Work Text:
It all started with banging on his wall.
Well, in truth, it was far more complicated and convoluted than that, but Prowl understood that most mechs preferred simplicity than the whole story. A… “straw that broke the turtle” as it were.
(Was that how that went again? Human idioms were Jazz’s favorite wordplay, not Prowl’s. He found them confusing, but Jazz always rewarded his effort by laughing, so he kept trying regardless).
So, yes, it started with banging on his wall.
Prowl stared up at the ceiling of his berthroom as two of his colleagues interfaced mere inches away from where he was laying on his berth. The program he’d built to purposefully purge identifying markers from their moaning and plate density from his processor churned away, leaving him with idling thoughts in the meantime.
Many of the Autobots considered Prowl a prude. Shy and uninterested in socializing and strict to the letter of the law. The few times someone propositioned him, drunk and dared into it, he’d turned them down. Gently, but firmly, with a simple “no, thank you”.
Prowl didn’t think himself as asocial or disinterested. He knew exactly what he wanted to say and what he wanted of his time and frame. It wasn’t his fault that he typically had nothing to say to most of his colleagues, and he had a specific set of requirements of what he wanted from his interfacing partners and would not deviate from it.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel… envious? Yes, envious, of the mechs who could simply blink at each other and be under each other’s panels in the next. They made it look so easy. Even Jazz, who flirted and charmed yet always danced away with a laugh, could have almost anyone in the ARK. Instead he kept crawling in at all hours to share Prowl’s pillows because he knew Prowl had no interest in him at all and never would.
Not that Jazz would ever admit to having a fear of intimacy, as obvious as it was- at least to Prowl.
The warmth of another frame against his own was comforting on its own, but it didn’t fully negate the quiet, craving need that haunted him. Not for Jazz, because Jazz didn’t check a single box on his requirement form, but for, well, more. Just… more.
(He was never good at explaining what, exactly, that was, only that he wanted it. His previous encounters prior to the war scratched around the itch, and he had hoped with the fall of Functionalism that he’d be able to explore it further with minimal restrictions and threat of litigation, but alas, the universe never bothered to ask Prowl anything).
The banging had turned into scraping, and Prowl closed his optics and let himself shuffle through his internal dossiers as a distraction. He never could quite grasp the concept of imagining a partner, not when there were real mechs all around him who provided qualitative data for him to osmosis daily. But he’d been through these forms hundreds of times by now- both for work and extracurricular, so he’d barely have to take a secondary glance before discarding all of the files he had on his fellow Autobots.
Prowl didn’t think that he had “high expectations” as Jazz would say. He wasn’t particular about face shapes or paint colors or how much money one had (when monetary wealth was an expectation and not a commodity). He thought his list was very simple, and relatively small considering what he’s heard from others gossiping about their own interests.
And the most important factor? He wanted his mechs big.
Too many of the Autobots were smaller frames. And racers. Not that Prowl had any prejudice against racers, but they were, well, racers. They were small and they were fast, and that applied to… everything, really. Perfect for scouting and speed tactics and time-sensitive assignments, not so much for private affairs as far as Prowl was concerned. The few Autobots who were built larger would be uninterested in Prowl in that way based off the data he’s already passively collected, or would only agree with noble grace that would make Prowl feel strangely guilty for even considering it, which was why he never brought it up and silently relieved that no one bothered to ask.
None of them would want to try to crush Prowl’s waist between large, rough servos anyway.
It was such a terrible shame most of the mechs who would qualify were on the side of the Decepticons. So many of them were huge, and he couldn’t help but sigh wistfully as he pulled their frame dimensions out from the dossiers to line them up within one of his secondary profiling programs and started plucking frames off the list and into the discard pile.
The fliers were always the first to go. Prowl has never interfaced a flier before, but they seemed more trouble than they were worth. Picky, prickly, and possibly ready to try to snap his helm off like those long and elegant insects with the bladed arms he’d seen on a documentary in passing once. A shame, because Thundercracker had a higher calculated success rate- if Prowl was foolish enough to disregard the negative offset coming from his trine’s involvement. Not to mention the other fliers who would most certainly make it their problem.
Best not to try with such poor probability.
Megatron was next. That made the Jazz voice inside Prowl’s helm to question why Megatron wasn’t first, which Prowl had a reasonable answer to if Jazz ever questioned him in person: contingency plans.
