I'm not reposting all the warnings. If you didn't read them in Pt. 1, then on your head be it.

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Pt. 6

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Starscream stopped like someone had flung a kill-switch. His lips pulled away from the Autobot's throat, and his head rose. Red optics questioned without words, but Jazz was dead serious. Fans burring with strain, limbs shaking, and yes, right there, oh by the Pit - !

But he was serious. First and foremost, Jazz was the Head of Special Operations, an Autobot officer, and duty sternly kicked him in the back of the cortex. The rest of him was a wibbling mess, but duty stood firm.

…frag it.

Scenarios of reluctance ran through Jazz's mind, growing more extreme as they went: a miser spending his last credit, a starving mech pouring out a full energon cube, letting go of the last handhold before falling off a cliff, and Tracks surrendering a tin of Super Turtle wax polish. They all went up against Starscream's expression and came up short. Nothing could compare to the way the Decepticon shut off his optics and gritted his teeth as he pried his fingers off Jazz, one by one.

The Seeker had been shivering with self-restraint before, apparently determined to tease Jazz at an excruciatingly slow pace. Now the shivers turned to outright shaking, and - Jazz wasn't much better, truth be told. Part of it was because Starscream was concentrating so hard on releasing his hands that his thigh was still firmly wedged between both of Jazz's.

The Seeker's increased shaking right there right there more more was doing exciting things to Jazz's temperature gauges. Jazz's head helplessly thunked back against the wall again, and it was the best he could do to maintain the severe set of his mouth as armor plating sweetly vibrated. The all-over quivering tapped his sensor network into a frenzy. It tried to pinpoint the location of the touches, and there were too many locations. Which only made him all the more aware of them. That, in turn, spun his sensitivity up even higher.

It was like racing through the first spring rain on Earth, systems pumping overdrive but tuned to the feel of joy and delight as warm flecks of harmless liquid hit him from every angle. There had been so few chances for speed on Cybertron that didn't involve a mission, and the rain had always been acid. The contrast to Earth's rainstorms and roads had amped sensation unreasonably high, and the Autobots had deserted the Ark en masse when spring rains first fell. They'd staggered back punch-drunk with the soaring high of multiple networks maxing out and tripping circuit blocks. Everybody's quarters had usually acquired a tangled knot of cables when the Autobots reached the end of their willpower and dragged whomever was in reach to the nearest berth for some truly spectacular interfacing.

Good times. Great memories. Really not helping his self-control at the moment.

Starscream's hands on him echoed the pleasant shock of Earth's rain: Jazz had expected one sensation and gotten the total opposite. He'd thought it'd be fast, like tires hitting asphalt, and it'd been agonizingly slow. He'd thought a Decepticon would take, but this was all giving. He thought it'd be a cold, impersonal business transaction, acid rain because that's what one would expect from polluted skies, but Starscream was peeling fingers off like they'd been glued down.

The contrast ramped a bit of playful molestation against the wall into, well, whatever this was.

So the buzz of armor plating became an assault too pervasive and delicate to be anything but pleasurable. Jazz was doing some shaking of his own. He only just kept his hips from bucking against the Seeker's thigh as Starscream freed their clasped hands at last. Jazz's hand stayed suspended in mid-air, fingers spread. The Autobot was proud that he wasn't reaching to touch the gleaming glass cockpit still pressed against his chest.

He couldn't respond. He couldn't reach out. Duty mule-kicked Jazz, fighting fire in his body with cool reason flooding down from his mind. If he responded, if he wanted, it wouldn't be taunting Mirage or Ratchet anymore. It would be him, Jazz, officer and saboteur, admitting that he wanted what the Decepticon Second-in-Command was offering. That would be a weakness to be exploited.

Offering a chink in the armor to Starscream was suicide. There was a peace treaty in progress, but Jazz would be smelted before he trusted the Seeker.

The treacherous mech's hand trembled in the air like a drone given conflicting orders, but then it balled into a fist and slammed into the wall beside Jazz's head. Starscream dropped his chin, forehelm blocking his optics from sight, and gave a scraping whine of frustrated arousal. "You're…sure."

