‘Cuz I can't fight this feeling anymore –REO Speedwagon, “I Can’t Fight This Feeling,” 1985
My door chime sounded. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. For one thing, the rather…empathetically appropriate…words of the song on the radio very nearly drowned out the soft, unobtrusive chime. But mostly it was because I was…preoccupied. Answering the door was not of uppermost importance in my mind. Neither were the reports that were scrawling languidly across the computer screen in front of me. Reports were rarely uppermost in my mind, after all. I read them all dutifully, of course, like a good little officer. I was, at that moment, staring blankly at this particular one, one elbow propped on my desk, the side of my face resting heavily, morosely against the palm of my hand. With the other hand, I was using one finger to spin an empty datapad around on the desktop. The glyphs on the computer screen happily scrolled by in front of me…but I didn’t see them. My thoughts were a thousand miles away… Since I was paying such incredibly close attention to them, I suppose that it was a good thing that I didn’t need reports to tell me what was going on in and around Autobot Headquarters. Especially when it came to something like…oh, morale. I learned all that I needed to know about that – and just about everything else, for that matter – from twice-daily strolls through the entire Headquarters complex, stopping to shoot the breeze here and there, gathering what information I could in a friendly, non-threatening, unofficial way from all manner of Autobots. Consequently, I usually already knew everything contained in the various reports that were funneled to me at the end of every day, even before they were funneled to me. No, reports were not my thing at all... Reports were Prowl’s thing… At the unintentional thought of Prowl, I groaned and buried my face in both hands, as if that would somehow, in turn, bury the emotions that were tumbling through my head. When had it happened ? I asked myself for the hundredth time today and for perhaps the millionth time in the past few months. I mean, I had known Prowl…oh, forever, it seemed. In truth, I’d known him longer than there’d been a human species, longer than the latest outbreak of war on Cybertron had so far lasted. And in all that time…Well, we hadn’t always gotten along, exactly, no. Our mindsets, our respective outlooks on life, our methods of going about doing things were so completely different from one another that it had had, in the past, a tendency to cause a certain amount of…uh, friction…between us. Prowl and I could very easily annoy the living hell out of one another, and we had done so on more occasions than I wanted to count. Prowl’s annoyance with me had always been of the urbane, genteel, and yet still somehow faintly disdainful variety. Whereas mine with him…? Uh, well, let's just say that was a whole different story… But still, in the end… In the end, massive mutual annoyance aside, Prowl and I always seemed to work well together. For some strange reason, Prowl would go about doing things his way, I’d go about doing things my way…and we’d always end up meeting somewhere in the middle, staring each other in the face, both completely shocked to be seeing eye-to-eye. Yet, there we were… Still, it wasn’t always bliss. It was hardly ever bliss. Prowl could be infuriatingly literal, deadly serious, annoyingly calm and logical and analytical even in the most heated of situations. Meaning, of course, situations in which I found myself on the verge of all-consuming outrage or joy or panic or terror or whatever, times when, in short, I wanted nothing more than someone to barrel along with me down the road to emotional chaos. Prowl was never a good choice as a partner in that endeavor, that was for sure… After all, it was sometimes hideously difficult to wring out of him the smallest iota of an emotional reaction to anything, no matter how terrible or wonderful it was. Whereas I was…Well, I was me. I was Jazz; that kind of just says it all, doesn’t it? So…oil and water, we should be, Prowl and I… We really shouldn’t mix at all, right? Right? That's what I thought, anyway.But, if that was the case, then why was it that my every thought, lately, was of him? Why had my thoughts — for quite an unacknowledged while, actually — often been of him? Just the other day when Prowl had finally collapsed in total physical and emotional exhaustion, why had I been the one who was there to catch him, literally and figuratively? Why had I made absolutely certain, in fact, that I was the one who would be there? This despite the fact, mind you, that Prowl had been decidedly unhappy about the idea and had chosen to express his displeasure with the situation and his…er, affection…for me with a few dozen angry rounds fired haphazardly from his rifle. It wasn’t like it was my job to be there, you know. If it were anyone’s job, it would have been Ratchet’s. But there I had been, nevertheless. “Heroic Autobot Jazz,” dodging acid pellets left and right as they splattered all around me and occasionally found their painful mark, all the while enduring a bellowed litany of very un-Prowl-like words, all of which had been about as far from terms of endearment as one could possibly get… And it had all been for…what? Why ? That was the question that, since the whole incident, had been bouncing around in my head, stridently demanding an answer…even though I knew I didn’t have one. Why was I drawn to Prowl? Was I a glutton for punishment? Or was I just one of those contrary people who had to pursue the impossible, just to prove that it was possible, whatever the “it” in question was? Quite possibly, I was both… Quite possibly, that was all there was to this…attraction that I felt for Prowl, that I had, in some unacknowledged corner of my mind, always felt for Prowl… …But I really didn’t think so. Because if that was the case…if I saw Prowl as nothing more than an exciting, exotic, enticing challenge to be conquered… Then afterwards…after everything…after Prowl had collapsed into a conflicted, helpless, exhausted pile of anxiety, among other things…why had it felt perfectly natural just to hold him? Why did I feel an overwhelming desire just to sit there and hold him and never let go? Why had a sense of relief, of…of completion, flitted through my entire being as I did so, as I went to him without a hint of wariness and knelt next to him and impulsively gathered his shaking body into my arms and held him, seeking only to comfort him…? …And why had I not been able to look Prowl in the face since all of that had happened? It had been a week since I had last seen him. Partly, that separation was because Prowl had withdrawn into hiding, embarrassed, no doubt, by everything that had happened to him, everything that he had said and done during his…indisposition. Hiding until the storm passed was his normal method of dealing with things. It was his normal defense mechanism against those hideous, evil things called emotions. But I also had not seen Prowl because…Well, because I’d been avoiding him, as well, though I wasn’t at all sure why I felt a need to do so… Whatever the case, the end result was that the past week had seemed to be the longest, emptiest…hollowest…week of my entire life, for the simple reason that Prowl hadn’t been a part of it. I’d missed him, I realized with a certain amount of surprise. I still missed him, in fact. It was an ache that wasn’t going away. And I missed him on so many different levels, as well… I groaned, sulkily snapped off the computer, and flopped back in my chair then, giving up all pretense of reading the daily reports. It was, after all, just a worthless attempt to distract myself from emotions that were not going to be denied, no matter how stridently I tried to deny them. The question now, of course, was what to do about those demanding emotions… What to do about this overwhelming