Warning: Slash, romantic friendship, holding hands, massage.

Disclaimer: I do not own The Transformers, and I do not make any money with this story.

Loyalty

xxx

An organic would probably have defined the sensation as a headache.

The point was, of course, moot. Since Prowl was not an organic, calling his condition a headache was a blatant semantic error.

It didn't make the feeling more enjoyable, though.

His CPU was beginning to overheat, his systems stressed from nearly five Terran solar cycles of constant work. He had not recharged during this period, had only taken the occasional short break for a perfunctory sip of energon. He was pushing his limits, and he knew it.

He paused the eight data streams he was currently processing and leaned back in his seat with a deep intake of air. Turning a crash-landed ship with a stasis-befuddled crew into a functioning military base did necessitate a certain amount of overtime, and that was before one factored in the virtually non-existent intel about the enemy's whereabouts or the germinal and precarious negotiations with the local governments. As Second-in-Command, it was Prowl's duty to keep an optic on all those proceedings, no matter how much Prime and Ratchet pestered him about taking better care of his health (one had to be careful, though; those two were not above pulling rank if ignored too blatantly).

He resumed his data streams and began to browse through the stack of data pads in his in-tray. The third one falling into his hands turned out to be Wheeljack's maintenance report on the ship's main engines; a read so mundane it took up basically no processing power at all. Before long, he had become so absorbed again that he nearly missed the sound of his door chime.

'Come in,' he commed absent-mindedly.

The door slid open, and a familiar, melodic voice said: "Hey there! Somebody home?"

Prowl put the data pad down. "Jazz," he greeted, adding a line of welcome/good to see you glyphs to his standard acknowledging ones. "How can I help you?"

"Oh, I'm good," Jazz replied happily. "Just checkin' if you're ready to roll."

Prowl blinked in bemusement. "I am currently in the middle of processing eight different data streams," he said, pointing to his connector cables. "And I have just begun to read Wheeljack's maintenance report. So I am not exactly ready to roll, as you put it, though it eludes me what you might be referring to."

For some reason, the saboteur scowled at that, his field projecting something that could only be classified as fond exasperation. "Yeah, that's what I thought." He hopped onto the edge of Prowl's desk, sitting there as if he owned the place. "Check that cache of yours, mech. Anything labeled Jazz in there?"

With anyone else, Prowl wouldn't have hesitated to impose proper sanctions for such flagrant disrespect of a superior officer, be they off duty or not. But this was Jazz, and Off-Duty Jazz was a special case altogether.

"You seem to be hinting at an appointment between us," he said, pulling his schedule onto his HUD, "though I do not recall any such -"

He did a double take. The table did, indeed, show an appointment for today's evening, about two breems in the past: 1900hlt:Outing ;rv_mainentr.

"Told ya," Jazz triumphed.

Prowl stared at the blinking glyphs. How was that possible? His administrative subroutines were programmed to ping him with a standard reminder for every entry.

"Give me a moment." He relegated his data streams to a secondary thread and accessed his audit trails: Reminder:1900hlt:Outing ;rv_mainentr_sent1830hlt.

No malfuntion there. He followed the thread further down.

Reminder:1900hlt:Outing ;rv_mainentr_sent1830hlt_deleted1831hlt

Reminder:1900hlt:Outing ;rv_mainentr_sent1840hlt_deleted1841hlt

And those weren't manual deletions. When his processor had started to repeatedly ping him with low energy and overheating warnings, Prowl had thrown together an app to automatically erase any in-system messages not flagged high priority - which, apparently, it had duly done.

He pinched his nasal ridge in a gesture of self-contempt. "Jazz, I'm sorry. I assure you I did not mean to let you down like this." Not to mention that he had been looking forward to this outing himself. A re-organization of his priority tree was in order, no doubt about it.

"Ah, don't fret, sunshine," Jazz said blithely. "We can have that joyride another time. Why don't we just hit the rec room and have a drink or three, huh? Come on."

"I'd love to," Prowl answered, and meant it. "But I'm still right in the middle of these data."

Jazz pulled a face. "Prowler," he said. "You need a break. You haven't refueled in nineteen joors."

"How do you know that?" Prowl asked, startled.

Jazz leaned in close. "I know everything," he stage-whispered, his visor twinkling with mirth. Prowl snorted, and the saboteur laughed.

"C'mon," he prompted while gently trying to dislodge the data pad from Prowl's hands. "Let's beat it."

Prowl hesitated. Not only did he owe Jazz some kind of atonement, the thought of sharing a cube and a chat with his friend certainly held a much stronger appeal than a selection of diagrams depicting the ship's current coolant level. But leaving a commenced task unfinished was among the top three on Prowl's personal list of Absolute No-Gos.

"At least let me finish the engine report," he begged, holding fast to the data pad.

"Engine maintenance?" Jazz shook his head. "Sweetspark, she hasn't been airborne for over 480 megavorns, and we all agreed that she's not gonna be for a while yet. Why are you getting your dentae into her engines?"

"Jazz, for Primus' sake, stop this," Prowl said in exasperation, determinedly moving the data pad out of his friend's reach. "I have to -"

"Prowl."

