A/N: Lockdown, you're so emotionally retarded. I adore you!
Also. I've attempted both coyness and niceties regarding reviews, but if interest is as staggeringly low as you've shown it to be, I see no reason to make this piece a priority or continue with my weekly updates. To everyone who has taken the time (including the last 24-hour rush, yikes-woah), thank you graciously and with many kisses: you have yourself to thank for 29 chapters, because your words and ideas are my lifeblood. Otherwise? I'm pretty sure I'd be just as happy bouncing these stories back and forth between Eno and myself and just leaving it at that.
That's all!
Anniversary
Once every blue moon, Prowl stumbled upon a clutch of happy coincidences.
First, he and Lockdown had been together for one-hundred and fifty stellar-cycles. Though sentimentalism was more tender handicap than anything in his line of business, the fact that he had spent so much of his function (over a third, now) with the bounty hunter was a startling thing to think about. Surely Cybertronian standards of time, considering their echoing lifespan, condensed stellar-cycles into smaller star-studded, swallowable things, but a century and a half was still a century and a half. And Prowl was… happy, to boot.
Second, taking his rare string of emotive malfunctions a step further, he accepted the chance to make it memorable. The ninjabot wasn't precisely looking for something to give to his very selective partner (that would have been too internally forward), but when Lockdown spent a near week silently mourning a certain flashy but gorgeously deadly gun he couldn't afford at the moment, Prowl was roused. Coincidence conspired with opportunity, both rubbing their metaphorical hands greedily: thus prompted, Prowl turned a faintly surprised optic to his burgeoning account for the first time in eons.
Hazarding a guess so foggy and nonchalant it would have made an accountant wretch, he dubbed the six-figure sum sufficient for his purposes and proceeded to ninja-tiptoe around until he was certain he had obtained all the information and proof necessary to warrant such a purchase. This involved a good bit of snooping on Moot's search log after his partner went into recharge. Luckily, it was utterly clogged with related accessories, installation procedures--not to mention the gigantic mech kept calling up a visual of it, watching it covetously just so he could be infuriated when it was purchased by someone else. The links were easy to trace, the sellers pliant as plasma. Just like always, Prowl moved silently, quickly, and operated only in the dark of night, enjoying this new domestic breed of stealth moreso than he had expected.
Lockdown, though he couldn't afford it in the first place, spent the whole solar-cycle in an outrageously foul mood when he checked the salesfeed again and found that it had been stolen from him during the short break in his vigil. The bounty hunter didn't think to check Prowl's account. He didn't see the three-thousand credit drop it had taken, nor did he assume Prowl's sudden and aggravating good mood to have any concrete roots. When his quiet little partner waltzed into the bridge with a thick grey carrying case a few solar-cycles later and placed it at the foot of his chair with nothing but a smile, however, he was beyond perturbed. He was… suspicious. When he opened it, he was downright aghast.
It was the gun. That gun: his gun. His Primus-slagging-mother-fragging-sweet-aft gun.
Any crazed elation at having the glossy beauty a scant three spans from him, smelling like green-hued destruction and sweet promised sizzles, was battered to death by the sight of Prowl's retreating shadow. After the initial node-numbing shock wore off, it also confused and displeased the sealant right off of his wiring, because Lockdown was reminded again how much money the brat had because he just didn't care about it. And the glitched little downgrade bought him something scandalously expensive, and there was something crazy and infuriating about the fact he was willing to throw all that cash away just to get his partner something in such a nonchalant, covert manner—or perhaps not just.
There might have been… another cause. No. Of course there was. Mere cycles after receiving the gun, Lockdown gave a scowl so poisonous it could have melted the hair off of a bladderbear—because that was it.
Prowl was trying to manipulate him. The bounty hunter knew it would come to this one solar-cycle, and even as he snagged the gun and lugged it to his shop (and the complex weight of it was delicious), Lockdown bucked up, preparing to show the little punk in every day and way that he couldn't be bought, damnit. Well, in… this way. Being a master businessman, he wasn't buying into any deal where the terms weren't directly stated—and there was no way in the Well the kid was going to blackmail him with a pretty present. Nudge him over, sugar his solenoids. No way in the Well. He was too damn good for that.
Lockdown's defenses were on high alert for the next week and, to make things worse, Prowl couldn't shake his serene, altruistic mood nor his smooth smiles. Everything only deteriorated from there with a streak of affection and luck. Opportunities to please Lockdown in small (insidious!) ways kept popping up and Prowl, feeling affectionate, took them like shiny fruit globes from a tree—a twist of the wrist was all that was required. He brought the bounty hunter a cube of high-grade one solar-cycle and adjusted his techno-chi the next. Then, after a casual bit of fun, he stayed curled against Lockdown for at least half a megacycle, dozing through the half-flirty purr of his motor.