pull toward Prowl that I had especially felt since that glorious but all-too-brief stretch of time in which he’d been enfolded in my arms, vulnerable and frightened and confused and shaken to his very core…and clinging desperately to me. Clinging to me while all of his usually carefully-buried emotions were right there, beckoning seductively to me, floating on the turbulent, storm-tossed surface of his psyche… And the answer to my dilemma, of course, was rather obvious. Logically, the answer was to hunt down Prowl, sit down with him, and…talk to him. To deal with what had happened between us in an efficient, practical manner. To work out exactly what it was that I felt for him…and find out what he felt for me — if anything — in return. After that, one way or the other, I would know. It would be an end to the indecision, the wondering... An end to that hideous state of “not knowing.” A simple answer, it was. And, at the same time, it was a hideously, terrifyingly complex answer… Prowl, after all, was the logical, efficient one, not yours truly… But I hated second-guessing myself, you see, and I had been doing that for the longest time when it came to Prowl and confronting my feelings toward him. It wasn’t generally in my nature to second-guess myself. I was not a cautious person. Neither was I a person who sat for extended periods of time and thought about what course of action was best to take in the face of “Situation X,” weighing all the possible outcomes and then settling on the most rational course of action. Prowl’s brain worked that way, to be sure, and it worked amazingly well. He was always thinking one step ahead, always planning and then smoothly altering plans on the fly, when necessary. My brain, on the other hand…? Well, it was quite well-known that my brain recklessly and single-mindedly galloped off in pursuit of the very first impulse that walked up and gave it a good whack to prod it into action. Yet here I was, thinking…not acting… It was very…odd, to say the least. I wasn’t really sure, after all, that I really knew how to think… But I sat for a few moments longer, drumming my fingers on the desktop in front of me and just thinking, thinking, thinking, anyway… I had just decided to go to Prowl’s quarters, was just gathering my nerve to stand up and square my shoulders and head for the door and stroll the couple of hundred meters of long, lonely corridor that separated his quarters from mine…when my door chime chirped cheerfully and impudently at me. Again. As it did so, it dawned on me in a vague, absent sort of way that it had chimed at least several times in the past few minutes, while I’d been valiantly grappling with a pernicious case of “Prowl On The Brain…” “Way to ruin a fit of decisiveness,” I muttered quietly, sourly as I turned off my music and said loudly and with false cheer to whomever it was that was lurking behind Door #1, “C’mon in! The water’s fine!” The door to my quarters slid open with a soft, pneumatic hiss…and suddenly there was Prowl, standing just outside my quarters with the weirdest of expressions on his face… It was all I could do to prevent my jaw from dropping unceremoniously and clanging against my desktop, both because Prowl had suddenly appeared as if my uncertain, wandering, but vaguely…lustful…thoughts had served to summon him to my door…and because he was just so damned gorgeous in so many ways. I sat there and just…just marveled at him, really. I marveled at the way that his body with its sweeping, graceful curves was so different than many of the other Autobots, most of whom seemed to be made entirely of sharp, intimidating angles… At the way that the stark simplicity of his black-and-white color scheme, which was even more basic and unassuming than my own, had the most breathtaking of effects on me… At the way that his body gleamed, as if he’d carefully waxed and buffed himself for the occasion, in the light that splashed out of my quarters and into the dim corridor where he stood… At the way that the dramatic, backswept curve of the door panels that jutted out of his back made him seem like a regal bird of prey on the wing… At the way that he moved with studied economy but unconscious grace as he hesitantly crossed the threshold into my quarters… Determinedly, I suppressed an airy, appreciative sigh as I watched him move. Just to be able to look at Prowl was a gift from Primus Himself; to hold him had been even sweeter. Holding him was something that, having gotten the briefest of tastes of it under the least happy of circumstances, I yearned to do more often, under much better circumstances. Like, every day, for starters. Several times every day, even. Or, even better, all night, every night… And for the rest of my life, of course… As I watched, trying to calm myself while a herd of lascivious thoughts gleefully stampeded their way through my brain, Prowl advanced further into my quarters. Closer and closer, he approached…until he halted just on the other side of the desk behind which I was still sitting. Achingly close, he was, but not quite close enough to touch. His posture as he stood there curiously regarding me was, as usual, perfect, regal, but also relaxed. He held his arms loosely at his sides, though the fingers of his left hand were lightly drumming against the outside of his thigh in an unsteady rhythm, drawing my attention to them. It was a sign of nervousness, perhaps? A rare thing, indeed, for Prowl. I watched the restless movements of his white fingers against the outside of his grey thigh, utterly fixated for a moment, before forcibly dragging my gaze away from them and up to Prowl’s outwardly calm face. He was looking down at me, his expression eminently curious. His head was tilted just slightly to the side, inquisitively so. His glowing blue gaze held mine for a long, electric moment that sent slow, pleasant shivers racing through my infrastructure. His eyes were narrowed just slightly and his mouth was frowning delicately…and enticingly…in puzzlement. “’The water?’” he asked quietly, after a long moment. I quirked a grin up at him and slumped back in my chair, valiantly attempting the air of cool relaxation that was expected of the Autobot known as Jazz. Prowl was often annoyingly literal, but he had long ago discovered that when I was in the right frame of mind, I found his customary literalness quite amusing. So it had become something of a joke between the two of us, on occasion. This time, I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was joking. He was attempting, perhaps, to lighten the atmosphere a bit since it was suddenly rather…charged, with an undercurrent that was different than anything that had ever before existed between us. I couldn’t help but think that that was because of what had happened to him… And because of what had happened between us, for those brief, delicious moments that were as sharp and clear in my mind as they would have been had they happened moments ago rather than a week ago. But neither of us, apparently, knew quite what to do about the other in the aftermath of that…incident… So I decided to dance around the subject for a bit, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and because I hated silences as much as Prowl worshipped them... I gestured at a nearby chair. “Take a load off, why don’t you?” I said, trying to make my voice as casual as I possibly could…Was that a waver that I heard in there? Nah, just my imagination, I’m sure… Once Prowl had dragged over the indicated chair so that it was just on the other side of the desk between us…So close, so tantalizingly close…and had settled himself with serene aplomb into its depths, I added solicitously, “How are you doing, Prowl?” Prowl opened his mouth to say something…then closed it again, his mouth twisting in puzzled uncertainty. Knowing Prowl, he’d decided that he needed to think about his answer before responding, even to such a simple question… Eventually, though, he