AU August Fic 24

AU August Fic 24

Childhood Best Friend

Notes: This feels simultaneously like the most romantic thing I’ve ever written, and also like I’ve ripped my heart out of my chest and rubbed it on the page.

Prowl had been forced to come to terms with his failures.  He’d accepted many of his faults and was working on finding contentment.  His life was nothing like how he’d imagined it.

He was not the Chief of the Enforcers.  He was not even an Enforcer.

He did not own his own habsuite.

He was not bonded.

He had no honors for the walls, no proudly displayed awards or certificates.

He was a faceless no one on the street and he was going to have to be okay with that.

He was not okay with his sparklinghood best friend finding out.

0-0-0

Jazz had arrived at worse than rock-bottom - he wasn’t even a has-been.  He was inching towards middle age, firmly set for being a never-was.  Mediocre.  

He had no record contract. 

He had no gigs.

He wasn’t famous.

He wasn’t rich.

There was no ‘wall of fame’ with his music on it.

He was a failed musician working odd jobs to get by and he had been able to mostly ignore the gnawing sense of shame in his spark.

He wasn’t sure he would be able to if the most important person from his sparklinghood found out.

0-0-0

It was chance that they ran across each other - an old teacher had contacted them both, looking for pictures of their classmates for a reunion.  He’d been surprised they hadn’t kept in touch and given each the other’s comm code.  Meeting up was unavoidable.

They decided to meet at a small cafe by Jazz’s habsuite.  

Prowl had sprung for a polish, but it wasn’t enough to hide the cheapness of his paint or the lack of Enforcer decals.

He’d driven most of the way himself, fueling on the cheapest energon he could find to save a few credits and now he was lost.

“Excuse me.”  He was walking through a residential area - apartment buildings, tiny front gardens, a shabby well-loved sparkling park.  He stopped to ask an older mech repairing the fence for directions.

“Do you know where Gravity Cafe is?”  The mech stood up, creaking slightly, and brushed curls of aluminum from his knees.  He was the muddy brown-green that older bots tended to favor and he wore two small metals of distinction on his left shoulder for service in the Space Academy.  

“Out of towner?  You’re in the right area, keep goin’ up tha’ way,” he pointed ahead, “an’ take a right at the mega-credit station.  You here for the festival?” he asked hopefully.

“Festival?”

The mech pointed towards a banner strung between two light posts down the road.

“Music and Light Festival, every town in Polyhex does it. Ours is just local - the one in the central town is huge an’ that’s where bots usually are heading.”

“No.”  Something warmed in his spark - Jazz was probably going to be playing on one of those central town stages soon.  “I’m visiting a friend - Jazz - but it might be interesting to see.”

The mech’s optics brightened.

“You’re a friend of Jazzy’s?”  

“Yes, you know him?”

The mech bounced in place.

“He’s the bot that walked my grand-sparklings to school every day when their creators left them wit’ me!  Used ta come over and play ‘em ta sleep too.  He’s the kindest bot in the whole city.  I was jus’ wishin’ he was here ta help me wit’ this, but if he’s meetin’ a good friend, I think that’s better.  Tell him I said, hi, yeah?”

“Of course.”

The mech wasn’t the last to talk up Jazz.  The femme at the mega-credit station raved about how Jazz donated his time to the local school and taught music lessons cheap enough for bots to afford them.  Another said that no matter how sad he felt, when he walked by Jazz when he was playing at night, he felt happier.  Prowl stopped to help a couple of younglings hang a banner and mentioned Jazz again.  He was apparently “the cooooolest” and they’d been to one of his concerts in the park.

Prowl dreaded Jazz finding out about his own life, but he couldn’t stop smiling, thinking about his best friend being so well loved.

0-0-0

Jazz had given in and looked Prowl up on the net.  He’d expected a few articles about him, maybe some pictures.

He hadn’t expected how many forums would be talking about how he saved their lives.

