Chapter Text
Prowl sits stiff and rigid behind his desk, his face a stern mask when Jazz enters. Jazz takes his seat on the other side, and he briefly considers throwing a pede up there on his desk just to irritate him some more.
Prowl doesn't say anything for a long couple of nano-kliks, staring at him in silence. Jazz has seen do this a million times: a tried and true intimidation tactic that works on too many bots. The fact that Prowl thinks that this'll work on him almost makes him crack a smile.
"You nearly cost us that battle, Jazz," Prowl finally says, voice low and digits steepled neatly.
Jazz purses his derma, absently rubbing at a scuff mark on his thigh that he must've missed earlier in the washracks. "You've really got a way of thanking mechs."
Prowl's optics narrow. "You abandoning your team to engage Starscream was not a part of the plan."
"Yeah, well it took the heat off Blue and the twins, didn't it? Primus knows they needed it." Based on the comms he had been hearing, they would've been digging their graying remains from the rubble if Thundercracker managed to make another successful pass on their lookout.
"I had the situation under control."
"Mmhm, yeah." Jazz levels him with a disbelieving stare.
Prowl's expression morphs into a scowl. Something creaks. "Had you simply communicated your concern and not abandoned your unit, we would not be having this conversation right now."
He gives up on the scuff mark. "If I wasted my time communicating my concerns, we'd still be sitting vigil for our mechs right now."
Prowl stands, still behind his desk but gripping it like he's three nano-kliks from throwing it. "Do you even know how many more mechs you put at risk with your stunt?"
Primus have mercy…does Prowl think he's that selfish? "Yeah, I do. I do every time. My mechs are out there too."
"Yet you seem to disregard their lives every time you deviate from the plan."
Jazz feels a smile tug at his derma, and he tilts his helm to the right. "You don't know my mechs, Prowl. You think a little deviation from a plan is gonna frag everything up? Blow up them little scenarios you got playin' in that big ol' processor of yours?"
Prowl's doorwings flare, and a low growl rumbles from his systems. "These little scenarios have kept the Autobots afloat for the last-"
"Oh, here he go," Jazz interrupts with a groan. He wishes Prowl could see how hard he's rolling his optics. "Talkin' all high and mighty 'bout himself. Just admit it when you're wrong."
That does it.
Prowl's servos crack against the edge of the desk — motor strain shrieking through the room as the metal bows and deforms under the force. His optics blaze, and when he speaks again, his growl is low enough to vibrate the floor plates.
"You mistake responsibility for ego, Jazz."
The part of Jazz watching this showdown from the back of his processor — casually eating cadmium puffs — briefly appreciates Wheeljack’s very intelligent decision to bolt the desk to the floor.
Jazz doesn't flinch. Doesn't even straighten. He leans back in the chair instead.
"No," Jazz says lightly, tightlipped. "I don't mistake rigidity for strategy."
For a nano-klik, the room is silent except for the hum of lights, and the growing whine of Prowl's systems struggling to stay within tolerance.
"You disobeyed direct orders," Prowl all but spits, faceplates twisted in a snarl. "You altered an engagement mid-combat without authorization, without backup, without communication for the third time this fragging campaign. You split from your unit, isolated injured mechs, left the west front vulnerable-"
"And won," Jazz snaps, casual grace gone in an instant. He sits up now, leaning forward, palms planted firmly on the desk. "We won, Prowl. Cleaner than you predicted. Fewer Autobot causalities. Heavier 'con losses. I know you got the numbers." He pauses. "Or do it hurt to acknowledge that you was wrong?"
Prowl straightens fully, towering above the desk, above this battlefield, doorwings in a steep enraged V. His voice is flat and downright icy when he speaks. "Victory does not justify recklessness."
Jazz's engine throttles up, alerts coming onto his HUD as he overrides stealth mods. "It does when recklessness is just your word for adaptation."
"You gambled with lives."
"Like you don't! Every orn, every battle!" Jazz fires back. "You act like we're all that different when we're not."
