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. 17
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"I must admit," Starscream said under the wild sound of the arena bursting into cheers, "I did not expect him to surrender so readily."
"Because he's that proud, or because I'm an Autobot?" The hand petting Thundercracker's helm continued its steady, soothing strokes, but Jazz's shrewd look was anything but soothing. He directed it over the blue Seeker's hunched back at Starscream. "Maybe I'm really just that good."
The Air Commander cocked his head, eyeing the Autobot right back. "Yes."
Jazz started to say something back and paused. It took a moment to parse that singularly unhelpful agreement. "…yes to what?"
"Exactly."
"You smug bastard," Jazz grumbled, amused despite himself.
A smile tugged at Starscream's lips, and sadly, Jazz was getting used to the fact that he seemed to fixate on them given half a chance. "You are well aware of the fact that I don't have a father. Why question the legitimacy of a fictional ancestor?"
Oh, so they were back to word games and banter? "I'm questionin' whether that rusty lawnmower in your background had a legal connection to the toaster oven it fragged to produce you," he said in all seriousness as he used the hand petting Thundercracker's helm to bring the dazed Seeker's face into view. Passive scans indicated damaged systems were recovering at a cripplingly-slow pace, and Thundercracker's lack of response to the conversation backed that up. The injuries from the challenge had been severe to start with; multiple overloads on top of that were doing him no favors. Although they probably weren't hurting him, considering the alternative.
Speaking of which, Starscream fingered the whip flanges thoughtfully. "That seems excessively crude," he said, mildly reproving.
Banter was a step in the right direction, believe it or not. Jazz wasn't stupid enough to think this was a return to actual courting, but it was an improvement. "Says the mech who just watched me overload someone in front of him," he snarked back. "If that's not crude, apparently I need to step up my game."
For a betraying second, the Air Commander looked intrigued. Jazz gave him the dirtiest grin he could dredge up on short notice. He ruthlessly stepped on the rogue subprocessor that not-helpfully popped up a few suggestions in the back of his mind. Banter, not outright verbal molestation!
It was also really not helping that his fans were whirring away, trying to disperse heat from overworked systems. Bad Jazz. He wasn't supposed to be…well, not liking, but - but - okay, so he didn't usually practice denial of the obvious, but Jazz shied away from calling what he felt enjoyment. He'd always relished being the center of attention, and pulling one over on the Decepticons was a source of vast professional glee, but 'enjoyment' seemed so…inexcusable.
He looked down at his hand where it stroked Thundercracker's helm and pulled it away quickly. This was not the time to get attached. The blue Seeker was a means to an end, and if Jazz couldn't maintain professional detachment, then he should tender his resignation of office to Optimus Prime. The Head of Special Operations had to be a calm, cool, collected officer under every circumstance.
And if anyone actually believed that, then they'd never taken a plan into combat and watched it fall apart. Jazz sighed pent-up hot air and brought his hand back up to Thundercracker's head. Self-denial of a manifesting control fetish aside, his ability to invest totally inappropriate enthusiasm into his work was what had propelled him up the ranks. SpecOps operatives blended into any situation. Jazz had simply honed his natural talent at it into an unsurpassed weapon, and his ability to switch personality gears at the drop of a pin was an additional sharp edge. That did mean he tended toward emotional involvement in his work.
That didn't mean he wouldn't assassinate a Decepticon after cuddling him.
Jazz's brand of professionalism had the side benefit of giving bystanders whiplash trying to keep up.
"I look forward to whatever voyeuristic tricks your garbage disposal ancestry has gifted you with," Starscream said, and Jazz was reminded once again that, of all mechs, this one was perfectly capable of keeping up with his mental gymnastics. He looked up, and the Air Commander drew the whip through his hands underneath a leer so filthy it ought to have been edited for content.
Jazz's fans kicked up a notch.
The dark helm resting against the Autobot's hood rolled to one side, thankfully derailing the conversation before it could nosedive into the gutter. "Mrrbruh?" Thundercracker mumbled, blinking his poorly-functional optic through reset several times. The disoriented sound could be barely heard over the crowd's ribald shouting.
"My princess awakens," Jazz announced grandly, and his teasing tone didn't so much as hint at how gratefully he grabbed the distraction. "Wakey, wakey." He patted the mech's cheek with his fingertips. "Y' with us yet, dearest?" He got another confused mumble for his pains, and the Autobot grinned. "And evidence says: I really am that good."
Starscream snorted and took a step back, swinging the whip in a crackling swish through thin air. The sound had Thundercracker flinching without being functional enough to even process what he'd heard. The Air Commander's face held a haughty arrogance familiar to anyone who'd ever seen him debate battle plans with Megatron. Facts were weapons when this mech used them. "He'd have overloaded for Skywarp, too. It doesn't take much under the right circumstances."
A bright grin under a brighter visor flashed up at the standing Seeker. "I thought you didn't expect him to surrender so quick?"
"But you'll note I didn't say he wouldn't have eventually surrendered," Starscream pointed out.
"So I guess it's up t' me to 'face him better than Skywarp ever co - oop!" Jazz pulled his attention back down as Thundercracker suddenly jerked his head up to stare at him. "Hi there," the Autobot chirped cheerfully, waving with his free hand. His other hand now rested on Thundercracker's shoulder, half support and half restraint.
