Chapter Text
When the ocean drinks the sky
And the city winks its eye
When the night is done, you'll vanish in the sun
Will I hold you when the night is over?
“Frag,” Jazz moans, low and gruff. He arches his back up into the steady movement of Prowl's hips as digits trace their way up his sides, gripping at the flexible abdominal plating there. “Ah, yeah, Prowler… That's good… little harder…”
“As you wish, sir,” Prowl teases, shifting Jazz’s leg up so he can drive in deeper, the tip of his long, slim spike brushing perfectly against the cluster of nodes buried towards the back, upper wall of Jazz’s valve.
Prowl is always a gentle spiker, but with enough encouragement, Jazz coaxes him into a rougher, more chaotic rhythm, until his shoulders creak from the impact of being pushed down into the berth.
They haven't had the time to interface as much recently, or, well, do much of anything non-work related. Either Jazz is away on missions, or they are stationed at various outposts closer to the ever-shifting front of the war that has taken nearly everything from them, yet still demands more. They do their best to make the most of their limited time together, as seen by the numerous paint transfers now scattered across their frames, lubricant and transfluid sprayed across their armor.
Practically every High Command meeting, now few and far between as officers remain scattered across Earth, ends in them sneaking away to find their way into each other's arms afterwards. At this point, the war effort does not even grant them nights together after meetings. Often, they have perhaps a joor or two until a transport shuttle comes to whisk someone away, back to the constant, processor-melting, spark-grinding work that encompasses nearly every waking moment of their lives.
Prowl's quarters here, in this tiny outpost on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, are smaller and dingier than his rooms back on the Ark. Jazz leaped at the rare chance to travel out here to discuss and prepare for an upcoming advancement on an experimental Laser Communication Relay Station, taken over and held hostage by Decepticon forces.
SpecOps will lead the charge, slipping in and sabotaging the defenses, while the rest of the Autobot forces sweep in as soon as the walls crumble. There are rumors that Deadlock has arrived on Earth, and Prowl has calculated a high likelihood he will be involved in the protection of such a high-profile asset.
Those operation plans have been completely washed from Jazz’s processor, though, as Prowl slams into that cluster of nodes again, ripping another moan from Jazz’s vocalizer. “Frag, right there Prowl, please—”
Prowl revs his engine high and loud, rubbing demanding strokes into Jazz’s anterior node, already sensitive from earlier soft, thorough kisses.
The overload ripples through Jazz, easing the constant, strut-deep exhaustion that he now wears across his frame like a weathered old coat. His cries are muffled by Prowl's mouth on his, the kiss gentle at first, then growing desperate and rough as Prowl chases his own high, transfluid splattering across the inner walls of Jazz's fluttering valve.
After Prowl slides out, it is time for Jazz’s favorite part. Prowl, too hyper sensitive to go another round himself, will lap at Jazz’s swollen valve as if he is a starving, stranded mech coming across the first scrap of energon he has found in vorns. Then he will lick soft, deliberate stripes up Jazz’s twitching spike, not quite enough to draw another overload, but the tender attention sends pleasant, tingling warmth across Jazz’s entire lower frame.
When Prowl is satisfied with his work—and his work is always impeccable—he lays next to Jazz, engine rumbling quietly as Jazz pets his doorwings.
It would be perfect, if it weren't for the icy worry creeping back into the back of both their processors.
“Will you spark bond with me?”
Prowl's voice is still hazy with the afterglow as he props himself up on his elbows to look Jazz in the optics, the dim blue light softening his tired features.
“What?” Jazz blinks away the static fuzz from his vision. He sits up, pressing his forehelm against Prowl's, feeling the residual heat from his chevron sizzle at their joined plating.
“I love you.” Prowl tilts his helm, scraping their armor together and leaving a red streak across Jazz’s dark plating. “I want all of you. Please.”
“I…” Jazz closes his optics.
