709A/N: I'm really, really sorry. I started… doodling humanized versions of Prowl and Lockdown and then I lost the game. AND MY LIFE.
Sorry. This is for fun, and a cheer-up for a rainy monday. Please don't report me to the Sanity Police.
Two notes: Prowl is uptight (and we knew that) but Lockdown is milder and a bit better adjusted (and more mischievous) because… well, deep-space bounty hunters have loads more problems than lecherous old drag-racers with bounty-hunting tendencies. He lives in Detroit, man, he doesn't have THAT many opportunities to get jacked up XD
I'm also sorry for not being clever enough to think up human names for them. Muu.
EDIT: HAHA. I FIXED IT. …Some of it. This story really evolved, so the beginning chapter was like 'what the hell was I trying to do?!'
Tea Versus Whiskey
It was Saturday night and Prowl was at a bar.
Strange, yes. Unheard-of? Not now.
Prowl had practically been banished there, told by a very fed-up and strict-looking Optimus that he was spending far too much time on patrol. His function as third Prime of the Detroit Police Department included looking after the mental health of the officers under his watch and he had found Prowl's 'behavior' (a vague, bloated term, riddled with an uncomfortable lack of evidence and eye-contact) to be both worrying and displeasing. Prowl, a very logical young man, could see nothing wrong with neither his so-called behavior nor his extra hours on the job: overtime pay was always welcome and the weather had been lovely.
Channeling a mildness Optimus found hard to fight, the officer tried to communicate the freedom he gained by speeding through the streets at night—almost to the point where looking for suspicious activity was of secondary importance to coasting along the outer city limits in the crisp-smelling autumn finery-but the unprofessional four-member jury of the Project still hung him. If asked, anyone (sans Bulkhead) in the house would inform you quite readily that Prowl was an over-controlling, workaholic, Zen-addicted antisocial wretch who sincerely needed a(nother) hobby or a drink or three.
And, of course, a hot biker chick to ride with.
That last suggestion was Bumblebee's, lobbed at his retreating back on the way out (along with several garish physical descriptions and all-too-easy bike-centered double entendres that made the officer wince). Being of better blood than that, however, he firmly failed to take any of his housemate's concerns or suggestions into account on his 'night out'. The young man sat in a booth at a scientifically random bar on the edge of Detroit, pointedly alone, with a pot of lukewarm chai tea at his elbow and the stiff attitude of one serving penitence until he could get back on the road again, expressive black brows knotted behind his dated ice-blue sunglasses.
Already calculating the lightly-narrated show he would regale Optimus with, making certain to include words like 'relaxing' and 'freeing' and possibly 'socially titillating', Prowl decided that a timely arrival just a quarter-hour after eleven would communicate precisely the right degree of enjoyment to his teammates—knowing, even as they futilely hoped for his sociable acclimation, that he did not dance, date, drink, or do anything that merited staying out after ten o'clock, save star-gazing. Sighing, he tapped the pot and took another sip of his tea. It was hard enough getting the kettle—even now the bartender was eying him as though he truly was unhinged, just as he had when he politely requested the thing. He was lucky he brought his own tea with him.
Then again, that was the way he was trained. Prepare for the worst. Prowl frowned. Perhaps he was a bit too pessimistic?
But no, no he wasn't—because just as he was about to remind himself that the place was actually quiet and low-lit, the tea came out nicely and it was slightly pleasant to sit someplace that didn't have Bumblebee's damn video games beeping and blipping and screaming in the adjacent room, he was approached.
By whom? A man. A strange man? Hardly.
Strange wouldn't even have begun to describe him.
He was well-built—a fact made only too obvious from the cling of the green-black leather suit and the outline of his bear-like muscled thighs—but strangely wiry, with a tight waist and absurdly broad shoulders. Above that, black tattoos cut his shaved head and hooked around his reddish eyes: red to match his vacant white skin. Albino. Albino, with a hook for a hand.
Then there were the spikes. Prowl didn't want to consider the implications of the spikes.
"Hey, kid. Whaddya drinkin'?"
His voice was abrasive enough to shave a yak. Prowl stared at him for a good, long, half-sick three minutes before really giving up on the fact that no, the skinhead leather-daddy wasn't actually talking to him but the stretch of glass behind him. Or the lamp. Or the wall. Or anything, including but not limited to buxom blonde hallucinations.
