'things you said when i was crying' (whirlstorm)
04 December 2018
He doesn’t cry. That’s not even an, ooh, tough guy thing, like maybe admittedly a couple of the other things he does are, it’s just that he physically can’t. Doesn’t have the anatomy. Had it ripped out of him once upon a time because the whole thing with the empurata procedure is to make the patient as unlike themselves as possible, take away all the parts that make them a mech and leave a machine. Something, something, dichotomy definitions functions.Well, the important thing is he can’t cry. Not that important. He doesn’t have a lot of use for crying anyway.
Except, except, the rest of him, the rest of his body, it doesn’t have that figured out, maybe – the gears haven’t fit their teeth together – the wires haven’t crossed. So sometimes his body says time to cry, dipshit, and then it stops being helpful altogether and just collapses inward. Implodes like a star. Crunches him up and spits him out.
Starts at his middle and makes him tense so tight that he bends over his own sharp knees, thighs scraping at his cockpit while his vents gasp for new air and his rotors sputter. Makes his head bend down so the prongs around his face drag against his glass. His claw tips grind and skip together.
But, you know, hey, no crying! No tears! So instead he’s knotted up all Gordian and clawing at the ground and wheezing, “oh frag, oh fuck, oh frag.” Curse words instead of tears. It’s really poetic, honestly, it’s an analogy for his whole sorry life. Take something that’s halfway decent and cut away the rounded parts, turn it jagged and harmful. He’s a person just like everyone else, except except except.
There’s lots of exceptions. Example: he does this not-crying thing on his own except for this time. Because this time there’s, you know, there’s someone, someone who maybe he likes and that’s worse somehow because he’s choking on nothing (he doesn’t have a mouth he doesn’t have any way to choke!) in front of someone he kind of cares about.
Brainstorm crouches next to him. They share a sort of color except Brainstorm, he’s brighter, he’s got a future, so he’s all vibrant and saturated and Whirl’s dull and aged. Brainstorm takes his mouthpiece off.
“You’re a really ugly crier,” Brainstorm says, all soft and gentle like it’s something comforting. “It’s all right, though, I’ve run the gamut of experiencing ugly crying. You’ve not seen ugly crying until you’ve seen Chromedome cry, I promise. And maybe until you’ve seen me do it once or twice.”
It’s so – stupid. Whirl picks his head up because Brainstorm’s the worst, and he’s going to tell him that, and it’s going to be so mean. But he looks up and Brainstorm grins shining bright and that’s distracting.
“Well hey there, sunspot,” he says chipperly. “Wanna talk about your feelings?”
It’s just tongue-in-cheek enough that one of Whirl’s hiccuping vents gets interrupted with a snort of a laugh, and then Brainstorm looks all smug, and he can’t have that, so Whirl has to tackle him down. It’s the natural course of things.