Prowl's been putting on a bit of weight lately, but don't worry. The Constructicons have him on a diet.
Title: Constructicon Lite
Warning: Noticing and making fun of 'fat' Prowl. Involuntary body modification. Coercion. Cannibalism? The Constructicons being Decepticons, and Prowl not being very happy about it.
Rating: PG-13
Continuity: IDW.
Characters: Prowl, Constructicons.
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): Canceled commission.
[* * * * *]
Something started in the last merge.
Devastator formed on the battlefield despite Prowl's reluctance. He knew that they had no choice. A choice between buying time for salvation or dying because he hated to combine, hated acknowledging that he could combine - that wasn't a choice. The Constructicons were there, they were willing, and Decepticons and Autobots were already fighting side-by-side on the battlefield. Shockwave would destroy them all if they didn't combine.
Logic dictated that Prowl not hold himself above sacrifice. His plans didn't exclude using even himself as a weapon. Devastator rose above the battle, as he had to.
Something started while he was merged, and that was what Prowl hadn't planned out. He'd been able to pin down his aversion to the Constructicons themselves, and his reluctance to let them into his head. They were awful people, the worst of the worst. That didn't account for how violently he recoiled from combining. What he felt was stronger than dislike or discomfort. Instinct wasn't a quantifiable thing, nor was a 'bad feeling.' He'd dismissed the uneasy crawl across his sensor network because he had to, but it didn't go away.
The wary, borderline fear he held the gestalt bond in justified itself. He hadn't known what would happen, but he'd known that something would, and it did. It was mechanical. It was also organic, at so far as mechanical beings could be organic.
'I'm not responding at maximum efficiency,' the part of Devastator that was Prowl thought during the battle. 'Unacceptable.'
'Yes.'
'Unacceptable.'
'Don't worry about it.'
'We got it covered, big guy.'
'We sure we're okay with this?'
That thought flashed boldly across Devastator's mingled minds, and for all that it came up in the forefront of their thoughts, it was insidious. It could have been and probably was a calculated move to start something only with Prowl's permission. The Constructicons wanted to make him one of them, part and parcel to their team. Slotted into Devastator, part of him and working as him, his mind focused on wringing the most out of the combiner. The idea appealed to him to further his plan and save his own life, and their deliberate question to the part of them that was him worked. Prowl saw the thought as his own.
In reality, it was his own. It was his mind, his thought, his agreement that snapped through Devastator's synapses. Of course he was okay with the solution piecing together in the substructure of his mind where Constructicons built blueprints. It was his solution as much as theirs.
'Proceed,' Devastator thought, and Prowl thought it, too. With his agreement, something started.
Amidst everything else that happened during the merge, that relatively small decision passed unnoticed at first. Prowl uncoupled from the gestalt links slightly heavier, his mind slightly changed. He landed on feet that felt wider. The metal of his struts felt harder, his shoulders broader, and his armor thicker, but he hadn't fought what was done to him. When Devastator came apart, there was no particular reason the tweaks would immediately catch his attention.
It took a full day for him to separate phantom sensation from actual physical changes. Devastator lingered in his joints as a memory. Prowl swung his head instead of turned it until he caught himself. The weight of his helm felt heavier than it was.
It wasn't just Devastator in his head, although it took him a while to figure that out. His head was, indeed, heavier. He had to puzzle out the appropriate processor to track down what had been done, and even then he couldn't pull concrete answers out of the combiner's archived files. What he found were echoes from the gestalt links throughout his body, timed commands executing well after the team uncoupled. The Constructicons had talked to his self-repair system, done something, and his body had changed in response. Was still changing, whenever he couldn't intercept the foreign orders that didn't ping as foreign to his obedient systems.
His body recognized the Constructicons as part of itself. He was vastly annoyed by that.
They'd had direct access to him while joined at the bodily level, processors synced up. A medic couldn't change him on that level without extensive reformatting with his cooperation, but this hadn't been a hack or medical procedure by an outside mechanism. His systems hadn't fought the intrusion, and he had to make a conscious effort to intercept the commands left behind in the gestalt links. The Constructicons weren't intruders. They had internal access when joined together as Devastator, and they chipped away at his independence, combined or not.
"Getting a little hefty there, eh?" Arcee said when he dropped to the ground after the battle.
He was already waving away five pairs of hands reaching out to help him regain his balance. Prowl gave her a sharp look. The Constructicons played innocent, pretending not to hear. The aftermath of the battle distracted him soon after.
It was the first comment he heard about his weight, but it certainly wasn't the last. Autobot and Decepticon alike joked about the Constructicons dogging his footsteps, laughing over the strange green-and-purple bulk he'd acquired, but there was more to it than that. Optimus Prime clapped him on the back and he didn't stagger, solid on his feet in a way that had his leader pausing just an instant before resuming what he'd been saying. Starscream prodded him in the chest, and it didn't knock him away. The Seeker's optics narrowed in sudden speculation, watching him.
He saw the strange looks when he swung his head instead of turned it, when he misjudged the distance and his shoulders narrowly missed knocking into door frames. The clumsiness felt as strange as it looked. He moved carefully, trying to figure out what precisely was different. He had changed. He was still changing. They were changing him.
A vague memory of agreement interfered with his search for the exact change. He kept looking for an obvious switch flipped, but what he eventually tracked down was a feeling that wasn't quite hard reason but still wasn't right. Devastator had approved at the time that they'd done it, but that didn't mean Prowl consciously agreed now.