hesitantly began, “I’m…uh—“ “If you say, ‘I’m fine,’” I interrupted exasperatedly, “I’m gonna have to hurt you!” Wonder of wonders, that brought a genuine half-smile to Prowl’s face…though he reined it in just in time, of course, before it could blossom into an honest-to-Primus, full-face grin… “I’m…recovering,” he finally settled on saying, after a long, deliberative moment in which he no doubt thoroughly searched his vocabulary for just the right word to describe his current state of mind. But then, rather unexpectedly, he lowered his gaze to the floor and added in a sudden, bewildered rush, as if he wanted to get the words out of his throat before he thought the better of them, “And I wanted to…apologize. To you, Jazz. Specifically.” “To me?” I asked, taken aback, sitting up straighter in my chair. “Why’s that, Prowl?” At that, his gaze shot up to meet mine again, his expression disbelieving. “I hurt you,” he said matter-of-factly, his tone of voice indicating that he thought that should have been obvious even to a complete moron. “And I said…I said some horrible things to you. I remember them all, although I wish that I didn’t…and I’m truly sorry.” I waved a dismissive hand at him. “Eh, there’s no need to apologize, Prowl,” I assured him airily, expansively. “That wasn’t the real you that did and said those things. I know that.” Prowl was quiet for a moment after I said that and utterly, unsettlingly still. He stared at me for quite a long moment, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully, speculatively at me. And then he suddenly leaned toward me and folded his forearms neatly on my desktop in front of him. His level gaze was bright, and it burned into me like the searing, localized flame of a welding iron. I heard rather than felt my breath suddenly quicken. I didn’t know if it was desire or trepidation that made it so, but I was suddenly hyperaware of it, whatever the case. “No, you don’t know that,” Prowl was saying to me quietly, urgently, almost conspiratorially. “You don’t know that at all, Jazz. And the strangest thing about it all is that…neither do I. I don’t know who or what the ‘real me’ is anymore,” he added before leaning back in his chair again with a weary sigh, his shoulders slumping just a bit. “And I think I’ve decided that I don’t want to know, either…” “Scary, wasn’t it?” I asked of him after a moment of companionable silence, after Prowl had become quite engrossed in staring at his hands, which were folded neatly in his lap. Meanwhile, I was leaning back in my chair, regarding him appraisingly, my head tilted to one side and my arms crossed behind it. I was curious, after all, curious to know exactly what was going through Prowl’s mind at the moment. He seemed so…so vulnerable…to me... …And there was a distinct part of me that liked that vulnerability. Oh, yes, indeed… “Scary?” Prowl was echoing, meanwhile, as he raised his eyes to mine again. They were narrowed thoughtfully at me again, which was usually the way that Prowl regarded me, of course. It seemed that I either made him think or I completely baffled him. There wasn't much in between. “Scary to lose control like that, wasn’t it?” I clarified. “I mean, I know that you’re a person who prides himself on being…well, in control of yourself and all. And on being self-reliant. You had neither of those things, for a while there…” “No…” Prowl admitted, and there was an unusual, far-away quality to his voice as he said it and as he continued, “No, that’s true. I didn’t have those things for a while…But I did have you...” Now, I wasn’t totally sure, but I was fairly certain that those words — particularly the last five of them — had slipped out of Prowl’s mouth quite by accident, completely without his conscious consent. I can’t imagine that he’d actually meant to say them aloud, especially to me. My theory seemed to be proven correct by the fact that as soon as those words had tumbled from Prowl’s mouth and as they then hung suspended and breathless between us for a moment, a fleeting expression of abject horror splashed across Prowl’s face. And then he clamped his jaw tightly shut and glued his gaze to a spot that was somewhere just above and beyond my left shoulder. He was looking in my direction, yes, but he certainly wasn’t looking at me. In fact, I was quite certain that Prowl was frantically trying to detach himself from the situation, so that he could pretend that it hadn’t happened and that he hadn’t said anything at all… It didn’t work very well…mostly because I was bound and determined that I wouldn’t let it work, of course… Prowl wasn’t going to slip away from me so easily this time, oh no… “Yeah,” I said softly. “Yeah, that’s true. You had me. You’ve always had me. And you still have me, too. You always will.” I paused, shifted slightly in my seat, and then angled my head so that it directly intersected Prowl’s fixated gaze before adding, once my gaze was again joined insistently with his, “You…uh… You do know that, don’t you, Prowl?” A curious expression flitted across Prowl’s face as my words and, of course, the not-so-hidden meaning behind them slowly sank into his head. It was an expression that was half relieved…and half terrified. He frowned fiercely as he deliberated, his fingers slowly balling themselves into tightly-clenched fists atop the arms of his chair. That was the only outward sign of any emotional tension that he displayed. And then he looked away from me, dragging his gaze away from mine and fixing it off to the side. He stared at the wall while I waited anxiously to see what he would say. Of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the very first words that spilled out of his mouth… “I think…I think…” Prowl began to say to the wall after a few moments of thought. His voice was tentative, almost shaky…and then it trailed off into a sticky quagmire of uncertainty, once he found himself at a rare loss for words. I stood up slowly then, as Prowl settled into a troubled, anxious silence. I felt not a hint of the uncertainty that was apparently plaguing Prowl, after all. Rather, I’d suddenly reached a firm decision. I’d suddenly had enough of dancing around the subject of Prowl and I, as it were. It had been going on for…well, for millennia now, that dancing, and I was suddenly quite tired of it, tired of hiding what I felt, tired most of all of playing games. So, just as slowly as I had stood up, I leaned forward across the width of my desk, ending up propped up on my elbows on it. I stared intently at Prowl, and I would have been eye-to-eye with him if he wasn’t still steadfastly refusing to look at me. His face was still turned to the side, so that he was staring at the wall, and he was doing so as if there was something utterly captivating and absorbing about the blank, red-orange wall off to his left. Well, that certainly wasn’t going to do, no siree! Because the sudden decision that had brought me to my feet was that there were many things that needed to be said between Prowl and I… No, upon further — albeit momentary, of course — thought, it was more like there were things that needed to be done between us. Things that would convey the words loudly ricocheting around in my head — and, I was now certain, in Prowl’s as well, although he was far from admitting it — without actually having to say them, if only because I knew that expressing his emotions verbally was the really hard part for poor Prowl. And it was quite obvious to me that Prowl wasn’t going to make the first move, either. His vastly irritating yet strangely alluring emotional reserve was holding him back, like a short leash attached to the collar of a dog that really wanted nothing more than to run. Which, as usual, left everything up to good ol’ Jazz… Tentatively, I reached out one hand toward Prowl. Gently, I grabbed his chin and slowly turned his face back toward mine. He didn’t offer much resistance. And now my face was mere inches