Title: Third Wheel

Warning: This inhabits a weird area where it's a humor fic, but people sensitive to misunderstandings causing serious discomfort probably shouldn't read.

Rating: PG

Continuity: G1

Characters: Smokescreen, Hound, Mirage, Bumblebee, Jazz, Blaster.

Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

Motivation (Prompt): People on Tumblr were talking about 'bots dribbling on themselves while fantasizing about voluptuous bumpers. It had to be written.

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Part Ten

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"I think we broke him."

Smokescreen risked nudging Jazz with his elbow. "Hello? You in there?"

Bumblebee made no move to defend his boss from the prodding. "Yeah, you broke him," he said when Hound turned to him for a second opinion. "Just leave him. It's not like it's a big secret what his favorite part is. We aaaaaall know what it is." He grinned at Smokescreen, who heaved a sigh. The bumper. It was always the bumper. "But here's my guess as to what Prowl might like about him, tit for tat and all that." He put his elbows on the table, and everyone sitting around it leaned in to hear. "The doors."

It took half a second to sink in, and then the whole table eyed Jazz, giving due consideration to the idea. Heads cocked to the side as they evaluated his doors as if seeing them for the first time.

"I can see it."

"Makes sense."

"They're so mobile."

"Now that you point it out…"

"Kind of a shame he's so fixated," somebody said from the table behind them, and everybody nodded again.

Bumblebee agreed while making a rueful face speaking of his own personal mourning of that particular fact. "He's practically monogamous. Unless it's a mission, mechs, you can't get your hands on those doors." He propped his cheek on his hand, regarding Jazz. "But see what I mean? Once you really take a look at him, it's the doors."

"Or the visor," Smokescreen pointed out.

"Mmhm, the visor's nice," Hound agreed. He squinted at Jazz. "But the door's you can play with. They're springy." He made flappy hand motions. "They're more flexible on the hinges than yours."

Smokescreen inched away from the gestures, doors tucking down. "Don't even try that with my doors. Ouch."

Bumblebee snickered suddenly. "He's really out of it." Pushing off his hand, he snapped his fingers in front of Jazz's visor. "Helloooo, are you in there? Look at that. Nobody home."

"How're you bam gonna snap him outta ratatat it?"

"Hmm." The yellow minibot gave it some thought. After a second, he concluded, "Let's talk about Prowl's kinks."

Jazz made a little noise, a mewling meep somewhere deep in his throat, and an oddly deep whoooooonk sound filled the air. The table flinched back, looking around for the source of the noise, but Bumblebee mimed a honk-honk gesture with the heel of his hand. Ohhh. Okay, Jazz's horn went off when he got excited. That was kind of cute. People made an effort to cover their grins.

He didn't notice. His visor shaded deeper yet into a lost, lustful, dusky hue staring into, presumably, some sort of fantasy involving Prowl and kinks.

"Totally lost to the world," Smokescreen concluded after he and Bumblebee waved their hands in front of his face. No reaction.

"Well, that didn't work," Hound said.

"Just as well. My imagination falls kind of short on what knots Prowl's cables, anyway," Trailbreaker said. "I feel like we'd end up discussing his extra troops kink. Reinforcements fetish! Energon surplus hot-n-bothered!" He raised his cube. "Charged up on supply requisition forms filed in triplicate."

Smokescreen couldn't help but laugh. To him, it sounded more like something that would get Ultra Magnus off. "Maybe he likes the color blue," he suggested. Everybody snickered at that, more than the comment deserved, and he glanced around curiously. "What? What am I missing this time?"

Hound clapped a hand on his shoulder, smiling broadly. "We've gotta show you some older pics of Jazz. He didn't pick up the red highlights 'til after the day he met Prowl, and if you check the shades…"

"Exact color match?"

"You got it. He's convinced it's Prowl's favorite color, just 'cause it's the only real color he's got on him."

Smokescreen pulled his head back to give Hound a skeptical look. "So he thinks it'll make Prowl, what, like him more?"

"Yeah, we know, it's a screws-loose idea, but it's what he did." Hound shook his head. "Talk about desperate."

Bumblebee pointed a spoon at Smokescreen in question. "Wait, we didn't tell you about that? You have to hear about that. You haven't heard anything until we tell you the grand tale of how Jazz got a paint sample from Prowl so he could match colors."