It took him a day to dig up the memories of what they'd started, tracing the timed commands from his gestalt links down through his processors to find where the combiner's archives had set up shop. His mind shuddered around it, unnerved. How long had it been there without him noticing? The harddrive hadn't existed in him until recently, too recently to have puzzled out conscious means of breaking in. Devastator's memories tasted foreign to his processors, files sitting locked in folders he didn't entirely have access to.
He didn't know how to open the files without blindly reliving them. His attempts left him blinking in the aftermath, resetting his optics again and again as a combiner without all its components hooked in tried to wake up. It wasn't a pleasant sensation. Devastator wasn't Prowl, wasn't the Constructicons, and wasn't who he'd been.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about Devastator was the titan's awareness of Scrapper's death. Prowl had taken the Constructicon's leader's place, and his mind changed the whole by joining it. Devastator accepted that matter-of-factly. Maybe that was why Devastator had little compunction about changing Prowl in return.
From the scattered files of the combiner came memories, fragmented and confused.
Access: repair nanite control program.
Program access granted.
Locate: unit Bonecrusher.
Unit Bonecrusher located.
"Why are you here?" he demanded of the Constructicon two days after the battle.
Megatron had surrendered, Optimus Prime was being a blasted idiot nattering on about a trial, Ultra Magnus had lost his mind and started citing regulations instead of common sense, and Starscream was a subject better not spoken of in Prowl's presence. In practical terms, Iacon was in ruins, Metroplex needed to be rebuilt, and the Decepticons had stolen away in the night. Prowl had reached his limits of handling any and all of that. He'd left the meeting before he lost control in front of anyone important. Stress and frustrated had mounted into a need to lash out.
Now was as good a time as any to demand an explanation of the bizarre, cryptic series of commands Devastator had given his body and dug into his mind. He remembered Bonecrusher, so he found Bonecrusher. Found him and demanded answers.
Except that articulating what had been done at his own initiative was harder than it had sounded in his head while driving between the meeting hall and downtown Iacon. His tires compressed under additional weight that he couldn't explain, and his fuel gauge dipped further than it used to. He tried to wrap his mouth around words that would say what he could hardly think, but there was nothing concrete to put into words. Half-remembered memories and thoughts that had made sense at the time hovered at the edges of his mind, refusing to gel.
The Constructicons had done something to him, and he'd agreed at the time. He didn't know what, and he couldn't just grab Bonecrusher by the treads and yell, "Tell me what I did to myself!"
Technically he could, but there were enough people who called him a lunatic. He'd stick to questions that made sense outside the confines of his own head.
That left him asking questions so broad they were useless, unfortunately. The Decepticon staring at him from the center of the destroyed building blinked up at him. "I'm...clearing rubble?" Bonecrusher said, uncertainty turning it into a question. "We're going to make a courtroom. You said we should."
He had? Oh, right. They had been shadowing him everywhere he went, so he'd sarcastically volunteered them for construction duty the moment a trial came up. They'd stopped waiting outside the meeting room soon after, but he'd thought no more of it than they'd found something to do. There were lots of things to do. Apparently they'd chosen to do what he'd suggested.
"The trial won't be taking place on Cybertron's surface," Prowl said absently as his mind ate through the ramifications of having a build team at his beck and call. An unexpected side effect of being stuck with the Constructicons. Huh. "It's been moved offworld. There's no need for a courtroom here." It hit him that he'd given away classified information to a Decepticon a second later, and his optics narrowed.
It'd come out on automatic. He didn't run on automatic. He didn't naturally trust that easily.
Bonecrusher glanced around the cleared area. "Oh. Um. Seems a waste." Prowl scrutinized the slump of his shoulders, searching for clues to the Decepticon's reaction to moving the trial off-planet. The Constructicon kicked a sheet of metal aside. "Any ideas for what to build here instead?"
Ah-ha, yes, Bonecrusher was a low-level Decepticon. He wouldn't be involved in any rescue attempts or plans except as someone in the brute squad. Prowl's mind turned that over as he said, "It doesn't matter. Build Starscream another palace, for all I care."
He paid no attention to what his mouth was saying, but he was in favor of anything that would shut the former Decepticon Second up for a few minutes. Starscream kept talking, kept worming his way into places he didn't belong on merit of being the elected leader of the fools who'd fallen for his tricks. It infuriated Prowl. The Seeker claimed to have sources among the departed Decepticons, but Prowl hadn't been able to pry any more information out of him as to what those Decepticons were doing.
It occurred to him now that he had his own sources among the Decepticons, even if they weren't currently with Soundwave's lot. Bonecrusher's lack of rank could be an advantage. Prowl's suspicious regard lightened to a speculative look. Nobody looked twice at grunt soldiers. It made them ideal infiltrators, in a way.
"Why are you here?" he asked again, this time actually requesting an answer instead of merely making a demand. Bonecrusher stopped in the middle of lifting the metal sheet to give him a quizzical look, and Prowl stepped closer in order to have his full attention. "Why didn't you leave with Soundwave?" He gestured vaguely out toward the wildlands around the ruined city.
Bonecrusher cocked his head to the side before shaking it and going back to dragging the metal toward the pile of recyclables at the back of the building. He'd been at work for a while, it seemed. "You're here, Prowl." He said it the way other people said, "This is Cybertron." It was a fact. Gravity kept him here. He belonged near Prowl and would always return to his place if he wandered.