He snapped his head up, bristling. Interrupting people was a cardinal sin, in Prowl's opinion, and he glared at his friend, door wings held high and ready to spit venom.

Jazz didn't look overly impressed. He only gazed down at him intently, his visor glowing a deep azure blue. "Prowl," he repeated, more gently this time. "Gimme your hands."

And what on Cybertron was that supposed to mean? Prowl frowned in suspicion, but Jazz simply put forth his own hands with an inviting smile.

Still wary, Prowl rested his fingers on the saboteur's palms.

Jazz' field shimmered with appraisal. He bent down to press a chaste kiss onto Prowl's knuckles, then he bedded one hand in his lap with a stern keep it there glyph before he started to rub his thumbs over the other one's palm in slow, lazy circles.

The firm touch instantly sent a warm, pleasant tingle through Prowl's sensor grid. His vents gave a little hiccup, and then another one as the saboteur switched to massaging his fingers with devastating gentleness. "Jazz..." he protested weakly, but was hushed with a stern "Ah-ah-ah." Prowl sank back into his chair, admitting defeat, and let his friend's careful ministrations ease the tension out of his strained actuators.

Some time passed before he became aware that Jazz was humming quietly to himself. He recognized the tune as an old Cybertronian pop ballad, the kind of trivial music Prowl had never particularly cared for, but the familiar melody was soothing in itself. Jazz chose this moment to find a sensitive spot near his right wrist, adding a tiny bit of electrical charge to the physical caress, and Prowl felt himself go practically limp with the deep relaxation that washed through his systems.

A mischievous glint lit Jazz' visor. "Good?"

Try as he might, Prowl couldn't get his vocalizer to produce more than a contented hum. In lieu of a verbal answer, he filled his field with the warmth and blissful tiredness he felt, hoping that Jazz would pick up on it, and Jazz did, nudging him with a little field flare of his own.

Prowl was sure now. He had deactivated, and his spark had returned to the Well.

He watched with half-dimmed optics as the saboteur moved on to his other hand to give it the same thorough treatment, and another pleasant shudder had him sink even deeper into his chair. A memory file popped up in his cache, showing him pictures of himself and Jazz on the last evening they'd spent together prior to the Ark's launch, more than 481.93 megavorns ago. They had done a lot of touching like this that night, he remembered, sensuous and intimate and pleasurable and...

Prowl found himself leaning forward without conscious thought, capturing the saboteur's black-plated hands between his white ones and holding them tight as he looked up at his friend, stoically ignoring the fluttering of his spark and the nervous twitching of his door wings.

"Jazz," he said quietly.

Clear, honest surprise lit up Jazz' field. A moment of silence ensued, stretching just long enough for Prowl to become painfully aware that he had no right to make such a request. What was he thinking, first standing his friend up and then coming on to him like an overzealous youngling?

He actually startled a bit when Jazz' fingers interlaced with his, giving them a gentle squeeze. Realizing that he had dropped his gaze he looked up again and found his friend smiling at him. It was a beautiful smile, warm and tender and affectionate and full of a gentle longing that made Prowl's spark flutter.

It did not happen very often that they shared a berth. They both had other priorities in their lives, other things to worry about, and personally, Prowl preferred friendship to romance. But from time to time, they would seek each other out, and Prowl cherished and treasured each and every one of those moments.

Jazz slid off the desk and leaned down, taking Prowl's faceplates into both hands and touching their foreheads together. His field reached out in a slow, steady sweep, enveloping them both in a cocoon of fondness. "Drop by when you're ready," he said simply, and his voice felt like warm energon.

And then he turned and left, as cool as you please, but with a spring to his gait that practically glued Prowl's optics to his friend's back until the door slid shut and he dropped back into his chair with a soft thud.

Well. That had been… unexpected, to say the least.

He was feeling much better, he realized. The headache-like sensation was gone, and his HUD was free of reminders and warning messages. Only a blinking input field reminded him that a number of eight data streams on pause was still awaiting his attention. And, of course, the data pad Jazz had so deftly plucked from his fingers.

A wave of deep, spark-felt disgust seized hold of him at the sight of it.

Decision made, he carefully saved his progress, then disconnected his cables, reeled them in, and aligned his memo pads and stylus so that they lay parallel to the desk's edge. He might allow Jazz to corrupt his morals from time to time, but that didn't mean that he tolerated disorder in his office.

Speaking of order, his memory core was complaisantly providing files of a time when he had cultivated a small ritual prior to any intimate encounters with Jazz, comprising a wash and a little polishing. Prowl looked down at himself. He wasn't in any way dirty, but a trip to the wash rack was definitely going to happen. Might as well make good use of his night off, right?

He smiled softly to himself as he stood and stretched slowly to work out the kinks in his cables. He felt a bit like an insurgent, a subverter even, and it was a good feeling.

Jazz would be proud of him.

He turned off the lights and left his office without a second glance.

*Fin*

This is the first Transformers story I have written solely in English, meaning this is a kind of first time for me :-) Enjoy!