They are both grown bots. They have lived long lives, and they have loved and lost before. He is not stupid, and he is not naive. Prowl knows exactly what he is asking for.
“We don't have to spark bond to love each other,” Jazz finally says after a long moment.
He loves Prowl. Loves Prowl more than he has possibly ever loved another bot. His spark, the ultimate betrayal of his churning processor, leaps at the idea, and the moment he had registered Prowl's request, his chest plating had nearly cracked open then and there. Even now, the mechanisms groan quietly at the effort it takes Jazz to keep them closed. He wants Prowl. He wants all of Prowl. He wants to feel his presence at every waking moment, he wants the warmth and love constantly trickling into the back of his processor, etched into his very frame.
Terror seizes his spark, ending the joyous, fluttering vibrations that had been rattling his spark chamber. “Run the numbers,” he begs Prowl.
Prowl goes silent, optics distant. From here, with their helms pressed together, Jazz can feel the slight increase in heat across his chevron as his TacNet fires. “I know.”
The odds are not good. The Autobots have been on the defensive for a long time now. They lose more and more every orn. Ratchet cannot continue to pull miracles from nothing, and the exhausted medic is beginning to falter.
Jazz seeks out and endures the most danger out of perhaps any singular bot in the entire Autobot army. He laughs in the face of death as he slips in and out of the living, Earthly embodiment of Unicron's Pit below. Prowl would say that it is not luck. It is planning and probabilities and Jazz’s infamous, honed skill and competence that keeps him alive, that lets him walk—or in some cases, get dragged—home each time. Jazz isn’t so sure. He has survived things he objectively should not have. He has used up enough luck for ten bots, and he worries the well is running dry.
Prowl does not face as much sheer risk as Jazz, but his high rank, lethally competent strategic capabilities, and access to practically every scrap of intel their army possesses makes him a uniquely valuable target. He dodges a constant stream of Decepticon saboteurs, spies, counterspies, and assassins with steadfast, stoic determination. Jazz wonders if there is a single part on Prowl's frame that has not been blown to pieces and replaced over the centavorns. He attracts danger like Earth's largest chunk of neodymium-iron-boron. Maybe that's why Jazz loves him so much. Every Decepticon sniper on a battlefield loves him, too. Would love to have his severed helm in servo to present to Megatron's pedes.
The odds of both the war actually ending in a scenario that doesn't guarantee their species’ slow, utter annihilation and extinction, as well as both Jazz and Prowl making it out the other side are astronomically low.
Prowl does not bet on odds like that. Or at least, he shouldn't. Even if it is down to matters of the spark.
“You know better than this,” Jazz murmurs. He rubs comforting circles into Prowl's doorwing joints. “I…we can't.”
They have both seen the effects of a shattered spark bond. If the remaining bot survives the initial agony, their spark will remain damaged for the rest of their lives. They may continue living, for a time, they may even live a good life, but their lifespan will be drastically cut. They will endure near-constant chronic phantom pain, not to mention the emotional and psychological repercussions.
Perhaps if they lived a life of peace, and one went before the other, they could continue on with the support of a circle of loved ones and friends to lean on.
In a war, they cannot afford to. If Prowl's processor didn't rip itself to shreds in the aftermath of a broken bond, he would remain compromised, a walking security leak and unable to ever again perform to the same standards he once set for himself. Jazz would lose the carefully honed, curated edge he had built and maintained for millenia. He is a living weapon, he cannot operate with cracks etched into his hardened battle mask, to introduce fault lines that can shear him apart at a moment's notice.
“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. I won't mention it again,” says Prowl quietly. He checks his chronometer. He should be getting up and getting back to work, even though it is late into the evening by now. Instead, he rests the side of his helm against Jazz’s chest plating and listens to the spark that he will never see humming below. “Stay with me?”
“Of course,” Jazz mumbles, leaning his helm back and closing his optics.