Mirage contributed a delicate snort of contempt. "Ah, yes. A 'sample.' Stealing his paint shade, you mean. Outright asking would have been much less comparable to stalking, creepy as it might have been for a mech Prowl had only just met to ask for his paint formula. I'm only glad illegally opening someone's medical file for a paint shade was ridiculous enough even he," he jerked his chin at Jazz, "automatically discarded the idea."

"It ended up being just as stupid in the end," Bumblebee said. "It turned into a stupid-aft mission that got way out of control, and it's how everybody found out our boss was helm-over-wheels for the new TacHead. Lemme tell you," he turned back to Smokescreen, "there isn't anything like getting caught out by Optimus Prime himself on a mission you don't even know the exact final goal for."

Smokescreen stared in disbelief. "The Prime caught you?"

"Oh, he caught us. Caught three of us and turned two of us over to Ironhide for a formal reprimand for," Mirage straightened up and put on a pompous voice, "over-enthusiasm in a training exercise." He dropped the act, expression souring. "We were unaware it was classified as a training exercise. Nothing in our briefing indicated anything other than a real mission until we were ordered to stand down, the training was complete. It was, I might add, a transparent ret-canoned excuse for why we were sent in fully armed and ready to disable any mech unfortunate to stumble over us, Autobot or not. The Prime was unamused, but he couldn't call the Head of Special Operations out for lying when there was no proof either way. Thus we received a reprimand for taking a training mission too far."

Smokescreen kept staring. He switched his gaze to other, non-SpecialOps mechs, hoping they'd tell him Mirage and Bumblebee were pulling his leg, but no. Everybody was nodding along with the tale. "It got that far out of control?" he asked at last.

"We set off alarms in the main base, riled up Red Alert but good, and got shot by our own side." Bumblebee smiled almost wearily. "And we didn't even know what we were sent to retrieve until Jazz finally got back."

"He was the one Optimus Prime detained," Mirage added. "He's never told us the details of the lecture, but there was a distinct scent of singed upholstery about him when he came back." He and Bumblebee exchanged satisfied looks. Apparently they felt a blistering dressing-down from Optimus Prime had been justified.

"Wait, so how - I'm almost afraid to ask, but I have to know." Smokescreen opened his hands on the table, giving up on any hope of sanity. "How did he get the paint sample to match, if you guys failed the mission?"

Long-Suffering Expression #4, one of many in Mirage's repertoire, put in an appearance. It didn't bode well for how this story ended. Bumblebee pressed his lips together. The corners twitched wildly. He looked up at the ceiling as if searching for self-control. Nobody else bothered to rein in their grins.

Smokescreen looked between the two agents, optics wide. Now he was definitely afraid.

"Right," Bumblebee said after wrestling down the urge to giggle. He reset his vocalizer and dragged his optics back to Smokescreen. A snort-giggle immediately escaped, freed by the Praxian's scandalized wonder, and all that hard-won control was lost. "I can't do it! Ahahaha!"

Mirage sighed. Mirage could win awards in how much exasperation he packed into a single sigh. The noblemech straightened up into a formal pose as though he were about to deliver a report. The crisp recitation made it that much more absurd.

"In the long and sordid history of Lieutenant Jazz making a fool of himself, let it be known that the first instance we can say for certain he didn't mean to do so occurred upon emerging, thoroughly chastened, from the Prime's office, whereupon he was confronted by the new Head of Strategic Planning. During said confrontation, witnesses testify to the sheer amount of energy used to convey what a supreme joke Jazz found flirting with Prowl to be, therein marking the start of a harmful legacy of those who don't know any better seeing his attempted courtship as nothing more than a show put on for their amusement. The climax of this confrontation, in a manner of speaking, was when our klutz of a boss tripped over his tongue and literally fell headfirst into the prominent bumper he was fixated upon. While this in and of itself earned him nothing but black-and-white paint transfers and Prowl's utmost disdain, the final crash to the floor after face met bumper resulted in him chipping a tooth on one of the few decals besides Prowl's chevron which is the desired shade of red. It is, you may or may not have noticed, as you are not obsessed with everything Prowl, a small arrow decal on his - "

By now, Smokescreen had both hands clamped over his mouth to keep his horrified laughter muffled. "I've noticed," he squeaked.

Mirage coughed discreetly into his fist, optics flashing off to the side in sympathetic embarrassment for Smokescreen's mortification. "Yes. Well. Wheeljack scraped a paint sample out of Jazz's front teeth."

"You could say Jazz likes it rough," Bumblebee giggled. "Rough and in the mouth. That's a kink, right?"

Mirage smacked him upside the helm the same way he did Cliffjumper sometimes. "That's enough of that."

