1: Step Into My Office...
.
"Jazz?" Prowl whispered, "are you on-line?"
Nothing.
Prowl lay down carefully on the recharge bunk behind his lover. The police cruiser's front bumper fit almost perfectly beneath Jazz's blocky shoulder-box. The recharging sports car moved his head a little, and Prowl could just hear Jazz's muffled helmet radio pick up,
"...-F these mornings you're goin' to rise up singing- -Then you'll spread your wings- -And you..." -before switching off again. Prowl smiled in the dark, and powered down for the night with one hand resting on the dark hip-casing in front of him.
.
"Not here," Prowl protested, disengaging Jazz's hands from around his neck.
"Oh, HECK no- -you got a lock on this door, an' I intend to use it."
"Jazz, this is my office."
"I know this-"
"-And as fun as you're making it sound-"
"-You got a desk-console, you got this floor, and hey- -four great walls..."
"JAZZ-" Prowl interrupted sharply, as eight hundred fascinating possibilities occurred to him at the same time.
Jazz, who knew perfectly well how Prowl's battle computer worked, leaned in just a -little- closer and blinked his headlights once.
Sixteen hundred and forty six. And counting.
"You asked for it," the police cruiser stated, and twisted Jazz's arm behind his back in a quick and efficient move. Jazz let him do it, figuring he'd be on or over Prowl's desk in the next few seconds. -Instead, Prowl walked him up to the office door.
"Now THIS is-" Jazz purred, then broke off with a surprised yelp as Prowl keyed the door open in front of him.
"O-kay... where are you takin' this, man?"
Prowl didn't answer him.
They walked down several long hallways, and even passed Bumblebee going in the opposite direction.
"S'up, Bee?" said Jazz, playing it as cool as he could.
"Have you seen Optimus?" Bumblebee asked them.
"I haven't seen him," Prowl replied, sounding disgustingly focused. "Why, is something wrong?"
"No, I just wanted to ask him about something Spike said."
"You could try the control room," Prowl suggested straight-faced, running his thumb along the base of Jazz's palm. Jazz managed not to react. Somehow.
"Okay thanks," said Bumblebee brightly, running off again.
The small yellow Autobot hadn't seen the unusual position of Jazz's arm, because the angle of Prowl's doors covered it. From Bee's perspective, it had looked like they each had an arm around the other, which wasn't that unusual.
"You got some -evil- relays up in there, you know that?" Jazz murmured.
Prowl smiled tightly and turned the next corner without replying. He stopped in front of the door to Jazz's studio.
"Honey, if you knock over my speakers again-" Jazz warned.
"Open the door."
Casting him a wary but speculative sideways glance, Jazz keyed in his code.
Inside, electronic stereo equipment and a collection of Earth instruments warred with sheet music and datapads for space on the counters, and dark gray acoustic foam covered the walls. In the shadows near the ceiling, something glittered faintly.
Prowl released Jazz into the studio with a slight shove, and locked the door behind them.
"What did you wanna hear?" Jazz asked, flipping through the album titles in a case of tapes.
"Leave the stereo off," Prowl instructed, hands slipping around Jazz's waist. "-I just want to hear -you-."
Jazz looked around the cozy, sound-proofed room with a slow smile.
"Step into my office..."
.
2: I Got You...
.
"-Set the charges here, here, and here. Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Ironhide, you go in through the front door, an' I want it loud. Mirage, Wheeljack, Bumblebee, the computer's all yours. Get what you can and get out. I'll be hanging around, but you won't see me. You three keep comm silence unless your tires are on fire. The rest of us can talk on the comms, but nobody even -thinks- about the computer team until this mission's done or blown wide open, understand?" Jazz made eye contact with Brawn, Bluestreak, and Cliffjumper in particular, who added their agreement to the others'.
"Prime?" Jazz said, turning.
"We must find out where Sparkplug and Ratchet are being held," the red semi-truck said, gravely, "hopefully the Decepticon computers can tell us that, and if not, we'll find another way. Wait for my signal to attack once we reach the warehouse, and no one is to leave their team. ...Autobots, transform and ROLL OUT!"
.
Prowl stood under the hot spray of the pressure washer, head bowed and hands flat against the concrete wash-rack wall.
His plan had worked.
