Part 21

Soundwave woke, resetting his optics twice as his lenses came into focus. The lights were off, and somewhere in another cell, Starscream's barely perceptible vents were the only sound. So they were still alone, then.

Soundwave had fallen into recharge while sitting against the wall, pedes out, and he tilted at the waist, loosening cables that had gone stiff. While writing, it was his preferred position, and he felt a little less vulnerable in his cell if he wasn't lying down.

How far had he gotten on the next chapter? Sometimes the story continued in his mind after recharge took him, and he scrolled back through his document file on his HUD.

"I will never serve the Prime," Starscream sobbed, shaking his head even as Skyfire lay the Autobot stencil across his wing. "I'm a Decepticon! I'm a Decepticon!"

Skyfire ignored the smaller mech's groans and instead stroked his wings, calming Starscream's fit. His little jet couldn't understand yet how he was wrong, had been wrong for so many millenia. But then Starscream had always needed a guiding hand to temper his wild mood swings and steer his desires. It was a job Skyfire looked forward to reclaiming...as was his bondmate, even if Starscream needed reminding.

Soundwave huffed. He'd imagined much more than that while he slept. So much to catch up on.

Adjusting his pedes on the floor, he raised his helm—

—and froze, his servos locking up for an instant. He wasn't alone.

Stupid! he berated himself, thinking himself secure just because he hadn't heard anything, and he scanned Jazz for any obvious firearms. Still his visitor said nothing. After a klik, Soundwave vented again, tucking the story file away in his cortex for later.

"Jazz, real?"

On the other side of the bars, the Third in Command frowned. "You been hallucinating?"

"Negative." Soundwave shook his helm, not wanting Jazz to think he was still glitching. "Images during recharge, stronger lately, sometimes linger into waking. It is not the first time I have seen you there."

"Uh-huh." Jazz glanced at the door, clearly waiting for somemech. "And what was I doing in those dreams? More kinky story slag?"

"...Jazz, shot Soundwave." Low and more of a vent than a voice, Soundwave's answer nonetheless filled the space between them, turning the air heavy.

Jazz didn't argue. Both of them knew it was a possible outcome.

Silent, Jazz nodded to some internal communication. Whatever he was waiting for must have happened. He looked back at Soundwave, standing straight, and touched the door mechanism. But he hesitated, tapping his finger on the lock a few times.

Silent, Soundwave waited.

"Optimus wants to talk to you upstairs," Jazz said. "Continue that conversation y'all were having."

"'Upstairs'?" Soundwave echoed. "Not here?"

"A conversation," Jazz said in emphasis. "Mech to mech. Not Prime to a prisoner."

A full vent cycle passed. Soundwave put his hand over his repaired casing. His Decepticon insignia had not been removed, nor had he asked for solvent or tried to scrape it off. For all anyone cared, he was very much their enemy. And still the Prime wanted to talk to him?

"Optimus Prime, either very strange," he murmured, "or very cunning."

Jazz snorted, surprising Soundwave.

"I love Optimus to pieces," Jazz snickered once, "but cunning's got nothing to do with him."

That Soundwave was skeptical was not commented on. Of course he was skeptical. Primes had all but ruined Cybertron in one long downhill succession. And yet Jazz served—Soundwave corrected himself. Jazz followed Optimus with an almost blind devotion. Either the Autobots were all religious fanatics, as zealous about their Prime as Megatron was about galactic domination...or else there really was something about Optimus that Soundwave had yet to understand.

"This conversation," he asked, "when?"

Jazz tapped the lock again, tilting his helm.

"A couple breem from now," he said. "But there's a problem I didn't think about 'till now."

Soundwave's face pinched so slightly, running through the list of issues he could imagine. Was it dangerous to move him around Autobots? Then the Prime would be down here. An imminent attack? Then Jazz wouldn't have come. Was Soundwave too dangerous to trust?

"The last time I was alone with you," Jazz said softly, "you locked me up and tried to overload me."