“I’d be dead by now, if it wasn’t for Prowl,” one post read in a neighborhood forum.

“He helped me keep my sparklings safe,” said another in a forum for abused bondmates.

“He was an aft, but he was right, and he got me out of trouble,” was a most liked post on a finance forum talking about people who needed advice.

Jazz wondered what branch of the enforcers Prowl was in that brought him into contact with such a wide range of bots and problems.  

It sounded just like him though.  Stupidly brave, mechling was not a stupidly brave mech. 

At least one of them had gotten their dream.  

Jazz saw the Iacon Hall stage in his processor, the screaming fans, himself playing something brilliant and new and complicated.  Endless hotel rooms and money to burn.

Frag.

Jazz stared down into his cube and tried not to imagine Prowl’s face when he realized what Jazz was doing with his life.  He traced pictures in the fluffy foam top with the tip of a digit.

The door opened.

0-0-0

It was Jazz.  Dear, Primus.  For some reason, Prowl hadn’t expected the mech to look the same - that smug grin, those sparkling optics, he even still had the same visor, now out of date and out of fashion.

“Jazz,” he breathed, a smile breaking across his face.  “Jazz.”

“Prowler.”  Then he was standing and they were both caught in a crushing embrace, not sure who had started it.

“Let me order ya a cube,” Jazz said, reluctantly breaking away from the embrace.

“Okay.”  Prowl slid into the booth and discretely wiped his optics.  Jazz bounced up to the counter and waved over the mech.  They spoke and the barista turned to Prowl, smiling.  He said something to Jazz and then turned to make whatever concoction Jazz had ordered him.  

The mech turned with an extremely purple cube in his servo and instead of giving it to Jazz, walked around the counter and headed towards their table.

“Orion!  Hey - !”  Jazz grabbed for the mech.  He walked faster, slopping a bit of purple over his servos, a giant grin on his face.

“One Gravity special!,” he said, placing it before Prowl.  “On the house for a ‘friend’ of Jazzy’s!”  Then he winked and spun around, walk - sauntering back to his station.

“What was -” Prowl stared, but Jazz waved it away.

“Jus’ a friend who thinks he’s funny.  It’s good though, the special.”  Jazz sat and Prowl took a sip.  It was good.

They fell silent and Prowl felt something in him ease.  He’d missed Jazz.

0-0-0

“So,” Jazz said, as he licked the last of the foam from the rim of the cube, “how’ve ya been doin’?”

Prowl twitched and his optics dropped to the table.

“I am…well.  There is nothing exciting going on in my life.”

“Ya went inta the Enforcers’ Academy after university, right?”  Jazz hadn’t seen Prowl since secondary school when they had both been awkward younglings, still growing into their new frames.

“I…no, I was not accepted.”

Jazz felt his mouth drop open and hurried to hide the surprise from his face.  All those people on the data net -

“What did you do instead?” he asked quickly.  He wanted to know - but he wasn’t going to ask.

Prowl answered the silent question anyways, his voice flat and low.

“They said my psych eval indicated instability in highly emotional situations.  I was offered a desk position in one of the political offices, but I declined.  My tactical processor was not designed for…politics.”

“That’s - that sucks, mech,” Jazz said.  He leaned back and vented deeply.  Poor Prowl.  The news must have devastated him.  “But, ya doin’ good now, right?  I mean -”

“I share a habsuite with two others and we’re saving up to buy it.  Credits are not plentiful right now.”

That explained the cheap paint.

“Is it a nice neighborhood?” Jazz asked, trying to steer the conversation to something positive.

“It is not bad,” Prowl admitted.  “It is close to work -”  He fell silent.

“Ya don’ have ta talk ‘bout it if ya don’ wanna,” Jazz offered.  “If -”

Prowl folded his servos neatly on the sticky table in front of him.

“I am a financial advisor and I run a small private security firm.”

“Oh.”