from his, so close that I felt dizzy with a mixture of desire and trepidation. So close that I could feel his breath gently playing over my face. So close that I could smell the clean, pure scent of him, and a faint hint of wax, indeed… But more than that, I could almost feel the waves of tension that were radiating from Prowl. I was only in physical contact with his chin…so far…yet I could sense that his body…his mind…his entire being…had frozen at the thought of what was quite obviously, I think, on my mind. But beneath the tension, beneath his initial frantic, instinctive impulse to slam into reverse, speed away from me, and hide somewhere, there was something else… A wanting… No, a needing… Prowl was, I knew, totally out of his element here, yet I also knew suddenly, on some instinctive level that I didn’t yet understand, that he was just as willing as I was. Maybe it was something in his expression…or in his eyes…or something else…but I knew right then that he wanted me as much as I wanted him. And I knew that the wanting was the real reason that he found himself here in my quarters tonight… A pull it was, an intractable pull that, in the end, he hadn’t been able to deny or dilute with a liberal dousing of cold, detached logic, especially in the wake of all that had so recently happened to him. I sensed that Prowl was walking a fine line, at the moment, a line between finally and heedlessly giving in to a long-suppressed attraction…and retreating, as usual, into a cold and, more importantly, safe state of emotional detachment. And I knew which way I wanted him to fall… And I also knew that all Prowl needed now in order to plunge in the direction that I wanted him to plunge was a bit of…encouragement, a little gentle but determined shove in the right direction to knock him a bit off-balance… I smiled softly, understandingly, at the confusion, the…the helpless conflict that was dominating Prowl’s expression now, a conflict between the wanting and his inherent, instinctive reserve. He was out of his element, indeed…and smack-dab in the middle of mine. “No, Prowl,” I whispered to him, my voice low and imploring and, for once, completely serious. My gaze was almost magnetically sealed to his, a hint of a softly teasing smile, I knew, tugging at my expression as I continued, “No. For once — Just once in your life, that‘s all I’m asking — don’t think. Don’t think at all, even for an instant. Just do. Do something because it feels right, not because you’ve decided that it’s the logical thing to do.” For a wonderfully agonizing half of a moment, Prowl seemed to chew on that concept. I could almost see the gears turning in his mind as he struggled with the tempting concept of tossing aside his cherished logic and his tendency to think thoroughly about everything and just completely submitting to the ravages of passion, that most dangerously uncontrollable and unpredictable of emotions. His calm, steady gaze, although still locked with mine, seemed to turn inward for a moment, as well, as if he was seeking a second opinion from someone nestled inside his head. Yet, when he apparently reached his decision a split-second later and seemed to snap back to the here-and-now with a noticeable shiver, he made his move with customary Prowl efficiency and decisiveness. I still had Prowl’s chin in my hand, was absently running my thumb along the contours of his mouth, giving him time to think but not at all relinquishing my hard-won hold on him. Nor did he make a move to break the contact. No, he surprised me by suddenly returning my gesture, reaching toward me with one hand and delicately tracing the line of my jaw with one extended finger. His touch was deliciously feather-light… And for a long moment, I was caught up…drowning, even…in the overwhelming, sensuous wonder of the fact that Prowl was here with me…and that he was in his right mind…and that he was touching me. Not as a friend, not as a comrade…but as a lover. The very idea was doing all sorts of interesting things to various parts of my body and mind, things that I hadn’t felt for so long that, in fact, I’d almost forgotten what it was like, which just made the sensations that much sweeter. And that sense of completion was back with a furious vengeance, too, this time infinitely magnified by the knowledge that, here, at this very moment, the circumstances were perfectly right for exploring that feeling…and for bringing it to its ultimate, blissful fruition. There was nothing to hold us back now, as there had been for so very long…too long. I was tingling all over in anticipation of the moment when Prowl would be mine. Forever and ever, amen… I was so lost in sheer sensation that for a long moment I lost touch with my surroundings. My entire universe had all at once collapsed down until it contained only Prowl. He was not only the center of my world for the moment, but he was all that existed. And I was entirely focused on what he was doing to me now…and even more focused on what he would be doing to me in the very near future, if I had anything to say about it… But eventually Prowl’s mellow voice dragged me back into a reality that was, for once, every bit as blissful as Fantasy Land. “What if…?” Prowl was asking me, his voice soft and uncharacteristically but endearingly hesitant. The finger that had been tracing my jawline now ran lazily over my chin…slowly, lightly down the front of my throat…and then still further down, down to the Autobot symbol emblazoned in the middle of my chest. He began to trace its outline…slowly…delicately…methodically, with that same delicious feathery touch, focusing all of his attention upon it. I clamped my jaw shut to hold back a whimper as a magnificent wave of warmth and a faint, electric tingling sensation began to radiate from the center of my chest. “What if I’ve decided,” Prowl was continuing, totally unaware, I think, of the effect that he was having on me, “that it’s also the logical thing to do?” And then he looked up at me, dragging his attention away from my symbol and fixing it squarely on my face, his expression an odd mixture of mischief, uncertainty, affection, and even, I think, a little fear. I felt a slow smile begin to spread across my face, one that matched, no doubt, the one that was already tugging alluringly at the corners of Prowl’s mouth. I moved my free hand, so that it cupped the side of his face, running my thumb in a light caress over his cheek. “All the better, baby,” I murmured as I did so, my voice a deep, almost feral growl that I must have dredged up from the primitive, lustful depths of my soul. “All the better.” And then, just like that, I was sliding across my desk, the last physical barrier that separated us. The stuff that had been littering the desktop went flying everywhere, in all directions, falling to the floor with a crash that I barely heard. I didn’t care. None of it was important as getting as close to Prowl as possible, in as many ways as possible, and as quickly as possible. The expression on Prowl’s face as he watched me was a mixture of surprise, baffled amusement…and an awakening passion. He looked, quite frankly, completely irresistible…and I’d had more than enough of trying to resist Prowl… That was when I slid completely off the desktop, swiftly went down on one knee in front of Prowl so that we were eye-to-eye, and then slowly — ever so slowly — I leaned toward him… And I began to trace the line of his jaw with my lips, interspersing light kisses with little delicate nibbles, working slowly from one side of his face, over his square chin, and then slowly over to the other side of his face. He stiffened for half a second and reared back slightly in his chair at first, which wasn’t exactly surprising. I was quite certain that he hadn’t exactly expected me to do what I was doing to him…but, then again, he also should have known that I prided myself on doing the unexpected — the illogical, even — if at