A/N: Hey-ho! I return with gifts!

Man, that was the best vacation EVAR. I've been geeking it at Comic-Con for the past week with my beloved Tanya, I'm so inspired! I swear, I don't think I could function without her. We have some Odd Couple goodies for you, for being so patient on my two-week sojourn. Just check my Deviantart (listed in my profile) in a few days and you won't be disappointed.

Thanks for your support, as always!

Sensation

Against all logic, hope or common sense, Lockdown and Prowl settled in quite nicely together.

Apart from the occasional exchange of jabs, each went about their business without speaking. It was comfortable, a word Prowl had never applied to life with another person, even his parents. Lockdown had few expectations and exerted no pressure. It seemed he had no sense of possessiveness about anything except for the contents of his garage; nonetheless, Prowl asked carefully before using anything that belonged to the man and usually received a grunt and a dismissive hand gesture in response.

Within time, even the ninja's sense of formality began to degrade and fizzle down into what would be called 'semi-normal conduct' amongst young adults—in fact, once his personality lay un-obscured by his own austere airs, he began to find that he himself was a little cheeky. That, or maybe he became cheekier to survive with the King of Cheek.

The two men watched TV together every so often, initially frigid distance between their perches narrowing each consecutive time. Either because Lockdown was a bit of a lazy-ass or his hard work genuinely tired him out, he occasionally fell asleep with his head rolled back, oblivious to the world. The house's resident officer was trying to watch a late-night documentary about the Russian when Lockdown fell asleep and proceeded to expel snores to rival a sick engine. Prowl, without even thinking, reached over and clamped two fingers around his housemate's nose until he snorted and woke up with a jerk. Prowl regarded him in an un-amused, slicing manner and arched one thin brow; after a minute or two, the mammoth of a man grumbled, rubbed at his face and trundled off to bed.

Times like that—the unnervingly domestic times where his spiteless spunk came out and Prowl couldn't quite define what they were to each other--made him wonder how he could simply get along with the man when there were far more respectable people out there. If he could coexist with this ruffian, who didn't read and was smothered in tattoos and used the non-word 'ain't', why in the world couldn't he get along with Optimus?

(But he didn't like to think about that, because that made him remember that he had come to Lockdown's house to get away from Optimus and his own professional mistakes and now that they were over he could move back but he really didn't want to and he didn't want to think about what that meant, really—)

The answer was easy enough. It all came down to Lockdown accepting him, completely and without criticism. Challenging him, yes, but still accepting of the way he was at present, potential and all. Perhaps it was because he broke down the stiff young man's boundaries so that he could accept himself in all the small ways, and the novelty of being himself around someone was so endearing that Prowl couldn't help but like his situation. It was, after all, the young man's first chance to be anything other than alone.

Inconquerable as he was, no one had ever tried quite so hard to get Prowl, or even displayed the unsavory, dogged type of interest that could withstand chilly disinterest and explicit biting discouragement. Lockdown had been brutal and indecent in his advances, true, but it was also the direct-to-order equation for securing one very prudent, easy-on-the-eyes cop, who was currently making dinner for the two of them at the stove with a look of undue concentration. Prowl was becoming quite an accomplished cook due to his recurrent duty, and spent more than a few days online looking for healthy recipes when he became tired of his usuals… even if Lockdown barely paused in swallowing to see what he was eating, and even then he usually only stopped to check if it had meat. Disappointment and a gloomy glare usually followed.

Prowl barely heard Lockdown toss his boots by the door over the sizzle of the pan. He jumped slightly when his housemate's huge hand gripped his side, clean winter air still clinging to his heavy clothes.

"Whaddya makin'?"

"Something you won't necessarily enjoy," Prowl recovered briskly, eyes on the creamy-looking lump that was one-third meal and two-thirds science experiment. "But if you are hungry enough, you will eat it."

"You tryin' to starve me, kid?" Lockdown grunted after a moment, regarding the pan's contents suspiciously. Prowl smiled with no small amount of superciliousness.

"Rather, trying to teach you that there is more to life than simple carbohydrates and bleeding protein. Tofu is a good start. "

Lockdown crunched those veiled dietary accusations for a split-second; his reddish eyes widened, then narrowed viciously.

"The hell did you just say?" he asked, looking slightly horrified at what he'd invited into his house. "What the fuck is tofu?"

He should have known it was bad by the preparatory breath Prowl took.

"Tofu is most commonly regarded as a meat substitute. It is made by coagulating soy milk and pressing the resulting curds into blocks. Bean-curd cheese, in effect. A good source of protein and a clean-burning fuel for manual labor." There was a small, sizzling silence where Prowl seemed content to absorb Lockdown's mounting horror at how well-versed he was in the ghastly-looking substance jittering in the pan—no one would know that people actually ate it on the other side of the world quite regularly. The very image of fond aloofness, Prowl chuckled faintly. "It's tasteless. You will be fine."

Finally, Lockdown just shook his bare head in a disgust so profound it should have been wordless, except he always had something to say when it came to food.