“I usually do small things - I work mostly with non-profit organizations.  We help mechs and femmes get financial independence.  Bots that have fallen below the poverty line.  My company only has three bots - me, Bulkhead, and Cliffjumper - and we only do piece work.”  Prowl was staring out the window, keeping Jazz out of view.

“You do events or -”

“Whoever needs some…security.”

“And you advise -”

“I was just hired by the Bonded Protection Home - financial abuse is very common.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“It is not…what I had imagined for myself,” Prowl said softly, looking down at his servos, shoulder hunched to make himself smaller.

It was the opposite of the sparkling Jazz had known.  That Prowl had always stood up, doorwings flared out, jumping in the middle of fights to defend whatever poor bitlet the bullies had decided to target.

He’d lost most of the fights.

“Ya mean all that hero business we talked about?  Running inta burnin’ buildings and saving people?  Going up against gangs and stuff?”

Prowl nodded.

“I…have had to accept that I am not a hero.”  He said it softly and Jazz saw his own shame mirrored in Prowl’s face, in his dim optics, in the twisting of his servos.

Frag that.

“Of course you’re a hero, dumbaft!”  Jazz slammed his servos on the table and the cubes rattled.  “Those bots save what - a couple dozen sparks a vorn?  Some showy heroics and a couple of traffic stops?  Ya using ya processor ta give people back their lives, Prowler.  Ya save lives every week - more than any a’ the enforcers could.  Ya special, Prowl.”  He reached out and took Prowl’s servo, squeezing hard.

Prowl was staring at him.  Jazz got the feeling that his enormously powerful processor was spinning in circles.

“That - you don’t understand - what?” he finally said, servos clutching at Jazz’s just as hard now.

“I think that’s amazing, Prowl, that you help people in so many different ways.  Jus’ like when we were bitlets.”

“Oh.”

Looking at it like that made everything seem…like something he could be proud of.

0-0-0

Jazz’s barista friend, Orion, came over under the guise of ‘cleaning’ to see if they were alright.  He smeared some of the spills around the table and then walked away, leaving the dirty rag and both their empty cubes.

“He must care about you,” Prowl remarked.

“He’s a nosey fragger that can’t stay outta any bot’s business,” Jazz grumbled.  He stacked the cubes and wiped the table probably.

“Is he a fan?” Prowl asked, letting his smile just peek out.  “The bitlets told me that everyone goes to your concerts.”

Jazz tensed and Prowl knew he’d said something wrong.

“Jazz?”

“I ah…they ain’t exactly concerts.  Not like tha’.  I jus’ drag my fiddle out ta the park every few months an’ play a few hours.  ‘S nothin’ big.  I - I don’ actually play professionally.  At all.”

That was…not what Prowl had been expecting.

“But you still play?” he asked.  Jazz’s optics were avoid his, darting over the small cafe.  A small, false smile was fixed on his face.

“Yeah.  Just…not as a career.”

“You chose something else?”  Jazz had lived for music when they’d been young.  Even as back when they’d met as toddling sparklings in preschool.

“Wasn’t really a choice.  I mostly do odd jobs.  I - well, it started as a way ta pay bills while I was workin’ on becomin’ a risin’ star and then, when I didn’t, it was all I really knew how ta do and -”  He laughed but it had a rough edge.  “I’ve got some steady gigs - jobs, I mean - like music lessons at the community center and they always hire me for the festivals.  I help some of the bots wit’ house and yard work that they can’t do.  Doesn’t make a lot, but the rent here is cheap.  I got my own habsuite - but it’s the size of a datapad.”  He laughed again.  “Not what I’d thought I’d be doing when I graduated.  Thought I’d be out, building up my name, getting contracts -”

“You’ve still made quite a name for yourself -” Prowl interrupted.  He couldn’t bear to hear that note of loss in Jazz’s voice.  The shame Prowl was only too familiar with.  Jazz was amazing - a brilliant musician and the kindest mech he’d ever known.

