A/N:…Why do Bumblebee's little interruptions continue to be the highlight of my day? He's just such a freakin' PUNK! But god, Prowl is so… awkward and miserable. He breaks my wee heart!

Also, I do not condone stalking and technically Lockdown is stalking Prowl. But… not really. The man's just hideously determined, quite clever, thinks Prowl is funny as hell (in a bad way) and loves to provoke him, and knows he's not gonna get the kid to talk to him any other way. So… now you know both sides XD

PS: Prowl doesn't go to another Laundromat because a) he's granted wash-tokens as a part of his lease for that particular Laundromat because the old factory is ghetto and they know they ghetto and b) he's a prideful little bugger. His Zen-schedule CANNOT BE CORRUPTED, laundry must continue every Thursday at 5!

Also, hehe. Just… hehe. A cameo! Now I'm thinking Anicon's alt-mode is a freaking washing machine… It fits. Don't lie.

Definition of Harassment

It was a pity that doing laundry wasn't a legal offense.

Dirty clothes themselves were rather mundane and expected, but Laundromats were a superbly effective tool—or trap—that Prowl couldn't even begin to fathom until he went to do laundry the next week… and nearly dropped his basket at the sight of Lockdown folding washed-out clothes across the room, equipped with discount bleach and a goading smile. The young man almost turned tail and walked out, but he had already caught the challenge, clear as though it were tattooed on the other's face alongside the black claws: the dare to run away. Prowl was no such wilting creature. Mustering up a chilly aura (with a brusque engagement of his Zen glands, no doubt), Prowl set his jaw and strode to the first open machine and did his damn business.

Within minutes, a wary circle (mirroring Lockdown's own tattoo- and muscle-earned 'wide berth') had cleared around him and Lockdown invaded it, time and time and time again.

"You got a quarter?"

"No."

"Got a minute, then?"

"This is the last time I will say this politely. Leave me alone."

Again and again, they ran in circles, the other man's smug, unflappable rhythm nearly sending him off the handle more than once. Laundry time, formerly an escape, had become an hour and a half of torture with the (alleged) dragracer lurking in his periphery with an empty detergent cup and an equally empty, smirking question on his lips. It was a complex shame that Prowl's pride was so colossal: too overwhelming, at the least, to submit an official report of an invasive old man following him around—or one who at least 'happened' to do laundry at the same place as he did and refused to have his hopes for conversation quelled.

The man had no boundaries. He took no hints.

Prowl, who lived his life in subtlety and nonverbal or minimalist communication, was shocked at the stony direct commands the racer managed to pass by with a flick of his mammoth hands and several more seconds of unwavering eye-contact. Then that… grin. He was toying with the young officer, surely: otherwise, he wouldn't reek of that filthy, rooting-pig-style enjoyment, but his casual abuse didn't stop there. One Thursday (his third, he had been dealing with this for three consecutive weeks) Prowl drifted off to the bathroom. Already well acquainted with the rogue's lack of decency, he stopped and asked an older woman to please keep an eye on his belongings while he used the restroom? She would.

Obviously he hadn't taken into account the fact that any sane woman with an ounce of self-preservation wouldn't be willing to talk down a six-foot-three, tattoo-marred skin-head for sake of a cellphone, even if in the anonymous protection of a public facility. He came out of the bathroom to find Lockdown with his mobile phone angled his gigantic hands, flicking through something with a look of concentration. Brain once again spattering the inside of his skull with a sick pop, Prowl stormed up and snatched it out of his hands, but it was too late.

"Is it four-three-nine-seven-five-five-five, or…? Is that three fives at the end?"

Prowl could only gape. Lockdown chuckled, saluted him and creaked off in his too-tight jeans to swap his whites to the dryer. Then he just… did his laundry. Just. Like. Always.

Upon returning home, the first thing Prowl did was try to dig the brute's number out of the afore-flaunted trash can (earning himself a very, very odd look from Bulkhead when the young man came by to dump out some of his paint water), fail miserably because trash day was last-last Tuesday, wish that he had kept it just so he could block the other first, run and roll around in his bed at how utterly immature he was being and how much this was truly bothering him, then sulk for the rest of the day while waiting for the anvil to fall on his head.

Just like the first time he showed up in the Laundromat, the fact that the scoundrel had his number was more a source of wrenching anxiety than what Lockdown actually did with it: fully tensed and prepared for vile, provocative drunk-dialing at two am, Prowl was nearly insane by the time, three days later, Lockdown texted him at a healthy, normal five pm.