"Fuck. Whatever happened to--I'm revokin' your right to that pan," he grumbled, stripping his jacket off with short, pissy movements. "You're gonna kill me with your weird Asian shit. Next it'll be chicken feet."

"You never know until you try it," Prowl said mildly, courteously ignoring the Chinese-Japanese faux pas and flipping his browning omelet with a sudden sense of pride. He reached for the spices again, as directed, but when he turned around to gather the tomatoes he had pre-sliced, Lockdown was positioned right in front of him, waiting.

A casual shift was all it took to pin Prowl to the counter, one thick thumb playing at his waist. Already the huge, pale man was sporting that lazy, devious grin that always made Prowl feel slightly warm just beneath his skin.

"How come you never take that to heart when it's comin' from me?"

Prowl fought to keep his face disapproving, even if mere proximity was more magical than any erotica gave it credit for. Lockdown had used the phrase a few times after suggesting something kinky—but his younger housemate was too new to the entire gamut to give into anything extravagant and morally questionable, or even vaguely edgy. Prowl supposed, looking back, that he must have been a slightly boring lover to someone as daring as Lockdown, but the older man seemed to content himself well enough with his naïveté and beautiful body.

"Tofu omelets are not indecent acts," Prowl snipped, whipping his glistening spatula around to press it precisely to Lockdown's gut with a killer arch of his eyebrow, as though marking out his cooking territory with a utensil boundary.

"Nope—they're downright treason." Lockdown rumbled, pressing in.

The spatula gave easily under the assault, and soon they were chest-to-chest, Prowl smiling faintly as the lecherous, musk-scented man properly pinned him back onto the counter. He kissed the side of Prowl's mouth and prickles erupted at the base of the young man's neck. He thrilled at the unrealized fact of what a genuine lover his housemate was, able to rile and tease if given the time (and a rare altruistic mind-set). Prowl closed his eyes after a moment, certain he would push the rogue away in the next few seconds if just for the sake of his omelet, but Lockdown extended his grace period by moving down to his tan neck, fingers on his left hand toying with his angular hip, the other hand braced on the top of the counter.

Both jumped when something sizzled, grisly and thick, and a quick flash lit up behind them. The air suddenly stank like burned plastic. Spooked, Prowl whirled and saved his omelet, holding the pan up in the air dumbly and staring down for some sort of gas leak. Nothing was wrong, happily sizzling weird-Asian-omelet and all—except for Lockdown, who stood a foot away looking at his hand with a grumpy expression.

"Shit," he muttered, picking at his ring finger, black and scorched almost to the first joint. The flesh on the tip of his middle finger was raw too. Prowl stiffened, gawking at the utter lack of pain the other was showing—he must have accidentally touched the stovetop—then faded into confused silence as he looked at the wound and the hand it was on. The prosthetic. It explained the smell of burning plastic… and why Lockdown didn't draw away the second he felt the heat of the stove at his fingertips. The artificial skin was burnt and dripping like putty, a bit of metal glinting through underneath.

"You… did not feel that," Prowl said slowly, placing his pan down by the counter. Lockdown glanced up, then shook his head.

"Nope."

It was surprising that Prowl hadn't realized it before, but, then, he almost forgot that it was there, day to day. Regardless of how well it blended in and functioned, prosthetics were not near so advanced that nerves could be hooked into the purely mechanical guts of them, so that meant… while Prowl could sometimes feel the difference when Lockdown touched him, he still regarded them as hands, but to Lockdown one was a hand and the other was a cold tool cleverly disguised as a hand. He couldn't feel anything when he touched someone with it.

The younger man nearly bit back a shiver at the now-different memory of that hand sliding down his hip. Was it habit that kept Lockdown trying to touch in intimate ways, even though he couldn't feel it? How did he know how hard to touch, when he didn't even know where his own fingers were?

He looked back; Lockdown was plucking at the burned skin-material with a knotted brow, flexing his fingers and listening to the whirr with a keen, concerned ear.

"How does it feel?" Prowl asked suddenly, nearly biting his tongue. "To… not feel."

Lockdown glared down at it, thinking. He'd never precisely been asked such a question.

"Strange. Confusin' as hell, at first—I was so hot t'have digits and an opposable thumb that I didn't much care that I couldn't feel what I was touchin'. Y'get used to it. Instinct takes over and you grab what you gotta grab."

Then Lockdown looked up into his face, expression and pale red eyes strangely serious.

"Know some people like that, though. Spend their whole lives goin' through the motions—never feel a thing. S'hell," he grunted. "But they don't get that, 'cos it's all they've known."

Prowl's mouth nearly dropped open as Lockdown held his gaze for another searching, scorching second, then turned to walk out of the kitchen with a faintly aggravated step, his dead hand cradled in the live one.

"You get one free pass with this fotu thing. Tomorrow, it's steak."

Once alone, Prowl went back to his pan shakily, the other man's words on loop in his head.