The most prominent plan was one with a very, very low rate of success, but, well, there were many personal articles the humans wrote on about the concept of interfacing “fixing” issues- particularly in a situation where a “villain” was the subject of needing “fixing”. He didn’t know exactly what the percentage of success was for such an act, considering most of the research he’d found had minimal to no scientific progression, but there was enough human documentation that he couldn’t outrule it.
(There was also the concept of turning Megatron into a femme- apparently humans had a lot of ideas when it came to helping adjust poorly-aligned persons.. Prowl had that on the bottom of the long list of last resort plans, just in case).
The noise from the adjacent room ceased. Prowl barely had time to be relieved before banging from the other neighboring room started. Prowl couldn’t help but frown at the ceiling, pausing his sorting to allow himself to be a touch annoyed. It reminded him of the time so long ago when he’d been forced out of recharge mere moments after falling into his berth by the ruckus of construction across the street.
The annoyance had faded once he’d gotten an opticful of the mechs working on the site.
Hm. Now there’s a thought.
Prowl pulled the Constructicons to the front of his profiling program, taking one image at random and casually rotating it to get a full 360 view.
They were a newer bunch- Megatron having dug them up from who knows where (but somewhere Prowl will find out). They were all significantly proportioned with thick plating and plenty of places to latch onto with his much smaller servos. They had working-mech servos with all the dings and scratches to prove their labor, and- from his calculations- plenty large enough to wrap them around the narrow portions of his frame. Like all Decepticons, they were rough, rude, and self-serving, but unlike most of the usual Decepticon riffraff, they were a Combiner team. Even more so- they were a Combiner team that worked well together, seamlessly falling into place within their own hierarchy when it mattered the most.
Prowl’s spark couldn’t help but yearn for it, just a little bit. That level of instinctive trust and dependability. To just… know… that someone would be there to watch your back without having to ask or to look. Prowl’s frame-type was made for cohort bonds- efficiency at its finest- but the Petrexi hadn’t gotten the memo when he’d first came online and had instead spent the precious few hours meant to establish bonds with his fellows in the same unfamiliar situation as he reading his work packets.
Why didn’t they just say that was what they were meant to do?
Prowl shook the dreary thoughts out of his helm, focusing back at the task at hand. Big mechs. Big servos. Established cohort. Underutilized by Megatron if anyone bothered to ask Prowl. They also had built themselves their own little base away from the other Decepticons based on Prowl’s observations of the human media and the communication reports from Blaster. They caused minimal trouble all things considered- granted, materials got stolen, some junkyards got ransacked, and sometimes they would get bored and build fake construction zones on highways and pull out in front of people causing them to swerve and crash, but in the likes of Megatron trying to blow up dams or Starscream trying to take over the giant metal and glass pyramid paying homage to the fish deity? Trivial matters.
Prowl ran the calculations as the banging was accompanied by some caterwauling that his program immediately purged from his memory bank in the background. The results of success from even one Constructicon were… significant enough to not ignore, but had too many variables that needed tweaking for a higher percentage.
Jazz wouldn’t be happy with him considering this at all, but Prowl readjusted the variables anyway.
It wasn’t about the war- this was about Prowl and what Prowl wanted. A mech to mech agreement, alignments negated under mutual understanding. If everyone else could go around interfacing, then he should be allowed too. The fact that they were Decepticons was arbitrary, really. Yes, it was dangerous, but the danger only made his spinal strut tingle from the potential, if done right. Especially if he could get them all. The probability of that was low, and even entertaining the thought of having six mechs instead of focusing on one was greedy, but he hadn’t interfaced since the war started. He was allowed to at least think about it.
He would have to get a single Constructicon alone to initiate contact. That itself would be difficult, but not impossible, considering where one was, the others were often not too far behind. But there were times where some would venture off to do their own thing, and Prowl let out a low hum as he carefully selected one Constructicon in particular out of his lineup.
Scavenger was the flightiest option, but the one he could more easily track and seclude. The excavator often wandered out to explore based on the amount of surprise holes dug in the middle of city parks or in driveway reported by the human populace. This wasn’t done out of malice, or so Prowl’s calculations concluded. It was more for… enrichment? Was he using that term correctly? In any case, Scavenger did it, and often alone.
