here are some things in the universe that you just don't expect to hear. Ever. Like, for instance, you really don’t expect to hear Grimlock all of a sudden reciting a soliloquy from Macbeth. You don’t expect to hear Gears whistling a happy tune, or Huffer not complaining, or Optimus Prime yelling in rage at the top of his voice.
Unfortunately, the latter was exactly what Prowl and I heard as we headed down the corridor toward Prime’s office. We both stopped in our tracks, suddenly uncertain about our little self-assigned mission, and exchanged a startled sidelong glance.
"Uh-oh," I murmured, breaking the seconds-long silence as we stared worriedly at each other.
"Mmmm…” Prowl offered in wordless apprehension before adding, “This is certainly not an auspicious omen, Jazz. Perhaps we should wait until tomorrow…?"
After he said that, without even waiting for an answer from me, Prowl executed a hasty 180 in order to head back in the opposite direction. He nearly whacked me with a door panel in his haste as he turned, even. I caught his arm, though, and turned him around again before he could get very far.
"Don't you go borrowing my procrastination habit, Prowl," I teasingly admonished him as I hauled him around, using his momentum against him. "Let's just…go get this over with, all right?" And with that, without waiting for a reply from him, I headed off down the corridor again, doing so in a light-stepped, carefree, cheerful sort of way that I knew would annoy Prowl.
"Well," I heard Prowl glumly murmur behind me, before he began to follow slowly and reluctantly in my wake, "perhaps we can't make his day any worse, at least…"
I really hate it when someone jinxes me that way…
When we reached our destination, Prowl and I approached Optimus' always-open door quietly, cautiously. Since I was in the lead, I was the one who got to warily peek around the doorjamb, scoping out the territory before invading it. And so it was me who first spied Optimus sitting at his desk. And what I saw wasn’t all that encouraging, either. Prime’s entire demeanor radiated…vast annoyance. He was leaning back slightly in his chair, his arms folded tightly across his broad chest. What I could see of his face in profile and above his faceplate was glaring ferociously at the computer screen in front of him, which I could just barely see was currently displaying…
…An ominously flashing red message that read “GAME OVER” in large, squared-off letters?
I had to fight to keep from laughing out loud…but I found that I couldn’t hold back a snicker and a snide announcement of my presence. Much louder than was really necessary, I called out, “Damn thing’s frustrating, ain’t it, Prime?”
And once I said that, I had the pleasure of seeing Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots and staunch defender of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, practically leap out of his metal skin. I snickered at him as he whipped his head around to glare at me. He was irritated, no doubt, that he’d been caught, red-handed, goofing off.
“You have an annoying habit,“ Optimus Prime eventually grumbled at me after several seconds spent settling back into his skin and folding his arms across his chest again, “of being in the right place at the right time, Jazz.”
“You noticed?” I replied with a goofy grin. “I’m so touched, Prime.”
In response, Prime made a noise that might have been annoyed but that was more likely at least secretly amused, but he didn’t say anything else. So, that left the talking up to me, as usual… While I fished around in my brain, trying to think of what I was going to say to him, Prime just stared at me expectantly.
“You, uh… You got a minute, Op?” I finally asked hesitantly, before I thought the better of my whole plan. Such as my “plan” was, of course. “There’s something I need to talk to you about, and it’s even kinda sorta important…”
“For you, Jazz, I might have two minutes,” Prime replied with a sigh. “Maybe even three, if you’re really good,” our fearless leader added before unfolding his arms, leaning forward a bit, and reaching out to turn off the screen in front of him with a vicious stab of one index finger. That accomplished, he angled an almost…apprehensive…look up at me and hesitantly asked, “But…why do I suddenly get that distinct sinking feeling that tells me I’m not going to like whatever it is you’re going to tell me?”
He was good, that Prime. Too good sometimes. Maybe the ability to mind-read was a job requirement or something. Scary thought, that, given the things that were often floating through my mind, especially lately…
“Um…” I hedged, hesitating. Then, clearing my throat nervously and trying to keep my voice steady and casual, I added, “Whatever gives you that idea, Prime?”
“Well…” Prime replied as he gestured mildly at Prowl, who was currently peeking warily over my shoulder, “for one thing, you’re grinning way too widely. For another, you brought along some moral support.”
“Who?” I responded, glancing over my shoulder and then reacting as if I was surprised to find Prowl hovering there. Then I shrugged, turned back to Prime, and casually asserted, “Who, him? Eh, whither I goest, he followeth nowadays.”