In Prowl's chest, down behind his spark chamber, Devastator's sleeping archive stirred. The harddrive that was and wasn't his opened a file for just a moment, responding.
Unit Bonecrusher: relocate. Relocation parameter: unit Prowl.
Command accepted.
Bonecrusher's simple statement didn't strike him as odd. The gestalt links twitched, small parts of his body searching for their counterparts, and for a brief moment of time that could have been a few seconds or a few minutes, Devastator overlaid him. A memory? Or an order. He didn't remember, and he couldn't grasp the file before the harddrive's encryption scrambled it before his mind's optics.
For that short, timeless span, he stared at the green-yellow back turned to him and thought nothing at all, mind wiped clean. No furious plans to sort out Optimus Prime's soft-sparked mercy. No blather from Starscream. No calculations or worries or contingency plans. No sour, bitter betrayal at Ultra Magnus' retreat into protocol, or the sharper, hotter betrayal behind that. Oh no, Prowl wouldn't forget that, but for a moment, he didn't think.
He reacted.
His hand rose without his permission, fingers softly curled. He wasn't reaching for Bonecrusher; his body was. Modified settings in his processors tripped, defaults reset to what hadn't been his default three days ago. Unfamiliar strain had burnt inside his body and mind after the first merge, the pain of parts forced into completion and activation, then ripped apart before the new circuits could settle. This was a different pain. This was closer to an injury, almost like the phantom sensation after a limb amputation. This was the pain of missing parts. The gestalt links throughout his body ached as if they were flexing, empty but grasping.
New settings dragged at the edges of his thoughts, trying to take hold. They wanted to recognize Bonecrusher as part of him. The Constructicon's presence pulled at the gestalt links, magnetic, and a hollow ache under his armor yearned for a merge to complete them.
What his mind recognized and body yearned for stood on the other side of the cleared building, and Prowl's hand dropped as confusion swamped him. The file closed, spitting him out of Devastator's memory. An explanation skittered around borders of understanding, and he shook his helm, scowling at his lack of coherency. There was something. Something had changed. He just couldn't put it into words in order to demand Bonecrusher confess to it.
Under the circumstances, retreat was his best option. Prowl tactfully withdrew from the battlefield. Later, he justified the encounter to himself as laying the groundwork to infiltrate Soundwave's cabal of Decepticons, and yes, he did follow up on that. Having seen into their heads and knowing he held a piece of their minds inside himself, he trusted the Constructicons to a small extent. He trusted that they would betray Soundwave before betraying him.
Not that he would ever tell them that.
He didn't need to. They knew. They knew a lot about him, knowledge drawn out of his memories, and it manifested in strange ways. They bristled at Chromedome. They replaced his recharge slab with one built to his specs. They respected Arcee more than any other Autobot he ever saw them around. In turn, she thought they were hilarious. It wouldn't surprise him if the Constructicons' reason for liking her had to do with how she'd flipped over into accepting them as his without skipping a beat. Optimus Prime handled them gingerly for much the same reason, but the Constructicons stayed a wary distance from Prowl's commander. Prowl hoped that distance didn't come from what they'd seen in his head.
One of them always showed up at his preferred time to fuel, toting at least one cube doctored to taste. His taste, but it was a taste that he didn't remember having. The fuel was inevitably thicker than he was used to, a surprise every time he opened the cube. The strong scent tickled his sensors every time he smelled it, an irresistible temptation. His chemical receptors lit up in desire whenever it wafted by his nose.
He didn't even know what he'd started craving until a Constructicon thrust a cube into his hands. He snatched it like a starving Empty. The fuel was deeply satisfying, more so than he could ever recall plain energon being. He'd never enjoyed fueling so much, not even when taking time for refueling used to be a euphemism for taking a break with Tumbler.
He found himself gulping the fuel down, taking a second cube anytime it was offered, and it almost always was. The Constructicons brought a cube for themselves, but they never took more than a sip before offering it to him. He didn't feel guilty for taking their fuel.
In reality, it felt oddly…right. No matter who carried the fuel and offered it to him, just the presence of a Constructicon did something to him. An edge-of-self tapping on the gestalt links itched inside his armor. He felt empty, hollow, and incomplete. Taking fuel soothed the feeling, but it didn't go away. The second cube eased the itch a bit more. The hunger ended as his fuel tank topped up, but the near-physical calling of the incomplete mechanism throughout his body faded just from taking a cube opened by his - his gestaltmate, as repulsive as the label was.
It wasn't a merge, but it was acceptance. Their hands had touched the same spot, and they were near enough to hand off the cube. That calmed the needy gestalt mechanisms a bare fraction.
The implications might have disturbed him more, but he rarely had time to think about it. The offered fuel was accompanied by a different set of alarming questions and speculations depending on which Constructicon carried the cubes, and that handily distracted Prowl from thinking about anything but dealing with said Constructicon. Long Haul's unsubtle ogling unnerved Prowl enough to rush him through refueling and out of the mech's presence, but he almost preferred Long Haul's obvious, obnoxious drooling to Bonecrusher's attempts to cuddle him. Bonecrusher didn't seem to care that Prowl broke his finger joints every time he stroked a hand over black-and-white plating. Long Haul wanted more than platonic contact, but Bonecrusher was oppressively persistent. Ugh.
Prowl eventually got so fed-up with the constant push for close contact that he made an effort to ignore small touches. They still made him tense up, but he kept a cool head. A compromise for peace and quiet, yes. He could do this.
