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. 16
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Politics, military procedure, and personal lives. A difficult trio to juggle any day, but throw peace into the mix, and the juggler was suddenly balancing on a highwire tightrope over vats of acid while the audience took pot-shots at him.
Yet Starscream seemed icy calm as he knelt beside Thundercracker and talked softly to his ex-wingmate. Jazz had seen him furious, betrayed, blank, and gloating - all within the space of a klik. The evil fragger had moods like mercury, and not a single one could be pinned down as genuine. The Autobot couldn't tell if the Air Commander hated Thundercracker or held some kind of twisted Decepticon love for him.
It abruptly struck Jazz how wrong it was to even wonder that. Not pondering the kind of stage-play interpersonal dynamics required to live among the Decepticons; that was a puzzle in and of itself that had baffled the Autobots for vorns. No, it was the idea of love. He'd held onto the idea of the Decepticons being a faction of rapists despite no evidence, but had it ever even occurred to him to wonder about the opposite?
A culture based on consent was difficult enough to process, flung at him like this. Overlaid over Skywarp's sadistic enjoyment of his ex-wingmate's suffering, it seemed contradictory. Acid Storm had needed overwhelming (and somewhat embarrassing) evidence to pound that idea through a stubborn stereotype, and it still tried to sneak in around the outer edges of thought. Jazz had to keep reminding himself of the evidence before his visor: the words being said, not events on surface-level.
It…scrambled his base concepts to introduce the idea of love. Decepticons…and love? No matter how many layers of concealment were applied over it, Jazz couldn't wrap his mind around love being a driving force for any Decepticon's actions. He'd seen the devastation and death left behind by Megatron's forces. He'd comforted tortured Autobots in fluid-stained cells and been tortured in turn by the professional sadists who seemed to end up as interrogators in the Decepticon ranks. He'd seen the scrap metal that had once been friends and enemies alike, and the idea that the mechs capable of tearing Cybertron apart had the same base needs and urges as he did -
A dull sort of horror rose up Jazz's primary intake. At some point in the war, he'd started relying on the assumption that Decepticons were fundamentally different than Autobots.
What hope could there be for peace if he hadn't realized that underlying keystone of his own worldview until this very moment?
The Decepticons were Cybertronians. War builds or industrials, specialists or service sector builds, they were Cybertronians. It should not be so difficult to contemplate the mere idea that Decepticons could be motivated by emotions other than hate, rage, or greed. He knew better. He'd fought and infiltrated the Decepticons for far too long to think of them as other than living, thinking beings. They were mechs and femmes with a full range of thoughts and feelings available to them. They weren't machines. The humans had sometimes tried to tack a preformed idea of emotionless, logic-following robots onto Cybertronians, but there had been no way to make that stereotype stick. Not when Earth witnessed Starscream shrieking in a fit of irrational fury at Megatron, or Bumblebee mourning at the grave of his first human friend. Nobody could call the Decepticons unemotional when the Constructicons viciously defended one of their own on the battlefield, and even the humans had conceded that Prowl made illogical decisions.
Because they weren't machines. They were robots in the same way that an a chimpanzee was a human: there was something resembling it in the ancestry.
Jazz still felt a sense of being far out of depth leaking like contamination into his tanks. Love? There had to be a more sinister motivation. They were Decepticons.
Except that he knew emotions couldn't be curtailed that way. Contained, changed, and suppressed, but Decepticons or not, they were still Cybertronians. It wasn't just possible, it was probable - even certain! - that they felt the full range of emotions any other Cybertronian felt...including love. To think otherwise would be to shunt them into a different category of being.
From the queasy roil of his tanks, Jazz had to question how close he'd come to putting them there. Not Cybertronian, but some strange mechanical species more murderous war machines than living, sentient beings. Machines incapable of love.
This was an idea that needed to be purged from his databanks. From the Autobots' databanks in general.
There were too many underlying assumptions changing at once. His assessment programs were fumbling new input, bouncing it back and forth between threat assessment and noncombat-dealings. All in all, it was actually kind of a relief when the bidding came to an end. He'd rather think about interfacing with Thundercracker.
Part of his threat assessment processor space had been dedicated to dealing to extrapolating potential reactions. There was going to be backlash for basically agreeing to have sex for cash. This was going to get back to the Autobots. There were simply too many gossiping mouths at the ready. It was a given that whole Decepticon faction already knew. The question was how he was going to play it out. There was an entire processor calculating how bad the fallout would be among the Autobots, but the rest of threat assessment was concentrating on the more important issue: how the Decepticons would react..
It was such a strange concept that threat assessment was waffling. One subprocessor had stuck on the idea that he should feel shame, but it could provide no concrete reason why. That tripped up the others. There was no prior evidence to draw from. Inter-factional interfacing wasn't well-documented, for reasons that were becoming really, scarily obvious. Interfacing for money had a stigma, but that stigma didn't seem to have historical precedent. So far as Jazz remembered, there had been courtesans available for hire in the Iacon Towers, and they had been respected members of the upper class.
Outside of the rich nobles, making a living just from selling cable-time didn't seem feasible. Not many mechs wanted a paid interface. The nobles had been mostly buying the coveted experience of having a trained, beautiful, intelligent mech or femme on call. They were companions far more than they were sexual partners. Cable uplinking was such a beloved intimacy that it was either freely offered or an unpleasant experience all around.
Then came the war, and the courtesans disappeared. Now paid interfacing happened in the ranks, but there was a stigma attached.
Okay, wait, rewind that thought. To be honest, Jazz had heard that it'd happened, but nobody he knew had actually participated. It was always one of those "I knew a guy who said…" rumors. If he didn't know better than to dismiss recurring rumors, he'd have chalked it up to bored imaginations making up stories.
At least among the Autobots, that was. He was the getting the idea that the Decepticons considered it a reasonable transaction, and…it made a sort of sense, the more he saw of Decepticon interfacing practices. Giving a mech money for cable interfacing just didn't really work out. As logical as a money transaction seemed, emotions were far more difficult to bribe. A paid cable-frag would feel more like a force-download. However, tactile interfacing didn't transmit feelings. Taking a bribe for some tac'-time could happen.
Everything in the Decepticon ranks seemed to be negotiable: office, politics, wingmates, rations, and interfacing. Versatility was a virtue. Like a mech? Think he was hot? Then bribe him for a good time. It had a strange sort of transactional logic to it, among the Decepticons.