Prowl steps out from his desk, every movement tight, calculated. Jazz dismisses whatever warning his HUD was trying to notify him of, and sits back, smiling jauntily as Prowl's shadow falls over him. Prowl's servos twitch where they rest at his sides, probably itching to shake his own version of sense into Jazz.
"We are not the same."
"I didn't say we were," Jazz scoffs, rising to his pedes now, matching height, matching pressure. "You really wanna know how we're different?"
Prowl rolls his optics, putting his servos behind his back. "Other than your blatant disrespect for authority, enlighten me."
Jazz can't help but laugh out loud at that. That has to be one of Prowl's favorite glyphs - authority. They're the same fraggin' rank!
"My mechs trust me," he says, smile still on his derma.
Prowl is silent at that, his slight smugness dropping from his face.
"My mechs trust me 'cause I don't treat them like pieces on a board, like pawns." Jazz's smile edges on sharp. "Your control-freak aft can't stand that I don't fit all nice and perfect like you want me to."
Prowl's optics narrow dangerously, doorwings hiking higher, flaring a little wider in that all too familiar attempt at intimidation. "And if you're wrong? If that trust gets them killed?"
His own doorwings slide free from where he keeps them tucked under his back plating, rising high and challenging Prowl's.
Jazz leans in close, smile falling and voice dropping, deadly serious. "Then their guttered sparks are on my servos; I acknowledge that." He lets a quiet growl rumble from his systems. "Just 'cause what you've done is all tidy and documented don't mean your servos are clean, either. So how 'bout you do me a favor and spare me the righteous fraggin' lecture."
For a moment, for several moments, Prowl looks like he might just actually try to strike him.
Jazz wishes he would.
The air hums, tight and electric.
Finally, Prowl backs down, and the air around him shimmers with heat, a system wide blow down. Deliberate. Controlled. "From here on out, you will follow the given orders," he says, clipped, professional.
"Or you will not lead."
Jazz's smile comes back now — but its all sharp edges and spite. Amazing how not a single slagging glyph got through that pearly white helm of his.
"Alright. Fine. Just one last thing for you then."
Prowl's optics narrow, faint confusion flickering in his field.
"Stop wastin' everyone's time and try writin' plans that are worth followin'."
The words hang there, charged, targeted and utterly radioactive in delivery.
Prowl takes a step forward. Too close now.
Jazz doesn't back up. Yields no ground. Their frames are nearly brushing now, optics locked to visor, the space between vibrating with restrained force.
"Get. Out."
His smile grows a little wider, edging on dangerous. "Or what? You gon' make me?"
Prowl's servo raises in some half aborted shove, digits curling, but stops short of Jazz's chest plating, close enough Jazz can feel the heat off his servos, the fine wisps of EM around the motorized joints.
"Do not. Test me."
Jazz laughs in his face, breathy and easy, and leans in that last fraction of distance. Their chest plates brush— metal on metal, a faint metallic squeal.
"Oh, Prowler, I am way past testin'."
Prowl snaps.
His servos slam into the slope of Jazz's hood and bumper, shoving him back - hard.
Jazz lets him.
He stumbles back a half-step, heel scraping against floor plates with a sharp metallic shriek. Systems flare red hot with retaliatory coded instinct. His engine surges, a snarl ripping free, HUD lighting up with threat vectors and defensive prompts that he dismisses without hesitation. Prowl might be dangerous in a lot of ways, but servo-to-servo isn't where the tactician holds any edge.
Before Prowl can reset his stance, Jazz is already moving, slamming back into Prowl's space - all momentum and spite, bumpers coming together with a solid clang that rattles both their frames.
This close, Jazz can feel the rest of the heat pouring off Prowl's frame in waves, bleeding through his own armor. Their EM fields grind together in a sparkling, jagged interference, static shocks snapping across Jazz's seams where the frequencies positively interfere. It prickles across his sensory net as live current as Prowl's furious optics burn bright and dangerous inches from his face.
Jazz tilts his helm slightly, and leans in, smile slow and sharp along his derma.