“I ain’t famous.”

“Yet every bot I spoke to on the way here knew of you,” he countered.  “They talked about hearing your music and how it helped them when they were sad.  You made them feel happy and the sparklings were excited to hear you again at this festival that’s going on.  A mech told me you helped him take care of his grand-sparklings when their parents abandoned them.  Bots love you Jazz.”  He couldn’t hold back a laugh.  “They always do.”

0-0-0

Jazz blinked.  That was how they’d met, two sparklings in school, grumpy Prowl and Jazz who could chatter to anyone.  People had insisted that if Jazz could make Prowl his friend, he could make friends with everyone.  Bots loved him.

Jazz had loved Prowl.  He stared at him now, the best friend he’d ever had, and he could feel his world shifting.  Something was coming loose from the moorings.  Something was changing.

Prowl, who thought he wasn’t important and spent his days saving lives, was looking at him as if he was important, his optics soft, warm.  He spoke, quietly, love in his optics.

“I would love to hear you play.  I know it’s not the Iacon Hall, but -”

“Nah, I’d love ta play for ya, mech.”  Strangely enough, for the first time in years, that vision of himself, playing on that stage, seemed fuzzy and, well, silly.  It was just a stage.  He couldn’t even picture the crowd anymore - just a sea of strange faces.

He imagined playing to Prowl, sitting on his beat up couch, the upstairs neighbors calling down their favorites.  He imagined Prowl’s optics as he played their favorite tunes from their bitlet days.  He imagined a future with Prowl in it, visiting on the weekends, talking about their days.

It was…bright.

Deleted scene I thought was cute

“Oh - I - Ah -”  The mech quickly hid his claws behind him. 

Jazz titled his helm.

“Was tha’ suppose ta reassure me?”

“Well, I have - um - I’ve been told that seeing them is frightening?”

He had six gleaming fangs in his mouth.  They were short, sharp, and wide.  Combined with the mech’s flustered antics and the mirth rolling through the room, they were actually kind of cute.

LOOOOOK

Sparkling Prowl Terrified of His Own Powers For NN1895 (Nemo_Nunca)

AU August Fic 29

Where It All Went Wrong

Hopeful ending!  Happily Ever Eventually!

Vorns later Prowl would finally be able to pinpoint where it all went wrong.  

‘This was the day Jazz stopped joking with me in berth.’

‘Here was when I started working late to avoid him.’

‘That was what I should have said.’

‘This was the last time we kissed because we wanted to, not because it was expected.’

But, by the time he realized it all, they had ended.  A quiet, if devastating break up.  One more casualty of the war.

Still, they were at war and that had to go on, even if Prowl felt like the spark had finally been dealt a blow too strong to withstand.  He went to the tactical suite and then to his habsuite.  He attended command meetings and never met Jazz’s optics.

The war continued and spilled out into the galaxy.

The strangest part was relearning how to navigate things without a partner.  They’d been courting since well before the war and for the first time, Prowl was wandering around the base alone.  Usually he either walked with Jazz or was walking to find Jazz.  Now he had nowhere to go.  He wasn’t expected anymore.  If he worked late, no one would notice.

He spent a lot of time in his office at first, with his team stepping softly around him.  Then, because if he didn’t do something he would shatter, he started spending his evening at the target range, with nothing but the silent whoosh of his rifle and occasionally the thud of another bot’s bullets hitting the targets.

The Chief Medical Officer had pulled Prowl aside one afternoon and told him he needed to stop mourning a relationship that was clearly over and start making new ones.  He wasn’t, the CMO said, a youngling with a first crush.  Prowl had just stared at him, unsure what to say.

One of the other medics - a bossy new one named Ratchet - had interrupted and asked the CMO if that meant they wouldn’t have to listen to him whine like a sparkling anymore when it was his turn to do the grunt work.