Jazz still wasn't sure what kind of connotations taking the bribe carried. Had there been a courtesan-class in Vos? Was the class rated high or low? Was paying for 'facing a dirty secret, as the rumors had it among the Autobot grunts? Or was it just business as usual for Decepticons? Nuts and bolts, the saboteur didn't even know if it made him available to all, suddenly. Should he prepare for offers from anyone with the money from now on? And was that necessarily a bad thing?
The niggling worm of shame tried to twist up through the bottom of his tanks, and Jazz determinedly crushed it. That persistently negative processor compared this to how whoring was stigmatized in some human cultures, but for all he knew, it established him as desirable to the Decepticons. He just didn't know, and there was no time to find out. His observational protocols were already incorporating what surrounded him.
Where he normally used the protocols during a mission to blend into the background, now he was using them to understand the character he was becoming. The protocols underwrote rationalization into his behavioral codes as quickly as he registered understandable behaviors. His mannerisms were changing swiftly. He didn't even consciously register it, and he wouldn't until it came time to unravel the code again.
All SpecOps mechs had hyper-aware observational protocols. Any Cybertronian with an altmode had comparable programming. The protocols gathered information from a mech's surroundings and changed underlying code to incorporate a scanned altmode's function into a mech. When it came to scanning a new alternate form, Cybertronians didn't just change their outer shells. They transformed, inside and out.
A particularly jarring example of the depth of that program change was Ravage. The Cassetticon had picked up noticeably feline traits from scanning a jaguar altmode, despite the fact that Cybertron didn't have cats. Petro-rabbits, turbo-foxes, and robo-possums, yes, but the felines of Earth didn't have a Wonderland-warped equivalent on Cybertron. Yet Ravage had become markedly more alien in his behavior, from a Cybertronian standpoint, simply by adapting to his new altmode.
That rapid adaptation had made the Decepticons incredibly difficult to find on Earth when they weren't blatantly blowing things up, but it was also why Jazz was so dangerous. SpecOps operatives took protocols already used for gathering information and applied it like the specialists they were. Now Jazz was using it to become a Decepticon. No, not a Decepticon: a Vosian.
As an Autobot, the shame wanted to drag his tanks down, but there was no room for shame right now. Later, he'd suss out the answers to the questions popping up, not the least of which was why he should feel ashamed at all. Right now, he had to concentrate on playing this part to the hilt. He had to be Jazz, the Vos city-state's intended. Not just worthy of being courted by their Emirate, but capable of being one of them. Even a Vosian courtesan or a whore would be acceptable, because, well, the Vosians were still enlisted in the Decepticon military ranks. The mech bought today could be a commander tomorrow.
When he shoved the unreasonable shame away and thought like a Decepticon, he could follow their reasoning so far as he understood it. However little he understood it. If he could believe any of it, which maybe he could.
Consent centered everything. It was a tightrope, the line the juggler walked. All the other issues juggled could change, but consent remained the key to everything. The social contracts gelled Vos together, and consent was the bottom line for every contract.
Jazz was idly interested in what Acid Storm's stance was on the ethics of buying consent. Was that considered a form of coercion, or just financial appreciation?
Even as he thought, Jazz's doors flicked up and back. They weren't wings, but they fanned in display that the flyers surrounding him understood on code-level. A glittering field of optics around the arena tracked the motions, and a thousand wings rose in response. He could feel the flyers watching him greedily, and he had to admit in the privacy of his own head that it felt nice. Attention slid over his curves like their scanners were fingers touching him all over. It felt like appreciation. Greed and desire, but he didn't feel degraded by the lust. They knew who he was. They knew how dangerous he was. And they were bidding a metric ton of credits on his…favors…anyway.
Awkward? Incredibly so. But there was definitely something to be said for having an army of Decepticons subtly trying to catch his attention with their own wing displays. The floodlights were even angling to light up his paintjob. Black, white, and glossy grounder curves stood in the midst of an audience of flyers, who were all watching him. He preened a little under the attention and let his windows roll up to maximize display area. He wasn't exactly sure what he was doing, but he must have been doing it right to get this kind of response.
Acid Storm watched his display with a critical eye, but Skywarp's grin was a mixture of hopeful anticipation and nasty, petty threat. The purple-and-black flyer had retrieved the encoder pad. "You talk big, Autobot," he sneered in an undertone as he showily presented the final number. Unspoken was the dare: 'You talk the talk; now walk the walk.'
Politics, military procedure, and personal lives, with the added difficulty of peace. It was the Decepticon circus act. Now it was Jazz's turn to venture out onto the highwire.
Jazz met his sneer with a brilliant smile that made the Seeker's resentment falter. "Skywarp, you should know better by now," he declared, plucking the chip from the pad and tossing encoder back as if it were no big deal that he'd just been handed enough credits to purchase Ratchet's medical wishlist twice over. "I don't bluff." His smile grew hard edges as his visor narrowed at Skywarp. "Gotta say, though, if it were you down there? Mech, there wouldn't be enough money on the planet to buy me."
Red optics popped wide, and the Seeker's jaw sagged slightly. Behind Skywarp, Acid Storm made a funny fizzing noise as he tried to keep his face straight. Jazz winked half his visor off at the green Rainmaker. Walk the walk? Pit-scrap, no, he wasn't going to walk. He was going to saunter down there and flaunt it, because there wasn't a Decepticon alive who could cow the Jazzmeister.
He stashed the credit-chip carefully in a side cache, trying not to look like part of his cortex was bouncing around waving pom poms and cheering wildly. Ratchet was going to flip his chevron with joy. Prime would give Jazz the Look of Disappoint, and Red Alert would pitch six kinds of security fits, but Ratchet would get his equipment. That he'd promptly use to scan the saboteur half to death, in all likelihood, searching for any ill effects from interfacing with a Decepticon.
Jazz himself worried about other consequences, but he wasn't worried about taking the credits. The Autobots could always use more money, no matter what Prowl would likely tell him later. The Autobots were not intergalactic beggars. There was no need to sell themselves for credits. They weren't rich, but they weren't exactly impoverished, either. There were entire worlds worse off than their faction, war or no.
But if Jazz had known he'd get this much straight-up cash auctioning off his body, er, well, future war documentaries would probably include a few more racy scenes.