--you ever go 2 bars or was that jst a fluke?

It seemed almost coy, coming from a stalker. Prowl, vicious with stress, amused himself (in a too-brief, snarling way) by mentally picking apart the text for incorrect grammar or spelling errors or just plain failure, then blocked the number so fast it surely made Lockdown's damn mechanical hand fritz on the other end.

The only flaw in his plan? The racer had a scrambler. Two days later, Prowl got another text. From another number. In… Florida?

--got your book tea kid

After a brief inventory of his impeccably arranged room, he realized he had forgotten his book at the Laundromat. Understandable: once he got to a certain stage of abuse (say, the point that his cell-phone was stolen and rifled through), he was nearly hysterical to get out of the place before he blew up at the man in public. That led to… not double-checking the contents of his laundry basket. Fuming, he wrote off the book as a loss, blocked that number and the next one after that. Then he blocked the next one, but it was to no avail.

Regardless of his other excesses, Lockdown was an efficient criminal. He never called, perhaps because, while stubborn, he wasn't stupid and he knew if he did so he would be hung up on immediately. He only dropped the odd thought every so often. The only way Prowl even knew it was Lockdown was a) no one else texted him and b) it was just obvious.

The next Dreaded Thursday, Prowl was approached once again--but not by his resident albino tormentor.

"Do you… know that man?"

Prowl looked up from his new book, blinking blankly. Wary as he was of anyone approaching him at all, the voice, meek and mild, simply wasn't Lockdown's gravel-in-a-bucket growl. Instead, a boy—young man—was standing in front of him and a little to the left, as though he didn't dare fully invade Prowl's visual field. In reality, his visitor had been there for weeks, loitering in the back of the building with his fresh polo shirts and khakis, but he was so pale he had blended seamlessly into the glossy white curvatures of the Laundromat environment. He smiled nervously.

"H-hi. I just—it seems like he's… bothering you."

"Grievously," Prowl answered after a moment, then inspected him. Sharp-looking clothes, slender build, perhaps a few years younger than himself. The young man waited attentively, short, somewhat foppish white-blond hair glowing in the slanting sunbars. "Do not concern yourself. He will tire of it."

"Well, I—I mean, that's… if he's bothering you like that, we could tell the police?"

"They are already well-informed," he said dryly and went back to his book without another word. Seconds passed. They were shuffling, staring seconds, unbeknownst to text-absorbed Prowl, but seconds nonetheless. Then:

"I'm Anicon."

Prowl looked up again, snapped out of the orderly, textured world of his current paragraph; somewhat startled that the other hadn't wandered off as implied or encouraged. Why would he stay? Forced by the awkward silence and the boy's big expectant eyes, he offered his hand.

"Prowl."

He shook the other's small hand, which 'Anicon' then stuck in his pockets. He smiled.

"Good, um… good choice."

"Concerning?" Prowl asked blankly.

"Hemingway," the other mumbled, blue eyes flickering off into some corner. "The Sun Also Rises' is my favorite. It's wonderful."

"Yes," Prowl said insightfully after a moment, unable to do more than stare at this incomprehensible creature trying to approach him with literature of all things while simultaneously badgering him away from his books. Anicon squirmed under his scrutiny, finally chuckling and fiddling with his hair.

"So do you… do you come here, ah, often?" he joked, face pinkening pathetically--and then the proverbial light bulb went off in Prowl's head.

He knew there was something different about this boy: something in the careful fidgeting and the timidity (uncalled for, as Prowl wasn't imposing simply off-putting) and the warm weight of his attention. His soft-mouth, shy-eyed interest. None of that impartial, flippant masculine banter here: this was not a brash yellow Bumblebee breed of male but a wilting, coy specimen, unused to sunlight and alcohol and football.

The aforementioned light bulb, thankfully, was also connected to a rusty mental device called the Gaydar. It lit up with a disused and rather alarmed creak, synthesized all the symptoms and Prowl finally, finally realized he was being flirted with. By a young man. In a Laundromat. Via Hemmingway.

He blinked. Anicon, newcomer and twice as pink and looking as though he didn't know whether to turn tail and run or stay and fidget, blinked back. Stalling, Prowl took to staring at some framed postcard (yellow-spattered San Francisco under a purple sky) across the Laundromat, not knowing what precisely to do to chase male pursuers off—because if he ever thought about it (and he didn't), he wasn't gay.