The Autobot didn't feel threatened. No, correction: he didn't feel threatened by Starscream. He felt more than a bit threatened by the urge melting down his back struts. He wanted to turn his head and bite the jet's wrist. The joint was right there, vulnerable cable within reach, but the wavelets of liquid desire lapping at the base of his spark casing had nothing to do with disabling an enemy. A sharp nip, right on the cable strung tense, and scrap metal and rust, his curiosity needed to take a long walk off a short pier. Preferably a pier in Sharkicon-infested waters. Because, yes alright yes, Jazz wanted to see what the Seeker would do.

His stupid blasted curiosity was going to get him interfaced against a wall. By Starscream. Who was still technically an enemy.

Jazz absently made a resolution to stop italicizing his own thoughts. The situation was ridiculous enough that every other thought deserved a few extra exclamation marks and an entire trust fun from the Bank of Flabbergasted.

"Yes," he bit out, and it was all duty speaking. Like it had to, frag it.

He shut off his visor to block out the tempting wrist and fought his ventilation system. The fans stubbornly kept spinning, prodded by a subprocessor that kept presenting him with more inappropriate ideas quickly pushing his sense of duty toward throwing a hissy-fit. The Seeker's weird banter over a certain Earth idiom was coming back to haunt him, and Jazz busily stuffed any and all chain-associated - or not associated, he wasn't even sure where they were coming from at this point - urges into a freezer located somewhere in Siberia to cool down.

"You're no fun."

"You have no idea how much fun I can be."

No. Bad body. Stop making things more difficult than they already were.

He was sure that his body betrayed how much he wanted this. The tiny movements he couldn't repress weren't visible, but they didn't have to be seen in order to feed back into Starscream. Their bodies were just pressed too closely together to hide anything, and it probably wasn't helping the situation any. Their bodies were tuned into each other. They'd made a loop that would only break when Starscream managed to let go. It was not, as Jazz was all too aware, such an easy task as that. The Seeker's wings were hiked high and shivering, moving parts flared at their widest as he tried to do precisely that, and his wrist was tempting Jazz because it was a sign of vulnerability.

Jazz was struggling to control himself because, yes, Primus that felt good. But the other half of the issue was far more internal. This was the Second-in-Command of the Decepticon faction openly displaying just how much Jazz revved his turbines. Any other situation, and Starscream would be a shrieking harpy hiding honest physical reaction behind a barrage of hate and gunfire. He'd had Jazz pinned and mostly helpless, but it was Starscream forcing himself to let go. Jazz had done this to him. Jazz was making him stop, all just by saying 'No.'

What a time to discover he had a powerplay fetish.

…that really shouldn't have been such a surprise. He was a Special Operations operative. He was a specialist even for Special Operations. The whole Autobot division probably had a control kink a galaxy wide. But mechs could only be equal when hardline cables crossed. Physical bodies were background noise when data interface began. Everything centered around the connection.

SpecOps mechs were already under suspicious scrutiny from the other Autobots. Offering cables to another Autobot was all about trust: taking and receiving. Data interfacing for Jazz had been for so long about the thrill of throwing himself wide open under another mech's mind, information files locked away behind firewalls and partitions but personality and emotions nothing but laid out.

Suddenly laid out physically, unreciprocated touch leaving him drowning mentally -

It hit all kinds of chords Jazz hadn't heard before from his body. He hadn't even known this station existed, much less what kind of music it played.

Starscream's fingers slid out from under his hood, and the Autobot had to suck air in just to give himself something to concentrate on that wasn't the slow slide of fingers departing. "Your hand," the Seeker got out, and it sounded like someone had put his normally-shrill voice through an extra round with the cheese grater.

His hand? Jazz brought his visor back online, peering down his arm somewhat muzzily. "Oh," he said faintly, his jumping-jack thoughts getting caught and pinned down by duty one at a time. "Right."

That hand. He'd forgotten it. The hand that Starscream had placed on his own waist. It was just sitting there, neither holding on to the jet or pushing away, and a hopeful subprocessor suggested that maybe it was okay. Maybe it was enough that he wasn't actually, measurably responding? Neutrality! Neither protesting nor supporting! Furthering the treaty process by putting his hands on over the enemy without intent to maim or molest! This was progress, surely? Yes?

Duty steamrolled that idea like a cement mixer hitting a pogo stick at 200 MPH. NO.

Jazz let gravity have its way, and his hand fell. It made a sad little clang hitting the wall. "Your leg," he said back to the jet, pushing strength into his voice because whimpering would not project the image of stern Autobot officer he needed right now, "should move." Not…in the way that irrepressibly energetic subprocessor immediately suggested. He had the mental image of his sense of duty glaring at the back of his head, trying to incinerate the suggestion.

