A/N: I know you didn't get to see how they grew and fell in love (and some of y'all expected to), but I figured this would be a nice run-in for LD :3 …Also, WHY must there only be THREE recognizable female transformers? Seriously? This is 4-srs cockblocking my attempts to expand the female cast.

Characters: Lockdown, Hound, Mirage, SPESHUL GUEST

Pairings: Hound/Mirage, implied Lockdown/Prowl

Warnings: none except cuteness! Oh, such cuteness.

Now

The one thing Lockdown had come to terms with in his life was that, no matter what, people stared. Even before his tattoos, people stared; in stores and restaurants, in clubs and gyms, everywhere it was the same. Lockdown didn't give two shits about people, as a general rule, and thus didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to them… unless, of course, they didn't take the 'eye-contact' cue.

Mr Smock on aisle five of Triangles was not taking the eye-contact cue. Three times, Lockdown had looked up from his (Prowl's) shopping list and caught the husky, brown-haired man staring unabashedly at him, and three times Mr. Smock had looked down… and looked up again. By the time Lockdown heard footsteps behind him, his patience was shot. Couldn't a man choose between thin-wafers and crackers in peace?

"You got somethin' I can help you with, buddy?" he rumbled through his teeth, turning from the packaged goods to find the man standing a mere foot from him, the same surprised look on his face.

"I'll be damned," Mr. Smock said faintly, apparently too engrossed in the other man's face to notice the almost-instinctual tensing of Lockdown's white muscles. "It is you."

Lockdown glared at him, and kept glaring until the man said his name, drawing away warily. Then he recognized that Tennessee twang and that brown-fuzzed face in a single spasm of memories. The clean aisle of the grocery store did not fit with the sudden burst of hay-smell and the remembered creak of an empty wooden barn. Lockdown's mouth fell open slightly.

"Goddamn. Hound."

The two men stared at each other for a long moment, each struggling to make the other fit into their current reality. Lockdown shifted his weight, inexplicably uncomfortable with the fresh-faced thirty-something man staring at him like he'd seen a ghost. Averting his eyes, he asked the obvious question—the one that had put Hound here after dusty Calhoun, out of all the big and little cities in the USA.

"How the hell'd you get out here?"

"I, uh, moved. With my… " Hound swallowed, scrubbing at the back of his head. He was neatly trimmed and neatly dressed, though still sporting a roguish five-o-clock shadow. Same boy, just a man now. "Stayed in Florida for a little while then moved up here for a job. Got outta Calhoun 'bout the time you did. I heard you just jumped ship one night. 'Probly the smartest one of us, honest."

A sudden pause settled between them, growing more and more uncomfortable by the second. Hound cleared his throat.

"Pretty, uh… pretty hellish, now that you've got some perspective, ain't it?"

Lockdown nodded. Once it had been acknowledged that they'd both walked the same ugly dirt roads a thousand miles away, the older man couldn't help but be transported there briefly. He hadn't had a reason to remember Calhoun for a long time and the feeling wasn't pretty. He heard Hound take a deep breath beside him, and looked up in time to see him stick his hands in his smock pockets. Hound's handsome, down-turned face was twisted in a mixture of shame and regret and Lockdown knew what was coming before he even said it.

"Lockdown. I just wanna say that I'm… sorry. Real sorry."

Ain't like you didn't have a choice, Lockdown wanted to say, but he settled for shaking his head. It was a strange realization to know that he would have bitten into Hound a year ago, but he just didn't have the gall to now. Didn't see the point.

Yeah, he'd run with the crowd that had made his life hell, but he'd never thrown stones. Hound himself probably lived through a different version of hell, laughing along with the same spiteful folks he knew would turn and beat him bloody in a moment if they only knew. Life was hard all over. No use cutting each other up now that they were in the clear.

It was definitely Prowl talking in his head, unsurprisingly, but that didn't make it any less true.

"Doesn't matter. Done my best to forget anything that happened in that town," Lockdown grunted, harsh voice lightening a little once he realized he truly meant it. "What matters is we're here."

"Yeah. That's right, idn't it," the younger man said with a relieved smile, reaching up to muss absently at his hair again. The two of them stood, eye-to-eye, and simply felt all the differences surrounding them. All the space to move. Hound opened his mouth to speak again, but before he could, a voice came from behind him.

"Hound, are you ready?"

Lockdown looked up, past Hound's broad shoulder: a tall, pale-haired man was waiting with a bag on one arm and a little girl in a purple dress on the other. Hound grinned and gave them a nod, face immediately lighting up.

"Yeah, gimme a sec to shut'er down for the next shift."