"Tea," he answered through his teeth, when he simply kept staring.
"… Long island tea?"
"No."
"Tea with whiskey?"
"No."
"Straight tea."
"Mm."
"Straight leaves-in-water, leave-to-soak tea."
"Yes," Prowl nearly seethed. The stranger guffawed.
"Hell. You ain't drinkin', you're hydratin'," he slurred in amusement, fishing out a thick-glassed bottle of liquid from his jacket. He wiggled it, liquid sloshing enticingly-apparently. "Wanna light your night up?"
"Not particularly," he responded, curtness causing the strangers tattooed brows to shoot up. Then, smiling like he'd just found a treasure (possibly the equivalent to a pornography magazine, by the enticed quirk of his wide mouth) he leaned on the side of Prowl's booth, leather squealing, and uncorked the bottle with a squeaky pop.
"What's your name, kid?"
"I don't see why I should give it," Prowl sniffed, knowing even as he did so that a) he was arguing with a drunk man and b) it would be taken as a challenge. He knew the feel of these types of men and their sticky egos, if the outrageous leather and spikes hadn't completed the image already.
"Can I sit down?" he asked, far too nicely for the aforementioned spikes.
"No," said Prowl flatly, glaring at him.
He sat down. Prowl twitched. After making a veritable scene settling himself in the padded booth and hiking a leg up (steel-tipped boots) onto the opposite booth seat, the man regarded him with shrewd pink-red eyes for a good too-long time before exhaling:
"Damn, but you're fine."
"And you smell like whiskey," Prowl snapped tightly, hunching under the weight of the confused (and amused) stare of the bartender over the stranger's spiked shoulder. No, he was officially not too pessimistic: his life, when it strayed outside the hypnotic circuit of patrol and paperwork, was downright lamentable. Regardless of his fresh despair, however, he did maintain some standards. Under no terms did he come here to be sexually harassed, much less by a man.
"Please leave."
"You gonna kung-fu me outta here?" the older man asked, leaning back, the waft of masculine scent (cologne and tightly-held sweat) the move released almost jarring Prowl from what he had just said. The officer narrowed his eyes. Even if it was from behind his sunglasses, the stranger saw the rest of his strict, long face crinkle and grinned, brandishing a neat little hole where he'd lost a tooth.
"I can see the shuriken in your boots," he explained lazily, then leaned toward the other's ear and grunted: "They're almost as tight as your pants."
His khaki pants, in all actuality, could not even begin to compare to the groin-hugging mastery that was the stranger's green and black leather second-skin. Nonetheless, the off-color comment both stunned and aggravated Prowl to the point of a heart attack. In the storm of confusion he managed to shield himself from the lecherous stranger and present a look so utterly condescending and aloof… that it still failed to negate the nasty chuckle and head-shake from his new 'companion'. Before Prowl could demand where he knew the term from (or demand once again that he remove his vagrant ass from his booth, thank you kindly), the man reached over and thumbed up the collar of his gold-detailed leather jacket, ravaged and scar-laced knuckles nearly scraping his young neck.
"Nice jacket. You ride?"
"Yes," Prowl irked out, spooked by the almost-contact and the other's unflappable physical presence. He blocked the rest of the bar like a siege wall, trapping the younger man in the booth.
"I race," he said, taking a swig of whatever was in the bottle—just, apparently, to loosen his tongue to the point of falling off. "Drag race. Just got back from one."
"Oh really," Prowl said icily. He nearly twitched, presented with both a possible lead and a way to make this lecher leave him alone
"Yup. Run'a the mill run, y'know. First place." He pinched his fingers together, grinning over at the young officer idiotically. "Almost lost it by this much."
"Victory in an illegal drag-racing circuit—and at the cost of how many streetlamps and stop-signs?"
"Y'say that like it's a bad thing," the stranger said mildly, appraising red eyes making up for the lack of punch in his voice. "What's your bag, kid?"
"Law enforcement." Prowl said dryly, because no true racer would brag to a stranger, they were too tightly kept—and, suddenly, getting the lecher to leave him alone was far, far more important than his job. The stranger whistled.
"Damn, but I pick 'em," the man drawled, rubbing his good hand across his tattooed face. "A whack-job ninja cop. Who'da thought?"
