Work Text:
“Please, don’t leave.”
There aren’t a lot of Autobots who touch Prowl without explicit invitation. Optimus, of course - the Prime bestows the favour of his touch freely (Prowl is able to think that with only the faintest trace of irony). Perceptor, on occasion, prone to grabbing the nearest listener by the shoulders when he’s caught up in the whirlwind of his next brilliant idea. Jazz… although Jazz is always so careful, under the deliberately cultivated air of carelessness. Prowl can see the little calculations running behind Jazz’s optics every time he lifts a friendly hand. There’s a math to whether he’ll settle that hand on Prowl’s shoulder, or just discreetly let it drop.
Most of the rest of the army treat Prowl like a live wire.
And then there’s Skids.
Prowl looks down at the hand gently braced against his chest. Skids’s touch is warm, the metal of his palms fine, with only the faintest hint of a burr here and there where carrying a gun has worn at his fingertips. The hands of a scholar turned spy. Hands that reach for Prowl warmly, easily, without hesitation.
There’s no one else in the corridor right now. Because Skids is careful, too, in his way - but whereas Jazz is always gauging Prowl’s likely reaction to being touched, Skids’s caution in touching him is about being caught.
After all, whatever else this thing between them is - this thing between the three of them, Skids and Getaway and Prowl (and Prowl has been spending a lot of processing power trying not to put a name to it) - whatever else it may be, it’s illegal. The Autobot Code is crystal clear on the matter of fraternisation within a direct chain of command. Optimus would shake his head gravely if he knew, and say something sombre about the potential for abuse of power.
(Prowl’s thoughts fill with secret orders and false flag operations and nudge guns, and the words potential for abuse of power threaten to tear an ugly, awful laugh out of him.)
At least Skids and Getaway wouldn’t be the ones in trouble if this ever comes out. Maybe that’s what allows Prowl to be reckless.
He slides his fingers between Skids’s, and clutches, hard, for just a second before letting go, before pulling away from that touch.
“Please,” Skids murmurs again. “Stay.”
“I don’t have the time,” Prowl lies. He steps back from the enticing warmth of Skids’s ventilations on his plating.
“Sure you do. Red’s doing his security update; no one can access the mainframe until he’s done. You can give us half an hour.” Skids clocks Prowl’s expression, and smiles wryly. “Twenty minutes.”
“It’s not appropriate for me to join a party with my subordinates.”
This is even less true than his initial lie, a fact they’re both well aware of. The truth is, Prowl opened the door to the wardroom, was immediately slammed by music and raucous laughter and the glitter of makeshift tinsel and the stink of engex, and shot back out the door so fast it was like he was on casters.
Skids doesn’t bother calling him out on the lie, and instead gives him the big, molten gold optics. “It’s Getaway’s creation day.”
Well, now who’s lying?
“No, it isn’t.” Prowl rolls his optics. A line that overused wouldn’t even fool a bartender on Hedonia into giving them a free drink. “The Corcapsia Incursion wasn’t even at this time of year.”
He expects Skids to grin sheepishly at being caught, and back down. To Prowl’s surprise, Skids actually looks annoyed with him. “All right,” Skids says. “If you want to be that pedantic. It’s his chosen creation day.”
Prowl blinks.
“Think he picked a date as far from his first battle as he could get. I can’t blame him.” Skids takes another look at Prowl’s face, and asks in a softer tone, “You didn’t know?”
“I…” Did Getaway not think Prowl would care? Or did he shy away from mentioning it for the same reason Prowl finds himself taken aback now - the small, strange intimacy of it, to be able to say to someone, This day matters to me, please celebrate me? It’s not a deep intimacy. Not one reserved solely for lovers or conjuges. Not a damning one, except where everything is potentially incriminating and every step closer feels dangerous. “I didn’t know.”
“It’d mean a lot,” Skids says, quietly but definitely, and somehow these decisions always feel clearer when Skids is around, which may be part of how Prowl ended up in this fix to begin with.
Without replying, Prowl steps around Skids and triggers the door to open again, this time positioning himself mostly out of sight around the edge of the doorframe. Prowl steels himself against the noise, and makes himself really look. Yes, there is the dull sheen of discarded metal shredded into glitter, scattered across the table and glinting in garlands strung from the ceiling. The crowd is smaller than he initially thought, though. It’s mostly just Spec Ops, or at least those who aren’t on active assignment right now. One of the officers must have given them access to the wardroom for the occasion; Prowl suspects Jazz, who is (naturally) over by the sound system controls, fiddling with the music selection. A couple of mechs are dancing, while the rest are clustered around the main table, where Rattrap has just cracked open a new bottle of engex and is gleefully splashing it into every cup thrust in his direction. In the middle of it all, Getaway is holding court: his feet propped up on the table, he’s leaning back, his optics warm as he trades jokes with Mirage who’s perched on the table’s edge. It’s all loud and bright and easy, and Prowl feels himself shrinking away again.
And then he spots the faint tension in the way Getaway’s holding himself. The studied nature of that seemingly casual sprawl, and the tightness at the corner of his optic as Mirage teases him.
That what makes up Prowl’s mind.
He almost regrets the decision the moment he steps into the wardroom. The mechs dancing stop dead, and Atomizer chokes mid-laugh. The agents who are sitting or draped around the room shift uneasily, as if suppressing the instinct to spring to attention.
Then Prowl sees that awful tension bleed out of Getaway, as if from Prowl’s presence alone.
Getaway sits up. Whispers, “Boss.”
Prowl’s mouth is dry. He manages, “Happy creation day.”
And, as if by magic, the world restarts around them. Conversations ramp up again. Dancing resumes. Rattrap hands a cup of engex to Prowl, who takes it and sits; out of the corner of his optic, he sees Skids slip into the room, grinning. Skids crosses to throw an arm around Getaway, who is straight-up beaming at Prowl, and this feels dangerous, like they’re all three teetering on the edge of something; but no one is looking at them and maybe, just for a moment, they get to have this.
Prowl lets himself smile back.