To his credit, Prowl does not bring it up again. He continues working. Their forces continue bleeding. The war marches on. When he can, he holds Jazz close and listens to his spark spin, and he allows himself briefly to fantasize about what might have been.
If they weren't at war. If their species wasn't dying. If Prowl could have a normal job, something where he sits in a quiet office and runs numbers that have nothing to do with life and death, where he delivers reports that do not condemn others to bleed and suffer, where if he makes a mistake, nothing important will ever come of it. Where, at the end of the orn, he will go home to Jazz, and they can take their time, and there are no blaring klaxons or reassignment orders or high-stakes, deadly operations to rip them apart.
And maybe Jazz can play music again, and there will be other people to listen to the music he makes, and Prowl can go and sit and watch, and he can hold a cube of high-grade that isn't distilled in a damp, sketchy, contraband filled basement. And then after the show, Jazz will ignore the roaming glances of other bots appreciating his languid, gleaming frame, because he will have optics only for Prowl, and they will leave together servo in servo.
And Prowl will smile and laugh with ease, and his face will no longer bear exhausted, irritated anger as a mask that hides his fear, and Jazz will kiss him and tell him that he is good. That he deserves to have desires, and he deserves to have his needs met, and he deserves to be loved.
Even on pre-war Cybertron, these fantasies would have never come to life. He cannot imagine a world in which he will ever get what he wants. Part of him wishes he had never tasted what might have been, so he does not miss it when he cannot have it.
When he stands with Bluestreak, and they examine their weapons one more time, meticulously counting spare ammunition, these fantasies are carefully buried deep, slipped into a partition and walled off as he runs the simulations again.
For once, Bluestreak is quiet, focused on his own methodical work. When they are ready, they look at each other and nod, then step onto the transport shuttle that will carry them to a designated drop off just away from the main fighting. They will slip, alone, without backup, far behind enemy lines, and there they will patiently wait.
Their armor is streaked in camouflage, and they lie silently. Prowl's wrist panel slides open, and he jacks into Bluestreak's waiting connection. They hardline with practiced ease, and soon Bluestreak's TacNet buzzes with the additional processing power and knowledge that Prowl provides, shoring up gaps and wrapping around him like a firm, steadying servo.
Sensor data trickles in a consistent, steady flow. Atmospheric pressure, temperature, wind speed, wind direction. Prowl carefully sorts what is extraneous, overwhelming, and useless, ruthlessly culling it down to a data packet that he sends directly to Bluestreak's trajectory planning program, slotting it in as if Bluestreak himself had felt each brush of wind against his concealed doorwings.
It is only after joors of waiting when they see it. Deadlock rises from his position, the tips of his finials streaked with mud and just barely glinting, his rifle raised as the shot slams into Downshift’s chest, the impact throwing his smoking frame back into a crumpled heap.
Prowl’s TacNet fires, ripping into the data and shunting it directly into Bluestreak’s targeting program with nary a millisecond of latency to spare, and Bluestreak fires the countershot. They hear it before they see it, a muffled cry and the screech of metal as Deadlock falls back.
Audio confirmation: positive
Visual indication: positive
Battle damage assessment:
[impact site: non-lethal]
[mobility: 62.87% compromised]
[battleworthiness: compromised]
[target: neutralized]
Prowl slips the observational data into Bluestreak’s side of the connection, and Bluestreak gives a tiny nod. Deadlock will live, but he will not remain a part of this battle. They immediately begin moving, Prowl sliding back out of Bluestreak’s processor and snapping his wrist panel shut. The loss of the other TacNet makes him reel for a klik, but he has experienced the separation enough times to know exactly what to expect.
He runs through their pre-planned escape routes, and they begin making their way to the extraction point, slinking low and quickly along outcroppings of stone and between cover points.
As soon as Bluestreak thinks to himself that their fallback is going smoothly, a jet engine roars overhead.
They freeze, dropping down into a ditch, crouching still and low. The seeker flies over, blasting past before climbing rapidly and inverting, looping back around into a dive.
