I had fun with this one
===
Jazz watched in amusement, as Prowl was able to correctly guess what each phrase or word that was chosen to go up on the board for hangman. Prowl made sure to keep his voice low so that he wouldn’t spoil it for the mechs that were playing hangman, which Jazz thought was very sweet of him to do.
This of course caused a small problem, when Brawn decided to be sneaky and listen to Prowl, and shout the answer so he could have a turn.
Brawn’s plan was thrown askew when, Cliffjumper of all mechs, decided to side with Sunstreaker, and claim that Brawn was cheating off of Prowl. Then the red minibot stoutly informed Prowl that he had to either, a) join in the game with the rest of them, or b) talk to Jazz over a comm. line if he simply had to tell Jazz what the word or phrase was.
“I apologize, it was not my intention to ruin your game,” Prowl answered, recognizing his wrong doing.
“Aw, it’s alright Prowl, it’s not like you did it to ruin the game,” Bumblebee amended. “Since you seem to do so well, why don’t you choose something? You did know a lot of the answers.”
Prowl looked at the chess board, and moved his queen, securing his victory against Red Alert in the chess game.
“If everyone is alright with that idea, then I will.”
Prowl got up and went over to the board that was set up, and erased Sunstreaker’s phrase from it, along with the half-drawn stick person, leaving only the gallows. Prowl tilted his helm to the side, and considered for a second, then, with a small smirk that only Jazz recognized, drew four dashes across the board to signal a four letter word.
Jazz’s visor flickered in confusion, Prowl, the brilliant tactician, who had a very sophisticated vocabulary, was going to use a four letter word?
“I think you’re goin’ easy on ‘em Prowler,” Jazz commented from his seat in the back of the room, and Prowl’s barely there smirk grew a little.
“I disagree, Jazz, I’m sure they’ll have a difficult time figuring out what it is,” Prowl responded, and a few mechs began protesting at his prediction. “We’ll see. Now who’s first?”
Sideswipe was quick to call out the letter ‘a’, and Prowl promptly wrote the letter where it was supposed to go.
_A_ _
“Ha! One letter down, three more to go! Sure you don’t want to come up with a different word, Prowl?” Sideswipe taunted.
“You seem to be forgetting Sideswipe, that there are 25 other letters to go through, and many different combinations of letters. You may have narrowed it down some, but there are thousands of combinations left,” Prowl countered, and Jazz couldn’t help but snicker.
“He got ya there, Sides.”
“Well, there’s probably another vowel in there,” Hound offered, and Bumblebee was quick to take the advice.
“E.”
The letter ‘e’ was written off to the side, and a circle was drawn for the head. The letter ‘o’ was next, and Prowl drew a line for the body.
The two setbacks didn’t falter the mechs, and they continued to call out letters, and soon the letters ‘s’, ‘t’, ‘h’, and ‘n’ had been discarded. Prowl’s stick figure now had arms and legs.
“The frag?” Sideswipe muttered, obviously not liking that they hadn’t been able to get another letter.
Jazz stared at the board, trying to think of what word Prowl had deviously come up with, and was coming up with a blank as well.
“Ya sure you’re usin’ English, Prowler?” Jazz teased, and Prowl nodded.
“Of course, it would be unfair to Spike if I used another language, not to mention it would be a form of cheating.”
“It may be English, but I’m still lost,” Spike complained, and a few mechs laughed in response.
“Do you all give up so soon?” Prowl asked innocently, and Jazz snickered, seeing the challenge in the SIC’s optics.
“No!” a few shouted the loudest of who were Cliffjumper, Sideswipe, and Slingshot.
::“Of course they get along now, Red should be recordin’ this for blackmail,”:: Jazz told Prowl over a private comm., and Prowl turned to hide his smirk as he drew a foot on the stick figure.
Bluestreak had wrongly guessed ‘d’.
‘M’ was the next letter, and Prowl gave the stick figure another foot.
Fireflight called out the letter ‘j’, and Sunstreaker started to growl at him.
“That’s not going to be on there!”
“Actually it is, Sunstreaker, so please calm down,” Prowl responded, writing a ‘j’ on the board, making it now read:
JA_ _.
“The frag? Prowl, I think you messed up somewhere,” Sideswipe teased, and Prowl shook his head.
“I have not messed up anywhere Sideswipe,” Prowl answered, unruffled. “You, on the other hand, are running out of guesses, and you said that this was going to be easy.”
