Title: Foreman
Warning: Coercion via forcible gestalt bonding and power dynamics. Manipulation. Vague references to rape. Donuts. Spoilers for RiD, MTMTE, and Dark Cybertron. If you can't take it, don't read it.
Rating: PG-13
Continuity: IDW, Robots in Disguise
Characters: Prowl, Constructicons
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): Kinkmeme prompt and Shibara. She keeps drawing things. Nothing new here, just cleaning up the fic a bit. Prompt: Prowl/Constructicons - "cliche"
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Part Seven
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The only way this could be more cliché was if they'd had one blanket during a blizzard.
He'd have been preferred that. Prowl could withstand freezing temperatures on his own and wouldn't have minded leaving the Constructicon to die. Unfortunately, he could not withstand several tons of collapsed building the same way.
It had come down on top of him. The ground had shaken, and the air itself had vibrated as a rolling roar almost too low to hear had preceded tons of crumbling metal structure heading right for him. The angle had been all wrong, and he hadn't taken more than two steps before realizing he couldn't outrun it. The workers had shouted, and he'd braced himself, furious at the futility but despairing because there were no options, he was out of options, the building was coming down -
And the gestalt bond had lit up in panic and a fierce sense of focus. A second later, the wreckage close enough the air rushing before it scoured his plating, a whirling impact knocked him sideways. Prowl had instinctively curled into a tight ball right as the world pounded down upon him.
Now…this. Trapped under wreckage, his body pressed to his savior's, unable to escape. It was enough to make a mech wish for a blizzard.
Prowl wanted to squirm, but he'd already scanned their tiny pocket of open space. There was nowhere to squirm to. Moving would serve no purpose and possibly destabilize the precarious balance of the building girders holding the wreckage at bay. Besides which, the Constructicon crouched over him would enjoy it too much. Knowing that, Prowl could not allow himself to squirm.
Air vented hot against the back of his neck, and Prowl ruthlessly cut power to his hip actuators. He would. Not. Squirm.
Long Haul's helm vents blew down on him again in harsh, heavy, panting breaths as the rubble pressed into the Constructicon's back. Gravity crushed them both into the ground, held back from smashing them flat by the intersection to two building spars directly across Long Haul's shoulders. It had been a last second rescue made possible by a prediction only Bonecrusher could have made as he saw the slow, inevitable fall of the wreckage coming down on Prowl. The demolitionist had an intrinsic understanding of the intersection of construction and destruction. It'd been his focus Prowl had felt spike through the bond.
That intuition had saved his life. Long Haul's reckless sprint to tackle him deserved equal credit. Prowl's frame didn't have the strength to hold up under the weight that had come down on them, but Long Haul's did. Elbows locked, arms lined up under his shoulders like loadbearing supports for the building above them, Long Haul held the building on his back. The hands on either side of Prowl's forearms were braced wide, unable to shift more than the fingers. The inside of his thighs pressed to the outside of Prowl's, but Long Haul didn't take advantage of their position. His legs didn't move. They were locked solid, knees digging into the ground and feet bracing them in place.
Prowl sprawled on his front to make room for his back-mounted doors between them, arms ahead of himself and knees drawn up under him to allow for his prominent chest. The awkward position pressed Long Haul's chest between his doors and all but glued their lower halves together. It was not a comfortable position. An inordinate amount of foreign plating pressed to his own, and it felt horribly familiar in a way he'd been attempting to forget. Prowl's dormant gestalt links pinged eager queries at him.
He denied them. No, this wasn't the prelude to a combine. This was a prelude to nothing, thank you very much. Long Haul crouched over him in this horribly intimate position because building girders lay flat across his back. That was the only reason. End of story.
It explained why Long Haul had turned their tiny shelter into a furnace, too. He billowed heat, but Prowl could feel mechanisms straining within the Constructicon's chassis. The whirring fans were obviously from hard labor. A perfectly logical explanation, and one that Prowl chose to believe. Long Haul stoically took the weight bearing down on them, arms faintly shaking on either side of the Autobot. Prowl breathed deep and waited, forcing himself to stay patient.
Long Haul ducked his head further as the wreckage shifted, and Prowl grimaced as the slight motion shielded his own helm from a patter of sharp rubble. "Thank you," he bit out, because he was grateful, and he understood that he'd been saved, but ugh.
"No problem."
The fitful static from their commlines broke into words as someone on the other side tried to reach them again. *On—-r way! We'll ha—dig y—-t, but hang tigh—*
"Understood," he said curtly into his comm. pick-up. It didn't matter if his transmission got through. No one would abandon the rescue attempt, not with four worried Constructicons free to pester the dig team. Prowl knew they'd find him.
It unsettled him a little how reassuring he found that.
"What, they think we're going to run away?" muttered against the back of his neck, and Prowl's doors shuddered at the combination of a hot rush of air and angry words. Combat protocols bypassed new gestalt programming, spinning up ready to fight. Years of war had taught him what to expect from a large Decepticon close quarters.
His reaction didn't go unnoticed. Around the edges of his spark, in the nebulous area where his awareness once ended, five minds drew back. A sense of hesitation brushed across him as though they were passing his wariness around asking each other what they'd done. Realization dawned, and a rough-edged projection of peace swiftly followed. Long Haul's engine accelerated from a stressed idle to a rumbling purr that vibrated down into Prowl. The gestalt program pinged him insistently, targeting his own cylinder cycles. It wanted him to sync with Long Haul.
