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Skids was used to being treated as part of the background. It was what he was comfortable with, as a guard. People went about their lives and didn’t ask him to do too many things except stay close and keep a lookout. He could still do that. Even in this city that he’d never been in before, full of mechs going about their days, and sightlines, and noise.
He was getting used to the noise, shunting it into background processing. Still working on getting used to Prince Jazz’s disinclination to slot him into the background. Skids felt he shouldn’t be handsy with royalty, just as a general rule to ensure his continued health and safety. Not that there was much he could do about the royalty getting handsy with him. In the specifics, he also felt he probably shouldn’t be this close to his commanding officer’s almost-conjunx, but again. Not much he could do about that either. The prince clung like a scraplet. A pretty polite scraplet, but boy did he have a strong grip on Skids’s elbow that he was refusing to relinquish despite a lot of hints. Skids gave up in time to walk and not get dragged into the very big and shiny building Prince Jazz seemed to be steering them towards.
It was pretty fancy inside, all spacey décor and big chairs and big windows. Not as many places for mechs to hide as you’d expect, must have been constructed with security in mind aside from the same sniper sightlines issue as every other building around here. Skids completed a lookover pretty quickly, and looked to the prince to try and get some idea of where they were heading next.
Prince Jazz was frowning. His field had tapered off from that weird ringing cheerfulness he’d been projecting, going quiet.
“Hm,” he said, sounding suspicious.
“You sound suspicious,” Skids pointed out. There wasn’t much here to be suspicious of. What did Jazz know that he didn’t?
“I am suspicious,” Prince Jazz said, which—sure, Skids could see that. Mysterious prince, not a whole lot of reports on what he’d been up to during the war but his tires showed plenty of use and his fingers were still maintaining a deadlock grip on Skids’s plating.
Oh, he’d meant that he was feeling suspicious.
The prince let go of Skids and wandered away, leaving Skids to fall into place next to him and look intimidating as they approached the desk near one of the only inhabited couches. Clearly inhabited by a couple of guards. Incognito guards, at that. Very sloppy. Too far to do immediate damage control if someone charged the vulnerable parts of the building, not portraying an obvious allegiance and backup that made it not worth it to mess with them, and not even getting out of sight in case someone was scoping the building. Skids stared them down while Prince Jazz made zero headway with the secretary. Sounded like he wanted to get to the governor’s office. Skids had to break eye contact when the prince hooked him again, laughed, and steered him away from prying eyes. In a new direction.
“So, suspicious, what are we investigating?” Skids asked as Prince Jazz scoped the lobby. He was casual about it, especially with the visor hiding the direction of his optics, but that was some scopage if Skids had ever seen it. He’d gotten used to boring guard duties. Whatever else he was, this prince certainly wasn’t boring.
Skids hadn’t been on a mission, a real mission, in ages. He maybe let the excitement run away with him, not thinking about the possibility that Jazz might not be able to keep up with his covert-ops trained antics until he was already halfway up a vent.
Every time he looked down, though, Jazz was right behind him and hanging onto the vents with some seriously strong magnets. And waving to let him know he was okay. Huh. Maybe Skids should worry more about keeping up himself.
It was good to work with a partner again. He and Getaway hadn’t been on any serious missions since the one against Meister, where Skids had gotten injured. Skids had been waiting to use the ‘too damaged to be causing problems’ routine for something more serious than sneaking poker nights past command ever since. It worked a treat, even if he got banged up on the way down to the floor and a little more by guards grumpy to have their jobs interrupted.
Skids got them to let him off on the third floor, and then took a different elevator bank down the rest of the way so the secretary wouldn’t see him come out when he hadn’t gone up and think something was up. It took him a minute to find the vent they’d gone up again. Once he had, he stood guard in front of it so Jazz would have backup as soon as he came out.
It didn’t quite work. Jazz walked up from a different direction after Skids had barely been there a full vent cycle, looking like he’d gone a couple rounds with a too-tight tunnel in alt. He waved again.
“Yo, Skids. You made it down safe.”
“Yes, sir.” Skids pulled up to attention. Whatever hierarchy they had run that op on, it probably didn’t apply in public. Skids could be discreet, especially if that meant looking deferential. “You took a different vent?” If he was more interested in being unpredictable than doubling back to make it easy to stay together, Skids should probably know that now.
“...No, I took the same vent.”
“Oh.” Skids had lost track, again. At least Jazz was nice about pointing it out instead of picking at him for it.
“You sure you didn’t hit your CPU too hard, there?”
That reminded Skids he had never actually explained about his processor damage, which prompted Jazz to give him a looking-over that was about as subtle as his scoping out the building. Skids looked at him right back.
He was more beat up than Skids had thought at first glance. A lot of minor bumps and dings, especially noticeable when they were in places that didn’t really make sense for collisions in alt-mode. If Jazz’s op today was stealthy enough Prowl hadn’t briefed Skids on it, it was probably stealthy enough he shouldn’t get caught with damage that hard to explain.
“If I may, your highness,” Skids said, reminding them both that Jazz was supposed to be back here later for a meeting and should probably maintain his cover. Also being polite because they weren’t exactly friends and that made pointing this out kind of rude. “You look like you had a rough landing.” Jazz took that with some surprise, looking down at himself like he hadn’t noticed before. Skids tried not to be too amused at his expense. “General Prowl’s probably going to chew me out for it.” It certainly looked bad that he’d been assigned to specifically to guard Jazz and make sure he didn’t get hurt, only to bring him back looking much worse than he’d left. The general had certainly fussed enough over Jazz’s safety already, what with sweeping the entire house as soon as they’d arrived and insisting on regular security patrols and scheduling a trip to Staniz so the old security network that Skids and Getaway agreed probably predated the war and didn’t hook up to anything anymore could be entirely stripped from the walls of the house. He was probably entitled to a little overprotectiveness after an entire war.
Jazz paused halfway through his self-examination, field suddenly clanging with panic for an instant before it vanished. Too fast for it to actually have been dismissed. A soothing current thrummed up, and Jazz’s frame language shifted into something relaxed and...reassuring? “Don’t worry, I’m sure he won’t blame you. ‘Specially not if I can get this cleaned up before then. Meant to visit a detailer in the city.” He was shifting his shoulders back, loose like he was ready to dodge an attack. Something was happening here that even Skids couldn’t miss. “Don’t want to look all messed up for my conjunx, right? Prowl doesn’t have to know a thing.”
There was an urgency behind that line that Skids didn’t like one bit. He grabbed that tight, not letting it fall out of central processing before he could really think it over.
They weren’t exactly friends, but Skids had a feeling that the truest way of saying that ended with ‘ yet .’ He liked Jazz, even if the mech was suspicious in more ways than one.
And he’d worked for Prowl for a while, but...as a subordinate agent , directly in his chain of command with a whole lot of checks and balances in between the way the general felt and the way he treated the people around him. He’d felt a lot of things about the general, but he’d never felt...afraid. Jazz was afraid.
Jazz was afraid, and he wanted to visit a detailer. That was something Skids could help with. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had opened a shop out here, hadn’t they? Sunstreaker did good work, according to his own bragging and the grudging admittance of other mechs near his unit. That might work.
And on the drive over, Skids could figure out exactly what to do about Jazz being afraid of the mech he claimed so easily as his conjunx assigning blame.