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"Tell me," Pipes said as he slumped into the booth across from Huffer. "Am I being stupid?"
Huffer looked up from his cube of engex and said, not but almost unkindly, "Yes."
Pipes' red band of a visor only stared back at him. "And?" He tried to prompt.
Huffer shrugged, taking another sip. "Okay, choosing to ignore that." Pipes said, his mask splitting down the center to raise his own cube to his mouth.
Huffer rolled his optics so far back into his helm that if he didn't know any better, he would've thought he'd caught a peek of his processor circuitry, a movement that was not hidden by his goggles. "About what, pray tell, are you being stupid about?"
Pipes' cube hit the table with such speed that Huffer could have sworn that the corner had chipped and shattered off. "About Riptide. My buddy, kind of, about twice my height? Kind of a teal blue? He's a boat?"
He nodded. "Yes. The dim one."
Pipes snapped his digits. "That's the guy." His face scrunched up weirdly before his mask connected back together. "I think I'm being stupid."
"You've said," Huffer replied, twisting his cube around on the tabletop. "I'm asking you why you think you're being stupid."
"I- Well-" he stammered, words tilting clumsily out of his intake. "It's that we've known each other a pretty long time, but y'know, it's the Lost Light, and it's been weirdly busy the entire time since he's joined, and. I don't know."
"You don't know how to talk to him again," Huffer provided sagely.
Pipes slumped his helm onto a servo. "I guess."
His visor dimmed and went a little murky, and Huffer nearly didn't ask — afraid to? — but said, "Is there…something specific you wanted to talk to Riptide about?"
And Pipes, Huffer nearly gagged at this, gave a wistful sigh. "Yeah."
"Why in the name of Primus would you come to me about something like this."
Pipes hummed. "'Dunno."
Huffer squinted at the other mech. "How many drinks have you had?"
"Mm. Four, maybe? Five? 'M not sure." Pipes waved a hand noncommittally. "Doesn't matter anyways."
Huffer frowned. "You should talk to, I don't know, anyone else besides me about this. Probably sober."
Pipes' helm slipped off his propped-up servo and hit the table with a hearty thonk that rattled the cubes on it, the shimmery liquid trembling in their glasses. "It's just- I'm bad at making friends. I want my friend back. He keeps hanging out with those guys and I 'dunno what t'do about it."
Without Pipes to see his faceplates, Huffer's expression dragged impossibly downwards into a grimace. "Are you sure this is just about 'friendship'? I'm also the least socialized mech on this ship."
Pipes heaved another one of those sickening sighs. "Noooo." He mumbled. "He's just so big and so dumb and- basically my entire type besides the fact he's that much bigger than me. Which i could get used to. And!" Pipes said, raising his helm. "We're already friends or whatever slag! The hard part about getting to know someone is already done! It could be so easy."
"But he's dumb." Huffer supplied.
"So fragging dumb. I don't know how he lived through the war, honestly." Pipes' helm sagged back down onto his outstretched forearm that took up way too much room for its size and gazed off with a mixture of fondness and frustration in his muddied field. Huffer felt the urge to shift uncomfortably in his seat, but instead pat the back of Pipes' servo awkwardly. He had a total of maybe three sentient beings that he could kind of call friends and who tolerated him in turn, Pipes being one of them. And even though this slag was the furthest thing out of his league to be dealing with — seriously, ask him anything about construction and he's your go-to mech — he didn't want to be a complete aft to Pipes.
"Have you…" He paused, thinking for a moment. "Tried to just corner him? Or something?"
"I'm 90 percent sure he could just step over me with those long legs." Pipes mused. "They're really nice. Unique kibble. Weird purple knee guards. Tall."
"Okay," Huffer said with a little too much force. "So that's off the table. Maybe send him a comm? Ask to get a drink to catch up or some slag?"
Pipes finally sat back up and the idea of a pout was impressively communicated even without the exposed intake through his mask. "What if he says no?"
Huffer shrugged again, splaying his hands palm-up on top of the table, intake scrunching. "I don't know? I don't know if you've noticed but I'm slag at friendship stuff or whatever. And whatever you've got…going on with your thoughts towards Riptide."
Pipes' got that faraway look in his visor again, humming appreciatively. "That helm crest…"
"Okay!" Huffer exclaimed, waving a servo in front of Pipes' face. "That's going deeper than I want to go for this. At least not only on two drinks. Stop that."
"Stop what?"
"You look weird." He said with an unamused frown.
"Nuh uh. You do."
Huffer dragged his servos down his face. "I just want to have one normal conversation with someone."
"Huffer," Pipes said. "This is normal for most mecha. Buddies asking buddies for advice? Normal as slag. You're just insociable and kind of an aft most the time." He thought a moment. "All the time." He conceded.
He leveled a flat stare at Pipes. "Thank you, so much."
Pipes flicked a thumbs-up at him. "You're welcome. So…advice?"
"Just ask him out or something, I don't know! Honest to Primus!" He nearly yelled, causing the mechs at the booth behind them to throw glances over their pauldrons before turning back to their conversation partners.
Most frustratingly, Pipes groaned, "But he could say noooo…"
"I'm going to throttle you. Or throw you in the oil reservoir. Maybe both."
"Oil reservoir please?"
"Is," Huffer started, a mild horror building in the back of his helm. "Is it because?"
Pipes giggled. "Yeah. Boat."
He smacked Pipes across the helm. "You're such an idiot."
"Ow. Yeah. I know."
In that blissful moment of silence between the two minibots, the sliding doors to Swerve's opened with a hiss, the troupe of Skids, Brainstorm, Riptide, and Nautica being led by the latter, optics locked on the four empty stools at the center table of the bar. Pipes was frozen in his seat, but scrambled out of his stupor when Huffer glanced back at him for the briefest nanosecond before jumping off the booth seat, throwing a servo to snag the other's arm but missing.
"Riptide!" Huffer called to the boatformer, whose gaze darted around at eye level for truly too long of a moment before looking down and seeing Huffer.
"Oh. Hi! Do I know you?" He smiled and waved.
"Friend of a friend. That friend-" he pointed back at his booth, Pipes attempting valiantly to shrink into a null point. "-Actually."
"Oh! I know him!"
"I'm sure you do. In fact, you should go talk to Pipes. Right now." Huffer stated, already leading the trailing Riptide to the booth, the rest of his group looking on in curiosity and vague amusement. Huffer all but shoved Riptide into the seat, turned around, and left without a word through the doors.
Pipes watched him go, dismay settling like an oily film in his tanks.
"By Primus," he muttered under his exvent. "He really did that."
"Did what?" Riptide asked, startling Pipes like he hadn't just watched him being practically dragged over.
"Oh, uhm." He said smartly. "Nothing."
Of all the mecha he could have befriended.