A snide, raunchy little voice in the back of his noted that the war wasn't officially over yet. For all he knew this would end up being a historical turning point for the peace process. Future generations might get to watch - for educational purposes, of course - him molest Thundercracker in front of the Decepticon Armada.
Speaking of which. "Gimme a lift?" he asked, cocking his visor past Skywarp at Acid Storm. The Decepticon reset his optics before nodding. Skywarp was evidently grumbling over internal comm., because the Rainmaker shouldered him aside with a long-suffering look. The teleporter pouted like a petulant child but only glared silently when Jazz smiled at him. Both Decepticons looked puzzled when the Autobot bent over and picked up two of the forgotten ration cubes. "I'll just be taking these…"
Acid Storm began to open his mouth to ask and visibly checked himself. He just extended his hand. The shorter 'bot accepted it, stepping forward. All of the black-and-white Autobot's nervous energy ironed into the shape of an overly bright smile. He'd been carried by flyers before, but rarely when they were in rootmode, and it had never been a comfortable ride for anyone involved when the flyer was a Decepticon. Comfort and safety both agreed that it was better to choose Acid Storm Airlines than Skywarp Air, however. Both were unreliable, but one was more likely to drop him for fun.
The Rainmaker's hand tightened around his. 'Come fly the unfriendly skies, Autobot.'
His right arm cradled the energon cubes to his bumper. He spared a thought to worry that it would be awkward to carry them like that, but the larger mech just folded him into his arms completely. One hand curled over a shoulder-tire to splay against Jazz's altmode roof, and the other slid up his right arm to take a firm hold. It felt…secure, not clutching. It was also completely not what he was expecting.
"Put your feet on top of mine," Acid Storm ordered and seemed amused by the uncertain flick of blue up at him. The small Autobot stepped up onto his feet as if the Rainmaker would snap at him for it, but a chuckle answered his hesitance. "You're not heavy enough to hurt me. Get your balance, or I'll have to pick you up." Jazz shifted a bit, daring to lean some of his weight against the arms holding him, and Acid Storm continued laughing at him. Okay, so his discomfiture was funny. That was better than annoying. "You act like you've never flown with someone before!"
"Hey, not many Seekers in the Autobots," Jazz excused himself, but…yeah. The Aerialbots apparently needed lessons on carrying fellow Autobots. They usually just grabbed a hand and took off, or went for bridal style-carrying. It wasn't embarrassing, but it didn't exactly grant their passengers a great sense of control. This position was more, ah, intimate, but it was an improvement over swinging about crazily by one arm while trying to shoot with the other, or being squished against someone's chest while said someone tried to free up a hand of his own to do the shooting.
"I'd say that's a shame, but we both know I'd be lying." Acid Storm's smile had an unexpected wistfulness to it.
Jazz looked up into and froze. Mostly because of how close it was. Intimate. Yes. That blasted rogue processor suddenly piped up, wondering how many of the Decepticons' kinks centered around interfacing while flying.
"Hold on," the Rainmaker, and Jazz's processor – still stuck on its wondering - squeaked alarm. But, no, the Decepticon was merely warning him that they were launching.
The kick of turbines lighting up jolted them, but Jazz had somehow expected it to be stronger. It made sense, he mused as the Rainmaker lifted off and took them out into the open air in the center of the arena. There was a difference in aerodynamics and momentum between being flown in odd carry-positions and standing upright. Of course, Jazz still wasn't made for any form of flight, but Acid Storm was taking it slow.
In fact, he was hovering in a slow turn like a display carrousel. "Really?" Jazz murmured low and a little amused. "Is this necessary?" He looked over his own shoulder-tire, smiling a bit at the greedy sea of optics drinking him in. The hand on his back was in a perfectly chaste position, but the thumb was rubbing little circles. Between the active scanners swiping over him from the crowd and how oversensitized he was becoming off the attention, it was enough to make him shuffle his feet on top of the Seeker's.
"They paid good money for the show," Acid Storm said back, just as amused. The weight-shift didn't even phase him; he adjusted so smoothly they didn't so much as wobble midair. "Might as well let them see what they're getting, hmm?"
"I'm fairly sure gettin' your hands on me wasn't part of the deal," Jazz snipped tartly, and the thumb stopped dead.
Wary red looked down at innocent blue. "…you're certainly in a mood."
The saboteur smiled sweetly. "You aren't watching Starscream watching us."
Acid Storm's head snapped away, looking down at his Air Commander - who knelt behind Thundercracker, speaking in his ex-wingmate's audio and not even looking up at them. The Rainmaker's head came back around so he could glare at the mech in his arms, but the point was made. Getting caught fondling, however benignly, his overly-possessive superior officer's intended was a Not Good thing. Jazz's tanks lurched as they dropped rapidly. Their landing barely even jostled the energon cubes he held, but that was Acid Storm showing off. The Seeker's face had hardened into a formal mask, and he released the Autobot with no more feeling than if the saboteur were cargo.
The Autobot stepped off his feet onto the rust of the arena floor and gave him nod that could have been a bow, doors held wide. "Thanks for your help, Subcommander Acid Storm."
That got him a surprised flick of wings in return, and after a moment's confusion, Acid Storm gave him a nod in return. "For the purpose of ending our Great War," he recited, because it really was a catch-all phrase between the factions right now. And because it was terribly, inappropriately funny in this situation.
Jazz's there-and-gone-again grin acknowledged that. He nodded once more and turned to face the only other mechs on the makeshift arena floor as the Rainmaker launched back into the air.
Thundercracker looked up at him through one shattered optic. While his face was rigidly blank, that optic was pale with fear. More obvious than that, the whorl of sparklight in his chest fluttered visibly. Knock Out had wrestled the broken cross-brace back into place and welded just enough together to close the blue Seeker's torso, but the medic hadn't bothered trying to fix the gutted cockpit. That left Thundercracker's spark open to air.
Despite the Seeker's attempt at controlling his facial expressions, all anyone had to do was look down to see how he really felt. Watching the panicked swirl and ebb was almost hypnotizing. Jazz had to stop and stare for a long klik.
In that klik, Starscream continued to talk.