The blue Seeker made an awful sound. It was partly an unbooted vocalizer trying to initialize before it was ready, but some of the sound came directly from the expression of dread creeping over Thundercracker's face. The empty pit that had been an optic widened in sync with the broken lens that still worked, and the split lips thinned into a tense line in anticipation of something Jazz couldn't even name. Mockery, probably, if Starscream's contempt for his surrender were any indication.
But just because Jazz's coding was picking up and integrating Vosian traits didn't make him a Decepticon. Besides, SpecOps operatives didn't do predictable. They didn't survive long if they did.
He lowered his voice to a berth-ready purr that came straight from his engine. "Beautiful," he drew out, reaching to cup the Seeker's face and rub his thumb over the dented faceplate. "Just beautiful. I wish you could of seen what I saw. You overload like a gift - my gift. My treasure. They can watch," his visor flickered, indicating the slowly-quieting audience, "but you're mine. Just mine, t' keep or to share, and can't you hear how much they wanna share you? They want you. They want you bad, but you're mine, Thundercracker. My pet, my beautiful pet."
Thundercracker's mouth drooped open slightly into a soft, vulnerable shape of shock and awe, optic wide and dim under the barrage of unexpected praise. The compliments poured over him, peppered with firm reaffirmations of ownership, and Jazz kept his hands gentle as they stroked. He touched the Seeker like he would a wounded turbo-fox on the cusp of running - or attacking. With Decepticons, either outcome was equally likely. Black fingertips stroked down the slack faceplates, counting the dents. They traced the broken helm vents, assiduously straightening the bent fins, and rubbed slow, hypnotic circles along the Seeker's jawline until they could run down the sides of his neck. The thumbs lingered on his throat linkages, deft as a medic's. Black hands settled in a strangler hold, a claiming grip of mine, and then they moved on. Across the shoulders, dancing over the cracks and walking fingertips over battered plating as if assessing property damage.
And through it all, the cotton-soft dabbing of tender words on a crushed ego. "Look at you. You're like a crippled gyro-falcon with your broken wings. I wanna take you home, fix you up, tame you to hand…Primus, I wanna launch you back into the sky and bring you down again to kneel like this. Kneeling under me, under my hands. Do you know what it's like t' get my hands on something so magnificent? Someone so wild? I've seen how gorgeous you are on the battlefield, but that's nothing compared to this. It's like watching birds at a distance or having a bird in a cage. I wanna put you in that cage and have you to myself forever. No more sky for you, little birdie. I'm gonna hold onto you, ground you permanently. I want you at my feet because you're mine, you're mine, you're gorgeous and you're mine."
The hands darted back to the Seeker's throat, clasping firmly until Thundercracker made a small noise of bewildered protest, and they were away again, this time exploring the ragged hinge where his cockpit canopy had previously been. "You've been brought down, Decepticon, and you're all mine. You lasted the whole war tearing apart the skies, admired by all of us, feared by everyone, but now you're down here with me. Under me. You aren't a free mech any longer. You're a broken-winged gyro-falcon flopping on the ground, and I can't even tell you how hot you are. How hot it is having someone so powerful like this: helpless before me, under me. You overload, and the crowd goes crazy. Nothing can compare. Nothing."
His hands could feel the tension slipping from the blue Seeker's frame. The words stroked as gently as his hands, pushing the mech little by little back into the right headspace. Thundercracker subsided into the fantasy with a reluctance only matched by his eagerness, and he began squirming. Not away; he arched up into the hands, turning to meet them halfway as he lowered his head to nuzzle at the Autobot's hood. One black hand wrapped around his neck again, kneading fingertips into the exposed circuitry in the cracked linkages at the back, and the soft protest turned into a quiet moan of need. Split lips parted, and Jazz's engine purred approval as the Decepticon almost shyly licked at the stripes of color on his hood. The hand tightened, guiding him along the lines of the '4' in the center.
Jazz's other hand lowered. The first ration cube had been knocked off his lap when Thundercracker had shuddered through overload, but the second was still full. He opened it by feel and dipped his fingers inside. The Autobot's throaty, rumbling berth-voice kept up its litany of possessive praise, and his hand lifted. One headlight was bathed in drips of pink fuel, and the rumble became a growl. An order, backed up by the guidance of an owner's hand.
Thundercracker's voice shook, deep tones pitched unusually low when he saw what he was directed toward. "Yes…yes, master." His head lowered, and, like a good pet, he obeyed.
The Autobot reared up on his knees and threw his head back with a gasp as the Seeker proceeded to clean every drop away.
There was no crowd noise. Background chatter had cut off the moment Thundercracker began responding to Jazz's taming touch, and now there was nothing but the unchecked buzz of cooling fans failing at their duty. The hitching exhale when Jazz sat slowly back down on Thundercracker's thigh was clearly audible. The blue Seeker turned his head to look up at him, licking his lips, and black fingers went right back into the cube. For all that Thundercracker was huddled down like the meekest, most defeated mech, his expression held an avid readiness as he watched those fingers paint the opposite headlight sopping wet with energon. But he waited for orders like an obedient pet.