“Wait…” Sideswipe muttered, and the mechs could almost hear the frontliner’s processor working overtime as he thought. “Jail! It has to be jail! ‘I’ and ‘L’ are the last two letters!”
Mechs began to cheer, happy to have finally won, only to realize that Prowl was writing the letters off to the side, and dotted two eyes on the stick figure’s face.
“No, they are not,” Prowl told them, once they began to quiet down.
The saboteur in the back of the room had to forcibly offlined his vocalizer to hide his laughter as he figured it out. It wouldn’t do to ruin Prowl’s fun.
There was shocked silence, as the mechs took in the fact that, no, they were not done yet, and that Prowl had really stumped them.
“R?” Hound ventured, taking a stab in the dark.
“No,” Prowl answered, drawing a frown on the face, prompting curious murmurs from the other mechs.
“No smiley face, Prowl?” Hound joked, and Prowl shook his head.
“I do not see why I should draw a smile for you, as you have lost the game.”
Numerous shouts of protests sounded throughout the rec room, demanding another try. Prowl arched an optic ridge at them all.
“The… hanging man is complete, therefore I have won, and you have lost. There is nothing left to draw on him,” Prowl stated, and the mechs and one human quieted as they tried to figure out a way to get at least one more letter.
“You forgot about the hair!” Spike suddenly called out, and several mechs began to agree, saying that the figure simply would not be complete without hair.
Prowl let them go on for a bit, but acquiesced to popular demand before they sicked Bluestreak and his long-winded explanations and puppy optics on him.
“Very well, one more guess.”
Everyone began to murmur to each other, trying to figure out which letter would be used as their last attempt to regain their dignity. Jazz, on the other hand, was shaking with barely contained mirth, because it was so simple and so funny that no one knew what the word was yet. Red Alert was looking at the visored mech like he had lost his processor, while Inferno watched the proceedings with interest, finishing up his energon.
The room got quiet again, and they all looked at Sideswipe expectantly, apparently having chosen the frontliner to be the fall mech if the letter was wrong.
“Have you decided?” Prowl asked, face completely calm, but the glint in his optics and the slight twitch of his doorwings told Jazz that Prowl was sure of his victory.
“Yep, ‘g’,” Sideswipe announced, and Prowl smirked, and drew a squiggly line on top of the head, and wrote the letter ‘g’ off to the side.
Groans went up all around the room, and Jazz leaned against the wall, shaking even harder at the dumbfounded look that Sideswipe now sported on his face.
Prowl just smiled serenely, and began to walk out of the room.
“Aren’t you gonna tell us what the word is Prowl?” Hound asked, and Prowl glanced back over his shoulder to look at the tracker.
“I believe it would be more… educational, if you all looked it up to find out yourselves,” Prowl answered, nodding to Red Alert, Inferno, and Jazz as he left, and groans filled the room.
“Someone go find a fraggin’ dictionary!” Sideswipe demanded, taking the loss to such a simple looking word as a personal front.
Jazz watched the disgruntled mechs with amusement, and briefly considered the word that Prowl had used. With his mind made up, Jazz smiled at Red Alert and Inferno, and slipped out of the Rec Room to go after Prowl.
“Hey, Prowler, wait up!” Jazz called, and Prowl stopped, waiting for Jazz to get close, before continuing on his way.
“My designation is Prowl, Jazz,” Prowl stated by reflex, and Jazz grinned in response.
“So ya keep tellin’ me,” Jazz answered, and Prowl snorted.
“For all the good it does, you seem to have a problem listening.”
“I do listen, I’ve stopped callin’ ya Prowlie, haven’t I?” Jazz teased, and Prowl’s doorwings shuddered.
“Never again,” Prowl growled, and Jazz laughed.
“Speakin’ of words, it was really clever of you to use that one,” Jazz began, speaking carefully, and Prowl arched an optic ridge at him.
“I thought as much, as often as it is said, it can be easily overlooked,” Prowl answered as they reached the door to his quarters, he punched in the code, and when the door opened, stepped aside to allow Jazz to enter.
Jazz grinned, proud that he was one of the few that were allowed inside Prowl’s quarters, and sauntered inside. Prowl followed after, the door shutting behind him.
“Overlooked how?” Jazz questioned, his tone sly as he sprawled in the only chair in the room.
Prowl looked a little hesitant at Jazz’s tone, and the way the saboteur was looking at him, with an odd knowing look.