"A grounder, Thundercracker. He's a grounder. I doubt he's ever flown on his own before, and what is a jet-pack to one of us?" The harsh, rasping voice fed pure poison into the blue Seeker's audio. Starscream angled just enough that Jazz could see his sadistic smirk as well. "We are the lords of the sky and masters of Cybertron. A mere road-runner can't compare. I've heard you say it often enough how low they are. Not just Autobots, no. You've always held ground-pounders in such contempt, haven't you, and here this one is. A grounder, and this time you're the lesser being. So much lesser." Thundercracker shuddered as the malicious words wrapped lovingly around him, and he couldn't seem to look away from Jazz. His spark glittered, sending out snapping arcs of plasma. "You're not even a Seeker now. What Seeker cannot fly? No, you're nothing unless I allow it, and the only thing I've allowed is Acid Storm's little dramatic showing. Did you think that was about you? Oh, no. That was about that inferior grounder…but he's not so inferior to you now, is he. No. He's an Autobot officer, an ally officer, and you are nothing. Inferior? Not to you, not now."
The shudders had become one continuous motion, shaking the blue Seeker head to foot. Jazz walked slowly forward, still mesmerized, but what kept him silent was the frantic whirl of Thundercracker's spark. In it, he saw panic, but it wasn't just panic. That would be like saying the tightening of his own spark when he barreled into combat was only fear. It was, but it wasn't, and that other feeling was overpowering in small doses. The dosage Starscream poured into his ex-wingmate's audio drugged Thundercracker in a way that Jazz didn't want to see, couldn't help but see, but it was erotic as a Constructicon-Ratchet orgy.
His fans clicked on, and he didn't bother to lock them down. The whirring sound made the blue Seeker shut off his optic and moan softly.
Jazz wasn't sure what to think of that. He wasn't sure what to think about how he was reacting to it, either. Starscream's voice scraped acidic, sharp-edged shrapnel over Thundercracker's punctured ego, and Jazz's fans busily whirred away. That rogue subprocessor made a small note relating to how Starscream apparently saw him, and an electric sort of excitement seeped into his fuel lines. Politics, military procedure, and personal lives might yet balance with peace if he could only juggle this right!
"What does that make you, Thundercracker? Nothing. Nothing," the Air Commander shot a piercing glare at Jazz, and the Autobot almost took a step back, "but a frag-toy auctioned off for someone else's pleasure. That was no bribe this Autobot accepted. That was the Armada paying him to take ownership of you. You're owned, Thundercracker. By an Autobot, a ground-pounder, and from now on, you're going to be at his feet unless he orders you elsewhere." A hand with battered knuckles forced Thundercracker's head around. The shattered optic lit again in time to see Starscream bare his teeth in a smile that held no pity whatsoever. The fluttering spark whirled faster, and there was a faint scent of overheated circuitry as the damaged mech's fans failed to keep up with his rising temperature. "Do you understand? You're not my wingmate. You're not an officer. You're not even a Decepticon. You're not even a flyer. Until I say differently, you are nothing," his optics slid sidelong like a dagger slipping across Thundercracker's dented cheek, and Jazz met the red gaze evenly, "but his toy. A pet."
He flung Thundercracker's face away as if shaking his hand free of used oil. It took the restrained mech off-guard and nearly sent him face-first into the rust at Jazz's feet. "A courting gift, Jazz. Use him as you will," Starscream sneered to the Autobot, and Thundercracker's shuddering seized up once, twice.
A skittering ring of blue charge flashed out from under the wounded Seeker as he overloaded hard enough to spit spark plasma out onto the rust. That knocked out the last of his balance, and the Seeker collapsed prone on the ground, helm pressed against the side of Jazz's foot. For a stunned second, there was only the uneven vent of hot air against the Autobot's tire.
Then Starscream laughed shrilly and grabbed one blue wing. "You would like that!"
The Air Commander surged to his feet, hauling Thundercracker back into position as he went. The blue Seeker cut off a pained yelp as his wounds protested. He swayed, trying to find a way to sit back on his thrusters that didn't hurt. He knelt there resetting his optics as Starscream bent to retrieve his chosen whip from the ground. Starscream used it to tip up Thundercracker's chin, directing the crippled mech's solitary dazed optic toward Jazz as if displaying the 'courting gift' to his intended.
Maybe it was Jazz's assessment programs failing under the onslaught of new underwriting, but he thought he saw satisfaction cross Starscream's face when the blue Seeker made an incoherent noise of scrambled processors. Thundercracker was three overloads in and recovering more slowly each time. Even taking into account damaged ventilation systems causing more frequent heat-dumps, the abused Seeker was enjoying this. Despite himself - or so he wanted it to seem. Enjoying himself immensely, if Acid Storm hadn't just been feeding Jazz an epic lie.
That was entirely possible. But this close, catching the shadow of smug achievement under Starscream's smirk and watching the slow, sated swirl of Thundercracker's spark…Jazz didn't think so.
The swirling spin tripped into a quick whirl when Thundercracker reset his optics one last time and finally registered who he was looking up at. Shame and fear made him jerk his chin off the whip in order to look away. "Jazz."
Starscream's wrist twisted and flicked, and the whip cracked across the wide, exposed expanse of the kneeling Seeker's wings. Caught unprepared, Thundercracker cried out and rocked forward on his knees.
"Is that how you address a superior officer?" the Air Commander demanded, red optics catching and holding Jazz's visor.
"Sir!" Thundercracker rocked under the whip again, biting back a cry this time. He looked up at Jazz uncertainly. The saboteur could practically see him searching files frantically. What was the this grounder's proper rank, anyway? Like he knew Autobot rank titles?! "Lieutenant?" the blue Seeker ventured.
The Autobot could only see him out of peripheral vision, but he didn't acknowledge the tentative guess. 'Wrong, Thundercracker.' Starscream struck out again, and neither of them looked down at the strained grunt. Red optics burned, but it wasn't like Jazz was a ice sculpture. Something that hot got a reaction from him, alright. "Autobot Lieutenant officer!" was cried out between them. The black-and-white mech took slow steps forward as if walking against a strong current. He held Starscream's gaze as fiercely as the Decepticon whipped the pink flanges down. "Jazz, sir! I - I don't know what -"
The whip fell again, but Jazz's last step nestled his foot between Thundercracker's spread thighs. The blue Seeker's words cut off with a strangled sound even before the whip struck yet again. The Autobot stood, one foot between the kneeling mech's legs and one arm holding two ration cubes to his chest, and looked into Starscream's optics from a distance of a whip and an arm. The air between them had a near-visible heatwave distortion. Audience where? Vos what? Decepticons - who cared?