The day Bonecrusher discovered Prowl wouldn't punch him if he restricted himself to petting the nearest shoulder tire was the most peaceful refueling the Autobot had had in weeks. It meant that all the Constructicons fastened onto the tiny bit of allowed, if stubbornly ignored, petting like they'd been waiting their whole lives to touch him, but oh well. At least most of them didn't leer. Long Haul had a way of tweaking his tire that made his axle tingle, and Prowl had no idea what to think of that.
Mixmaster was kind of a relief from the others. He didn't stand too near or let his hand stay on Prowl's shoulder too long. He just asked very specific questions about taste and texture on the fuel, all business in a very chemist-centered way. It felt rather like a professional interview instead of a…date. A gestalt date. Thing. Whatever the refueling breaks were. Prowl avoided thinking about what they were because if he did, he had to think about why he kept allowing the Constructicons to meet him twice every day in a semi-private location where it was just them.
Regardless of why the meetings happened, they did, and Mixmaster's turn on the roster brought a barrage of questions about the fuel the Constructicons kept bringing him. Prowl had to concentrate on walking the fine line between noncommittal grunts and admitting that he thoroughly enjoyed whatever the chemist had added. It wouldn't do to encourage the - pampering, that's what it was. The Constructicons were pampering their newest member, trying to court him, and it wouldn't work. It wouldn't!
He refused to admit that he looked forward to the days Mixmaster brought the cubes. Arriving early would make him look eager, which he wasn't, but he did tap his fingers impatiently during Starscream's blathering on days when meetings went long. Mixmaster usually brought a buffet of smallish energon cubes and little canisters of things typically not seen outside a medibay. They were pressed on the Autobot until Prowl all but waddled away, tank stuffed past sloshing and reserve tanks full to the brim. He could swear Mixmaster brought more every time, too, but never more than he could drink.
The heavy feeling in Prowl's joints and chest made a certain amount of sense on those days, because he did weigh more. His tanks weighted him down. The weighty build-up seemed to migrate across his body, but he put it down to fuel circulation and unfamiliarity. Being full was an odd sensation. War had put everyone on rations for so long his tanks weren't used to the feeling.
He smothered the annoyance - and smidgeon of flattered pleasure - at being pampered and resigned himself to being the chemist's experimental subject. Better him than another Autobot, right? The Constructicons were immoral, unethical criminals who would undoubtedly seize victims off the street if Prowl didn't keep them appeased. They could be useful tools to him, if he trusted them that much.
"This one next." Prowl eyed the canister. "What? Drink it." More suspicion. "Fine!" He sipped from it only after Mixmaster muttered a rude comment and took a healthy swig. The lip of the container had scrapes from the chemist's intake tube. He tried not to think about how well his mouth fit against them, or how the tight, longing pressure between his shoulders eased as he drank. "Hmm. How's that feel?" Mixmaster chuffed impatiently at the Autobot's neutral shrug. "Yes, very helpful. Like asking a drone, I swear. Drink, drink! I didn't bring this for me."
Prowl cradled the canister in his hands and watched the Constructicon putter about pouring flakes and liquids into energon, stirring and cackling to himself. The washer fluid had been a surprise as it sluiced through his mouth, and his intakes clicked about in his throat to find the correct setting. Each swallow was diverted into a dry reservoir he hadn't filled for centuries. He tried not to savor the rest of the canister, keeping things professional, but he ended up drinking it slowly to make the taste last. There was something extra in it, something slick and just a tad acidic to cut through the dusty leftover at the base of his reservoir.
Mixmaster flung a scan over him once he finished drinking, and Prowl stiffened, gestalt links activating in a sudden bleep of pings, yearning for their other halves.
Before he could snap an angry reproof at the chemist, Mixmaster shoved another canister into his hands. "You need more. Drink!"
How did the fragging Pitspawn do that? For all the itching burn at the borders of his mind and edges of his spark, Prowl couldn't pick real information about the Constructicons out of the muddle of Devastator's presence. The incomplete gestalt protocols lodged in his processors pulled at his thoughts, but they didn't supply data on their complementary programs in the Constructicons' minds. He had memories of being in their heads, a nauseating surround-sound live experience of being them through their minds, but nothing on their current thoughts or status.
They, on the other hand, kept surprising him with their insight into his condition. He hadn't even realized his nonessential maintenance had declined until Hook and Mixmaster started showing up with fanatic gleams in their optics and maintenance supplies in hand. He could have gone to Ratchet, but letting the Constructicons fuss instead seemed relatively harmless. They hovered around him anytime they could, anyway. Taking their supplies instead of using Autobot resources made sense.
If only it wasn't accompanied by their company.
"You never had to learn to move like that, did you. It's natural to you." Hook's visor moved down his body, half assessment and half admiration, and Prowl turned to the side as if it would turn him invisible. The Constructicon took the opportunity to ogle him from the side. "Your instructors at the Enforcer Academy must have seen the potential in you. I'll bet you were put into the fast track for detective the moment you stepped through the door."
Actually, Prowl's first instructor had torn a strip off him and threatened to send him packing if he didn't loosen up his vacuum seal on the regulations. His formative years had ingrained strict adherence to the law into him, and his first Academy experience had been a brutal breaking of his belief that everything went by the book. His instructor had been convinced he'd be offlined the first time he did a real patrol on the streets.