Of course, his own smiles and strange contentment didn't blind him to the… effect he was causing. Somehow, someway (though he could guess why—it had, after all, been 150 stellar-cycles) he was tying his partner into knots. Worse than that, Prowl was actually beginning to be amused by the suspicious crunch of Lockdown's face when he followed the ninjabot (sauntering so casually) out the door with his calculating red optics… then took a quick sip of the energon as if to test it. For poison. Drugs. More energon, a different grade of energon: anything out of the ordinary, anything to warrant a confrontation.
No, Prowl's usually unflappable partner was stumped. He writhed and huffed and paced underneath an imaginary, gargantuan anvil, swinging above his head and weighing his limbs and rationale in its evil shadow…and over the next week, Prowl teased on and on and on. Finally, when the ninjabot brought him a jug of coolant in his shop—his coolant, not the brat's—Lockdown utterly couldn't take it anymore.
"Alright, what do you want?"
Prowl turned halfway to the door, an infuriatingly airy smile on his long face. Lockdown straightened with barely-contained animosity (already on the grudging offensive, a disposition made clear by a defiant flinging-down of his blowtorch) and glared at him.
"I'm not sayin' you'll get it, but spit it out," he snarled. "What do you want?"
"What do you mean?" Prowl asked evenly—innocently, even, with his lilting, ever-measured vocals. If Lockdown could have seen himself, properly distanced from the maddening, cloying charade Prowl had driven him over the edge with, he may have been a tad embarrassed at the fiery, twitchy accusation in his face, or the way he jabbed a digit at his partner and hissed out:
"You want somethin' from me. That gun got you credit, kid, but I won't go along with anything ridiculous. I'll go up to the price you paid, but not beyond."
"It's called a gift, Lockdown," Prowl said mildly, smiling all the wider. "And if it is a form of extortion, it's a highly inefficient one. I don't expect anything in return."
If it there was one thing Lockdown knew for certain—his religion, as it were—it was that every action required an equal an opposite reaction. Tit for tat. But now Prowl was insisting his action was a free-swinging kindness. No payment required. Given for the sake of giving.
Yeah, free-swinging: like the slaggin' anvil. If Swindle were here, the arms-dealer would tell him to turn tail and run as fast as possible. The kid made no sense. Gruffly, Lockdown tried again.
"Why'd you get it?"
Prowl straightened, looking at him with a touch of surprise.
"Do you know what stellar-cycle it is?"
"You think I keep track?"
Prompted by the ninjabot's expectant look (the little thing was still unruffled, visor wide and blameless blue), Lockdown wirelessly called up the ship's stats and the date, crunching the foreign-looking numbers with a disturbed squint. He looked back at Prowl wordlessly. Prowl smiled.
"I may be off by a stellar-cycle or two, but we have been in business for a century and a half."
Lockdown stared at the wall for a moment, trying to comprehend it. He scratched his neck.
"Yeah. That's… a while."
"Congratulations," Prowl said softly.
"Congrats to yourself," he grunted, optics locked on whatever was in his servos—he didn't have to know the name of it to use it as a way to avoid Prowl's stare.
Prowl smiled at him again and turned to leave, compact black form trailing an airy, content mystique. It was the final crack in a chain of busted links. Lockdown bolted out of his chair, driven to an absolute frenzy by the coy, conniving creature that had replaced his partner in the night.
"What do you want, damnit?!" He demanded, gesticulating madly. "I'm not gonna believe you're actin' so fraggin' bizarre for nothin'!"
So--it was true. Lockdown simply didn't understand. Prowl turned back again, venting a small bit of air.
"Fine." The ninjabot gave a small, curt smile and addressed him clearly: "If you insist upon the fact that I extort something from you…"
Here it comes. All those indirect, insidious little manipulations coming to a head.
"A smile."
It was possibly the worst thing to ask for. Ever.
Lockdown refreshed his optics twice, felt something crack behind them, then spent the next two airless cycles containing a wide variety of snarls and spits as Prowl looked on. His expectations for the kid's final punch—privileges, more organic slag, possibly a exotic sexual favor or three—disintegrated, then coagulated into one very, very uncomfortable, clammy lump right underneath his Spark. Finally, devoured by nauseating awkwardness (and doubly-more nauseating fact that he just didn't know what to do when confronted with such a murderously simple and impossible request), he muttered:
"Those don't come free."
"To the tune of three-thousand. I've noticed," Prowl observed archly, leaning back against a tool table and crossing his arms. Lockdown's mouth opened, then shut. Stranded without options, Prowl's visor seeming to drill a hole into his Spark, gun gleaming on the shelf, Lockdown finally snarled and bared his dentals in a horrible caricature of a smile. The sight was so wrong--somewhere, a Sparkling probably rebooted screaming--that Prowl couldn't help but chuckle.
"Thank you," he said with a shake of his head, and left.