all possible… In the end, however, my…unexpectedness…didn’t really matter because Prowl soon — much sooner than I would have anticipated, actually — began to relax under my deliberate but gentle ministrations. He sighed luxuriantly as I nibbled lightly at his jawline. And then his head fell back as he completely relaxed, which gave me easier access to his neck, a fact of which I took immediate advantage, my lips slowly working their way down its length, expanding my exploration. A soft, strangled whimper escaped Prowl’s throat every now and then, as I stumbled upon particularly sensitive spots and carefully filed away their locations for future reference. His soft cries were music to my audios, encouraging me, making me grin widely as I worked diligently, as Prowl slumped in his chair, his breathing quickening and echoing loudly in my audios, beginning to harmonize and synchronize with my own… And then Prowl began to do some tentative exploration of his own, much to my delight… His hands had been clenched almost spasmodically around the arms of his chair since the moment I had slid across my desk and landed practically in his lap…but now they loosened their frantic grip and began to…migrate. They were suddenly and delightfully everywhere. Stroking lightly here and there. Tickling teasingly along my flanks and then around and past them to my back. Meeting at the small of my back and lingering there for long, wonderful moments, kneading in small, unhurried, gentle circles while I sighed in delight against his throat… And then they ran lightly, lazily, up the length of my back and spread out again, stopping there to massage my shoulders. His grasp on them unconsciously tightened whenever I would hit a particularly sensitive spot on his face or his neck or on his chest as I slowly explored his body… And everywhere that Prowl’s hands ventured, a mellow, tingling warmth followed in their wake, nicely mirroring the slow-burning fire that was steadily building inside of me, in anticipation of an eventual – and glorious – release. And so, too, was the desire to truly be one with Prowl, now and forever, slowly building… It was a thought that was lightly flitting about in the back of my mind, at the moment, a pleasant notion though as yet a distant one. I had no desire to move too quickly and, by doing so, run the risk of scaring Prowl away with the heat of my passion for him. But if he kept doing what he was doing… Ohhhh, if he kept doing what he was doing to me, then all too soon the thought of bonding with him would be as a ravening, raging, and ultimately undeniable inferno in my head. Still, I couldn’t pull myself away… At that moment, nothing could have pulled me away from Prowl, in fact. The entire Decepticon army could have waltzed into the room, and I wouldn’t necessarily have noticed their arrival. And oh, how I wanted him! I wanted him so very badly. I wanted to feel every centimeter of his magnificent body pressed as closely as possible against mine. I wanted to hold him in my arms and embrace that intriguingly complex mind of his as tightly as I would embrace his body. I wanted to share his deepest thoughts and his strongest and innermost emotions. And I wanted to feel for myself all of the pleasure that I would give to him as our bodies were pressed together and our souls were merged and my hands and my mouth roamed freely over him, thoroughly exploring every square millimeter of his body… The erotic thought and the sudden, burning, all-consuming need for Prowl – all of Prowl – that raced through my brain hard on the heels of the thought sent an exquisite shudder through my body. I moaned as my imagination ran wild, as a low growl rumbled in my chest and my lips vibrated against Prowl’s throat, which I was currently nuzzling. My wandering hands moved outwards and ran slowly, lightly along the front of each of those wonderful, sweeping door panels…and Prowl stiffened as I caressed them, a little strangled gasp escaping, once again, from his throat. I grinned, once again, in utter delight as he squirmed under my touch, completely in my power and totally under my spell… But then, much to my surprise, with a low, frustrated growl Prowl suddenly pushed his chair back, wrenching himself from my embrace, and then he rose smoothly to his feet. With a savage growl, he kicked aside the chair while I rose rather unsteadily to my feet… And then we stood there, staring at each other, regarding each other with a palpable and fiery lust that was curiously tinged with a sudden wariness. The very next step, after all, was quite a doozy, and we were both entirely aware of that fact… But with a few steps Prowl closed the distance between us, and there we stood, mere inches apart. He made no effort to touch me, though; he just stared quizzically at me. I returned the stare levelly, though I was struggling to keep myself from panting, struggling to keep from reaching out, grabbing him, and crushing his body against mine in a fury of blind, heedless passion. All of this and more floated through my mind as I stood there staring at Prowl, wanting him with every fiber of my being…and wondering what was going through his mind as he stared at me. I soon found out. “Should we really be doing this?” Prowl asked quietly of me. His fists were clenching and unclenching at his sides, his breath coming in short, labored gasps. I just stared at his mouth as he said the words, dazed, utterly fixated by the movement of his lips. It took a second or two for Prowl’s words to pierce the miasma of desire that fogged any rational thought that my brain might have tried to entertain. I shook my head sharply in an attempt to clear the haze away, but it didn’t help all that much, even when Prowl broke our mutual stare by lowering his gaze to stare at the small patch of floor between our feet. “Why not?” was all that my foggy brain could think of to say for a moment, but then I added, rather wearily, “You’re thinking again, aren’t you? I told you not to do that, Prowl.” His head jerked up at that, and his eyes narrowed at me, glowing a slightly brighter shade of blue in the subdued lighting of my quarters. His chest rose and fell once as he sighed deeply and slightly exasperatedly at me. “This isn’t something that you do without thinking about it, Jazz, foreign as that concept may seem to you,” he retorted quietly. The words stung a bit, though of course they were spoken without malice, only with stark rationality. And, besides that, I knew that Prowl’s words were quite true, as well. So then it was my turn to sigh, only mine was an apologetic one. “I know,” I said simply. “I know.” After a brief, tension-filled silence, Prowl softened, smiled one of his beautiful and all-too-rare smiles, and then raised a hand to caress my cheek. I leaned my face longingly into the gesture as he whispered to me seriously but gently, “There’s a war going on out there, Jazz. I could die tomorrow, you know.” Oh, so that was it… “Thanks for the timely reminder,” I answered quietly, dryly. I turned my face slightly to the side so that I could plant a soft, gentle kiss in the palm of his caressing hand… But then with a mighty effort, I pulled away from him and paced a few steps farther away so that I could more easily gather my thoughts without Prowl’s nearness distracting me. And then I added, more emphatically, more seriously, “Yes, you could die tomorrow, Prowl. Or I could die tomorrow. Or the sun could explode tomorrow. Or a space-traveling behemoth could happen by the solar system tomorrow and see the Earth as just one large and mighty tasty appetizer. Or the entire universe could collapse tomorrow. I just don’t know. And neither do you. No one knows. Life is uncertain even when there isn’t a war going on, you know. But there’s one thing that I do know…” Prowl watched me pace as I talked, his arms folded neatly under his chest and across his midsection, as if he was hugging himself. His expression was