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It was quiet when Starscream and Prowl arrived at the restaurant they had agreed upon for their “date.”
Too quiet.
They’re definitely listening to us.
Prowl dropped the comm at Starscream as soon as they sat down at the table. The former Decepticon simply huffed his vents ruefully, flicking his wings in annoyance as his optics carefully scanned the packed room.
Of course they are. It’s simply unexpected that this many of them would show up.
Prowl didn’t respond to the comm, simply humming slightly in agreement as a waiter hurried over. A basket of rust sticks was set as an appetizer in the middle of the table, before the nervous worker asked them what they’d like that evening. Their order was taken in a quick, almost panicked manner, though Prowl supposed it could be justified. He and Starscream were two of the most powerful mecha on Cybertron, and neither of them were particularly known for being nice.
After the waiter scurried off, he and Starscream were once again left to their own devices.
Well, left to their own devices if they were able to ignore the numerous invading audials surrounding them. Which they couldn’t. Too paranoid, the both of them.
They’re not going to give up anytime soon, will they? Prowl asked disparagingly as a few furtive glances were sent their way.
Doubtful.
He and Starscream continued to stare at each other for another long moment, neither really sure what to say in the situation. There were far too many audials on them to talk of anything work related, which was pretty much all they had in common.
Prowl might not be the most socially gifted mecha (many would, in fact, say he was the polar opposite of such), but even he understood that spending an entire dinner in silence with his supposed lover would cause suspicion neither of them wanted to deal with.
Prowl cleared his vents awkwardly before asking, in a stilted tone, “So, how was your day?”
Starscream looked at him for a long moment, lips twitching minutely in amusement before he responded. “Not nearly as productive as I would have liked it to be.”
“Neutral delegates?”
“When is it not?”
Prowl huffed softly in amusement, sensory panels bobbing slightly with the movement. Starscream’s wings fluttered shortly in response to the movement, before they lapsed into silence once more.
The entire scheme they had entrapped themselves in had seemed like a good idea at first — nobody was particularly fond of Prowl or Starscream, in any manner of the word. Their actions were watched and scrutinized, proposals scanned as if they were planning to murder with a single semicolon.
It had been Starscream’s idea, and as outlandish as it had seemed at first, had been able to quickly sell it to Prowl.
Distract the media and the general population with something they couldn’t ignore — a salacious romance between two self-interested government officials would do the trick.
“There are two main ways this could go,” Starscream had said when he proposed it to Prowl. “Either they’re so distracted or enamoured by our romance, or proof of ‘the healing divide between Autobots and Decepticons’ or whatever jargon they come up with that they forget that we have agendas—”
“Give them something more likely to sell on the front page than the newest infrastructure act,” Prowl murmured.
“Precisely,” Starscream said. “Or, they remember we have agendas, and assume that we’re playing each other for our own gain, and spend more time analyzing our relationship than the newest executive order.”
“Either make them think we’re working for the betterment of Cybertron and bridging divides, or that we’re too distracted by each other to even think about pushing our own agendas in the legislative arena.”
“Well, if those are the assumptions they make,” Starscream said mockingly, shrugging his wings as a nasty smirk flickered across his face, “then it’s certainly not our fault that they’re wrong. We don’t have to tell them anything about our personal lives.”
Against his better judgement, Prowl agreed.
He and Starscream were both smart — extremely so, they had survived the brutal chains of command and fields of battle long enough to even be at such a point after all. Between them, they came up with a plan.
Concessions were carefully and strategically marked out — Prowl would stop his block of the relocation of funds from the police force to reconstruction, but only after Starscream had a word with him in private.
Starscream listened and accepted Prowl’s proposition of how to allocate and ration the newly regenerated energon supplies, but only after a meeting on the subject went longer than scheduled.
They almost completely missed the relieved looks Windblade and Bumblebee would trade when they started to ‘get along.’ Prowl supposed he could relate — it was nice to be productive for once.
Not long after they started concessions, there would be other incidents — walking too close to each other from one meeting to the next, near enough to each other that their respective kibble would be constantly touching. Warm greetings as they passed in the halls, unreadable glances traded during council sessions, private meetings that went longer than expected.
Gossip was currency, and Starscream was a master counterfeiter.
Mecha quickly began to talk.
Is it just me, or are those two being a little too friendly with each other?
Prowl’s spending a lot more time in Starscream’s office than I would have expected. Since when did those two like each other?
Probably playing some mind game, trying to see who cracks first.
And if they arrived at a meeting early, only to be caught pressed up against the wall by another early arrival, faces far too close and frames borderline melded into each other — well, then the assumptions people drew from that weren’t their problem.
If Starscream and Prowl aren’t dating each other, then at the very least they’re pining for each other obliviously.
It had all gone perfectly according to plan: headlines the very next day focused on the secret and steamy relationship of President Starscream and Councilor Prowl.
A bill passed the same day, restructuring the energon supply system, wasn’t even mentioned until page thirteen.
Starscream had struck gold with the scheme, and by the smug look on his face and the high cant of his wings as he and Prowl vetted possible venues for their first public appearance together in his office was any indication, he knew it.
However, a short coming on both their parts was not considering that neither of them had really done ‘romantic relationships’ before.
Prowl was cold and had never found interest in the prospect before, and Starscream was too paranoid to have let himself into a potentially vulnerable and open position like that.
We never agreed what we were to talk about, Prowl mused over their comm line Starscream responded shortly. Yes, I’m realizing that now.
Prowl played with a rust stick between his fingers, attempting to relax his posture and ultimately failing. Starscream’s optics kept flicking around the restaurant, twitching each time a mech moved too fast.
