Another PxJ Challenge Response
Title: Pretend
Prompt: Week 3 #1- Movie Night
Rating: PG
Characters: Prowl, Jazz, mention of others
Verse: G1
Words: 728
Summary: It was a perfect opportunity to forget reality.
Notes: For the prowlxjazz anniversary challenge.
“And the movie’s long over,
That’s three that have passed, one more’s fine.”
- “Awake” by Secondhand Serenade
Movies were taken very seriously by the Autobots.
They were a way to remember what they had lost. A way to remember the culture that they were trying to preserve. And, most importantly, a way to forget, even if only for a measly few Earth hours, that they were in the middle of a war.
Every now and then groups would gather in the Rec Room to watch a movie or three, sometimes it would be a marathon of human movies so that Spike, Carly, and Chip could understand what was going on. Other times they would watch one from Cybertron, where time was different, and their equivalent of hours - joors - were about six Earth hours long, and a movie could last as long as an entire Earth day.
Their human friends had been shocked of course, to find that the movies could last so long, and Carly had asked that, after a few hours, what was left to be shown.
Jazz had laughed at her and told her “plot.”
That had earned the easy-going mech a few good-hearted glares from his organic friends, and Jazz smiled back, in a stretch of lip plates that suddenly felt all-too fake.
The humans couldn’t really understand the effect movies had on the Autobots, had on Jazz, because Cybertronian films had something that human movies just couldn’t have.
Time.
Time to pretend he was someone else. To pretend that he was somewhere else. To pretend, that at least for a human day, things were much different than they actually were. Time to embrace the false reality he built around himself.
So once every month, Jazz dragged Prowl out of his office and sat with the former enforcer in Prowl’s quarters on the mech’s berth and watched a Cybertronian film for a private movie night.
It was always a Cybertronian film, never a human one, because those were much too short. Jazz never even considered bringing along a human movie and Prowl didn’t give any suggestions as to what movie he’d like to see. So Jazz always chose.
Jazz was generally pretty good at picking movies, there had only been a few times that he had chosen a film that Prowl really didn’t like. The first time that had happened, Jazz had been afraid Prowl wouldn’t allow Jazz to continue their movie night. That Jazz wouldn’t have a perfectly legitimate reason to go hide in Prowl’s quarters and pretend that the world was different. But Prowl surprised him the next orn saying that the next time would have to be post-poned due to work constraints.
Prowl never seemed to find a logical reason to kick Jazz out of his quarters. Never questioned why Jazz, who was so enamored with human culture, never chose a human movie. Never asked why Jazz made sure that both of them were only allowed to be commed if there was a major emergency that no one else could take care of. Prowl never seemed to care that Jazz always brought in a few cubes of the Twins’ high grade for them to enjoy.
Prowl never even bothered to ask Jazz why the saboteur always came to him to watch a movie with, and Jazz was grateful, because he didn’t want to explain and have that time taken away.
And once they were settled next to each other on Prowl’s berth, the film in the player, both sipping their contraband, there was no talking, no sound other than the film and their own systems, that’s when Jazz allowed his own fantasy to play out.
In the dark of Prowl’s quarters, reality would fade away, and Jazz could pretend. Could pretend that he was back on Cybertron before the war, and he was with a friend. Could pretend that with the almost non-existent space between the two, that Jazz meant more to Prowl than just a friend. Could pretend that this was what was real, and that the war and life outside the dark quarters was just a faraway nightmare. Jazz could pretend that he mattered to Prowl.
But the thing that Jazz always recognized about pretending was that it was not real, and in all actuality, it never would be.
===
And in the dark of the room, sitting so close to the mech that wormed his way into his spark, Prowl could pretend that someone cared.