 Prowl did not make confidants easily.  The few he’d worked his lifetime for, had died at Praxus.  He looked for casual friends, but failed.  He didn’t understand the attraction of small talk and gossip, but he’d tried a few times.  It just made him feel more empty as he sat there and recited the rote phrases he’d learned as a sparkling.

The day Bluestreak had transferred had been where it all started to go right.

The mech was only just an adult, but already one of the best snipers in the army.  He was chatty and friendly.  He could have had his pick of friends.

He had latched onto Prowl and held like epoxy.

Without releasing his hold he’d pulled the troublemakers Sunstreaker and Sideswipe in their orbit and now Prowl listened as they debated over the best fuels and the worst guns.  He argued for his acid pellets and lost each time, but that didn’t seem to bother the three of them.

Bumblebee had squirmed his way in and turned into the sarcastic voice in Prowl’s comms during meetings, mocking each General and even Optimus Prime.

Shy, hesitant Trailbreaker had stood on the outside until Prowl - to his own surprise - had invited him to sit.

The next thing Prowl knew, the war had been going for nearly a quarter of a millennia and he had friends - the bossy medic who quickly became the CMO, Ironhide and Chromia, a grumpy bot named Kup that corralled the younger recruits like turbofoxes, and half a dozen others from different departments.

They were real friends too - not one of convenience or boredom.  Some were closer and some farther, but they were his.

Then Jazz reappeared, but it wasn’t the Jazz he remembered.

This Jazz wore a slick smile, but his servos shook when he thought no one was looking.  He lied more than he told the truth and no one but Prowl noticed.

He wasn’t just clever, but crafty and cunning.  His words turned either way, like a knife - sometimes that flat of it, sometimes the edge.  Every conversation seemed to have a ticking clock, a hidden bomb, an threat.

He created a strange circle of space around himself.  He could talk with anyone.  Everyone knew him and liked him.  No one trusted him.  No one was his friend.

Prowl looked at the mech he’d thought he would spend his life with.  The mech he’d thought would be the only one to ever understand him.  

And he loved him just as desperately as he had when they had been young and stupid, joining up for a war they barely understood.

So, one day, when the rec room was full and everyone was distracted, Prowl stepped forwards and broke through that circle of space.

No one noticed.  It had been so long that anyone who had known them as a couple, had long since forgotten.

Prowl sat down next to him and his processor went blank.

This wasn’t Jazz, yet it was. 

The mech in front of him was grinning, optics dimmed, every inch of him looking lazy and careless.  Prowl could see right through to how frightened he was.  Of Prowl?  Or of everyone?

It didn’t matter.  This time, Prowl was going to make sure it went right.

AU August Fic 25

Mad Scientist

Most bots thought of science as chemicals in beakers or mad engineers building time dilation devices.

They all ignored the subtle science of cybertronian anatomy.  The danger in a well designed pede and the poetry of a perfectly sculpted bumper.

The perfectly sculpted bumper in front of him, put stars in Jazz’s optics.  It was a perfect mixture of sleek and tough, expertly designed to balance speed and ramming ability.  The curve alone!  

Jazz was not, however, blindsided by a perfect bumper to the point that he ignored the rest of the gorgeous, gorgeous anatomy.  

Where to start?  Top or bottom.  Heh, ‘bottom.’

The mech’s pedes were not pretty in the same way his bumper was, but the sheer craftsmanship that had gone into them was dazzling.  Jazz watched each tiny hydraulic cylinder compress as the mech shifted from pede to pede, the shaft pressing inwards with the weight and easing out as he lifted his pedes.  It must have been like walking on air.  The moving parts, spinning and pumping and cranking, were dizzying to watch.

As his optics moved upwards, Jazz could see the cables and sensors peeking out from behind the armor plating.  Each leg was thick - heavily armored and strung with thick and thin cables.  It allowed the mech the choice of powerful gross movement or delicate precision.  Jazz felt an ache in his digits - he wanted to stroke his servos over those smooth shinplates and up those round thighs…

His hips were very wide - perfect for resting weight on be it his own or a partner’s.  While the mech was in pursuit the hip joints would take the heavy pounding if he was running.  Whatever bumps weren’t compensated for by the hydraulic suspension in his pedes, would be evenly distributed over his hips to reduce vibration and damage to his torso and sparkcase.