Prowl side-eyed Hook hard but didn't correct him. Hook was lost in speculation, musing over how he must have topped his class and been the star in every instructor's optic. He'd been good, but what the frag? That was a bit rich. He'd been no Orion Pax. Sometimes, Prowl got the idea the Constructicons were making up fantasies to fill in the information they didn't have about him.
The longer they went without combining, the more elaborate the fantasies became. "So when you single-handedly fought Megatron at Sherma Bridge while Optimus Prime was down, how did you - "
"Stop." Prowl put a hand up to halt the words. He used the other to rub his chevron. "Stop right there. I wasn't even at Sherma's Bridge."
Scavenger stared at him. "Sure you were."
"No, I think I'd remember if I was."
"But Long Haul said he saw that you'd - "
Primus, but this was getting out of hand. "I was involved in the planning of the campaign. I was never in the battle."
"But Long Haul said - "
"Long Haul," he interrupted, crushing the bizarre hero worship in Scavenger's wide visor, "is talking scrap. He doesn't know anything, and he's making up details because you're apparently gullible enough to believe anything he tells you."
Scavenger heaved a sigh. "Oh, it's not that I really believed it," he confessed when the Autobot gave him a quizzical look. "It's just that you're so cool it kinda fit. And you were really the one responsible for why the Autobots won that area, so it's not that big a stretch to say you held Megatron off."
Prowl stared at him. He had no idea what to say to that. Being dumb and believing a fanciful tale was one thing, but willfully making up exaggerated stories because the Constructicons thought he was some larger-than-life main character swooping into their life story was - he didn't even know what that was. Autobots did that about Optimus Prime, sometimes. Thunderclash, all the time. Even Jazz had a mysterious swirl of rumor and speculation surrounding him. Prowl? Rewind had said snide things about him and tables, but that was - rather shamefully, Prowl admitted when he wasn't silently fuming - accurate information.
He didn't know how to deal with fans. The Constructicons were so openly adoring of everything he did, and they kept making up things they thought he'd done. It was baffling. He didn't have any sort of experience in handling admirers.
Fuel to the rescue. Prowl buried his face in the cube and kept drinking to avoid answering any other wild, vivid, and embarrassingly flattering questions about himself. His sudden interest in the fuel resulted in Scavenger offering his own cube, and Prowl accepted it just to keep his mouth full.
Access: repair nanite control program.
Program access granted.
Locate: unit Scavenger.
Unit Scavenger located.
His head came up in an abrupt jerk, optics sharp. Scavenger didn't change expressions, happy and contented as he watched Prowl guzzle the second cube. Inside the Autobot, an aching, empty pain clawed around his fuel pump and spark chamber. It hurt like the metal had become too weak to support itself. A weird pulling sensation heated the base of his fuel tanks, warm and liquid. Prowl blinked rapidly, the edge of the cube still between his lips.
Unit Scavenger: relocate. Relocation parameter: unit Prowl.
Command accepted.
The fuel spread thick over his tongue. He hadn't noticed until right this moment that his chemical receptors numbed on contact. He couldn't taste whatever was in the fuel.
Like a rank amateur, he'd stupidly accepted what the Constructicons handed him. Why had he believed they wouldn't harm him? They were some of the worst Decepticons out there, and he'd trusted them?
Too late now. He swallowed what was already in his mouth, feeling it slide in a cold slug down his tubes. It merged into the building heat in his tank, cool disappearing into comforting warmth. It felt good. Wrong, but good despite that.
"Poison?" he said when he had control of his voice. It came out a calm question, because it was the only conclusion. Panic wouldn't help.
Scavenger blinked, however, looking away from the empty cube to focus on his face. "Huh? No! I mean, uh, there's some mercury and lead, and I think Hook's been adding some real heavy metals to get your levels up quick, but nothing that's going to hurt you. You're not hurt, are you?" He wore the most earnest look as he asked, and Prowl shifted away when the Constructicon would have reached out to touch him, a physical check his body wanted and Prowl denied. "Hook can look you over…"
He frowned. "I'll speak with Ratchet."
Scavenger's face closed up. "You don't have to. You're fine."
Prowl studied him for a moment. The mech seemed uneasy with the idea, which probably meant it was a good idea. He also seemed jealous. "I'll make an appointment."
"Aw, come on, you know Hook's going to yell if you do." The prospect didn't thrill Scavenger, either. The Constructicons guarded his body from outsiders as if it were part of their own. While that made sense in a gestalt kind of way, Prowl didn't have to agree with it. "Look, we'll bring you more fuel. Whatever lump hit your tanks, it'll flush out in a couple hours, and we'll blend things more carefully from now on, honest!" Scavenger tried a smile, appealing to the strange hunger that he shouldn't even know about. "Three cubes from now on, okay?"
The craving hit Prowl between the shoulders like a physical force. For a moment, he struggled between alarm and need. His fuel gauge jumped, full one second and running on fumes the next, and he didn't know which was correct, which reading was true. He felt full but empty, an individual and yet a part missing the whole. Scavenger smiled at him: open, wanting, and eager for sips of contact, and in return, using Prowl's subconscious response for his own ends. If not for his moment of clarity, Prowl might not have noticed how he was being manipulated. Scavenger was slyly intelligent but underestimated because of his earnest personality.
"No more fuel," Prowl forced himself to say, and the Constructicon's mouth dropped open in dismay.
"But you have to - "
"No, I don't. I'll accept no more fuel from you."