"C'mon, Prowler," he murmurs. His voice is easy, amused, but his engine is roaring in his chest. "You done posturing, or you actually got somethin' to say?"
Prowl doesn't answer. Those angry optics flick once - quick and sharp.
Not to Jazz's visor.
Lower.
To the curve of Jazz's derma, where a heady grin cuts bright across his face.
Jazz catches it. Sees it for what it is.
Ah.
His smile widens, feral and delighted.
"Yeah," he vents out softly. "Thought so."
Something in Prowl's expression fractures— optics flickering as cold tactical discipline collides headlong with something far less orderly.
For a fraction of a klik it looks like he might say something.
Instead -
Whatever razor edge of control Prowl had been riding evaporates and he shoves him away again, harder - and Jazz is slamming into the door frame with a resounding clang.
Prowl moves fast - faster than Jazz expects, doorwings raised and spread wide. Anybot else, any perfectly rational, sane, right-minded mech would be, should be, rapidly reconsidering their life choices.
One lunging stride, a clash of sparks, and his servo catches Jazz by the shoulder pauldron - not to shove now, but to haul him in. Gravity shifts violently as Prowl drags him close, frames colliding bumper to bumper with an offending, grinding squeal.
For a klik, they are locked there.
Optics blazing.
Engines throttling in a heady cacophony.
Vents dumping heat in short, blasting bursts.
Jazz grins, denta bared, feral and bright. His processor is absolutely singing now, combat subroutines pulsing merrily in the periphery, charge racing through lines. Prowl’s running hot. Sloppy. His presence floods his sensors - heat and pressure and the overwhelming hum of a frame running dangerously close to redline. "You done?"
Prowl's voice, when it comes, is a low gritty growl.
"You," he spits, "are infuriating."
For a fraction of a klik, neither of them moves.
Then Prowl is crushing forward into that last fraction of space and crashing their intakes together — it's furious, open-mouthed and reckless, all mesh and heat and decacycles — stellar cycles, vorn — of suppressed frustration and rage detonating in one violent collision.
Brutal. Desperate. Like he's trying to silence Jazz the only way left available to him.
Jazz's circuits positively sizzle. For a sparkspin he freezes— and the intensity knocks a startled misfire out of his engine before he can stifle it.
That is a victory Prowl will not get a second time.
Static rips through his processor - oh slag - and then its not fear or shock or any of those less important things, just the split-klik gritty, enfevered realization that this is real and happening and YES—
—and he's snarling low in his chest and kissing him back just as hard, servos coming up from defensive pushback to seize Prowl's side plating, pulling him close instead of pushing away. Their EM fields flare, and pulse, and tangle in a heated, sparking barrage, heat blooming where their frames scrape together.
Something tears loose in him, bright and furious and starving. Wild.
Metal rings, a sharp report in the enclosed office. Hydraulics whine under increasing load. Cooling fans kick up a strained, uneven pitch. The air smells like hot insulation and scorched dust.
There’s no space between decision and action now. No higher processor functions. Just heat and shove and pull and answer.
Prowl’s control - so pristine, so rigid - burns away in the contact. His grip shifts from restraining to claiming as he angles the kiss deeper, rougher, sparks skittering sharp and bright. Denta graze, and then Prowl, PROWL is biting down on his lower derma; the sting flashes clear through Jazz's sensory net.
Prowl. Prowl. Ol' Prowler, of all mechs, that gearstick-up-the-aft Prowl, just bit him.
Jazz goes still for half a klik—then his processor catches up, and oh, that is not a game he’s losing.
His helm jerks forward before Prowl can pull away. Denta clamp down hard on Prowl’s lower derma in a sharp, retaliatory CHOMP.
A sharp metallic click, and the taste of energon wells up, bright and sharp on his sensors.
Prowl freezes, a flicker of genuine surprise broadcasted all over his faceplates.
Jazz pulls back just enough to see it, to take that in, a smirk deepening slow as he drags a thumb across the mark.
