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The movie had been Sari’s recommendation, although Prowl tries not to think too hard about what her intentions in might have been. It’s challenging enough trying to keep his new relationship with Bumblebee from being too much of a spectacle among their team, but on top of that he’s gathered it might be best to limit the extent of their contact around their young human friend as well.
Not that things have even progressed beyond holding hands at the moment. For all his bluster, Bumblebee is shy and awkward about physical things, which feels significant given the limited nature of Prowl’s own experience.
This movie, though… Prowl suspects Sari had anticipated the result that happens to be unfolding. They’d started a respectful distance from each other on the couch, but with each mere passing mention of the “ghost” or whatever such nonsense, Bumblebee flails around in fear. Somehow, each time he settles, he ends up a little closer to Prowl. Prowl doesn’t mind, but he does think Sari must have known how Bumblebee feels about ghosts, so this was obviously not intended to keep him at a relaxed distance.
“Bumblebee,” Prowl starts, unwisely, during a quiet moment on screen, causing the other to yelp and jump again. Bumblebee turn to him slowly, optics wide and frozen. Prowl feels a little bit guilty and figures the best thing to ease the tension of situation would be to continue. “Are you sure you don’t want to watch something else?”
“Are you freaking crazy?” Bumblebee squeaks, gesturing wildly at the screen as he continues. “Now that we’re thirty minutes in and all this spooky scrap has happened? I need closure! I can’t just stop now and let my imagination fill in the blanks about who gets eaten by the ghost!”
“The ghost didn’t eat the dog,” Prowl points out, looking towards the screen and frowning slightly.
“Maybe the ghost doesn’t like the taste of dog! Maybe it only likes people!” He seems to be forgetting that he’s neither of these.
Prowl smirks and glances at Bumblebee. “Maybe it’s got a taste for Autobots.”
Bumblebee stares at him, utterly scandalized. “Don’t joke about that, Prowl!” He tucks his legs up on the couch and wraps his arms around them, peering at the screen stubbornly over his knees and trying to ignore his partner.
Somehow, Bumblebee retaliating against being teased just endears him further to Prowl. He pretends to return his attention to the movie, taking a moment’s pause before he shifts subtly on the couch as if just trying to get comfortable with the effect of crossing the rest of the distance between them. The movie plays on for a few more spooky minutes and the tension in Bumblebee’s frame eventually relaxes slightly, and he leans into Prowl’s side. After another few minutes, he lets his legs unfold from beneath his arms, and his hands rest in tightly curled fists on his thigh where it touches the other bot’s.
Prowl is very aware of their proximity to each other and is quickly losing the thread of the movie with his focus directed elsewhere. Bumblebee’s head seems to be sinking lower into his shoulder as he slowly melts down to hide himself in the crook of Prowl’s arm, so Prowl unfurls it from where it’s pinched between them and wraps it around Bumblebee’s shoulders. Neither of them say anything, perhaps because Bumblebee is still far too preoccupied with his wide eyes anxiously tracking the characters on the screen, seeking out signs of paranormal activity to notice they’re cuddling now.
Prowl decides to go even further, not only with the motive to entertain himself, but in the hopes that a little physical grounding might ease the tension built up in Bumblebee from watching a movie that so clearly frightens him. He reaches for Bumblebee’s hand, turning it over and threading his fingers between his. Bumblebee seems to respond while still not consciously noticing they’re in contact. He even reaches to cover their clasped hands with his other one. He’s squeezing Prowl steadily, past the point of casual contact, clearly channeling his nervous energy into his hands.
The warmth of his hands, the pressure that seems to force it in deeper, is even more distracting. It could have been uncomfortable, but Prowl finds he likes it, this secure kind of attachment to another mech. He tunes his focus in very finely and tries to feel the thrum of Bumblebee’s racing spark as the energy flows through his lines even down to his fingertips.
Two screams jarr Prowl from his reverie, one from the movie, and then another one overlapping and lingering from Bumblebee, who suddenly throws himself against Prowl’s chest plate. He doesn’t stop screaming until quite a while after the character on screen does. Their hands are broken as Bumblebee throws them around Prowl’s waist and clings desperately to him.
“Tell me when it’s over!” Bumblebee shouts into Prowl’s chest. Prowl lets his hands settle on Bumblebee’s back and dutifully watches the screen.
“Oh,” says Prowl, though nothing especially frightening is happening. “Hmm. Oh, my.”
“Prowl!” Bumblebee wails, looking up from Prowl’s chest to glare at him again. He does look thoroughly, desperately panicked. Prowl reluctantly stops teasing him.
“It’s not real, Bumblebee,” he says gently. “You don’t need to be afraid.”
Bumblebee turns around in Prowl’s lap, which is some kind of sensation on its own, but that thought is shelved when he settles with his hands on Prowl’s shoulders, one creeping up towards his neck. Bumblebee still doesn’t seem fully aware of what he’s doing, but rather is just clinging to him because he’s there, but Prowl’s plating burns as he immediately keys into that spark energy again. He might be imagining it, but he feels like it’s an even stronger sensation now that their sparks are actually closer in proximity.