“Mmmm…” Optimus murmured. And then he added, in a distinctly amused tone of voice and with his eyes dancing with merriment at Prowl, “He’s rather like a ball and chain that way, yes.”
I heard Prowl heave a long and exasperated sigh behind me while I snickered at that, and then he grumbled, “All right, I’m leaving now.”
And he actually tried to do so, too, the creep…but I reached back and grabbed his arm again before he could make good his escape.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I chastised him. “We do this together, remember? You promised and everything.”
Which was even true! Well, sort of, anyway…
The night before, I’d done a good amount of thinking after Skyfire’s completely unexpected revelations to me about himself and Starscream. I’d spent hours just driving around, circling the general vicinity of Autobot Headquarters, thinking my little brain out. And that was, of course, an activity that was pretty alien to me. But I did it. Unfortunately, it didn’t really help. All it did was give me a massive headache, so I had decided to return home. And when I’d finally returned to Autobot Headquarters quite late at night, I discovered that Prowl had waited up for me. Oh, he tried to make it look like he’d just stayed up to catch up on the work that he’d been neglecting of late, but I knew better. If nothing else, the second I’d walked into our quarters, he’d leveled That Look, that concerned look of his, at me and then, almost immediately, he’d begun spitting out the rapid-fire questions. And, eventually, I’d told Prowl everything, of course. It wasn’t like I would’ve been able to keep it a secret from him for long, anyway.
Of course, I should have realized that the utter surrealness of the situation with Skyfire and Starscream would just blow poor Prowl’s logical little mind. Oh, he could wrap his mind around the concept of Skyfire having a mate easily enough, sure. And because of…well, because of us…he could even intimately understand Skyfire’s overwhelming desire to be with that person. But what Prowl couldn’t quite seem to process was that Skyfire’s mate was Starscream, of all people. And truthfully, even I had a hard time picturing the two of them as a pair, even after hearing Skyfire’s rhapsodic descriptions of a very different – an even likeable – Starscream. And if anyone could have comprehended the whole thing between Skyfire and Starscream, it should have been me. Because I’m goopy that way. Prowl, on the other hand… Well, poor Prowl couldn’t comprehend the whole thing at all, and since he couldn’t really comprehend the situation, it logically followed that he wouldn’t be able to come up with a solution to the problem. He, in fact, had ended up asking me what my plan was.
Ah, sweet, sweet irony…
Of course, I didn’t have a plan – That was what Prowl was for – but by that point in the conversation between Prowl and me, I’d figured out that I just needed to dump the whole convoluted mess in Optimus Prime’s lap and then convince him that Skyfire needed to go and that he needed to go with Prime’s blessing. And I knew…or at least I thought…that I could do that, too. So, that was what I’d told Prowl, that I was just going to go have a chat with Big Red. And when I’d said that I was going to do that, Prowl had offered to accompany me. Since the prospect of talking to Optimus about the whole mess wasn’t something that I relished having to do alone, I had latched onto Prowl’s offer like a drowning human to a life preserver. So…
Well, maybe saying that Prowl had promised to talk to Prime with me was a tiny bit of an exaggeration. But still, he’d offered to go with me of his own free will. And so… Well, here we were.
“You do what together?” Prime was asking of me meanwhile, his tone of voice intensely curious. His words fully brought me back to the here-and-now, and I realized that he was talking to me. In answer, I felt my mouth try to jerk itself into a reflexive grin. I fought it back.
Instead, I deadpanned, “Y’know, that’s a mighty personal question there, Prime…”
I heard Prowl behind me heave another long-suffering and possibly mortified sigh, while Optimus just gave me an equally long-suffering – though distinctly amused – look.
“Stop with the stalling thing, Jazz,” he said with the patience of a slightly exasperated saint. “Out with it. Now.”
I hated it that Fearless Leader knew me so well, to the point that he could see right through one of my favorite delaying tactics. But see through it he did. So, resigned to the task at hand, I finally walked fully into Optimus Prime’s office, rather than lingering in the doorway, from which I could make a quick escape if necessary. Prowl dutifully followed me, and he even had the good sense to make sure the door was locked behind us. It wouldn’t do, after all, to have anyone barge in and overhear the conversation that the three of us were about to have… Trying to appear as casual as possible, I approached and perched myself, as was my habit, on one corner of Prime’s desk. I figured that I might as well be comfortable…or at least try to look that way.