"There we go," he murmurs. "Now… that's a good look on you."
Then they are a mutual staggering, grappling, groping, tangled whirlwind mess of limbs — paint grinds. Gouges. Leaves streaks of black and white across opposing armor plating.
Prowl shoves him back into the desk hard enough to rattle the bolts in the floor mounts. Datapads leap and scatter.
A low, challenging rumble builds in Jazz's engine, revving hot and utterly unintimidated as his stealth mods drop away without a secondary processing cycle. Across from him, Prowl’s expression has twisted into something foreign and feral below that red chevron, doorwings fluttering in sharp, staccato motion. Jazz's optics flick to the motion and he only grins wider, bracing against the edge of the desk, leaning into it and Prowl advances like a freight train.
Jazz doesn’t dodge. Doesn't spin away, doesn’t need to. Doesn't want to.
They crash together again.
Like tidally locked planets—breaking orbit only to slam back into each other harder.
The desk clears in one violent sweep — Jazz's frame sending monitors, styluses, stray data sticks flying. A holo-projector bursts underpede. The air tastes metallic — ozone thick in his vents, insulation running hotter than spec.
And then Prowl’s knee slides between Jazz’s pedes—
—and suddenly he’s straddling Jazz’s thigh.
The contact sends a searing spike of heat through Jazz’s sensory net.
Well now. That’s a development.
And he is very, very interested.
Jazz’s engine purrs. "Don't tell me this got you all hot under your panels, Prowler…"
Prowl grinds down spitefully with a searingly hot panel, heat perfusing in a way that's got nothing to do with combat. His normally white faceplates are flushed a deep blue. "Shut up."
Jazz laughs breathlessly.
"You can admit it, Prowler," he begins, optics flaring bright behind his visor. "You're likin-"
Prowl seizes Jazz’s helm in both servos and his grip is crushing, possessive, motor housings humming under the strain — and he is dragged in for another burning collision of intakes.
And oh—
Jazz is going to have fun with that.
He would’ve never thought Prowl was the type to burn like this.
Jazz lets him. Meets him. Pushes him further. He tastes of ozone, of energon, and plating polish.
Jazz slips the hold to Prowl’s right, already moving before the grip can adjust and rolls them into a tight half-spin, letting Prowl’s own momentum drive him into the wall. The impact reverberates through Prowl’s doorwings at a bad angle, metal protesting sharply — but if it hurts, and it should, it doesn’t show.
Prowl squirms, tries to twist it into leverage—
and Jazz just flows with it.
Smooth. Sinuous.
Rolling up into every movement instead of fighting it, his frame sliding against Prowl’s in a slow, deliberate grind that keeps him pinned exactly where he wants him.
Jazz fills that space between them, pressing in chest to chest, plating to plating. He can feel Prowl’s engine cycling hard. Hear the high, razor-edge whine of stressed motors. Feel the heat radiating through layers of alloy.
Their EM fields writhe and flare — static snapping faintly where armor edges meet.
Jazz vents hard, intake vent slats fluttering, and wants.
This is indulgent.
This is dangerous.
This fixes everything.
This fixes nothing.
…
Neither of them is stopping.
Prowl's anger is real, and he intends to frag it out of Jazz. But he's got it backwards, Jazz is gonna frag it out of Prowl.
Jazz can admire Prowl. He did at one point, right around when they first met; he's easy on the optics even with that permanent scowl, but the attitude, the pettiness, that controlling nature, was way too much.
Jazz’s servos slide up to his headlights—teasing, tracing, following the curve of smooth glass warmed from overworked systems. He drags his thumb along the edge, slow—deliberate—feeling the way his frame tightens under it, the way his engine throttles and stutters high for half a klik before settling into something rougher.
Yeah.
That’s interesting.
Prowl's frame rolls up against him with a snarling, "I hate you."
Jazz hums, low and pleased, leaning in so close his voice ghosts across Prowl’s audial, vibration bleeding straight through sensitive plating.
“That's funny, cause your frame's saying otherwise."