For his submission, he was rewarded. The hand on his neck guided him toward the new feast, and he went eagerly. The audience's fans rattled and labored in the background, but Jazz's throaty monologue drowned them out. It detailed exactly how much they wanted him, how much they couldn't have him, because he was Jazz's. Jazz wasn't going to share his beautiful Seeker, his lovely prize. They could look, they could watch, but they couldn't have him. They couldn't have Jazz's frag-toy, his pet.
Each new word degraded and uplifted him in one, and Thundercracker's abused ventilation system sent up a whole new slew of warnings. The Autobot could clearly hear the rattletrap burr of inadequate cooling systems. His words shifted just a bit as the Seeker's tongue laved the round metal frame around his headlight.
"What a good pet you are," Jazz crooned, painting his grill dripping pink and raising his visor to shoot a look at Starscream as Thundercracker went after the fuel like his life depended on it. The Air Commander had temporarily ceded the floorshow to them, but the look he leveled on the entwined pair was anything but a bystander's. He met the Autobot's See What I Can Do? look with an unreadable smirk. "Such a good pet," Jazz said to them both. "What a good frag-toy, gettin' fired up for me. I can feel your systems warming up, and Primus Himself would 'face you like this. Look at you! Who wouldn't want you?" He rocked, chest pushing in time with the mouth feeding off him, and his gaze challenged Starscream. "Do you want me, Thundercracker? Do you?"
"Yes," the mech panted against his grill, lapping between words. The Autobot moved into the agile tongue flicking at the metal. "Yes, master, I-I want - I want - "
"What d'you want?" Jazz asked, every inch a devoted owner, but his visor never left Starscream. The Air Commander took a step closer, looming over them both, and the smirk had widened. Jazz's free hand wandered out over the blue stretch of Thundercracker's wing, tweaking the damaged ailerons and thumbing the bent edge. Thundercracker wriggled a bit, nudging his face into the Autobot's grill and whimpering as sensors sent conflicting reports of pain and pleasure. "Does my beautiful pet want another overload?" the saboteur asked sweetly, sugared tone completely over the top and all the more humiliating for it.
That was exactly what pushed Thundercracker's buttons, forcing him to acknowledge out loud what he wanted. He shivered, wings flexing helplessly against the bar wedged under them, and his voice dropped into a near-subsonic pitch. It trembled the fluids in Jazz's lines, he spoke so low and close. "I…yes. Please, yes."
Jazz rewarded him with another long stroke over his wings. Black palms sent out passive scans from embedded sensor suites, and the fingers followed the revealed paths of sensory networks under the plating. They dipped into unsealed cracks to pick at interior struts and wiring alike. The Autobot worked into one large rent and rolled the wires he found there between thumb and forefinger, pinching delicately at the tiny sensor nubs under the metal.
Thundercracker cried out and writhed, biting desperately at the grill he hid his face against. Jazz demurely peered up from under his forehelm at Starscream: 'This could be you.'
He almost faltered when the Air Commander met his sultry come-on with a blatant Oh, Really? look. It all but crawled between Thundercracker and Jazz to join in the fun. "I take it you like my gift?" Starscream asked, mock-solicitous. He bent down and tapped the melted backside of blue wings with the whip. A shock of electricity crackled over the whip-charred plating.
His ex-wingmate only gave a choked cry and turned to nibbling instead of biting. At this point, pain melded seamlessly into pleasure, upping the ante on both.
Jazz's shoulders went back, and he shoved Thundercracker's face brazenly into his grill as he stared defiantly up at the Air Commander. "I'd have preferred a bouquet of roses, t' be honest."
Red optics judged his sincerity. "I see. Bundles of dead vegetation turn your engine? I'll keep that in mind." For the life of him, Jazz really couldn't decide if the mech was being serious. His visor narrowed suspiciously.
Starscream just smiled blandly at him. The burning intensity of his optics never changed, but the Air Commander's expression was deceptively blank as leaned close enough to wash hot air from his helm vents over him. The Autobot didn't know if he were about to be kissed into oblivion or viciously sucker-punched, but either way he couldn't seem to stop watching the slagging mech's lips. Why, by Primus' rusted camshaft, had he fixated on that one body part as erotic?!
"Don't look now, but I do believe Skywarp likes what he sees," Starscream stage-whispered.
…well, that was one way to divert his gaze from a certain mech's too-tempting lips.
He almost looked. Nuts and bolts, Thundercracker almost looked, and Jazz would have laid money on the blue Seeker being too occupied mouthing his bumper to even hear what Starscream said. The Air Commander frowned slightly, and the whip tapped again: mild punishment for stopping his task even for a moment. Thundercracker grunted painfully and went for Jazz's left headlight as if salvation could be found by licking broad swathes across the smooth glass.
Mech was a fragging tease, telling him not to look like that. "'facing someone, huh?" he asked, voice purposefully light. He refused to look. He also refused to let his voice change as Thundercracker ran his tongue around the sensor-laden metal rim of his headlight.
"Rather vigorously." Starscream sounded quite amused, but the husky rasp held more than amusement. It held an entire novel more than amusement.
Thundercracker's wings strained back into the light taps of the whip, moving under the spots of burning electricity but not trying to evade, and the dark curve of the Air Commander's lip smiled. Jazz had to fight to keep his expression neutral. Smelt him, he was watching Starscream's mouth again. This was getting ridiculous.
