuss, you scoundrel!” The voice crackled—it was Rodimus. “Where’s the crown jewel of my investigation team?”
“You know the four of them add up to one of me. I’m busy.”
“Check your messages, Nightbeat. I didn’t hand-pick those emojis for nothing.” Rodimus said in as stern a voice as he could and hung up.
Nightbeat groaned. His eyes reluctantly scanned the screen for a few seconds before he sprang to his feet. “Wait, that’s actually interesting. Of course it’s the engine room, that place is so creepy. I doubt it's a ghost like Rodimus seems convinced it is, but could you imagine?” He got up, and Siren instinctively followed him. “And this just so happens to be exactly what recently repaired dowsing rods are for. We’ll just stop by my place and then head there.”
They made their way to Nightbeat’s quarters to collect his equipment and he even trusted Siren to carry some of it.
“If it’s not a ghost, then what is it?” Siren asked as Nightbeat carefully stacked things in his arms.
“I didn’t say it’s not a ghost.”
“Well, I doubt it. It’s probably, like, the death rattles something mounted in the vents running out of batteries.”
“Eh, possibly.” Nightbeat shrugged, picking up two cases by their handles and leading the way. “Probably an infestation of some sort: scraplets. Those missing medidrones. Space werewolves.”
“Werewolves? Aren’t those made up? How is that more likely than ghosts?”
“You doubt me?” Nightbeat scoffed. “That was barely the tip of the iceberg. What I’m really thinking—what’s most likely—is that this is some sort of multidimensional prank that a bunch of other Rodimi are orchestrating against ours.”
“Uh-huh.”
Nightbeat held his ground, eyes burning into Siren’s instead of looking where they were going. They both burst out laughing.
“I was just testing you.”
“I know.”
“Really though, it could be pretty much anything. Can’t really start theorizing ‘til we’re down there.” Nightbeat said with an unusually lively intonation. It may have been subtle, but he always seemed enthralled with the world around him, and it was impressive that that attention could reach even further limits given the right circumstances. Siren thanked Primus that he was lucky enough to witness it.
They had almost made it to the engine room. Siren had been so pleased with how his evening had unfolded that he had forgotten it was almost over. His alarm rang and he stopped cold.
“Oh, right,” Nightbeat said, disappointed.
Siren held on to the equipment in his arms like he was afraid someone would seize it from him. “…How long do you think this will take?”
“Hard to say, but I’m guessing long: even if we figure it out quickly, we’ll probably have to explain the scientific method to Rodimus a few times.”
“Yeah, I can’t…uh…sorry.”
“No, I should have remembered you have obligations instead of just dragging you along.” Nightbeat set his luggage down and began unloading the gadgetry from Siren’s arms and lining them up by the door. “It’s a good thing you have that thing to remind the both of us.”
“Some other time…!” Siren insisted, though given how long they had known each other and how that had yet to be possible, neither of them could really believe it would be any time remotely soon.
“Yes, definitely,” Nightbeat reassured with an arm rub. His touch was the only thing Siren could find comfort in. “See you later, partner.”
Siren watched the sprightly spring in Nightbeat’s step as he entered the engine room. At least one of them was happy. ✧