Never mind that Bumblebee and Mirage were almost trapped in a falling freight elevator, or that Optimus had half a building collapse on him, actually cracking his right windshield. Never mind that for 13.62 seconds, he'd thought Jazz had gone down on that elevator WITH Bumblebee and Mirage, instead of saving them from it. Never mind that Ratchet had said Bluestreak's arm could be reattached within a day or two.
Just- ...Never mind.
Prowl turned around, letting the hot water drum against his windshield and jet cleanly through the hinges of his doors. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Two hands. Jazz's hands, lathering Prowl's shoulders and hood with a brush from the soap bucket. Prowl sighed quietly, and kept his optics offline.
Jazz moved around him, soaping each faring and joint carefully. He passed a hand over each of the police cruiser's painted shields as he finished with it.
The first time a mission had so very nearly gone wrong, Prowl hadn't handled it well. He'd verbally bitten Jazz and Benchmark's heads off before they'd even made it back to Iacon, and locked his battle computer up twice trying to plan the next raid.
It got easier, as experience taught him that other bots' plans didn't work out as often as his well-calculated ones, and time showed him just how frighteningly capable Jazz was. ...But the split-second of cold, sick, -terror- at knowing that his friends had been damaged, even destroyed doing what HE'D decided they had to attempt, never quite went away.
As Prime's second in command, Jazz knew all about that.
The brush was working lower now, circling across the flat panels and taking time on grooves and joints. Jazz knelt in the suds to finish, then finally reached up and changed the spray setting. The noise of the water fell to a steady hiss, and soap sluiced off of Prowl's tired frame. He heard a low whine from one of the servos in Jazz's knee. It meant that Jazz was about to stand up, and it had done that ever since Jazz had bailed out of a window on the fifty-fourth floor of a Cybertronian high-rise spindle...
Prowl's knees buckled without warning and he pressed his face into Jazz's hood, hands gripping the black metal of his lover's arms hard enough to indent.
"S'all right, Prowler," Jazz murmured against the crest of Prowl's white helmet, "I got you..."
.
3: Work Somethin' Out
.
Prowl stood by the console in his quarters, and contemplated a coil of thin black cable.
He palmed it out of sight when he heard the door being keyed open. Jazz swirled in looking dusty, and returned Prowl's welcoming smile.
"How did it go?"
"Beachcomber's not ready," Jazz replied with a shrug, "-but everybody had fun."
"Hmm." Prowl had suspected as much. In his opinion, Beachcomber's interest in joining the special ops team had more to do with his hero Hound's stories of Mirage and Jazz than anything else... "-You look a little low on your shock absorbers, Jazz."
"It has been a looong day."
"Did you refuel yet?"
"Nah, I've still got a quarter tank. I'll do it in the morning," Jazz yawned.
"I got us takeout..." Prowl said, pointing to a drum of gasoline in the corner.
"Oh man, I love you," Jazz grinned, molding himself against Prowl's back between his doors and settling his chin on the police cruiser's shoulder. "...But this means you got somethin' planned, am I right?"
"I did and I do, Prowl replied easily, "-considering the state YOU'RE in, I think it can wait until morning."
"No faith..."
"Let's refuel. We can talk about it later," Prowl suggested. -When Jazz was tired, he couldn't stay online with a full tank, and the sports car was far too stubborn to admit that.
.
"Good morning..." Prowl murmured, right beside one of Jazz's audio receptors.
Jazz shifted a little under Prowl's hands, but he didn't come online. Prowl slid the fingers of one hand cautiously under the back of Jazz's helmet, and ran the tips across the case of Jazz's core processor. The hard metal cover was warm to the touch, dual cooling fans on the front side of Jazz's helmet turning almost silently. Very slowly, Prowl built up the electrical current in his arm. The stray voltage grounded out to his frame the way it was supposed to, and passed from Prowl's fingers into the casing they touched. Jazz's visor flickered blue for a moment. His helmet fans began to humm softly, rising and falling with no pattern Prowl could detect. Prowl reached down with his other hand, and started stroking the small panels and fittings along Jazz's waist.
Jazz came online in a haze of pleasurable sensations, and immediately snatched Prowl's hand away from his midsection with a yelp, because it tickled like -crazy-.
"Finally," Prowl purred against his shoulder, fingertips tracing small circles on the back of Jazz's CPU case.
"Now that is MY kind of wake-up call..." Jazz groaned, trying to hold his head still.