Those luscious - oh, for Primus' sake - lips curved into an evil smirk as Starscream straightened back to his full height to glance aside, presumably at his 'vigorous' wingmate. "Acid Storm is going to have some difficulty getting airborne if he manages to get his whole fist up that thruster."
That…was more information than he wanted to know. Now he was glad he hadn't looked. "I'm not sure that's physically possible," the saboteur remarked matter-of-factly, "and I don't wanna know for certain." Thundercracker shuddered against his chest, lips suddenly warm and quivering as they worked up toward the center of his hood. Jazz's visor ticked a fraction wider, and not just because the Seeker's tongue began obsessively outlining the number on his hood. Despite the definite perk of interest from one pit-slag subprocessor with kinky interfacing stuck in its solution algorithms, threat assessment kicked over an emergency topic change. "I thought he couldn't frag around outside your trine?"
"I see somebody's been a curious Autobot. Just who's been telling tales on my contract terms, hmm?" Fortunately, that seemed more of side-observation than a real concern, and Starscream only nodded agreement. "He can't. Not without my permission, anyway. Which Acid Storm was quick to acquire, as I take it he was as eager to ease some charge as Skywarp. You are, ah, how shall I say - providing quite the show."
The Air Commander didn't look away from where he was holding the whip pressed to Thundercracker's remaining wingtip. Blue paint bubbled away to black char, then melted into silvery slag as the metal slumped. Silent agony had that entire wing fluttering as every moving part tried to escape, but the blue Seeker held himself rigid. He just licked harder and scraped his teeth across the Autobot's hood, whimpering softly when Jazz's hand squeezed the back of his neck.
The sound was composed of more need than pain, and Jazz used that hand to lift Thundercracker's head. "What a good pet," he crooned to the Seeker, chugging his engine in arousal and approval that had the Decepticon pressing further into to his lap. Sunk so deep in the fantasy, under the spell of Jazz's lazy drawl, even shame had been forgotten. There were only so many processor threads available between the damage reports and self-repair power demands, and the majority of them were being redirected to the magma-spill of hot systems turning joints to rubber and rubber to gummy, heated liquid. "I think my pretty birdie should have a reward," Jazz said, visor sharp no matter how playful his voice. "What d'you need, pet? Tell me what you need to overload."
"Oh, good luck flying on that," Starscream was saying, attention and amusement elsewhere at the moment. "Physically possible, yes, but certainly not physically advisable!"
"My spark," Thundercracker breathed, so low Jazz had to dial his audios up to hear him. "I…my spark." A twist of something more painful than fear pulled his face into a mask, but need stole its strength until the Seeker's face fell into frantic lines again. His systems whined, vents whistling and fans unable to keep up, and Thundercracker sucked in a great gulp of air as if it were courage. "Touch…touch my spark." His shoulders twitched. "Master."
For once, even the Jazzmeister was rendered speechless.
Sparks were off-limits. Even medics didn't open the spark chamber unless a mech was dying. There weren't many circumstances when having it open helped, anyway. By the time an injury involved the spark, it was usually too late. Jazz had seen mechs rip the sparks out of each other on the battlefield, and it was the most brutal way to die. Melting alive in the smelter might be slower pain, but give a mech the choice between execution by spark or smelter, and there'd be a lot of hesitation in that decision.
Kill the body, and a mech was dead. Kill the spark, and…theories varied. It was true that mechs could practically be reconstructed from the personality components out. Case in point: the Combaticons. The Decepticons imprisoned their political dissenters in cell blocks that were nothing more than storage boxes. Inside those boxes, the personality components of each prisoner lay wrapped in their own malleable spark plasma. Starscream had reconstructed the Combaticons using nothing more than old, scrapped vehicles for protoforms and the sheer, long-confined energy of each mech's imprisoned spark.
Sparks were capable of that. They were the one piece of Cybertronians that went beyond machine.
Cybertronians were not robots. Jazz had tried to explain this to the humans for years, but they seemed unable to look beyond the giant metal bodies to the most important part of every Cybertronian: the spark. The Autobots had shied away from relating their sparks to human souls, as religion had been a particular volatile subject on Earth, but it was the closest equivalent Jazz could think of. Sparks had the nebulous, immeasurable, unscientific significance of the soul combined with the placement, physical presence, and emotional connotations of the heart. Unlike a heart, however, they couldn't be replaced.
Destroy the spark, and it didn't matter how preserved the rest of the body was. Even if the body continued functioning, the mech was dead. Processors could be replaced, and personality components were occasionally corrupted. Lose the memory and rust the body, but the spark still contained the fundamental essentials of a mech.
There were atheists and divergent cults aplenty on Cybertron, but the most common theory of spark origins centered on Primus. Through His vessels on Cybertron - only one of which was Vector Sigma - He granted life to Cybertronians. Optimus Prime and Megatron had skirted on heresy by bringing the Aerialbots and Stunticons to Vector Sigma fully formed, but war had muted most everyone's first instinct to protest.
Traditionally, Decepticon or Autobot, only vaguely shaped metal protoforms were presented to be imprinted by the sparks. The first surge of energy from a new life would shape the body as the spark needed. Preprogrammed processors and set transformations had been become more commonplace during the Golden Age, when the Senate began decreeing the necessity of certain bodytypes for state-mandated functions. That had never sat easy on Cybertron.