The glances being sent their way were none too subtle, and Prowl could only imagine what would be said the next day if they passed the whole evening in silence.
Small talk — that was something couples did, wasn’t it?
“It’s not hard,” he remembered Jazz saying once, when he’d tried to explain the concept of small talk to him. “Just say the first thing that comes to mind and let the conversation flow from there, y’know?”
Prowl did not, in fact, know. Mindless, inane, and purposeless chatter had never appealed to him, but he supposed there was no time like the present to try.
He had a housing bill to introduce in a week, he was not about to let his and Starscream’s ruse shatter.
Prowl glanced down at the treat in his hands.
Just say the first thing that comes to mind.
“You know,” Prowl said off-handedly after a few moments of silence, “I always imagined that the sound of snapping a rust stick is what snapping someone’s struts would sound like.” He broke the rust stick he was fiddling with in two, as if to accentuate his point.
The restaurant fell silent at his statement, and Prowl could feel his auxiliary panels try and shrink closer to his frame, as if to shield him from the affronted looks.
Starscream stared at him for a moment, before a smirk crossed his face.
“No, no,” he said. “Have you ever had rust sticks dipped in mercury? The noise those make is far more accurate — it’s difficult to break the struts without breaking a few energon lines, so the mercury helps it make that sort of particular wet snapping sound.”
Prowl nodded sagely in agreement, ignoring the looks of horror thrown their way by the unsubtle eavesdroppers that had packed themselves into the restaurant.
“That would certainly explain the amount of times I’ve heard someone call for a medic when rust sticks are being eaten.”
Starscream laughed, and Prowl felt an odd warmth course through his circuitry at the sound. It was nice to know that he wasn’t completely screwing up their scheme by the simple virtue of not knowing how to socialize.
“In the Decepticons, it used to be a way of subtly implying a threat to one's frame — look them dead in the optic and snap a rust stick.”
Prowl allowed his lips to quirk slightly upward at the remark. “You’d certainly know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Starscream cycled his optics at the remark. “Just threatening enough to establish your place, but not so much so that you could be brought up on infighting charges.”
“Well, I certainly wasn’t about to let them walk all over me, was I?” Starscream shrugged, his wings bobbing and fluttering in amusement as he talked. “Besides, they knew I meant spinal struts when I did that, not leg struts like some sort of coward.”
“Go big or go home, I suppose.”
“Oh, like you never had to threaten unruly Autobots back into line.”
“I was in charge of Special Operations, Starscream. I just had to have a chat with them about rules and regulations and they fell back into line on their own.”
Starscream smirked. “Should I be worried about all those times you’ve talked to me about being ‘professional,’ then?”
Prowl raised an optic ridge at the seeker, a smile playing at his lips as they talked. “Should I be worried about eating rust sticks with you, then?”
That earned him another amused flutter of wings, which he returned with his own auxiliary panels without really thinking about it.
“Unlike those brutes, you happen to have a brain module, and I find myself quite fond of it and the frame it’s attached to. I might snap a finger if you overstep any boundaries, but I’m not going to snap your spine.”
“I had no idea you could be so romantic,” Prowl said dryly.
Starscream huffed and winked at him. “You know it, sweetspark.”
Prowl was reluctant to admit that he actually began to enjoy his conversation with Starscream after that, able to push his paranoia about the reporters surrounding to the back of his mind. He’d never been a social mech, but he could see why some mechs would be, if outings like his with Starscream were so enjoyable.
It was nice, he supposed, to talk with someone on his level, instead of growing frustrated with those around him and spending much of his free time in isolation.
When Starscream finally paused in their conversation to pay the check, Prowl was surprised to notice that it was dark outside. He’d never gotten so lost in a conversation that he lost track of time, but, as Prowl was discovering with many other things that evening, it wasn’t that bad.
Standing outside the restaurant, conversation tapering off as they prepared to part ways, Prowl caught himself wishing that perhaps it might last a little longer, but brushed off the feeling as a little foolish.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” he asked hesitantly after a few moments of silence.
Starscream tilted his head at him consideringly, optics raking across his face, seemingly searching for something that Prowl couldn’t identify. After a few moments of the action, he reached towards his face, taking his chin carefully in his hand. Prowl paused as Starscream smirked to himself before leaning in.
Now, perhaps it was because Prowl had never been a social mech that it took his brain module a few seconds to figure out what precisely Starscream was doing, and by the time he accomplished that, the seeker pressed their lips together.
Prowl froze.
Starscream took a tiny step closer to him, to stop leaning over the gap between their frames and instead press them together. It was at that point that Prowl realized that keeping his optics online was slightly strange, and that he should perhaps respond to Starscream’s actions as he felt the other's glossa run across his lips.
Allowing his optics to offline, Prowl slowly pressed back against Starscream, mirroring his movements, tilting his head as his mouth was pried open. The seeker ran his glossa along the inside of Prowl’s mouth, and — oh.
Prowl thought he understood, at least a little better, the attraction of kissing another mech as Starscream ravaged the inside of his mouth.
He had to remind himself to let his vents run as Starsceam pulled away with dimmed optics.
“Tomorrow, then,” Starscream murmured against his lips, giving him a peck before turning and strutting a few paces away to transform and fly off.
Prowl stood there, frozen, and watched Starscream take off, fading into the distance. Eventually, he managed to convince his frame to respond, pressing his fingers lightly against his lips.
Starscream was incredibly dangerous, that was a simple fact of life. Prowl had allowed him into his personal space, to place his hands on his face, so close to his main energon line, and he didn’t even flinch, hadn’t even stopped to analyze the situation. His inbuilt weapon systems had stayed neutral, his battle computer off.
And yet, Prowl found, he didn’t mind. It was actually quite nice.