"I believe you're mine," Jazz murmured, and he didn't break the stare-down. He knew what his voice could do to mechs. Starscream had that surprising drop in his vocal range, but Jazz had a berth-voice that purled words into a silken nest mechs wanted to curl up into. Carly had once commented that he and Barry White should have a voice-baby made of sex and cozy blankets on winter nights. Spike had blushed beet red but agreed later, once his wife was out of the room.
Thundercracker just stared upward, shattered optic wide, as the soft accent rolled over him with the purring undertone of a high-performance car engine. For all that Jazz was talking to him, the Autobot never even looked down. The air over Thundercracker's head was thick enough to slice, and the sleek grounder smiled slightly under the steady blue of his visor at Starscream.
He didn't look down even as he told the kneeling Seeker, "You should address me as such."
Starscream's optics narrowed into glowing slits, but it wasn't a glare. Looking into his optics was like trying to read information off a wiped disk, but with the emotional depth of the Pit and the snapping flames of an inferno behind cracked glass. Jazz stared into the abyss, and the abyss stared back. His fans hummed under that gaze. He'd known confronting the Air Commander would be difficult, but he hadn't expected it to be quite this hot.
"…lord?" Thundercracker offered cautiously, and flinched as the lash snapped over his wingtip. The foot between his thighs shifted, pushing against that panel Skywarp had delighted to torment, and the flinch turned into an uncomfortable squirm. The whip cracked over his wingtip again, and Thundercracker couldn't help but jerk away. "I don't understand!" he rushed out, trying to angle the abused wing away, but Starscream mercilessly brought the whip down: crack! "Tell," Thundercracker's deep voice jumped, "me what you want me to say!"
Now Jazz looked down. It transferred all that built-up heat-pressure to the Seeker helplessly squirming at his feet. It funneled the intensity of a desert sun through a magnifying glass and nailed the smelter door shut. Jazz looked down, and Thundercracker melted into the Autobot's silken voice. "If you're my toy, you're not my enemy or one of my mechs. You're my pet. So what's that make me?"
The whip snapped, but this time the Seeker threw himself back into it. Away from the Autobot, and out of the pleasant, heated haze muddling his processors. "No!" Denial painted Thundercracker's face in lurid, revolted desperation. "Slag you to the Pit, Autobot - no mech is my master!"
Denying the inevitable, and Jazz felt a stab of pity catch his spark. Body language spoke of refusal, but under the surface flared desire. Thundercracker's exposed spark sped up and started giving off excited little flares. The blue Seeker's bound torso recoiled violently, but the move forced the bar under his wings to arch his back struts, which ground the poor mech's pelvic plating against Jazz's foot. Damaged vents stuttered. Denial dropped straight into a sick craving.
A moment later the whip fell again, and the Seeker shuddered all over, spark crackling as he tried to stop his own hips from working. Jazz couldn't tell if Thundercracker even knew what he wanted at this point. The flyer was all but pressed along the length of Jazz's leg as he arched and struggled, and Starscream ruthlessly whipped one wingtip until smoke rose from the burnt metal.
The Air Commander was still focused upon the Autobot Third-in-Command, however. Thundercracker was a means for them to meet here, not the main cause. This wasn't about him. It was about the two officers standing above him.
It felt inevitable that Jazz would look up again, meet that smelter-depth heat in Starscream's optics, so he refused to do it. He focused on Thundercracker instead, because while none of this was really about the powerless mech, Jazz refused to ignore him.
Decepticons juggled politics, militaries, and personal lives differently than Autobots. It…might not be a matter of 'softer' emotions or sincerity. Decepticons might love, but Autobots showed it more easily. In a new era of peace, the Decepticons were going to have to get used to Autobots participating in their three-ring circus. Jazz could juggle just fine, and it was time to direct things like a ringmaster. Thundercracker wasn't going to be a forgotten sideshow among Jazz's priorities. Starscream was just going to have to deal with that fact.
So he carefully bent and placed the cubes on the ground beside Thundercracker while Starscream settled into a rhythm, and he didn't look up into the smoldering optics waiting for him. The Seeker at his feet struggled hard enough that the bar under his wings wedged up against the hinges, but all that did was angle his wings into the lash. Screams choked down into grunts. Warbuild or not, Thundercracker was so heavily damaged that an extensive whipping could be dangerous. More obvious yet, he couldn't block the pain of the whip. The mech had just overloaded. Jazz had once stubbed his foot after overloading and hopped around convinced he'd broken something. Overloading primed a mech's sensor grid, and following an overload with a flogging was supremely cruel.
Or, frag, it could be a fantasy come true. Jazz didn't know.
He sank down slowly, sliding onto his own knees. Incidentally, it also slid his body down the length of Thundercracker's torso. His leg and hip actually slipped into the gaping hole that had been the flyer's cockpit, sliding down, and the very edges of a plasma-hot spark corona brushed against Jazz's far cooler armor plating.
A true scream ripped from Thundercracker, and the light behind his shattered optic lit far beyond normal parameters. He thrashed feebly, trying with joint-popping effort to push into the Autobot's leg. Starscream laughed as the blue Seeker's wings went absolutely rigid, no longer trying to evade the lash as spark-deep pleasure ramped Thundercracker's sensor grid past pain.
The Autobot sank down, unhurried. He intentionally turned the motion into a graceful, extended caress of the kneeling mech. He settled his knees on either side of Thundercracker's left thigh, straddling the flyer's undamaged hip. At this angle, his own thigh lodged firmly between Thundercracker's and pressed against that neglected, abused, teased panel. The blue Seeker's helm fell forward, thunking onto Jazz's shoulder. This close, the Autobot could hear the rapidfire clicking of a vocalizer trying to reset against emergency shutdown. Even so, a gleeping sobbed noise escaped the Decepticon: an involuntary sound of need and pleasure and pain all in one.
Jazz could feel the way he trembled, gathering self-control strand by strand in order not to buck against the Autobot's thigh. Starscream targeted the other wingtip. The trembling broke into shivers.