"My training in ninjitsu has nothing to do with my profession," Prowl snapped, aggravated both at the man's mocking tone and the fact he felt the need to defend himself to the drunkard. The man shook his head again.
"Hobby?" he asked.
"Philosophy."
"I got a philosophy. Win, n' don't come back 'till you do." The man burst out laughing at his own non-joke, then leaned in far too close, rasping: "How 'bout your philosophy and mine go have a drink? Tea versus whiskey. Heard they go pretty well together."
"Enough. Get out."
His tone was so unstable and poisonous that the man actually leaned back, put his hands (hand, then hook) up and slid out of the booth, forcibly blank tattoo-scarred face absorbing the full brunt of Prowl's hateful glare. It had been easy enough to drive the racer out, once he put the full heft of his dislike behind it, but it still left him with a thudding heart and a bad taste in his mouth. The gall of him.
If Prowl thought the stranger was gone for good, however, he was sadly mistaken. The drifter made sure to sit within sight, waving cheerily when Prowl glanced over, only to make him return to his tea in an even fouler mood. This is what bars and other social cesspools got him, this is what trying to be sociable and pleasant landed him with—a crick in his neck, an inability to look up, hot cheeks and a vicious and grinding and unpleasant and uncharacteristic urge to 'kung-fu' the brute.
Prowl would be very, very glad to get back on patrol. Very, very glad. The stress of one night of relaxation almost drove him over the edge.
When the young cop slunk off to the restroom (he'd been drinking tea so nervously that… well) his would-be companion hefted himself up from his seat with one hand and wandered out into the bar's rare covered garage, metal-reinforced boots making heavy clanging sounds to fit his 200+ pound frame. With a lazy air gifted by the cozy heat of drink in his veins, he admired the rides, obviously looking for something. He chuckled, low and pleased, when he came upon a small, sleek black custom motorcycle with sweeping (but conservative) gold details, tucked at the back of a row and expertly propped. He slid up beside it and fondled the handles.
"Heh. Like kid, like bike."
Musing over the compulsion to pimp up rides to fit the rider (and spending far too much time in that comparison dwelling on the kid's sleek figure and that close-cut leather jacket), the man bent down to engine-level and did something sneaky—just a skillful waggle of something and a flick of something else—and patted a cap back down again with a satisfied noise, then sauntered off whistling.
He left the kid alone for the rest of the night.
His bike lasted for four miles—just enough time to get hopelessly out of range.
After the dooming chug, nearly lost in the noise of the highway but clearly felt between his thighs, Prowl lost control within seconds. Add to that the fact it was raining heavily, and the heart-stopping swerve-screech was made even more terrifying by the inch-thick rain-oil gloss on the black asphalt and the white, blinding rush of a mack truck. After it howled past him, horn blaring, Prowl skidded to a halt on the side of the highway, nearly jolting himself over the front of his rain-wet bike. Gasping and hissing, he flung up the kickstand and dragged himself off, moving around to the front of the bike and bending to inspect the engine in the near-black.
He fell off his haunches and into the rain-filled hole behind him with a cry as the engine made a sick, sputtering noise and began to smoke. He literally splashed—the pothole, upon later inspection, was at least a foot deep—and the cold of the fresh autumn water wicked into his pants and down to his underwear in one clammy second, irking a convulsive shiver out of the skinny youth.
Gritting his teeth, he heaved himself out, mentally cursing as he fished for something in his pocket. He found what he was looking for (a flashlight) but his curses doubled when he pulled out his cell-phone, found it to be very, very wet, then proceeded to slip in the rain and send it tumbling into the Evil Pothole of earlier. It spewed muffled static for a split second upon retrieval, then died.
Overwhelmed and dripping, Prowl was so absorbed in his misery and the smoke-complicated inspection of his poor bike's motor that he hardly noticed his new visitor.
Slowly, very slowly, the car detached itself from the ceaseless blur of the highway and pulled up into the light-smoke of its own red headlights, the rest of it doused in black. Drenched in the bloody light, Prowl turned around warily at the murmur of road passing under slow tires, skin prickling under slovenly cling of his sleeveless shirt. His callused hands tightened; he took some comfort in the audible squeak of his gloves.
"Need a hand?" the car rumbled.
