Ep 0.5 - Family Business - Closed

Jazz liked to know things. Especially things about mechs close to him. Especially especially things that might end up biting any of his cohort in the aft. (Which was...pretty much anything.) He didn't necessarily DO anything with the knowledge. In fact, he USUALLY didn't do anything with it. He just liked to know. So he could help out if possible. And so he could see the aft-biting coming ahead of time.

Jazz had been called many things. "Respectful of personal privacy" was not one of them. "Nosy little bastard" was in the top ten.

It had honestly not been that hard to figure out. One boring monitor duty shift combing through the ground bridge logs had found the altered logs with Shadow's and Ironhide's idents all over them. He'd asked Shadow about them out of curiosity, and she'd explained her own usage easily enough ("I wanted to be alone for awhile" was perfectly reasonable in Jazz's book). She'd not had much intel on Ironhide's, though.

Granted, Jazz had been away a long while, but last he'd known, Ironhide did not particularly like to range far from base. As far as Jazz could tell, Ironhide's guardian coding went right down to the spark: he liked to be close, just in case. Jazz had teased him often about being a homebody.

So why, Jazz had asked himself, was Ironhide making quick sightseeing trips to random bits of Earth?

It was a mystery.

Jazz LOVED mysteries. Especially ultra-rare Ironhide!mysteries.

Jazz had cast his net wide. Finding the one anomalous bit of contact Ironhide had spearheaded in the past, quiet few months had given him an inkling. A comprehensive sweep of the control room security feeds indicating that Ironhide had come back from at least one of his outings with a goofy little grin on his face had given him another.

Then Jazz had started WATCHING. The subtle collection of energon, the restlessness, the goofy little grin resurfacing when he thought he was alone, the continued poking about in his spare time for a place to do...something....

And now this: Ironhide going off to that apparently-perfect place yet again, practically skipping through the bridge?

Oh, Jazz had ideas about what this was. He'd SEEN the first vorns of Ironhide and Chromia's courtship, after all.

This definitely called for some family intervention. Wouldn't want Ironhide to feel like he could get away with something this big without the proper amount of...love. Yes, that was it. Familial love.

Especially when Ironhide wandered back through the ground bridge looking like a dazed turbofox.

Jazz had seen Ironhide in a lot of states. THIS particular loose-jointed stumble, coupled with THAT length of longwave, muddled up with THAT pole-axed look? Only added up to "and a very good fragging was had by all".

Jazz sat back in the monitor chair and let his smirk speak for itself ("Hey, Hide, havin' a good time? Because now we get to embarrass the slag out of you. Feel free to run, it will make no difference."). "Hey, 'Hide. How's it hummin'?"

Shadow had been telling Ironhide the absolute truth when she'd said she didn't want to know what he was up to.

Jazz wanting to figure out what Hide was up to was a completely different matter.

Jazz wanting to share that information was Not Her Fault. At All.

Jazz casually suggesting that she might want to meet him and Blue at the ground bridge? Like she was going to slagging miss that opportunity.

Which was why she was leaning up against the monitor chair and grinning like a Cheshire cat when Ironhide finally managed to find his way back through the ground bridge. And no, she wouldn't have missed his expression when he saw them - which said busted plain as glyphs - for anything.

Ironhide was going to kill them all. Best make this worth it.

Her optics narrowed, and she made a point of looking him over. "You look," she said, the grin threatening to split her face plates, "like a mech who's had a very rewarding patrol. I really think you ought to tell us about it."

Jazz accepted the torrent of cursing as his due, spreading his hands and returning a well-worn and familiar glyph of "Hey, this is ME!"

Still, he let himself be pushed out of the chair, falling to the floor in a slump of parts, then propping his head up on one hand as he contemplated Ironhide's question. He wasn't entirely surprised by the implication, given some of his guesses about just who might have put that slink in Ironhide's walk.

Jazz sat up fully so he could give Ironhide the serious look in the optics the question demanded. "Control room's securest place here, 'cept Prime's quarters. From outside audials, at least. You want to keep this in the cohort we might want to move, though. Never know who'll wander through." He made a vague gesture up to the airducts, then mimed kitty ears.

"Now Blue," Shadow said, leaning over to pat the little sniper's arm soothingly, "maybe we're jumping to conclusions. I'm sure there are any number of good reasons Ironhide's patrol might have run over by nearly two hours. Without him feeling the need to call for backup. It's not all fighting Decepticons, after all. Sometimes the best thing to do when you run across something interesting on patrol is just...examine it. In detail."

She turned to look at Ironhide, expression sweetly innocent. "Is that what happened, Hide? You found something interesting? Maybe a couple of new positions you needed to check out?"

Jazz grinned. He mentally patted himself on the back.

He'd thought that the Neutral might have a part to play in this. Unless Ironhide was finally falling into a deep and abiding love with one of the Decepticons, there weren't that many other choices. And if 'Hide had found some other, heretofore-unnoticed Neutral out and about, he would have reported them at the least, same as Cleaver.

Jazz suppressed a snicker. Yeah, he remembered the last time that Ironhide had had to deal with a love interest. The mech had missed so many cues that Jazz had honestly debated whether anyone could be THAT oblivious to an obviously interested femme. In the end he'd concluded that the answer was "yes" and suggested that Chromia just trip Ironhide into a berth already, as that was possibly the only thing that would get the right idea through the warrior's processor.

Jazz toned down the grin to a smile. Oh, with that look to him, that fuzz in his field, Ironhide was in deep. Chromia-level deep. That was going to be...interesting. Not bad, necessarily, just...interesting. "Can't wait to meet her. Must be a pretty awesome femme to put THAT spring in your step, y'old rustbucket."

THEN the grin came back, along with a suggestive waggle to his field. Just to keep up with the "embarrassing the slag out of Ironhide" theme the younglings had going here.

Shadow couldn't help a little sound of amusement over Ironhide's reaction, and the way he immediately blamed Jazz for her smart aft comment (not that she was going to ever accuse Jazz of being a good influence... or Blue either, for that matter...but this time Jazz wasn't at fault). Bee had mentioned Cleaver; she knew the medic had made a positive impression on the scout.

And apparently, an even more positive impression on Ironhide, judging from the grin he'd been wearing when he arrived, the EMF pulsing contentment/pleasure and a kind of adorable delight, even over the embarrassment they were all ruthlessly exploiting, and a deeper thread of anxiety.

"I suspect if she was any better, he wouldn't have made it back through the bridge," she said, smirk sliding back onto her face. "Good thing she's a medic."

Jazz's grin only got bigger. He'd FELT the second that Ironhide's field had relaxed again. Felt it when his cohortmate had given up on all the Serious Bizness that needed to be discussed in regards to his new sweetheart.

And that rush of warmth had felt good. Jazz liked to encourage it.

He scooted closer, leaning on Ironhide's legs like an oversized sparkling begging for a story. "Oh, really? Do tell, 'Hide. So far as I can tell the kids're woefully undereducated in such matters. I blame you entirely. For shame."