“Frag!” Bluestreak lunges out of the ditch, rifle raised as Prowl sets a servo on his shoulder, looking up. Numbers race across his HUD: air speed, flight trajectory, missile trajectory, time to impact. He tenses, heat beginning to roll off of his frame in shimmering waves as the seeker’s engines scream, dark grey and red paint gleaming.
He nudges Bluestreak’s arm then squeezes his shoulder, and the shot strikes true, tearing its way through the seeker’s wing. Red Wing goes spinning, guns roaring to life as he fires a desperate snapshot spray before pulling up out of the dive, listing heavily to one side as he retreats.
“Where’s his fragging trine!” Bluestreak snaps, yelping as bullets rip into his plating. Prowl staggers back, yanking them both back into the ditch where they crouch, fans roaring. His own frame is littered with wounds from the snapshot attack, and he is beginning to leak as his HUD screams with warnings.
Pressure loss, torn coolant lines, auxiliary fuel pump compromised—
He dismisses them and shunts processing power to his screaming sensors.
“I don’t know,” Prowl admits, fans beginning to squeal as he desperately tries to regain control of the situation. “They aren’t supposed to be here, aerial support was going to be limited to a few rotorformers and the Coneheads!”
The Aerialbots had kept the Coneheads busy, meaning they should have had air dominance for once.
“We gotta move, go, go, go,” Bluestreak insists, grabbing Prowl’s arm and hauling him along, ducking into a copse of trees.
Prowl stumbles, blinking away warning pings as his TacNet cascades.
Visual confirmation: positive
Combatant type: seeker, interceptor class
Designation: Red Wing
Alignment: Decepticon
Additional data: trined with Slipstream [trineleader, Air Captain, air force TIC]; Nacelle [seeker, interceptor class]
Battle damage assessment:
[Airworthiness: compromised]
“Stop running simulations, and run!” Bluestreak snarls, slapping Prowl upside the helm as he drags Prowl behind a towering rock formation.
“Frag,” Prowl gasps, shaking his helm. “Slipstream is going to be a problem.”
“Primus Almighty, how many cores did it take your TacNet to come to that conclusion?” hisses Bluestreak. His optics soften for a moment, though, as he sighs. “Okay… okay. Do we have another escape route? Our extraction point may be compromised.”
They are still too close to the egress point to risk comming. Prowl bites his lip, optics glowing near white as he readjusts parameters. “Secondary extraction point: ten kilometers, as the seeker flies.”
“Route?”
“Difficult terrain, travel by alt mode is impossible. Cover from aerial observation and attack, acceptable.”
“Better than nothing. Let’s roll.”
They stagger, doing their best to not leave a literal glowing trail of spilled energon from their dripping wounds as they pick their way over gullies and through ravines, painstaking meter by painstaking meter. The breems tick by, passing into joors as they close in on their extraction point.
“—Primus fraggin’ damn it, Sunstreaker’s gonna kill me when he sees all this damage. He spent, like, six joors touching up my paint last deca-orn. Used the good polish, too. I don’t know where he gets it, actually, I haven’t asked. Hey, Prowl, you always smell nice, what brand of polish do you use? Maybe I’ll try and find some for Sunstreaker. I heard Jazz say once that he likes the way you smell. But then again, I don’t think Sunny would like using the same brand as you, now that I think about it. No offense. But I think he’d rather die than have something in common with you. Hey, Prowl, are you listening to me?”
“Shut up!” Prowl hisses, optics blazing. “You act like this is your first time in the field. We are supposed to be quiet.”
“We’re eight kilometers from the egress point, have you tried comming?” Bluestreak asks.
“I already did. They’ll be at the secondary extraction point in seventeen breems. Skyfire is having trouble getting out there, he’s too large for the clearing. It’ll be touch and go,” Prowl says, shaking his helm. He’d rather it be Silverbolt, but currently, they needed him elsewhere.
