Chapter Text
Day One:
A hand came into his field of view, the crowd-noise he could only faintly hear took on that pitch and tone that meant someone was trying to talk to him specifically. Jazz looked up from his tablet screen and pulled the bulky bluetooth headphones down around his neck. He looked up. A police officer! Geeze. What’d he do to deserve that? “Sorry. Whazzat?”
The officer looked only mildly annoyed. “I asked if I could sit here for a moment. This is the only free chair right now.”
A little surprised to see that that was true, Jazz looked around in bewilderment. When had it gotten so crowded? “Yeah, sure mech.”
“Thank you.”
Jazz found himself watching the graceful, precise movements. Setting down his drink, then his plate, then the folder he was carrying, pulling out the chair, lowering himself into it… It was a smooth and practiced sequence, like a kata. His new tablemate looked like a standard, clunky-framed Praxan, but he moved like a song.
Ooh… moved like a song. Jazz turned back to his computer and jotted the line into the margins of the doc he was working on. He didn’t know where it would go yet but it was worth remembering! He pulled the headphones back onto his audios and sank back into the melody he’d written.
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Day Two:
“Are you new here?” the officer asked before Jazz could pull up his headphones again.
He paused. “What makes you say that, copper?”
His tablemate’s nose wrinkled at the nickname, but he didn’t comment. “You just seemed surprised at how crowded this place gets during the breakfast rush,” he elaborated, “but you’re acting like a regular: same drink, same spot, same activity. You’re not a regular though, not yet. Or at least not here. Either this isn’t your usual place, or it’s not your usual time.”
“No way you’d know that unless you were a regular,” Jazz pointed out to buy a few seconds to think, poking his stylus in the mech’s direction.
“Which I am,” he admitted easily. “I usually do not stay and eat though. I’m on vacation.”
“Staycation,” Jazz needled, because who kept going to their regular work cafe during their vacations?
The officer looked pained. “Yes. Fine. Staycation, if you must.”
“I really must,” Jazz chuckled. He started to pull his headphones back on…
“If you don’t want to answer the question, please just say so,” the officer insisted plaintively. He picked at his pastry with his fingers like a bird would, breaking it into small pieces. It was, Jazz thought, an unexpectedly insecure gesture. Not just from an officer, but from someone who had seemed so poised yesterday.
“Questio--oh. Sorry.” Did he want to answer the question? There wasn’t any harm in it… “I just moved here. Took me a while to find this place, but I like the way it sounds.”
“I’m surprised you can hear anything in those headphones.”
Scoff. “Shows what you know.” Just because he couldn’t hear specifics, or words, didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of the rise and fall of conversations around him, of the energy thrumming through the room. The crowd had a sound. The mechs cooking, bussing tables, even the plain-as-slag muzak all made a place sound unique. Special.
“I apologize,” the officer said, looking down at his pastry which he was still picking into pieces. Pick. Pick. Pick. If Jazz watched his hands and not his face or frame, he looked like a nervous newling about to ask his first crush to a date.
Absently, Jazz jotted that thought down. It didn’t fit the meter of the song, yet, but it sounded good. Nice opening to a love song. “Sure mech.”
He pulled up his headphones.
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Day Three:
“For a mech on vacation, you’re carrying around a lot of work.” This time it was Jazz who started the conversation after the usual exchange of the officer requesting permission to share his table.
“Vacation,” the officer said dryly, sliding into the chair and opening the ever-present file, “does not negate the need to turn the paperwork in on time.”
Not willing to verbally agree, but acknowledging he probably had a point, Jazz just hummed. “Kind of a waste of a vacation though.”
“As you pointed out yesterday,” the mech retorted mildly, starting to pick at his pastry, “I am on a staycation.”
“Still kind of a waste,” was Jazz’s opinion. “At least tell me you’ve got something fun planned. There’s a water-slide park right outside town, ain’t there?”
“There is.” The officer picked up one of the pieces he’d broken off of his pastry. Jazz thought he’d eat it, but he decided not, putting it back down to pick it into smaller pieces. “And I’ve been. It’s not the sort of place that is very fun when by oneself, in all honesty.”
Jazz hummed again. There was that.
“Have you been yet?” the mech spoke up quickly when Jazz’s attention started turning down to his tablet and his half-finished song. “To the water park?”
“Haven’t.” More from lack of interest than lack of time. Jazz was a nightlife sort of mech and the water park was expensive.
“Would you like to?”
Jazz looked up only to find the officer was looking down at his plate. His pastry, the victim of his nervous fidgeting, was mere crumbs. He thought about it, and he thought about his tablemate.
“Ain’t going on a date with a mech who won’t even say his name,” he decided, though he kept the bite from his tone. The mech was shy, not a creep. “And you should probably look at me.”
The officer’s gaze shot up, and Jazz saw the hint of alarm in his optics before the neutral, controlled expression slammed down. “My name is Prowl,” he said flatly, like a drone.
Ooooh yeah. Really shy. “I’m Jazz,” he returned, reaching out to rescue the desecrated corpse of the pastry by pulling his hands away from it, “and I’d love to go to the water park with you.”
“And the rest of the staycation?” Prowl murmured, optics locked on their intertwined fingers.
Jazz laughed. “Let’s see how the water park goes.”
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