Work Text:
Prowl’s primary memory is of lingering at the edges.
(“You mean your primary memory of parties is of lingering at the edges, correct?”
“I said what I said.”)
His hometown didn’t go in much for celebrations. There were rituals, yes, at the Primalist shrine, in honour of the Guiding Hand, but they were solemn and whatever gatherings followed them were subdued, as befitted a place where the residents had every incentive to stay quiet and keep their heads down. And then, at the mechaforensics precinct in Iacon, parties were workaday things. Some officer or other would be transferring, or joining, or celebrating their creation day, and their friends would put a little money behind the bar at Maccadam’s. Perhaps the afterparties were something a bit more special, but they would remain a mystery; those invitations didn’t tend to include the detective so hated that his partner was granted the nickname “Unlucky”.
(“Poor Prowl.”
“Spare me the sarcasm.”
“That wasn’t sarcasm.”)
Prowl and Tumbler had been assigned as security to a fancy shindig in the Iacon Towers once. Once.
They were never sure afterwards whether it had been Tumbler’s attempt to sneak a glass of the beautiful vintage highgrade - which had accidentally brought the entire pyramid of delicate engex flutes crashing down - or Prowl’s insistence on searching every guest thoroughly for contraband - which had led him to try to arrest a senator’s date - that had caused the offense. Both had featured heavily in the reprimand their commanding officer had screamed at them.
But once Prowl went to work for Sentinel Prime, elegant parties became more of a feature of his life. He was still there as head of security, not as a guest; but the job had evolved far beyond door duty. More often than not, he found himself taking up a station against the wall, an untasted drink as a prop in his hand, watching the crowd intently to see who blanked or spoke to or slipped away with whom.
That was where he first spotted the mech. Tall, mustachioed, of an unmistakably aristocratic bearing; the heir of the House of Ambus, exalted even amid such illustrious company. He would swan into these exclusive parties in the latest paints and detailing to rival Senator Shockwave in his heyday. But the stares and whispers would inevitably focus less on him than on the tiny mech on his arm. His scandalous disposable-class conjunx endura.
Disgusting, Sentinel would rant to Prowl afterwards in his office, as Prowl meticulously cataloged any new observations or intel from the evening. Bad enough to have a room full of these degenerates, simpering and calling each other “conjunx” and “amica”, but to see a mech with Dominus Ambus’s standing flout all decent principles of Functionism like that…
Prowl would often find his optic drawn to Ambus and his conjunx as they held court in the middle of the reception, surrounded by Ambus’s iconoclastic set, and then, further out, by a ring of nobles and senators fluttering with shock at the pair and pretending they weren’t enjoying the gossip fuel. Prowl would watch the couple promenade through forests of whispers and hostile gazes, or take to the dance floor, flagrantly hand in hand, looking like they only had optics for one another.
And he would hate Dominus Ambus just a little.
(“You… you actually hated -”
“I hated the reminder of something I’d been told it was treason to want. Shhhh.”)
***
Some things, even war didn’t change, at least not for a long while.
In the Autobot stronghold of Iacon, Maccadam’s still stood, at first - half bombed out and with mortar scars on the outer walls, but more or less intact, and busier than it had ever been. It was packed to the rafters most nights, with soldiers instead of cops. Commanding officers were now the ones putting a little money behind the bar (when they had it), and the celebrations were collective - Autobot victories instead of individual milestones. (Or funerals, but those were collective, too, in their own small way.)
“It’s nice to see you taking a break from working,” Optimus Prime would say whenever Prowl turned up at Maccadam’s. And Prowl, more concerned with being tactful in those days, would smile and not point out that he was, in fact, working, as he took a seat at the bar and watched the crowds, mapping their currents of joy and grief, looking for any undertow of discontent.
(“You used to have to spy on your fellow Autobots yourself instead of nesting in your office and simply reading reports from your agents. Poor Prowl.”
“ That was sarcasm.”
“Yes, it was.”)
Dominus Ambus and his conjunx were a staple of those nights at Maccadam’s whenever they were stationed in Iacon - though less joined at the hip than they had been at all the pre-war soirees.
(“Careful.”