Personally, Jazz had tried not to think about it. He'd done his stint as an Enforcer bringing in the pre-formed protoforms in and escorting the new-sparked from the crèche-vessels afterward. He had done his best not to think about how the Senate flunkies had examined each new mech and assigned them a life function based on that initial examination. It…hadn't been right, watching sparks slotting into solid code instead of the other way around: the sparks should have written the code and determined what each new mech could be.
Jazz had never been a religious mech, but that could be said of a lot of Autobots nowadays. He had no idea what it was like in the Decepticon ranks. He did know that both sides of the growing civil war had almost stumbled to a halt back when the crèche-vessels stopped working overnight. Say whatever they wanted about Primus not intervening in the war, but even the atheists had hedged around admitting it'd been a fairly clear sign that He didn't approve of creating more of His children to fight and die. Primus wouldn't contribute sparks to either side of the war effort. If Cybertron wanted to kill itself, they'd have to resort to building drones and smart-droids. Which they had, unfortunately.
The Dinobots had been an extremely depressing attempt by Wheeljack to perpetuate their own race. It'd turned out better than expected; they were almost full Cybertronians in everything but sparks. But the sparks weren't there. For as much as the Autobots liked their rampaging brute squad and acknowledged their individual personalities, there were still Autobots who completely refused to interface with them. Because the Dinobots were, in basic terms, glorified robots.
The Aerialbots, on the other wing, had been welcomed into the Ark like the miracles they were. Slag, the Autobots had even welcomed the Stunticons. Both combiners had raw enthusiasm and talent to spare, but neither team should have survived their first decivorn of civil war. Silverbolt was afraid of heights, for frag's sake, but he'd gone toe-to-toe with the Elite of the Decepticon Armada for years. And while Motormaster was almost as tough as he thought he was, taking on experienced Autobot frontliners should have been a recipe for immediate offlining.
Yet both combiner teams survived. Jazz couldn't speak for all the other Autobots who'd ever had a Stunticon down and out, but he hadn't been able to land the final blow. He just…couldn't. They were horrible mechs on the wrong side of the war, and he hadn't been able to kill them. At the same time, he'd seen Thrust and Ramjet lay into Slingshot and just - stop. Perfect opportunity to kill an Autobot, gone right to waste. Not that it was anything to risk a life on, but he couldn't blame the Coneheads for pulling their blows.
It was obvious the pre-programmed directives and gestalt links had messed up both combiner teams, but Vector Sigma had still activated. The Key hadn't worked for millions of years. There had been no logical reason it should have worked when Megatron brought the Stunticons to Vector Sigma, but Primus had still granted them sparks. Both sides of the war had practically given up on their race continuing at that point in the war, and suddenly there were new-sparks running about on Earth sending the factions into a raging tizzy of hope. Nobody had wanted to be the one who murdered the first sign of their deity's blessing in nine million years.
Jazz truly wouldn't rule out that Vector Sigma's reactivation had really been the first step in the peace process. Cybertron had fallen into an orbit around a star, end of the energy crisis, blah blah blah - frag that! Primus had spoken to His children, and maybe they'd finally paid attention to His will.
So, yeah. Sparks? Important things.
A Decepticon asking an Autobot to handle his spark was mind-blowing.
Jazz blinked. Swallowed. Reset his vocalizer and his visor again, because it was taking that long to process the request. The hand on the back of Thundercracker's neck had gone strangely numb and cold. His arm felt heavy. The blue Seeker only stared at him, sole optic dumbly hopeful and terrified at the same time.
"…are you sure?" Jazz asked, but somewhere between request and thinking, the low rumble of his voice had fallen to a new intimacy. His words stroked over the Decepticon in vibration and sound, shivering down Thundercracker's back from the hand on his neck.
That watching optic dimmed appreciatively. It still took a moment to scrape up the ball-bearings to quietly reply, "Yes."
He didn't understand. He couldn't wrap his mind around the idea of someone touching his own spark, but dear merciful Primus, the thought! Liquid heat that had been slowly pooling in Jazz's tanks raced up the sides to climb out and coat his internals in a fountain of sudden, undeniably carnal desire. Arousal erupted in boiling hot droplets drizzling down the inside of his armor, swirling around his spark and sending his ventilation system into overdrive. The hand on the back of Thundercracker's neck went straight from numb to oversensitive, clamping down with a possessive want that couldn't be disguised.
Jazz didn't speak. 'Speaking' implied mere movement of air. No, his vocalizer had sex with sound, sending out his voice to find audio receptors and do obscene things to them. "Well, since you've been such a good pet, I suppose I can oblige." The blue Seeker's jaw worked, and he turned his head to nuzzle into Jazz's arm.
Jazz raised his voice to catch Starscream's attention. "Oh, suitor-mine. I could use some help down here."
Audio-ravishing, noisy, bang-on-the-wall, 'Come over here and take me!' vocal sex; the tone effectively caught the Air Commander's attention well before the words actually registered. Red optics snapped to him, subtly wider than a moment ago. The night stuttered into sound and light as half the audience overloaded, pushed over the brink by the power of that thrumming voice alone. Jazz curled the fingers of his free hand in a come-hither gesture so full of innuendo it practically molested Starscream where he stood.