“You’ve got a problem on your hands, Prime,” I informed him without preamble after I’d settled myself.
“Only one?” Prime replied archly. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“Well, only one problem that I know of,” I clarified. “Unfortunately, it’s one of those doozy kinds of problems.”
“And I have to remember not to kill the messenger when you tell me all about it,” Prime said, leaning wearily back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest, his entire bearing one big, strange mix of amusement, resignation, and deep apprehension. “Is that it, Jazz?”
“Yeah!” I answered with a big old grin. “Exactly. No killing Jazz allowed.”
“I’ll try to bear that in mind,” Prime muttered before settling into staring at me expectantly while I tried to gather my thoughts into something resembling order. The previous night, I’d spent many restless hours pacing around my quarters, trying to decide how best to tell Optimus everything that I had learned. But even after all those hours, I hadn’t figured out exactly what to say. In fact, I hadn’t really thought of anything to say; I’d resolved instead to just wing it as I went along. I was usually pretty good at that. I had found, though, that today was going to be an exception to that general rule. I was reduced to blurting out the first inane thing that came to mind.
“Have you noticed anything…odd…about Skyfire lately?” I hesitantly asked of Optimus Prime.
In reply, Prime gave me a strange, narrow-eyed look, as if that was the very last question on Earth that he’d expected me to ask of him. And I could see why he’d think the question odd, too. I mean, who’d have thought that anything would be odd about good old calm, quiet, reliable, affable, levelheaded Skyfire, of all people? But I, of course, had learned the hard way that looks and mannerisms could be deceiving. Now I just had to let Optimus Prime in on that little secret…
“Odd?” Optimus was echoing, meanwhile, all suddenly perplexed. “About Skyfire? Well…no, nothing really comes to mind… Why do you ask?”
He tilted his head inquisitively to one side as he regarded me, waiting for me to elaborate on what I’d said, no doubt hoping to glean some information from my reaction to what he’d said. And my reaction was…? Well, I heaved a deep, resigned sigh before I answered him, doing my best at winging it.
“Well…” I said, angling an imploring glance over at Prowl as I fished around in my mind for the right words to say. Unfortunately, Prowl just gazed mildly back at me. In fact, he folded his arms across his midsection and leaned back against the wall, getting comfy for the long haul. It didn’t look like he was going to help me in the explaining department any time soon. It certainly would have helped if he’d felt so inclined; Prowl was really good at explaining things in a blunt, logical, non-rambling, straightforward, anti-Jazzian kind of way. But for the moment it looked like he was content to be silent moral support. I was on my own.
“Well,” I hesitantly began again with a long, resigned sigh, “I had a…conversation with Skyfire yesterday that was…uh, pretty enlightening.”
“Enlightening,” Optimus tonelessly echoed once again. It seemed that he was good at doing that. One might have thought that he was a parrot in disguise, even. It was odd that I hadn’t noticed this habit of his before… “Enlightening how?”
Such direct questions! I hated direct questions when I didn’t have any answers for them. Sometimes, I wished that Optimus was as good at beating around the bush as I was. But he was more of a direct kind of guy. Why was it that I always surrounded myself with direct sort of people, the sort who didn’t like to just shoot the breeze for no real reason other than to pass the time? Nope, I got Prowl. And Prime. Yippee. Sighing at my own unenviable position, I eventually asked of Prime, “How much do you really know about Skyfire, Prime?”
Optimus mulled that one over for a long moment, leaning back in his seat, raising his arms to fold them behind his head, and staring up at the ceiling of his office as he mulled. Then he looked back at me, his eyes narrowed in what was probably suspicion.
“Practically nothing,” he admitted. “But I suspect that you know something that I don’t know, Jazz. Something big, judging by the amount of stalling you’ve been doing since you got here…?”
“Bingo,” I said with a nod, perversely relieved that at least for now he was directing the conversation. It meant that I didn’t have to do it.
“And you’ve decided that I need to know about this whatever-it-is…?” Prime further ventured.
“Bingo again,” I said, grinning. “Care to go for a hat trick, O Great Fearless Leader?”
“For that, Jazz,” Prime replied with a humorless chuckle, “I’d have to have some clue as to what you’re talking about. And I’m still not sure that I really want to know what you’re talking about.”