“You don’t think that could actually happen? Out in the woods, or whatever creepy place you and Sari always want to go camping? Remember last time, with the space barnacles? Space barnacles are like one step away from ghosts, Prowl!”
“We survived the space barnacles,” Prowl points out.
“There’s always next time,” Bumblebee says darkly. But in another minute he yelps again, and then a few minutes after that, and again. And each time he throws himself back against Prowl, into his arms. It’s the most they’ve touched before and Prowl is still pretty sure he’s the only one clocking that fact.
Prowl has given up on following the movie, since he’s spent so much of the time preoccupied with the handful of frightened bot in his lap. However, he gathers they might (finally) be nearing the end, and things seem to be picking up in creepiness. Bumblebee is huddling against Prowl and shivering slightly, wincing his eyes closed every few seconds. At the point where the mother, possessed by a ghost, apparently, seems about ready to murder her child (one of them? Prowl has lost track of how many there are) the music swells into a full haunting, creeping, murdering peak, Bumblebee ducks into him again.
“I can’t watch!” he squeaks, pressing his face into Prowl’s shoulder.
Prowl keeps his eyes on the screen for a moment, disinterested in the horror unfolding on the screen as the humans yell and get thrown about by supernatural forces. Something else is occupying his attention right now. Tentatively, he reaches up, his fingers lightly brushing against Bumblebee’s cheek. Bumblebee lifts his head, frowning as if he expects Prowl to tease him again, but he doesn’t. Instead they lock optics, and for the first time in nearly two hours, Bumblebee seems to forget the movie.
Prowl hesitates, not wanting to overstep where he’s not welcome, but they’re alone, and Bumblebee has been curled up in his lap for the better part of the movie. The logical next step is…
He’s actually not sure which of them leans in to kiss the other, but their lips meet anyway in a rush of sparks that echoes throughout both of their fields. Prowl hugs Bumblebee up to him, feeling his hands wrap around the back of his neck again as his lips part and press against Prowl’s mouth again. He’s still shaking slightly, though Prowl suspects it’s not from fear, but from something else. It’s his first kiss, Prowl realizes as he lets his glossa brush against Bumblebee’s lip. Even though it’s not for him, this feels novel, special. Despite the sounds of screaming and scary music in the background.
Bumblebee grows a little bolder, tugging Prowl down to seal their lips together tighter. He nips at him, wanting more, and makes the softest little sound when Prowl tentatively obliges, slipping into his mouth and letting their internal heat mix together in a brush of glossa and sweet lubricant.
Prowl’s never considered himself especially dominant. He didn’t think he’d be the calm one or the forward one in physically intimate situations, being so inexperienced with them himself. But Bumblebee makes more soft sounds, little whines and moans from the depths of his vocalizer, as he squirms against Prowl, and Prowl finds himself enjoying his position. He lets Bumblebee paw all over him—his neck, his shoulders, his chest, slipping down around his waist at one point and sending a shiver up his spinal strut, which Prowl finds he quite likes.
Prowl has his hands full supporting Bumblebee to keep him from falling backwards onto the couch. As they kiss Bumblebee shifts up straighter, supporting more of his own weight, and Prowl’s hands roam downwards just slightly, stopping at his hip plating. As soon as it reaches so low, Bumblebee jerks up again and suddenly breaks apart from him.
“It’s over!” he shouts unexpectedly.
Prowl, slightly dazed, doesn’t immediately realize what he’s talking about. “What?”
“The movie! We missed the end!” He suddenly leans out of Prowl’s lap to reach for the remote. Indeed, the credits are now rolling. “We have to rewind.”
Prowl shakes his head slightly to clear his processor. “I thought you said you couldn’t watch?”
“I couldn’t, but I have to,” Bumblebee says with determination. Prowl can’t tell if he’s trying to avoid making direct eye contact with him as he scrolls through the terrifying scenes that had caused him to cringe away earlier. “I told you, there’s gotta be closure.”
He’s fully out of Prowl’s lap now, which is especially apparent to Prowl because his bare plating feels cool now by comparison. He wonders if he might have overstepped after all. Perhaps the hip is too scandalous at this point in their courtship? “Bumblebee…” he begins slowly.
Having found the spot in the movie where he’d stopped paying attention, Bumblebee turns to look at him, smiling, surprisingly, and no longer shaking. Prowl forgets what he was going to say, stalled by the sincerity of his expression. Bumblebee leans in shyly and pecks him on the lips before settling into the crook of his arm again, pulling it around himself and grabbing Prowl’s other hand to clasp loosely in his own. “You gotta make sure I watch this time.”
He turns his attention back to the movie very definitively, but Prowl thinks he’s more giddy than worried about the movie or even offended, as Prowl had briefly thought. So he relaxes himself, having given up on absorbing the remainder of the film and instead focusing on the soft, fond thrum of Bumblebee’s spark where he can feel it against his chest.