Chapter Text
Cosmos was still far from awake as he popped open his inbox for the first time that morning. His comm was pinging with the day’s announcements, starting with medium priority—Soundwave would need a taskforce to check on the auxiliary communications array—and then moving through the low priority points from earliest to latest.
He came across the invitation while listening to the energetic announcement for that week’s engex special. The words didn’t make sense the first time he read them, so he prodded a few systems to boot up a little faster, watching in real time as the glyphs came together to achieve coherency and meaning.
“You are invited to provide a response to the following form: Prowl Romantic Affection Feedback.”
He prodded his brain module a few more times, trying to—
Right. They’d had the conversation… three weeks ago? No, two. Prowl had pointed out, perhaps even accurately, that by observing his own romantic history, he could conclude that he was a poor judge of his own romantic abilities. And Cosmos, trying to be helpful, had told Prowl he could always ask them how they felt about the quality of his advances.
Well. It seemed he was asking now.
Cosmos sat up. He was alone in the room, Prowl out on duty shift, so he took his time, allowing his tired internal mechanisms to hiss and groan into place as he made ready to face the day.
It didn’t take long, just a few minutes. Cosmos spent some time thinking about each of the questions, just enough to be confident about his answers. As soon as it was complete, he sent it off to Prowl without further review, then resumed his getting ready for the day.
Cosmos received the second message at the beginning of the next shift, as he was stepping out of the airlock. He opened it as he stepped out onto Sanctuary’s exterior, searching for the burnt out signal light that had sent out an error earlier in the day.
“To Cosmos and Soundwave,
“Thank you for taking the time to contribute to this effort. All responses have been recorded and compiled in the following document.”
Cosmos opened the file and almost immediately stopped short. A2
That—was he serious?
“Prowl,” he said, opening their direct comm frequency. “What are these scores supposed to mean? And why are all of mine void?”
“Cosmos,” Prowl said. His voice offered little inflection, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary, especially during a duty shift. “The scores are calculated by a combination of your measured responses and open ended feedback. Any scores marked void are a result of unreliable data within the algorithm.”
“Unreliable?” Cosmos echoed. He’d known from the beginning that Prowl was slow to trust, but he thought they’d made more progress than this.
“Your survey responses were skewed,” Prowl said. “It’s not a reflection on you and all of your feedback will still be taken into account, but while I am reviewing the results later, I need accurate data to work with.”
Cosmos had been able to convince Prowl of a lot, probably more than almost anyone else: it was okay to say when he was feeling sad or hurt, and no great disaster would strike if he took time off where he needed it. But data was Prowl’s world, and even if Cosmos could keep up with the math, the logic it produced was a deep maze of looping tunnels and unfamiliar realities Prowl always managed to lose him in.
“You know I’m being honest, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” Prowl said. “But I need results that are also honest.”
The next time a form arrived in Cosmos’ inbox, he was more prepared. In the days leading up to the end of the first quarter, he had been reviewing the results from the first survey and thinking about what he would say for the next. When it arrived in his inbox mid-shift, he opened it immediately, scanning through the questions that were almost identical to the one before, save for the last few.
He did not let himself rush through it, though. Once he had confirmed what he needed to do. He closed the form and returned his attention to work. Only once his task was completed and his tools put away did he grab a cube of energon, find a comfortable place to sit, and started to fill out his answers.
Once more, the results were returned before the end of the day.
He had stopped by Soundwave’s office for a quick chat and stopped mid-sentence when the notification popped up.
“Sorry, do you mind if I…?” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Soundwave was already nodding, probably digging into the new data himself. Cosmos, who hadn’t been planning to stay more than a couple minutes, let himself into the room and in one of the seats reserved for guests to Sanctuary’s logistics hub.
With a touch more hesitation than the last time, he opened the document. B1
Cosmos glanced at Soundwave as he came to the end of Prowl’s comments. It was clear the other mech had finished reading and been waiting for Cosmos to catch up, but there wasn’t any judgement in his stare as their visors met.
“I did notice the yelling,” Cosmos said, “but I didn’t want to say anything in case it made him clam up again. He’s been more open lately, even if it’s sometimes a little… loud.”
“Prowl more often uses anger to conceal his thoughts than to express them,” Soundwave said. “Resorting to yelling when he can’t come up with another response is causing more harm to his communication goals.”
Cosmos sighed as he rested his elbow on the arm of the chair. Actually taking the time to fill out the survey the way Prowl wanted had been time consuming and exhausting; it had felt almost like an extra duty shift on top of his last one, and part of him wanted to skip the hard conversations altogether and go straight to relaxing until it was time for recharge.
“Are we really helping him by doing these?” Cosmos asked.
“Prowl asked for our help and we are giving it,” Soundwave said, which was no answer at all.
