Chapter Text
Prowl groaned on the berth, not wanting to get up. Jazz laughed and kissed him behind his audial, “C’mon, lover. Ratchet needs ta run his tests.”
“If he is so concerned, he may come to me,” Prowl grumbled as he hugged Jazz’s arms closer to him. They had managed to find a way so Jazz could cuddle behind him without damaging Prowl’s doorwings.
“Prowler, ya know that ain’t how it works,” Jazz crooned. One of his arms managed to dip south, “If ya need some motivation…”
Prowl grabbed his servo and returned it to his waist, “Perhaps you need some motivation to keep me in berth.”
Jazz laughed huskily into his audial, “Lover, ya know that ain’t goin’ to happen. Nothin’ short of an attack could make me let ya skip yer appointment.”
Prowl twitched his doorwings before he looked over his shoulder. “Jazz, do you remember what was special about that diner I showed you?”
He blinked, “Yeah, it was the last place ya ate at before ya became Praxus.” Yes, good.
“And you understand that I will do everything it takes to get you home safely?” He pressed.
Jazz chuckled and nuzzled into his neck, “I definitely heard that ya blackmailed Prime once ‘r twice to bring me home… And bullied Springer a few times to lend ya some Wreckers for that one nasty extraction… Where are ya goin’ with this?”
Prowl shifted and twisted until he was facing Jazz again. He locked their digits together and swallowed. Jazz tried to take one of his servos back to caress Prowl’s face, but his lover held firm.
“I… I want a hardline. I need to show you something,” He said. His wrist port opened, and Jazz’s clicked open half a sparkbeat later. They each took a free servo to jack into the other and a familiar memory echoed forward.
It was Jazz, playing between The Wings That Measure The Sky, singing his song on the electrobass that rested on the other side of the room.
“Trying not to hold in my safety,” Jazz sung as he stood at the mouth of the passage between the tunnels. He kept his voice low and rumbling, but Prowl could hear every note clear as anything.
But locked underground for as long as he was, safe and secure, and coddled? A part of him wanted out.
Someone had come to free him, but keep him safe in a different sense.
“Prisoner to my miracle save me, from the roof that I built myself gave me… Only thing that I didn’t want more of, was the feeling I couldn’t escape it…”
It had not been him, but a prior Praxus to build the City Hall that shielded his helm, but through tradition, it had been him. He was the safest Praxian in the city, but sometimes he wanted to walk amongst his peers again. Now, his peers in the truest sense ranked so few in number that he wasn’t entirely sure how many there really were. Would he be stuck in this limbo forever?
No, because he had someone willing to help now.
“Waiting tables at a klik n' complaining, that the phone would start ringing, but lately… My spark’s–”
Running the city was a lot of work, but he wished so often that someone would come to visit, to know him. His brothers, all of them, were nice, but… It hurt sometimes. He could take pride in his work, but… sometimes…
His special younglings, the ones he joined in their recharging processors all believed he was a figment of their imaginations, and who was he to ruin that?
He had waited by the comms to ring for a specific person to call him.
“Looking for a better way to deal with all the little changes that keep freaking me out. Wouldn’t hurt to figure out a better way of imitatin’, so I don’t let me down.”
He had grumbled to think about all of the things that had needed changing since Jazz’s arrival, what it really meant. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but he needed to find a way to exist in polite society again. He couldn’t be Prowl of Praxus anymore. He needed to be Prowl, the Autobot now.
As he sang, Prowl allowed millions of tiny white lights began to light up along the weather station as he danced to the music. Jazz’s smile grew, encouraging him more.
“Sitting in the middle of a city with a million strangers and it’s getting too loud. Wouldn’t hurt to figure out a better way of imitating, so I don’t let me down. So I don’t let me down, and so I don’t let me down.”
In his city, Prowl was still a stranger, despite knowing all of his people, and they knowing him, however tangentially. He couldn’t afford to let them down.
He couldn’t.
Failure wasn’t an option.
He wouldn’t let that happen, he couldn’t let everyone down.
“Got no time to be overthinking. Can the thoughts in my head be the demons that wanna drive me away from believing in the things that I was so sure of.”