Just… left.
The brat bought him a three-thousand-credit gun with no word of warning, proceeded to torture him with kindness for the next week, and all he said was 'thanks'. Primus. There was something seriously wrong with that 'bot. If he didn't have a handful of wires switched end-to-end somewhere, Lockdown was in need of a defragging.
Still, hard as he tried to shake the entire inexplicable upheaval off and get back to his work, Lockdown couldn't help staring after his partner—then looking long and hard at the gun. Then he took a swig of coolant, then half-winced and looked at the gun again.
Needless to say, he didn't like where his thoughts were going.
A few weeks later, Prowl found something outside his door. Several somethings, in fact.
He nearly stepped on the compact disks, foggy as he was from a good, much-needed recharge: the two had completed another grab-and-bag job the solar-cycle before which involved far, far too much driving and sprinting. They were lucky to have made it to their berths without shutting down. Huffing, Prowl nearly lost his balance, squirming at the last klik to avoid crunching the little trinkets. Next, he went down to his knees and gathered them into his servos, carding through them with a wide-optic'ed bemusement. At first, the titles and compatibility warnings, much less the fact that he'd found them scattered in front of his door like lazy confetti, refused to make sense.
Then, slowly but surely, he smiled.
They were files for his datapad. It was an eclectic little collection, either composed from too much thought or too little thought. There were classics, exotic documentaries, things much like he enjoyed. Then Prowl found what he could only assume was pornography involving tentacle creatures and he had to laugh aloud: the collection only worsened from there, spiraling downwards into the depths of 'Accounting for Ironagabic Imbeciles' and 'My Life as a Vokian Pleasure Slave'. Lockdown had obviously located a bargain bin and simply grabbed. The visual made Prowl chuckle again; he could simply imagine the weird and uncomfortable mental-emotional acrobatics Lockdown had gone through to consider getting them at all, and that only made his cozy Spark expand even more.
He looked at the collection with a fond optic, carding through them again. Lockdown had gotten him something. Perhaps it was in hounded response to Prowl's own gifting, (a desperate thrashing to conquer or defeat an unknown language of voluntary emotional transactions from a 'bot who hated to be trumped) but it was still a token, considerate…in general…of his intellectual leanings. A gift. A personal gift.
Primus, how far they had come.
Yes, it was already a strange and pleasing development, but the ninjabot knew he had to push it: make it settle in as an actual approved act, not a half-remembered last resort. Prowl gathered them into his fist and strode to the bridge.
Lockdown was hunched at the controls: new stats shone on the screen, in dull grays and greens and bright blues. A new job, judging from the rapid tick-taks of his typing and the 3D render spinning in the middle. Prowl leaned against the wall, just out of sight. He refreshed his vocals.
"I found something outside my door," Prowl said with a carefully-engineered curiosity. He paused. "Are these for me?"
Lockdown grunted. Prowl took that to be a yes.
"What do I owe you for them?" He asked casually, turning them over in his servos. Lockdown's engine hitched. He shifted uncomfortably at the control station, not looking at his partner.
"S'a gift. Means I'm not s'posed to expect anything in return."
"Supposed to?" Prowl repeated puckishly, and that was the end of it.
The hurdle had been vaulted. He had gotten Lockdown to say the word, and that was truly all he wanted; besides, he had been more than cruel to the other mech but weeks before, so he supposed a little understandable kindness was in order. Lockdown seemed to sense the pleased, coy shift in his partner and looked over his spiked shoulder, a grin spreading over his devious white face. Prowl, for zany reasons unknown, loved the emotionally-handicapped bounty hunter strangely and intensely in that bantering, them moment.
"'Bot can't help but hope for a thank you," the huge mech said slyly, turning at his station, wheel-studded hip cocked. Prowl responded in kind, placing the discs down in his partner's navigator chair and sauntering up to his side, placing one warm servo against Lockdown's hip on the control panel. He leaned close.
"Of what fashion and caliber?" He asked professionally, mouth still twitching; still dying to smile and reward Lockdown for such good behavior.
"Horizontal and damn good."
Prowl laughed—actually laughed, not a curtailed chuckle or a close-mouthed snicker—as Lockdown swept him off his pedes and sat him on the control panel, already deep in the act of seducing him. They were ridiculous, the both of them.
"Lockdown."
His partner made a perfunctory inquiry noise past his mouthful of Prowl's neck, both servos cupped around his aft, driving his delicate knees apart to accommodate the bounty hunter's spiked, ever-randy girth. Prowl, feeling giddy for possibly the first time in his straight-line life (with 'My Life as a Vokian Pleasure Slave' in plain view on Lockdown's chair), laughed again.
"Absolutely nothing," he sighed in amusement, let his brutal, physical, learning partner take the reins, and thought that anniversaries weren't as terribly overrated as people made them out to be.
