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It was a nightmare. No, it was worse than a nightmare. It was like waking up during open-spark surgery but the doctors were also sawing off limbs. It was like being put in an industrial tungsten shredder– twice. It was like being forced to watch Adventures with Bolthead and Screwbrain for the fifth time because someone thought it was the best show ever. Twenty-five seasons of pure unintelligible scrap metal…
It was actually worse than all three of those things, plus every other horrifically horrible scenario Prowl could think of (which was quite a lot):
The grocery store.
Was out.
Of Dura-Shine brand five-in-one cleanser, wax, polish, leather conditioner, and rust preventor with ‘new car’ scent.
Empty shelf. Out of stock. He was doomed. Simply, utterly doomed.
The whole trip had been rough from the start. It was busy, likely due to an upcoming Cybertron-wide holiday and mecha scrambling to make sure their parties would be well-stocked with all the best treats. It was loud, and not just because of how busy it was; the radio was cranked especially high, playing some annoyingly catchy pop songs that Prowl had been tired of last quartex. It was bright, too bright, but that was maybe because he was already overstimulated. The refrigerators and freezers hummed and buzzed. The checkouts were beeping arythmically and constantly. One of the shopping cart’s wheels was loose, so it rattled as it rolled, making the handle vibrate under his palms.
Also, his partner– loving, adoring, perfect partner– was going to drive him up the Primus-damned wall if he kept singing along to Chafed Road’s Warm to Start.
Prowl stared at the empty bit of shelf where his five-in-one should be, frustration and desperation welling up inside of him with nowhere to go. He kept looking at the other Dura-Shine products as if his would be there, but it wasn’t. So he kept staring at the hole in the rows of cleansers as if it would just spontaneously appear.
He had done the same thing at the very start of their trip: the store had also been out of the correctly-sized titanium torque wrench he needed to replace since he foolishly lent his old one to an untrustworthy coworker (one who claimed she ‘lost it’, but he knew the value of that torque wrench). Rather than settle for one of lesser quality, he came to terms and decided he could do without it. For now. Jazz said he had one ‘laying around somewhere’, so he hoped the mech would be able to find it before his brake discs got warped.
He had also been quite irritated in the supplements isle, as they only had packs of sixteen iron pellets instead of the thirty-two he always bought. It forced him to spend slightly more for the same amount of iron pellets. Jazz did not see the fuss in this problem, but Prowl suffered on, resigned to marking the tragedy in his budgeting spreadsheet.
Another thing that had irritated him was the fact that Jazz had little to no regard for Prowl’s carefully manufactured budgeting spreadsheet. The mech, through his dancing to Chafed Road and Picture Beasts and spawn-of-the-pit Swiftwind, thought he was being surreptitious when he tossed in extra items they didn’t need. Was two cases of topaz crackers really necessary? They still hadn’t finished the box they already had!
Don’t even get him started on Jazz’s inability to put things into the cart neatly. There was an order for things to be placed, a procedure! They’d been through this! Large, bulky items always had to go on the bottom, and anything in boxes or cans or jars had to be upright and in alignment with the mesh of the cart. You couldn’t just toss a box of energon Gel Cubes on top of bag of thin Crispy Gold Flakes, you’ll just crush the flakes!
All of Prowl’s attempts to get Jazz to put things back or put things in nicely were merely brushed aside with a wave of a servo or a cheeky remark about ‘let’s live a little!’ or ‘just a little treat, no biggie!’.
Biggie. Massive biggie. All of it. But Prowl knew how ridiculous it was. He was getting mad at the grocery store. It wasn’t like it was an all-out civil war tearing Cybertron to pieces! He had to suck it up; just vent and bear through the slow, agonizing torture.
“And I said ‘Pump! It up!’ – been starin’ at those bottles for a while, babe– Ooh, yeah, you pump the air in my tiiiiiires!”
Prowl’s optic flickered. “They’re out of what I need,” he muttered, fists tightening around the shopping cart’s handle.
“You could try the– Oh yeaeeyeaaah~ – the contrails scent?” Jazz oh-so helpfully pointed out the other Dura-Shine five-in-one bottles, each marked with scents that weren’t ‘new car’.
Yeah, because I’m a fragging tetrajet, Prowl thought, venomously.
“No…” he said instead, because it was taking every micronometer of willpower left in his frame not to start kicking shelves over.
“Didn’t you like, uh, the industrial one before? Somethin’ somethin’ air in my tiiiiires~”
“No.” No, Prowl had only ever gotten ‘new car’. It was all he liked. He didn’t want to smell like anything else. And other brands with a new car scent didn’t feel even remotely right on his plating, nor were they five-in-one. It was efficient!
“You could try Steel Mill, their cleansers are–”
“Sweetspark,” Prowl breathed, as gently as he could muster. A threat of violence was queued in his vocalizer. One of absolute carnage to befall this pit-damned grocery store. One of bloodshed and terror.
Jazz’s intake shut so fast it was a wonder his teeth didn’t chip. His visor brightened with sudden realization and horror, and had Prowl been feeling maybe 60% better, he would have hugged the mech. As it were, he was closer to shredding the walls with his bare servos should he decide to touch anything.
“Wait here,” Jazz said, in the next instant disappearing from the aisle.
That left Prowl still staring in silent misery at the vacant bottles of five-in-one. Air in My Tires by Sire Glitchmouse ended, only to be replaced by the much worse: Field Trips by Eddycurrent. He had to pull the cart closer to the shelves so a new creator and his tantrum-having sparkling could pass by. He edited his spreadsheets to calm himself down.
A few breems later, Jazz returned, servos behind his back and a pleased little smile on his face.
“We may need to hurry up and checkout before we get kicked out–” Jazz started, making Prowl’s optics widen with disbelief and panic– “but they had a case in their backstock.”
Brandished like a holy artifact in Jazz’s servos, was Prowl’s ‘new car’ scented five-in-one. It practically glowed, and a fraction of the misery melted away into adoration. It didn’t quite make up for the rest of the insufferable evening, but it maybe saved their relationship. That was the drama speaking, they were totally and completely fine. It did save his nightly washrack routine, however, and that was a relief beyond reliefs.
“Oh, Jazz,” Prowl sighed, accepting the offering and gently placing it upright and in a perfectly sized slot in the cart between their other groceries. “What did you do?”
Jazz held up his pointer and thumb, pinching them so that they were nearly touching. “Just a little bit of threatening to complain to a manager.”
Prowl knew that ‘just a little bit’ meant that Jazz had put on his scary face. It had actually gotten them in trouble with the enforcers that one time, but it was luck that had them dealing with Prowl’s batchmate, rather than anyone else. No fines were issued that night.
“Run?” Prowl asked, already angling the cart towards the checkout.
“Run.”