“So anyways, Jazz said he likes the way you smell, which is kinda crazy, like, I didn’t know you guys hung out like that. I mean, I’ve seen you refuel together before, but now that you got reassigned away from the Ark, he’s just like, so… I don’t know. He’s not grumpy, but he’s quieter.”
“Hmm,” grunts Prowl noncommittal and gruff. His left hip joint is screaming with every step, and he fights back a wince.
“What’d you do to your doorwing?” Bluestreak asks after a moment.
“What?” Prowl turns his helm, but he can’t quite see his own doorwing. He folds them down low against his back. “I probably got shot.”
“No, it’s not a bullet wound. It’s like… a bite mark.”
A flick of one doorwing, and Prowl frowns. “That’s ridiculous. I do not have a bite mark in my doorwing. It is likely just shrapnel damage.”
“It’s not bleeding, though, it’s just a dent. Looks old.”
“Then perhaps old training damage.”
“Yeah, but you’re always so meticulous when you preen. Is it ‘cause they have you stationed out in the middle of the ocean? Got nobody to preen with? There’s gotta at least be a few bots with doorwings or spoilers who need a good kibble preening session. Unless… you’re too good to preen with the rest of us. High and mighty CTO.”
Prowl fixes Bluestreak with his coldest, meanest glare, but the effect is ruined by his limp and the energon streaking his plating. “Shut up. I am adhering perfectly to maintenance and grooming regulations.”
He doesn’t want to admit Bluestreak has a point. Outside of a select few, he hates others touching his doorwings. Jazz can do whatever he wants to the sensory structures, and he tolerates the touch of Bluestreak and Smokescreen. As for anyone else…
If Jazz had bit him the last time they lay together, he would have offered to buff the dent out.
Unless… Slag. That moment they shared in the supply closet, outside the meeting room of the pre-battle briefing. They hadn’t progressed past a bit of kissing and playful biting, but they’d been interrupted when Prowl received an emergency call, stating Ricochet had been injured in a training incident and wouldn’t be recovered in time to report in. And thus, Prowl was playing spotter instead.
“So… who bit you?”
“Nobody bit me!” Prowl clenches his jaw, and he receives a warning ping. Jazz would always smooth his servo along the side of Prowl’s helm, teasing at the edge of the side plating and offering to give him something better to do with his mouth.
Jazz is not here. He is far behind enemy lines at the moment, hopefully falling back to his own extraction point by now after successfully bringing down Decepticon communication structures.
“Was it Jazz?” Bluestreak walks beside Prowl, leaning in close to look at the dent. “I’m kinda surprised, you know. Jazz seems like he’d be a lot to keep up with. I mean, I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with you, but… I didn’t even know you liked interfacing. I always thought you hated the concept. Too messy. Waste of energy. Letting someone touch you.”
Prowl begins to growl in earnest now, his engine revving higher in displeasure. “Bluestreak,” he warns. He is grudgingly fond of the other Praxian, perhaps more fond than he ought to be, but Bluestreak is still his subordinate.
Bluestreak is oblivious. “I know you’re not a virgin or anything. But I thought after Barricade you’d maybe sworn off the entire thing. That’s not your fault, though. Barricade was the worst frag I’ve ever had in my life.”
Prowl stops snarling to look at Bluestreak, unable to hide the shock flickering across his face.
“Oh, yeah. Barricade tried to get in everyone’s panels. I think he managed to frag everyone in our precinct at least once. Well, actually, maybe not Hotdive. She would never let someone top her, although, she did have these really cool spike mods—”
“I need you to stop talking.”
“Wait… don’t tell me. Did you frag him more than once? Mech…”
“Quiet!” Prowl draws his own rifle, wrapping a servo around Bluestreak’s shoulder and forcing him to stop walking. The faint roar of jet engines trickles into his audials, and he begins to run, comming Skyfire as he goes.
