Chapter Text
Jazz huffed as he stared out the office door at his job. He had just finished checking in what would hopefully be the last guest for the night. His shift had been almost painfully slow. He had only had to catch up on some paperwork and check in two groups the whole night.
He just wanted to get out of work so he could meet up with Prowl.
The two of them had planned to go out to an abandoned building as soon as they both got off their night shifts. The two of them didn’t have many options for getting out when their work schedules kept them up all night. The small rural community they lived in didn’t have anything open past eight PM. It left their options for date nights to be pretty damn slim.
Jazz wouldn’t be able to tell you whose idea it was. It could have been his, it could have been Prowls, and it might have even been their upstairs neighbor, Blaster's idea. No matter what, one of them had come up with something to do when the town was sleeping.
Jazz and Prowl hunted for the paranormal. They would record it and post it online sometimes. They didn't really have a following outside of their local community, but that was fine. They mostly did this as a way to spend time alone with each other. It was nice just goofing off with Prowl, hunting for a ghost, or following up on a UFO sighting.
Blaster found all of the paranormal stuff cool, but he was more than a bit scared whenever he came out with them. Blaster preferred staying behind and helping Jazz do research or helping edit the raw video down into something that could be shared around.
That night was one of the ones where Blaster was staying behind. It would just be him and Prowl going through some abandoned house. Blaster had found a few videos online of someone showing off some activity. Nothing crazy, a door slamming, and the ever-so-vague particles of dust on a camera that someone passed off as spirit orbs. It didn’t seem all that convincing, but they didn’t have anything better to do.
Jazz firmly believed in ghosts and even the odd cryptid. What Jazz didn’t believe in was most of the ghost hunting and paranormal content online. Most of the stuff was painfully fake.
The videos that Jazz and Prowl posted online didn’t have any evidence in them so far. The only thing that the videos proved was that the places they were investigating weren’t haunted. It was demoralizing to never really catch anything. Jazz would rather post a boring real video than an embarrassingly fake one.
He looked up at the old analog clock on the hotel lobby's wall. He watched as the seconds ticked by. He tapped his foot impatiently as time seemed to drag out. It was almost time for him to take off. At this point, he was counting the seconds to the end of his shift. He collapsed onto the office desk with a thud and stared at the clock.
As soon as he heard the familiar sound of his coworker's car driving into the parking lot, he stood up from the desk. He winced at the twinge of pain from his back and popped it.
“Slow night, Jazz?” his coworker asked.
“Yeah, same old, I’ll see you tomorrow," Jazz waved at his coworker as he took Jazz’s spot at the front desk. Jazz didn’t say anything as he saw the man plug in his headphones and immediately tune out the world. This stretch of the night was normally extremely dead. Jazz had done the same thing on more than one occasion.
Jazz stepped into the back office long enough to clock out on the ancient machine. He had a grin on his face as he stepped out into the cold midnight air. He took a deep breath and felt revitalized by the cold. There were even the faintest hints of a fog starting to roll in. Jazz grinned. It was the perfect night for a hunt.
He felt his phone buzz in his pocket as he walked out to his car. He glanced down at his phone and saw a text from Blaster wishing the two of them luck. Jazz sent a thumbs-up in the group chat in response. Prowl would probably leave about a paragraph reply about what exactly they were going to do and when they would be done. Jazz would be sure to check that when he got to the location.
Jazz opened his car door and connected his phone to the radio. He put on a random playlist and started driving out to the spot. He zoned out ever so slightly as he drove through the familiar roads of his hometown. The roads were bare of traffic, and the only thing providing any light was his headlights and the odd streetlight.
Jazz had spent the last few years of his youth here. He went to high school here. He met the best man he could have possibly met here. There were plenty of things to hate about this town, but Jazz had always felt so at home here. His boss had asked him once why he hadn't just moved to a bigger city, one that actually had something going for it. Jazz hadn't really been able to give a good answer to the man outside of that it just felt wrong to leave.
Jazz glanced down at his phone from its spot on the dashboard holder and made sure he was taking the right turns toward the abandoned home. They were a dime a dozen on the outskirts. This particular home had been abandoned decades ago.
Some kid had started posting online about the strange things he had seen there. Jazz was pretty sure they wouldn’t catch anything that night. He’d be lying to himself, though, if he hadn't been hoping to finally catch something.
Jazz wasn’t sure about the authenticity of the video, but he wasn’t gonna let Prowl know that. He got the slightest rise out of his partner, ranting about how fake some of the evidence posted online was. Jazz grinned as he approached his destination. Anticipation was starting to take a firmer hold on him the closer he got.
Jazz pulled up to the home at the end of a rural street. The lawn was overgrown, and the house almost looked like it would fall over any day. It was only illuminated by one nearby streetlight, painting it a haunting glow.
Jazz pulled his car up next to Prowl’s on the side of the road in front of the house. He stepped out of the car and took a picture of the creepy house to hopefully use as a thumbnail for the eventual video.
The sound of a car door slamming made Jazz twist his head toward Prowl's car. “How was your shift, Jazz?”
Jazz shrugged, “Boring. You?”
“Uneventful.”
“In your line of work, that’s always a good thing,” Jazz smiled.
Jazz could faintly make out Prowl rolling his eyes in the dark, “Yes, it always is a good thing. I do not want to have to call the police on someone making a mess at the cemetery.”
Prowl worked at the hotel with Jazz a few years ago. But he had found other work shortly after they started dating, so their schedules would line up better. The first job that would take him was with a private security firm that needed someone to work at the local cemetery. The last guy got fired after a body was stolen while he was sleeping. Or at least that was the rumor that had gone around town. Prowl never really complained about the job, but Jazz could only imagine how boring it would be.
