25!
"Congratulations on graduating, I guess."
Heatwave takes a swig of the bottle of high grade and passes it to Blades, who wipes off the top before taking a drink. Chase stares at them balefully.
"I am now an officer of the law-" he starts, but Heatwave waves a hand in his face.
"Not yet, you aren't," he tells him, taking the bottle back from Boulder for another swig. "That's tomorrow. Day one of the rest of our lives, fellas." He offers the bottle to Chase. "Just enjoy yourself, mech."
Chase frowns, doorwings down and finials pinned back. Finally, he sighs and takes the bottle, producing a rag of his own to clean the top. "Alright."
"Attaboy." Heatwave leans back.
"You aren't even a real enforcer," Blades points out, flopping back between Heatwave and Boulder. "You're 'enforcer-adjacent'."
"You're a Rescue Bot," Boulder pipes up, taking the bottle from Chase, then handing to Blades. "We all are. Don't think to hard about the details."
"Damn straight," Heatwave agrees, nudging Boulder's pede with his own.
Chase sighs again, then scoots over to join the pile on Heatwave's other side, accepting the bottle when it's passed back to him.
It's peaceful as they finish the first bottle and get well through the second- up until Heatwave pulls out a cygar.
"What are you doing?" Chase demands, but his voice slurs a little.
Heatwave grins. "Smokin'."
Chase narrows his optics. "This is a non-smoking building."
Heatwave's grin gets bigger. "Whatcha gonna do, arrest me?"
Chase stares at him like he's genuinely considering it.
"Do it," Blades jeers, from where he's been building an impressively intricate card tower on Boulder's chassis. The mech in question is holding so still Heatwave feels the need to poke them every five or so minutes, just to make sure they aren't dead. "Arrest him for being, uh, fuck, um, not funny. Yeah."
"In that case-" Heatwave hiccups, then downs the rest of the bottle in one go. "In that case, arrest us all! But then you'd uh, damn, uh, you'd fuck up the card tower. And that shit's illegal."
"Is it?" Chase's expression is wide open and horrified, doorwings flicking agitatedly.
"Yes, definitely," Blades tells him. "Pass the cygar."
Heatwave reaches around the card tower, and Blades takes the cygar and starts puffing on it like he was a bot that had seen too much. Heatwave knows deep in his spark he's not getting that back.
By the time they've worked their way through five of the bottles, Blades has built his card tower so tightly to the ceiling that Boulder is now stuck beneath it, and they cannot figure out how to get them out. Chase passed out trying, leaving Blades and Heatwave to lean against the two of them, sharing the last bottle and smoking the last cygar.
"You think things will stay like this forever?" Blades asks.
"Hell no," Heatwave mutters around the cygar. The room has taken on an odd haze from them smoking, and even the windows open to vent it hasn't properly dissipated it. "This is the last of our academy days. Now we gotta like, fuck, work 'n shit."
"Not what I meant," Blades mutters. "You're all not gonna die or whatever, right?"
Heatwave frowns, trying to wrap his helm around the question, or at least make up some kind of reassuring answer. "Nah," he settles on. "I won't let us. And... uh, Chase would arrest us."
"He'd find a way," Blades agrees. "Yeah."
"Yeah."
They don't really remember the conversation in the morning.