<<Prowl to Skyfire. Get an Aerialbot in the skies, we may have interceptors>>
<<Skyfire to Prowl, acknowledged. I have Air Raid with me. Coneheads on the bug, Nacelle is currently engaged. No optics on Slipstream, and Red Wing is not airworthy>>
Slag. No optics on Slipstream? That was the worst possible case scenario.
They cover ground quickly, breaking from the treeline and transforming as they enter the open area leading to the extraction point, pushing their engines to the max. A jet wheels around the second they emerge from cover, ripping overhead as it flies dangerously low. Only a few seekers could fly with such skill, and from the grime-streaked purple and blue plating, it is clear who this is.
Prowl leaps forward into his transformation sequence in unison with Bluestreak, dropping to a knee as his optics blaze white.
The trajectory is wrong. Slipstream is a far better flier than Red Wing, and she comes in hot, control surfaces rippling.
When the bombs hit, his TacNet seizes with the chaos as he goes flying, slamming into the ground and coming to a screeching, skidding halt, a tangle of burning metal and debris. His vision goes red with warnings, damage reports flooding in before the pain has a chance to settle over his frame.
He is barely aware of a second jet coming streaking from above, the sun obscuring the reckless attack. Slipstream rises to meet Air Raid, and the jets whip around in their deadly, gravity-defying dance.
“Frag, frag, frag, Prowl, can you hear me?” Bluestreak is gasping in his audial, pulling at his twisted frame, dragging him over the ruined, pitted earth.
He groans, vocalizer spitting static as he stares up at the ash-filled sky. The ground rumbles with Skyfire’s impact as he fumbles the landing and drops heavily.
“Where—?” he manages to choke out, vents stuttering and dirt-choked. He can feel one of the blades, bent out of alignment, scrape painfully with each shattered rotation. “Arm…”
“You’re missing it, mech, it’s gone,” Bluestreak says as he forces Prowl to his pedes, half dragging, half carrying him into Skyfire’s waiting cargo hold.
Prowl slumps, allowing Bluestreak to do the work until he is dropped clumsily to the metal floor of the hold. His frayed sensor net flashes warning after warning, and he is faintly aware of the burning, screaming pain in one doorwing as it twitches uncontrollably.
“Fr-ag…”
“Yeah, you’re telling me.” Bluestreak sits next to him, leaning against his remaining shoulder as he rubs a servo over his face, shaking with the rumbling of Skyfire’s frame-wrenching takeoff.
<<Eta: 31 breems. Report?>> Skyfire’s voice, usually calm and quiet, now sharp, floods into his glitching comms.
<<Just fly. I’ll live>> Prowl wheezes, struggling to bring the stuffy air of the cargo hold into his burning frame. He weakly attempts to begin clearing the errors, and he can feel Bluestreak scrabbling at one of his hardline ports. He lets it slide open, and the other Praxian’s calming presence quickly slides into his TacNet as he begins taking over triage, carefully severing the connection to his ruined doorwing and sparking stump where his arm once was.
The assistance allows him to begin to regain control, the sharp pain fading to a dull, throbbing ache as he raises his helm and rakes his optics over Bluestreak.
He looks well enough for the situation, covered in shrapnel wounds, and there is a bleeding gash in his side, but he is better off than Prowl.
Prowl closes his optics, retreating into his own processor as Skyfire flies.
Jazz is still thrumming with the aftermath of his mission, despite his battle protocols having clicked off joors ago. He paces, restless, outside of the temporary medical tent, wearing grooves into the mud outside. As soon as Ratchet ducks out, Jazz is in his face.
“Don’t rush me,” Ratchet snaps, but his optics soften as he takes in Jazz’s appearance. Jazz himself is uninjured, his operation somehow having gone without a hitch. The Decepticons have not sounded a retreat, yet, but with their entire network dark, the Autobots are having a field day, mopping up the chaotic remnants of their shattered resistance.