The understatement of the millennium, that was…
“Oh, I’m sure you don’t want to know,” I answered Prime with a deeply pitying grin. “But, being the really great guy that I am, I’m going to tell you anyway.”
“Joy,” Optimus sarcastically responded. And after I snickered at him for that, he wearily added, “All right, then, Jazz… Out with it. I can take it…I hope.”
I took a deep breath, figuring that I was likely about to embark on a rather long speech…although it turned out that that wasn’t exactly the case….
“I had a long talk with Skyfire last night, Prime,” I began. “He told me a lot of things about himself. Things that I never would have expected…”
“Like, for instance…?” Optimus prodded when my voice trailed off.
I glanced over at Prowl again, who gave me a deeply apprehensive look but still didn’t say anything. I kept hoping that he’d take pity on me and take up the story but…no such luck. He just shrugged at me, his expression shifting to one of encouragement. In response, I took a deep breath and decided to just get the whole meeting over with. Dragging it out by beating around the bush certainly wasn’t doing my sanity any good. Optimus had told me to come out with what I knew, and who was I to disobey a direct order, right? Right.
“Like for instance the fact that Skyfire’s bonded,” I announced, surprised that my voice sounded fairly casual about that revelation. Of course, I hadn’t gotten to the really good part yet…
“Really?” Optimus responded mildly. Mildly because I hadn’t dropped the really big honkin’ bomb on him yet… Being bonded was a rather rare condition in the grand Cybertronian scheme of things, sure, but it wasn’t like it was super-surprising or anything.
“Really,” I confirmed. “And his mate just happens to be right here on Earth, actually…”
That detail made Optimus stop and think. Rightfully so, too. After all, Skyfire hadn’t shown any special affinity with any of the Autobots on Earth. In fact, he tended to rigorously isolate himself from most if not all of us, and he wouldn’t do that if he were bonded to one of us. So that, of course, left only the Decepticons as possibilities. True to form, Optimus Prime had connected those particular dots with disturbing swiftness. And as soon as he made that connection, his shoulders slumped and he slouched forward, rested his elbows on the desk in front of him, and buried his face in his hands.
“Ohhhhhh, Primus…” he moaned around a drawn-out and despairing sigh.
“That was exactly my reaction, too!” I crowed sympathetically. I even reached forward to pat him consolingly on the shoulder just before he decided to flop dejectedly back in his seat again.
“Who is it?” Optimus eventually asked of me, after a long moment spent staring meditatively up at the ceiling. His voice was quiet and remarkably composed, considering the implications of what I was telling him. “I really don’t want to know, but tell me anyway,” he added wearily.
For some reason, I felt a need to glance over at Prowl again, and for some reason, he actually decided to speak up this time.
“Starscream,” Prowl said succinctly and flatly, betraying no trace of what he personally thought of the union. He just pushed himself away from the wall and wandered over to stand in my general vicinity.
Optimus jerked his head up at that, and, for a long moment after Prowl had spoken, he just goggled silently at Prowl. I imagined that if he’d had a proper mouth, his jaw would have slammed down on the desktop in front of him.
“Starscream?” Optimus finally managed to echo. “As in, Megatron’s second-in-command?”
“The same,” Prowl said with a grave nod. I admired his ability to impart shocking news to our Fearless Leader without emotion or fanfare. “From what Jazz told me last night, they knew each other and bonded before the war began, not long before Skyfire was lost here on Earth. And Starscream was a very different person then.”
“I…would hope so,” Optimus managed to grind out, after more long moments spent gawking stupidly at Prowl. After a stretch of time that seemed like hours, Prime added, “And now I suppose that Skyfire wants to be with…him.”
It wasn’t really a question, but I answered it as such.
“Yes,” I said quietly.
Optimus turned his head to look at me then, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully at me. I had no idea what was going through his mind at the moment, but I knew without a doubt that he knew exactly what was going through my mind.
“And you think,” he said slowly, “that I should let him go.”
It wasn’t a question at all, and his tone of voice was almost…accusatory, as if I’d put ideas into Skyfire’s head or something. The insinuation made me just a wee bit defensive.
“Frankly, Prime, he’ll go whether you or I want him to go or not,” I informed Optimus in a rather prickly tone of voice that carried not a trace of its usual cheer. “I know that because I know what he’s feeling right now. I just think it would be better if he went with your blessing…and with the option to return if necessary, no questions asked.”