It took him a minute to understand that the Constructicons were trying to soothe him. His doors tucked in close. No. Just…no.
Long Haul tipped his head back to open up as much space as he could. "Don't do that. I'm not going to hurt you. We'd never hurt you."
Prowl didn't believe that. He wouldn't believe that of anyone, not ever again. "Be quiet," he ordered.
The order got him a few minutes of silence. He seized it, sinking into his thoughts, but the Constructicons were up to something. He could feel it. As much as he'd wanted to, he couldn't ignore the activity around his spark and in the corners of his mind where he couldn't seem to chase them out. They communicated with each other in flickers of thought and feeling faster than he could speak through a commlink. He could only monitor their sudden, suspicious spate of activity. It didn't bode well. He silently urged the rescuers to dig faster.
After twenty minutes, Long Haul drew in a deep vent of already hot air. It did nothing to cool either of them anymore. "Look, we've gotta talk. We want to join your — "
"Shut up."
"No! You keep shutting us down when we try to talk this out with you — "
"Because there's nothing to talk about."
"Will you just let us speak?! We have a say in this, you know! We're stuck to your spark, too, so you gotta concede something to us — "
"No, I don't."
"Yes, you do."
"Do not."
"Do too!"
It was immature, but he couldn't stop himself. "Says who, exactly? Megatron? Your leader, you might have noticed, is in the stockades."
The rubble shifted ominously above them, and Long Haul's reflexive twitch stopped cold. Prowl had already flinched low, pressing into the ground to get away from what might have been a reaction to a the Decepticon leader's name or an attempt to strike him for the reminder. He couldn't tell which. The gestalt bond didn't feel malicious, but it never did. He hadn't felt hostility even when the Constructicons had been fighting the Dinobots. Violence was the norm for the combiner team. They killed as easily as they did anything else.
He had to remember that. Above all, he had to remember that even though the gestalt program wanted to accept the soothing, the physical contact, the murmurs on the edge of hearing - despite everything in him that wanted to keep them close, he couldn't trust them. They were everything their connection promised at the same time they were everything he'd seen in their heads.
The minds around his own reached out, trying to catch his thoughts, puzzled and seeking his perspective. He pressed his lips into a thin line, braced himself for the pain, and squeezed the bond as tight as he could.
Objections immediately hammered at the closed bond, hurt by his abrupt rejection of their comforting presences. They wanted to make him understand and understand him, but Prowl shut them out. He would always shut them out. They didn't belong in his head anymore than he belonged in theirs. He was trapped here, but the threat of being crushed alive was just one more threat in a long line of life-threatening dangers. The body sheltering him from the latest threat was new, but a Constructicon shielding him was just a hard place opposite a rock. Another trap, disguised as a savior.
Long Haul gently nudged the back of his helm. "Prowl, please. Just listen."
Blue optics glared at the ground in front of his face. Determination covered the fear he wouldn't admit to. "Be. Quiet."
"No. We're going to talk about this now, while you can't — urk!" Prowl gave another grinding squirm, deliberately working his hips. His aft scraped where it would devastate the most. Long Haul made a soft sound more telling than the way his arms shook. Determination melted into a desperate, persuasive tone. "D-don't. Don't do that. We need to talk. Just — can we talk?"
He flexed his doors back against the Constructicon's chest, sliding them down as far as the hinges allowed. Long Haul swallowed another tiny noise as doors sleeked down against his midriff, but Prowl's hips rolled up, and the Constructicon's vocalizer bleated a distressed blurt of static. Prowl managed to pull one arm back under himself when the mech above him somehow found the strength to scrunch upward as if burnt by the extra contact. That moved his hand into position to rub the fingers over a panel that covered wires leading to his spark chamber, and Prowl gave it a suggestive tap.
Long Haul's fans caught. He'd heard that.
"Fine," Prowl said, level and calm. "Let's talk."
"Don't do that." The Constructicon's voice was nowhere near level.
"You wanted to talk. I'm listening. Unless you'd like me to stop?" The panel popped open. It sounded far too loud in the small space.
Long Haul's arms jerked, one hand trying to move, but he couldn't. The weight above them was too great. He was pinned as he was with no relief in sight and his elusive, aloof sixth team member stroking his own wires under him. Prowl could feel the way his spark wailed to the others for help, and their confusion transmitted in return. None of them knew what to do.
"That's not fair," whined into the back of his neck.
"Those are my terms," he said. His fingertips probed deep, reaching for a particularly sensitive relay cluster. He arched as much as he could when they found it, and he didn't even try to muffle his breathy sound of pleasure. Electricity raced, charge building dense enough to taste, and his spark thrummed into the gestalt connection. "Talk."
Long Haul slumped as much as he could. "…stop. I won't — you win."
Prowl hummed acknowledgement and let his hand fall out of his chest, palming the panel shut. The warm flush of arousal would cool soon enough. The silence was worth being stuck in an even more awkward position.
"You're not even being subtle about manipulating us anymore," Long Haul complained.
"I fail to see how being upfront in dealing with your unit can be twisted into a complaint." He might have put a little too much smugness into his voice, but what were they going to do? They wanted him, and they wanted to make him want them. He had no compunction against using that.
Silence fell, broken only by the rush of fans and Long Haul's uncomfortable wriggling as aroused systems cooled slowly. Prowl stayed perfectly still. The rescue team would reach them before he moved again.
He did harbor a slight worry that the Constructicons would go behind his back after this, but really. What could they do?