…they were all a little keyed up, here.
"Really." Lechery underscored Starscream's words, but he gamely bent down. "And what do you need help with, intended?" He sneered the last word.
The Autobot slipped his hand around to the front of Thundercracker's throat and firmly pushed him up, out of his lap. "Here, hold this."
Surprised, Starscream caught the blue Seeker by the shoulders and held him. The move curved Thundercracker's back against the bar wedged under his wings, straining his shoulders and making his shattered cockpit thrust outward. Which was the point, after all, and Thundercracker actually struggled to straighten further. Starscream frowned and dropped the whip in order to wrestle his ex-wingmate into a better position sitting back on damaged thrusters. The Air Commander ended up kneeling, lower leg braced along the whip-striped length of Thundercracker's back. The bar crossed just under his knee, and Starscream wrapped a less-than-gentle hand around Thundercracker's neck from behind, keeping him upright with fingers dug into throat linkages. His other hand was clamped onto Thundercracker's shoulder as if the mech were trying to escape.
He wasn't. Thundercracker shrugged against the tight hands holding him still, testing how much wiggle-room he had. Starscream hauled him back, shoving his leg against the bar and making the blue Seeker's back struts creak as the hand on his throat dragged him into a punishing arch over the Air Commander's knee armor. Thundercracker cried out, a hushed, involuntary sound of pain as whip scores and structure alike protested. He rose up slightly on his knees, trying to ease the stress.
Jazz rode down his thigh and was abruptly face-to-cockpit with the blue Seeker. He smiled like he'd just invented sin and was ready to give a hands-on demonstration.
There was an inrush of air as the entire arena saw that expression in the blue-white light of an exposed spark.
It had been bizarrely erotic when Starscream had torn open his challenger and toyed with his spark, forcing him to yield at the basest level. Disturbing to a sickening degree, but something hungry and frankly burning had clenched around the audience's sparks when he'd breeched spark containment and played with the flares of plasma leaking out. Plasma leaks were a Bad Thing, in a way that had medics running triage to make those injuries top priority. Seeing something like that scared even hardened Decepticons, no matter what they pretended. No Cybertronian could be unaffected by watching the flicker of sparklight. It was like seeing another mech's soul, his heart, his very being exposed to all. In the chaos of war, it was far too easy to imagine their own sparks open to air like the light shining from Thundercracker's chest.
Starscream had been exquisitely careful while preparing Thundercracker's spark chamber for execution extraction, disabling everything but the most vital connections. Knock Out had hooked most of those leads back up to prevent unexpected containment failure from lack of energy or jolting systems. That didn't mean that the medic had fixed the armor petals Starscream had peeled out of their intricate iris, breeching the chamber's containment field enough to allow the plasma leaks in the first place. Thundercracker was wounded to the core, and everyone knew it. They could see it. Tactile overloads often crackled energy across a mech's plating, but the spitting spark-flares that had lashed out of Thundercracker's chest were big, obvious signs of something very, very wrong. It was Very Bad with eighteen exclamation marks and a chorus of medics citing survival statics.
It was also the hottest thing this side of Cybertron.
"Now, just what are you up to?" Starscream asked, optics narrow and intrigued. The Autobot looked up, blue visor almost shadowed in the stark sparklight, and Thundercracker's head turned. The blue Seeker's red-orange broken optic sought his ex-wingleader's gaze, soundlessly pleading for - what? Intervention? Salvation?
Cooperation, perhaps?
"I'm doing what your lovely courtship gift has requested," Jazz said with a beatific smile belied by the audio-sex of his voice. "Apparently," black hands rose, "he wants to be 'faced," they dipped into the blue-white flare that was all Starscream could see from behind Thundercracker, "with my hands."
The blue Seeker convulsed wildly in Starscream's hands, a full-throated scream tearing through the silence of the arena. The high-pitched sound was one of utter bliss.
Suddenly, air was in short supply. Mechs were gasping, fans inadequate as the overall temperature of the whole area sped upward. Entire units fell over each other, even the just-overloaded pawing and whimpering at their partners. The Autobot's fingers stroked, agonizing meticulous. They moved in silhouette against the gleaming spark pulsing like a captured star in Thundercracker's chest. That entire side of the arena craned their necks, clutching hands over their own chambers as careful fingers picked knowingly over every frail, delicate petal of the forced-open chamber iris.
Thundercracker shuddered and squealed. His wings flapped, metal bending on the bar with a tortured groan as the wide, flat plating banged against Starscream as if he needed the pain of the whipmarks to ground himself.
If that was his goal, it failed. Streamers of plasma stretched unhurriedly out of his gutted cockpit, gradually coaxed and twined in glittering strands around gentle black hands like an impossible cat's-cradle. Jazz flexed his fingers, looping an extra coil around his forefingers. Thundercracker arched with strut-bending effort, wailing a cry that had the rust quaking as his engines broke lock-down and roared to life. Starscream cursed shrilly and jerked the blue Seeker down, forcing him to sit back on and repress his own turning turbines. The scream squawked off into white noise, the primitive sounds of a machine pushed past its limits. Jazz's wrists rolled in the plasma, and Thundercracker surged up again, squirming and bucking. Starscream could barely keep a hold on him as code-level instinct blared emergency alerts but body-level pleasure sang almost audibly through every shaking screw.