"Yes, it should," Starscream agreed, surprisingly, and his helm rose to flash deep, burgundy optics at the smaller Autobot. They met Jazz's blue gaze the same way a human woman target-locked on the last piece of chocolate cake: 'Yum. Time to eat.'

That look went straight through his visor and rooted about among his thoughts, setting fires as it went. That obviously-malfunctioning subprocessor gleefully started writing subroutines directing Jazz's body on how he should respond to a look that heated. Duty squeaked dismay and hauled on logic-reins as hard as it could, starting a tug-of-war that Jazz wasn't sure who would win. He wasn't sure who he wanted to win, to be honest. He knew who he should want to win, but - right. When a mech stooped to personifying his conflicting desires in order to control them, they were probably already out of his control.

"Why isn't it moving?" the Autobot said, and if his voice was a little higher than normal, it was still nicer to listen to than Starscream's piercing tones.

"Give me…a moment." A chuff of laughter left Starscream's air intakes, and the dark helm dropped again. "It's good to know we're physically compatible, I suppose," the Seeker said conversationally almost a full klik later. "I'd been slightly concerned that you wouldn't find my frametype desirable after so long on the opposite side of the battlefield."

Jazz had absolutely no response for that. Say he found the jet…compatible, and he'd be admitting that he wanted this. Say he didn't, and it'd be a blatant lie. It probably wouldn't end the peace negotiations, but it certainly wouldn't help. Autobots and Decepticons were still finding their boundaries with a slap to the face. What was the phrase? 'Damned if you do, damned if you don't.'

Fortunately, Starscream didn't seem to be expecting a response. "It doesn't make this any more understandable. Why won't you simply accept what I'm offering you?" The Seeker sounded strangely plaintive, but he was pulling back. "Am I still taking this too quickly?"

The slow scrape of his leg between Jazz's thighs stroked the Autobot speechless. Something tender convulsed in the center of his spark. Over-sensitized sensors sat up and begged, panting for just a little more stimulation, an extra push over their parameters, and they'd - "Yes," duty said, because Jazz had left the building.

Starscream whipped around as soon as he was clear, thrusting himself away using the fist on the wall and taking three quick steps across the corridor. The Seeker's wings flexed as if they could still sense him, even with the Seeker's back turned. "It's just an overload," the Decepticon insisted, and it sounded like each word cost metal shavings off his vocalizer. "If I hadn't walked in on that," one blue hand waved at Ratchet's door, "Mixmaster and Bonecrusher would have overloaded your CMO. I sincerely doubt," a look more caustic than carnal was finally turned on Jazz, "that he would have stopped them. I doubt even more that he'd have complained when they did it again. And again." Jazz watched the jet's wings slowly shift down, the hunched shoulders rolling down and back as icy control settled over Starscream again, and something sank in the Autobot's chest. Hostility was reflex in the Decepticon ranks, and Starscream topped the ranks. "I didn't see you stopping them. Why is it acceptable for those bolt-brained menials to bring the Autobot Chief Medical Officer to overload, but I am not allowed to - "

A shrieking sound of frustration burst from Starscream as he turned to fully face the Autobot still slumped against the opposite wall. "I am Second-in-Command of the Decepticon forces, the Air Commander of the Armada, and I will be the one to restore Vos to her former glory. Can you at least lower your prissy Autobot standards enough to deign to feel honored by my intentions?! There isn't a flyer in the ranks who wouldn't change places with you in a flash!"

That was going too far, but he knew it was a mistake even as he responded. "I'm not one of your flyers!" Jazz said back sharply. "It's not idealism if I'm more concerned with what those intentions are than a quick grope in the halls!" Starscream's head jerked back, offense following on the heels of shock, but Jazz had been riled up too far to back down now. Lust, anger, conflict of expectations and reality; it all scorched his internal systems until the sound of coolant pumping through his lines shook his neural circuitry in their slots. "All those titles mean nothing but 'shoot on sight' to me unless or until the Pit-slagged peace agreement goes through! What'd you think I'd do, lay down an' let you paw me?" Mocking laughter barked across the hallway like a raised fist, and the Seeker tensed to meet it. Jazz slashed his hand through the air, denying a fight even as his words punched. "Ratchet can handle himself, and he's a medical officer. The Constructicons may be powerhouses, but they don't stand a chance hackin' him. You're more of a threat to my - "

"Why are you bringing hacking into this?!" Starscream howled, taking a half-step forward, and Jazz's shoulder-tires sprang him off the wall to take a combat stance opposite him. Not the low-key stance of a sparring match, but aggression facing off against aggression as Autobot and Decepticon began to circle. "Typical Autobot! You see a little pleasure as trying to take advantage of you! I never once went for your cables, but you're acting like I'm about to force-download your entire cortex!"

