The Invictus - Chapter XXI
Chapter Twenty-One
“Hey, Prowl,” Lens said as she sat next to him along the eastern wall of the school yard.
“Hi, Lens,” Prowl answered, looking over at the coral femme.
“May I join you?” she asked, referring to her lunch.
“Sure,” Prowl agreed with a smile. “What do you have?”
“Nothing too special,” Lens replied, showing him the fare. “Just some straight energon and-Oh come off it!”
“What is it?” Prowl asked.
Lens held up a dish of thick cream colored paste. “Aged. Copper. Flux,” she announced with a groan. “My crazy great-aunt is in town and she thinks I like this stuff.”
“Do you?” Prowl asked.
“Of course not!” Lens cried. “It’s disgusting.”
“Trade you for my energon,” Prowl quickly offered. “I like it-I’ll eat it.”
“Done,” Lens agreed, handing him the dish and accepting his slab of energon. “Here’s the spoon.”
Prowl popped the lid and dug into the flux. “Thanks, Lens,” he said sincerely.
“Thanks for taking it off my hands,” she dismissed, starting to eat the energon. “So where’s High Wire? You get bored chasing her around?”
“She left,” Prowl said levelly. “Her family’s going back to Crystal City.”
“Where they belong for all I care,” Lens dismissed tartly. “She was way too stuck on herself, y’know?”
Prowl heard her words echoing in his audio-I definitely don’t love having to share you with someone you shouldn’t even be caring for-when he agreed. “She was.”
“I don’t know what you saw in her,” Lens declared, taking a bite out of the energon.
“Just a brief infatuation, I guess,” Prowl mused, mentally poking his dead feelings for High Wire with a stick.
“I mean, really,” Lens went on as if he’d never spoken, “you don’t need the kinda scrap she dished out every solar cycle. She wouldn’t understand you or your grandfather or anything.”
“Yeah, she probably wouldn’t,” Prowl agreed, skipping the ugly truth contained in the details.
“If you’re gonna have a sparkmate,” Lens went on seriously, “it’s gotta be someone who can love you and can love what you do for your grandfather-cuts back on the scrap down the line, y’know?”
“How do you know all that, Lens?” Prowl teased. “You’re what? A stellar cycle older than I am?”
“Give or take an orbital cycle, yeah,” she confirmed. “Why?”
“How do you know so much about sparkmates?” Prowl questioned, poking her in the side.
She laughed as she edged away from Prowl’s poke. “I just do!” she giggled.
“So tell me this,” Prowl requested. “What kind of sparkmate should I have?”
Lens thought. “Someone who really knows you would help,” she mused. “Someone who knows you and you grandfather and is okay with the way you take care of him-which I admire, by the way. And someone with a solid CPU would help-“
“Someone like you?” Prowl interjected.
Lens considered the words. “Yeah, someone like me would be great for you.”
“So you would be good for me?” Prowl asked between bites of flux.
“Perhaps-but I never said me specifically,” Lens replied. “I said someone like me.”
“You’re the only person in the school like you,” Prowl reminded.
“Who said it had to be someone in our school or in the village?” Lens observed, borrowing Prowl’s bottle of low grade tea and taking a sip. “It could be someone way out there in another village or city.”
“I’ll be fragged if I go sparkmate hunting like in the myths,” Prowl chuckled as he took of a swig of the tea. “If I ever find a sparkmate, it’ll be someone in the village.”
“Someone like me?” Lens suggested.
“Exactly,” Prowl confirmed. “Frag, it could be you.”
“So why not me?” Lens questioned.
“Why not you?” Prowl dismissed.
“I think you’re afraid to have me for a sparkmate,” Lens mused.
“Why the slag would you say that?” Prowl queried incredulously.
“Because we’ve been best friends since we were nine-you couldn’t handle that,” she said flippantly.
“I could handle it!” Prowl rebutted.
“Prove it!” Lens challenged.
“Fine!” Prowl snapped, impulsively pulling Lens over into a kiss. One hand kept his balance against the earth on which they sat, the other held the back of her helm. Lens’ frame stiffened sharply and her optics widened as the clicks passed before he pulled away, rapidly cycling breaths and with defiance etched in his visor,
“What the frag was that for?” Lens screeched.
“You said to prove it to you,” Prowl replied easily, going back to his flux. “I proved it.”
“Fine then,” Lens replied tartly. The pair leaned against the wall, and Prowl took her hand in his. Their expressions were still taut, but the held each other’s hand as easily as two sparkmates would.