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”)
Ambus’s conjunx seemed to be coming into his own among the other soldiers. He was always at the centre of a knot of people, all of whom would be listening avidly, laughing at his stories, watching spellbound as he played his clips projected on a scrap of shell-damaged wall. As for Ambus himself, it was a rare night that didn’t see him working the room. Very quickly, he’d come to be on drinking-buddy terms with half of High Command, and even the half who weren’t still seemed to be a little awed by him - enough to cave whenever Ambus started sweetly pressing for more supplies for this or that battalion (often not his own), or asking whether there were plans to provide trauma support to the survivors of that battle, or wrapping his arm around an unsuspecting target’s shoulder and murmuring that surely they weren’t going to stand for the abuse of power Ambus had heard soldiers say was happening under so-and-so’s command…
Once, when Ambus slid up to the bar next to him to order another round for the room, Prowl said, “If you ever want to actually put that silver tongue of yours to good use for your faction , Special Operations could find a place for you.”
“I’m happier out of the shadows , thank you,” Ambus replied, shooting him a pointed look.
***
It was almost two million years before they spoke again.
The bar was on an alien world. Prowl wasn’t there by happenstance, but in response to a message, coded, desperate. Ambus’s conjunx -
(“Why won’t you say his name?”
“... I thought you wouldn’t want to hear it. Not now. Not from me.”
“... say it.”)
- Rewind had been gravely wounded in battle.
Ambus was haggard when he walked through the door. He dropped into the booth across from Prowl and said without preamble, “The medics called me almost forty-eight hours after it happened. It took them that long to stabilise all the wounded they could, before they could bother with going through files and contacting next of kin. They say he’s resting, that he’ll recover, but he hasn’t woken up. And once he does, it will be back on the front lines. Rewind will never give up the struggle. Especially not while I’m still fighting.” He covered his face. “I don’t know how to keep him safe.”
“Yes, you do.”
Ambus looked up, his optics bleak.
“End the war. Do everything you can to bring down the Decepticons, so you can finally live your lives.”
“How… but…”
“You know what you need to do.” Prowl folded his hands and rested his chin on them, studying Ambus. “You contacted me. You could be sitting here with your old drinking buddy Ratchet right now, wheedling him into putting Rewind on medical leave. Or with Optimus. He’d have taken your call, you know. You could have asked him to have Rewind reassigned somewhere safe -”
“Where’s safe?” Ambus shot back, and then drew himself up. “Not that it matters. Rewind is his own person. I would never try to manipulate matters behind his back to undercut his choices, and he would never forgive me if I did. No, I cannot control what Rewind does in the war… only what I do.”
“And so you came to me.”
“And so,” Ambus echoed, locking gazes with Prowl, “I came to you.”
***
“Prowl.”
“Dominus Ambus. Should I ask for what purpose you’ve just placed a bottle of engex on my desk?”
“Drink with me.”
“I’m on duty.”
“You’re never off duty.”
“As you say. So you can see the futility of this invitation.”
“Prowl, several months ago, at your instruction, I left my station without a word to my conjunx endura , whom I will most likely never see again. Tomorrow, I’m stepping into a shell based on a dead mech and being dropped behind enemy lines, for an undercover mission of indefinite duration that may well kill me. Tonight, you are having a drink with me.”
“... One. One drink.”
***
They are three drinks in.
Prowl, having wrapped up his tale, is quiet, staring at the way the light plays in the depths of his glass.
“Huh.” Dominus sits on the arm of the plush chair Prowl has practically burrowed into. “You know, I noticed you, as well. Before.”
“The Autobot monster in the closet. Of course you did.”
“Before that.” He braces one hand on the back of the chair so that he can stretch out, reclining on one hip and crossing his legs. The light from Prowl’s still-on computer screens seems to ripple over the long lines of his chassis, making the polish shimmer like liquid. “I remember watching you propping up the wall at all those interminable parties. Sentinel’s guard dog. I used to wonder what you were thinking.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Don’t imagine yourself so unmemorable.” Dominus unhooks his ankles. One foot, dangling, brushes Prowl’s shin. “You never drank, then.”
“Had to keep a clear head.”
“And yet you’re not as much of a lightweight as I thought you’d be.”
There’s a flicker of what could be a smile. “Not that long after I created Special Operations, Jazz came to my office - late at night, with a bottle of engex, much like this. And he told me that if I was going to be sending operatives into the field, I needed to undertake a mission myself, so I understood what it was like. I asked what the engex was for, and he said he would never send out an agent who couldn’t drink their mark under the table. And so, night by night, he taught me.”
“That sounds a great deal more interesting than the training the rest of us received from Jazz.”
Prowl looks at him over the top of his glass. “Perhaps he calculated that all those fancy parties had already prepared you. I seem to recall that the Iaconian elite went harder than the hardest-drinking Decepticon.”
