NOTES: I can count on one finger the amount of fanfictions I've seen that involves Prowl's occupation as a police officer in one form or another during intimacy, and it's really disappointing that people don't use it to their advantage when writing Prowl/Jazz fiction. C'mon guys, there's a world of potential out there! Plz write more about this stuff

So I decided to cover the realities of being an Enforcer in a five minute scene snapshot. I didn't really see a reason to like Prowl and Jazz as a couple until I realised that they share a lot of burden in their field of work, which is something I've never seen touched in any Prowl/Jazz fic I've read, disappointingly enough.
I am a filthy cop sympathiser FIGHT ME

.o

Life on Earth was not as complicated as life on Cybertron for Prowl. Fighting the Decepticons was very different from hunting down the average criminal. You didn't have to file the same kind of reports for how many rounds were spent, damage incurred to the surrounding areas (well, until the human authorities decided that the Autobots were to be held responsible for what they found to be unnecessary damage while fighting Decepticons), enemies downed.

It detached one from the situation, made one feel less accountable for their actions, less empathy for taking down these Decepticons. You didn't have to try to save a Decepticon's life after downing him so that he's no longer a threat. You didn't have to be placed on modified duty pending an investigation after you killed the Decepticon. You didn't have your weapons taken away while on desk work. Most people don't realise just how suffering that is, to have your weapon taken away, both at work and at home. You don't feel safe. You didn't have to sit in the court system and listen to people judging your actions, the whole "if it were me, I would have done this instead!" spiel. The things people think sitting on their high chair looking down at you, not trying to understand the reason you took the actions you did, or the mindset. You didn't have to explain why you killed him. You didn't have to justify the reasons because one less Decepticon was one step closer to a peaceful Earth.

Now that Cybertron was gone and there were only factions of Autobot and Decepticon left on Earth, there weren't any civilian mechs to monitor, protect, and enforce. Unless you counted humans. Humans were a very messy bunch when it came to crime.

When Decepticon activity was low, Prowl often went out on patrol, just like his old days as an officer. It was the only way to make him feel at home. He wasn't an adrenaline junkie like some of his fellow officers were, but he wouldn't deny a bit of a thrill buzzing through his circuits whenever he apprehended a human suspect.

Prowl kept to himself. That's just how the job made you. It made you isolated, cautious, suspicious of others, unable to trust. It made you pessimistic about life. It took away your friends because you changed so much during training. It made you lonely.

That all changed when Jazz started trying to get to know him.

As with most people he'd met, he kept Jazz at a distance. The bot was known to have a sketchy history, no doubt several stacks of criminal misconduct back on Cybertron. An officer should never fraternize with a criminal unless he wants his job stripped from him. It's bad press and could lead to favouritism and numerous other problems.

Yet the black and white musician continued to be a staple in Prowl's life as the years on Earth continued. The walls of protection around Prowl's mind and spark began to fall as Jazz proved time and time again to be a strong ally despite his tainted past. More than once Prowl had found his back covered by the mech, and that sparked a longing for a closer relationship—being able to carry yourself in battle and protect your fellow team mates was a respectable and very appealing trait.

Months of verbal flirting turned to weeks of touches that grew bolder by the day, until Jazz popped the question and asked to further their relationship. Prowl, being the lonely outcast with a personality and past no bot could really understand, accepted.

Prowl was terrified.

On Cybertron, he'd go out every day knowing that one day he may not make it back home. He walked into work knowing that his partner would have his back, and that his enforcer department would do the best they could to protect each other. Hearing "officer down!" was one of the most spark-attack-inducing messages you could hear across frequencies. Seeing your partner, who'd just gone into a shop for a quick bite to eat, down with a gaping hole in their spark chamber… Your partner that you knew for many a stellar cycle. The partner you shared energon, sweat, and tears with. All of that gone.

And now he was going to have to do it all over again with someone who'd never been an officer.

The thing about being an officer was that there were certain things you were exposed to.

As Prowl sat in front of Jazz, caressing Jazz's black hip, he hesitated. Jazz said he could handle it. He'd seen a lot in war. He's sure he could handle it. It's a burden they're going to have to share together. It's better together than to always be alone.

And ain't that the truth as an enforcer. You never want to be alone in the pain, yet you're forced to because civilians won't ever understand the world you're coming from.

Prowl swallowed. Almost shyly, a manner unbefitting of someone of his stature, he opened his chestplates to his soon-to-be sparkmate. His red spark pulsed strongly within its casing, inviting. The red glow was a stark contrast against Jazz's white and black armour.

Jazz followed suit, opening his as well. A deep blue spark to contrast, creating the familiar wigwag lightshow on both their black and white frames. In a gesture recognised since Ancient Cybertron, they sweeped their hands over the other's shoulders and merged their chests together.

