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Jazz hadn't seen Prowl in... a while. Which was an uncomplicated way to say that Jazz had a bit of processing data dedicated specifically to a timer tracking the exact time passed since they'd last seen each other. One of those lingering war tendencies that she hadn't quite had the spark to terminate. If war was a mess, it was a familiar one, and the post-war society they found themselves in was difficult to navigate at the best of times, both politically and personally.
Every time things seemed to be looking peaceful, something catastrophic just had to follow. Which Prowl, of course, had to be in the thick of. Jazz would wager that around half of their recent correspondences involved at least one rant about some latest scheme that High Lord Starscream had concocted that was interfering with his own to ‘increasingly unacceptable degrees’. Or something along those lines. Soundwave was convinced that the seeker was enacting his own brand of flirting, but Jazz wasn't quite sure if was working as intended.
So they'd spoken to each other with something resembling regularity, obviously, but as for actually seeing each other, face to face? It'd been a while. Not that Jazz took that to spark, she'd known exactly who the mech she'd befriended all those years ago was, and all that entailed when forging their bond of friendship in the first place.
That's why it wasn't a surprise to see Prowl show up to Jazz and Soundwave's sparkling shower— which was something Jazz had been adamant about hosting despite there being no precedent for such a thing on Cybertron. Didn't matter, she was getting that party. Humans were right about a lot of things (Primus she missed Earth sometimes), but especially the fact that it 'takes a village' to raise a youngling. That, and who could say no to gifts? Sure, they were nowhere near broke, but sparkling supplements were pricey.
What did surprise her was the moon-white sparkling dangling from Prowl's servo in claw grip like a ufo catcher prize.
“Can you watch this?”
Latent protocols activated and Jazz brought servos up to hold the unindentified sparkling with a crest that looked like Prowl's and familiar vents and wings and Primus damn it, Soundwave had totally been right about the flirting and it had worked and there was a sparkling in her servos. Jazz's vocalizer finally restarted after three failed attempts to do so. “…And this is—?"
Prowl, absolutely intentionally taking advantage of Jazz'z fritzing processor to take a step back and make that expression he always made when he was imparting what he deemed to be a Very Important Mission on a mech and needed their compliance. Jazz doesn't know when she moved the baby higher up on her chasis to perch on her hood, but the tiniest digits she had ever seen in her whole entire life were now grasping at the edge of her collar plating and making a valid attempt to get at vital cabling.
“Starscream's, yes. An unexpected result from our...” Prowl doesn't get flustered, but there's a wholly unfamiliar light in the other bot’s optics that threatens to send Jazz into another cascade, followed by him resetting his vocalizer, dare Jazz say it, awkwardly. “Neither of us has the time to dedicate to it what with our careers, and there is no one else I trust more to watch it. And I thought you might appreciate the practice.”
“And Screamer's not here for the send off because—?”
Prowl doesn't so much as shift. “He has a meeting.”
The implied ‘he does not give a fuck’ would almost be reassuring in its familiarity in literally any other circumstances.
It's at this point that Soundwave enters the room and immediately freezes at the scene in pure confusion for a only a nano-klik before regaining composure absurdly unfairly quickly and heading straight for them. Prowl apparently takes this as his cue to leave (which, what the hell, mech?) and turns on his pede and briskly speedwalks for the exit before Jazz even has the chance ask for the bitlet's name.
Soundwave reaches her side right as their front door slid closes behind the fleeing— Sire? Carrier?? How had this happened??— and the brush of her conjunx's field and the concern and love held within almost has Jazz sagging where she stands. She gratefully leans back against her larger frame as the hurricane of confusion finally passes through her processor and her thoughts settle and crystallize into a clear, grim understanding. The servo that wraps around her upper arm is as much support as it is encouragement not to hunt down the deadbeat.
“He's not coming back, is he?”
“Affirmative.”
The afthole. As if Jazz wasn't going to comm him as soon as the sparkling stopped giggling and buzzing in her audial long enough for her to formulate a message. Before she can formulate something truly too obscene, Soundwave gently reaches down and plucks up a gold card that had apparently been magnetized to the bitlet's back, and Jazz vents as she feels a processor ache begin to brew as her coding fails to decide between horror or amusment and instead tries to synthesize a new emotion that’s even worse.
“At least they're paying child support.”