Soundwave stared at him for several kliks, his optics opening wider in understanding. But then he frowned again, tilting his head as if Jazz were standing sideways.

"But..." he tried, "overloads, pleasureable. Desirable."

Jazz scowled, leaning forward to an icy glare that made Soundwave sit straight, thunking his helm against the wall. Clearly that was not something the smaller mech wanted to discuss. And yet Soundwave couldn't help a stab of humiliation.

"Soundwave, so clumsy at overloading?" he whispered.

"How would you like it," Jazz said through clenched denta, "if I chained you up and overloaded you right now?"

His optics widening as large as his specifications allowed, Soundwave felt a rush of heat to his faceplate. Belatedly he clamped down on his engine so fast that he coughed, and his whole frame tensed in an effort to hide exactly how he'd like it if Jazz followed up on that threat. Even with the looming threat of execution over his head, that exact scene in Spec Ops #219: Third in Command, First in Desire had been one of his favorites to write.

"Not such a fun idea now, is it?" Completely misreading Soundwave's reaction, Jazz curled his fist around one of the bars, his voice taut.

But clearly it wasn't one of Jazz's favorites. Quite the opposite. Soundwave flinched from the heat of Jazz's anger. No, the little Autobot did not care for restrained overloads one bit.

"Did not realize..." Soundwave trailed off, and he lowered his helm so he didn't have to see Jazz. He'd only conceptualized two types of interfacing, force-downloads and overloading. This was a mistake he did not know how to fix.

"Did not—" Soundwave stopped and took a vent, shuddering deep in his frame. There was nothing he could say to improve this. He squeezed his optics shut. "Soundwave, sorry. Did not know. Did not know."

Long kliks passed. The door opened a crack, letting in a long spill of light into the gloomy brig. Jazz sighed and stood straight.

"Yeah, well." He shrugged. "Just not looking forward to escorting you. That's all."

Motioning for him to stand, Jazz held out a pair of stasis cuffs. Realizing he needed to move lest Jazz grow even more angry with him, Soundwave bent and slid his wrists into the restraints. A low level ripple of static crackled across his sensors, nothing like a full stasis charge, and he stood back as Jazz opened the cell.

Both of them regarded each other for a moment. Jazz frowned, and Soundwave felt the very obvious twist of self-conscious anxiety flit across his face. He ducked his helm as if inspecting his shoulder panel.

"Walk...very long?" he asked.

"Not really." Jazz leaned forward, angling to see his face. "You feeling wobbly?"

"Malfunctioning gyro negligible," Soundwave answered with a shake of his head. "Clarification: no mask. No visor. Visible emotions, disconcerting." His voice ended on a higher pitch, obviously questioning without asking.

"Shouldn't be any mechs between here and there to see you," Jazz said. "Just my bots. And 'sides, Prowl says no. Says not having 'em lowers your threat rating."

Soundwave considered that for a moment, calculating a percentage for efficiency of concealing emotion, subtracting the sum from his most current threat level calculation. Then grudgingly nodded once. "By five percent. Analysis unarguable."

Jazz backed up several steps, giving him room to move by, and Soundwave bowed his head slightly as he came under the cell door—

—and found Jazz's knife sliding up between his armor plating, nestling in amongst his cables.

Both of them froze. Jazz looked as surprised as Soundwave felt. Cassette emergency summons and fight or flight protocols blared warning after warning that the Decepticon struggled to ignore, knowing logically that reacting in any way meant death. Already overheated, he flooded with coolant. Warring commands clashed in his cortex, and a wave of nausea tilted his gyros, shuddering the final stabilizer still under heavy repair. The brig tilted wildly, nauseating his fuel reserves.

When Jazz withdrew his knife, clean of any energon or oil, Soundwave groaned and sank to one knee.

"Room, spinning," Soundwave mumbled, leaning against the bars.

"It's okay," Jazz vented with one hand pressed to his mouth. "I didn't cut nothing. It's okay."