Time flew by and before Cosmos knew it, they were three quarters of the way through orbit. He didn’t especially like this part of the orbit; the storms on this side of Jupiter were hazy and not so well defined as some of the other views they had the privilege of, so he had to make a full flight if he was in the mood for photography. Making such ventures work around the confines of the duty roster was often more trouble than it was worth, so except for the odd times Soundwave would include a surveillance run as part of his tasks for the day, he mostly kept to the station. Even when he was itching to do something.
The message in his inbox was a welcome relief. He looked away from the Earth show he’d been watching, down the couch at Prowl, who had looked like he was watching as well.
“I thought you liked this show,” he said.
Prowl’s lips quirked that way he did when he was uncomfortable.
“I couldn’t focus,” was all he said. He glanced at Cosmos once, then stood up, back to him so Cosmos couldn’t see his expression. “I’m going to do a few laps around the track. Will you let me know when you’re done?”
“You could stay,” Cosmos said before he could think about it too much.
He saw the way Prowl froze up, the tension causing his doorwings to quiver.
“I’d really rather not,” he said. Point to open communication?
“Okay,” Cosmos said. “I’ll comm you.”
Prowl left, wasting no time in escaping the hab. Cosmos watched him go, feeling lonelier in their shared room than he had in a long time.
“Cosmos?” Soundwave’s comm came in. “Would you like company?”
“Yeah,” Cosmos said. “That would be great.” He looked down at his hands, anything to idle himself with. “I think we need to do something different this time.”
“Ideas?” Soundwave asked.
A couple, mostly half-formed. But maybe that was enough of a start.
Cosmos messaged Prowl as he’d promised to, then sat through the long minutes in silence as he waited for Prowl to get back. Whatever Prowl had been feeling on his return, it was wiped from his face the moment the door opened and he saw Soundwave also waiting for him, trying to effect a casual posture in a way he’d never been successful at.
“Soundwave, you’re still on shift,” he said.
Soundwave raised the datapad he’d been working on, raised so precisely Cosmos had to assume he’d been calculating the movement while they waited.
“My office is unnecessary for this task,” he said. Cosmos was getting better at hearing the unspoken words that would pass between them, so he did not try to add anything to the conversation. He moved over, patting the empty seat beside him on the sofa, and with just a moment’s hesitation Prowl accepted the offer.
The wait for the results this time was much shorter than it had been for the previous surveys. As with the form itself, Prowl delivered the document without any external warning, and even a glance his direction didn’t reveal any change in his demeanor.
Still looking at Prowl, Cosmos opened the document. C1
“You didn’t fill it out,” Cosmos noted immediately.
“The data is skewed,” Prowl said. “There would be no point.”
Cosmos glanced through the sheet, not that there was anything new to see. He and Soundwave had worked together this time, talking through each answer. It had felt like the right thing to do at the time.
“You’re angry,” he said.
“I’m hopeless,” Prowl snapped back. “I’m defective. You want me to be open? Here it is: I can’t even come up with a system to improve on my failings without creating more problems.”
“Not defective,” Soundwave said, rising from his seat.
“Just distractable, short tempered, disorganized, incapable of change—”
“We didn’t say any of that!” Cosmos said.
“It’s in the data,” Prowl countered, exactly as Cosmos knew he would.
“And now the data is saying something else.” Soundwave stayed standing, but he didn’t try to move any closer to Prowl, whose frame, Cosmos now realized, was tight with tension. “But Prowl is still dissatisfied.”
“It’s not real.” Prowl got off the couch and started to pace, the air around him rippling with the warmth of a charged electric field. “You cover up your feelings because—what, you think I’m fragile? I can’t handle the reality, even when that reality is that I still fail at even the smallest goals I set out to achieve?”
There was so much Cosmos could have said in response to that. Prowl was fragile, but he also wasn’t. He always took on more than he knew how to handle and could never admit he was overwhelmed. His definition of small was warped beyond recognition. Luckily, Soundwave beat him to it.
“We can be dissatisfied with your behavior at a surface level, and satisfied with it in relation to your past,” he said. He still did not move forward, so it was entirely Prowl’s own choice to stop and stare at Soundwave. “Both these things can be true. It is not a sign of malfunction.”
What followed was a very long conversation, with more accusations and a little yelling and a few broad gestures relating to the nature of truth and empirical data. But it ended with all of them in the same room together (not always the case) with a few mumbled apologies (understood regardless, but it was important to say these things out loud) and a blanket of exhaustion settling over their shoulders.
Prowl moved to extricate himself from his spot in the middle of the couch, and Cosmos saw Soundwave’s grip on him tighten before going slack. Cosmos stayed still and quiet, not that he had to try very hard to fade into the background. Prowl and Soundwave were briefly wrapped up in each other, looking and trying to speak and coming up short. Cosmos almost interjected when finally, Prowl found the words.