There was a squeal from Prowl's natural bullhorn upon contact, the initial pain a shock to him, before they settled together and processed each other's memories.

Jazz started first, giving Prowl glimpses of his start in Cybertron. How Jazz was just like every other bot, just trying to make a living and playing his own tunes in bars across his city. How Jazz loved to break the speed limits riding on Cybertron's winding highways. How Jazz would flirt with the law and escape before law enforcement could catch him. How Jazz would end up owing someone money. How Jazz would be caught and beaten within an inch of his life. How Jazz had spilled a mech's energon and snuffed a spark for the first time. How Jazz had to constantly be wary from that moment on. How Jazz had begun to go through true horrors when he joined Special Ops, the torture he went through during training. How Jazz had seen horrible things while rummaging around other mechs' processors. How Jazz had to do horrible things that would make any sane mech faint. How Jazz had to effectively erase the part of himself that could empathise with his targets in order for him to do his job.

And Prowl had accepted it for all it was, as his story was no better. In some messed up way, Prowl took comfort in it. Someone who would understand. After all this time, he had to wonder why Jazz didn't give mention to so much of this. Perhaps their relationship would have moved a lot faster had he known that Jazz wasn't as innocent as he'd thought.

Prowl's start in Cybertron quickly moved into law enforcement. It was natural, a calling of the spark, and one would say destiny, considering the kind of processor he was built with. He moved through the academy with ease, and given that he was a mech who valued logic over emotion, moving to the fields wasn't a difficult endeavor for him.

Initially, he didn't think the messed up situations would affect him. Dead bodies, quarreling sparkmates, drug users—the general stuff that every enforcer expected to see. None of it really haunted him. At least, the general stuff.

One time he was at an apartment. He'd seen a dead body—typical—but the thing that nearly had him vomiting was that there were sparklings playing in the greyed mech's spilt energon. Covered head to toe with it, giggling, splashing each other. They had no idea what they were even seeing.

Then there was the mech who was sawed in two, with only his spark chamber remaining intact, as it was made of an alloy much stronger than the object that had halved him. The mech said that his creator had done this to him, that he was a mistake, but he told Prowl to tell his creator that he loved him regardless. The mech was cut in half and yet he could forgive this creator of his. The spark supernovaed in its casing before fizzling out.

Then there were all the times where Prowl and his team had apprehended a suspect, taken him to jail, had him ready to be convicted, only for the case to be thrown out. So many times this happened, so many frustrating hours spent trying to put the actual criminals behind bars, and yet being unable to.

One time, a sparkmate had beaten his lover nearly to termination, yet the lover did not call until it was too late. When Prowl arrived, the lover was holding their sparkling in their arms, trying to bond with the sparkling one last time spark-to-spark, but the lover's spark was too weak from damage, and ended up fading before the bond could be connected. The sparkling didn't even know why. Years later that same sparkling would go to commit mass murder, and it hurt Prowl to know that if he'd gotten there a little sooner, or tried harder to change the situation the numerous other times they were called to this unit, maybe that sparkling's creator would have survived, and maybe the sparkling wouldn't've turned out that way.

The times where he thought he could have done better, or differently, were the ones that ate him up like acid at night. He could have saved that femme if he'd applied the tourniquet a few seconds earlier. He could have saved that mech from the fire if he didn't wait for the fire department in his earlier years. He could have saved his first lover if he didn't tell anyone that they were in a relationship—thus his lover being used as a pawn against him. He could have stopped that mile-wide oil explosion if he'd stopped pursuing the speeding mech just ten seconds earlier, which may have got the suspect to slow down and take a different route instead of the one straight into the oil refinery.

The pain of guilt, fear, longing, and isolation built up over the years of service, and only temporarily aided by defragmenting every night. Some nights he couldn't recharge at all. Some nights he was left to wonder if maybe he's just not good enough for this job.

Then there was the post-traumatic stress. His current life was always plagued with the horrors of things he'd encountered.

He tried to avoid certain rooms, as they reminded him too much of a situation where there were three hostages and one gunman, with one of the hostages already taken a plasma to the face and scorched, melting head remains splattered the wall behind the dead hostage. The hostage looked way too similar to his fallen first love.

He hated the smell of hydrofluoric acid because it reminded him of the acid bath murders that occurred in his 176th stellar cycle of service, where an entire block of bots had been melted down while being kept alive, and forever suffering.