"Ow! Ow, cut it out!" Bumblebee hid his head under his arms, sniggering. It was hard to hear through the table and arms in the way, but Smokescreen thought the yellow minibot said, "Prowl's had enough of that!"

Bringing to mind a new question. "What did Prowl do?"

Bumblebee peeked over his arms, grinning wickedly. "He called for a medic."

"I assume he believed Jazz had suffered some sort of malfunction," Mirage said. He sounded entirely resigned to the ridiculousness. His boss had pulled off too many crazy stunts for him to get upset over it anymore.

"Good aftercare," Bumblebee approved, however, and Mirage's optics lit up in total indignation, proving modesty wasn't dead in his spark yet.

"Bumblebee!"

The SpecOps mechs took off across the messhall in a tangle of yellow and blue, one laughing hysterically and the other spitting like an offended felinoid. Nobody took much notice. Blaster took the opportunity to steal Bumblebee's seat, in fact. Jazz continued to tune out the rest of the galaxy in favor of a dreamworld full of Prowl, so he didn't protest.

He probably should have, as the first thing Blaster did was prop his elbows on the table and grin at Smokescreen. "I hear we're tradin' tales of the Jazzmeister's many fails."

"Is that what you heard? I didn't hear that." The Praxian's resolution to not prolong the ludicrous storytime lasted about two seconds. "Alright, spill it."

"Didja hear about the flat tires?"

The table became a scene of wide grins and anticipation. Smokescreen took a look around. It was a little scary. "How do you guys know all these stories and I'm just hearing them for the first time? I've been here years. Why am I only just hearing about this stuff?"

"Mech, this happened like a month ago."

"Oh." During his depressive phase. No wonder he hadn't heard about it. People were still filling him in on the Decepticon attack he'd slept through. He'd known he was exhausted, but Ambulon insisted he hadn't sedated him. He'd simply slept right through the call to arms, tucked safely in the medbay and forgotten until Wheeljack rousted him off the repair slab in favor of someone missing a leg.

Smokescreen rubbed at the base of his chevron. "Right. No, I didn't hear about the flat tires." Dropping his hand, he looked at Jazz. Nope, still out of it. On with the stories of humiliating but true antics. He cocked his head at Blaster. "Hit me, dealer."

Blaster laughed. "It ain't that bad! I was in the comm. room the day Jazz here scraped up the gears to say something to Prowler 'bout you - "

A hand slapped over Blaster's mouth.

"Awww, c'mon!" the comm. specialist said from behind it.

Jazz slowly turned his head, visor narrowed. "No."

"You said it was off the record! Anything an officer says to another officer off the record's back in public domain," Blaster protested. The non-commissioned Autobots at the table blinked, and he spun his fans in exasperation. "On the record's classified, and my records are sealed on that 'less they're ordered open, but 'off the record' is basically 'this isn't official,' you dig? If it ain't official business, it's personal, and personal scrap said in front of me's fair game for gossip."

Jazz glared harder.

"It's true and you know it, mech."

Narrowed blue glass spat peeved sparks, it compressed so far. Jazz pressed his mouth into a thin line of disapproval before abruptly opening in a t-ha sigh letting it go. "Fine. Then I'm asking you not t'go spreadin' that around."

Blaster squinted at him. "Uh…I mean, fine. I'll respect that, but," he glanced at their audience, "can I ask why? You didn't say nothing that can't be repeated, I don't think, and it did kind of win you an award."

"Wait, you won an award?" Smokescreen stared at Jazz. "What award did you win? How did I miss this? Was there a ceremony?"

Trepidation suddenly filled Jazz's visor. His hand dropped from Blaster's mouth, and he darted a look around the table in search of backup. "Um."

Mirage and Bumblebee to the rescue! "I said we'd get him an award if he managed a whole conversation with Prowl without screwing up," Bumblebee said cheerfully as he draped himself on their boss' shoulder.

"There was a short ceremony. Invitation only event," Mirage said as he came to stand behind Jazz's other shoulder. "Quite classy."

The two Special Ops mechs smiled sweetly. Their boss seemed trapped between them. The look on his face defied description.

Smokescreen looked between the three of them. "Was this a division effort?"

"One might say that."

"Everyone contributed!"

Ah, so the look on Jazz's face was trauma. That explained more than it didn't. "Too bad I missed it," Smokescreen said tactfully.

"You can see the award later. It's displayed on his office wall," Bumblebee informed him. "Wheeljack gave us the glue."

Jazz muttered something that sounded like, "So he's the fragger to blame."