Kindness and manipulation twined in Jazz's spark. His visor shut off, and for a moment of no visual input, he drew up archived memories from back before the Ark. There had been a time before his duties as Head of Special Operations and Autobot Third had put him in too prominent and risky a position, and he needed the memories of that time right now. A status bar began filling in on his HUD: 'file unpacking in process.'
He pushed his hips forward, riding up on Thundercracker's leg and back down. He undulated, thigh and body rubbing just a little, just enough, and the glitched, hitching vocalizer error-noise became a steady stream of little whimpers. The Seeker turned his helm away but bent over more to press the side of his face into the Autobot's upper arm under the tire. Thundercracker was desperate to hide but unable to stop wanting. Jazz could feel the hot pant of overworked vents, and the status bar blipped completion.
He remembered. The face had been red, not silver, the helm white instead of black, but Jazz smiled just as warmly at the back of this dark helm. Tracks had sobbed under the pain Ratchet had grimly scratched in, one peel of metal at a time, and Jazz had held him as he'd broken. Tracks had far more trauma under his vain exterior mask than most mechs suspected. He'd been unable to let go any other way. This? Not the same. But Thundercracker's ordeal was still oddly similar.
Jazz pulled up remembered duty because it was the only experience he really had to go on in this situation. He looked up, visor unfocused, and for an unsettling moment Ratchet's red and white wavered on top of Starscream's blue and red like a transparent overlay. He looked down again.
One hand lifted to touch Thundercracker's unseen face, but the Seeker tried to turn further into the Autobot's arm. "Is it so bad?" that velvety voice soothed him. "Autobots take care of our pets. We never hurt them, and we always make sure they want what we give them." Thundercracker was flinching now in time to the whip, and the hand persisted until it found his cheek. The fingers curled, smoothing the backs down the dented surface. "You gotta want this, Thundercracker. I'm not gonna do anything to you y' don't ask for. If you tell me 'no,' I'm gonna stop. But if you want this…I'll take care of you."
The Autobot's armor vibrated with the deep thrum of a high-performance car engine, and Thundercacker pressed his face into it harder. Jazz hummed softly, swamping the Seeker with almost enough comfort to drown out the sharp stripes of pain lashed over his wings, one burnt line at a time. The fingers stroked in time, petting him, and it was the worst humiliation such a proud mech could ever suffer
So it made no sense that the crippled flyer would push his face into the gentle touch, but he did. "You gotta tell me, Thundercracker. You gotta agree, and you gotta talk. You gotta let me know what y' want me to do."
Thundercracker trembled, trying to burrow further into that rich voice, that purring motor, but the fingers insistently urged his chin up and away. Jazz's blue visor was waiting. Thundercracker's resistance melted as thoroughly as his back struts. He pushed forward into the black hand on his face.
"Do you get what I'm sayin'?" Jazz asked him, infinitely tender. "I'm an Autobot. I gotta know you want this. I'll give you what you need, but only if I know it's what you want, too."
Starscream laughed, sharp as a knife. The whip paused just so he could lean over them. "And the Autobots say I'm cruel?" His hand idly fell on one half-melted wingtip and twisted, but Thundercracker only moaned and helplessly arched his back struts down.
It pushed the blue Seeker's face further into Jazz's hand, and the Autobot's smile held a saint's mercy. The black-and-white mech cupped the suffering flyer's face in his hand and hummed a snatch of lullaby. The sound had all the connotations of a hymn sung in Hell, and Thundercracker moaned again. He arched the other way, offering his back to Starscream in order to burrow into that comfort.
"Oh, Jazz," the Air Commander breathed, and while the Autobot's face slanted up to share the smile, that blue visor never left Thundercracker. "I do believe I've sorely underestimated your capacity for vengeance. What on Cybertron did he do to earn this from you?"
"This isn't vengeance," Jazz's free hand reached down and picked up one of the ration cubes. "You gave me a pet, Starscream. What'd you think I was gonna do with him?" He set it on the unstable flat of the thigh held between his legs. The top opened with minimal fiddling, and Jazz dipped his thumb in. "That leaves me responsible for his care. I don't know what his limits are. I don't know what he likes, or what he hates. I gotta ask, and he's gotta answer."
The hand on Thundercracker's face raised it up. Jazz smiled into the unfocused, broken optic and brought his other hand up. Pink energon dripped down the side of his hand into his palm, but his thumb carefully smeared the majority of it across the blue Seeker's bottom lip. "I don't break my toys," the Autobot hummed to them both. "I like to play with them again - "
Thundercracker's tongue flicked out unconsciously, and Jazz's thumb swept back the other direction.
" - and again."
Half-hypnotized, the Seeker stared into the blue visor and licked his lips. The energon vanished into hungry systems bled out by the challenge, and a small sound of need whined out of the depths of Thundercracker's drained tanks: 'More.' The Autobot's thumb left momentarily and returned dripping more pink fuel. The hungry whine pitched higher when the fumes registered. Thundercracker didn't realize it, but his mouth had dropped slightly open. Wanting and waiting to be fed. Needing this, as a growing glaze of desire spread over his face in the excited sparklight from his open chest.
This time, Jazz took his time tracing the line of energon across the pale curve of Thundercracker's lower lip. There were two splits near the middle, no longer leaking but still ragged enough to snag his finger on the edges. He made sure to coat the wounds with an extra layer of energon, and there was a soft, unmistakable whimper when Thundercracker tongued the cuts to get the last of it out. Jazz's smile widened. If his right hand hadn't still been cradling Thundercracker's jaw, he wouldn't have noticed the almost imperceptible pressure; the Seeker had chased after the thumb leaving his lip.
He dipped his forefinger into the cube this time, and however slight the motion, the Seeker definitely lunged to meet it.
"You have no idea how cruel you're being, do you?" Starscream asked, but his question had a vague approval to it. Jazz could see him at the corner of his vision standing behind Thundercracker's wing, hand on his hip and whip's tip resting on the ground as he watched.
Jazz slanted that smile at him again, but his attention remained on the slow, smooth slide of his forefinger. He let it rest for a moment on one of the cuts, and there was a barely-there sensation against the very tip. The tiniest lick, hidden behind a quivering lip. His smile was directed at Starscream, but his processors sang triumphantly for the nearly-inaudible sound of disappointment from Thundercracker when he took his forefinger away.