It seemed wrong at first, for the waist to be so small and trim compared to the generousness of his legs and hips.  However, as Jazz stared looked he realized the narrow waist gave him nearly 180 degree bend and twist.  The armor around his central column was made up of many interlocking plates, creating a thick, but flexible shield.  Flexibility was always…good.

Jazz shifted and bit down hard on his thumb, trying not to imagine that flexibility too much.

His chest was broad and deep.  Jazz had heard him speak and it was like a rumble of thunder.  His shoulders obviously held a trio of missile each, if the lines in his plating was any indication.  Yet they were so smooth and polished, it seemed impossible that they could transform.  Jazz imagined the plating folding out like a flower as the weapons sprung forward, hot and charged and -

Oh, he might need to step outside.  Jazz tried to discreetly increase his fans and pressed his back against the coolness of the window behind him.

His chest was impressive, not counting that perfect, perfect bumper.

The helm was striking.  Plain white, rounded, with cheek guards.  A single adornment - a sharp, red chevron - was the only flash of color.

His face, well, Jazz had always had a thing for the stoic type.  Pale blue optics and a stern mouth.  A chin that looked like it had taken a few hits - which only intrigued Jazz more.

Behind him, held stiffly, were the ultimate temptations.  If rumors were true, those elegant, thick doorwings were sensor rich.  Jazz wanted to locate each sensor and give it the attention it deserved.  Preferably while the mech was pinned on his front -

“Thermal-Blend with sprinkles for Jazz!” called the barista.  

Jazz wasn’t sure if it was good or terrible timing.  He felt a step away from combusting and he had a feeling the crowded cafe would notice something like that.

He had to be careful in the colonies.  It wasn’t as easy to disappear.  He had to leave behind his old profession and his old skills.  Things like that wouldn’t go unnoticed here.  Such few bots made patterns easier to see.

“Sorry,” he mumbled as he bumped into someone, holding his cube close to his chest so it didn’t spill.  He looked up.

Oh.  He didn’t think he’d get to study the bumped up close.

“It is alright.  You are new to this colony?”  

Jazz nodded, trying to keep his optics fixed on the other mech’s instead of letting them slip down to -

“Just left Cybertron last week.  Thought it would be a good change.”

“It is.  I am Captain of the Enforcers here.  If you need anything, you only need to ask.”

An Enforcer. Of course he was.  Built for combat and pursuit.  Scrap.

“Thanks.  We’ll probably be seein’ a lot of each other,” Jazz said, before his processor caught up with him.  He wasn’t supposed to be taunting the enforcers!

“Oh?”  The enforcer tilted his lovely helm.  “What is your function?”

Jazz looked the mech up and down as his processor ran a mile a minute.  Well, he had said he was going to go straight once he got to the colonies…

“Scientist,” Jazz said, leaning back against the door frame.  “I’m a scientist.”

I don’t know who it was that I follow that posted Yu-Gi-Oh stuff, but I blame you.  I am re-watching the series and having ‘Feels’ and nostalgia.  It was my first fandom.  I might still have the ‘medallion’ that came in the cereal boxes.

I also made the mistake of looking for fanfics. I forgot how much work it is breaking into a new/old fandom.  Usually I use a recs list and find one fic that I like and then go through that author’s bookmarks.  Then, I go through the bookmarks of those authors until I have amounted a large pile of fics.

That didn’t work.

Where are the fics stuffed full of created lore and careful, molasses-slow character development?  How do I find introspective gen fic?  I need to locate the author that inter library loaned a book about Egyptian Botany from the last ice age to make sure the Pharaoh is running through the right field of flowers.