Optimus’ eyes widened at that for a moment. I didn’t know if he was taken aback by what I’d said or by the tone with which I’d said it, but either way he stared at me for a very long moment, and the expression on his face was odd, as if he didn’t know me. And then, without warning, he launched himself to his feet and started to pace frantically around his office.
“I… Surely you know that I can’t let Skyfire do that, Jazz,” Optimus Prime asserted, after finally coming to a rest and then slowly sinking down into his seat again. “Who knows what might happen to him? He’s just not…He’s not thinking straight. Starscream’s not the person he…knows. He must realize that. He’s a Decepticon and he’d surely take advantage of the situation. He’d be taken prisoner, interrogated… So this…this thing would be dangerous not just for him, but for all of us. Surely he realizes that. Surely you realize that, Jazz?”
I didn’t immediately answer him. In fact, after he said that, there was a long moment of complete silence. I fancifully thought that if there’d been a fly in the room, I could have heard it crawling on the walls. But otherwise I spent the time trying to think of something to say to Prime. I wanted to say something intelligent, something persuasive. Something that would convince Optimus that giving Skyfire his blessing to go do what he needed to do regarding Starscream was the only real option that was open to him. But for some reason…the words just weren’t coming to me. That was starting to become something of an annoying habit of mine over the past couple of days. I hated it, and the more I thought about how much I hated it, the more that words refused to come to me.
But then, as it turned out, I shouldn’t have worried.
“Prime…” Prowl chose to say quietly, gently, although his voice seemed obscenely loud in comparison to the dead silence that his words had broken. “If you don’t let Skyfire do this, then you’ll be no better than Megatron.”
At that, Optimus regarded Prowl with an openly shocked and slightly scandalized expression on his mostly-concealed face. No doubt he couldn’t believe that Prowl would be so horrible as to compare him to his mortal enemy. But what Prowl had said was very true. I tended to think that, like Megatron, Prime saw great worth in Skyfire for what he could do for the Autobot cause without thinking all that much about what Skyfire might want and need for himself. Prime would just assume that Skyfire would be happy to be on the “good guy” side of the war and then think little – or even nothing – more of it. He wouldn’t have taken into consideration that Skyfire had had a life before the war…and that, more importantly, that pre-war life, of which Starscream had obviously been a large part, was the only life that Skyfire really knew.
Looking at things from a purely tactical perspective, I could sort of understand Prime’s thinking. Skyfire, as a large aerial transport if nothing else, was a great asset to the Autobot cause. Even I couldn’t deny that. But I tended to see the more personal side of any given issue. I tended to think about how circumstances affected people on a purely emotional level. Skyfire was a tactical asset, sure, but at what personal price for Skyfire himself? And for someone who valued personal freedom above all else…Well, Prime’s attitude, to me, smacked of hypocrisy in the highest degree. And I was about to tell Prime just that…but Prowl beat me to it, speaking up again before Optimus could voice any objection to what Prowl had previously said.
“Megatron gave Skyfire no choice in the matter of his allegiance, Prime. He just assumed that Skyfire would be a loyal Decepticon, that he would do exactly what Megatron ordered him to do, no questions asked.” Prowl asserted quietly.
He was leaning down now, resting his weight on both hands, which were splayed on the desktop right in front of Prime, so that he could look Prime directly in the eye…and, no doubt, so that Prime would have to look Prowl in the eye when he answered. That was a favorite tactic of Prowl’s, one that I certainly knew all too well. And then, tilting his head inquisitively to one side, Prowl fired off The Killer Question, phrased oh-so-calmly but at the same time oh-so-cuttingly: “Would you be just like Megatron and demand that Skyfire do exactly what you want him to do? Would you refuse Skyfire the right to fight for his own bondmate?”
At that, Optimus Prime just…blinked. Sure, he and Prowl often disagreed, mostly because Prowl was more on the conservative side when it came to how to go about doing things while Optimus was more the gung-ho, go-get-‘em hero type that tended to make practical, cautious Prowl cringe to his very core. And sometimes those disagreements of theirs had gotten quite…heated, quite loud, resulting in one or the other of them – usually Optimus – storming off in complete frustration with the other for an extended cooling-off period. But never had Prowl called Optimus’s morals into question… Funny that I had been, internally, questioning his morals myself, at that moment…
“I’m…I’m not doing that, Prowl,” Optimus finally spluttered under the onslaught of Prowl’s expectant stare. “I wouldn’t do that. I’m just…just…”
“Just what?” Prowl asked when Prime’s voice trailed off helplessly. His tone of voice was suddenly bordering on irritation which, coming from Prowl, was a definite rarity. One of Prowl’s hands even balled itself into a fist against Prime’s desktop. But then Prowl caught himself, calmed himself with a long, indrawn breath while Optimus Prime just silently stared at him, no doubt shocked by Prowl’s uncharacteristic vehemence.