Prowl's mouth popped open but closed again as another car whooshed by and illuminated, in full smoky headlight-bleached split-second grandeur, the albino leaning out of his window with a wide grin and one tooth missing. Roguish would have been one word for the smile—predatory and shit-eating would have been two others. Prowl bristled.
"Only got one to spare, though."
Just his luck.
"I can manage," he responded icily, flinging off his leather jacket—he expertly aimed it toward the shady character and managed to catch him in the face with the majority of the resulting spray. He held it above his head, blocking most of the rain only to send it laving down his back and bare shoulders and into his pants. Dignity? Not much left.
"You sure? I know a thing or two about bikes… and 'sides that, if there's one thing I've learned about machines, it's that smokin' ain't good."
"Thank you," Prowl said insincerely. "But I'm trained to handle my own equipment."
Pause.
"I'll leave that one alone," the dragster chuckled thickly, making Prowl bristle all over again. He simply peered out his window, saved from the deluge by the ridiculous spiked roof (like driver like car), and watched the young man tinker hopelessly with things as cars zoomed by, fingers losing feeling and warmth even in their leather casings.
At least ten minutes, watching him. Then, finally:
"Y'know, you can't ride your pride home. And it's rainin'."
He had the most stunning talent for stating the obvious in such a rumbling, playful way that Prowl found it a little hard to resent him for it-or too easy to resent him for it, when it was so cold and wet and raining and he kept staring. Either or.
"I don't know how this happened. It was fine when I rode in," Prowl murmured, grasping at straws: any straw that would keep him away from the man's roughly-humming muscle car. The stranger shrugged.
"I'll take you to my place." When Prowl turned and glared at him, he put up his hand. "Got a garage, kid, and tools besides that. Warm and dry, with a guaranteed lack of funny business."
Even if the look on his face said anything but.
"What's your name?" the racer asked again, smiling slightly in the pitter-pattering, dark silence. Feeling something give way with a momentous un-heard crunch inside of him (how the wall of resolve crumbled, when faced with that black road, his dead bike and the promise of dry and warm anything), Prowl sighed.
"Prowl," he surrendered softly.
"Lockdown," the other said, holding his hand out of the window. Prowl took it. With his huge mitt cupped around the ninja's soaking hands, the stranger—Lockdown, now—had a chance to get a look at the rest of him in the off-shine of his headlights. He shook once, let go, leaned over to open the door and whistled.
"You're soaked."
He reached back and grabbed something that looked like a poncho from the back seat and bundled it down into the passenger seat.
"Gotta respect the interior," he said quite seriously, then patted the bundle (altogether too charmingly for a middle-aged spike-adorned drag racer with one hand, which made the other man a little nauseatingly nervous). "Climb on in, kid."
"What was the point of asking for my name if you intend to debase me with nicknames the entire time?" Prowl grumbled, following orders with a barely-restrained shiver. Most or all of his thin hair was loose from his ponytail, slicked down to his cheeks in miserable strands, giving him a purely bedraggled look that made the driver chuckle.
"Best to know an animal's name before tryin' to tame it."
Lockdown saved him the chance of answering that cryptic, beyond-offending nugget by getting out in the rain and chaining up his bike to the back of his huge car. By the time he got back in, the heater he inconspicuously flipped on upon exiting had lulled the shivering young man into a state of ecstasy, though he did draw back slightly from his hungry hunch at the vents when Lockdown got back in. The other man chuckled at him and turned it up with his non-hand. That drew Prowl's attention back to the hook—and the unseen process of strapping up his bike. Lockdown saw the dubious look and shook the wicked-looking appendage.
"Any scratches, I pay for it," he said dryly. "I've had this thing long enough to know how to use it."
He started up the car afresh and off they drove.
It was a surprisingly quiet drive. The older man did not attempt conversation with him, nor make anymore sexual overtures. Well, almost. Prowl stiffened when he noticed (in the flashes of neighboring cars) the stranger's gaze dipping down to the front of his utterly-soaked pants, but a snippy huff of I-know-what-you're-doing-and-I-could-have-you-arrested-damnit air was enough to fend off his strangely-red eyes, even if the defense had to be used at least three times on the drive. That was something he could deal with, surprisingly enough, but it was when 'Lockdown' stopped for something at a gas station then 'inconspicuously' got on the highway in the opposite direction that Prowl suspected he hadn't just been 'happened upon'. He'd been followed.
He was also too damn tired to care.