Prowl pressed a kiss to the back of one of Jazz's boxy helmet antennas. Jazz shivered, and reached back to-
"Trust me?" Prowl asked, withdrawing his hand from under Jazz's helmet.
"-'Course," Jazz nodded.
Prowl opened a small cover behind Jazz's front bumper, and felt the clean rows of metal contact-nodes inside. He didn't press anything, he just -brushed-.
Jazz made a kind of keening, humming noise, and set his jaw tightly when the hand was withdrawn. Prowl opened his own data port with less ceremony, uncoiled the length of gray cable stored on one side, and connected them.
Jazz grinned, and murmured something Prowl didn't catch. Jazz had probably said it through the cable too, but Prowl hadn't opened his side of the connection yet. -He needed his hands steady. By the light of Jazz's now somewhat puzzled visor, Prowl uncurled the thin black cable he'd been toying with the night before. He plugged one end into his own police radio handset jack, and the other end into the stereo jack on the side of Jazz's helmet. Jazz captured Prowl's hand as he finished, and kissed the base of his palm impatiently.
"What's with the lockout, Prowler?"
"You'll see. -Now."
Prowl opened the connection. His equilibrium dropped offline, and he gripped Jazz's shoulders reflexively.
"You routed... you... hot DAMN..." Jazz breathed, visor glowing bright and steady. Prowl uncurled his hands as the world stopped spinning around him, and tried to get his optics to focus.
It had been a long, long time since Jazz had felt THIS kind of bandwidth, but the stunned silence on the other end of the connection worried him. He reached up and back, stroking Prowl's heated face with the backs of his fingers.
"-All right back there?" Jazz whispered.
Prowl nodded.
Jazz continued stroking his face unhurriedly, and Prowl became aware of an echoing pulse beginning to build in the back of his mind, sexy but subtle, like the intro to a song. ...Jazz loved adding details like that.
Prowl's optics flashed, and he reached for Jazz across the link.
.
"-SLAG-..." Jazz groaned, glaring at the beeping chronometer.
"...Hm?" Prowl mumbled against Jazz's shoulder.
"I do NOT wanna move," Jazz smiled ruefully, switching the alarm off.
"What time is it?" Prowl asked, sitting up on one elbow.
"1130. Which means either you messed with the schedule, or we are gonna get it."
"I switched your shift with Ironhide's."
"Mmm..." Jazz rolled over, and kissed his partner. "-Did he ask?"
"Nope."
"...You were GONNA jump me last night," Jazz laughed.
"Adapt and overcome," Prowl shrugged.
"That's no joke," Jazz agreed, picking up the black audio cable that lay on the bunk between them, "-but I thought you got over that bandwidth trip. I -told- you it didn't matter to me if-"
"You also told me how good eighteen-point interfacing was, and don't -tell- me you didn't enjoy this morning," Prowl pointed out.
"I'm an acoustic, Prowler. We're -built- for high-intensity audio feeds. ...Come to think of it, how DID you keep your BC from locking up?"
Prowl smiled a little, but said nothing.
"No. No WAY, man...!" Jazz shouted.
"It was only thirty-six variables," Prowl shrugged.
"You can use your battle computer for THAT?"
"Why not? You can play Beethoven's fifth back as a sensory impulse. -Where do you think I got the idea?"
"...That is copyright infringement," Jazz grinned, optics narrowing beneath his visor.
"I don't suppose you'd consider settling out of court?" Prowl deadpanned.
"Oh, I'm sure we can work somethin' out..." Jazz purred, and leaned in for another kiss.
.
.
Author's notes:
.
Lyrics from the beginning are from Ella Fitzgerald's 'Summertime'.
.
Benchmark is an original character of mine, a blade-specialist Autobot who died in the war with the Decepticons before the start of the series.
.
Right after I wrote Jazz saying, "No faith..." I was moving a box next to my stereo, and it accidentally switched on and just happened to play Smokey Robinson's 'Cruisin' on the radio as the next song. I am not making this up.
.
Inspiration for part three was from a P/J fan art I saw, though I couldn't make out the artist's signature. It's a black-and-white line art, drawn very well.
Jazz asks, "What say you and me find out if our hardware's compatible, hmmm?" -Prowl covers his face with one hand and replies, "Jazz, where do you GET these lines?"
...In character, and pure genius. I -had- to run with it.