“Look, Prime,” Prowl finally – and much more calmly – reasoned, “were I in your place, I’d understand the whole situation that you’re facing no better than you do. I’d raise all the same objections that you’ve raised and for exactly the same reasons. And I’d probably feel completely justified in following through with my convictions and then trying to keep Skyfire safe and away from the Decepticons at all costs…”
Prowl’s calm, assured voice trailed off for a moment as he sought the words that he wanted to say. When he found them after a short moment, he said them in a tone laced with more emotion, possibly, than I’d ever heard from him – in public, at least.
“But I’m not in the same place you are, Prime,” Prowl continued. “I’m seeing things from a completely different perspective, and I know now how…how torn Skyfire has to have been feeling over the past year or so, and how horrible that must have been for him. But you have no conception of what it must have been like, Prime, simply because you are not and never have been bonded. You can’t imagine the emotions and…compulsions that are involved, especially in the sort of situation that Skyfire’s in.”
After a moment spent still staring at Prowl, radiating vast surprise, Optimus nodded understandingly.
“I understand that, Prowl,” he said quietly. “As well as I can, at any rate . And I’m trying to imagine how it must be, really. I’m trying to see things through his eyes, but…”
“But you can’t, Prime,” I said gently, finally speaking up when Prime’s voice trailed off uncertainly. “You have to trust that, just this once, Skyfire himself knows better than all of us what’s best for him. You have to let him try to reach Starscream. If you don’t… Well, if you don’t, you’ll have trampled all over the principles that you claim to uphold, and you’ll have destroyed Skyfire in the bargain, too. Could you live with all that, Prime? Honestly?”
It was a good speech, I thought, one that cut to the heart of the matter without being all flowery. Optimus Prime stared at me thoughtfully for quite a long while after I finished that speech, too…and then he heaved a long and world-weary sigh, but it was still another quite long while until he actually spoke up.
For my part, I spent the time staring in wonderment at Prowl. Going into this discussion with Prime, I hadn’t been entirely sure of Prowl’s stance on the whole thing regarding Starscream and Skyfire. He’d been distinctly quiet after I’d told him the whole tale of woe the previous night, and he hadn’t said much to me about it earlier, before we’d left for Optimus’ office, either. I knew that he had been thinking, methodically turning over alternatives in his mind, and that he’d reach a decision about where he stood…eventually. Well, apparently he’d reached that decision already, and he’d further decided to make his position on the subject eminently clear. Later, I would have to properly thank him for supporting me so vehemently…
“Sometimes…Sometimes, I really hate you, Jazz,” Optimus Prime finally decided to announce. His tone of voice was resigned, and it had the effect of abruptly pulling my thoughts away from pleasant thoughts about how, exactly, I was going to thank Prowl for supporting me.
“Moi?” I answered innocently. “How could anyone ever hate sweet little moi?”
“Easily,” Optimus grumbled. And then, over my snickering, he added, “All right, all right, I’ll call Skyfire in for a talk this afternoon, give him my blessing to…go do whatever he needs to do. I just hope I don’t regret it. And I hope that he doesn’t regret it, either.”
“He may very well regret it, Prime,” Prowl said quietly, seriously. “But he…can’t do anything else.”
“Mmmm,” Prime murmured noncommittally. “Poor guy, on so many different levels… Please, if I ever start talking about finding myself a bondmate, will you two do me a favor and…kill me or something?”
One corner of Prowl’s mouth curled upward in amusement.
“No problem, Prime,” he promised.
“Hey, we’ll even make it a painless death,” I added with a cheerful grin.
“Thank you ever so much, Jazz,” Prime replied with a smirk in his voice that of course didn’t show on his face. “Now scram, both of you. I’ve got thousands of rampaging demons from hell to kill on my computer here.”
Prowl and I exchanged an amused look and then, as one, we turned and headed for the door. And I don’t know about Prowl, but I felt a ten-ton load of bricks fall off my shoulders as we headed off to go about the rest of the day’s business.