Jazz smoothly retreated before the Seeker's longer stride, coolly noting that the stairs were down this way. He wanted the option of escape. "You dare say you've never done it, and I'll pull up every Autobot profile that says differently," he shot back. "Decepticons have done it before, and you'll do it - "

" - again? Really. Is that what you think this is about?" The smile on Starscream's face qualified as a lethal weapon, and just the sight of it registered across Jazz's tongue as bitter. "Interesting how Autobot ideals strip down to the metal when exposed to reality. Autobot interrogators force-download Decepticon prisoners, too, and don't pretend otherwise. At least we," the words were individual drops of acid delivered with a scientist's accuracy, "don't commonly practice it for fun."

"That's not the same thing," Jazz said, voice low and cold enough to freeze water. His visor was a narrow blue band giving nothing away, but threat assessment was running the Seeker's every stalking step forward. In the corridor, Starscream's wings impeded his fighting ability. It nominally gave Jazz the upper hand, but the Decepticon's mass was in his favor if it came to a fight. "Data interfacing is nothin' like force-downloading. We only did that when the war gave us no choice but survival or sacrifice."

Starscream's lip curled. "Oh, please. Save the sniveling sacrificial innocent act for someone who hasn't seen you murder his subordinates with a smile so wide it should have split your face in two."

"Murder - !" Jazz took a step forward, visor blazing, and the Seeker's turbines spun on with a threatening cough. "You're one to talk!"

"I've never denied my kill count," Starscream said, smooth as a knife sliding between armor plating, and his optics were vicious slits set over a sneer only elongated canines away from being a feral animal's snarl, "but neither have I ever said they were anything but killing. And don't say Decepticons are alone in glorying over the number of enemies destroyed. I've seen your sociopaths on the front line, and our spies have overheard enough conversations comparing kill counts among your troops. Even now with whatever the fragging truce mandates, I wouldn't fly alone out near Autobot territory. Your innocent little soldiers would shoot me out of the sky, ceasefire or not, and they wouldn't bother to hide my body. They'd say that it was justified, and you name one Autobot officer," he stepped closer, crowding the smaller mech, "one officer of your dear cadre that's supposed to hold so closely to Prime's mantra of forgiveness and freedom - you name one mech that wouldn't agree."

The smaller mech glared up, fists balled at his sides. "I regret every time I've had to force-download a mech's cortex," his fists shook with the memories, "because it's nothing like interfacing. It left wounds on my mind and spark I don't even want to think about. But I don't regret killing Decepticons who had it comin'. Those that didn't, yes. But you - " one fist unfolded a single finger to stab at the Seeker, " - you name one of us who doesn't deserve the death sentence for what we've done in this war!"

"I'm sure we could argue about the technicalities of that for vorns, but don't project your guilt on me," Starscream said softly, and the rasp of a blade over a whetstone underlaid his voice. "Regrets are useless. They change nothing. If I went back in time, I would still kill every Autobot I did the first time through." His head tilted, cocky and gloating just to see Jazz's cold mask flicker anger hot as the blue-white of a welding torch. "Probably more." He leaned closer, deliberately inviting the Autobot to throw a punch, go for his throat, make the first move. "And do you know why?"

"You're a sick piece of pit-slag?" Jazz clipped out, but he didn't strike. It took every bit of self-control he could dig up, but he didn't strike.

Starscream chortled. "Quite possibly, but no. I would do it all over again, because otherwise we wouldn't be here." His sneer twisted, and he raised his head to glance around the hallway. They'd circled nearly to the corner. "Here, on the edge of - peace." His tone made it at curse, but he also took a step back to eye Jazz disdainfully. "We've all become killers, but if we hadn't…where would we be, hmm? A whole society of weak fools beneath the Senate's heel has been culled until only the strong have survived. We are the best of our race," a sudden blink of thoughtfulness crossed his face, faster than it could be suppressed, "despite how odd those 'best' mechs have turned out to be." He shook his head, perhaps freeing himself from that presumably disturbing thought.