“Well, considering the frequency of letters in any given word, the letter ‘a’ was the most common one featured in that particular… word. The other two letters are far less common…” Prowl trailed off as Jazz huffed through his vents. “Jazz?”
“That’s why you picked it? ‘Cause of the letters?”
“They were asking me to provide them with a challenge, and I found that that combination of letters was fit to achieve that, and it would be something that they would overlook,” Prowl explained, and Jazz slumped further into the chair, so Prowl continued, his tone careful, and his optics stoutly avoiding looking at Jazz. “Would there be another reason you think I chose it for?”
“Well, I was thinkin’, that maybe, it might’ve, you know, meant something,” Jazz answered pointedly, and Prowl paused, considering.
“Ah,” Prowl muttered intelligently, optics overly bright, as he stared at Jazz with some sort of amazed horror.
“Right, ‘ah’,” Jazz teased, his grin turning somewhat predatory, as he got up and advanced towards Prowl. “So, am I right in thinkin’ that you may have chosen it because you just happened to be thinkin’ it at the time? Not just because of your statistics?”
“If I did, then, it was a simple coincidence,” Prowl answered distracted, taking steps back to compensate for Jazz’s steps forward, trying to maintain the distance between them.
Unfortunately for Prowl, his quarters were not big, so he could only take a few steps back before he was in danger of hitting his doorwings against the wall. Jazz was free to advance as close as he wanted.
“Really? Then why did you keep eyein’ me at the back of the Rec Room earlier then?” Jazz questioned, reaching over Prowl’s shoulder to lean against the wall behind him, bringing his own faceplates close to Prowl’s.
“Well…” Prowl stalled, grasping at words, and Jazz laughed, leaning just a bit closer.
“You see Prowler, I think you chose it on purpose, for some other reason, and that that reason is that you kinda like me. Am I right?” Jazz asked, tone smooth as silk, and Prowl just knew that he was in over his head, and at the moment he didn’t care much.
“Yes?”
“Well, that’s just great, ‘cause I kinda like you too,” Jazz breathed, noseplates brushing against Prowl’s, causing Prowl’s doorwings to shudder and clatter against the wall.
Prowl hissed, and Jazz was quick to soothe the pain with a few gentle strokes to the tactician’s doorwings.
“Sorry about that,” Jazz muttered, visor locked on Prowl’s optics. “Now, where were we? Oh yeah. So, what do you think we should do about it, huh, Prowler? I think, since you’re a proper bot and all, we should probably go out on a date, right?”
“Well, yes,” Prowl agreed, still not quite sure how this was happening, but quite willing to follow along.
“Well, there’s only one problem with that,” Jazz said, his tone thoughtful, pulling back a bit, making Prowl’s processor struggle with the abrupt change in the saboteur’s tone.
“Problem?” Prowl asked once his logic center caught up, not liking the idea of there being a problem with Jazz that close to him, still stroking Prowl’s doorwings.
“Yeah, you see, I’m not a proper bot,” Jazz replied, tilting his head to the side, a lopsided grin forming on his faceplates. “So, you might have to wait for that date,” Jazz continued, leaning in, and kissing Prowl.
Prowl obligingly kissed back, because it was completely logical: Why care about a date in the future if Jazz was kissing him now?
===
Later in the Rec Room, Spike was flipping through the ‘ja’ section of a dictionary, surrounded by mechs rapidly scanning the pages’ contents, and they came across a certain word.
“You’re fragging kidding me,” Spike muttered, and Hound laughed.
“Sideswipe’s teaching you bad habits, Spike.”
“Well, take a look at this!” Spike defended, and Hound peered down to look at the word that Spike was referring to.
“How could we have missed that?” Cliffjumper demanded as soon as he saw.
“He was sitting in the back of the room, too!” Sideswipe groaned, slumping into a seat.
“Do you think he knew?”
“This is Jazz we’re talking about, of course he knew. He even followed Prowl out, probably grinning too, the slagger,” Hound joked, and Sideswipe made a pitiful moan, catching everyone’s attention as the red mech began to bang his helm against the wall.
Sunstreaker, who had been studiously ignoring them, spoke up from where he was sitting polishing his arm.
“Don’t mind him, he’s just upset that he lost the pool.”
Sideswipe grumbled in response.
“Vorns and vorns of dancing around each other, and being painfully oblivious to each other’s interest, and it’s not a major emergency that causes a confession, no, it’s a fragging game of hangman.”