The Air Commander might have protested having to keep the other Seeker restrained, but he evidently couldn't keep his optics off the flaring spitfire of sparklight burning over Jazz's fingers. The Autobot washed his hands in forbidden pleasure. Jazz could see wide, fascinated red optics out of the corner of his vision, but most of his attention was on the phosphorescent material in his hands.
It slid, slick and semi-solid like liquid gelatin inside a slippery skin that glowed and singed his hands. He could feel the way it resisted his touch, but it spat tiny arcs of light to dance over his knuckle joints at the same time. It was strange. It was wonderful, but it was strange. Jazz's systems were in flux, pumping sizzling charge instead of fuel through his lines, and his spark chamber bleated inquiries at him. His processors tumbled denials and oh Primus please yes back in response, and he had never, ever been so aware of the individual petals that made up his chamber iris. They were fluttering. He hadn't even know that was possible, but he was watching the warped, bent petals of Thundercracker's spark chamber shift and flex right before him, so it had to be more than his imagination.
The streamers of plasma snapped back into the fitzing ball inside the chamber, then spat back out in pulsing rhythm that sped up with every touch. Jazz ignored them for a moment and resumed playing with the iris petals, tweaking them gently until static broke into ecstatic, hitched squalls. Thundercracker strained against Starscream's hold, twisting into every tender tracing along the thin chamber edges and sobbing as the pleasure built and built. The Air Commander's punishing grip had turned into a near-embrace, bringing his ex-wingmate under control and offering a peculiar kind of support as the Autobot tormented Thundercracker's spark with a swirl of fingers right inside the chamber itself. Fondling the inner surface of the iris petals had Thundercracker mewling, head thrown back and mouth gaping open in a howl constricted down to tiny, helpless grunts of utmost pleasure.
The spark all but separated into hissing strands of light, plasma-heat leaving black streaks on Jazz's forearms as charge coalesced in visible crackle-snaps of electricity and field energy over Thundercracker's armor. It ran in painful jolts through open rents, transmitting from wire to cables to ragged metal edges in his injuries. Miniature lightning bolts zapped from the Seeker's internals, running in blue-white charge over the outside of the spark chamber until they grounded through Jazz's hands.
The Autobot's smile never faltered. His visor lifted to visually caress the only Seeker aware enough to stare down at him, and Starscream's sudden intake of air shocked them both in an involuntary stutter of fans. For a moment, visor and optics locked in mutual arousal.
Then Jazz's visor dimmed completely, and the saboteur lowered his head. From Starscream's perspective, there was just the briefest glimpse of parting lips.
Thundercracker shrieked.
Light exploded outward.
Starscream swore, flinching back as charge smacked into the palms of his hands and blew out Thundercracker's wide open mouth in a gust of smoke and failed ventilation. The Air Commander coughed the burnt smell of melted rubber and singed copper from his intakes, squinting. The light went out with a faint sputter, going from blinding to almost nothing in the space of a pump-beat.
In that low light, Jazz sat back with a satisfied sigh of his vents. Black coated one side of his face, smeared across his cheek in wanton evidence of what he'd just done.
What he'd just done was overload Thundercracker hard enough that - Starscream shook one shoulder experimentally - the mech had been knocked offline. Not even a wince from the blue Seeker when Starscream knocked sharply on a blue wing, purposefully digging into a whip score.
Jazz couldn't interpret the look the Air Commander directed at him. "You really are just that good," Starscream murmured, and oh. Ah ha. That look was respect.
He lowered his visor demurely, hiding his smirk. "What can I say?" he said, mock-modest. "It's all in the wrist, my mech." He rolled one hand in demonstration, using his other hand to check his tongue for burns. The taste receptors were blipping sad little messages to self-repair, but the flexible plating seemed mostly intact. A few areas stung, melted, but it seemed he'd escaped with surface char instead of real damage. Not that he regretted it. He could have burnt his tongue to a nub and not regretted it.
Thundercracker's spark had tasted the way a thunderstorm felt. It'd slammed across his senses as if the Seeker were prostrate and hacked open to his every whim, riding the storm and booming across the sky but bound to his will at the same time. The spark plasma had licked heat and personality down his throat, and it'd tasted like distilled Thundercracker.
Jazz looked up at Starscream and very deliberately licked his fingertips.
The Air Commander blinked through reset, startled. Maybe just a bit interested as well.
Blue wings twitched. A barely-functional optic lit and looked at nothing much. "…muh?"
Oh, come on. That was both annoying and amusing. Plus a little reassuring, because Jazz had been a smidgen afraid he'd managed to do permanent damage to Thundercracker's spark. But as funny as the muzzy sounds of a fragged-senseless mech were, it did kind of interrupt Jazz's attempt at outright seducing a Vosian Emirate, one Starscream by name. Said Emirate shook his wings back and visibly redirected his attention toward the wobbly-jointed puddle of a Seeker hanging from his hands, and Jazz narrowed his visor. This was neither the time nor the place to just pounce the Air Commander, but he was beginning to think it was viable option.