He gave Jazz an unreadable look as the sneer dropped entirely. "You Autobots! You can't see the living for the bodies anymore."

There was a heaviness dragging down Jazz's jaw, but disbelief alone wasn't enough to drop his mouth open. There were words that were stronger than the need to gape in shock. "We can't - you're insane. Crazy! Cybertron has practically become a recycling plant for the dead, and you think this's progress?!" He took the step forward that Starscream had given up, and suddenly they were circling back up the hall as the Autobot returned aggression for aggression. "There're barely any living mechs left t' see because we're up to our optics in the dead!"

"If the next words out of your mouth blame the Decepticons for all those bodies," Starscream shrilled, "I will laugh in your face!"

"Then go ahead and laugh!" Jazz yelled. "The Decepticons destroyed our civilization and massacred whole cities! How can you blame that on the Autobots?! You've had your Primus-damned revenge for your blasted city six times over, and the Autobots aren't the Senate! You can't blame Vos on Prime, so you tell me why the fragging flyers stayed with the Decepticons if not t' kill for the power of it!"

"What do you think the Decepticons want, you stupid 'bot?! If it were power, we wouldn't have slaughtered so many!" Starscream's voice shattered off the walls like broken glass, dangerous pieces flying out of control, and the Seeker was crowding Jazz again. "There's no power to be had if your power base is all dead!"

"I don't know!" Jazz shouted. The pressure of fury and confusion ignited into an unexpected explosion that had only one outlet available, and his voice turned into an outright scream: "I don't know what you want!"

Silence struck hard enough to stun, and the words filled the hall in almost visible heatwaves. Jazz vibrated like a strung bow in the tension, visor glaring and when had he drawn his gun? Starscream's arms were almost into position to fire his nullrays.

But they'd stopped. Barely.

*"Jazz, do I need to send a team to your location?"* Red Alert's transmission dropped through the network, and Jazz would have flinched if Starscream's optics weren't watching his every movement for threat. *"Ratchet is standing by to assist."*

Thank Primus for soundproof doors and cameras without microphones. "No, Red. Starscream and I are just, ah, having a discussion," Jazz said, and the trace of a smile in his voice was a credit to his acting skills, because it certainly didn't reflect anything he was feeling at that moment. He cut off the transmission and forced out, "For…the purpose of ending our Great War."

It almost wasn't enough. Not for a Decepticon relearning tolerance and patience. Or for an Autobot who'd shot on autopilot at this Decepticon more times than he could count, for that matter. Peace was a teacup full of nitroglycerine, and it was so fragile in their hands.

Finally, Starscream's arms lowered. He moved stiffly, as if de-escalation were a foreign concept working against his basic subroutines. Just as stiffly, Jazz holstered his gun. They regarded each other warily from less than an arm-length apart. For all that they'd never stopped moving, they'd circled right back to where they'd started in the hall. Self-defeating progress, turning common ground into a battlefield.

"At least I am willing," the Decepticon Second-in-Command nearly whispered, "to accommodate what you want. Even when I don't know what precisely that is." Hot turbines pinged against the cooler metal of the floor as he took a slow step back away from the Autobot he courted. An expression too raw to be identified came and went on the Seeker's face, and Starscream scoffed. "How much faith can I possibly hold in a peace treaty with the Autobots when neither side knows anything about the other?"

"Trust can't be one-sided," Jazz said back, just as low, "and the Decepticons have been proven untrustworthy."

"Yes," Starscream agreed sourly. Harsh emotion flowed like buried magma behind the red optics studying Jazz. "Which is why I said 'faith,' not 'trust.' I wouldn't bet on any trust being offered from your side of things." His optics turned away, something resentful in the set of his mouth. "There seems little point in continuing this farce."

He swept into a shallow bow, a stiff formality. "For the purpose of ending our Great War," he recited, going through the motions with utterly no sincerity behind them before turned on a turbine and walking away.

Jazz watched him go. A dozen responses, comebacks, scenarios, and potential problems/solution subsets went through threat assessment and came up empty. A subprocessor offered a note about nice afts and chasing the one currently going out of sight.

This time, duty had no problem ruthlessly suppressing it.

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End Pt. 6

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