Prowl would get them out of this, but doubts whispered in his audials. He had the power, he had the ability to do everything that was needed, but it wasn’t necessarily a question of ‘could he do it’, but ‘would he be able to’?
“Had to lie and defy, be my savior, emphasize in the lights and my failures, ‘cause it’s not black and white in this nature.”
He hated lying, but he needed to do this. He needed to believe it wasn’t Barricade. If it wasn’t, he would be sentencing millions of his people to death. He needed to focus on what he could do. Now, he was looking back and realizing that it wasn’t black and white. It had been stained in energon and family bonds, and delusion.
But if Barricade had wanted Prowl to escape from the Decepticons…
Was it all black and white? It… No. It was so complicated and maybe they wouldn’t get a clear answer. Not until this was over.
“When the ship lands I’m still–” The chorus came back around and slowly, the people of Praxus had joined in.
This was why he did what he did. He wanted nothing more than to unite Praxus. He loved his people, and he wanted them to be happy.
He brought together 3.2 million Praxians, and he would entrust all of them to Jazz. Even just the 125 thousand, all of them to Jazz.
“...And so I don’t let me… ‘Cause I keep thinking, when the sun gets better…”
Jazz spun in a slow circle, and Prowl was singing with the knowledge that he was thriving in this environment. This was what Jazz was good at, and Prowl would enjoy every song he would be willing to share, every little bit of sunlight he sought to sing about.
“I’ll be dancing on my fears from yesterday.”
The next several lines were reiterated until the last verse came through.
“‘Cause I’m still looking for a better way to deal with all the little changes, that keep freaking me out. Wouldn’t hurt to figure out a better way of imitating, so I don’t let me down.”
Prowl was going to pray to his predecessors that what he was going to ask for wouldn’t go poorly. It would be a change, a minor one, but one that he would be fighting for if Jazz agreed for it.
He hoped nothing would change or, if it would, for the better.
“I… I trust you, Jazz, with everything that I am, have been, and ever will be and I hope you feel the same,” He said slowly. Jazz’s spark began to pulse harder and harder as a thought crept into his mind.
It wasn’t a thought he was opposed to.
No, he welcomed it.
He clicked his visor back, showing warm optics. Prowl’s icy blues stared back, wide in shock.
“Bond with me,” He whispered, his doorwings fluttering.
Jazz smiled and leaned in to kiss him gently. “I’d wan’ nothin’ more, Prowl.”
Prowl sighed into the kiss as his chest plates clicked open and back. A brilliant spark had the room lighting up and Jazz focused in on it. It was a crisp, light blue, bordering on white, but… There was something odd about it.
There was almost an additional field around it with fine particles around it. Jazz looked closer and his breath caught.
When Prowl had stated he carried a piece of each and every one of his people in his spark, Jazz hadn’t thought he was so literal. There were microscopic blips of tens of thousands of individual sparks and Jazz stared reverently.
A part of his spark reached out, begging, screaming to join with it and Prowl smiled knowingly. “You have a connection to Red Alert, but you are also connected to me. They won’t affect anything in our bond.”
Jazz clicked his own chest plates open a moment later. He looked over his own, or tried to, but Prowl leaned down to kiss one of the open panels. Jazz’s vents hitched, “Prowler, I ain’t in the mood for teasin’.”
“Then take what you want,” He whispered back. “I knew I needed to keep an optic on you the moment you stepped off of that train, but I never would have thought we had ended up here.”
The spy chuckled as he swung a leg over Prowl’s waist and leaned over him, “Nah, Prowler. You’re a musician with yer people, yer calculations, yer everythin’. I fell in love with that song.” He continued forward to kiss him again, brushing their sparks together.
They tangled in each other, and even in their hardline, they lost track of where one ended and another began.
They were Jazz. Citizen. Spy. Musician. Improvisation.
They were Prowl. City. Tactician. Conductor. Structure.
They were perfection.
They were one lonely spark, surrounded by millions of friends, reaching out for each other.
They were one mech.
They were one team.
I’ll Share It All, just for you.