Mirage swooped down. "What was that?"

Jazz eyed him sidelong. "I asked if he made th' frame."

"He did. A study construction, don't you agree?"

"That's one way of puttin' it." Jazz didn't seem entirely happy with how it'd been put.

Hound leaned in close to Smokescreen to whisper, "They've been tweaking him on this the whole month. So far he hasn't figured out how to pry it loose. I think they want to see how long it takes him to figure out Wheeljack built it into the wall."

"That's evil," Smokescreen whispered back. "Is there a betting pool set up?"

"Yup."

"Count me in."

"I still don't get why you don't want me telling people about what you said. It was kinda cool, mech." Turning his hands up in a shrug, Blaster sat back on the bench. "I won't if you don't want me to, but I'd think you'd want everybody here to know you can manage to talk to Prowler when you gotta."

Jazz ducked his head and mumbled something.

Mirage and Bumblebee recoiled as if they'd been stung, but Blaster's expression softened immediately. "Aww. Aww, mech. Mech, come see me later, I'll play it back for you. It's perfectly okay, Jazzerton." He patted his friend's shoulder. "Some people can't record under stress, it's just how they - "

"Frag that," Bumblebee interrupted.

Mirage frowned. "It doesn't count if he can't remember the conversation."

"We're taking the award back," they finished together. The two agents spun on their heels and stormed toward the messhall exit.

Jazz all but fell off the bench. "Hey! Hey, get back here!" he yelled as he tried to stand up, leap after them, and fight free of the table at the same time. "I earned that award, slaggit! Don't you dare, don't you fraggin' dare y' half-clocked cogsuckers!" And he was out the door and away, pelting after his rebellious subordinates.

A rude razzing noise drifted back.

"They're really enjoying getting back at him over this, aren't they?" Hound observed as the table gazed after the best of Special Operations. Nobody had stopped eating throughout. They just watched with the mild expressions of people used to this brand of chaos.

"Seems blammo so."

"So what's this about flat tires?" Smokescreen asked, turning back to Blaster.

"Ahhh, hm. Hold on. Need to edit." Blaster looked down at the table as his decks whirred, partially visible through the windows in his chest. After a second, he looked up again. "Take two: Tale of the Tires, the No Details Director's Cut! Soooo," he drew out, "without spoilering the conversation they had, picture the two of them face to face, Jazzmeister and Prowler one-on-one time. Jazz's doing his best to stand tall and proud and get taken seriously, like y'do, but as they're getting down to the business," Smokescreen covered his optics with his hand as the table hurr-hurred at the unsubtle innuendo, "Jazz's tires spring a leak. Two of them." Smokescreen peeked. Blaster was still grinning like a fiend. "Both his heels. I'm guessing he popped his valve stems."

Smokescreen's hand dropped to the table. His head followed right after, and his doors started shaking with silent laughter.

Blaster put his hand flat at about head height and did an imitation of air being let out under pressure. "Fweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee - "

"Primus, Blaster."

"- eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee - "

"What the frag?"

"- eeeee - bear with me, here, I'm doing this real-time, it took almost a whole minute, it was amazing - eeeeeeeeee - and their faces, mechs, their faces, I couldn't make this slag up - fweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee - "

The laughter wasn't so silent anymore, and Smokescreen looked up through blurred optics to see Blaster bringing his hand down in wicked imitation of Jazz sinking gradually as the black-and-white's heel tires deflated.

" - eeeeeeeeeeeeee - I kid you not, it's still going, and Prowl just had this look, like this look of 'Why is this my life?' and Jazz is playing calm as can be but he's got that look on where you can tell he's dying inside, but they're both just pretending nothing's happening, waiting for it to end so they can keep talking, but it just keeps going. Fweeeeeeeeeeeeee - "

"And that's the story of Jazz and the flat tires?" Smokescreen asked after he'd laughed himself to vent hiccups. Blaster grinned, happy to have cracked him up. "Did they ever stop deflating?"

"Oh yeah, sure, and they went right back to talking like nothing had happened, but, heh." Blaster tipped his head to the side, smiling. "Jazz went to leave, and one tire had more air left in it than the other, so you know how quiet he normally walks, right?" Smokescreen nodded, already snickering, and Blaster nodded. "Every other step, we heard it wheeze. Silence, fwee, silence, fweee, all the way off down the hall."

"As far as I'm concerned, he should get an award for just that," Hound said thoughtfully over Smokescreen collapsing into laughter yet again.

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