The dismay deepened. "But if you don't intake it this way, how will you - "
"No more!" If he stayed, he'd succumb to the alien desire to step closer, following the pull of the mechanisms that belonged to Devastator's body, not his own. Prowl backed up, squared his shoulders, and turned to walk away from the hands extended toward him. The gestalt links cried for completion. A sick, queasy drain blurred his vision, but he focused on how his tanks felt warm and full, fuel processing plant humming away. He would not turn back.
It wasn't until he triumphantly closed his office door that he realized he should have demanded Scavenger tell him what it was they were feeding him. They must have been slipping something in. Possibly an addictive substance, and he felt a fool for not realizing sooner that's why his body wanted their company even though his mind felt nothing but distaste. Maybe some other things he didn't acknowledge, but mostly distaste.
He fully intended to speak with Ratchet about the issue, but Windblate's hologram of Earth and Optimus Prime's immediate response meant that Prowl had more pressing concerns. Namely, that the Autobots might return to Earth.
"Disguises are easy to come by," the Prime assured Arcee when she squinted at a picture. She didn't look impressed by all the water. "A change in altmode would do some of us good. We do tend to get pinched inside out-dated shapes."
Yeah, he caught that look. Subtlety was not Optimus Prime's best skill. Prowl stalked out of the meeting hall offended by the world in general. He couldn't even say why the pointed comment offended him. He was so riled up he wanted to punch something, and the short path to violence should have been strange but wasn't. The way he'd been feeling lately, his fist would likely go through a wall. He felt heavier, stronger, his armor reinforced and hydraulics operating under higher pressure.
He also felt slightly claustrophobic. Squeezed, almost. He'd never been the most imaginative person, so he assumed the crowded feeling came from the Constructicons. They were following him again, clustering outside the meetings and swarming at his heels. They buzzed like black flies around him, chattering and attempting to touch him whenever he didn't wave them away. They offered cubes of fuel, fresh and tempting as he smelled it, but they weren't surprised when he refused their offerings. They coaxed at him for a bit, but he retreated into his office and locked the door.
It was a victory of the petty sort. Prowl brooded at his desk and sipped a cube of regular fuel. It tasted thin. Flavorless, but with an aftertaste of rust that soured his mouth. Scraping the surface of his tongue against his chemical receptors didn't help, but it distracted him from the hollow hunger in his tanks. His fuel gauge ticked upward, hitting the halfway mark before subsiding. That alarmed him. Had he really been burning through fuel that fast? What was in those cubes the Constructicons had fed him? Or was the heavy, leaden feeling of his armor requiring that much more effort from his systems?
When he went looking for answers, Hook was waiting.
Prowl fixed him with a glare that wanted to be hard and came out vaguely puzzled. He'd intended to go pry answers about the fuel out of the Constructicons, but that had just been upstaged by a bizarre commcall. "I…just received a call from the repair crews."
The surgeon shrugged. "Sorry."
"I take it you know why they called."
"Well, yeah."
"And you're apologizing because..?"
"He got caught."
Prowl rubbed his chevron. "That's what I thought. Why was Long Haul eating," he said it still not quite believing it, "Flatline's medical bins?"
Hook smirked. "The same reason I ate all of Starscream's crowns." He slid a step closer.
One step, and then another, because Prowl was temporarily distracted by what he'd said. "You - Starscream has - no, what was I thinking, of course he has crowns." The Autobot shook his head and muttered, "Had. Heh. What I wouldn't give to see his face when he - wait." Prowl looked up and blinked at how close the surgeon was. "Why did you - "
Hook kissed him.
Access: repair nanite control program.
Program access granted.
Locate: unit Hook.
Unit Hook located.
No, Prowl kissed him, Devastator an overpowering presence surging into being below his spark chamber, around his mind, and the hunger splashed across his processor as if it were the only thing of importance. It was all he'd ever cared about. His tanks growled, churning empty fuel through a processing plant adjusted to higher metal content, higher octane, a harder burn. Aching hollows cored through vital parts of his body as an intense need flexed ports, primed jacks, opened relays, and crackled through circuit boards that wanted, had to have, starved for the comfort of their compatible slots. It had been so long, so long since they'd connected. The merge expanded into being between them and hovered, straining for completion.
He ripped his mouth away and gasped, optics blown wide and blue-white. "I - I - !"
"You," Hook purred, and a hand grasped his chin, tipping his head at the right angle. Prowl garbled a protest, but his hands clamped onto Hook's forearms when the surgeon pulled back.
They melded together.
Hot and angular, familiar plating stretched under his shaking hands. The rising charge tasted like his own, electricity transmitting through closed hatches. They stayed closed despite how Hook's fingers stroked, asking for admittance. No, no permission, this was too much, and yet Prowl couldn't pull away a second time. The gestalt links activated and charged, excited by the electric signature tantalizingly close to them. So very close to completion, but too far. They had to get closer. At that moment, if he could have, Prowl would have climbed inside Hook.
He pushed into the kiss, breathing through Hook's ventilation system. His own fans stopped, and every vent clamped shut. The air filled him: used, hot, and full of molecules and grit that his filters combed from the air like pollution, but it wasn't pollution. It was Hook. It was Hook's tongue everywhere inside his mouth, leaving a silvery film that coated his teeth and lips and chemical receptors in thick swipes. His vision glitched, and his fuel processing plant howled need. His body clamored for it. He swallowed and swallowed, and still he reached for more.
Unit Hook: relocate. Relocation parameter: unit Prowl.
Command accepted.
