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“I wish I had a mouth,” Tumbler said, scowling at the straw in his drink. He glanced over at Prowl, sitting closer to him than was necessary in their private area of the bar. “You have a mouth.”
Prowl’s doorwings twitched. Tumbler was sure his complaints about body type were making Prowl anxious. He didn’t care. He was drunk, and Prowl’s anxieties were annoying and stupid.
“You have a good mouth, too,” Tumbler said, staring at it. He knew that it was rude. He was too drunk to care.
Prowl did have a good mouth — all nice curves and pleasant lines, with perfectly-proportioned lips. A pretty mouth that suited his pretty frame, even though all he ever did with it was frown.
“Tumbler, stop.” Fuel rushed to the surface of Prowl’s faceplates, flushing them a pretty pink — another fetching attribute Tumbler hadn’t been built with.
Tumbler synthesized a snort. “Come on, Prowl. You’re not in Petrex any more. No one cares if I complain about how I was built. Nobody but you.”
Prowl’s doorwings twitched again. Tumbler opened his primary fuel intake, hatch shifting open on his faceplate, fumbled with his straw, and took a long drink.
“Anyway, it’s easy for you to tell me not to complain. I mean, look at you.” Tumbler gestured vaguely at Prowl with one hand. He just got silence in response. Not like he’d expected anything else.
They were new at this. This whatever it was that had started to build between them. Something beyond a professional partnership, or even a friendly interest.
They both knew where it was headed. But they both stumbled around it anyway. Holding hands when nobody was watching. Fumbling at each others’ frames when they were alone. And now this — drinking at a very private booth in a very quiet bar, because they didn’t want to intimidate with the appearance of a police presence, but really because Prowl was terribly uncomfortable with public displays of affection, and he had never been on a date.
“Tumbler,” Prowl said, “there’s nothing wrong with the way you’re built.”
Tumbler watched Prowl’s lips move as he spoke. He made a small noise, shoved the straw back into his primary fuel intake and drank.
“You have a practical alt-mode,” Prowl said — the perfect Prowl-compliment, a backhanded insult that was probably accidental. Prowl was looking down at his drink as he spoke — still mostly full, the same drink he’d been nursing all night. “You have clever hands. And you have pretty optics behind your visor.”
Tumbler almost choked on his drink. He still didn’t know what to do with this — with these strangely honest, bizarrely pleasant things that sometimes came out of Prowl’s pretty mouth. Apologies and compliments and kindness. Their relationship had been built around Prowl’s criticism and Tumbler’s complaints, their mutual tolerance of traits that no other mech was willing deal with. Not… this.
“Take off your faceplate,” Prowl said.
“I — What?” Tumbler’s vocalizer stalled, not from the engex. The request made no sense. “Why?”
“Just take it off.”
Tumbler didn’t want to. He had nothing behind the faceplate but circuitry and a simple fuel intake, and showing raw circuitry in public like that was… rude.
But their booth was private, and Tumbler was drunk, and Prowl kept staring at him, waiting.
Tumbler fumbled with the latches. It took him a moment to work them — his faceplate wasn’t meant to be removed easily, not like the add-on masks that some mechs got to cover noses and mouths. His had multiple latches on each side that had to be open manually.
Tumbler lifted the faceplate away, exposing his fuel intake and facial circuitry to the air. It felt strange and uncomfortable and oversensitive. Prowl leaned in, optics flickering, and he couldn’t be about to do what Tumbler thought he was. Could he? Because Prowl hated public affection of any kind, and he wouldn’t —
Prowl pressed his lips against Tumbler’s exposed facial circuitry. Very lightly, but it wasn’t built to be touched. Tumbler’s nervous sensors sent him bad data, a phantom fritzing near-pain. His vision glitched, faint vertical blue lines clouding his display.
Prowl pulled away again. The nervous and visual distortions cleared.
Tumbler almost dropped his faceplate. Prowl caught it, guided it up, and pushed it back over Tumbler’s tingling face. It was a relief when the latches clicked home.
Prowl’s fingertips lingered on Tumbler’s facemask, a steady pressure of touch and faint, familiar electromagnetic field. Tumbler’s head spun, and it wasn’t the residual distortion, and it wasn’t just the engex either.
“There’s nothing wrong with the way you’re built,” Prowl said, and Tumbler could almost believe him.