A/N: The happy/simple end.

Read no further (when/if I write the second ending), but thank you so much for reading, for giving this pairing a serious chance and for sticking with (long-winded, brutal, and often stupid) me through a ridiculous 70 chapters. You are amazing. I had so much fun and so much worry making this fic a reality, and learned so much in the process. Thanks for putting up with my mistakes and victories alike.

And hey: ninja-bike and pirate-musclecar love for forever. Hearts!

Just One Word

It had been the longest solar-cycle to date.

Lockdown sat against the wall nearest to his shop, kneading the tired dermaplating around his optics. His creaking hunch said it all: his systems were run so dry, the wall was the only thing keeping him from pitching over and shutting down into a scratched, steaming pile of spare parts.

Details weren't necessary: they had been active for approximately 74.379 megacycles, under insane physical duress, and had bagged their captive only half a megacycle (.5 of that slagging 74.379) earlier.

Prowl had gotten off easier than himself since their mark had taken the subterranean route that Lockdown was covering, but the big mech didn't have the energy left to resent it. They had barely managed to drag their sorry afts back to the ship in one piece and he craved oblivion so badly he could taste it—which was why his head kept dipping, optics flickering—but he had to wait up for the transaction approval. Payment.

Lockdown peered around. The world was a dull and ugly thing, colored by his flat grey exhaustion. At this point, distractions were both welcome and maddening. It was a welcome thing that Prowl was situated in front of him, polishing himself absently, because that meant movement, activity. Something for his optics to follow. Conversely, it was maddening due to its enthralling rhythm: soothing loops and soft swirls, predictable and soundless. Watching it nearly lulled him into sweet, weightless stasis.

Not only that, his partner had reached that one center spot on his tank that he never could reach, and seeing him fuss with it, cycle after cycle, annoyed the Pit out of him.

Prowl flinched as the bounty hunter's heavy arm bumped into him like a iron balloon gone astray, own optics losing resolution with exhaustion. Lockdown flexed his digits and grunted before snagging the polishing cloth from the other mech and very clumsily running it over Prowl's tank. He had to try a few times before the cloth didn't skid off in an odd direction; his wide, sleepy frown indicated his level of concentration, but, through dedication and hard work, the accomplished, half-dead bounty hunter had the cloth moving in circles over almost-exactly the right spot. Prowl, quieted through more than just his need for recharge, sat very still and let himself be… buffed.

At first, all went according to not-plan. The movement stimulated him. Then, once he got the hang of it, he locked into the motion, and pushing through the glossy round-round-round motion was even more soothing than watching it.

He was rubbing himself into recharge—him and Prowl both, because if buffing was pleasant, being buffed by someone else was twice so. The battered ninjabot relaxed down to his girders, substructure slackening. The slow exchange went on for quite some time, deepening their respective stupors with a gentle hand, until Prowl realized that Lockdown had disintegrated into two-thousand-plus pounds of deadness against his back, core emitting nothing but a paper-thin hum.

The ninjabot looked over his shoulder and smiled at the swaying mech, servo frozen on his tank. Prowl stopped him at the wrist, then tugged the cloth free and thanked him almost shyly. Lockdown huffed dumbly, rattled his loosely-bolted head and swayed even more ponderously than before. Prowl smiled again, then rose to his pedes with heavy, resigned motions.

"Rest," Prowl told his partner, one servo on the other's shoulder-plating. "I will wait for the transfer."

Lockdown didn't even have the energy to look at him as appraisingly as the reciprocal kindness deserved, but simply fell to the side. He hit the floor with a clank as dull as his optics, the last bit of air he held in whooshing out of his top vents; Prowl heard the lusty moan of his systems shutting down and went to sit in the bounty hunter's chair until their transaction was completed.

Lockdown never would have lasted. Delayed by circumstantial bothers he was all too eager to whine about, their contractor appeared a full megacycle later, wringing his clammy appendages and reeking of all the physical signs of a price back-down. Prowl pushed through it and secured their agreed-on payment in a tight-lipped, brutal way that would have made his partner proud, but the ninjabot felt nothing but tender hollowness after the screen flickered out.

It felt like he had been gutted with an abrasive knife and left to feel the sting of exhaustion on every contour of his healable-by-darkness insides. He vented some air, rising up and starting for his room.

His partner lay in the way. The gigantic mech had not moved from his initial (ridiculously open-mouthed) sprawl, and, looking at him with his own clouded optics, Prowl suddenly didn't have the Spark to walk all the way to his own chambers. The bridge was as fine a place to recharge as any. Padding over, the ninjabot lowered himself to the floor with many a creak and cringe.

Blearily, running off of nothing but backup coding and a few glimmers of energon, he scooted closer to the other mech, then decisively nudged Lockdown's flung-out arm up and slipped under it. His scraped-out center needed the weight of his warm, quietly-churning partner over his tender chassis. Prowl himself needed some sort of hold, possibly to keep him from falling too far into recharge.

The movement caused his partner to boot up for a split klik. Stiffening suddenly, Lockdown grunted, then tested the new position of his arm; when he found a freshly-buffed, soft-edged 'bot tucked under it, he made another vague sound then pressed Prowl close for a sleepy moment. He was too defenseless to deny their bond or the comfort he gained from moving his legs behind Prowl's—and there they lay, kliks from oblivion, and simply aspirated in tandem. Felt each other in all their scraped and scuffed-up parts.

Much had changed, through their stellar-cycles together. For as much as had changed, twice as much had gone unsaid. They were not ones to track their progress as a personal narrative, jotting down events to remember or embellish with prickly mostly-fictional details. They lived and progressed, wordless, without celebration. It was simply their way. Actions reigned supreme over words and tender admittance was as much a sin as it was an inconvenience, but what they did not say, they lived instead.

One thing that Prowl had never told his partner was how utterly and completely he loved the other mech. How dearly he was devoted to Lockdown, frame and Spark. He never told the other because there was no need, not when the evidence of their bond was in every interaction, giving them a glowing honey base to work from. No matter how rare, each found odd, coy ways of letting the other know: I treasure you above all else.

To anyone else, such an exchange may have looked like an insult or a flippant bit of teasing or a dry glance. To them, in their own complex non-language, it was as significant as a close, twisting kiss.

It had been a battle, of course. Much like everything else with the older mech, conflict was the deciding factor. As thick and headstrong as the bounty hunter could be, his ego and solitary stance simply couldn't hold up against the press of intimate millennia and the pull of a Spark that loved him as deeply as his tiny partner did. Dominated by a mech half his size, Lockdown bowed; after 23,742 stellar-cycles with him, Prowl knew that Lockdown knew. Prowl knew, more than that, that his partner felt the same way, and rare affirmation came that very moment they lay down together, each nursing the others soft hurts before blackness.

"Kid?"

Prowl hmm-ed sleepily, shifting only slightly and unaware of the conflicted expression on the older mech's face. Lockdown's huge servo slid over his front until he found the bike's tiny one, then laced their digits, face pressed into his partner's neck as though his scent alone kept him grounded. His old Spark pulsed. Prowl's pulsed back, warm and giving and loving, and Lockdown smiled into his partner's plating as though he had finally found his place, in the stars and his ship and with this mech.

"Nothin', darlin'. Nothin'."

Prowl tightened his servo and faded into recharge with a smile, because it was all his lover ever needed to say with his Spark saying everything for him.