Answering the PxJ November challenge
Title: One Last Perfect Verse
Rating: PG (for the idealogically sensitive)
Pairings, Characters: Jazz/Prowl.
Summary: From the prompt “Sing to awaken a missing Autobot,” my Jazz continues to take leave of his senses, quite literally. Prowl gets to pick up the pieces.
Disclaimer: Very much not mine - they belong to Hastak.
A/N: I’m not sure how or why, but at some point one of my Jazz muses literally went crazy, and he’s the one that insisted on coming out to play. Creative interpretation of “awaken a lost Autobot” *looks shifty and scurries back behind her rock*
Unbeta'd, y'know what that means.
~*~
Blue optics tracked over the water, watching intently the rolling flow of the waves, the neverending come and go.
So much like Jazz, he mused, wings flicking as the sea-breeze shifted. Sometimes the saboteur was here, and then he would just flow away like the tide, leaving naught but remnants and debris in his wake. Later, he would come rushing back, his usual wild and tumble self, claiming all the broken pieces once more, hiding them away as he danced around the tactician.
Unlike the waves, though, there wasn’t always the certainty that Jazz would return.
With a sigh, Prowl turned his gaze to the mech in question, watching as the other black and white wandered the beach. He walked determinedly, despite his feet sinking into the sand, but stopped on occasion, this time attracted by a shell that he would inspect curiously, that time dancing back a few steps, or now just looking out to sea.
No, Prowl reflected, Jazz wasn’t here right now. The tactician felt out along the sparkbond, stepping out onto the sand to walk towards Jazz as he did. The saboteur’s spark was chaos, thrumming and pulsing with one emotion and thought after another. Whatever had caused Jazz to suddenly dash out here to the ocean, Prowl would probably never know. Jazz was likely unable to recall, and Prowl hated reminding his mate of the blank spaces in his memory banks.
“Prowl!” the other black and white caught sight of him and bounced over, visor flashing in the sun, as it slid away for his beloved. He stopped before the tactician, blinking optics that gazed through Prowl as much as they saw him.
“There are three hundred ways t’die. Ten flowed upwards, and th’ rest are still below. S’time t’be like a leaf.”
Prowl smiled softly at him. “Yes, Jazz, it is.”
“I think I got sand in m’ wheel well,” Jazz added solemnly.
“And that,” the tactician informed him, “Is what you get for prancing about in it.” Prowl slung an arm around the saboteur’s shoulders, attempting to steer him away from the beach. But, Jazz had other ideas, turning to throw both arms around his bondmate and snuggling to his chassis. The movement caught Prowl by surprise and he fell back, catching himself by turning and shifting their weight.
Inwardly, Prowl sighed as he felt the water lapping at his feet, but continued to slowly whirl around with Jazz in his hold, a lazy dance timed only by the rolling rise and fall rushing of the waves. Jazz himself laughed and went with it, and Prowl had to admit that the other black and white always retained his sense of grace, no matter how foggy his processor became.
It was then, with the water swirling around them and hastening away the indented dance-patterns they had left in the sand, that Prowl recalled a time when he had held Jazz close, rocking him back and forth in the safety of their quarters after one particularly difficult mission. Then, the timing had been kept by the underlying beats of an old song that Jazz had pouring from his soundsystems, covering them in its caressing melodies and letting them both drown and forget that anything outside of that moment existed. It was long before the saboteur’s core programming had begun corrupting so badly, a time when it was a minor behavioural glitch.
If only they could have that moment back.
The chaotic twist and jump in Jazz’s spark eased back before Prowl even realised that he was humming that long-forgotten song, replicated in soft trills and murmurs for his mate.
“Like the chimes, catching in the winds, gone to the aether,” Jazz murmured, and Prowl continued to lead him around in their haphazard waltz.
The tactician tightened his hold, pulling Jazz even closer to him, where he could hold him safe. But never did he stop the song, and the smaller black and white began to echo back with the missing harmony.
Slowly, curl by tumble, the confusion in Jazz began to peel back, burning away to leave a wildness that was simply perpetually Jazz.
“Prowl?”
The taller black and white stopped as Jazz’s note died in its midst, giving way to the hesitant question, and a tentative nudge at his spark. He pulled back to meet the saboteur’s now focused, sorrowful gaze.
“’t happened again,” Jazz said quietly and Prowl could only nod.
Jazz drooped a little, folding into himself, sorrowful expression turning downright miserable.
“I don’ reme-“ he found himself cut off as a white finger pressed over his lips, and looked back up at his tactician.
::I love you::
Jazz responded to the words spoken directly to his spark by pressing himself back into Prowl’s arms, shuttering his optics against the tears that began to drop against the white chassis.
They stood in the surf, this time unmoving as the waves crashed around their legs, each holding the other close. But, once again, Prowl picked up the song, just loud enough for Jazz to hear him, and they lost themselves once more to the moment, neverending.
~*~
A/N 2: As soon as I saw the prompt, the Romanticide muses wanted in. I tried to resist, because it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense as a stand alone, but shall I just say that I hate “I Kissed a Girl” and Jazz got creative with torture methods *shudders*. As it is, this could be in any ‘verse with my crazy Jazz, but the idea was born out of that AU. I just hope it made sense.