“He’ll live. You can go in there, just don’t get him too riled up.”
Jazz pushes past Ratchet, but pauses for a klik. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Bluestreak was the one that dragged him out of there.”
Prowl is a pitiful sight, optics closed as he lays in a medberth cot. Ratchet has done his best to crimp the damaged fuel lines of his missing arm, but it will take time before he can get a replacement. His frame is littered with scorch marks and wounds, hastily patched over until proper welds can be done. One doorwing is broken in half. The other half is likely still laying in that field, probably along with the severed arm.
Jazz stands quietly at his side, looking down at him. He reaches out, servo minutely shaking, but then pulls it away before sitting in the small chair Ratchet has left for him.
Prowl cracks open an optic and reaches for his servo.
Jazz takes it, smoothing the back of his thumb over the blackened metal.
“Hi, Prowler. You look terrible.” The joke lands flat, and Jazz regrets it the moment he utters the words.
“Hi,” Prowl rasps. Jazz can tell he is fuzzy with pain patches, but the mechanisms in his optics readjust, and he focuses on Jazz’s face. “You should… see the other guy…”
Jazz cannot help but smile softly. He’d gotten word that Deadlock was out of the picture, for now, at least.
“You did good,” he reassures Prowl. “Popped a nice hole in Deadlock. Made it home. Mostly.”
“Hmm.” Prowl sighs. “Which one… of your scouts said… it’d just be the Coneheads? I’m firing them.”
Jazz clicks his tongue. “That would be me,” he says, guilt washing over him, the cold dread filling his lines as his fuel tank roils.
“You’re fired.”
“Aw, don’t be like that. Skydive managed to shoot down Nacelle. He’s coolin’ his thrusters in custody.”
Prowl goes quiet, optics distant. Jazz deliberates leaving him to rest, now that he has visual confirmation that he isn’t going to die. All things considered, Prowl is not grievously injured. Once his replacement parts come in, he will return to work as if nothing happened. Jazz has seen him on the brink of death before, but even then, it did not compare to the worry now eating his spark alive.
“Spark bond with me.” Prowl's voice is so quiet, Jazz nearly doesn't hear him. He already knows what the answer will be. His odds are in the gutter, but Prowl asks anyway.
Prowl looks up at the ceiling as Jazz grasps his battered servo in both of his own. There is the soft stutter of a ventilation, then the sparking, crunching grind of a dented fan blade catching as Prowl wheezes again.
Jazz debates calling for Ratchet. The massive, cracked, bleeding dent in the side of Prowl's chest looks painful, but it won't kill him. There are plenty of other bots around who will die if Ratchet doesn't get to them soon. He sighs softly, gripping Prowl's servo harder.
“No.”
Prowl lets out a choked sob, turning his helm away, and it is perhaps the saddest, most pathetic, spark-wrenching sound that Jazz has ever heard in his life. He has gone silent, save for the tiny whimpers he hides as his ventilations stall, that damn fan blade letting out sharp squealing sounds every other rotation.
Jazz stands and begins untangling his digits from Prowl's. His spark spins fast in his chest, and he can hear the quiet whoosh in his audials.
This has happened before. Jazz is friendly and warm, he loves brilliantly and loudly. He is full of jokes and smiles, purred compliments and gentle touches. Yet when one begins to peel the mask back, and the affection from others becomes overbearing, he freezes up. He slips away like a wraith, vanishing like fog in the sun.
Prowl has dug further than most. Without Jazz realizing, he has hooked his digits into the edges of Jazz’s spark casing, and begun to pry his chest open to look inside. When he sees what churns below, he doesn't flinch away. He quietly, reverently reaches further, even if he is burned in the process.
If Jazz let him, he would destroy himself and smile all the while.
So his chest panels remain closed, and he begins silently rebuilding the walls around them.