Squeezing his optics shut, Soundwave didn't feel at all reassured by that. Then he realized that Jazz was talking to himself, calming his own jumpy spark. He didn't raise his voice to confirm that he was all right. Jazz had not yet put away the blade, holding the clean edge up to his optics.

"Okay..." Jazz vented in, out, in a little longer, out a little longer. Then took a full vent and looked at Soundwave, still kneeling in front of him. "Okay. So. Soundwave walking toward me triggers stabby response number one."

Despite himself, still with his optics shut, Soundwave gave a weak chuckle. Jazz sounded as shaky as he felt.

"Walk will be highly ineffecient," Soundwave said. "If stabbed every step."

"See? Told ya you got a sense of humor." Jazz didn't laugh, but he grimaced and pressed his hand against his head. "Well, slag. Okay, I gotta get you to Prime and I ain't got time to waste on me being trigger happy. Since I don't think you wanna walk around on a leash, I'll let Mirage—"

"Leash, acceptable."

The words were out of Soundwave's mouth before he realized he'd thought it. He didn't dare look at Jazz. Did the Autobot think he had misheard? Or that Soundwave was being stupidly logical? Or that the Decepticon really did have a thing for small, shiny bots?

"You gotta be..." Jazz cut himself off, holding up his hands in defeat. "Okay, you know what? Fine. Fine. We'll do it that way. I ain't got time for anything else."

Soundwave didn't know where Jazz found an energon chain. Most likely the brig had all sorts of restraints in storage. What his cortex focused on was the slimmer, dextrous hands setting the chain over his neck, wrapping it around once, twice. Then came the soft click of the lock cinching it just tight enough to be snug.

Amazed, recording every second for later playback, Soundwave lifted his head. On his knees in stasis cuffs, he looked up at Jazz who held the end of the energon leash. Aside from the fact that Jazz looked less controlling and more like he couldn't believe he was doing this, it was just like Soundwave had imagined in Spec Ops #219.

"Okay," Jazz said, giving the leash a tug. "Get up and let's see if I can hold myself back."

A command! Soundwave slowly came up on his pedes, perfectly still. He would move only when ordered. He didn't think he'd be so lucky as to have the plot come to life, but—

"Follow me," Jazz said, leading the way out and pulling the leash taut. "And keep pace. Don't try to walk faster'n me or Primus only knows what might happen."

Soundwave squashed the warble in his engine. He couldn't afford to show anything. Jazz didn't like mixing overloading and imprisonment. If Jazz knew how Soundwave really felt about this, he might take the leash off entirely. Schooling his face to remain as blank as possible, knowing his optics were overly wide and obviously focused on Jazz's shiny aft, he followed at the slower speed the smaller mech set, blinking in the bright corridor.

Smokescreen led the way, Mirage brought up the rear, and Bumblebee followed right beside Soundwave. All of them open-carried their rifles, and Bumblebee kept a constant watch on every twitch of their prisoner's hands, every waver of his optics.

Bumblebee raised an eye ridge. Hey, Jazz?

Yeah? Jazz answered. He doing something tricky?

No, Bumblebee said slowly. Just that...boss, he looks like he wants to eat you.

Jazz looked over his shoulder. A few cycles ago, he would have considered such a strong stare to be hostile or a sign of defiance. But now he was older and, sadly, wiser. He huffed and faced front again.

Bot's got issues, 'Bee. Ignore it.

Sure, boss.

It didn't matter that he wasn't looking at Soundwave. Jazz could feel the stare sweeping over him, just as he had before when Soundwave first removed his visor. He considered talking to Prowl and urging him to reconsider. The golden optics made their prisoner all the more vulnerable, but his looks were likewise as potent.

He tightened his grip on the leash. And damned if the creepy mech didn't make the energon chain into something more erotic than it had any right to be. Jazz made a note that, after dropping off the prisoner, he'd ask Prowl to meet him in his berth. Immediately.

He hoped Optimus would want to have a long, long talk with Soundwave before sending him back to the brig.

TBC...