Rather, of course he wasn't gay. He wasn't… anything. He preferred the term asexual if it was ever talked about (which it wasn't), because anybody who met him took one look at his disinterested sterility and uptight conduct and automatically couldn't see him naked... or at all indecent or sweating in a ridiculous position, or anything of the uncontrolled panting undignified sort.

His surgical non-involvement was assumed. People—observant people who knew him—acted accordingly. They never tried and he never had to decline. It was a self-perpetuating cycle of silence, certainly, but it worked. His life was much less awkward for it.

Then there were those who couldn't imagine a life unruled by the dumb inarticulate urges of genitalia. Bumblebee, for example, and occasionally Ratchet, who had once told him to go out and get himself screwed—or perhaps that was more incorrectly phrased 'disrespectful young people' insult than order. Still, they urged him. They pressed at him, goaded him to 'get a girl' and offered the occasional double pity-date: nothing more than shallow, eye-contact-molested farce of a conversation and a fifty-dollar loss. In some ways, it was though he had never escaped high school--

Refocusing, Prowl cleared his throat and said something vague and slightly dismissive, resettling his bookmark and thumbing the pages. Far from taking his colossal nonverbal hints, the young man moved closer and started making conversation with new vigor. Lamentable. Prowl was beginning to go a little insane at the inadequacy of his most prized form of communication, but it all came down to the fact that most plebeians seemed to be unaware of the social-cue language as a whole, or simply didn't know how to use their eyes. The encounter proceeded.

Anicon, apparently, was a student at the University of Detroit Mercy and majoring in botany. His father was a businessman, hastily skipped over. He admired law enforcers and blushed frequently. Uncomfortable in a way he didn't see fit to vocalize, Prowl nodded and murmured along with his precious book in hand, so wrapped up in his current conundrum that he nearly forgot about the other threat lurking out of sight.

But of course, it was a Thursday and it was the Burgundy Bird Laundromat—which was nothing more than a coy synonym for 'Personal Hell', apparently.

Prowl felt his approach before he saw it. Striding across the white floor, thumbs hooked indolently in his thread-bare pockets, Lockdown advanced like a storm cloud, black pressure and acidic tingles included. The 'ninjacop' tensed, swamped with the foreboding factor of a pedestrian situated between their messy, immature feud—or the possibility that the racer would somehow make gruesome use of his new 'angle' and embarrass him further. Anicon noticed his paralysis: he looked over and caught sight of the brute, unreal with his dark clothes and sharp tattoos among all the busy quiet housewives and college students. The young man's pretty face bleached.

Anicon was roughly half the size of Lockdown and gazed at the older man as though he'd never seen a piercing, much less a vicious old dragster with a missing tooth and (although he didn't know) a mechanical hand. It was altogether surprising, then, what happened next. When Lockdown got within distance and Prowl drew breath to fend him off as his gut turned to stone, Anicon actually slid off the washing machine and straightened, hastily balling his hands into fists. Prowl's mouth popped open.

"Excuse me." He glared at the huge—underline huge—man, neck already a woeful shade of rose. "Do you n-need something?"

"Actually, yeah. Was gonna ask your friend somethin'," Lockdown answered after a slow, staring second, red eyes drifting to find Prowl's as if to say, where did you find this snot rag guard dog? Prowl convulsively hunched and half hid his face, paralyzed by the other's sly amusement because he knew where it was going because Anicon was drawing breath--

"Then be quick about it," he snapped shrilly. Prowl, retracting his arm before he reached out and grabbed for the other young man, bit his lip and felt his heart sink and crash on the planes of his stone gut. The little scientist took another quivering breath and launched off again, deadly solemn. "And in the f—um, you should really quit bothering him. I can s-see that he isn't--I would appreciate it if you would leave us--h-him--alone. Now."

Being as the quintessential Laundromat was possibly one of the quietest places on the planet when not interrupted by the advances of vagabonds or well-meaning but unwanted intellectuals, the interaction of those two toxic forces couldn't have possibly gone unnoticed among the other laundering denizens of Detroit. For a long, long moment, every eye in the building was focused on them and, consequently, Prowl. The ninja's insides twisted into nauseated knots, ears burning as he waited for Lockdown's reaction.

He didn't disappoint.