…alright, he was a little fired-up. And that rogue subprocessor had apparently collected a harem, because there were far more scenarios being churned out than could be blamed on one lone unit.
Jazz inhaled deeply, forcing his vents open to their widest setting and holding it for a long moment. His temperature gauge logged off the scale, but he sternly kicked himself in the back of the cortex. Duty staggered back from where it'd been watching hardcore porn - er, Jazz's imagination run rampant, and it gingerly settled back into the groove.
Thundercracker made another thoroughly unintelligible noise and stared blearily at the night sky as Starscream brusquely tipped his head back. The Air Commander turned his face from side to side, snapping his fingers in front of his nose and chuckling when Thundercracker only made a faint, questioning sound.
"He's going to be out of it for a while," Starscream said without looking at Jazz. He slid his hand down and daintily swept it through the open space that had been a cockpit. Sparklight flickered fitfully but subsided after a moment. Thundercracker whimpered softly, expression oddly confused. He obviously wasn't comprehending a single thing going on. "I think you gave them their money's worth, Autobot."
Money's worth..? Huh, right.
Selective filters were great, but a mech had to remember to turn them off when they weren't needed. Jazz's audio receptors flipped the custom filters off, and suddenly he reeled in the onslaught of noise.
Stunned, Jazz turned. Wherever he looked, there were cheering flyers standing, stomping, waving their hands and applauding deliriously. Some of them were hardly able to stand. The air even in the middle of the makeshift arena floor reeked of the charged-ozone scent of interfacing. He couldn't imagine how heavy the atmosphere over the crowd was. There were still mechs rolling about on the building wreckage, cries audible even above the cascading shouts of approval pouring down around him. He was surrounded by a multicolored, heaving mass of wings, hot-opticked desire, and screaming ventilation fans.
Not bad, Jazz. Not bad at all.
Not that there'd ever been a doubt of that. "Of course I did," he said cockily, giving the Air Commander his most charming grin. The Seeker harrumphed at him without pausing the scans running over Thundercracker. "So, doc, will the patient recover?" Jazz righted himself, still straddling Thundercracker's thigh but now just perching instead of grinding.
That earned him a thoughtful look. "He will. Which raises the question of what exactly I'm going to do with him," Starscream said under the crowd noise. "You," he accused, and despite the teasing smirk, his optics held frustrated anger, "are trouble."
Less anger than he'd expected, to be honest. Considering the effort he'd just put into lessening that anger, however, Jazz would take anger over the fury Starscream had held during the challenge. Anger could be appeased; fury raged until it burnt out.
Jazz shrugged his doors, flashing the windows at the audience. "He got in my way," he said far more flippantly than the situation deserved.
Red optics turned cutting. "He…got in your way."
Autobot blue met that penetrating gaze with a coy flash of a visor. "Mmhmm."
Starscream glared. Jazz just looked back. Behind his visor, threat assessment waited tensely for new input, but it had already run the odds. It'd run acquired knowledge and studied behaviors past information assessment, and this was the resulting gamble. The right of someone being courted versus the trouble caused by an Autobot outsider.
After a moment, glaring became grudging acceptance. "Trouble," the Air Commander repeated, huffing out an angry exhale.
"And you're not?"
Dark lips almost smiled. "I suppose you have a point."
Jazz hummed agreement and stretched up to fold his arms on top of Thundercracker's shoulder. He rested his chin on the scorch marks from the Seeker's over-stimulated spark and looked up at Starscream from around the nearest air intake. "…so."
The Air Commander straightened, still kneeling behind his ex-wingmate but able to look down at the Autobot at the same time. Sometimes Jazz loathed having a small frametype. "So."
"What will you do with him?"
An expression that was nearly…conflicted crossed the Decepticon Second-in-Command's dark face. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
Starscream's head angled, and he gave the smaller mech a wry look as he slowly climbed to his feet. Without his support, Thundercracker slid gradually down into a senseless pile of restrained limbs in the rust. Starscream offered the Autobot a hand up. "Nothing. You see," he said as Jazz accepted his hand and gracefully stood, "I seem to be involved in a courtship right now, which prevents me from accepting or offering another suit at this time." Surprise popped Jazz's visor wide, and the Air Commander's smirk was caustic. "A pity. That leaves poor Thundercracker abandoned on the runway, as none of the Armada would dare cross my orders and offer for him."
He tucked the Autobot's hand in the crook of his arm, pointedly claiming him in front of the Decepticons and Vos and Primus alike. The crowd noise took on a much more gossiping note, excitedly commenting on the move, and Jazz's mouth flattened into a half-disapproving, half-resigned line.
At their feet, Thundercracker rolled onto his side, something finally seeping through the post-overload haze. "…sir?"
The Air Commander shook his head, and Jazz couldn't read anything but wicked entertainment on his face. Mech had moods like quicksilver! "You have a choice, Decepticon Thundercracker," he said, stiffly formal, and that snapped through the pleasure faster than any whip. "My recommendation is that you grant permission and agree quickly. I sincerely doubt you will receive a better offer." Confused horror painted over Thundercracker's face as Starscream stepped back, drawing Jazz away as he went.
"He's all yours," Starscream said to the arena in general.
It took all of Jazz's hard-won operative self-control not to react as Soundwave emerged from the crowd.
[* * * * *]
End Pt. 17
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