STOP! YOU'VE VIOLATED THE LAW-

{ @best-head }

Oh, he is being patted…

Optimus leans over further, almost overbalancing as he presses his big blocky helm into Prowl’s servos.

Prowl is not... tall. By any means. There have been larger Cybertronians.

He was playing nice for Optimus. But let Megatron slip, just once.

Optimus, Prowl had come to find over the years, was something like a large dog.

This was his way of showing affection, getting in the way. Prowl just.. has more patience for it, these days. Reaching a servo up to pat at Optimus' arm, he grumbled his engines a little.

Patting is not explicit permission. He needs to be told yes. Prowl should have a say in the matter, no matter how much Optimus’ messed-up coding howls at him to grab his friend and drag him off to—

That is Voice # 3, which is cause for alarm. Tarantulas never uses Voice #3. Prowl turned to give her his full attention, brow furrowing. Camras malfunctioned? Some sort of break in she couldn't handle?

..worse? Code O?

Harried, she catches herself on the doorframe, mandibles rippling in peevish, flustered agitation.

Prowl stalled for all of two moments before blinking. He did.. not know what to do with this information. He didn't have a contingency for 'reverted into sparkling', nor was it a situation he ever thought was going to make an appearance because it.. simply did not. Lacing his digits over his bumper, his scowl deepened in thought for a moment or two, before he finally went, "Is Ostaros...alright?"

That was the correct question, right? Was the sparkling alright? ...what was he supposed to do, here? They needed to fuel him. He'd need to rest somewhere.

...sparklings needed toys. He needed to do more research.

Nevermind. He should of listened to the feeling.

Items shoved aside, Prowl sighed through his vents, but settled his servos on Rodimus' hips, leaning back in his chair to get comfortable.

"...I am not working, no."

{ @best-head }

Tarantulas offers a muttered half-greeting and wraps an arm around Prowl, still mostly focused on the notepad in her other paw. It was the intended use-case for her generously supple and plush plumpness, after all; no reason to remark upon Prowl availing himself of something meant for him.

This close, he can likely hear the contraction-expansion of her artificial heart, pushing hydraulic hemolymph and energon through organs both meat and mechanical. Woom. Woom. Woom.

As she curled around him, he sagged, drooping a little, and pressed his face a little farther in, nearly engulfed.

He didn't have any assignments. He'd played his little processor games. With nothing left to do, he came for her, content in the silence and dark. It was helpful, even beyond the throbbing behind his optic, the thumping of her energon flooding his own lines that he could feel-

Prowl paused for a moment, digit hovering over his datapad.

The pause was pregnant- heavily so, and craving at the very least an explanation from Rodimus Prime, who came in and said whatever he liked for the sake of saying things or at the very least hearing himself talk.

A beat passed, and then another, before he set the datapad down, crossed a leg over the other, servos linking over the top of his bumper.

“Yeah, so, how cool are you with gender theory? I mean, I know you’re like, only he/him pronouns because you like consistency or whatever,” he flaps a servo around as if that helps to drive the point home, “But Yaoi is when two ‘male’ oriented figures get it on or, uh, make out at the bar for drinks. Like… Okay, well, most of the couples I know are actually more yuri-coded, so trying to give you an example is tough. Uhh… Look, the Camiens don’t have a ton of ‘male’ he/him masculine dudes on their planet, the way we kinda didn’t have women for a while, and a lot of ‘em are figuring out they’re bisexual?”

That’s so many words that mean literally nothing.

Instead, his face scrunched as he took this in. 'Male' and 'Female' were really Earth concepts. Prowl didn't care much for the gendered concept- he was an Enforcer frame, which was about as much as he needed to know. But he was.. making an effort to understand and listen more than he had, before. People seemed to like when you listened to them.

"I see. Yaoi is 'male' coded behaviors, and Yuri is 'female' coded.." He ran the part of his processor that could link to the holonet and internet in the background over these terms, nose wrinkling faintly at a few results that came up. ..perhaps he would run it without the.. NSFW results? Another sweep pulled up the history of such terms, why they came about, cultural relevance.

..there was a lot.