one of affectionate amusement, something that I found vaguely…annoying under the circumstances, for some reason. “And that would be…?” Prowl eventually prompted lightly after I’d been silent for a long moment, after my voice had trailed off, leaving in its wake only the sound of my footsteps as I paced nervously before him. At that prompt, though, I stopped in my tracks and wheeled around to face Prowl. I gathered the thoughts and feelings that were recklessly careening through my brain into a semi-neat pile and hoped to Primus that the intensity of my emotions showed on my face as I tried to put them into words in order to answer Prowl’s question. “That would be that I’ve given up too much already because of this damned war,” I explained with a long, weary sigh. “That I’ve given up way too much to the…the fear that war creates, you know? The fear of getting too close to anyone. You know, just in case Fate has them earmarked as the next to die and all. Well, I’m sick of it, Prowl. So damn sick of it all that I could scream. And I refuse – Refuse, do you hear me? – to sacrifice anything else for this stupid, senseless war.” I paced in a few tight circles then, as I gathered my final thoughts. Prowl continued simply to watch me, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully at me, his brow furrowed, his lips downturned in a silent, contemplative frown. All traces of amusement were gone from his expression as he silently absorbed my words into himself, something that he was, indeed, very good at doing. It was, after all, his trademark. And then I halted in my pacing again a few paces away from him before continuing with my final volley, as the words that I’d wanted to say to Prowl for…oh, for way too long now…came spilling in a heedless deluge out of my mouth, for better or worse. “And most of all,” I finished vehemently, before I could think the better of it, “I refuse to sacrifice you, Prowl. I’ve put aside what I feel for you for so long now because of that fear that I might lose you someday. And I’ve just recently realized how totally stupid that was of me and how much time has been wasted because of it. Time that we could have spent together instead of forcing ourselves to stay apart, you know. And I’m tired of that, too. I don’t want to be apart from you anymore. Ever. I want you, Prowl. I’ve wanted you for so long, almost since the first moment I saw you. And right now, right at this very moment in time, my greatest fear isn’t bonding with you and then having to suffer through your possible death at some vague, hypothetical point some time in the future. No, my greatest fear is the thought of never having bonded with you and then losing you.” I took one more pause to close the distance between us, stopping just short of reaching out and gathering him into my arms. Instead, I stared at him levelly, eye-to-eye with him, feeling the level of my desire for him rise yet another notch or two since I was once again so close to him. I tried not to let it distract me for the moment, though, as I pulled in a deep, calming breath and concluded, “And that, Prowl, is what I think.” A heavily charged silence followed in the wake of my tirade as Prowl and I stood there, separated by mere inches. Both of us, I think, were almost afraid to touch the other now…until a gentle, affectionate half-smile softened the strong lines of Prowl’s face and he raised one hand between us in order to run the fingers of one hand lightly up and over my chest to my chin. “You’re gorgeous when you’re all outraged like this, you know that?” he said softly, lightly, though not at all jokingly as he cupped my chin in one hand and gazed soulfully into my face. My jaw dropped silently into his palm at that. It certainly wasn’t the response that I’d been expecting at all, but before I could muster up a reply, Prowl had moved around behind me. I was pretty sure that I knew what his intentions were…and my energon pump began to hammer frantically away inside of me in anticipation. It was so loud that I thought they might be able to hear it all the way down in Decepticon Headquarters. But then that thought along with any others that I might have attempted to entertain flew out the airlock as Prowl fiercely wrapped his arms around my midsection, pulling my body back against his with a desperate, feral urgency that I wouldn’t have expected of him. But I wasn’t about to complain, either, not as he began to insistently nuzzle the side of my neck, as I had done to his moments before. My head, entirely of its own volition, fell to one side in utter surrender under Prowl’s onslaught, giving him the easier access that he no doubt wanted. A wavering, helpless whimper escaped my throat as he brought his lips to my audio and his breath tickled over it like an exquisite caress as he spoke to me. “And for once, my beautiful, outraged Jazz,” Prowl breathed, his voice a low, husky, lustful murmur, the likes of which I had never heard from him before, and which sent waves of delicious shivers skittering through my entire body, “we think exactly alike.” His hands began to move freely over my body then, sometimes darting quickly here and there, sometimes moving slowly and methodically…teasingly…over my body. And he was thorough, my Prowl. He left no square centimeter of my upper body unexplored. He teased with his fingers or his lips or both every last sensor, I think, that was embedded in my metal skin. He found my hot spots – the headlights and the grille embedded in the front of my chest, the light blue panels on the fronts of my hips, the junction of my neck and my chest, the sensor nodes on the sides of my head, even that wonderful, exquisitely sensitive little armor seam on the inside of my left elbow and others that I hadn’t even known that I had. All of them he discovered in his methodical, painstaking, logical way, one after the other, over the next few minutes that felt like blissful eternities. His thorough, efficient efforts were rewarded by vocal encouragement from yours truly, which made him chuckle more than once, an almost purring sound that sent still more shivers racing through my aroused body. Prowl’s efforts left me paralyzed by pleasure. I felt momentarily guilty for not being able to return his gestures, but I’d found that I simply couldn’t move. All that I could do was bask. Just bask in the overwhelming sensations that Prowl was wringing from my body with sweet, gentle caresses and in the wonder of the fact that he wanted me as much as I wanted him, which was still not quite real to me yet. Besides which, between the efforts of Prowl’s hands and his mouth, I didn’t particularly want to move, anyway. I wanted to stay exactly as I was – my body pressed against Prowl’s, his hands and his lips ranging freely over me – forever and ever. I wanted time to freeze. I never wanted to leave the present moment and its sensuous wonders. Never. But then my knees buckled. It was rather unexpected, though I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised that it happened. I had been on the verge of total sensory overload, and my body had simply done what it could to break the spell, to preserve my wits if not my sanity. Curse it… Then again… We crashed to the floor in a heap, Prowl atop me, the unexpected momentum of my sudden collapse having dragged him down with me. My collapse unparalyzed me as much as it surprised Prowl and, grinning like an idiot, I used the momentary distraction to wrest control of the situation at hand from Prowl. Laughing, I wriggled out from beneath his weight. He tried to stop me, and somehow during the ensuing, though momentary, wrestling match I managed to flip Prowl over onto his back with a resounding clang that Wheeljack, quartered next door to me, could no doubt hear, though I didn’t care in the least at the moment. Prowl blinked up at me, his expression a stunned one, but I gave him no chance to utter a protest at my rough treatment. Without