Taking full advantage of the ringing silence, Lockdown suddenly erupted into a loud, long laugh: it practically overwhelmed the limited white confines of the building, setting everyone to stare at each other. It was only a few seconds worth of mirth, but it was enough; then he stepped forward—certainly on purpose, certainly with an added muscle-taut lunge—and Anicon jerked back with a strangled noise, face bright pink. His back bumped against a washer; Lockdown smirked at him from a healthy five-foot distance and the young man looked down, exhaling shakily. Lockdown turned his attention to Prowl with another step and his smirk only widened alongside a little shake of his head.

Prowl, mortified, watched wordlessly as the older man reached back and pried something out of his back pocket, only to hand him the anthology he had left there the week before.

"Just gonna fetch you your book back, kid," he rumbled lightly, then gestured to the noble brown-bound collection. "Though I gotta say, bad taste. Couldn't get past the first few bits."

Prowl's mouth stayed open until Lockdown trundled back to his own washer, looking back with an amused, dry expression before simply continuing his business. The young man's gaze drifted down to the book, world whiting out.

"I'm… sorry. That didn't—I didn't mean it to come out like that. H-he should leave you be."

The apology, faint and squeezed, made him look up at the other young man for a moment. He took in Anicon's earnest, pink face, then shook his head.

"Please leave."

"Wh—I'm sorry?"

"Please," he murmured miserably, long, fine-boned face bowed toward his book. "I want to read."

It was incredible, that an hour and a half could produce so much chaos.

Even after four Thursdays of it, Prowl never imagined it would get this bad… or that he would be so susceptible to such immature, attention-seeking tomfoolery. Harassment. Add to that the fact that he was technically searching for the man every night and would have cherished encountering him in one environment and dreaded him in every other—it was impossible to keep his head on straight sometimes. Even his practice failed to offer him solace.

Instead of his 'soothing' daily rituals drowning out the disturbance and enfolding him in structured peace, they only seemed to exaggerate it and turn his whole life on its end. Lockdown, dense and inflammatory, was the only thing worthy of notice in an endless rotation of patrol, lunch, meditation, reading and so on, even with new, equally miserable distractions materializing at home… such as Bumblebee booby-trapping his computer with very explicit, very gay pornography. He'd actually cried out upon seeing the fourth horrific installment in full 1280x800 glory on his desktop, flinging his hands in front of his eyes: the answering cackle further down the hallway was all the proof he needed to storm out and give the teen a good shake and a better talking-to.

Bee, of course, ran like the dickens as soon as he heard footsteps and it escalated to put boiling acid to shame. The adrenaline-fueled, arms-tucked-close, sharp-corner chase around the old factory actually made the emotionally besieged officer feel better: it got him sweating and brought his anger rocketing to the surface, because his housemate was a fast little smear when he was (by that time) in fear for his life. Unfortunately, his very prey-like stumbles and gasps resulted in the dooming release of Prowl's inner ninja-wolf… who only heeled when sated.

He ended up reversing track, surprising Bumblebee around a corner. The teenager literally shrieked and scrabbled backwards, but Prowl tripped him and wrestled him into a twist-hold, promptly and firmly jabbing his knee into the teen's narrow back. Young face crammed against the concrete after the sharp impact, 'BB' needed little more than a quietly poisonous "That was very disrespectful" before he was almost whining and crying his apologies, arching into the hold to keep it from hurting him, round face pink as a posie. First pressing him into the concrete to made the information settle, Prowl then released him, leaving the scrub to limp back to his room with his tail between his asphalt-smeared legs and his idea of 'acceptable prank' aching from a solid redefinition.

Satisfied down to his bones, Prowl got to his feet and looked up to see Ratchet eyeing him from the garage, but the old veteran only shook his head and went back to washing the equally old, out-of-commission emergency vehicle he called his own. Prowl had a sneaking feeling that it was only because the old man understood the urge to discipline Bumblebee (and believed that everyone needed to get knocked around once in a while and he couldn't catch the little brat himself) that he was getting away with the overt act of bullying… but it was no wonder his housemates thought he had been acting odd lately. By any and all definitions, he was.

Perhaps that explained why one day, after five solid weeks of being stalked and stared at and texted, Prowl decided to do something about it all. It was the opposite of what he should have done, most certainly, but he was at the end of his rope and this illogical behavior simply couldn't continue. The man had to be shooting for something, a goal, that Prowl had yet to even acknowledge: part of his pain stemmed from the fact he had yet to acknowledge the entire debacle was happening at all. So he finally… agreed.

"What do I have to do?"

It wasn't the wisest question to ask, but he also knew that the strange older man had the tiniest bit of tact—or style disguised as tact. The question, while open, demanded a straightforward answer and that was what Prowl needed: to get that answer and proceed to tear it up and work it down to something he could swallow. Put this 'experience' into brackets, give it boundaries.