"I'm doing exactly what you 'Cons do, according to Acid Storm," he informed the Air Commander. "I'm just not playin' your games. He's my pet, and I'll treat him good, but we're gonna do this my way. I don't know what all's Decepticon power-games and what's really wanted, here. So he's gonna tell me what he wants, or we're not doing anything."
"That is far more twisted than I ever gave you credit for." There was a strange sort of respect implied in that statement, and Jazz's smile was all for the Air Commander this time. Admittedly, it was a sly smile, but Jazz thought the respect had a tinge of interest in it when Starscream mused, "Killing with kindness is still killing. Autobots may have more to their ways of thought than I'd previously assumed."
The unpleasantly screechy voice Starscream was notorious for was steadily dropping toward that rasping husk. Even after everything that had happened in the past two nights, it managed to trip something very like desire down underneath Jazz's back armor. He hid it by tending to his new 'toy.' Another fingerful of dripping pink was transferred in the slowest, most inefficient way possible up to Thundercracker's mouth.
Starscream eyed it. "You're going to make him admit, out loud, in front of an audience of his peers, that he wants this degrading little fantasy. Just," he remarked, "so you know he wants it."
Putting it that way did sort of lay out just how terrible his Autobot morals seemed in this situation. "Asking consent is never wrong," Jazz repeated his own thoughts from earlier, from watching entire units team up to give one of their own a chance at being beaten. Because that was what was wanted. "This isn't a fantasy. It's reality," he said solemnly.
"That just makes it worse," the Air Commander pointed out, bending down again to wrench the wingtip he'd mangled earlier. Thundercracker made a strangled sound around the fingertip now in his mouth, and Jazz had to control a start of surprise when the blue Seeker responded by desperately sucking his finger in deeper. "You're going to give him the scenario of his dreams, but laying it out for everyone to see like this - "
" - is what he wants, or so I've been told," Jazz interrupted. He pulled his finger free and got another fingerful of pink fuel. Instead of coating pale lips with it, however, he just offered it to Thundercracker. The Seeker made a small noise, a sound like fragile things breaking, and shut off his flickering optic. An expression of pain beyond physical hurt crossed his face. But he lifted his head to take the Autobot's finger into his mouth all on his own.
"You can say no," Jazz said to him, and his gentleness hurt. "I'll stop, Thundercracker. I promise."
It was manipulation like the fine silk of a spider's web: even the slightest show of strength and will could easily break it, but this Autobot was so skilled he'd turned the fine lines into a safety net. Breaking free condemned the ensnared as fully as being caught in the first place. This was the Autobot's Head of Special Operations at work, traversing the complicated knots of the Decepticon network and tying his own threads into their pattern.
If Jazz weren't so hyper-aware of what he was doing right here and now, he wouldn't even see it. It was a problem that truly needed to be addressed by the Autobots, and soon. This was part of what was making it so hard for the Autobots and Decepticons to negotiate peace. They were playing the same social game, but on completely different levels. Jazz's offer was yet another move in the game, but until tonight, he hadn't been aware of the complexity of the Decepticons' rules of play. He hadn't really even been aware of the Autobots' version. There was a vast difference between unspoken rules and explicitly stated ones. This was something that had to be dealt with - but not now. Right now, he had other issues to deal with.
The flare of sparklight was so bright it would blind anyone looking directly at it, but Thundercracker had gradually shrunk into a miserable huddle around it. As the two mechs talked over his head, the blue Seeker had compacted into himself. He couldn't physically get smaller, but his shoulders had hunched and he'd cringed toward the ground. Which had practically doubled him over into Jazz's lap, open cockpit close enough to shimmer plasma spark-heat onto the Autobot's thigh. For all that he seemed to want to vanish into the rust, his face remained upturned, cradled in Jazz's palm as the smaller mech fed him fuel, fingerful by fingerful.
Each time, the Autobot's finger lingered longer. Forefinger was joined by the middle two, and the Seeker couldn't seem to stop himself. He couldn't keep his mouth closed or his tongue from licking them until they were cleaned. Couldn't stop licking them after the energon was gone. Jazz could only imagine why. Was it because they tasted like energon and Autobot, rust and road grit, dishonor and everything he'd ever held in contempt from his superior vantage-point in the sky? Did he want the taste that badly, swallowing down all the scorn now heaped upon him, the rankless loser, the courting-gift frag-toy? His tongue lapped at the saboteur's fingers, curled around them, and pulled them deeper into his mouth each time.
Jazz could only give him what he wanted. His fingers pressed down on the Seeker's tongue, curving the pliable metal under their pressure, and stroked the chemical receptors lining the top of his mouth. Thundercracker whimpered, hiding in the darkness behind his offline optic as if to block out the entire arena watching them, and swallowed around black fingertips. Jazz lifted his hand, and Thundercracker obligingly bent his neck back until the cables strained. The fingers pulled up and away, leaving his mouth open for their violation, and when they defiled him again, he suckled energon and tank-churning pleasure off them.
All of which Jazz and Starscream watched, because it was becoming blatantly obvious just how much the mech between them was enjoying this. Jazz didn't look up despite the almost tangible feel of red optics gliding over him. Observing him, evaluating him. Re-evaluating him, perhaps, in the way his fingers thrust in and out of Thundercracker's mouth. The Air Commander absently fiddled at Thundercracker's wingtip, bending back and forth to strain the melted metal. Thundercracker groaned and arched, but as soon as his back went down, it pushed back up in order to lift his mouth toward the feeding.
"What does it matter to you, anyway?" Jazz asked quietly. He let Thundercracker nurse off his fingers, but his question was for Starscream. "You've already ruined him. His reputation will be shot," the blue wing shuddered under the Air Commander's hand, "but it's not like you were going to take him back into your wing when this was over." His voice lilted slightly, not quite asking.
His visor finally rose to meet that red gaze, questioning. Starscream's heavy stare slammed into him, a near physical force, and it didn't matter that they were in the middle of an arena. It didn't matter how Thundercracker's spark whirled or the way the defeated Seeker writhed between them. For that moment, it was just the two of them, and Jazz couldn't decide if they were mortal enemies or about to interface each other right there in the rust.
One cracked red optic reset, nearly too quick to be seen. Jazz's visor flickered surprise. "True," Starscream conceded, giving one last twist to Thundercracker's wing. The tip came away in his hand, trailing wires, and the blue Seeker choked a scream around Jazz's fingers. "His…tastes…were really only forbidden because of his rank. Without that," the whip lifted as Starscream shrugged, "he's just one more grunt with a fetish."