another thought, without saying a word, I just climbed atop him, straddling his hips and resting my full weight upon him as I pinned his forearms to the floor. He could have broken my grasp, I knew. I also knew that he didn’t want to. It wasn’t something that I suspected or that I thought that I sensed or anything as ambiguous as that. No, it was just something that I suddenly knew, the knowledge stealthily flooding into my consciousness, tickling my senses. We were that close to establishing that bond that I had wanted to experience with Prowl for so long. Perhaps we had already established a tenuous one, even... Because as much as I knew intellectually that Prowl prided himself on keeping strict control over himself, I suddenly knew in a…sensuous…way that he was finding that control’s loss, in this situation, rather…exciting. But then I also felt a corner of his mind begin to detach and slink off and away from me, no doubt in order to ponder exactly why he was enjoying this loss of control. Well, we couldn’t have that, obviously. I greedily wanted all of Prowl, every centimeter of his body and every thought and every emotion nestled within every corner of his mind…and I egotistically wanted all of it focused on me and only me. I wanted to be the center of Prowl’s universe, as he was already the center of mine. So I wiggled atop him to get his full attention. “None of that thinking stuff, you!” I chided him playfully. “’Cuz now it’s my turn…” And before Prowl could utter a sound, I swiftly leaned forward and captured his mouth with mine, something that I know he hadn’t expected. This, after all, was a human thing…but then, he should have known that I was an avid student of Earth culture. And, indeed, one of the many wonderful things that I loved about Prowl was that he was a very fast learner. He didn’t quite know what do at first as my lips met and began to devour his, no. But after several wonderfully long moments – by the time that I had slid off of him and nestled myself down alongside of his body, my lips never leaving his, my hands exploring his body as he had explored mine – he was returning my kiss with abandon, quite happily following my lead. And then… Oh, then my mind…my senses…everything was suddenly on overload. Flashes of light exploded in my field of vision. All that I could hear was the sound of Prowl’s breathing…or maybe it was mine…or maybe it was both of ours merged together, I don’t know. Every square inch of my body felt energized, all of it tingling in anticipation and need, a need for completion, a need to be one with Prowl, forever. Similar sensations, similar longings, I knew, were stampeding through Prowl’s body and mind, as well. I could feel the steady pounding of his energon pump against the palm of my hand where it rested against his midsection. And inside of him, nestled next to that pounding pump just as I was nestled next to Prowl’s body, was his spark. It was right there, just under my hand. I could almost feel its pulsating warmth. Only a small panel of thick, protective armor – armor that would slide aside in very short order, if I had my way – separated it from me. The knowledge was driving me out of my mind… I wanted it. I wanted him. Now . And then suddenly I was working entirely on what a human would call instinct. The rational Jazz who occasionally thought about things every so often when the mood struck him was suddenly gone. He’d drowned in a sea of sensation, consumed by a tidal wave of desire that had been building for millennia but that was now so very close to cresting and crashing down upon me. All that was left now was the animalistic side of Jazz, and he was suddenly and firmly and quite happily in control. That was the Jazz who would wait no longer to be one with Prowl. This very second, he had decided, was The Moment, and I was suddenly just along for the ride, reduced almost to being a mere spectator in my own body. With a growl, I propped myself up on an elbow, abruptly breaking the kiss. Prowl protested my sudden restlessness…somehow… At least, I think he did. He said something to me that was utterly drowned out by my mind yelling, “Now, damn you!” at me. “The Voice That Must Be Obeyed,” it was. And I obeyed. In fact, I could do nothing but obey in the state that I was in… I climbed on top of Prowl again…and then scooted slowly down his body, trailing light kisses as I went. I delighted in the little sounds of pleasure that erupted from his throat and urged me on as I moved my mouth slowly down to my target, to that little patch of extra-protective armor on his midsection. He held his breath as my lips hovered mere centimeters over that little panel. He couldn’t see what I was doing and that was somehow, I sensed, a very erotic and exciting thing for him. His fists clenched at both of his sides in anticipation, and his entire body was stiffened, stretched taut like the strings of a violin beneath me, awaiting the slightest, lightest caress of a bow. I grinned devilishly to myself…and then blew ever so gently across that little panel. And I laughed softly as Prowl’s held breath exploded from him in a great, airy gasp. Ohhhhhh, Primus …his voice echoed lustily in my head, and somehow that was vastly more erotic to me than if he’d said anything aloud. And then, with the softest little click, that little panel slid aside, revealing to me Prowl’s spark, nestled protectively within the protective arms of his laser core, pulsing gently. The blue light that emanated from it bathed my face for a few long moments, until I could stand it no longer and, with a single quick mental command lowered a similar panel on my own midsection. We were so close now. So close…and as I maneuvered my body so that my exposed core was as close to Prowl’s as possible, the distance between us dwindled…dwindled…until there was no space between our sparks at all. Until they were joined. Physically, at least. They touched, began to glow a brighter blue, and began to synchronize, pulsing as one and more quickly than they had before, as if to keep up with the pounding of their neighboring energon pumps which slavishly sought to keep our bodies fully supplied with energy even as we heedlessly expended it. It was as if our sparks were feeding off one another…which, in fact, they were doing, each of us drawing energy from the other. Still, there was one final step to be taken… I skittered tentatively, shyly along the edges of Prowl’s mind for a few moments, felt his presence on the periphery of mine as well. I took a small mental step closer to him…and then another…and another…and then a few more… I love you…I’ve always loved you…The thought suddenly floated gently between us, suspended like a feather forever floating on a spring breeze. I don’t know who thought it first, and it really didn’t matter. The emotion behind the thought, and the yearning and the need and the long-pent-up desire behind it, was there, a living, palpable thing. It seemed almost as if I could reach out and touch it. And this time, it was a mutually-acknowledged thought, as well. Neither of us was denying it…And it seemed to me as if the unspoken words were a key that opened a long-locked gate in the heavy emotional fence that had always separated Prowl and I. It had always checked the…need…for each other that had been simmering between us, I think, since the moment that we had met, so very long ago. We had both ignored that need, that wanting, for so long, carefully mending the isolating fence between us whenever necessary, never once crossing into the other’s territory for fear of mortally offending the other…until the other day…And until now, of course... Joined but not yet fully merged, we teetered on the edge of something wonderful, something inexpressibly blissful yet at the same time quite intimidating, as if love was an ocean below us and we were standing on the rocky precipice of a cliff high above the crashing waves… And we were