Chapter Text
It isn’t every day that a looming, menacing shadow of a mech ends up in the doorway of his shop. Plating such a dark purple that it might as well have been black, with a dark visor covering his face, broad shoulders and a broad chest, strong legs…rough hands tipped with dangerous, wicked claws. There seems to be a blade attached at his hip, as well, a small publicly-acceptable dagger that was almost perfectly concealed.
Whirl is sure the only reason he notices it is because the mech is posed with his hands on his hips. Staring into the shop. Staring at him . He strikes a forbidding presence, unnerving and threatening just by standing there.
Swallowing around the lump of fear that was steadily climbing up his intake, he makes a shaky gesture around the shop, at the walls of clocks and watches and knicknacks. He can’t imagine this mech would have need of any of them. “You can come inside, I am open! I’ve…I’ve got plenty of stock and an-anything I don’t have…”
He trails off with a squeak as the imposing mech finally steps all the way into his shop, coming straight for him. His frame is just this side of heavy enough to cause the items on the nearest table to shake and threaten to fall over, and Whirl swore his spark almost jumped up into his throat. He’s glad, suddenly, for the counter that sits between him and this stranger. Now inside with the lights properly on him, he can see the just-barely-hidden scars that marr dark protoform, the scuffs and scrapes that decorate his heavy armored plating. The bright, violet biolights that run the entire length of his frame, pulsing softly with what he can only assume is in time with the mech’s spark. He seems oddly familiar, like he’d seen him before…a nightmare, maybe.
“Looking for anything in particular? A gift, perhaps?”
Silence follows his question. The mech just continued to stare, helm tilted just so. It would almost be cute if he wasn’t so damn frightened that he was about to be robbed.
“A GIFT.”
Hearing his own voice parroted back to him, the pitch lowered and emphasis added, definitely sets his gears grinding uncomfortably, and Whirl took a small step backwards, watching the way that helm moved just slightly; tracking his movements like a predator in one of those vid-films he’d watched, the ones with creatures like insecticons and sparkeaters hunting down some hapless young mecha. This mech could have stepped right out of one of those. Silent, looming, frame a live wire of raw power, attractive but so, so wrong…
Whirl snapped back to the moment, face flushing a deep blue. Averting his gaze, he tapped on the glass case in front of him.
“These are lovely pieces, good for a courting gift or…?”
The mech just stared again. And then he shook his head, bringing up those dangerous, time-worn hands to rest on the counter. His claws just barely graze over Whirl’s fingers, and his breath hitches, vents stuttering as he struggled to keep his frame still. It takes all of his willpower to not snatch his hands away.
“Um…so?”
Almost hesitantly, plating ruffling with a nervousness that Whirl hadn’t seen before, the mech pulled a worn datapad from his subspace, placing it next to the blue mech’s hands on the counter with a surprising gentleness. Huh. His yellow gaze flicked back up to the stranger, finding that blank, smooth visor staring him down again. The plating had smoothed back out, and now he was back to looking like a predator stalking after a petro-rabbit. He looked back down at the datapad. Might as well pick it up and turn it on, hoping it wasn’t something terrible like - oh. Oh, well. That was certainly a relief!
The mech was looking for a gift, like he had said, particularly one for an older mech, one in a high labor job if the simple but sturdy design was anything to go by. Yeah. Yeah he probably had something like this laying around.
“I could…I could have this done in a few hours, if you’d…like to come back and pick it up then?” Anything to get the oddly alluring mech out of his shop. He needed quiet while he worked, and not the sort of predatory, dangerous silence that followed this one like a shadow. It was, quite frankly, extremely unnerving. It reminded him of…no, he didn’t need to think about that right now.
“You can pay when you come to pick it up.”
“ PICK IT UP .” There was his voice again, thrown back at him with a slightly more amused inflection added to his own words. He wondered, idly, if the mech didn’t have one of his own. A voice, that is. Not that he minded, not at all. It did raise some questions about communication…
“ COMM. FREQUENCY? ” Now that wasn’t his voice, but someone else’s. It was much deeper, gravelly and even through the speakers on this mech it held a rumble to it that made the winglets on his back bob and dip. Like a bass beat echoing through his frame.
“Right! Um, o-oh, here. I’m Whirl. I’ll, err, call you once I’m done with your order, sir.”
The mech stared at him some more, those violet pulsing a steadier, warmer glow. It was nearly intoxicating, watching them. And embarrassing, Primus, he’s spending way too much time staring at this stranger and not -
“Soundwave.”
“Oh?” Whirl’s head popped up from where he’d been pretending to read the datapad, and he knows his face is flushed blue again by the reflection of his own face in that dark visor. It makes him shiver, grip tightening on the datapad until he reminds himself it doesn’t belong to him. Can’t break client property!
“Soundwave.” As he says it, he points a sharp claw at his own chest. Oh!
“Your name is Soundwave?”
“Affirmative.”
It’s then he realizes that the mech - that Soundwave - was using his real voice. It’s not like the recording he’d used before, but it isn’t wholly unpleasant either; deep, but scratchy and hoarse. He spoke quietly, softly, as if going above a whisper would cause him a great deal of pain. Maybe it would. As he’s thinking, the dark mech’s helm tilts, and for just a moment he catches a glimpse of silvery, very recent welds along the bottom of his jaw and the base of his neck.
Whirl doesn’t get the chance to mention them, though. Soundwave is out the door before he can even figure out how to breathe again.
Primus .