"An ex-officer."
"Mmhmm. Well, demotion happens." The Air Commander's optics shifted, expanding out of their narrow focus on Jazz to look at the audience. The crowd noise had been parsed out and de-prioritized by Jazz's audio sensors in favor of Thundercracker's small sounds, but he was abruptly all-too-aware of the roar of cooling fans and the chatter of 600+ Decepticons. "It makes a good show to distract the rabble from causing trouble," Starscream noted, knife-edge smile slashing across the combat-dents on his face.
He gave the Autobot a pointed look and suddenly darted his hand down to catch Jazz's wrist when the Autobot's hand went to dip into the open cube. Jazz stiffened but glared up at him fearlessly as the Air Commander lifted their hands. Pink fuel dribbled down the smaller mech's fingers and scattered droplets onto Thundercracker's helm and shoulder. Starscream gave him a crooked smirk and bent forward over the blue Seeker toward him. His head angled, red optics staring hotly around the black hand held between them.
"So you had better get on with it," Starscream purred, all damaged armor and danger. Then, never once looking away, he licked from wrist to fingertip, catching the dribbling energon on his tongue. Jazz tensed, startled, but otherwise didn't move. His hand remained relaxed. Starscream turned his head a bit and gave an extra lick to the join between thumb and forefinger before releasing his hold.
The blue of his visor darkened to something sultry, but Jazz's face was a mask of calm. His hand slowly dropped to rest on his thigh, subtly drawing into a loose fist, and it wasn't because there was a tingling streak painted across his palm. Really, it wasn't. Sort of how he wasn't looking at the faint sheen of pink fluid on the side of Starscream's lower lip.
For a moment, there was a leap in his chest like Thundercracker's wildly spinning spark. Fortunately, his reactions weren't so exposed.
"That's up to this gift of yours," his tone poked right back at the Air Commander. "It's his choice."
Thundercracker whined softly and turned his face into the hand still holding his jaw. It was the universe's worst attempt at hiding, but it was really all the poor mech had left as the Autobot's thumb caressed his cheek. Denial had evaporated away.
"Tell me 'no', and I'll give the money back," Jazz told him. "But you have to tell me, one way or another, what you want."
Starscream laughed, but the sound was lost in the snap of the whip. Thundercracker juddered, armor shredded and dignity utterly destroyed. A conflicted, constricted noise blew against Jazz's palm, thin and metallic. The whip cracked. The Air Commander fell into a punishing rhythm: a figure-eight meant to score both blue wings equally. Thundercracker jolted and flinched under it. His face turned further into the Autobot's palm in an unconscious search for comfort amidst the punishment.
"Thundercracker." Jazz sounded so gentle. So kind. The absolute opposite of the mech searing burn marks into Thundercracker's precious wings. The Seeker's mouth opened against the black palm, but all that came out was a gasp as the whip fell again. Jazz shifted his hand, returning to smoothing the backs of his fingers down Thundercracker's contorted face. "Poor pet," he crooned. "Are you gonna let me take care of you?"
He kept his voice and hands gentle, treating Thundercracker like the mech were a spun-sugar sculpture instead of a Decepticon warrior. It both helped and hindered the blue mech's pain-addled thoughts, and he knew it. And he deliberately took all that careful handling and used it like the weapon it was: "Nobody else wants you, after all."
Thundercracker's head jerked around, shattered optic online and incredulous as it snapped upward. But the shock dimmed as quickly as it came. Said in that voice, under the slow stroke of those hands, it demolished any tattered remnants of hope. The Seeker searched his face, but there was nothing but sympathy in the line of the black-and-white grounder's mouth. Sympathy, and also honesty, because there was no one stepping forward from the audience. There was only the ex-wingmate whipping him, and the Autobot he'd been given to.
The blue visor was opaque, hiding Jazz's thoughts, but it never wavered. Two fingers dipped into the forgotten energon cube, and they slowly drew out. Thundercracker winced as the lash hit a particularly vulnerable sensor cluster, but his optic followed that hand as it rose toward his mouth. Pink dribbled onto Thundercracker's thigh, down the Autobot's wrist and arm, but the black hand stopped just out of reach.
Jazz waited. Patiently. Refusing to push. Refusing to make the choice for him.
Refusing to allow him to keep that scant piece of pride.
Thundercracker flinched under the whip and whispered an answer to the ground.
The pink-coated fingers came a little closer, but Jazz's free hand curled under the Seeker's chin and made him look up at him. "Yes…what?"
The fingers traced over his split lip, but Thundercracker didn't lick at the energon. He just looked up at the Autobot with the most thoroughly beaten expression Jazz had ever seen. "Yes, I - I want you to take care of me." Another pass of the fingers, and they rested on the Seeker's bottom lip as if waiting. Thundercracker's mouth moved against them, and he swallowed like it hurt. It probably had. Humility never went down easily. "…master."
He humbly bowed his head, and the hand under his chin let him. When he lapped at the Autobot's fingers this time, they slid past his lips in one long stroke like they were claiming his mouth as their own. If there had been any resistance stiffening the Seeker's back struts, it crumbled into hot little pieces before that claim. The whip rose and fell, but Thundercracker all but melted down into Jazz's lap, optic dimming and bliss arcing sparklight in fitful spurts across the Autobot's thighs as he sucked and licked and made undignified, tiny, weak noises.
The overload was building, pulsing in time with the fingers thrusting in and out of Thundercracker's mouth, and the watching blue visor judged the Seeker too close. The hand on his chin held him steady. Instead of pulling away to refresh their coating of energon, black fingers matched the rhythm of the whip.
Pain in striped out his wings in and it felt out too fragging in good out in out in oh Primus in out.
"Don't fight it," silk and velvet and sliding fingers, but still an order, and in oh yes out yes.
Thundercracker tore his mouth free and bit into the closest thing at hand - Jazz's bumper, which did not help - but the strangled shout got out anyway. "Master!"
Out of the periphery of his vision, Jazz saw a strange emotion cross Starscream's face as Thundercracker shuddered into a fourth overload.
He couldn't put a name to that emotion. But Jazz didn't rule out that it might be love.
[* * * * *]
End Pt. 16
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