A moan dribbled from the corner of their mouths, the seal breaking for an agonizing second. They felt it as acutely as a broken link during combination, one of their own splitting off for a second. The hole sealed as Prowl yanked on the hands suddenly wrapped under the surgeon's helm cowl. Hook made a small sound of pain at the sharp bite, but he bent willingly enough into the rough handling. His tongue retreated, allowing the Autobot's aggressive advance, and Prowl lapped at the bleeding wound left undefended. Fuel, repair nanites, and a dense slurry of repair materials sent out from Hook's self-repair storage spilled into his mouth, and Prowl's engine downshifted into a needy snarl.
The Constructicon dropped down onto one knee, kneeling so his head turned up. That was all the encouragement Prowl needed. He bore down on the surgeon, sucking on the wound and the tongue offered up to his teeth and hunger. He couldn't process why or what. The archive that did and didn't belong inside him flung files into the forefront of his mind, blinding him to everything but the driving need to consume, assimilate, and be.
He was Devastator, he was Prowl, and although the part of him currently kneeling at his feet was not physically joined to his screaming gestalt links, it joined him nonetheless. Part of him, part of him -
Command accepted.
Command accepted.
Command accepted.
He had never kissed anyone like this, not this hard nor this passionately. Not this way, not quite. Prowl shut off his optics and blotted out the memory of a smooth face mask under his lips. He didn't want to remember that. Thankfully, he didn't have to. Hook's mouth moved against his own, and he buried himself in the sensation, licking into the body that wasn't his, not yet, but would be, and Hook's tongue painted another thick layer of slurry around the inside of his mouth.
Prowl swallowed it down. He couldn't taste it, but the texture reminded him of doctored fuel, Mixmaster's altered canisters of nonessentials, the tang that wasn't a taste but something he absolutely had to have. Hook backed off just enough to interrupt, pushing Prowl's tongue of his mouth far enough to bring his teeth hard together. He bit the inside of his own lip, and a fresh wave of fuel and self swept across Prowl's tongue as Hook immediately resumed where they'd left off.
His optics burst online, horrified bright blue looking into contented dark red. "You…" Hook's ventilation system had been doing twice the load. Prowl had to manually restart his own stalled fans, forcing a system reboot to unfreeze processor threads. The air burned, it felt so cold. "Get away from me!"
The Constructicon didn't move. He simply stayed kneeling, arms falling to his sides as Prowl stumbled back. The Autobot repeatedly wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, optics wide in shock, but too late.
"May I check integration?" Hook asked without moving.
After that kiss, the courtesy of asking permission struck Prowl dumb. Anger wouldn't form. It fell apart in his head, muted by the satisfaction filling his tanks and the buzzing warmth of gestalt mechanisms slowly winding down. He couldn't manage to scrape together hate, much less rage. The best he could do was grouchy discontent, and he tried not to think it was because one had become two. His body didn't like ending that pseudo-merge.
"What did you put into me?" he asked at last, strangely calm.
Hook's abused mouth twisted. "Don't be an idiot. You know exactly what just happened."
Prowl stared down at him. The worst part was that he did.
No, the worst part was seeing the ragged trail of pink dripping from Hook's lip and wanting to duck down to lick it up.
The surgeon smirked, deliberately cracking the delicate metal scab his repair nanites had constructed. Prowl's hands twitched. Hook tipped his head back to lengthen the pink trail down his neck instead of letting it drip to the floor, and the Autobot's vents closed to narrow openings. They hissed. Prowl reached for control.
"This is what you wanted," Hook reminded him, and Prowl wanted to deny it.
Devastator stirred, however, and the Autobot turned to flee at a dignified walk, shaken down to his struts by what he couldn't quite piece together. It didn't form a complete picture in his head, but the fragments were there. Retreat. He had to retreat, regroup, and - hide. He couldn't stay in his office forever, or teleport in and out of meetings, but he could give it a good try. It was safer than the alternative.
He still didn't understand. His lack of understanding confused him, as if he knew that he should know what was going on but kept running headfirst into a blockage in his thoughts. It frustrated him.
Meanwhile, fuel continued to taste wrong. It felt like nothing in his mouth. He was drinking three times as much, now, but his body felt steadily weaker as the days passed. He felt heavier, but an unhealthy heavier as if he'd weakened. His limbs felt too heavy for him to lift. His helm nodded forward if he didn't think about keeping his neck straight. The strength that had been building around his joints and gears made him clumsy, half-finished work deep in his chassis underfueled and left searching for sources.
Every few days, the Constructicons would locate his latest hide-out. They didn't invade his office, but he tried to lose any trackers between office and his latest room to crash in. Iacon was enough of a wreck that there were plenty of abandoned buildings to recharge in. They didn't do more than rustle outside the door, but he knew when they'd found him because a cube of thick energon would be left outside.
It wasn't just energon. It was never only fuel or additives for taste. It was a suspension of many things, things typically only found inside another Cybertronian, and he silently left the cubes where they sat when he found them.
If it had been a particularly frustrating day and they found his hide-out before he went into recharge, he wouldn't relocate that night. He would return to find a cube, maybe two, outside the door, and sometimes - just sometimes - he'd bring it inside with him. He didn't drink it. He just cradled it in his hands and peeled back a corner. The smell woke Devastator, and Prowl lay on the recharge slab dreaming a titan's thoughts.
Access: repair nanite control program.
Program access granted.
Locate: unit Long Haul.
Unit Long Haul located.