But of course, Lockdown had to draw it out.

"For what?" he asked indolently, sitting on the washer next to his with a car magazine and a paint-speckled mug of tar-black coffee—the latter far too close to Prowl's freshly-washed whites.

"To get you to leave me be," the officer answered icily.

He didn't need to lower his voice. The Laundromat's normal occupants either congregated at the other end of the room or had stopped coming altogether on Thursday at five pm: the two, unfortunately and understandably, were always quite alone. Lockdown just looked at him, a combination of pseudo-hurt and amusement layering his beastly face as thick and smug as icing. Prowl recollected himself and forced his hackles up, raising a finger and hissing, "I am giving you a chance to end this cleanly and cease your campaign before I press charges. Under my personal rights and any conditions therein, this could easily be qualified as harassm—"

"'Kay, Primus, I give. Can't fight the jargon," Lockdown huffed, seeming genuinely irked at the reappearance of the young man's frigid language. He shook his head and passed his (bad) hand over his tattooed skull, making Prowl's nose wrinkle from a now-common rush of musky cologne and, today, coffee. "Fine. You'n me. Your choice of place, after six, food involved--and no less than two hours."

…Oh Primus.

It could not possibly be. He couldn't say what he expected—perhaps a foul and explicit proposal and a comfortingly immediate refusal, an offense tangible enough to seek a lawful solution or just a joke--but it was certainly not that. And certainly not… stated so cleanly by a born negotiator.

"What?" Prowl hissed, eyes wide.

"Just wanna hang out. Talk some."

Lockdown guzzled down the appalled look on the young man's narrow face with a smarmy grin, knowing, from his look, how very like a lame teenager he sounded, plying the prissy girl of his choice on a not-really-date. Then he grinned, flicking Prowl's chest.

"Social call. Ain't a crime—n'if it were, I'd need you round anyways. Keep me in check, y'know," he said and winked. "Might just be rumor, but I hear I get up to some pretty crazy shit at night. Nothin' you'd be interested in, though."

It was then that Prowl knew: his lack of evidence on this man (alongside his pathetic almost-puns) was going to be the death of his sanity. The young officer ended up gathering up his thankfully-clean clothes and storming out in a hopeless huff, beyond offended and, most importantly, stunned. He needed to get into the closed environment of his room and think, and get out from under those appraising reddish eyes.

Two hours later, things didn't make much more sense.

He wanted to end it, no doubt. Desperately. But there was, after all, the chance Lockdown could be lying. There were dozens of horrible and unwanted scenarios that could play out when alone with the man for a two-hour period—two hours wasn't long, but it was enough. Then there was the fact of what the man was, or how it would look to be seen alone with him especially after Bumblebee falsely (but with great grandeur) 'outed' him to the whole house. The entire situation was beyond lamentable and didn't seem any better laying face-up on his rock-hard, cream-sheeted bed, but the lure of the obnoxious scoundrel leaving him alone…

Had he really attempted to read some of the anthology?

His cellphone beeped three times, making his tired heart sink. Inwardly groaning (because he didn't even have the Zen-focus to ignore such earthly tortures), he reached for it with heavy hands, slapping down, grabbing and flipping it open. It was a new number, of course, but the green-on-black text was unmistakable.

--I mean it tea kid. you n me no funny business. scouts honor

Prowl, surely only because he was exhausted and disheartened and frazzled to death, had to stall at that. His was a simple enough request, really, and much more palatable when it wasn't being badgered out of him in public. The strange, middle-aged rascal wanted a civil conversation from him, then nothing more. No more harassment, no more contact; Lockdown's curiosity would be satisfied (or his lechery formally apprehended) and his own life would be restored to normal. It was also the second time Lockdown had promised a lack of 'funny business'—and hadn't he upheld that promise the first time, when Prowl was defenseless on his couch?

Letting his cellphone tumble out of his hands and hit the floor, Prowl lay back into his pillows, thoroughly exhausted, and fell asleep in a series of jerks and exhalations, wondering how on earth it became so easy to rationalize surrender to a deviant and his twisted whims when his personal shields had lowered far enough to let all the weird little bike-repairing kindnesses in and all he wanted to do was sleep.

Things would seem more logical in the evening. The road always helped him think. He only hoped he wouldn't run into Lockdown before he'd reached a decision—or the end of his patrol.