A/N: Hai all, and I hope you're okay after the last chapter. This one is much nicer; and for those of you who don't recognise the setting it's a Mobile Suit Gundam: 0079 AU. (MSG is the only anime I will ever watch. I'm sorry, Full Metal Alchemist fans.)

"Working Late", in which Prowl is the greatest wingman of all time.

Field Technician Eilidh Dalton looked sadly up at the giant Mobile Suit which stood silent in the Cybertron Federation's assault carrier Ark's hangar bay, the eye-lights still proudly lit up electric blue and the chest armour retracted to reveal a faint orange light coming from the cockpit. Eilidh stepped onto the elevator, a tray with a few pieces of buttered bread and a thin slice of pork on it perched in her left hand. She pressed the button to ascend, the lift smoothly beginning its long journey upwards towards the catwalk suspended in front of the silent titanium behemoth.

There were only a few – well, to be exact, there were four – Mobile Suits on the Ark; the unending conflict with the Principality of Kaon whittling their numbers down until only the very best survived. Consequently, the remaining pilots formed a special relationship with their suits; each reflected the other. For example, their leader – a tall middle-aged man named Oliver Prince – piloted an immense 70 foot monster of a mobile suit decked in stunning red, white and blue; armed with twin 19-inch blaster cannons and a gigantic orange plasma sword; Oliver affectionately called the suit Optimus Prime. By contrast, the second-in-command; a tough young woman called Rachel Carter; piloted a thin blue-and-pink 40 foot scout suit, its feminine torso barely large enough to fit a pilot comfortably yet blessed with sufficient extraordinary manoeuvrability and grace to make up for Arcee's lack of armour and reliance on its twin razor-sharp wrist blades.

And a careful medium between the two was the mobile suit in front of her. It was around 55 feet tall, and while Optimus Prime had a triangular grey battle-mask and Arcee had a stylised snarl; the mobile suit Prowl had a serene expression on its metal face – a peaceful look, which was at odds with the suit's grim purposes. Prowl was armed with dual beam pistols and a thin white sword, and it was lethal. The only other mobile suit in the base was the chief engineer's suit – a man called Robert Latchkey – and it was about the same height as Prowl and finished in pure white (with red detailing) with large scarlet Red Cross emblems on the shoulders. Robert called his mobile suit "Ratchet", which didn't quite seem to fit with Robert's predilection for the twin rotating angle-grinders attached to Ratchet's forearms.

Eilidh, however, was here for the pilot of Prowl. He was still obviously in the cockpit, the soft sounds of a ratchet screwdriver turning bolts in the armour echoing faintly down as the Field Technician ascended. Eilidh reached the catwalk and the elevator stopped abruptly. She stepped off and onto the metal grate.

"Paul?" she asked cautiously, stepping forward to be bathed in the glow from the torch.

Paul was hanging upside-down in the cockpit of Prowl, his near-skintight piloting suit still on from the day's sortie, and covered in spots of oil and grease. His helmet, LT ROWLEY written across the side in thick lettering, was lying on the pilot's chair next to his toolbox while his torch was looped around a cable hanging from the ceiling, and his hands cast dancing shadows in the orange light when he reached down (or up, by his perspective) to change tools.

"Paul?" Eilidh asked again.

"What is it, Eilidh?" Paul replied, reaching for another tool.

"I brought you some food." Eilidh replied tenderly. "You missed evening rations."

"Thank you, Eilidh. I'll eat when I've finished refitting Prowl's targeting computer." Paul replied, pushing a few buttons on the pilot's console without looking and continuing to tinker away. "Get some rest, Eilidh. You sound tired."

Eilidh sighed. "Paul, I sound tired because it's three o'clock in the morning. You've been working for four hours straight, and...and I'm worried about you."

Paul paused. "Four hours? It felt like five minutes." he remarked, laying down his tools and packing them neatly away. He flipped himself back around and stepped down into the pilot's chair, picking up his helmet and putting it on the floor of the cockpit. "I'll eat, Eilidh. You can go to bed now – you don't have to worry."

Eilidh crossed her arms. "I'm not stupid, Paul. You'll just go back to working on Prowl if I leave."

"I promise. I won't work on Prowl any more tonight." Paul said, holding his hands up.

"No, but you'll just go and work on the Ark until daybreak!" Eilidh countered. She held out the tray. "You can't work at all hours, Paul. Take this."

Paul took the tray and raised an eyebrow, still sitting on the edge of the pilot's chair. Eilidh pulled herself up through the hatch and sat beside Paul in the pilot's seat – it was a bit of a squeeze for two people, and Eilidh could feel the warmth radiating through Paul's (super tight in all the right places, heavens above) piloting suit. Paul looked at the tray of food and then at Eilidh sitting next to him with her arms folded, a growing expression of confusion on his face.

"Eat it. I'm not leaving until you..." Eilidh tailed off to yawn, covering her mouth politely, "...until you do."

Paul looked at the food again, then picked up the first piece of bread and took a small bite. It was at this point that he realised he was really quite hungry, and finished off the rest of the food in quick succession. Paul wolfed down the last morsel of pork, and then turned to Eilidh. "See. Now, you can go and...oh."

Eilidh was sound asleep, her red hair flopping down over her face and covering up one eye. Paul took a quiet breath and haltingly brushed her hair back off her face with two gloved fingers. Eilidh's head rested against his shoulder as she unconsciously stretched herself out a little for comfort, a hand going to Paul's chest and a small smile working its way onto her slightly parted lips.

She looked exceptionally beautiful, an expression of pure calm on her face as she nestled into Paul's piloting suit. Eilidh shifted slightly in her sleep and shivered against Paul, who cursed the Ark's broken heating systems and reached for the hatch close lever, pulling slightly away from Eilidh to do so. He pulled the lever down and locked it, the armoured hatch sliding down and blocking out any of the blue light from Prowl's eye-lights; leaving the two in just the flickering orange light. Eilidh's arms tightened a little on nothing, and she frowned and let out a soft noise of disappointment.

Paul, feeling his eyelids start to slide shut, switched on Prowl's internal heater before he sat back in the seat and Eilidh returned to her previous position. Paul paused, looking down at Eilidh's frown. He placed a very light and very soft kiss on her forehead, and the frown marring her beautiful features vanished, she let out a breathy little moan of contentment, and that soft smile came back onto her face. Paul's eyes finally closed as well, and he lost himself in the warm embrace of Eilidh and his mobile suit.

Damn right. Eat your heart out, Amuro.