He rolled the lid back onto the cube and put it outside the door again. The command pulsed in the gestalt links under his armor, unaccepted. He didn't understand it. He didn't like it. He accepted that he had, as Devastator and himself and the Constructicons joined as one, made the best choice available at the time. That didn't mean he had to accept this.
In the morning, a fresh cube waited.
Unit Bonecrusher located.
In the morning, he moved his few belongings to a new room and went on with his life. Cybertron didn't pause because of the internal happenings of one combiner team.
The craving got so bad that he finally went to Fixit. He couldn't go to Ratchet, not for this. The Autobot CMO would insist on a full spectrum of scans and health checks, not just a quick check of something Prowl already half-knew.
Fixit gave him a profoundly unsettled look when Prowl stepped off the scale. "You have a third again your previously recorded mass."
He didn't flinch. The news was almost expected. Now the only question was, "Was my file last updated before or after Devastator happened?"
The medic checked, but it was a formality. "I updated the file myself during the quick check I did of you right after you tore yourself loose. Whatever this is, it's not a transformation compatibility upgrade for the gestalt technology. This is new accumulation." He set his datapad aside and shook his head, troubled. "Unless the mechanisms themselves are upgrading? May I inspect the - "
"No."
Fixit sighed. "I didn't think you'd let me."
Prowl got out the makeshift clinic soon after. What he'd suspected had been confirmed: the Constructicons were changing him. Adapting him. Donating nanites, metal, and energy to shoring up his comparatively flimsy body to meet their standards. Yes, his armor felt thicker, his struts stronger, his cables wirier. They probably were. It made so much sense in the context of a group that he couldn't even argue against the logic. One weak member could cripple a unit, and Devastator indecipherable thoughts had enough of Prowl's hard logic woven through them that the Autobot could see how the decision might have been made.
But he didn't know, not for sure. It could all be a trick. It could.
The more he thought about it, the weaker he felt. His body felt incomplete. His fuel processing plant complained.
It grew harder to reject the cubes.
Unit Hook located.
Unit Mixmaster located.
He was unbelievably hungry, craving something that was actually someone. Desire close to compulsion begged for the fuel. Repair nanites flung open program access, asking for unit relocation with a persistence that gnawed at the base of his tanks. The command remained unaccepted.
Prowl was sorting through Cosmos' scans of Earth vehicles when Scavenger opened his office door. He looked up and wished he felt surprised.
The Constructicon closed the door and leaned back against it, crossing his arms as he stared his reluctant sixth gestaltmate down. After a couple minutes, he shrugged and pushed off the door. "Well, what you going to do, boss?" He rolled forward to stand on the other side of the desk, fidgeting slightly. "We're just trying to help."
The sleek, aerodynamic police cars he'd favored during the last trip to Earth had been pushed aside. Prowl looked down at the hulking, hefty bruiser vehicles that fit his new specs. They were ugly with the ugliness of necessity over choice. Through the Constructicons' optics, his attractiveness hadn't changed, but his speed had been traded for power, his streamlined hood exchanged for brute force. He barely fit in his current altmode. He didn't like to admit that, but he also hadn't attempted to transform in longer than he cared to think about. He'd probably pop his doors if he tried.
"Hey there, pudgy!" someone from Blurr's obnoxious bar rebuilding group had catcalled the last time he walked through Iacon, and Prowl had wanted to beat the scrap out of the cogsucker.
It wasn't even his violence. The urge felt as ugly and imposed as the bulk of his next altmode. For every bit of his gestaltmates he absorbed, his defaults had accepted a fraction more. His processors had been modified.
Scavenger's hands jittered over the edge of his desk, searching for a grip. Prowl watched them, wondering.
Rather than answer the question hanging between them, the Autobot rose and walked around the desk. Scavenger watched him, worried, but Prowl only eased between desk and Constructicon. Green hands sprang off the desk and hovered, uncertain of their welcome. A grim, unamused smile pulled at Prowl's mouth. He'd trained his limits into them even as they pushed their compromises on him.
He hitched his hip up to sit on the desk as he caught one green hand, then the other. Slowly, thoughtfully, he spread his knees wide and pulled the Decepticon forward, between his thighs. His heels hooked around Scavenger's knees, buckling them and almost sending the Constructicon crashing down on top of him.
Scavenger's mouth opened in an astonished 'O'. "Prowl, I, um. You know what's going to happen. I kind of - it's a gestalt protocol demand on us just as much as you."
It was almost sweet of him to give a warning. The Constructicons were more the type to take advantage of Devastator's subconscious agreement and the command waiting for acceptance inside Prowl's mind, but that didn't mean they'd come back to awareness after the merge knowing exactly what was going on. Maybe they were disturbed by what they had to do. Maybe it was a compulsion as strange to them as it was to Prowl.
Prowl snorted air out his vents in disgust and reached up to pull Scavenger's face down to his own.
The mech didn't fight him.
Logic dictated that Prowl not hold himself above sacrifice. His plans didn't exclude using even himself as a weapon.
Devastator had formed on the battlefield, a conglomerate of one and all, Constructicons and Prowl. They hadn't had choice, just as he didn't right now. None of them did, not really, not when the choice was to stop resisting now or give in later. The Constructicons were there, they were willing, and they were, in their own awful way, helping him.
Something had started in the last merge. Bitter and resigned, Prowl let it happen.
[* * * * *]
[A/N: All this just to explain the comments on Prowl's weight gain.]