looking down into that beckoning, tossing, tempting ocean of bliss, peeking at it warily yet…hungrily. And we were both, I knew, at once powerfully awestruck…and completely terrified. Because we both knew that if we did what we were about to do, then there was no going back. To make that final leap that we were contemplating — to dive, so to speak, completely and irrevocably into each others’ bodies and minds and souls — was to create a permanent bond between us. A part of Prowl would forever belong to me, just as a part of me would become Prowl’s. An eternal commitment, it was, but one that was by no means guaranteed to be eternally blissful. And it would never truly die, either…unless and until one of us died, of course. Yet the rewards…Oh, the rewards… It was an exhilarating thought. It was a daunting thought. It was a joyous thought. It was an overwhelmingly horrifying thought. It was everything and nothing all at once. Emotions tumbled through my head, all of them flitting by like a quicksilver school of fish in a shallow, sunny stream, darting and flashing so quickly here and there that I didn’t have a chance fully to grasp a single one. I didn’t know whose emotions were whose; I simply felt them all at the same time in a bright, dizzying, and roaring flood, reveling in them yet fearing them all at the same time. We teetered there on the edge of that proverbial cliff for a long time, Prowl and I, uncertain. I have no idea how long we lingered there in a shared trance of mingled fear and longing, sparks joined, hands moving over each other as our bodies were pressed together, yet still somehow hesitant… But then suddenly…as one…we leaped off the cliff. There was no forethought on the matter, no “discussion” between us about the issue. We just dove simultaneously, and a full and deep physical and spiritual connection formed between us, between the sparks that were our very consciousness. And with that connection both physical and, finally, mental, a whole new world suddenly sprang open for both of us, like a new leaf on a tree, unfurling and greedily soaking in its very first taste of warm spring sunshine. There was suddenly no Prowl. There was no Jazz. There was no end of one individual and no beginning of another. There was only an “us,” a single merged entity, a single merged soul, and two bodies as closely merged as they could possibly be, entwined with one another as much as their awkward bulk would allow. The endless vista of Prowl’s mind suddenly yawned before me, huge and inviting and yet, at the same time, somewhat intimidating. His memories, his thoughts, his emotions, his most cherished dreams, his hidden fears, his darkest secrets, his greatest joys, his deepest sorrows; they were all there, just waiting to be explored. Nothing was hidden from me. Absolutely nothing. I could explore to my heart’s content… But not all tonight, oh no. There was plenty there to keep me occupied for the rest of my life, as Prowl was, I knew, simultaneously discovering about me. But tonight was only about forming the connection between us, about blazing a trail, as if we were explorers traveling through unknown, uncharted space in order to find a place that was ours alone. Tonight was about giving and taking pleasure from one another, sharing souls, sharing energy, until one or the other of us…or both of us…could simply do no more. Tonight…Oh, tonight was simply the first of many, many future forays into an endlessly intriguing and pleasure-filled realm. And pleasure it was. Not just mine, but Prowl’s. I could feel my own hands on his body, could feel the tingles that ran through his body as I nuzzled his shoulder, as the fingers of one hand dug into a strategic spot that I had earlier discovered on one of those lovely, sweeping doors. And then there was my own pleasure, as well, as Prowl wrapped his arms around me as best he could in our somewhat awkward position, kneading that delicious spot on my back that he’d found earlier and then moving on from there. On and on it went, as we wrestled in an erotic dance together, careful never to break the connection between us, as we revisited those sensitive spots that we had previously discovered before we’d bonded and found new ones, as well, each discovery digging a well of mutual bliss. But then our movements became more urgent as the energy between us built to a crescendo. Our breath came in short, labored gasps of exertion as our bodies tried frantically to cool down to more tolerable levels. The steady pulsing of our merged spark grew more frantic and irregular, and a faint blue glow developed between us, spreading slowly out from our point of connection until it enveloped even our entangled limbs, our intertwined fingers. I have no idea how long we remained merged. It seemed like both a blink of an eye and the longest stretch of time that I had ever experienced. Though this was but a first bond, the pleasure just seemed to go on and on, building and raging inside both of us in a shared inferno of passion…until suddenly we could sustain it no longer. Prowl’s energy level was dangerously low, I knew, and mine wasn’t much higher. So, with a mutual yell of mingled passion and disappointment that the bond had to end – a yell that could probably be heard in Decepticon Headquarters and that surely jolted poor Wheeljack out of a sound recharge cycle next door – we reluctantly disengaged. Prowl collapsed with a strangled whimper onto his back, legs and one arm sprawled every which way, the other arm wrapped around my back, his hand resting on my waist as I lay propped up on one elbow next to him, absently tracing light, random patterns over his midsection with the other hand. His chest was heaving with exertion. It had been quite a draining week for him and, almost immediately after we disengaged, he was in recharge, though he murmured a sheepish apology in my head for it as the link between us slowly dissipated to a low ebb – though of course it would never completely disappear now. “Don’t you worry about it, love,” I whispered gently to him as he shut down completely, and as I planted a soft kiss on his cheek. “You just rest up for Round Two,” I added with an affectionate chuckle. A small smile found its way to Prowl’s face and stayed there, and I sighed as he settled into recharge and an incredible feeling of peace settled over me. It was a feeling that was soon joined by a sense of overwhelming exhaustion… The very last thing I did before my energy gave out entirely was to aim a weary glance up at the clock, its numbers glowing a bright, phosphorescent green on the desktop above our exhausted, entangled bodies. Five-o-clock in the morning, it read. Outside, I knew that the sun would soon be rising, cracking the eastern horizon and streaking the sky with the delicate, pastel hues of a desert summer dawn. It was the start of a new day, a new beginning. Sighing luxuriantly, I lowered my head and snuggled more closely into Prowl’s side, pillowing my head on the front of his shoulder, wrapping an arm possessively around his narrow midsection, which was still radiating warmth from our exertions, and twining a leg equally possessively around one of his splayed ones. For a few moments, I simply reveled in his nearness, and in the fact that he was now irrevocably mine, that I would be able to enjoy this kind of closeness, this kind of…communion…with Prowl for the rest of my life. I even rejoiced just in the simple, comforting warmth of his arm wrapped around my back, in the feel of his hand resting lightly on the side of my waist. One final thought floated through my mind before recharge claimed me as surely and as completely as it had already claimed my beloved…and the thought brought a contented smile to my face. A new beginning , I thought as I gently slipped down into a blissfully peaceful darkness with the smile still on my face. A new beginning, indeed…
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