“Perhaps - but not me.”
“No.” It comes out as a sigh, as Prowl nestles deeper into the chair. He’s clearly far from drunk, but the fourth glass has started to work a little bit of the tension from his limbs. “You always had some angle you were working, some kind of scheme.”
“Only you would describe my lobbying for equal rights as a scheme.” It’s said with a surprising fondness. “If that’s the case, though, then we’re not so different, are we?”
Prowl sips his drink, and doesn’t answer.
Dominus flops back, shoulder pressed to Prowl’s doorwing now. If he lets himself relax any further, he’ll slide right into Prowl’s lap. He murmurs, “I wonder if that will make it easier.”
“What?”
“Going undercover. One massive, ongoing scheme that you’re working every second, without pause. Living a lie.”
“Pfft. You’re very disdainful of the idea of living a lie, for a mech who’s never even let his conjunx see him outside of his armour.”
“... You’re cruel.”
Prowl’s optics narrow. “All I’m saying is, it’s pretty rich to be having second thoughts on that basis.”
“Second thoughts?”
“Isn’t that what all of this is about? The broody self-examination, the sudden attempt to bond?”
“You -”
“You’re not the first to balk just before deployment, you know. You aren’t special. But you could at least be honest.”
“You want honest?” Dominus is crouched on the arm of the chair now, nose to nose with Prowl, all trace of loucheness in his posture gone. “ Yes, I’m having second thoughts! I’m going to be stripped of everything I am - stripped down to the original frame even my husband hasn’t seen, and then welded inside some hulking, monstrous thing of hooks and purple paint, some thing that’s what we all think Decepticons are like, and I will cease to exist as me. I’m widowing my conjunx and he won’t even get to mourn me. I don’t want this!” His shaking fingers are curled in Prowl’s collar fairing, pulling him even closer. “And Jazz lied to you, or to himself, because going undercover for a few weeks does not mean you know what this is like. You have never had to subordinate who you are, day after day after day, for the sake of the cause.”
Prowl’s mouth twists into what could be, at first, mistaken for a smile. “What is it you think I do? Day after day after day?”
“Spare me. You know it isn’t the same thing.”
“Maybe not. You’re right, I don’t know what it’s like to be in your position, not firsthand. But I know you. Probably better than anyone does. That’s how I know that whatever your doubts, you’ll still go through with this.”
“Because you know me so well? Based on a few months of training and a few centuries of hating me across a ballroom?”
“Because you came to me. Because you want your conj - Rewind to be safe and happy more than you want to be happy with him.”
Dominus just stares for a moment, a pain underneath his spark like it’s been wrenched out of his chest.
Then, with an awful, wounded noise, he lurches forward and kisses Prowl.
It’s not a kind kiss. Dominus’s mouth is taunting and demanding by turns, pushing his tongue between Prowl’s lips, and then pulling back to nip and tug at his lower lip before devouring him again. Prowl gasps and stiffens… and then seems to melt. He doesn’t match Dominus’s aggression, but he opens to him, hungrily taking whatever Dominus gives him.
Dominus pulls away, and Prowl chases his mouth for half a second before coming back to himself, his ventilations ragged. It takes a second longer for Prowl’s optics to open.
“I know you, too,” Dominus hisses. He’s looming over Prowl, practically straddling his lap, and he needs to get up, get away, he feels sick already when he thinks of Rewind - but some dark part of him looks at Prowl’s optics fluttering open, and wants to take his mouth again. Wants to brand himself onto Prowl’s plating.
Prowl presses unsteady fingertips to his mouth, and looks wide-opticked at Dominus.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he whispers, and the sick feeling in Dominus’s tanks sours further. He’s about to apologise when Prowl’s next words knock the air out of him. “I wouldn’t have forgotten you, even without it.”
***
The next afternoon, as he - anonymous inside his new Decepticon shell - makes his rendezvous with the pilot who’ll take him behind ’Con lines, is when he finds out his new code name.
“Agent 113,” the pilot says with the kind of nod that conveys I know nothing about you and I intend to keep it that way.
- The number of a turbofox alt in the Grand Cybertronian Taxonomy. Counting himself, his brother, and the surgeon who’s just performed his alterations, there are only four people living who know his actual alt mode, so this is Prowl’s little joke. A last twist of the knife… or a last mercy.
I know you. Probably better than anyone does.
“That’s me,” Agent 113 replies.