Prowl opened the trunk of his car and pulled out a duffel bag with a grunt. “You ready?”
“For you? Always,” Jazz said with a grin.
Prowl turned away, but Jazz could see the faintest hint of red across his face. Jazz smiled as he walked behind Prowl up the worn pathway to the house. He was careful to avoid the roots that had lifted the cement path off the ground.
The home loomed above the two. Jazz’s smile got wider the closer the two of them got to the front door. The door had been torn slightly off its hinges at one point; now it was barely hanging on. Jazz stepped ahead of Prowl and carefully nudged the door open with his foot.
“After you,” Jazz said, beckoning Prowl inside.
Prowl stepped over the threshold and gazed out at the inside of the home before making a clicking noise with his tongue. “This place looks like it should be condemned. I would not recommend either of us trying to go up stairs.”
Jazz shot a wary glance at the staircase that looked mostly collapsed. Only a few steps looked sturdy enough to stand on. Jazz nodded in agreement. He didn’t want to have to go to the hospital because one of them fell through the stairs.
Jazz stilled as he heard a bang off somewhere in the house. The two of them went still. Jazz strained his hearing and heard another faint noise. Prowl dropped the duffel bag to the floor gently and dug out the handheld camcorder. He flicked it on and nodded to Jazz.
Jazz took the lead as they cautiously went off in search of whatever had made that noise. He walked through the house carefully, making sure not to step on any part of the floor that seemed too weak to hold his weight. He carefully made his way to a hallway. He stopped and strained his hearing. He only continued in his journey after he heard the sound echo down the hallway. He walked as silently as he could.
He heard muffled talking this time. It came from a room towards the end of the hallway. Jazz stalked over and leaned against the wall. Prowl had the camera angled towards the door.
“I just don’t know bout this man,” One voice said.
Jazz’s stomach dropped. He groaned when he realized that it was a teenager.
“It’ll be funny! Come on, the web page said they’d be here tonight, we just gotta spook 'em a bit then-”
Jazz carefully stepped out from behind the door and stood in the frame proper. “Then you post about how you got us?” A cocky grin spread on Jazz’s face. He was frustrated, but he wouldn’t let the small group of teenagers in front of him know that. Jazz saw Prowl put the camera down, but it looked like he still had it set to record.
There were three of them crowded into the small room. One of them was wearing a hoodie with a high school logo that belonged to the next town over.
“What are you kids doing out here on a school night?” Jazz said sarcastically.
One of the kids looked ashamed. The other two, not so much.
“What are you doing here? Looks like you're trespassing too,” The teenager said as he crossed his arms.
“Nah, we got permission from the owner,” Jazz said casually.
Prowl nodded, “We have permission to be here. You three, however, do not.”
The shortest of the three looked nervous. The other two looked like they really didn’t care about the potential of getting in trouble.
“We won’t post this online as long as the three of you leave,” Prowl said, holding up the camera.
One of the teens snorted, “Why would we care if you posted that online?”
“Would I be wrong in assuming the three of you are the ones who have been posting videos about this place online?” Prowl raised an eyebrow and stared between the three teenagers. “If we post this, then you would probably lose more than a few followers for being exposed as frauds.”
The two standoffish teenagers looked like they were going to continue arguing. The nervous-looking teenager started to nod before the other two stepped in front of him. “Fine, we’ll leave. Just don’t post that video,” The nervous kid said.
The other two shot a look back at their friend, but sighed as they nodded in agreement.
Prowl nodded and pushed open the door to let the three teens leave. Within a few minutes, the three of them were safely out of the building and walking down the road. Jazz watched from the porch as the three of them went off into the night. They grabbed some bikes that they had stashed in a bush, and they rode off into the night.
“Man, and those videos were so convincing, too,” Jazz said. He fought to keep the smile off his face as Prowl groaned.
“I could see the wire pulling the doors closed.”
Jazz shrugged, “I don’t know, maybe there’s ghosts out there who know how to use a wire to close a door.”
Prowl sighed as he shot a knowing look at Jazz. His shoulders slumped.
Jazz sat down on the ruined porch of the home, and Prowl joined him. Jazz leaned back and propped his arms behind him to stay seated.
“Just one time, though, I really hoped we would find actual proof,” Jazz admitted.
He was more disappointed than he would let on that this turned out to be another hoax. He figured it would be, but that didn’t make it sting any less.
“Who knows, maybe next time we’ll capture evidence of something,” Prowl stated.
“You just want to get some proof of UFO’s man,” Jazz said, shooting a fond look at Prowl.
The barest hint of a smile broke out on Prowl’s face. Jazz could never really get behind the idea of aliens being real. If there was intelligent life out there, he believed they would have made contact already. Prowl, however, would ramble on about how statistically unlikely it was for humans to be alone in the universe. Jazz had memorized the whole rambly speech Prowl would do, but it was always nice to just hear his partner talk about something he was so passionate about.
“Maybe next time we’ll get something,” Prowl didn’t exactly sound extremely convincing.
They had gone out and done investigations in random places dozens of times now. The two of them had yet to find anything resembling evidence of any paranormal activity. The most they had captured was proof of people being frauds.
Jazz stared out longingly into the night, “Yeah. Next time,” He leaned against Prowl and smiled a little when Prowl leaned back.
Jazz hoped that next time would be different. After all, he thought it would be cool to find some real proof of the paranormal.