He couldn't stand the colour purple, not because of Decepticons, but because there was a mafia of purple mechs who were known as Enforcing the Enforcers, that killed Enforcers pretty indiscriminately. Just because they were Enforcers. The targeted slaying of a mech just because they happened to work a certain job. An Enforcer could have been a saint—prayed to Primus every day, donated to charity, engaged with poorer communities—and he'd be gone the next day to a random EtE's bullets.

That didn't even consider the human cases he'd seen. Humans, again, were very messy creatures. Prowl had never seen a room covered wall-to-wall in feces, and had never smelled something so heinous as a dead body roasting and festering with bugs for 12 days in 105 degree temperatures. He'd never seen a baby with a diaper that needed changing 3 days ago and had developed a rash from sitting in their own waste. He'd never seen a brain splattered against a wall—it's much, much more bloody and graphic than they showed in movies. He'd never seen, oh he'd never seen…

He was scared of commitment. Not the kind of commitment that was expected of him at his original job, but the kind of commitment that made him care if he lived to see another day. The commitment of caring for someone more than just the general community—the commitment of a sparkmate. His team came close to this, but it was expected that one day they may not make it home. A sparkmate needed him to come home. Prowl wasn't the kind of person who liked to make promises or commitments he couldn't uphold.

And now Jazz saw all that.

In the distance, Prowl thought he could hear someone crying. He thought it was Jazz reacting to the things no normal civ should ever see, and thankfully don't. But he realised it was himself, sobbing and shaking in Jazz's arms, as he relived all those memories at once, all those emotions, all the locked away feelings that he tried to drink away after work with his brothers and sisters in arm.

Jazz took it all in, just holding Prowl, sending strong feelings of support, understanding, and most importantly, acceptance of the things Prowl had to do for his job. He and Prowl weren't so different. The only difference was that Jazz knew how to go to sleep peacefully at the end of the day, thanks to his vicious training, whereas the Enforcer Academy left Prowl with all the skills to handle the situation, but none of the skills to take him home without the job following. None of the skills needed to get a good night's rest. None of the skills to make him not feel so much guilt for the things he couldn't do.

It was only a five minute dialogue between their sparks, yet it felt like it added another million stellar cycles to their age.

Jazz eventually moved away enough to separate his spark from Prowl's, slowly shutting his chestplates with a quiet click. Prowl's optics remained dim, misty and his cheeks stained with tears. He gently shut Prowl's spark chamber as well, smoothing his hand over the Enforcer's chest, before drawing him closer again, chest-to-chest.

"Prowla," Jazz whispered, pressing their foreheads together. "Prowla, you can't do this job alone. That's a suicide mission."

"'m not alone. The human law enforcement does their job and I do my part."

"No, Prowl, not what I meant. You can't carry the burden of everything you've seen all by yerself. Y'ain't got a way to cope, y've just been bottling it up 'n drinkin' it away. That ain't healthy, mech." Jazz murmured. "You get caught in the loop of "what if", 'n it doesn't do anythin' to help with all yer troubles."

"I don't think anyone here would understand. Any time I do talk about it, it's like I'm speaking a different language," Prowl wiped his cheeks before settling his arms around Jazz, fully enjoying the embrace.

"You got me now. We ain't that different."

Prowl huffed and a small smile graced his lips for the first time in their new bond. "Anyone who knows us would say that's completely untrue."

"Maybe so. But that's because they only see the outer layer. Our jobs, they affect us on a deeper layer that we don't let anyone see. Too risky."

"It's hard…"

"Hey," Jazz planted a quick kiss on Prowl's lips. "No one said the job would be easy. That's why there's less than one percent of people in our fields."

He moved his fingers underneath Prowl's arms and behind his back, reaching up to trace the letters of "POLICE" on the Praxian's doorwings.

"Guess I'm really lucky to have such a rare catch," Jazz grinned, blue visor flashing.

Prowl chuckled. "Most people actively avoid the attention of law enforcement officers."

"Maybe I like to show off a lil…" the sports car's engine gave a rumble. "Say…That thing ya did with yer voice, that nearly blew my audials… What was that?"

Prowl touched his throat. "Oh that? It's something that's installed onto you when you join the Enforcers. It amplifies your voice as a bullhorn, but can also be altered when your rumblers or howlers are on. So along with low frequencies of your siren, the frequencies of your voice are lowered and amplified so more people can hear you. It's very convenient used against humans. Stops them right away."

"And why would ya activate it here?"

Prowl looked a bit embarrassed. "That was an accident. I didn't expect to experience something so strong."

Jazz grinned mischievously. "Can I get ya to do that with your police sirens too?"

It took a second for Prowl to process what Jazz meant by that. "It takes a lot to get those to accidentally go off."

"Well, I guess I'll have to try my best to get those reds and blues going."

Prowl's engine revved with that adrenaline anticipation.