"Daddy, git a move on," the little girl called, only to have her ponytail tweaked hard enough that she squeaked indignantly. The other man bent down with a disgruntled expression and gave her what sounded like a gentle correction in grammar or pronunciation ("Doesn't 'please hurry' sound better, angel?"). Hound nodded at Lockdown's utterly lost expression and gave a sheepish attempt at a smile.

"Raj is, uh… real insistent that Windy not start talkin' like me. He's real soft on everythin' else, but… no bones on that. Got her lined up to take speech coachin' or somethin'."

It took Lockdown a minute to figure out the simple logistics on the two people standing on the other aisle and the man standing in front of him. He and Hound had rolled together once, briefly and out of nothing more than necessity—now the grocer's son had a man, and, unless she was a loaner, a kid.

A kid. The thought blew his mind. Had they just walked in and asked for one? And the adoption place had just… handed her over to two men?

Lockdown stared at the little girl, held by one father and awaiting the other one anxiously, then looked down at Hound.

"How d'you know which one she's talkin' to?" he growled dubiously.

"If both of us answer her ever' time, there ain't a need to guess," Hound chuckled. He looked fondly back at little Windy, who was now smart-talking Mirage by the way she had her hands holstered on her hips. "She's pretty awful spoiled, but she'll grow out of it. Maybe. She's a firecracker though—can't make her do anythin' she didn't have her mind on before."

"Huh. Who's the mom?"

"Oh, well… y'know, both of us kinda… do whatever it takes to—" Hound began, somewhat doddering, but then realized the fearsome, tattooed albino in front of him was looking at him with a goading, rib-nudging expression, got the actual joke and sputtered, "Oh, Mirage. Hell, definitely Mirage."

Lockdown grinned what Prowl had always dubbed his 'dirty lecher' grin, giving a satisfied little nod. Their 'male' moment, sex joke and all, was complete. Hound chuckled a little once the shock passed—he had never seen Lockdown smile before that moment, even if it waned to something small and a little uncomfortable—and, after rocking to his toes for a second, the grocer offered his tan hand. Lockdown looked at it uncomprehendingly before taking it and shaking it once. It felt strangely good to make that simple, honest contact with a boy—man—he never thought he'd see again.

Felt good to see him alive and well. Functioning. Happy, for lack of a better term… especially when they'd long thought 'happy' was too high to shoot for, being a pair of queers in Calhoun.

"Anyways, it was good talkin' to you. I own this place—jus' this one, not the chain--so if you… need anythin' of the min'mal variety, you just lemme know. A'right, Lockdown?"

"Yeah," he answered vaguely, mind still stuck on the thought of kids. Kids and queers. Little girls and queers. Then, when he actually heard what Hound said, something Prowl said flashed through his mind and Lockdown gestured as the other man started to walk away. "Wait a sec."

Hound turned, waiting expectantly; Lockdown crunched his short-term memories, drowning in the lame feeling of being thoroughly whipped by a boy half his size… and fighting to remember something as sissy as herb names.

"Some, uh… some coriander." At Hound's mystified stare, the dockworker ran a hand over his skull with an air of impatience. "My guy cooks with it an he's been bitchin' that he can't find it anywhere."

"And he's cookin'…" Hound trailed off curiously. Lockdown shrugged.

"Dunno. Darlin's a vegan-tarian, whatever the hell that means," he huffed, rolling his eyes. "Startin' to sound more like Commie every day."

Hound blinked, then actually laughed aloud: it was a deep, nice sound, genuine and calm. It gave Lockdown a snapshot of his life, and he knew right then that anybody would be lucky to have half of what Hound had, regardless of where he came from. Hound took a pencil and a pad of paper from his pocket and jotted the herb down, then nodded at Lockdown with another slight chuckle.

"A'right, I'll get on that. You come back next week and I'll have word for you."

"Thanks," Lockdown made himself say, then immediately turned and walked away, towards the door.

He didn't leave, however. He lingered long enough at the end of the isle, out of sight, to see Mirage usher Hound out from behind the butcher's bar and kiss him, sweetly and fearlessly in the middle of a populated grocery store. The little girl tugged on each of their hands until they leaned down and pecked her on each cheek. She clambered into Hound's arms like a purple-frocked monkey and the pair carried her out, chatting adoringly over her head and, though Lockdown didn't know it, deciding on the location of their next picnic.

The door jingled and, along with the nice idea that maybe people could leave a place like Calhoun behind, Lockdown was visited by a thought as brief as it was absolutely terrifying: would Prowl ever want kids?

Shit, he hoped not.