In a sudden burst of strength, Prowl clenches Jazz’s servo harder, enough to make the metal begin creaking. He finally looks at Jazz, his optics glowing wild and bright. The jagged wound ripping open one side of his mouth is beginning to bleed again, despite the temporary patch, and the energon stands out stark against his silvery face plating.
“Please…”
Prowl stares, the unsaid words hanging heavy in the air.
Please what? Spark bond with him? Stay? Don't leave, please, don't leave. Can't Jazz see, he is begging? He doesn't ask for much. Since he rolled off that assembly line in Praxus, Prowl has spent the rest of his life sacrificing.
His processor, his frame, his health, his dignity. He is only asking for one thing. After millennia of steadfast dedication, of bleeding for the cause, why can't the universe deliver him this?
Jazz sits back down, nudging his chair closer to the emergency medical cot, and leans forward to bump his forehelm against Prowl's, mindful of the jagged edges where part of his chevron is splintered. Behind his visor, he closes his optics and tunes up his audials.
He can hear the pained moans of the injured around them. The muffled buzz of a welder. Even Ratchet's muttered cursing. They are miles behind the front, and the battle has gone quiet, a temporary reprieve in the grueling carnage, but it will inevitably start back up soon.
When it does, Jazz will let go of Prowl's servo, and he will leave. He will walk back onto that battlefield, and he may not walk back off of it.
But for now, he holds Prowl tighter and squeezes his optics shut, listening to Prowl's shaky, strained ventilations and the soft hum of his circuitry, the faint trickle of oil and fuel and coolant through his lines.
He draws back for a moment and kisses the uninjured side of Prowl's mouth, despite the bitter, acrid tang of energon and dust and smoke lingering on his tongue. He brings one servo up to cradle the side of Prowl's neck, then moves it up to trace the edge of his jaw and grasp his chin.
Jazz’s touches are feather-light, barely there caresses. Prowl's frame is cool to the touch, far colder than it should be as he shunts the limited fuel and heat he has left to maintain vital systems. He shivers, trying to lean into Jazz’s warmth, letting out a quiet whine.
After a moment, Jazz draws back, and Prowl whines again, his vocalizer raspy with static and smoke. Jazz kisses the cold metal just under his optic, then tucks his face against the crook of Prowl's neck, slotting in as if they were forged to fit together.
He dials back his stealth mods, just enough so that Prowl can hear the faint idling of his engine, even with half a doorwing missing and his sensory net shattered, pain patches dulling the agonizing sensation of losing part of a vital, sensitive structure.
Prowl shifts slightly, biting back a pained grunt as he tries to press himself closer. Jazz stills him, laying an arm over his cracked, singed plating.
“I love you,” Prowl whispers.
“I know.”
After another long moment.
“I'm sorry.”
“It's okay, Prowler. I've got you.”
“... I don't want to die alone.” Prowl closes his optics the moment the words slip from his mouth, shame curling around him. He is being utterly, incorrigibly selfish. He loves Jazz. He shouldn't wish harm upon him, by asking for a spark bond in which Jazz will feel every agonizing, terrifying moment of his death, when his time comes. Yet his processor cannot help but stray to the numerous times he has lay bleeding, systems shutting down one by one, leaving him in that horrifying, lonely, approaching darkness. Where his spark desperately reached out in a last ditch effort to find comfort that would not come.
“You’re not gonna die at all. We're gonna make it through this war, and then I will spark bond with you,” Jazz says quietly, even though this is a blatant lie. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot predict the future, and he is making a promise he cannot realistically keep.
“Okay.” Prowl lets out another trembling sigh, then lays still.
After nearly half a joor of sitting there, Prowl’s ventilations even out. They are still strained, but the damaged blade is quieter now that the fans are spinning slower as he slips into exhausted recharge. Jazz untangles himself from the twist of intertwined limbs. He looks down at Prowl and smooths the tips of his digits across the weary lines furrowed into his features. Then quietly, with all the stealth and grace of his SpecOps skills honed over millennia, he leaves.