Prowl hummed another low sound as he pulled up a map of all the most recent reports. From this alone he further cemented his conclusion that the Constructicons had their hideout within reasonable driving distance of the ARK- if one was a mech who could handle the long drive. Farther out than their usual patrols made for easily distracted racers, but that only worked in Prowl’s favor. He had made note of it before in official reports, but the Constructicons seemed to mind their own business when not under orders by Megatron, so the general consensus was leaving them be until they got too close or became a problem.
He zoomed in on the map, selecting several sections that had minimal contact with humans. It was a heavily wooded area, with a rural gas station being the nearest human settlement for miles. It was out of the way of both the Constructicon’s projected location and the ARK, which made it a perfect place to stage a meeting.
But how to get Scavenger there?
He would have to do it slowly. Carefully. Decepticons were naturally suspicious, so appearing immediately would make an already twitchy mech running, especially if they knew who he was. Which, in truth, had higher chances that they didn’t know who he was. Decepticons of lower ranks were notorious for not remembering which Autobot was which, and Prowl had never been seen often in person on the field, and pulled entirely out of active fighting since just before the Constructicons were introduced. The anonymity would help, but he still had to negate the initial reaction of seeing an Autobot. So, take it slow. Build up to it gradually, so he can offer his proposal without a destructive response.
The chances of it being Scavenger weren’t particularly high, but he could convey the offer to the rest of his team. At least one of them would be interested- if not just for the novelty of being with an Autobot.
He could set up… some sort of trap. Like how the human documentaries tried to capture rare animals to tag for conservation purposes, except he wouldn’t be trying to tag Scavenger. Jazz would, since Jazz tagged all the Autobots- but Prowl wasn’t Jazz and he disliked having ulterior motives of a nefarious nature. Which this wasn’t, because Prowl was trying to build trust, not immediately lay the groundwork for failure. After they both got what they wanted, it would be back to as if nothing had happened. No catches, no tricks.
Data suggested that Scavenger had an impeccable sense of smell. Or at least a sixth sense of finding buried things. Mostly junk, if his penchant for finding hidden landfills was anything to go by. Prowl could hide something better than junk or simple trinkets for him to find, get used to the expectation of finding something in a specific area and lower his guard. It would be obvious that someone was hiding them after a few times, but by then he would be expecting it and be less inclined to run away if Prowl appeared.
But what would keep a mech coming back to the same general location over and over again?
“You want to what?”
Wheeljack rolled out from under his latest project- some giant ray gun that Prowl was certain Optimus nor Ratchet knew anything about yet. Prowl folded his servos behind his back so as to not touch any of the lingering grease or soot that caked the surface of much of Wheeljack’s zone of the workshop and patiently waited for the mech to settle.
“I want to learn how to make treats,” he repeated, watching as Wheeljack’s helmfins rippled through various colors.
Perhaps to most, Wheeljack would be an unconventional mech to ask for such help, but Prowl knew the ins and outs of most of the older guard of the Autobot army. Wheeljack, despite his penchance for thermal events, knew how to make what Prowl wanted to learn.
Everyone had been suggesting to Prowl to pick up a hobby. Not subtly, since they’d learned early on that he wouldn’t get it. Ratchet would ask him every time Prowl slinked into the medbay for some quiet Jazz-free time. With the extra energon and access to a plethora of minerals and fuels not seen in quite some time due to their outreach with the humans, cooking was something productive, qualitative for morale, and a skill that would be excellent to learn and carry into post-war life with minimal loss of supply in the present.
No one would ask why Prowl wanted to learn, and Prowl was content in not telling them he was planning on saving some to hide later in the woods for half-starved Deceptcions to dig up in a convoluted ploy to hopefully get large, strong servos denting his waist and his own grabbing at any speck of protoform within reach.
Jazz would ask, eventually, but that was a future Prowl problem. Present Prowl had priorities.
“Oh. Oh!” Wheeljack visibly perked up as he seemed to realize where Prowl was going with this sudden request, nearly banging his helm on the bottom of the ray gun in his haste to hop to his pedes. “Yes! Of course! Goodness, we haven’t made anything beyond basic energon, haven’t we? Let me clean up a bit, and hunt down some additives. I hit a bit of a snag anyway and could use a break-”
Prowl let Wheeljack ramble on, content in listening without the pressure of needing to respond as he mentally checked step one on his list.